# What Hard Drive are they using in the bolt Plus?



## drrich0216 (Aug 29, 2016)

Has anyone opened one of these things up? I am curious as to the brand/type of 3TB Hdd that is being used.

I search every day and so far nobody has cracked one opened! I find that hard to believe........


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## Jpieri4 (Jul 2, 2013)

That's because they have not even shipped yet.


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## thyname (Dec 27, 2010)

Jpieri4 said:


> That's because they have not even shipped yet.


Not true. At least two people in these forums have already received it as early as last Friday.

Not sure about the HDDs. Even WeaKnees is using external drives for their upgraded Bolt+

https://www.weaknees.com/tivo-bolt-plus-4k-series6.php


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

Might not be true: http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=543605


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## Steve (Apr 24, 2003)

Jpieri4 said:


> That's because they have not even shipped yet.


At least a couple of TCFers got them Friday or Saturday and have already set them up.


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## steinbch (Nov 23, 2007)

I just inboxed my Bolt+. Having buyers remorse, but will see if it grows on me over the 30 day period. The shell is actually slightly transparent. The drive is a WD Blue drive. Couldn't easily see the serial or model number.


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## drrich0216 (Aug 29, 2016)

Thanks. From what I read the wd. Blue drives aren't a/v rated. That's surprising.


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

drrich0216 said:


> Thanks. From what I read the wd. Blue drives aren't a/v rated. That's surprising.


What does a AV rated drive get you over a normal drive, say a green WD drive without the AV rating, I have been using them (WD green non AV) for years without problems.


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## drrich0216 (Aug 29, 2016)

I'm no hard drive expert, as a matter of fact, until last week I had no idea there was anything even called an "AV" drive. My plan was to get a cheap large drive, and stick it in my TiVo.
But.........
Then I started to read these forums and others, and apparently some drives are rated for continuous read/write, and those are best for dvrs since they are more robust.

Now in answering your question, I think the term "AV" drive is a great marketing term used by WD. The drive you have in your TiVo, the WD green, (from what I can gather) is an AV drive before the term was coined. In other words, it was their drive that was meant for high demand read/write situations. Notice how the green drive was discontinued and replaced with the "new" AV drives. 
Same product, different packaging. 

I think......


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## drrich0216 (Aug 29, 2016)

Thank you to Puget Systems for this awesome explanation of WD hard drives.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Understanding-the-WD-Rainbow-674/


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## NJ Webel (Dec 8, 2004)

steinbch said:


> I just inboxed my Bolt+. Having buyers remorse, but will see if it grows on me over the 30 day period. The shell is actually slightly transparent. The drive is a WD Blue drive. Couldn't easily see the serial or model number.


If it is indeed a WD Blue drive, then it has to be the WD30NPRZ.


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## BobCamp1 (May 15, 2002)

NJ Webel said:


> If it is indeed a WD Blue drive, then it has to be the WD30NPRZ.


Which would have been considered a Green drive since the model number ends in a 'Z', but WD has now merged the Green and Blue lines to form Blue.

It's at the top end of their Blue lineup, which scares me a little bit in terms of reliability. And they lowered all the warranties in their Blue drives from 3 years to 2, which isn't comforting either.

And the spin up time is 8 seconds! I wonder if that will cause the original Bolt any problems on start up?


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

BobCamp1 said:


> Which would have been considered a Green drive since the model number ends in a 'Z', but WD has now merged the Green and Blue lines to form Blue.
> 
> It's at the top end of their Blue lineup, which scares me a little bit in terms of reliability. And they lowered all the warranties in their Blue drives from 3 years to 2, which isn't comforting either.
> 
> And the spin up time is 8 seconds! I wonder if that will cause the original Bolt any problems on start up?


I don't see why. The OS isn't stored on the hard drive any more. It's in flash memory. And the TiVos now have a standby function which spins down the drives when not recording. If enabled. So it needs to wait for the drive to spin up when coming out of standby anyway.


