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A nice score from a dumped Sky HD+ box

everthewatcher

everthewatcher

Forum Supporter
I've mentioned before that dumped Sky+ boxes will usually have a perfectly good Seagate 500GB drive in them, same model as used in the HDR, albeit with a high power on time of sometimes >2000 days. I've got a stack of them here plus a 250GB one that I must do something about and every one passed Seagate's Seatools long test OK.

The other day a slightly different black-fronted Sky box came my way with "2TB" on the front. Inside was a WD20EURX drive with 740 days and currently with a 55 PoC, 10 of which will have happened while I've had it. I've now got to decide what to do with it.
 
It would also indicate that the WD10EURX and WD20EURX are a good choice should you need to replace the original Seagate.
 
Pulled a 2009 WD2500AAJS WD Caviar Blue drive from a dumped Sagem Freeview box yesterday. 162 days, 2470 PoC and so many duff sectors it's unrecoverable.
 
everthewatcher said:
Pulled a 2009 WD2500AAJS WD Caviar Blue drive from a dumped Sagem Freeview box yesterday. 162 days, 2470 PoC and so many duff sectors it's unrecoverable.
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You win some - you lose some,
I returned my Sagem box to John Lewis after a month or so as too unreliable to use and got the Humax HDR T2 instead, I haven't looked back since :)
 
Two more Sky HD+ boxes turned up yesterday and I think we may have a new record.

One box was dated '09 and had a WD Greenpower WD3200AVVS drive with 3194 days / 105 PoC on it - that's 8.75 years. Passed WD's Data LifeGuard Diagnostics extended test with no issues.

The Seagate 500GB in the other one was fine too, with only 1020 days / 90 PoC.

[Edit] The WD box was an early design I've not seen before with two fans, one dedicated to cooling the HDD which also had a louvred heatsink bolted to one side.
 
antipodean said:
Make a NAS box with striping et al ... ?:)
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With a similar 500GB drive surplus, I was considering that but it wouldn't be worth it for fewer than 5 (say ~2TB usable capacity) and the cost of an enclosure for 5 or more 3.5" drives seems to be prohibitive (especially compared to the 0 cost of the drives) ... unless anyone has any suggestions?
 
/df said:
With a similar 500GB drive surplus, I was considering that but it wouldn't be worth it for fewer than 5 (say ~2TB usable capacity) and the cost of an enclosure for 5 or more 3.5" drives seems to be prohibitive (especially compared to the 0 cost of the drives) ... unless anyone has any suggestions?
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Use USB interfaces and a Rasberry Pi? A USB hub would allow one to attach a very large number (as in more than 3-5) of drives and Linux would handle the striping/mirroring to make one large drive.
 
antipodean said:
Use USB interfaces and a Rasberry Pi? A USB hub would allow one to attach a very large number (as in more than 3-5) of drives and Linux would handle the striping/mirroring to make one large drive.
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Quite, but I think the real problem is a box with mounting points, fan and power supply in which to put the numerous drives, and then perhaps that the whole thing would be some sort of unplanned convection heater.
 
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