Looking to Upgrade? 400gb SATA drive for $100, no rebates

[waharris007]

Saw this on digg today. It's a 400gb 7200rpm SATA drive from Samsung for $100 with no rebates. Not quite the 750gb that people are talking about, but much more affordable for a smaller step up.

Linky (http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=340904&ref=cj)

[HomeUser]

Remember you can only "Step up" once keeping recordings.

[Woodstock2]

Remember you can only "Step up" once keeping recordings.
Really? I thought "upgrading, keeping recordings" was just copying the data from a linux drive? If tivo can prevent the 2nd upgrade, I'm surprised they don't prevent the first.

[CCourtney]

I question the quality of this drive. The listed Manfucture number doesn't exist. All of Samsungs list 400GB SATA drives are SATA-II (3.0Gbps) while this is spec'd as a SATA-I (1.5Gbps) The only reference to this number I find out on the internet points back to the CompUSA sells.

Is this some rejected line?

Here's a link to Sammy's HDD page.
http://www.samsung.com/Products/HardDiskDrive/SpinPointTSeries/index.asp

[Eskimo Pie]

I'm sure someone else who's a linux expert will chime in, but it's not TiVo preventing multiple copies, it's some limitation with the file system... Can someone else explain better?

[redtape]

It's sold out for delivery and not available in stores at this time. Too late again....

[rainwater]

I'm sure someone else who's a linux expert will chime in, but it's not TiVo preventing multiple copies, it's some limitation with the file system... Can someone else explain better?

You can only expand the drive once and keep the recordings.

[HomeUser]

Really? I thought "upgrading, keeping recordings" was just copying the data from a linux drive? If tivo can prevent the 2nd upgrade, I'm surprised they don't prevent the first.

Yes there are some Linux partitions and some modified Apple MFS partitions. Unfortunately there is a limit on the total number of partitions. MFSTools expands the drive by adding two more partitions to fill the extra space on the drive. The first upgrade for the Series 2 and 3 Tivos the partition limit is reached preventing additional expanding. The only way for MFSTools to re-expand is to remove the extra partitions then re-create larger ones using the -s option in mfsbackup the -s only works if the partitions being removed do not have anything that is being copied.

I spouse if you are computer savvy at the disk level you could adjust the partition table.