# WD10EADS in Series 3?



## litkaj (Jun 5, 2007)

I'm pretty sure that the Seagate 1TB SV35.3 I bought back in May 2008 is flaking out (I'm getting skips, but no pixelation, in recorded video and I had one instaboot earlier tonight).

I've been searching for info on the EADS drive (I've got one sitting here doing nothing) but haven't come across anything with respect to the S3. Does anyone know if it suffers from the same soft reboot issue as the newer EACS?

If so, or if there is some other reason to not use this drive, are there any other suggestions?


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## jlib (Nov 22, 2002)

Well, you can be a pioneer or just get the WD10EVCS and not worry about it. Most likely the WD10EADS would have similar characteristics to the WD10EACS. With the WD10EVCS you also won't have to bother with adjusting the head seek acoustics. 

Your Seagate is an enterprise class drive and has a 5 year warranty. You might try some non-destructive drive tests on it before assuming it is defective. Is it noisier than usual? If found bad you should be able to get it cross-shipped. How was the head seek noise level on that Seagate model for living room use?


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## drey (Jul 21, 2008)

Actually the latest revision of WD10EACS works fine with S3. The revision you're looking for is 00D6B1. 

I tested it on my S3 and it doesn't exhibit "reboot issue" and works very nicely.


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## litkaj (Jun 5, 2007)

jlib said:


> Well, you can be a pioneer or just get the WD10EVCS and not worry about it. Most likely the WD10EADS would have similar characteristics to the WD10EACS. With the WD10EVCS you also won't have to bother with adjusting the head seek acoustics.
> 
> Your Seagate is an enterprise class drive and has a 5 year warranty. You might try some non-destructive drive tests on it before assuming it is defective. Is it noisier than usual? If found bad you should be able to get it cross-shipped. How was the head seek noise level on that Seagate model for living room use?


Nosier, no, not at all. I can't even hear it. In fact, the drive was never noisy and I never adjusted the acoustics.

The only real problems I've had is that I got one instaboot yesterday and for the past week I've had some stuttering. Even then, I only had that once per evening up until yesterday where it happened every 10 minutes or so. I've left the stuttering recordings on my TiVo (to prevent the system from writing to those same areas on the disk) so I may try pulling them off and then running them through mpeg2repair to see what I get.

Anyway, since no one can tell me whether or not this disk will work, and because cloning a 1TB disk is somewhat time-intensive and I'd rather not waste half a day, I'm going to order an EVCS now for delivery on Monday. Thanks all.

EDIT: I think I'll use the EADS to pull off all the recordings so that I can truncate and get my S3 back up and running faster on Monday. I was going to install that in my computer as extra storage anyway once my SSDs get here. I can transfer the shows all back at my leisure over the next few week.


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## drey (Jul 21, 2008)

just to add... EADS *doesn't work* in Series 3, ie. it is experiencing "soft reboot" issue. However, latest revision of EACS that I mentioned in the post earlier does work and EVCS do work just fine.


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## litkaj (Jun 5, 2007)

Ah, well, it might not matter. The wife just called to tell me that the TiVo was in the process of rebooting when she walked in the door. I may have to clone over to the EADS and then over again to the EVCS on Monday...


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## litkaj (Jun 5, 2007)

drey said:


> Actually the latest revision of WD10EACS works fine with S3. The revision you're looking for is 00D6B1.
> 
> I tested it on my S3 and it doesn't exhibit "reboot issue" and works very nicely.


Are you sure? I've found a couple threads here saying that that revision doesn't correctly work with the S3.


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## drey (Jul 21, 2008)

litkaj said:


> Are you sure? I've found a couple threads here saying that that revision doesn't correctly work with the S3.


Yes, I'm sure. I tried it in my S3  I was able to reboot the unit without it hanging at startup screen.


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## litkaj (Jun 5, 2007)

Hmmm... Well, I stopped at Best Buy on the way home to get a Seagate 7200.11 1TB.

I tried cloning the SV35.3 but WinMFS said it wasn't a TiVo drive. I ended up digging the original 250 GB out of the closet. I did a truncated back of that disk and then restored the backup to the new drive and expanded. I just finished installing it back in the TiVo about 10 minutes ago and am currently waiting for it to boot. I am getting a bit worried though as it's just sitting there as the "Please Wait" screen...

EDIT: Though it just occurred to me that I may have not actually plugged the hard drive into the cable. _Goes away to find his screwdriver to disassemble the S3 again..._


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## litkaj (Jun 5, 2007)

Yup, wasn't plugged in. 