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## BobCamp1 (May 15, 2002)

aaronwt said:


> I don't see why. The OS isn't stored on the hard drive any more. It's in flash memory. And the TiVos now have a standby function which spins down the drives when not recording. If enabled. So it needs to wait for the drive to spin up when coming out of standby anyway.


It would just be some weird timing thing that should be easy to fix. That is, if they can pull anybody off of fixing the Rovi guide data to fix it.


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## HarperVision (May 14, 2007)

Jpieri4 said:


> That's because they have not even shipped yet.





thyname said:


> Not true. At least two people in these forums have already received it as early as last Friday.
> 
> Not sure about the HDDs. Even WeaKnees is using external drives for their upgraded Bolt+
> 
> https://www.weaknees.com/tivo-bolt-plus-4k-series6.php





Steve said:


> At least a couple of TCFers got them Friday or Saturday and have already set them up.


I got mine from Amazon on Friday Sep 16 and set it up that night. I'm also having a bit of buyer's remorse and I spoke with my wife last night while we were watching my Philadelphia "Wentz"sylvania, Eagles smoke the hapless Bears on MNF via my Amazon FireTV's Vue app on ESPN and "Con"cast SportsNet. We both noticed how great the picture and motion (framerate) was compared to our crappy Oceanic TWC feed of ESPN.

So I took the opening from her to plug going to Vue for cable type channels again and using a TiVo for local OTA channels and she agreed the picture was a lot better and proceeded to say "I don't care if we use Vue", meaning "whatever, just do what you're going to do", so that's progress from "why doesn't our TiVo have cable channels anymore" and having to explain for the umpteenth time that cable channels are on the FireTV's Vue app, which she always just ignored since it was too much trouble to switch inputs and fire up the Vue app. So I told her...."Oh you'll care as soon as TiVo loses the cable channels again and you have to use the FireTV for cable again!" 

Not sure what to do now. Love TiVo, *HATE* Oceanic TWC!


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## Sixto (Sep 16, 2005)

Confirmed: It's a WD30NPRZ. (At least that's what's in mine).

And you don't need to open the case to confirm.
Just need a penlight, dark room, and a magnifying glass, the case is transparent.


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## Fant (Sep 1, 2016)

Sixto said:


> Confirmed: It's a WD30NPRZ. (At least that's what's in mine).


Who sells this drive yet?


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## rainwater (Sep 21, 2004)

Fant said:


> Who sells this drive yet?


I doubt it is a retail drive.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

Sixto said:


> Confirmed: It's a WD30NPRZ. (At least that's what's in mine).
> 
> And you don't need to open the case to confirm.
> Just need a penlight, dark room, and a magnifying glass, the case is transparent.


So they don't even use the A/V drives anymore? They use the Blue drives now?

I do see a few places that sell the WD30NPRZ. But it's around $300.

And it looks like that is the same drive that WD uses in the USB external portable 3TB drive.


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## drrich0216 (Aug 29, 2016)

So it looks to me like they are using a hard drive that's very hard to find here in the United States.

I don't know if that's by coincidence or intentionally but it makes it difficult to just plunk down $125 and get a home made"bolt plus" with 4 tuners for $325


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## BobCamp1 (May 15, 2002)

aaronwt said:


> So they don't even use the A/V drives anymore? They use the Blue drives now?
> 
> I do see a few places that sell the WD30NPRZ. But it's around $300.
> 
> And it looks like that is the same drive that WD uses in the USB external portable 3TB drive.


The blue drives with the "Z" in the last character of the model number are the old "Green" drives which WD obsoleted earlier this year. There is no more Green. Only Blue. And based on that 8 second spin-up time, they clearly undersized the motor to make it green. I would not use the standby mode on a Bolt+.

I bet there are no A/V drives in that form factor with that capacity. There are barely any regular drives at that capacity and form factor. I'm guessing it's also one of the few PMR drives at that form factor and that capacity.

