BT Vision HDD

It seems BT have now locked the drives so they cant be used in a PC.

Does anyone know if its possible to remove this lock?

A word of caution. When I bought a secod-hand Humax I replaced the 150GB drive with a 750GB one. I thought of using the 150GB as spare storage. Not a good idea. The new and replacement drives are optimised for video. The firmware tolerates transient errors. Fine for video, not fine for normal usage.

Modern drives can be configured for AV use or for computer use using the DIP switches next to the data connector.

The old drive was IDE, the new one SATA (which meant I needed convertor to use it in my old Humax). Neither documented a switch. I rarely buy new technology so modern is lost on me!

i used a drive from a thomson top up Tv box in a computer with no problem.

As gomezz suggests times have moved on. I have been lucky with drives and apart from the Humax only two others have had errors. One I repaired by replacing the rubber band which came off its spindle. The other was sold to me as new - the vendor admitted their error when I quoted personal details from its previous owner!

I have a load of these coming in soon so I'll let you know.

In reply to a post by john2007:

When I bought a secod-hand Humax I replaced the 150GB drive with a 750GB one.

That is very interesting (always running out of space here!). Is it just a simple matter of physically replacing the existing drive or are some special setup steps required?
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Bryn

My model is second-hand from Amazon in 2009 (until I bought it I didn't realise they had such a market). Humax Duovision PVR-9200T to give the full name.

It's an IDE machine. It came with a 150GB IDE drive. Like a man I wanted bigger.

I looked on a UK forum ( http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1386584 ) which seems to have folded. The advice their was that a special AV drive was needed (which I searched around for).

I bought a Seagate DB35.3 750GB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb 8MB Cache - OEM 3YR for £51.31 from overclock in late 2009.

If you have a modern machine it's probably SATA. My main problem was finding an IDE SATA convertor (less than a £5 from HK I think).

My model is well built. Five screws and the lid is off. The hard drive is secured by four screws on anti-vibration mountings. Unscrew replace. Put IDE-SATA convertor in to replaced drive.

It's a trivial job. Even in the reach of men!

If your Humax is a different model I can't help other than say look online or quote the model number.

Thanks for that. I had a dim and distant memory that HDs in video recorders were different in some way, and your message has given me a type number that comes up readily on eBay. Mostly "refurbished" of course - what can they do, polish the label?!

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Bryn