Running the network connection now. Crossing my fingers that it will bump me up quickly. I had forgotten how much I disliked 9.3...


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

drey said:


> Yes, I'm sure. I tried it in my S3  I was able to reboot the unit without it hanging at startup screen.


Andrey, can you please confirm that you are restarting your TiVo Series3 with a WD10EACS-00D6B1 internal hard drive using this exact method:

1. Go to TiVo Central
2. Select Messages & Setup
3. Select System Reset
4. Select Restart Receiver

And that it fully boots up and runs normally? Not doubting, but if so it's a first. There was an earlier post that made the same claim but was never confirmed and basically deemed bogus.

If by "reboot" do you mean a hard reboot (unplug TiVo and then plug it back in)? If so it should work and otherwise function normally...only during a soft reboot (as outlined above) or a software update would you see a problem. If it worked on a hard reboot, please let us know...nothing to be embarrassed about.

Plus I'm confused...according to this post you used to have a Samsung hard drive in your Series3 and then changed it to a WD10EVCS. Are you saying that within the last couple of weeks that you replaced it with WD10EACS? 

So if you do have a WD10EACS in your Series3 that does not incur a soft reboot issue, can you tell us what recording capacity your TiVo is showing and where and when you purchased that particular drive? A screen shot of the info screen showing the eSATA drive model number (like this one) would be appreciated as well.

It's important to confirm either way to ensure that the right information is being posted, saving others from spending their hard-earned time and money on a product that until now has been repeatedly reported to NOT work as an internal upgrade for a Series3.

TIA. :up:


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

Our friend drey has yet to answer the above question (and has posted elsewhere on the forum since). As with the other lone member making the same claim a while back and never confirming it, guess we'll have to discount the authenticity/credibility of the claim and continue to recommend that the WD10EACS hard drive NOT be used for internal upgrades with TiVo Series3's.


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## jlib (Nov 22, 2002)

Even if the report is credible and it did work there are several users that report that it didn't so you end up with inconsistent drive behavior which would still make it a not recommended drive for S3 internal upgrades. Who would want to take the chance?


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## litkaj (Jun 5, 2007)

Well, anyway, just an update. I installed the Seagate 7200.11 back on the 8th but my wife is really not happy with the noise level. Unlike the SV35.3, this drive is very audible from as far away as 8ft.

I had also ordered an WD10EVCS from Dell and it arrived last Tuesday. I tried to swap them out this past Sunday morning but was unsuccessful. I truncated a backup from the 7200.11 and then restored it to the EVCS but it came up with a GSOD and was not successful in fixing the drive after two passes.

I figured I got a bad image from the drive so I went back and tried it again. This time I received errors while writing the image to the EVCS.

Next, I figured the 7200.11 was defective (you've seen the reports, Seagate is getting blasted this week) so I went back to the known-good 9.3 image from my original 250GB but that failed to write as well.

Honestly, I didn't have high hopes for the EVCS. Apparently, WD's packing for this drive is to shrink-wrap it to a piece of folding cardboard that turns into a tiny box. Dell then chose to toss that box into a bubble-mailer and ship it FedEx. Basically, it flew across the country with *zero* padding.

I called my Dell rep and he passed me over to customer care who shipped my a new one NDA (delivered today) though the packing on this one wasn't much better. The drive came in the same insufficient WD box, though this one was at least tossed in a second cardboard box. There was a tiny scrap of crumpled paper in there to keep it from bouncing around, though by the time it got here, it was fairly flat.

Anyway, I'm going to run read/write tests on it until the end of the day Friday. If it passes without errors then I'll install it Saturday morning.


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## lullwater (Jan 20, 2009)

I replaced my TivoHD with an internal 1 TB WD10EADS drive and added an external Antec MX-1 case with the same 1 TB WD10EADS drive using a SIIG cable. Flawless performance for several days using the directions given by the majordomos of this site. I want to thank those contributors.

Now I&#8217;m dispirited. Today I started to get soft-reboots every couple of hours or so. I thought I had followed the recipe to make this a successful upgrade, but I guess I flubbed the drive choice when Amazon offered me the 1 TB WD10EADS as an alternative when my first one was out of stock. Unless I hear differently or in the unlikely event Tivo decides to remain static, I intend to return and exchange the drives after the weekend


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## drey (Jul 21, 2008)

richsadams said:


> Andrey, can you please confirm that you are restarting your TiVo Series3 with a WD10EACS-00D6B1 internal hard drive using this exact method:
> 
> 1. Go to TiVo Central
> 2. Select Messages & Setup
> ...


