Anyone buy HD from Weaknees?

[marcb515]

We have a Sony SVR3000 that looks like it needs a new Hard Drive.

Weaknees has an upgrade for $120.

Any of you guys have good luck with upgrading?

Thank you,.....marc

[stevel]

Lots of people have done so over the years, and the experience is almost always good. You should check around in the Upgrades section of the forum for more.

[jjberger2134]

I bought from weaknees many years ago. Since the upgrade the drive has worked very well. If you are a do it yourselfer there are many tools you can use to upgrade at a much lower cost.

Instant Cake is $20, and if you poke around the upgrade forum you can learn about MFSLive and Winmfs, both free utilities. In all cases you can buy an off the shelf PATA drive. If you use any of the above methods, you will have a hard drive that is much larger than what you can buy at weaknees for the same money.

Mind me asking why you think the hard drive is shot?

[astrohip]

For my 2nd S3, I bought a 500GB HD from WK. Popped it open, plugged it in, done.

It cost me a little more than a raw drive, although not much. And it saved me from having to d/l the TiVo OS to a raw drive.

Convenience. :up:

[nmiller855]

I bought an upgraded drive a few years back. I was such a chicken that I sent them my unit & they installed it & sent back the original drive in the box with it. It has worked flawlessly for several years now.

[marcb515]

The HD appears to be bad for the following reasons:
making noise
picture breaks up every now and then
access abd selection is very slow
set up is very slow

[Bierboy]

For my 2nd S3, I bought a 500GB HD from WK. Popped it open, plugged it in, done.

It cost me a little more than a raw drive, although not much. And it saved me from having to d/l the TiVo OS to a raw drive.

Convenience. :up:

Same here -- bought my S3 the minute it was released Sept. 12, 2006 and ordered the 750GB pre-formatted WK drive in December, dropped it in and haven't looked back.

[sirbob]

When my harddrive failed, I didn't have an image saved from it so I ended up buying one from Instant Cake. The transfer of the image to a new drive, and the upgrade itself was quite simple. That being said, I've always enjoyed opening up my computer and upgrading parts. It's really quite simple, but if you're new to the idea, and you'd rather not muck around with your expensive electronics, just have a friend who's more inclined do it for you or go with a service like weaknees.com

[snickerrrrs]

Prices are much more reasonable now compared to when I bought mine (it was kind of a screw for a drive when instantcake is $20). But the prices are lot better now so it's a pretty good deal for the hardware challenged. Pricing aside my weaknees drive worked perfectly and the instructions were well written, the kit worked just like they said it would. I'd recommend them to anyone. (although I here dvrupgrade.com is good also). :up:

[c3]

Those prices are more than twice as much as the bare drive prices.

[phox_mulder]

When I ordered my S3, I ordered a bigger drive from Weaknees the same day.
When they arrived, I immediately put the bigger drive in, didn't even turn it on with the original drive.

Yes, I paid more for the Weaknees drive, but it was well worth it.
My previous computer was 8 years old, well before SATA was invented.
Getting a bare drive and setting it up for the S3 was not possible.
(might have been possible, but the price involved would have surpassed the ready-to-wear Weaknees drive)

I had previously ordered a secondary drive for my HR10 from Weaknees and was pleased with how easy it was.


phox

[Rawson819]

I have also used Instant Cake for drive replacements and highly recommend it! It made the process painless and I found that I actually enjoyed it and the resulting sense of accomplishment.

[btwyx]

I've bought quite a few upgrades from Weaknees, I'd recommend them.

[sirbob]

My previous computer was 8 years old, well before SATA was invented.
Getting a bare drive and setting it up for the S3 was not possible.
(might have been possible, but the price involved would have surpassed the ready-to-wear Weaknees drive)phox

I used my IDE laptop to upgrade the SATA harddrive on a new TivoHD, it just took a $11 IDE/SATA to USB adaptor I got from my local Microcenter. You can get simillar ones from Newegg online. I'm guessing my 1TB drive and $11 adapter was cheaper than the Weakness drive. However, if you don't want to deal with the work, then Weakness is a good way to go,

Ryan

[cheerdude]

Another satisfied Weaknees customer (times many).

Latest one was getting a HD to downgrade my failing 2-drive Series 2 (also from Weaknees). Only thing that I didn't think of was a single drive bracket; luckily I had a spare TiVo handy to salvage this part from.

[dylanemcgregor]

I've upgraded twice, once using Weaknees and once on my own.

The Weaknees experience was very easy with clear instructions and my TiVo was up and running 15 minutes after the package arrived at my front door.

The second upgrade was on my own, since I had found a black friday deal on a hard drive. This definitely took longer (especially since I didn't have a desktop PC at home, and so had to schlep the drive to work on a weekend and do the work there. But all in all that was a good experience, and I learned a bit more doing it myself.

[classicsat]

Those prices are more than twice as much as the bare drive prices.

Keep in mind they use prepared DVR grade drives (which are generally unavailable for general sales), and provide warranty support for them. And they are a somewhat smaller company.

[c3]

Keep in mind they use prepared DVR grade drives (which are generally unavailable for general sales), and provide warranty support for them. And they are a somewhat smaller company.

DVR grade drive == marketing. If people really want to use DVR drives for whatever reason, they can be easily bought online.

For people who can open TiVos and replace drives, I believe most of them would have no problem using WinMFS to do their own upgrades. With USB support, you don't even need to open up the PC.

[tivoupgrade]

Those prices are more than twice as much as the bare drive prices.

Keep in mind that we retailers typically spend more for drives than a typical end-user would.

When I started, I used to purchase drives from vendors listed on pricewatch and sometimes there were great deals, but with quantity limitations. And other times, great prices translated into grey market drives, poor fulfillment practices (slow order processing, poor packing, etc) and other issues.

At a certain point, we started to use 'official' suppliers to the resellers (as I suspect WK has, as well), ie distributors, and they typically charge more per drive then you may see listed on a bargain site.

I know that there are some that don't value the mark-up as much as others do. Just as we all know, having a meal prepared for us can cost many times that of the raw materials. Some people prefer to cook rather than pay a premium for that service.

Also please keep in mind that there is a cost of overhead in running a business, and also sustaining it to remain around to provide long term support. That was something folks around here were concerned about a long time ago.

Lou

[btwyx]

DVR grade drive == marketing.There's more than just marketing. I got a non-DVR 750GB drive for my S3 when I first got it, it was very noisy, possibly too noisy to live with. Weaknees took it back and did the DVR preparation to it, it was totally quiet after I got it back.

[c3]

There's more than just marketing. I got a non-DVR 750GB drive for my S3 when I first got it, it was very noisy, possibly too noisy to live with. Weaknees took it back and did the DVR preparation to it, it was totally quiet after I got it back.

That IS part of marketing -- same drive with firmware for quieter seeks. With WD, Hitachi, and old Maxtor, you just run a program to change the AAM setting. Seagate did not (still does not?) implement external AAM due to patent issue, but internal AAM is just the same. You do NOT need to buy a "DVR" drive to get a quiet drive.