Drive Expansion and Drive Upgrade FAQ - Page 153

cjv2 · 01-11-2010, 07:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by backyard

This is from Spike on the MFSlive.org forum...

Drives to Avoid for TiVo Series 3:
Western Digital (WD10EADS) *soft reboot problem on S3 but works on THD

backyard, thanks for the cross-post from MFSLive on the alignment bit.

I thought I would highlight the above item though. Certain models of the WD10EADS *do* have the soft reboot problem on a TivoHD (though presumably subject to correction by "fixing Intellipark.")

I got one of those EADS drives for my TivoHD and had to take it back because I was running a laptop USB -> SATA adapter rather than a motherboard SATA plug, and consequently could not get the WD utility to see the drive and turn Intellipark off. In fact, I couldn't get the thing to boot, period. Stuck at "Welcome! Powering Up."

There was a great deal of discussion about the EADS and apparent recent revisions to it by WD in this thread. It might be worth passing the discussion here on to Spike if you are so inclined.

camm91 · 01-11-2010, 07:47 PM

To use wdidle3 does my drive need to have a drive letter? At present my wd10evds is plugged in and recognised through bios etc, and, winmfs can see it. Do I need to mount it or whatever to give it a drive letter?

I have the boot cd working, but, I am unsure what to do from there? It went to some wierd a: (I don't have an a

and just entering the command didnt work.

MPSAN · 01-11-2010, 08:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by camm91

To use wdidle3 does my drive need to have a drive letter? At present my wd10evds is plugged in and recognised through bios etc, and, winmfs can see it. Do I need to mount it or whatever to give it a drive letter?

I have the boot cd working, but, I am unsure what to do from there? It went to some wierd a: (I don't have an a

and just entering the command didnt work.

Once you get the A: prompt, try R: or S: and do a DIR and see if wdidle3.exe shows up. If so enter it to run the utility. This is NOT from within Windows and is from the boot cd that boots into DOS.

camm91 · 01-11-2010, 08:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MPSAN

Once you get the A: prompt, try R: or S: and do a DIR and see if wdidle3.exe shows up. If so enter it to run the utility. This is NOT from within Windows and is from the boot cd that boots into DOS.

Yes, I am using the boot cd that boots into dos.

It gives a msg, Driver version v340
Device Name: Banana
No drives found, Aborting installation...

Then goes to a:

I just retried twice after your msg, tried drives a->z. I can get it to change between drives a and b, neither of which contain the program. no other drives are recognised.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

camm91 · 01-11-2010, 09:21 PM

Found this thread over here tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=370784&page=145 (removed the www so that I can post, wouldnt let me post links as < 5 posts) which the person had the same problem as me. I grabbed all the files from the ultimate bootable cd download and chucked the wdidle3 on it as well.

This doesnt work as a boot cd now :/

Does anyone see what is wrong? Can assist me?

richsadams · 01-12-2010, 12:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigd2008

First time poster here! I'll be upgrading my TivoHD I received for Xmas straight out of the box with the WD10EVDS drive. I ordered it from Amazon on Jan 6th and received it today with a manufacture date of Oct 10, 2009. Looks like pre-November EVDS drives are still being shipped. Upgrading my Series 2 was a headache after the original drive had failed so I'd like to upgrade now and get a head start on an easy recovery solution. Is there any trouble I may run into by perfoming the upgrade before ever powering the unit on?

Agree with everyone else...get your new TiVo set up and running before doing anything to it. I'd give it a solid 30 days before upgrading. Lucky drive order...let us know if it performs a menu restart.

Happy upgrading!

yukit · 01-12-2010, 02:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by backyard

Thanks for the responses. It would be great to know if someone had success and there was no intellipark problem.

This is from Spike on the MFSlive.org forum. The EARS note was added a few days ago.

Recommended SATA drives for TiVo S3, TiVo HD, TiVo HDXL
by spike » Sat Mar 22, 2008 12:54 pm
...
Stay Away from WD "EARS" Drives
WD10EARS or "EARS" drives have 4KB physical sector aka. Advanced Format.
Drives currenlty have 512 Byte physical sector and TiVo File System is designed with that in mind.
So with the 4K sectors, partitions will be misaligned and MFS (TiVo File System) read/write will be misaligned...
I would think this will cause major slow down, so you should stay away from them until further studies have been conducted on TiVo.
Stay tuned....

Thanks for posting this info. It is good to hear directly from spike regarding the 4k sector issue on EARS drives.

I think there is a jumper on the drive to force the sector offset trick used on WinXP. I wonder if that would make the drive to work with Tivo FS, but it may fool WinMFS.