Sorry, I didn't see this thread before and didn't subscribe to it after my initial post. Yes, I confirm that soft reboot works with WD10EACS-00D6B1 on Series 3. I'm running 11.0 release, recording capacity (after MSF supersize) is at 157 HD, 1367 SD. Here is the screenshot: TiVo Series 3 with WD10EACS

The reason for so many drives is that I have 2 Series 3 units and can try different configurations. The Samsung drive that other user mentioned on the forum turned out to be pretty loud for TiVo, so I had to sell it. Now that unit has WD10EVCS.

My second unit, Series 3 also, now has WD10EACS (revision 00D6B1) since WD10EVCS were quite expensive at a time. I'm certainly not having an issue with soft-reboot at all. The tricky part is that to make sure it is B1 revision and not anything else. Most of the time when ordering, there is no way to tell which revision it is. I ordered my drive from onsale.com.

I hope this helps. If anyone else besides me has WD10EACS-00D6B1, I'd definitely be interested to hear your success with Series 3.

-- Andrey


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

drey said:


> Sorry, I didn't see this thread before and didn't subscribe to it after my initial post. Yes, I confirm that soft reboot works with WD10EACS-00D6B1 on Series 3. I'm running 11.0 release, recording capacity (after MSF supersize) is at 157 HD, 1367 SD. Here is the screenshot: TiVo Series 3 with WD10EACS


Thanks for that. Do you have a screen shot of the actual external storage such as the one I posted previously showing the WD10EACS-00D6B1? TIA.


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## drey (Jul 21, 2008)

richsadams said:


> Thanks for that. Do you have a screen shot of the actual external storage such as the one I posted previously showing the WD10EACS-00D6B1? TIA.


I do not have an external storage, sorry. The only drive that is currently installed is internal.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

drey said:


> I do not have an external storage, sorry. The only drive that is currently installed is internal.


Ah, got it, my error. Thanks!

That said, it's almost impossible to know exactly which model of the WD10EACS one would receive without eyeballing the drive itself. With so many confirmations of that model not working in Series3's, it would still be appropriate to keep the original recommendation of the Official eSATA Drive Expansion and Drive Upgrade FAQ that the WD10EACS NOT be used as an internal upgrade in TiVo Series3's.


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## drey (Jul 21, 2008)

richsadams said:


> Ah, got it, my error. Thanks!
> 
> That said, it's almost impossible to know exactly which model of the WD10EACS one would receive without eyeballing the drive itself. With so many confirmations of that model not working in Series3's, it would still be appropriate to keep the original recommendation of the Official eSATA Drive Expansion and Drive Upgrade FAQ that the WD10EACS NOT be used as an internal upgrade in TiVo Series3's.


I agree with the last statement. If anyone wants to visually tell the difference though, newer WD10EACS have "1TB / 16MB Cache" in the big black letters in the upper left corner of the drive. Older drives listed size and capacity next to the model number.

old: http://i8.ebayimg.com/05/i/001/27/71/2f1a_1.JPG
new: http://i12.ebayimg.com/06/i/001/2c/8b/c2f1_1.JPG

From what I've heard, most online retailers who carry updated inventory won't have older WD10EACS's in stock. I know for sure onsale.com, amazon.com and buy.com have newer revisions. Not sure about other retailers.

Lastly, the price for WD10EVCS vs. WD10EACS is pretty much the same now, so it might be wiser just to get WD10EVCS and don't take a chance on revision.

-- Andrey


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## jlib (Nov 22, 2002)

drey said:


> ...If anyone wants to visually tell the difference though, newer WD10EACS have "1TB / 16MB Cache" in the big black letters in the upper left corner of the drive. Older drives listed size and capacity next to the model number.
> 
> old: http://i8.ebayimg.com/05/i/001/27/71/2f1a_1.JPG
> new: http://i12.ebayimg.com/06/i/001/2c/8b/c2f1_1.JPG


Very good. Thanks for your careful report. Notice how the new 3 platter design has no top spindle bearing. Should still be OK.


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## lullwater (Jan 20, 2009)

My TivoHD with the internal 1 TB WD10EADS is working just fine without the soft-boot issue now that I&#8217;ve divorced it from the external enclosure (Antec MX-1 case, 1 TB WD10EADS, SIIG cable).


