# Wd 4tb Hdd



## uw69 (Jan 25, 2001)

Potential new drive for a TiVo? 

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57521020-1/wd-ships-4tb-enterprise-grade-hard-drive/


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

How would that work? The TiVo wouldn't be able to access almost half of the drive.

What's still amazing to me is that it's only $280 to $290 for a 4TB drive. I still remember paying around $300 for each 250GB drive around ten years ago when I setup 3TB of Network storage for my HD recordings.

Even with the inflated hard drive prices during the last year, it is still extremely cheap for storage compared to ten or eleven years ago.


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

Agreed. We cannot use a 3TB drive, so my expectations for a 4TB drive are extremely low.


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

aaronwt said:


> How would that work? The TiVo wouldn't be able to access almost half of the drive.
> 
> What's still amazing to me is that it's only $280 to $290 for a 4TB drive. I still remember paying around $300 for each 250GB drive around ten years ago when I setup 3TB of Network storage for my HD recordings.
> 
> Even with the inflated hard drive prices during the last year, it is still extremely cheap for storage compared to ten or eleven years ago.


I have not found a way to use any part of a drive bigger than 2TB, the TiVo will not boot with drives 2.5TB or bigger, even if you don't try to expand the TiVo space.


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## P42 (Jan 7, 2003)

Maybe the OP is referring to Tivo6...


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## uw69 (Jan 25, 2001)

Maybe for a series 5? Seems the 2TB barrier will be broken sometime as 3TB and now 4TB drives arrive on the market.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

uw69 said:


> Potential new drive for a TiVo?
> 
> http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57521020-1/wd-ships-4tb-enterprise-grade-hard-drive/


Not for any current models.

Maybe if the S5s are built to work with 6/Gbs and AF and the 2TB per drive limit is overcome.

Of course putting them in a computer and archiving shows (if the anti-copy bit isn't set) is a different matter, if your motherboard and OS are new enough.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Yeah, I saw *some* 4 TB drive in Fry's ads within the past few months, and it was under $400, maybe under $300.. Not sure if it was this one..

It's tempting for more offline storage.


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## jcthorne (Jan 28, 2002)

WD bought the Hitachi drive line. These are the same drives being sold under the Hitachi label. Nothing wrong with that. I have had 7 of the Hitachi 4tb drives in a NAS Raid array for some time. They are quiet, very low power and thus cool running. No failures as yet.


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## sbourgeo (Nov 10, 2000)

aaronwt said:


> How would that work? The TiVo wouldn't be able to access almost half of the drive.
> 
> What's still amazing to me is that it's only $280 to $290 for a 4TB drive. I still remember paying around $300 for each 250GB drive around ten years ago when I setup 3TB of Network storage for my HD recordings.
> 
> Even with the inflated hard drive prices during the last year, it is still extremely cheap for storage compared to ten or eleven years ago.


That's the way disk drive prices have always worked. I probably paid about $300 for a 20 MB MFM hard disk in 1989, a 1.2 GB IDE disk in 1995, and an 80 GB IDE disk in 2000.


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## tivohaydon (Mar 24, 2001)

It's a "RE" drive so it's from the high end RAID line which explains some of the cost. But it's a 7200 RPM drive so it doesn't make sense for a TiVo. And it's also a five platter design. The 4TB drives will have to get to 4 platters before they make inroads.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

tivohaydon said:


> It's a "RE" drive so it's from the high end RAID line which explains some of the cost. But it's a 7200 RPM drive so it doesn't make sense for a TiVo. And it's also a five platter design. The 4TB drives will have to get to 4 platters before they make inroads.


Five platter drives should still work fine. I used two of the first Hitachi 1 TB drives in my Series 3 boxes(OLED). They were also five platter and 7200 rpm.
My girlfriend is still using these S3 boxes with no issues.

Sent from my HTC ReZound using Forum Runner


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## jcthorne (Jan 28, 2002)

They also build 5400 RPM coolspin models which are actually what I run in the NAS. Why is 5 platters a problem? These 5 platter drives use less power per TB than any other drive on the market other than SSD which is stupid expensive for server storage.

Don't get what difference it makes 5 vs 4 platters. Yes, the same design in a 4 platter would use less, but no ones does 1TB platters yet.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

They first introduced 1TB platters a year ago. Although I have no idea if they are using them in 4TB drives. Or is that what you were talking about?


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## tivohaydon (Mar 24, 2001)

jcthorne said:


> They also build 5400 RPM coolspin models which are actually what I run in the NAS. Why is 5 platters a problem? These 5 platter drives use less power per TB than any other drive on the market other than SSD which is stupid expensive for server storage.
> 
> Don't get what difference it makes 5 vs 4 platters. Yes, the same design in a 4 platter would use less, but no ones does 1TB platters yet.


Five platters aren't a technical problem, more financial. When they get down to four platters the price will be more mainstream. (Not for RE drives though.)


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

mattack said:


> Yeah, I saw *some* 4 TB drive in Fry's ads within the past few months, and it was under $400, maybe under $300.. Not sure if it was this one..
> 
> It's tempting for more offline storage.


Oops, I meant under $300, maybe under $200

But this is the one I must have been talking about.. 4 TB, $199.99.

http://www.frys.com/product/7057131


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## jcthorne (Jan 28, 2002)

That's a great price. Nice to see the 4tb drives finally starting to come down in price. I paid near $400 for some of mine.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

jcthorne said:


> That's a great price. Nice to see the 4tb drives finally starting to come down in price. I paid near $400 for some of mine.


