[jfh3]

If anyone is looking for a good deal on a 1TB drive for an upgrade, Best Buy has the Hitachi external 1TB drive on sale this week for $279.99. Even less w/ a discount coupon

It's a USB drive, not eSATA, but you can simply extract the drive - inside is a Deskstar 7K1000 drive.

Case is pretty easy to open once you figure it out. The front slides off in a U after you depress two hidden tabs through the vents at the top and bottom of the case and slide forward. I didn't figure this out until after I forced the case open along the sides with a screwdriver. Note that according to the documentation, the warranty is voided once you open the case.

Going to replace a 500GB with this in a Series 3 and put the old drive back in this case for my wife to use as external storage.

Incredibly quiet drive too, and I haven't enabled AAM yet.

Not bad, considering I just bought a Seagate DB35 750GB for a Tivo HD for the same price.

 

[aaronwt]

Don't those drives get rather hot? I went up 5 degrees by going from a 500GB drive to a 750GB one. And those Hitachi 1TB drives are supposed to be much hotter.

 

[lessd]

If anyone is looking for a good deal on a 1TB drive for an upgrade, Best Buy has the Hitachi external 1TB drive on sale this week for $279.99. Even less w/ a discount coupon

It's a USB drive, not eSATA, but you can simply extract the drive - inside is a Deskstar 7K1000 drive.

Case is pretty easy to open once you figure it out. The front slides off in a U after you depress two hidden tabs through the vents at the top and bottom of the case and slide forward. I didn't figure this out until after I forced the case open along the sides with a screwdriver. Note that according to the documentation, the warranty is voided once you open the case.

Going to replace a 500GB with this in a Series 3 and put the old drive back in this case for my wife to use as external storage.

Incredibly quiet drive too, and I haven't enabled AAM yet.

Not bad, considering I just bought a Seagate DB35 750GB for a Tivo HD for the same price.

Thanks..good find

 

[nuttzy06]

Great find! Well, the difference I guess is if a 3-year warranty is worth $65? Probably for some folks and not for others. Here's some links:

Best Buy:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage...ategoryId=pcmcat107700050005&id=1177112455081

Pricegrabber:
http://computers.pricegrabber.com/hard-drives/hitachi/m/36267958/sort_type=bottomline

-Nuttzy

p.s. I'm headed down to Best Buy tomorrow (NH is 10 min away and there's no sales tax there )

 

[jfh3]

Couple other notes on extracting the drive - after you take the cover off you DO NOT have to remove the circuit board from the tray, even though it looks like you do. The trick it to take the entire tray out and to do that you have to remove the two stickers on the side of the case to expose the two screws that hold the support tray to the case. Slide the tray out, disconnect the power / signal cables, take the other two screws out of the tray and lift the drive out.

When you take the stickers off, they will leave a "V O I D" marking in the recess and the 1 year warranty clearly indicates that the entire unit needs to be returned for any claims.

Not sure why you couldn't just claim against the bare drive if something went wrong in a year, but with the sale, a 10% coupon and some BB $ that were going to expire anyway, I'll take the risk.

On the temperature issue - I can't address that - this is my first 1TB drive. But I have read where quite a few people have used this drive for Tivo upgrades (and I think this is the same drive that weakness and dvrupgrade use).

 

[pattont]

thats a pretty cool idea even if you wanted to Esata it, the nx-1 has a fan built in surely it could handle the pain

Also, if i am not mistaken isn't there a utility to use on hitatchi drives to fix their noise levels which in turn might fix the heat issues??

 

[keenanSR]

How noisy are these drives? Is the DB35 Seagate quieter?

 

[jlib]

According to the specs, a detuned DeskStar has the same head seek acoustics as a DB35 (but that assumes the manufacturers use the same method for measuring, which I don't know).

 

[moldymac]

does anyone know how noisy it is compared to the WD WD7500AAKS? I had one of these in my tivo HD, but took it out because of an annoying ticking sound it made when 2 things were recording at once.

 

[aaronwt]

does anyone know how noisy it is compared to the WD WD7500AAKS? I had one of these in my tivo HD, but took it out because of an annoying ticking sound it made when 2 things were recording at once.

Did you enable the Acousctic Management? It is off when you buy the drive and you have to turn it on. Mine is extremely quiet with AM on. It is a night a day difference between AM on and off.
Mine can be recording two things, downloading an Unbox movie and also watching something all simultaneously and you need it to be very quiet in the room to even hear it.(ie. no extraneous noise at all) And then if you do hear it, it sounds like quiet, light raindrops in the distance.

In that same situation with AM set to off it is extremely annoying.

I use the Hitachi tool to set the Acoustic management to On in my Western Digital drives. On all the drives, 250GB, 500GB, and 750GB there is a night and day difference in noise levels between the two settings.

 

[moldymac]

I feel dumb for not trying accoustics management, been a long time since I tried it. how is it enabled on this drive?

 

[mchiles]

I have been having discussions with higher ups at Hitachi Global Storage Technologies about making the 1Tb CinemaStar hard drives generally available to the TiVo upgrading public.

It make take several more weeks for that to happen.