There is no demand for an A/V drive like that except for Tivo, and they are a speck on a fruit fly in terms of volume. No other DVR mfr was dumb enough to shrink their box so much that they were forced to use 2.5" drives.

The only real difference between the A/V drive and the Blue drives are the warranty. Three years for an A/V drive, two for a Blue. But that reason alone may be enough to justify the extra cost.


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## fcfc2 (Feb 19, 2015)

I wonder what drives WD is using in their WD My Passport Ultra Portable External Hard Drives that come in the 3 and 4TB versions. These are 2.5" drives. If they are using the same "blue" line and can be cracked open and used in the Bolt, they are much more economical. https://www.amazon.com/Black-Passpo...&qid=1474563170&sr=1-1&keywords=WDBBKD0030BBK
The only issue is if these drives don't have the standard sata heads and power connections as I have read sometimes the enclosure drives have non-standard usb only connectors. 
Anyone daring enough to pull one apart?


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

BobCamp1 said:


> The blue drives with the "Z" in the last character of the model number are the old "Green" drives which WD obsoleted earlier this year. There is no more Green. Only Blue. And based on that 8 second spin-up time, they clearly undersized the motor to make it green. I would not use the standby mode on a Bolt+.
> 
> I bet there are no A/V drives in that form factor with that capacity. There are barely any regular drives at that capacity and form factor. I'm guessing it's also one of the few PMR drives at that form factor and that capacity.
> 
> ...


WD uses this drive in their 3TB USB external enclosure.


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## Steve (Apr 24, 2003)

FWIW, I enabled standby on my Bolt+ this morning. Just "woke it up" it for the first time, and it seems like it came out of standby in under 2 seconds, about half the time of my Bolts.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

Steve said:


> FWIW, I enabled standby on my Bolt+ this morning. Just "woke it up" it for the first time, and it seems like it came out of standby in under 2 seconds, about half the time of my Bolts.


This is how my Bolts behave if shows are being recorded in standby.
Was it recording anything? When it's recording and in standby, it comes out of it very quickly. But if nothing is being recorded, it takes much longer since the hard drive needs to spin up.


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## Steve (Apr 24, 2003)

aaronwt said:


> This is how my Bolts behave if shows are being recorded in standby.
> Was it recording anything? When it's recording and in standby, it comes out of it very quickly. But if nothing is being recorded, it takes much longer since the hard drive needs to spin up.


Makes sense. It was recording. Until this thread, I never paid attention to start-up time.


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## Fant (Sep 1, 2016)

fcfc2 said:


> I wonder what drives WD is using in their WD My Passport Ultra Portable External Hard Drives that come in the 3 and 4TB versions. These are 2.5" drives. If they are using the same "blue" line and can be cracked open and used in the Bolt, they are much more economical. https://www.amazon.com/Black-Passpo...&qid=1474563170&sr=1-1&keywords=WDBBKD0030BBK
> The only issue is if these drives don't have the standard sata heads and power connections as I have read sometimes the enclosure drives have non-standard usb only connectors.
> Anyone daring enough to pull one apart?


Also waiting for someone to confirm the internal of their passport drive is the same before sticking into my bolt ...


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## drrich0216 (Aug 29, 2016)

Decisions, decisions...... I got my bolt yesterday, and it's so much better than my premiere xl4, technology has come so far in 4 years. Streaming is usable (fast),my guide (so far) works well. The only issue is the darn hard drive size. 
I spent 500 plus on my premiere, including a 36 month "warranty" that I didn't need. That unit had a 2TB hdd that was sufficient for my needs. The 4 tuners were fine also. I'm just mad that it stopped receiving channels out of left field. It may in fact be related to the software, but it's been at least a month, and it still does not work properly, and I don't see TiVo offering us a credit each month that our service is not functioning properly (which they should do).

