# Western Digital Red Drives



## lillevig (Dec 7, 2010)

Anybody tried one of the WD Red drives on a Tivo? They are made for NAS installs and run at 5400 instead of 7200 which is all good but the transfer rate is 6Gb/sec and I'm not sure if that can be jumpered down to 3Gb/sec.


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## ggieseke (May 30, 2008)

I haven't tried one in a TiVo (or a WD Red), but I run several different 6Gb/sec drives in my PC with no problems even though it only supports 3. Odds are good that it will adjust down automatically.


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## L David Matheny (Jan 29, 2011)

lillevig said:


> Anybody tried one of the WD Red drives on a Tivo? They are made for NAS installs and run at 5400 instead of 7200 which is all good but the transfer rate is 6Gb/sec and I'm not sure if that can be jumpered down to 3Gb/sec.


I tried a WD20EFRX (WD Red drive designed for NAS) as reported here. It seemed to work fine for the few hours I had it in my 2-tuner Premiere. I didn't have to use any jumpers.


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## lillevig (Dec 7, 2010)

ggieseke said:


> I haven't tried one in a TiVo (or a WD Red), but I run several different 6Gb/sec drives in my PC with no problems even though it only supports 3. Odds are good that it will adjust down automatically.


I was unclear about that, having read some posts here that warn about possible issues with 6Gb/sec transfer rates.


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## lillevig (Dec 7, 2010)

L David Matheny said:


> I tried a WD20EFRX (WD Red drive designed for NAS) as reported here. It seemed to work fine for the few hours I had it in my 2-tuner Premiere. I didn't have to use any jumpers.


I take it there was no need to run WDIDLE3 even though the drive has the IntelliPower "feature"?


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

Intellipower is okay. Intellipark has been the issues in the past. 

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2


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## L David Matheny (Jan 29, 2011)

lillevig said:


> I take it there was no need to run WDIDLE3 even though the drive has the IntelliPower "feature"?


I don't remember whether I ran WDidle3 or not, but I haven't had to change the IntelliPark setting for any recent drives. IOW, if I did run it, it must have said IntelliPark was already disabled. In any case, the drive rebooted successfully, both cold and warm.


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## banjomaniac (Apr 23, 2010)

I believe that is the same drive Im getting ready to set up, if so I'll report back and let you know how it works.

Banjomaniac


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## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

The difference on the Red drives is the disabling of retries for errors, where the time delay can make a RAID array mark the drive as bad.

I think that wouldn't have much impact on a DVR, other than masking any glitches go by faster.


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## dmk1974 (Mar 7, 2002)

I'm still looking around at various 2 TB drives for my Premiere 4. The RED I see is on sale at Newegg for $100.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236343

Is the RED really at least as good as the GREEN (which I have one in a 2-tuner Premiere)? Specs look like the RED is quiet and uses a low power draw as well.

EDIT: I ordered 2 of them on Saturday with the Newegg promo so they were $91.99 each. Should be arriving on Wednesday. I hope they work well!


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## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

lillevig said:


> Anybody tried one of the WD Red drives on a Tivo? They are made for NAS installs and run at 5400 instead of 7200 which is all good but the transfer rate is 6Gb/sec and I'm not sure if that can be jumpered down to 3Gb/sec.


All SATA drives are backward compatible with previous SATA interfaces and will adjust to the speed of said interface. There is nothing to jumper.

The WD red drives should theoretically work, but they tend to be more expensive so I'm not sure why you'd want to use one in a Tivo. Your best bet would be to get an A/V drive specifically targeted for DVR use.


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## dmk1974 (Mar 7, 2002)

I received my 2 TB WD Red drive today. Used the jmfs tools 104 and performed the drive copy, expand, and supersize. Took about 3 hours. Popped it back into my Premiere 4 and so far so good. Seems to be just as fast (or slow I guess) as the original drive and is also very silent. 318 HD hours!!! I hope it hold up and works well for a long time!

Now I need to upgrade my buddy's 2-tuner Premiere with the other Red drive. Hopefully it goes just as smooth.


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