You paid more than that, you paid the "need new hardware and OS to run bigger drives" tax.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

unitron said:


> You paid more than that, you paid the "need new hardware and OS to run bigger drives" tax.


Hmm, I sure hope those will work on MacOS. (without partitioning)


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## jcthorne (Jan 28, 2002)

Mine are all running on my Synology NAS. Yes an OS update was required back when I started using them but, Synology updates are included in the purchase price until such time the hardware can no longer support current feature set. But the current OS runs on Synology boxes many years old.....just not as quickly or missing a feature or two.

Anyway, there was no upgrade costs for me but Win7 or newer is required on the pc side. Same was true for 3TB drives. 4TB brought nothing new on hardware or software requirments.


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## ShayL (Jul 18, 2007)

mattack said:


> Hmm, I sure hope those will work on MacOS. (without partitioning)


As far maximum file size, I think you do not have to worry unless you're on a very old version of OSX: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2422?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US


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## trip1eX (Apr 2, 2005)

I have an 8mb hard drive in the garage if anyone needs one.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

trip1eX said:


> I have an 8mb hard drive in the garage if anyone needs one.


ROFLMAO!!! 

Actually, I do have a use for such a drive. I have one door that won't stay open. It would make a good doorstop.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

mattack said:


> Oops, I meant under $300, maybe under $200
> 
> But this is the one I must have been talking about.. 4 TB, $199.99.
> 
> http://www.frys.com/product/7057131


Oh, wow! That's amazing. I'm going to need to upgrade the array on my backup server in a couple of months. I was intending to upgrade from 1.5T spindles to 3T spindles at about $50 per Terabyte, but if the 4T drives can be had at $50/T or less, then I will re-think my plans. 28T of RAID6 storage for $1800. Hmm.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

unitron said:


> You paid more than that, you paid the "need new hardware and OS to run bigger drives" tax.


My hardware and OS, some 4 and 2 years old, respectively, will work with 4T drives with no problem.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

sbourgeo said:


> That's the way disk drive prices have always worked. I probably paid about $300 for a 20 MB MFM hard disk in 1989, a 1.2 GB IDE disk in 1995, and an 80 GB IDE disk in 2000.


I purchased them for the University, not myself, but in 1981 I purchased a pair of 12M (that's megs, not gigs), 12" hard drives for $8000. In 1983, I purchased a 360K floppy drive - for myself - for $300. A 4T drive has the storage capbilities of about 12,000,000 of those floppy discs.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

ShayL said:


> As far maximum file size, I think you do not have to worry unless you're on a very old version of OSX: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2422?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US


oooh, 8 million terabytes!

I might even record in HD with that much storage!

(mostly joking.. One of my thoughts of getting that 4 TB drive would be to actually get me to start recording in HD more often.. as in AT ALL, except for VERY rare music shows that show up on various channels. CLARIFICATION -- to use this as OFFLINE storage.)


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## firesignth (Apr 19, 2012)

Is there really no hope for patching the drive access limitations in Series 3 and Series 4 TiVo? This is $43 per TB...

www-dot-tigerdirect-dot-com/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=7739052&SRCCODE=BIZRATE&cm_mmc_o=2mHCjCmtB5ObkkzCjCVqHCjCdwwp&cpncode=31-143282094-2"
Seagate 4TB Internal HDD - 3.5" Form Factor, SATA III 6Gb/s, 64MB Cache


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Hmm, do they charge shipping?

No, there is not really any hope.. it has to do with the partition sizes. Your best bet is to use kmttg/pytivo to use it as offline external storage.


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## P42 (Jan 7, 2003)

Why would Tivo patch their product to support hardware they don't provide? I don't think the solution is a simple OS patch, but that the issue is at a lower level then that, ie the logic board's BIOS - I'm going way out on a limb here 

But I expect the new hardware platform support larger than 2TB drives.


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

P42 said:


> Why would Tivo patch their product to support hardware they don't provide? I don't think the solution is a simple OS patch, but that the issue is at a lower level then that, ie the logic board's BIOS - I'm going way out on a limb here
> 
> But I expect the new hardware platform support larger than 2TB drives.


No harm in speculation as long you don't go out and purchase the over 2.2Tb drive now for TiVo use, I am also sure if/when TiVo comes out with a 6 tuner whole home solution TiVo will break the 2.2Tb barrier and also have programs grouped first by a family name then by program so little Johnny will have his kids programs under his name and mom under her name etc. TiVo could also come out with a two cable card TiVo that would have 12 tuners. Speculation is fun!


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## BobCamp1 (May 15, 2002)

P42 said:


> Why would Tivo patch their product to support hardware they don't provide? I don't think the solution is a simple OS patch, but that the issue is at a lower level then that, ie the logic board's BIOS - I'm going way out on a limb here
> 
> But I expect the new hardware platform support larger than 2TB drives.


The "BIOS" (or whatever it is) needs to be replaced with UEFI, or something like it.

APM must be replaced as well, probably with GUID. This will break every single tool ever written for Tivo. All the tools would have to be modified to support the new partition system. So you couldn't take advantage of the large hard drive, anyway. Not for a while at least.


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