So I bought the cheapest Bolt, which they gave me for 175. 3 TB hdd was 150, and the enclosure was another 50. All in, I'm at 375.00. A new bolt plus with the same size hdd is over 500, but it's got 2 -additional tuners. It was about the challenge more than the money, but from what I read on these forums, it seems that replaced hard drive TiVos seem to have problems, require reboots, stop working after software upgrades etc. 
I am looking to run that external hdd in place of the internal hdd. The setup is in my basement so I don't care about extra equipment or fan noise, but I'm looking to have zero issues. 
Should I exchange the bolt for a bolt plus and return the hdd and enclosure??

Your opinions are greatly appreciated and helpful


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## Steve (Apr 24, 2003)

aaronwt said:


> But if nothing is being recorded, it takes much longer since the hard drive needs to spin up.


In standby with no recording, it took the Bolt+ about five seconds to fire-up this morning. That seems about the same as my 500GB and 2TB Bolts, IIRC.


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## BobCamp1 (May 15, 2002)

aaronwt said:


> WD uses this drive in their 3TB USB external enclosure.


I meant to say "No need for an A/V drive like that." A general drive like that would be useful in an external USB drive. It's just that there may never be an A/V equivalent of that drive.


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## Sixto (Sep 16, 2005)

Was just looking at that WDC 3TB 2.5" USB device on Amazon referenced here that may have the WD30NPRZ. 

Beware, one of the reviewers mentions that it's direct wired USB and can't easily be used internally. It was only $114 so I thought that might be a good backup to have, but it looks like it's not swappable.

I've always had a WDC 3.5TB AV-GP drive in the house as a backup, but no good now with the smaller unit.


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## NJ Webel (Dec 8, 2004)

Sixto said:


> Was just looking at that WDC 3TB 2.5" USB device on Amazon referenced here that may have the WD30NPRZ.
> 
> Beware, one of the reviewers mentions that it's direct wired USB and can't easily be used internally. It was only $114 so I thought that might be a good backup to have, but it looks like it's not swappable.


When I decided on the 3TB Toshiba drive to put into my Bolt, I went through the same thing with their external portable: http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=10901448#post10901448


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## OmeneX (Jul 2, 2016)

fcfc2 said:


> I wonder what drives WD is using in their WD My Passport Ultra Portable External Hard Drives that come in the 3 and 4TB versions. These are 2.5" drives. If they are using the same "blue" line and can be cracked open and used in the Bolt, they are much more economical. https://www.amazon.com/Black-Passpo...&qid=1474563170&sr=1-1&keywords=WDBBKD0030BBK
> The only issue is if these drives don't have the standard sata heads and power connections as I have read sometimes the enclosure drives have non-standard usb only connectors.
> Anyone daring enough to *pull one apart?*


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sorry:

Ultra Passports all have their USB ports soldered to the drive. Below I've included pictures I took of my own drives for your reference.

I have a few of these --










Picture of USB top side (opened) --










Picture of USB bottom side (opened) --










Just for kicks I also opened up a external Western Digital Elements 2.5 500GB -- same deal. Soldered USB --










FYI - I only opened up a 1TB Ultra Passport. I didn't want to dig out and crack open a 3TB Ultra Passport. But I bet my bottom dollar it's the same design and build as a 1TB Ultra Passport. Soldered USB port to the HDD interface board.

--End


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## drrich0216 (Aug 29, 2016)

Okay, it's done but with a 3.5 inch 3 TB WD AV/green drive in an external enclosure. Had to cut (burn with a red hot screw driver) a slot above the sata connector on the mother board to make it happen, but it works and that is all I care about. Video to follow as soon as I can remember how to edit in
Final Cut Pro X


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## lew (Mar 12, 2002)

drrich0216 said:


> I'm no hard drive expert, as a matter of fact, until last week I had no idea there was anything even called an "AV" drive. My plan was to get a cheap large drive, and stick it in my TiVo.
> But.........
> Then I started to read these forums and others, and apparently some drives are rated for continuous read/write, and those are best for dvrs since they are more robust.
> 
> ...


