This blog post is about the inside of a Sky+HD DRX895-C 2TB satellite receiver set-top box.
Introduction
I’m going to get straight to the point. I purchased this set-top box at a car boot sale in April 2019 for £3 GBP. The couple that I purchased the set-top box from, were selling it due to an upgrade.
I regularly see Sky+HD boxes selling for between £3 to £5, and I think they are fantastic purchases. I’m not interested in using the set-top box and I don’t have a Sky subscription.
I only purchase them as I want to remove the hard disks, and the DRX895-C I purchased had a massive 2TB hard drive!
I also salvage other parts from these boxes, such as the screws and a couple of the cables. I’ve been keeping the fans, but I don’t have a use for them currently.
The back of the box
As well as showing the inside, I thought I should also show the connections on the back, just in-case someone is interested to know those details.
The inside of the set-top box
I found accessing the inside of the box quite easy and I used a screwdriver and pliers to help me.
Sorry I forgot to take a photo that would have shown what was connected to the cables you can see in the photo above.
I used a pair of scissors to cut the three cable ties.
The hard disk in the box I opened is a Seagate Video 3.5″ 2TB, model number ST2000VM003. I just looked up the hard drive price on Amazon and at the time of writing this blog post, the hard disk is listed for £71.44 brand new!
How I’m using the hard disk.
I’ve removed hard disks from Sky+HD boxes before and use them in desktop PCs are secondary drives. However, the 2TB hard disk from this box has been placed in an old D-Link DNS-320 NAS box.
Usually I would use WD Red hard disks in a NAS box, but in this instance I won’t be leaving the NAS box on all the time.
I ran a test on the hard disk and it seems fine. I’m not going to rely on the disk for critical data, especially as I’m unsure of how much it has been used.
Conclusion
I hope you have found this blog post helpful. I’ve also purchased non-Sky set-top boxes in the past and removed their hard drives. I’ve found using old set-top box hard drives as a good way to save money.
My main desktop computer has a couple of hard drives from set-top boxes and then my primary drive is a WD SSD. There is definitely a risk when using old used drives, but I’m currently happy to do so.
This is only the second 2TB hard drive I’ve removed from a set-top box and I think I purchased a bargain.