BTW, I am using Hitachi 2TB (HD32000 IDK/7K) drive with an HDXL. Upgraded about a week ago, working very well so far.

mellenfan · 01-12-2010, 06:49 AM

What drive should I buy to install in my Tivo HD? I have seen so many issues with this drive and that drive that I am not sure what to use!

I have the cake software and can handle any iso buring to CD that is needed to apply DOS scripts, etc.

Thanks!

richsadams · 01-12-2010, 08:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mellenfan

What drive should I buy to install in my Tivo HD? I have seen so many issues with this drive and that drive that I am not sure what to use!

I have the cake software and can handle any iso buring to CD that is needed to apply DOS scripts, etc.

Thanks!

My two or three cents:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb...09#post7712809

If you have a PC and are comfortable with doing a little extra work, any of the Western Digital drives listed in the first post would be fine as well.

Happy upgrading!

drhankz · 01-12-2010, 08:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by richsadams

My two or three cents:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb...09#post7712809

If you have a PC and are comfortable with doing a little extra work, any of the Western Digital drives listed in the first post would be fine as well.

Happy upgrading!

Hi Rich - I like your Seagate recommendation.

If I were upgrading mine today - that is the one I would go with.

KNOCK on wood my 1 TB Internal TiVo just reached its 2nd Birthday this month

wackymann · 01-12-2010, 09:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigd2008

First time poster here! I'll be upgrading my TivoHD I received for Xmas straight out of the box with the WD10EVDS drive. I ordered it from Amazon on Jan 6th and received it today with a manufacture date of Oct 10, 2009. Looks like pre-November EVDS drives are still being shipped. Upgrading my Series 2 was a headache after the original drive had failed so I'd like to upgrade now and get a head start on an easy recovery solution. Is there any trouble I may run into by perfoming the upgrade before ever powering the unit on?

You got lucky - I ordered one from Amazon around the same time and it came with a manufacture date of Dec 7. Did you order directly from Amazon, or one of its affiliates? I ordered mine directly from Amazon so I could get their free 2-day shipping. There was a slightly cheaper option that was from one of their affiliates. Maybe they are shipping the older drives? If so, that would be good to know.

bigd2008 · 01-12-2010, 11:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wackymann

You got lucky - I ordered one from Amazon around the same time and it came with a manufacture date of Dec 7. Did you order directly from Amazon, or one of its affiliates?

Directly from Amazon. A friend also ordered the same drive direct from Amazon two days after I placed my order and he received the Oct 10th drive too. Did his TivoHD last night with no softboot (or other) problems.

Despite the advice to first power on MY unit and wait a few weeks before upgrading, I didn't. *sigh*

I used MFSLive v1.4. and had trouble mounting a NTFS file system to save the backup. I used a FAT32 formatted flash stick instead. Then, my backup file was reaching 2GB and failing. The uncompressed size was close to 3,330MB. I think it was backing up the 5 "get started" recordings. Then I remembered "Hey, people recommended not doing this..." and powered my unit on through the guided setup. Perm deleted the recordings which were about 1.3GB (according to record info). Tried it all over again and the uncompressed backup size was now 1390MB leaving me with a 527MB file (which fits on fat32)

What gives? Anyone know why the image fresh from the box is larger? Seems like it is more than just recordings, but maybe that's all it is.

MPSAN · 01-12-2010, 12:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by camm91

Found this thread over here tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=370784&page=145 (removed the www so that I can post, wouldnt let me post links as < 5 posts) which the person had the same problem as me. I grabbed all the files from the ultimate bootable cd download and chucked the wdidle3 on it as well.

This doesnt work as a boot cd now :/

Does anyone see what is wrong? Can assist me?

Well, the DOS will see IDE drives, and since the driver will not install, I can just assume that your BIOS does not have the SATA drives configured for IDE. That means no RAID or other settings. After the wdidle3 run just change the BIOS back to what it was. Also, make sure your CD Drive is an IDE as well!

adamwsh · 01-13-2010, 08:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by richsadams

My two or three cents:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb...09#post7712809

If you have a PC and are comfortable with doing a little extra work, any of the Western Digital drives listed in the first post would be fine as well.

Happy upgrading!

I just purchased the Segate Pipeline ST31000533CS from ProVantage (cheapest price) on your recommendation. Hope it works well! I hope it comes soon. I'm tired of having only 20 hours of space!

whitepelican · 01-13-2010, 08:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by adamwsh

I just purchased the Segate Pipeline ST31000533CS from ProVantage (cheapest price) on your recommendation. Hope it works well! I hope it comes soon. I'm tired of having only 20 hours of space!