I think your bottom line is right but your analysis is off. AV drives predate green drives. I guess you could make the case WD learned the power saving techniques used in the AV drives were applicable to needs of desktop computers. Your linked article gave the main, current, difference. The command set of WD AV drives have some commands which are good for streaming. For data you want to retry many times for giving up, for streaming video you'd rather just skip over the read error. All evidence suggests tivo never used those modes. Many of use used AV drives when the difference in price was only a few dollars. Longer warranty alone was a good reason. Possibility tivo might use those modes in future software versions was another reason, which never came to be.



drrich0216 said:


> So it looks to me like they are using a hard drive that's very hard to find here in the United States.
> 
> I don't know if that's by coincidence or intentionally but it makes it difficult to just plunk down $125 and get a home made"bolt plus" with 4 tuners for $325


Neither. Tivo decided to go with a smaller, sexier case which requires 2.5" drives. Tivo decided to come up with a model with a large drive. Tivo negotiated with WD. WD decided the retail marketplace has no interest in that drive, as an internal drive. WD markets it as an external drive.

I doubt there are enough tivo customers, looking to upgrade the basic bolt, to justify WD marketing a drive which would almost exclusively be bought by those customers.

People who want to upgrade the hard drive capacity in a laptop aren't generally interested in opening the case. The trend in laptops seems to be solid state drives, not larger drives.

JMO but the extra tuners, and hard disk, more then justifies the price premium.


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## drrich0216 (Aug 29, 2016)

Fantastic info, thanks for your post. I too would have had no problem with the price of the bolt plus, had my premiere xl4 "elite"not stopped working for absolutely no reason after about 40 months. It was all I needed. 4 tuners and 2TB hdd. 
Then I woke up one morning and poof-lots of hd channels not working. After 3 visits from cablevision, and tivo saying it's the guide update, to be patient I had to cave and buy a new bolt. 
As far as my xl4, I spent close to 700 with the 36 month extended warranty. Not nearly enough product life to justify the cost. At least if my 175 bolt caps out, I habe my external 3gig AV green drive with enclosure to use on my next tivo. 

Rich


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## lew (Mar 12, 2002)

I wonder how many WD30NPRZ tivo would have to sell, in order to have WD fill a special order with eSATA instead of USB. I suspect the market must be very small or we'd have a new approved external hard drive.


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## RichB (Apr 2, 2003)

I am not a fan of the bent look, but at least the Bolt Plus is black. 
The Bolt Plus does check most of the boxes with support for 4K UDB/HDR (future update).

The speed improvement and fan-less (I think) are nice.

So the last question is about the drive. Are 2.5 hard drives as reliable as their larger brethren?

- Rich


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

RichB said:


> I am not a fan of the bent look, but at least the Bolt Plus is black.
> The Bolt Plus does check most of the boxes as an 4K UDB/HDR (future update).
> 
> The speed improvement and fan-less (I think) are nice.
> ...


There is a fan. The Bolt would get super hot if there was no fan in there. (and if there was no fan it would be much quieter... it's nowhere near being silent)

Here is an image of the inside of a Bolt. From www.zatznotfunny.com


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## V7Goose (May 28, 2005)

lew said:


> I wonder how many WD30NPRZ tivo would have to sell, in order to have WD fill a special order with eSATA instead of USB. I suspect the market must be very small or we'd have a new approved external hard drive.


The solution is actually so much more simple than this - TiVo simply needs to support the existing USB port for external HDD! It should be totally simple for them to do, but they just do not want to give up the idea of getting more money for selling proprietary drives.

Just for comparison, the Dish Hopper DVR has both eSATA and USB ports, and you can plug in ANY standard USB 2.0 drive and have it instantly recognized and usable. Furthermore, you can remove that USB drive and attach it to a different DVR without loosing any recordings anywhere. The only real difference with the Hopper's use of an external drive is that it is not added to the size of the primary storage - you simply have to decide to move programs from main storage to the external drive, just like moving them to the TiVo desktop. But there were no restrictions from copying any programs, and once moved, they could be watched directly from the external drive without needing to move them back to main storage.

