v+frezing up at night
 

Hi my v+ box is frezing up at nighttime a lot when the hard drive get to 71 GB or more will have to phone VM. Can the hard drive be upgraded from 80GB to 160GB?

thanks Andrew

Re: v+frezing up at night
 

I don't believe there is any means of upgrading the Hare Drive size. In the long term that will be the Achilles heel of the V+ STB, especially if Virgin do one day decide to get more HD content.

Any device needing a Hard Disk will have difficulty when the storage nears capacity. A good rule of thumb was always that 10% of free space is desirable in computers, so I'd expect a similar desirable with any other device.

Night time freezing especially shortly after midnight, when the Virgin Media updates seem to take place is a common problem. Why they can't do it around 4 am or sometime when there is likely to be really few people using the box is beyond me.

Re: v+frezing up at night
 

The slightly flippant answer is "because days start at midnight".

It's a consequence of the way DVB defined it. At midnight (GMT), you have to throw away the data for the day just ended, then move day 1 to day 0, day 2 to day 1, and so on. If it was delayed to 4am, you'd have no guide data for 4 hours.

Re: v+frezing up at night
 

I am sure its a 160GB drive that is in the V+ already

Re: v+frezing up at night
 

no it's a 80GB hard drive is in V+ boxes it is sky+ that have the 160GB will virgin be makeing new V+set top boxes with 160GB hard drives?

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Re: v+frezing up at night
 

The problem though is not the guide being current / out of date. After all my standard V box effectively gets no usable guide anyway for a couple of hours after midnight due to it's pant's update procedure (but that is a separate issue). It's the fact that the V+ can't be controlled for the few minutes around midnight as the updating overloads it. Trying to stop / rewind / Fast forward / play any recording at that time (trying to get past the recorded adverts for example) is an impossibility. The V+ is a great bit of kit, but this midnight lack of responsiveness is a significant annoyance.

Re: v+frezing up at night
 

I think you're getting confused with hours - VM say the V+ can record 80 hours, and as a general rule of thumb broadcast quality SD MPEG2 comes in at roughly about something a bit like 2GB an hour (although on Freeview these days you're probably looking at closer to 1GB/hr), so the V+ must have a 160GB drive.

I think the Sky+HD box has a 320GB drive, but Sky steal half of that so it comes to about the same.

Also, whoever said that a 160GB drive won't be enough once we get more HD channels is quite right! I struggle to find space for recordings from just one HD channel!

Sam

Re: v+frezing up at night
 

No its a 160GB HDD that is in the V+, Sky do put in 320GB drives but keep half of that reserved for the Sky anytime service or something like that.

Re: v+frezing up at night
 

It is possible to upgrade the hard drive, but since the box is technically owned by Virgin Media and not you, you're not really allowed to modify the box in any way. Although I don't think they'd notice unless you have to send the box back for a replacement/ if you cancel your contract, and then you could just put back the old hard drive.

For clarification, the hard drive is a 160GB 3.5" IDE drive. The one in my box is manufactured by Western Digital, but the manufacturer might vary between different boxes.