Good luck. I hope for your sake it is a lot less noisy than the Seagate ST31500541AS drive that I have.

moxie1617 · 01-13-2010, 08:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by whitepelican

Good luck. I hope for your sake it is a lot less noisy than the Seagate ST31500541AS drive that I have.

I haven't looked at the specs in over a year but the CS drives had been a lot quieter than the AS and NS series. I have both in Antec cases, the CS for the Tivo and the AS for backups. Night and day difference.

jeffw_00 · 01-13-2010, 09:05 AM

I ordered from Amazon 3 weeks ago and got a 10/15 EVDS drive. It probably matters, in part, which warehouse they ship from. If you can do the wdidle thing it doesn't matter though.

adamwsh · 01-13-2010, 09:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by whitepelican

Good luck. I hope for your sake it is a lot less noisy than the Seagate ST31500541AS drive that I have.

Well, it is a 7 out of 10 (10 being best) on the noise level chart at the top of this thread. Also, even the manufacturer claims it is meant for DVR use with low noise, high operating temp, etc.

I'll post my results when I'm done.

pl1 · 01-13-2010, 11:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by adamwsh

I just purchased the Segate Pipeline ST31000533CS from ProVantage (cheapest price) on your recommendation. Hope it works well! I hope it comes soon. I'm tired of having only 20 hours of space!

I just bought one of the Seagates myself off of Ebay for $85 shipped. We'll see how the sound is. They are designed for DVRs with a 3 year warranty.

Seagate Pipeline HD .2 1TB 1 TB SATA ST31000322CS

pl1 · 01-13-2010, 11:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by adamwsh

Well, it is a 7 out of 10 (10 being best) on the noise level chart at the top of this thread. Also, even the manufacturer claims it is meant for DVR use with low noise, high operating temp, etc.
I'll post my results when I'm done.

One reason I was hesitant about buying the Seagate was that there are no noise level adjustments that can be made. The reason I'm OK with it if it is a little noisy is that it is in my livingroom. The old Maxtor drives I used to use were terribly loud during head seeks. The WD drives are virtually silent.

zanyman · 01-13-2010, 01:05 PM

Just found the 1TB Hitachi HD31000 at my local Microcenter for $70 this weekend. The upgrade to my TivoHD was quick and painless, thanks to these excellent recommendations and instructions. Thanks!!

adamwsh · 01-13-2010, 01:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by adamwsh

I just purchased the Segate Pipeline ST31000533CS from ProVantage (cheapest price) on your recommendation. Hope it works well! I hope it comes soon. I'm tired of having only 20 hours of space!

So after seeing that ProVantage had over 400 in stock (according to their website) I placed the order. I just got an email saying the no longer have them available and won't until maybe 1/22. So I canceled the order and found it on PCRush.com (never heard of them before) for a couple bucks more. I called them first to ask if they in fact have them ready to ship and the guy said yes. So I placed the order. We'll see what happens.

dgarrick · 01-14-2010, 06:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cjv2

D'oh!
Didn't someone in here say they set up some EARS without issue?

Yes, I just did a full upgrade over last weekend of my HD Tivo's internal and external drives. For the drives I used:

WD10EARS 1TB - internal
Seagate ST3100341AS 1.5TB in an Antec MX-1 eSata enclosure

All went smooth for me except the fact I am a Mac guy and had to use my work PC laptop and a SATA-to-USB connector to perform the upgrade. I did the "preserve settings but not recordings" upgrade for the internal EARS drive. That worked fine.

The only step that was difficult for me was finding a SATA motherboard connection (had a vacant PC at work for this) to perform the WD Intellipark disable step with wdidle3. Note: The USB-to-SATA connector WILL NOT work for this step as the wdidle3 just hangs in DOS when the command is entered from the R:> drive. Apparently the EARS drives DO have this feature enabled as my Tivo was struck on the power up before I did the wdidle3.

As far as any drive noise, I do not hear any coming from the EARS. The total capacity now reads in the 300's HD and 2900+ SD.

This wasn't a completely seamless upgrade due to my preference for Mac but fairly painless looking back on the process.

backyard · 01-14-2010, 08:36 AM

dg,

I'm all EARS.

Thanks for posting the EARS results. I haven't decided wether to return mine or go for the install. I am sata-usb constrained as well and curious about the 4K misalignment potential (see above). Please drop a note here if you notice any performance issues. I have a week or so to decide. Thanks again.
Backyard.