However, in those is discussions, I was told that the Hitachi 1TB External USB drive sold exclusive through Best Buy uses a 1Tb Hitachi DESKSTAR 7K1000 hard drive that has the acoustic management ALREADY TURNED ON for quieter operation.

I was planning to wait for the 1Tb CinemaStar drives, but at a $279 sale price for these 1Tb drives that can be dismantled and used as an internal drive in a S3 or in a Antec MX-1. I may have to give this idea serious consideration. I expect that the 1Tb CinemaStar drives are going to be around $400. So, this Best Buy sale is comparative bargain. I just wish I had bought a an Antec MX-1 at Best Buy a couple of weeks ago when they were on sale for $49.95. Oh well, you snooze, you lose...

 

[aaronwt]

I feel dumb for not trying accoustics management, been a long time since I tried it. how is it enabled on this drive?

There is an Hitachi program that works with the WD drives to set AM. I leave it on what it sets for the default(I think it's 128 out of 256) I don't remember where I downlaoded it though. I got it last year when I got my S3 boxes. I believe it was an ISO and I just burned it to a CD. I know you do boot from the CD to use the program. It's very quick.

 

[keenanSR]

I have been having discussions with higher ups at Hitachi Global Storage Technologies about making the 1Tb CinemaStar hard drives generally available to the TiVo upgrading public.

It make take several more weeks for that to happen.

However, in those is discussions, I was told that the Hitachi 1TB External USB drive sold exclusive through Best Buy uses a 1Tb Hitachi DESKSTAR 7K1000 hard drive that has the acoustic management ALREADY TURNED ON for quieter operation.

I was planning to wait for the 1Tb CinemaStar drives, but at a $279 sale price for these 1Tb drives that can be dismantled and used as an internal drive in a S3 or in a Antec MX-1. I may have to give this idea serious consideration. I expect that the 1Tb CinemaStar drives are going to be around $400. So, this Best Buy sale is comparative bargain. I just wish I had bought a an Antec MX-1 at Best Buy a couple of weeks ago when they were on sale for $49.95. Oh well, you snooze, you lose...

Can they be dismantled though, without tearing the case apart? I have a Seagate external that has no apparent way to get in to it, that's why I was wondering.

 

[Lensman]

In for 2!

 

[keenanSR]

In for 2!

Do you actually have the drive already? Is it easy to get in to?

Never mind, I see the first post has the instructions.

 

[T-Shee]

Best Buy lists this drive as having a 1 yr warranty, whereas the ZipZoomFly OEM bare drive comes with a 3 year warranty. Just though it was significant enough to warrant, ahem, mentioning.

 

[jmpage2]

Did you enable the Acousctic Management? It is off when you buy the drive and you have to turn it on. Mine is extremely quiet with AM on. It is a night a day difference between AM on and off.
Mine can be recording two things, downloading an Unbox movie and also watching something all simultaneously and you need it to be very quiet in the room to even hear it.(ie. no extraneous noise at all) And then if you do hear it, it sounds like quiet, light raindrops in the distance.

In that same situation with AM set to off it is extremely annoying.

I use the Hitachi tool to set the Acoustic management to On in my Western Digital drives. On all the drives, 250GB, 500GB, and 750GB there is a night and day difference in noise levels between the two settings.

Hmm. I wonder why Hitachi and WD work this way but not Seagate. I got a great deal on a 500GB Seagate drive that I have a feeling I will be returning because they have a reputation for being extremely noisy when seeking.

I am contemplating just getting the 500GB Samsung Spinpoint drive. Those are supposed to be very quiet when seeking and run very low temperature without any special modifications.

 

[55bish]

I was planning to wait for the 1Tb CinemaStar drives, but at a $279 sale price for these 1Tb drives that can be dismantled and used as an internal drive in a S3 or in a Antec MX-1. I may have to give this idea serious consideration. I expect that the 1Tb CinemaStar drives are going to be around $400. So, this Best Buy sale is comparative bargain. I just wish I had bought a an Antec MX-1 at Best Buy a couple of weeks ago when they were on sale for $49.95. Oh well, you snooze, you lose...

How big is the DeskStar? Will it fit in an Antec MX-1? I did pick it up at BB when it was on sale but I'm still shopping for a drive. This one looks pretty tempting. Also does anyone know, are there any physical differences in the way the DeskStar and CinemaStar work or is it just preset firmware settings with the Acoustic Management? I don't care to much about how loud it is as long as it's going to last considering the warranty would be voided.

 

[jfh3]

I was told that the Hitachi 1TB External USB drive sold exclusive through Best Buy uses a 1Tb Hitachi DESKSTAR 7K1000 hard drive that has the acoustic management ALREADY TURNED ON for quieter operation.

Interesting. How do you verify the AAM setting? I have no idea what it's supposed to be. I went and got another drive, but haven't hooked up the freed one yet or burned the CD with the tools.

(For those that asked about the software, there is a URL in the doc folder on the drive that links you to the support page where you can download various ISO images.)

And thanks for your efforts to make the drives available for general upgraders. I sure hope Hitachi disk drive management team is less bureaucratic than it was at IBM or you don't have prayer.