Harddrive size

[ZombiE]

Hi everyone,

I have a 40 hr (540) Tivo and was wondering what size hardrive comes standard in these?
I searched but couldn't find the answer to this, a ton of posts about upgrading the drive though.

Thanks,

Alex

[jfh3]

40 Gb

[greg_burns]

Not the question, but to provide more info:

140Hour Tivo's have only 120GB drives.

What are the 80Hours ones? 80GB is a common drive size, but is that right?

And why is a 120GB drive, 140 and not 120? :confused:

[windracer]

I've always wondered that too ...

- my 40hr box came with a 40gb HD
- my 60hr box came with a 60gb HD
- my 140hr box had a 120gb HD
- when I upgraded my 40hr with a 120gb HD, it went to 133hrs

Ah well ... differences in calculations and such, I guess.

[classicsat]

My 80 GB DVR had 87 Hrs capacity. I think part of the reason a 120 GB drive can do 140 GB, is that space isn't lost to a partiion boundary and index.

[greg_burns]

- when I upgraded my 40hr with a 120gb HD, it went to 133hrs

Mine also. I felt cheated (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=292427). Somebody owes me 7 hours. :p

[windracer]

Mine also. I felt cheated (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=292427). Somebody owes me 7 hours. :p
:D

Well, when I upgraded my 60hr with a 200gb HD, it went to 237hrs, so I'm cool with missing the 7 hours on the other box. :)

[c3]

In order to get 140 hours on a 120GB drive, you have to use a 140-hour image and a Maxtor "120GB" drive.

[greg_burns]

In order to get 140 hours on a 120GB drive, you have to use a 140-hour image and a Maxtor "120GB" drive.

OK, but my 140 HR Tivo had a Western Digital 120GB inside it. How did Tivo manage that?

[c3]

OK, but my 140 HR Tivo had a Western Digital 120GB inside it. How did Tivo manage that?

Oh, I was talking about the current 540 series. You must have 240, which has slightly higher capacity per GB.

[Puppy76]

How's that work? This is so mysterious :D

[c3]

How's that work?

Which part are you asking?

[greg_burns]

Oh, I was talking about the current 540 series. You must have 240, which has slightly higher capacity per GB.

Yeah, my 140HR was a 240 series. (Had I only know how simply upgrading was before I bought it! :rolleyes: )

[ZombiE]

The 540 series from what I have read has better mpeg compression ratio, hence the "larger" capacity for the 540 series.

I also think the drop in hours vs. gigabytes is the old 1024 thing. When you first put a new drive in your computer that is 80gb, you really only get about 75-76 gigabytes out of it. That difference increases with larger capacity drives.

Alex

[c3]

No, this has nothing to do with 1000 versus 1024 bytes. Drive manufacturers have been using 1000 instead of 1024 for ages. Maxtor drives are consistently 2-3GB larger than other brands for the "same capacity" shown on the box/label.

For the same hard drive, the 240 series would show higher capacity than the 540 series, not the other way around. I don't know what changed.

[MikePGH]

FWIW, I just put a Seagate 300GB drive in my 540040 TiVo and it reads 340 hours basic or about 99 hours on Best quality.

[Puppy76]

How many hours on High and Medium?

[Guindalf]

Remember that a certain amount of space is taken up by operating system software, so if an 80Gb drive returns 80 hours, then only part of that 80Gb is going to program storage. Increase the HD size and the OS space stays the same and the extra available space is ALL for programming, hence 140hrs on a 120Gb drive and so on.

There will always be variations on actual storage depending on software version, hard drive manufacturer and so on.

[classicsat]

The system sofware space is static. There is probably loss when you expand,

[Sirshagg]

I'm looking at 2 drives that came out of two brand new 540's and they are both 40gb