Been a while since I have done or learnt anything worthy of publication, but last night I took it upon myself to figure out how to access the internals of my new 1tb Sky HD box and since there seem to be no other guides, I figured I would stick my neck out.
So, why did I risk voiding my warranty and bricking the brand new box? Well, so that I could transfer all of my old recorded programs from the last box onto the new one, not mission critical, but I had a lot of recorded programs that I still needed to work my way through. I’ll put some guidance on those steps as well, but I would suggest following the FAQ’s on the Copy + page.
Required tools
- A standard electrical screwdriver
- A 2mm / 3mm flat head screwdriver
- Standard flat pliers
Gaining access
Turn the Sky box upside down, ensuring you place the nice new glossy topside on something that isn’t going to snag or scratch it.
Remove the two plastic ‘grills’ on either end. They should just pop off with a light outwards tug. Second photo shows the simple plastic clips that hold them in place.
Pull towards you to remove.
See simple plastic 'retaining clips'
Having removed side grills, there are four screws which need to be removed from the base of the device [ edit ] and one from the rear, just above and to the left of the HDMI port.
Remove four encircled screws.
Again from the underside of the box, lift the retaining clasp and ease the outer box forwards. BE CAREFULL TO KEEP LEVEL, any torquing may damage LEDs or buttons from the front of the device.
Carefully lift clip with a flathead screw driver and ease outer box forwards
You can now remove the remaining side pieces of black plastic, which will have probably fallen off on their own, but are again pushed towards the front of the box to release the ‘L’ retaining clip from the metal case body.
The last piece of the plastic outer body to remove
You should now only have a metal innards of the box now, you can turn this the right way up. CAREFULLY remove the ribbon from the front connection, to the left of the middle black piece.
Carefully remove from retaining port.
If you now look at the box from above you will see four twisted metal retaining clasps, with a set of pliers delicately twist these straight.
Twist each of the encircled items straight with pliers.
You should now be able to lift the lid from the front, gently pivoting it at the rear, before lifting up completely to reveal the compact and surprisingly well organised innards.
The insides that are revealed.
You can now access the SATA port and power for the hard drive in the bottom right hand corner. If using something like Copy +, I would suggest removing these items and connecting new cables from your PC, rather than trying to remove the hard disk (Surely you don’t need more than 1tb anyway….?)
June 6th, 2010 3:34 pm
Excellent guide, I feel much more confident of doing the same myself. Just for information, did you “commission” your new 1tb box first, i.e. set it up, phone sky to assign viewing card to box etc,followed by copy+, or use copy+ first, and install the box afterwards, or does it make no difference?
Thanks
Overload
June 6th, 2010 8:42 pm
I had connected the sky box up before I copied the content, using the self install telephone activation (think it was an option within the services menu). That really is just a case of pairing your viewing card with the new box, once that is done, the copy is pretty simple.
Let me know if you have any issues and I’ll do what I can to help. The forum admin on the copy+ site is really helpful and active, should you have trouble. (Another reassuring thing is the capacity to do a system reset on the box should you need to).
June 13th, 2010 12:46 pm
There is another screw at the rear of the box above and to the left of the HDMI socket which also needs to be removed otherwise the plastic cover will not move forward to enable access to the metal box.
June 24th, 2010 10:16 pm
Cheers Tony, updated..
July 14th, 2010 10:39 pm
I’ve got the Sky Plus system fault so can’t record on my Amstrad drx890C – would you assume that the instructions above would be the same for my model, and is it just a matter of turning off the machine, opening it up and swapping the drives – or does software need to be installed?
Thanks.
July 23rd, 2010 8:35 pm
The Hard Disk Drive Power & SATA cables both have locking connectors (on my DRX895) – reach round and underneath each one to lift up the locking tab – you can still wiggle them loose without unlocking but this sometimes chips the plastic on the HDD Power & Data sockets.
July 23rd, 2010 11:00 pm
Sorry about the delay..
You can copy the details of your drive from one hard disk to the other fairly simply using some free software. In terms of opening the case up, I suspect it will be different to my guide but from a quick google image search I’ve done, I think it is just the old box, which I have also opened up. Message back if you still need some guidance and I’ll get back to you and help out.
July 24th, 2010 12:28 am
Out of interest which Model of Sky box did you copy the recordings from? Was it the same disk format (Little or Big Endian?)?