Are Maxtor Quickview drives in demand?

[TCL6262]

I am new here and I don't want to violate any rules, so let me say that I am NOT trying to sell drives here. I also know almost nothing about TIVOs.

I just bought a case of Maxtor 6L250RO 250GB OEM drives that I thought were Diamond Max drives for PCs. What I got were 6L250RO Quickview drives. I did not even know that such a drive existed and now I am trying to determine if they can be used reliably in a PC or not.

In my research I discovered this site and read some old threads about the Quickview drives.

So my question is do many current TIVOs still use IDE drives, and if so would these 250GB drives be usable and/or desirable to TIVO users?

I guess I should also ask if it is permissible to sell items on this board, or post a link to EBay should they turn out to be better suited for TIVO than a PC.

Thanks

[classicsat]

They are better suited to a TiVo, yes, but I don't think there is that much of a demand for them.

You can use it in a PC, likely as a data drive, with a slight performance hit.

You cannot sell here at all. Not even link your own eBay listings.

[TCL6262]

[QUOTE=classicsat]You can use it in a PC, likely as a data drive, with a slight performance hit.QUOTE]

Thanks for the response, but I have a question. From everything I have read, these drives are supposed to be faster, quieter, and sturdier than their DiamondMax counterparts. They have the same seek times and the same 16MB cache.

The big disadvantage to using them in a PC is the fact that they do not perform as rigorous error checking as a standard PC drive, which could lead to issues. I was planning to use them as project drives to edit video to and from, but I am a little scared of the error check issue.

Is this basically correct, or am I missing some info?

[rbtravis]

[QUOTE=classicsat]You can use it in a PC, likely as a data drive, with a slight performance hit.QUOTE]

Thanks for the response, but I have a question. From everything I have read, these drives are supposed to be faster, quieter, and sturdier than their DiamondMax counterparts. They have the same seek times and the same 16MB cache.

The big disadvantage to using them in a PC is the fact that they do not perform as rigorous error checking as a standard PC drive, which could lead to issues. I was planning to use them as project drives to edit video to and from, but I am a little scared of the error check issue.

Is this basically correct, or am I missing some info?Demand is on a Par with that of the Edsel Ford :eek:

[HomeUser]

From everything I have read, these drives are supposed to be faster, quieter, and sturdier than their DiamondMax counterparts. They have the same seek times and the same 16MB cache.

The big disadvantage to using them in a PC is the fact that they do not perform as rigorous error checking as a standard PC drive, which could lead to issues. I was planning to use them as project drives to edit video to and from, but I am a little scared of the error check issue.

Is this basically correct, or am I missing some info?


Correct, the drive gives up on the re-reading bad sectors sooner then the standard drive. Having the drive returning a read error sooner lets the OS determine weather getting a 100% correct read is more important then data starvation. A missing pixel or 2 in Video probably will not be noticed where a second or 2 of frozen screen will definitely be noticed.

As for using the drives in a PC there should be no problem the OS will tell the drive to retry until there is a good read. Performance may suffer a little when the drives becomes fragmented because the head seeking is done in quiet mode.

[TCL6262]

Correct, the drive gives up on the re-reading bad sectors sooner then the standard drive. Having the drive returning a read error sooner lets the OS determine weather getting a 100% correct read is more important then data starvation. A missing pixel or 2 in Video probably will not be noticed where a second or 2 of frozen screen will definitely be noticed.

As for using the drives in a PC there should be no problem the OS will tell the drive to retry until there is a good read. Performance may suffer a little when the drives becomes fragmented because the head seeking is done in quiet mode.
It seems like I have read here (or another site) about some sort of utility that allow you to turn the quiet mode off and on. Is this available, and would it increase the performance?

Thanks!

[bhang]

I've used drives scrounged from dvrs many, many times and so have other folks I know I've got a 120 and an 80gig in my box right now and they've been in there for like 3-4 years without a problem.
Ive used these and others for lots of video transcoding, editing and processing without a problem. They seem to provide smother video playback and even seem alot snappier than my "regular" drives.
try installing one and running some kind of "benchmarking" app on them(i used nero) mine preform better.


bhang

[jlib]

There is no problem using a so-called DVR drive in a PC. They are simply capable of the ATA 7 Streaming Command Set (including the urgent bit). If you send them regular read/write commands they respond like a regular drive. This is why all these drives (Maxtor QuickView, Seagate DB35, and Hitachi CinemaStar) were all all originally considered OEM drives by their manufacturers. They were intended to be sold to companies to design and build a DVR or other consumer electronics device around. They are only of advantage to a host that makes use of the specific streaming commands. The TiVo does not use the Streaming Command Set and treats the drive like any other.

Some unscrupulous retailers started reselling them at premium prices on the secondary market boasting of their DVR performance (the 1TB CinemaStar initially had a several hundred dollar premium over the functionally equivalent DeskStar when there was only one vendor reselling OEM stock). They do have the advantage of already having the head seek performance acoustically detuned but most regular drives (save Seagate) can have that done manually with no price premium.

I don't know if the acoustic management can be "undone" in this specific case but you could try downloading the Hitachi Feature Tool (http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm) and run it on one of the drives to see if it was just defaulted to low and if it can be changed back to normal. Most of the demand for upgrading drives comes from the byte hungry Tivo Series 3 and HD models so your drives would be both too small and have the wrong interface (PATA instead of SATA).

Here's some light reading ;) for anyone interested in the subject: See Section 4.17 Streaming Feature Set (http://www.t10.org/t13/project/d1532v1r4a-ATA-ATAPI-7.pdf) of the AT Attachment with Packet Interface - 7 Volume 1 - Register Delivered Command Set, Logical Register Set (ATA/ATAPI-7 V1) document.

[TCL6262]

There is no problem using a so-called DVR drive in a PC. They are simply capable of the ATA 7 Streaming Command Set (including the urgent bit). If you send them regular read/write commands they respond like a regular drive. This is why all these drives (Maxtor QuickView, Seagate DB35, and Hitachi CinemaStar) were all all originally considered OEM drives by their manufacturers. They were intended to be sold to companies to design and build a DVR or other consumer electronics device around. They are only of advantage to a host that makes use of the specific streaming commands. The TiVo does not use the Streaming Command Set and treats the drive like any other.

Some unscrupulous retailers started reselling them at premium prices on the secondary market boasting of their DVR performance (the 1TB CinemaStar initially had a several hundred dollar premium over the functionally equivalent DeskStar when there was only one vendor reselling OEM stock). They do have the advantage of already having the head seek performance acoustically detuned but most regular drives (save Seagate) can have that done manually with no price premium.

I don't know if the acoustic management can be "undone" in this specific case but you could try downloading the removed and run it on one of the drives to see if it was just defaulted to low and if it can be changed back to normal. Most of the demand for upgrading drives comes from the byte hungry Tivo Series 3 and HD models so your drives would be both too small and have the wrong interface (PATA instead of SATA).

Here's some light reading ;) for anyone interested in the subject: Removed of the AT Attachment with Packet Interface - 7 Volume 1 - Register Delivered Command Set, Logical Register Set (ATA/ATAPI-7 V1) document.

Thank you very much. My biggest concern was that they would not hadle the error request properly. I found the AAMSET utility and am going to try turning quite mode off and just use the drives as intended.