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

lullwater said:


> My TivoHD with the internal 1 TB WD10EADS is working just fine without the soft-boot issue now that I've divorced it from the external enclosure (Antec MX-1 case, 1 TB WD10EADS, SIIG cable).


Glad to hear things are better...sort of better anyway. There are three things that may have been problematic with your eSATA drive: the eSATA cable, the MX-1 enclosure or the hard drive itself. All of which various folks here have reported...the cable being the issue most often resolved by replacing it, then bad hard drives and a couple of reports of the bridge in the MX-1 failing.

Have you had a chance to determine what might have caused your issue? If it's the hard drive did you run any diagnostics on it?

BTW, there has never been a TiVo HD soft reboot issue with any of the recommended drives...that's been limited to the TiVo Series3's.

Thanks and TIA for any updates. :up:


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## Gunner636 (Mar 10, 2009)

I have seen a couple posts about using the WD10EADS drive internal and one post where someone used it as an internal and external, but ended up removing the external. I havnt seen any posts bout using this drive on an non-modded series 3 tivo as an external drive. Will this drive work ok as an exteral drive? And just a side question has anyone used a thermaltake esata enclosure? I didnt see any posts about it either.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

Gunner636 said:


> I have seen a couple posts about using the WD10EADS drive internal and one post where someone used it as an internal and external, but ended up removing the external. I havnt seen any posts bout using this drive on an non-modded series 3 tivo as an external drive. Will this drive work ok as an exteral drive? And just a side question has anyone used a thermaltake esata enclosure? I didnt see any posts about it either.


IIRC there are several folks using the WD10EADS as an eSATA drive. You shouldn't have any problem adding it to your unmodified Series3.

AFAIK no one is using a Thermaltake eSATA enclosure. It looks like it would work and the active cooling is a plus. There's no reason that I know of that it wouldn't work but there have been a handful of eSATA enclosures that had problems with TiVo "seeing" them due to a bridge issue. No way to know unless you try it. Of course you'll need to report back and become a TiVo Pioneer (the T-shirts are worth it alone!) If it doesn't work, the recommended Antec MX-1 is guaranteed to work.†

For all the info you need click on the link at the bottom of my signature.

Happy upgrading!


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## Gunner636 (Mar 10, 2009)

I see, right now I am getting an error message, something to the effect of this device is not support by your tivo. I just setup the thermaltake esata enclosure with the WD10EADS hd inside (using the supplied eSata cable). I am not sure if it is the HD or the enclosure or the cable. *frustrateing lol* I took an older Sata HD and put it in the enclosure and got the exact same error. Which leads me to believe that its either the esata cable or the enclosure. Unfortunately I dont have any other cables or enclosures to try but tomorrow I will pick up the Antec MX-1 enclosure and try that (along w/ a differnt cable). Is there a cable that a local store will have that may be more successful? I am getting the enclosure at Fry's if that helps. Is there a specfic cable I can look for? I orderd the cable suggested in the extremely long write up about all of this info already tonight but that wont do me any good in the mean time (it cant hurt to have a few extra cables around . AND THANK YOU for your really fast responce.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

Gunner636 said:


> I see, right now I am getting an error message, something to the effect of this device is not support by your tivo.


If you have a TiVo Series3, ignore the error message. The only time that error will not appear is when the "approved" WD My DVR Expander is connected. The "error screen" should give you the option to continue anyway. I think you have to give it three thumbs up to continue (can't remember now), but do whatever it's asking and you should be in business. Let me know if it doesn't work (or if you have a TiVo HD, in which case it won't work).


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## Gunner636 (Mar 10, 2009)

Lol, wow, I am a goofball. I do have the tivo HD. What does that error mean on the HD tivo? Sorry its been a long night.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

Gunner636 said:


> Lol, wow, I am a goofball. I do have the tivo HD. What does that error mean on the HD tivo? Sorry its been a long night.


Bummer. Per the Drive Expansion and Drive Upgrade FAQ sticky thread, TiVo HD software only allows it to accept the TiVo approved WD My DVR Expander via plug and pray.

That said, it is possible to "marry" an "unapproved" eSATA drive to a TiVo HD using a program called winMFS (or MFSTools if you a code kinda person). It isn't difficult if you're comfortable with connecting a hard drive to a PC. All of the instructions are on the sticky thread. Of course opening the box voids the warranty but that's been worth it to hundreds (maybe thousands?) of us to get some reasonable recording space.