In my opinion, that would be a perfect option for TiVo also. Even better if they supported both the existing eSATA storage expansion AND a discrete USB external drive option.

And even the hardware should not be a problem - not only does the TiVo already have USB ports, but I have an old ASUS O!Play media player that has an eSATA port that works for BOTH eSATA connections AND USB connections - SAME port, either cable or drive!

I have always been at a complete loss to understand why TiVo insists on NOT supporting the USB expansion. I do not really believe it is greed, just to sell TiVo branded drives; they cannot really be making that much money on this - but what other excuse could it be? I am not buying that it is prevented by cable card licensing - if Dish can do this with their own DVR, then others can also. And besides, how is copying a program directly to an external drive any different at all from copying it over the network to a drive in a computer? We have been able to do that with TiVos for years and years. The technology of the connection should have NOTHING to do with what the drive is used for - that is an internal software issue. Furthermore, you cannot keep using the cable card excuse for any OTA only box, right???


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

RichB said:


> So the last question is about the drive. Are 2.5 hard drives as reliable as their larger brethren?
> 
> - Rich


I am sure lots of people have an opinion on this and some may even have some anecdotal evidence to support what ever their opinion is. If anyone actually has any real research data the would justify basing a conclusion on is another matter.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

Dish doesn't use cable cards.

And their only OTA only box is just one that has both OTA and cable but the cable card slot is removed so you can't easily use it with cable.


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## RichB (Apr 2, 2003)

aaronwt said:


> There is a fan. The Bolt would get super hot if there was no fan in there. (and if there was no fan it would be much quieter... it's nowhere near being silent)
> 
> Here is an image of the inside of a Bolt. From www.zatznotfunny.com


Thanks for this information.

How does the noise level compare with the Pro?

- Rich


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## drrich0216 (Aug 29, 2016)

lew said:


> I wonder how many WD30NPRZ tivo would have to sell, in order to have WD fill a special order with eSATA instead of USB. I suspect the market must be very small or we'd have a new approved external hard drive.


I wouldn't think that many, but it's just my guess. I have no idea if TiVo built 1000, 10,000 or 100,000 bolt plus units to fulfill demand, but I read somewhere there were one million TiVo subscribers, so if 1 percent of those million purchased a Bolt plus, that would mean 10,000 purchases which would surely be enough for Western Digital to make a custom hard drive, I would speculate.

Rich


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## lew (Mar 12, 2002)

RichB said:


> I am not a fan of the bent look, but at least the Bolt Plus is black.
> The Bolt Plus does check most of the boxes with support for 4K UDB/HDR (future update).
> 
> The speed improvement and fan-less (I think) are nice.
> ...


3.5" drivers are generally used in desktop computers, NAS, DVRs
2.5" drives are generally used in laptop/notebook computers

I'd expect a higher failure rate in any drive used in a mobile device.


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## mangochutney (Apr 7, 2015)

The larger the drive the more room for platters the larger the capacity.


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## ncbill (Sep 1, 2007)

2.5" drives = less heat, cheaper than 3.5" drives (at least in OEM quantities)

I'm still waiting for someone to drop Samsung's $1500, 4TB SSD in there.


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## BobCamp1 (May 15, 2002)

lew said:


> 3.5" drivers are generally used in desktop computers, NAS, DVRs
> 2.5" drives are generally used in laptop/notebook computers
> 
> I'd expect a higher failure rate in any drive used in a mobile device.


2.5" drives are also frequently used by servers. There are pros and cons. Less heat being a pro (not a lot of heat to dissipate) and higher storage density (when dozens are used).

Notebook drives (which all happen to be 2.5") have less reliability because hard drives do not like to be moved. Or shipped. Or jostled. Or even looked at funny.

But if you bolt down the 2.5" drive (no pun intended) and don't whack the top of the Tivo, it has around the same reliability as a 3.5" drive.

Finding any real evidence of that is next to impossible, as the hard drive industry keeps a very tight lid on how it determines reliability numbers. Penn and Teller are definitely involved.


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