# Preferred upgrade drives



## Bill McNeal (May 31, 2002)

Weaknees interactive instructions recommend Maxtor's Quickview model hard drives, which are labeled as optimized for DVRs.

Anyone notice a performance difference with these drives versus other regular hard drives?

I saw an old thread on this topic, however it got sidetracked into online deals for hard drives.


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## wscannell (Dec 7, 2003)

Under normal operation, there is not a discernable performance difference. In fact, TiVo has delivered units with non-Quickview drives installed.

The primary benefits of the Quickview drives as I understand are:
1) They are designed for reading/writing 24/7 by DVRs
2) They are optimized for DVR operation
3) They have a little different read error procedure where they do not retry as much (A few bad bits in the video picture probably would not be noticed).

These things sound good in principle, but whether they make for better TiVo drives will probably be debated for a long time to come.


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## litzdog911 (Oct 18, 2002)

Seagate drives also get high marks from many folks here.


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## Netbudda (Mar 3, 2005)

litzdog911 said:


> Seagate drives also get high marks from many folks here.


+1 I have installed two of them 300GB and 400G ......and they carry 5 years warranty.


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## dheerema (Jul 6, 2004)

I just did a seagate 400 Gig drive in one unit and a WD 320 Gig drive in another with great success. 

One of the units was for my bedroom. I noticed that they both are loud enough to hear at night, until I Ran the hitachi tool on the WD drive. Now it is whisper quiet. The seagate drive is perfect in my living room though.


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## supasta (May 6, 2006)

Put a Seagate in my DT, was loud as a freight train. Put in a WD and ran Hitachi and is whisper silent.


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## necrolop (Oct 5, 2006)

What do people think about 750Gb seagates? Too loud?


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## Pauli (Mar 1, 2004)

Seagates do not support acoustic management (AAM), so they don't make good upgrade drives for those people who care about noise. WD are about the best bet right now. Samsungs are also good for low noise, but tend to vibrate more than other brands which may create additional noise, depending on how it's mounted.


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## kroddy (Oct 31, 2001)

necrolop said:


> What do people think about 750Gb seagates? Too loud?


I have a Seagate 750 in my HR10... I can hear it churning when I mute the sound and listen carefully... would probably be too loud in a bedroom if you are bothered by that kind of sound.


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## Dkerr24 (Oct 29, 2004)

The seek noise doesn't bother me too much, but I'd say my 300gb Samsung drive is much noisier than my 160gb Western Digital drive. 

I'd say stick with a drive that can use the quiet utility.


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## dheerema (Jul 6, 2004)

Pauli said:


> Seagates do not support acoustic management (AAM), so they don't make good upgrade drives for those people who care about noise. WD are about the best bet right now. Samsungs are also good for low noise, but tend to vibrate more than other brands which may create additional noise, depending on how it's mounted.


I agree completely. If you're using it in a bedroom, definately go for the WD, then change the acoustic settings. I have used all the hard drives above, and finally settled on the WD.

After all, who really needs a 750 Gig hard drive anyway


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## 1283 (Sep 8, 2000)

dheerema said:


> After all, who really needs a 750 Gig hard drive anyway


For people with S3, 750GB is still too small. Way too small.


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## jrock (Aug 27, 2002)

I read something on the S3 Forum about if you upgrade the internal drive you wont be able to use an external drive when they enable ESATA.

There reason was there is a max number of partitions set for the S3 and upgrading the internal drive will use them up.

Is this true? I upgraded to a 500 GB drive when I first got my S3 last month and just assumed I would be able to add more when the ESATA port was activated. I hope this isn't true  

-Joe


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## 1283 (Sep 8, 2000)

jrock said:


> There reason was there is a max number of partitions set for the S3 and upgrading the internal drive will use them up.


We won't know for sure, but the limit has always been 3 pairs per drive, not per system.


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