The rule of thumb here is that if you're going to open TiVo up, rather than add a larger (than the Expander's 500GB) external hard drive you might as well upgrade the internal hard drive (up to 1TB), put the OEM drive on the shelf as a backup and be done with it.

So now you either have a new expansion drive for your computer...AND you can buy a WD My DVR Expander...OR you can upgrade the internal drive on your TiVo. There is a silver lining here, sort of. Since you do have a TiVo HD your WD10EADS hard drive should work just fine as an internal upgrade. It wouldn't work inside of a Series3 (due to a soft reboot issue). So all is not lost. 

Let us know what you decide and how it goes!


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## Gunner636 (Mar 10, 2009)

First off, I want to say thank you again for your help!  

I have decided I am going to replace the tivo drive with my new 1Tb drive. My last question, at least for now, is are there any other down sides to doing this upgrade other than voiding the warranty. Will I loose out on any features the tivo offers, like being able to use netfix and such? 

Also will it effect tivo desktop? Will I still be able to xfer files from the tivo to my pc?


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## drey (Jul 21, 2008)

Gunner636 said:


> First off, I want to say thank you again for your help!
> 
> I have decided I am going to replace the tivo drive with my new 1Tb drive. My last question, at least for now, is are there any other down sides to doing this upgrade other than voiding the warranty. Will I loose out on any features the tivo offers, like being able to use netfix and such?


Besides the warranty, you only will benefit from the larger drive. There are no other downsides. Enjoy your upgrade!


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

Gunner636 said:


> First off, I want to say thank you again for your help!
> 
> I have decided I am going to replace the tivo drive with my new 1Tb drive. My last question, at least for now, is are there any other down sides to doing this upgrade other than voiding the warranty. Will I loose out on any features the tivo offers, like being able to use netfix and such?
> 
> Also will it effect tivo desktop? Will I still be able to xfer files from the tivo to my pc?


With the exception of voiding the warranty the upgrade is completely transparent. Everything TiVo does or can do now it will still do with a new drive...it'll just have more space to save whatever it's doing. If you follow the normal instructions all of your Season Passes, cable card settings, etc. will be saved. Image the new drive, plug it in, fire it up and go. If you want to take the slightly more involved copy/image route you can even save existing recordings. Again, all of the details are on the thread linked below.

With respect to the warranty, TiVo can tell when an upgrade has been performed by viewing their logs (records of when TiVo talks to the mother ship) if they look into it. Otherwise, there's no way to tell that the box has been opened (no warranty seals, etc.) unless you leave part of your grilled cheese sandwich inside or something (even then you could try to blame it on the assembly line folks  ). If something went south in the past many folks have been able to reinstall their original hard drive and have the box replaced. (A majority of replacements are for hard drive failures though.) IIRC there has been at least one if not two reports that TiVo refused to replace the box because of the upgrade recently. No idea if the owners let it slip, they found a screwdriver left behind or what the circumstances were though.

In any case...happy upgrading!


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## rberna3486 (Mar 16, 2003)

I was just going to do my upgrade and i notice the issues with WD10EACS. I just picked one and the model is wd10eacs-00D680 made on 07 jan 2009. 

Since the original problem started a year ago do you think that it will would have the same problem? 

Thanks for the advise.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

rberna3486 said:


> I was just going to do my upgrade and i notice the issues with WD10EACS. I just picked one and the model is wd10eacs-00D680 made on 07 jan 2009.
> 
> Since the original problem started a year ago do you think that it will would have the same problem?
> 
> Thanks for the advise.


If you're talking about the Series3 soft reboot issue, it's with the Series3 software not the hard drive. There's no reason to believe that anything has changed. If you have a Series3 it's safe to go with the recommended WD10EVCS. If you have a TiVo HD the WD10EACS will work. (You'll probably want to adjust the AAM so it runs quieter is all).


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## rberna3486 (Mar 16, 2003)

sorry to be a pain but "How do I adjust the AAM?"


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## rainwater (Sep 21, 2004)

rberna3486 said:


> sorry to be a pain but "How do I adjust the AAM?"


You can use the Hitachi Feature Tool (just google it) and some of the MFS tools have a similar feature as well. You just hook it up to your pc and set the "Acoustic Level"/AAM to it's quietest setting. Most WD drives are set to performance mode, so its always a good idea to change it. It can be changed at any time since it is only a setting on the drive and will not affect the data on the drive.


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