Got the wrong drive for Bolt HD Upgrade, need help on right cables/adapters

Advertisements

I went and bought this drive from Newegg and opened the enclosure up before noticing I bought a 3.5 form factor Seagate 4TB drive, instead of the 2.5 one. Therefore, I own this one totally.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178741

Since the Bolt will be in an enclosed cabinet, I am not concerned about having that left corner piece out with a cable coming out to the drive sitting just outside the Bolt. My thought is to leave the left corner piece off and get extension cables that come out the left side and plugin to the new drive outside the case. I would aim a small fan at that left corner to blow air into the case to keep it cool in lieu of the built in fan.

In reading other forum posts and such, it sounds like it is not a good idea to power an "external" 3.5 SATA III drive using the Bolt's onboard power, since the 3.5 would need more current than the 2.5 factory drive. Given this, I am thinking I should indeed power it externally.

This is where the complication comes in. I could power the drive using its enclosure power, but I would have to convert the 7 pin sata iii data plug to either the USB 3.0(2 section) female on the back of the enclosure or to a standard USB 3.0 male plug at the other end of the enclosure's usb cable.

The other option is to use a separate 7 pin sata iii to sata iii extension cable for data and somehow connect a 15 pin power plug connected to an ac adapter of some sort.

After searching for various parts, I am getting a bad headache trying to find a combination of cables/adapters/etc that I think would work to ensure that I still realize the 5gbps data transfer speed that the Seagate drive is certified for AND avoid using the Bolt's power to run it.

For those of you with an external drive connected to the main sata port of the motherboard, what would you advise is the best way to get the drive connected with or without the Seagate enclosure? I'm an IT pro but a bit stumped on this one and could use some help from my fellow TiVoers.

 

In this case, I believe I am going to do the following:

1. Leave left corner piece off of Bolt. Get another Sata 3 20in cable with a 90 degree 7 pin on the mainboard end and unplug the factory one. Cable will run out of the left side of the Bolt and connect to the drive, which will sit on top of the HDD enclosure with the rubber spacers moved to the bottom of the drive and used as rubber feet. HDD onboard power cable left untouched on mainboard and unplugged from factory drive, which will lower the Bolt's power consumption. Factory drive will stay where it is.

2. Take the enclosure's circuit board off the hard drive and set it in the enclosure in its normal positions with small spacers at the bottom of each of the four corners, plug in a 15pin sata power 12 in extension cable and stick it out the same side of the enclosure where the enclosure's adapter plugs in. Plug the extension into the power portion of the hard drive.

3. Aim 6 in fan set on high that is used in cabinet to blow directly over HDD and into the open left side of Bolt for proper ventilation.

This way, the circuit boards of the enclosure and the Bolt stay covered for the most part, the Seagate is powered by its own power supply and the data cable will still be sata 3 certified for full throughput.

Once done, it will be Christened... FrankenBolt!

If I ever have to send it in for service, just unhook the Seagate, rehook the factory drive, put case back together and the service tech will never know the difference!!!

 

Advertisements

Yeah, I am ok taking that risk. I wonder if anyone had the need for warranty service after upgrading the hard drive and tried to get it.

 

Yeah, that's a good tip.

 

I ended up getting a sata 15pin power extension cable and hooking it into the enclosure's circuit board and the other end to the back of the drive, which sits on top of the enclosure now. I also bought an 18in sata 3 cable and hooked it to the Bolt's mainboard, removing the data and power cable on board.

Found out that I not only had to plug in the ac adapter to the circuit board, I also had to connect the USB 3.0 cable to a cell phone charger plug and send USB power to that circuit board. Once done, the HDD light came on.

Of course, I didn't initially realize I had to wipe the Seagate's preformatted partition on the drive. Wiped that and hooked back in to the Bolt and everything proceeded normally from there.

Also, the old 6 inch fan in the enclosed cabinet developed a short in the switch when I turned it off for the procedure. Went to Walmart and bough a 9 inch fan to replace it. It will provide cold air to the open left side of the Bolt and the external HDD. In the picture, it's the black box on the far left, with the HDD in the middle and the Bolt on the right with the lightweight TP-Link Archer C9 Wireless AC router on top...

Upgrade complete:

Recording capacity now up to 639 HD hours
Free disk space up to 642 HD hours

Just configuring the settings after guided setup now and getting the full guide data loaded.

IT'S ALIVE!!! The FrankenBolt is alive!!!

 

Update: I am having some sort of issue with the Bolt glitching with the hard drive.

Last night after the unit had been on the new drive for about 2-3 hours, I noticed that CC was not displaying, got in to the settings and it said CC was off and then all of a sudden the screen froze and when the TiVo tried to reboot, all four lights started blinking again. I had to unplug the hard drive first, then unplug and replug the Bolt. It would only reboot normally after doing those steps in that order. Just unplugging and replugging the Bolt only did not cure the problem.

Today, sometime after leaving the house at 7am and before arriving home at 5pm, the Bolt went back to the four blinking lights. It failed to record. I again unplugged and replugged the ac adapter to the hard drive, followed by an unplug and replug of the Bolt. It has been running since 5:25 tonight. It recorded from then until 6:30 and from 7-10. It it currently on and not recording.

The only thing I did after 7am while at work was to add and shuffle the order of OnePasses via my phone app and also using online.tivo.com.

In my setup, I connected a new sata 3 data cable to the mainboard. Both ends are locking, so the connections are secure on the mainboard and the hard drive. The power, on the other hand, is from the enclosure, which required not only the ac adapter, but power from the USB 3.0 cable, which I provided by plugging that cable into a Samsung Galaxy phone charger. The catch might be that the USB connection is not doing anything data related and I'm not sure if the circuit board might do something weird if data is not going through it.

If I had to guess, something is happening with that enclosure circuit board to make the hard drive respond or not respond in a way that the Bolt can't handle, like maybe the power briefly cutting out.

I may go ahead and get something like poppagene suggests for the power, since my solution is a bit on the jerryrigged side.

Given what I have described above, does anyone else have a clue as to what is going on or what I should try to eliminate this glitch?

Note, the ODT is staying between 50 and 58, which seems to be normal, so I don't believe the unit is overheating.


Please advise.

 

I have been putting it in Standby, but think I will leave it on to see what happens in this scenario. The good thing is that we're not switching over to it fully for about 2 months, so I can work to figure out where the problem is and hopefully resolve it.