# Best Hard Drive for Bedroom TiVo



## RawisTheGameHhH (May 25, 2005)

Can anyone please suggest the best hard drive for my TiVo located in my bedroom. Thanks in advance.


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## SteelersFan (Sep 7, 2004)

Here's a link to the Quickview drives on the Weaknees site. Probably equal to factory installed drives and very quiet. Expensive though (at least from Weaknees) in comparison to 7200rpm drives.

I have two regular Seagates (120gb 7200.7 and 400gb 7200.9) and they are quiet enough for the bedroom. They were also very cheap ($30, $110) and have a great warranty (5yrs). YMMV


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## rainwater (Sep 21, 2004)

The Seagate drives do not support AAM (Acoustic Management). Some of them can be very loud. I have been getting the WD Caviar drives lately since they support AAM and can hardly be heard at all when set their their lowest acoustic setting.


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## Dkerr24 (Oct 29, 2004)

If you can still find one, a 5400rpm EIDE drive would be ideal for the bedroom. My bedroom DTivo unit has a 120gb 5400rpm Maxtor in it which is very quiet. The fan on back makes more noise than the drive does.


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## goony (Nov 20, 2003)

I find the Samsung drives to be very quiet after using the utility from their support website to set them in 'quiet' mode.


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## RawisTheGameHhH (May 25, 2005)

rainwater said:


> The Seagate drives do not support AAM (Acoustic Management). Some of them can be very loud. I have been getting the WD Caviar drives lately since they support AAM and can hardly be heard at all when set their their lowest acoustic setting.


i have the 320gb wd caviar drive and set it to the lowest AAM setting when I got it. Then I installed my TiVo software via instantcake and put in into my TiVo. Now I just plugged my drive back into my PC to check the AAM settings. My drive was set at the highest AAM level. So I set it back to the lowest, hope it stays the lowest this time!


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## zync (Feb 22, 2003)

I read the thread title and thought of all of the spam I get.

Anyway - I 2nd seagate post-utility as creating a very quiet system. Also look for low-heat as well.


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## Abaddon (Jul 22, 2006)

SteelersFan said:


> a link to the Quickview drives on the Weaknees site. Probably equal to factory installed drives and very quiet. Expensive though (at least from Weaknees) in comparison to 7200rpm drives.
> 
> I have two regular Seagates (120gb 7200.7 and 400gb 7200.9) and they are quiet enough for the bedroom. They were also very cheap ($30, $110) and have a great warranty (5yrs). YMMV


Just out of curiosity, where did you find a 120gb ATA drive for $30? I found a nice 160gb drive on Newegg for $56 and I thought that was a good deal!


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## SteelersFan (Sep 7, 2004)

Abaddon said:


> Just out of curiosity, where did you find a 120gb ATA drive for $30? I found a nice 160gb drive on Newegg for $56 and I thought that was a good deal!


Back in November Best Buy had a Seagate 120gb for $30 after rebate. Since then I always try to get HDs for 25 cents/gig or less. Both of my Seagates are so quiet I can't even hear them with the lids of the Tivo cracked open. I have the lids open to help keep the temp down from these hot summer days in So Cal.


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## tnedator (Dec 4, 2003)

SteelersFan said:


> Back in November Best Buy had a Seagate 120gb for $30 after rebate. Since then I always try to get HDs for 25 cents/gig or less. Both of my Seagates are so quiet I can't even hear them with the lids of the Tivo cracked open. I have the lids open to help keep the temp down from these hot summer days in So Cal.


Now I'm feeling bad about my Seagate 500gb drive at 30 cents/gig


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## danny7481 (Dec 6, 2005)

rainwater said:


> The Seagate drives do not support AAM (Acoustic Management). Some of them can be very loud. I have been getting the WD Caviar drives lately since they support AAM and can hardly be heard at all when set their their lowest acoustic setting.


how do you set the acoustic? i have a WD caviar and its the loudest hard drive ive ever heard!!!


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## Abaddon (Jul 22, 2006)

SteelersFan said:


> Back in November Best Buy had a Seagate 120gb for $30 after rebate. Since then I always try to get HDs for 25 cents/gig or less. Both of my Seagates are so quiet I can't even hear them with the lids of the Tivo cracked open. I have the lids open to help keep the temp down from these hot summer days in So Cal.


Very nice. I'm only using a NOISY 80GB Maxtor and I've been thinking about upgrading to something around 160GB or so. I just hate seeing that lil yellow dot next to my shows.


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## RawisTheGameHhH (May 25, 2005)

Abaddon said:


> Very nice. I'm only using a NOISY 80GB Maxtor and I've been thinking about upgrading to something around 160GB or so. I just hate seeing that lil yellow dot next to my shows.


when upgrading a hard drive, tivo still thinks you have the factory default hard drive in, example I had a 80 gig drive in and now I have a 320 gig drive, however tivo still thinks its a 80 gig drive and therefore the yellow dots will still appear fast!


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## Abaddon (Jul 22, 2006)

RawisTheGameHhH said:


> when upgrading a hard drive, tivo still thinks you have the factory default hard drive in, example I had a 80 gig drive in and now I have a 320 gig drive, however tivo still thinks its a 80 gig drive and therefore the yellow dots will still appear fast!


Great. Those things drive me nuts. Oh well. I could always use some extra space. Sci-Fi channel keeps coming up with decent shows and I'm running out of room. Thanks for the info.


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## wscannell (Dec 7, 2003)

RawisTheGameHhH said:


> when upgrading a hard drive, tivo still thinks you have the factory default hard drive in, example I had a 80 gig drive in and now I have a 320 gig drive, however tivo still thinks its a 80 gig drive and therefore the yellow dots will still appear fast!


The TiVo does not look at the drive size to set the expiration of programs. The yellow dot still appears in 24 hours and the exclamation appears in another 24 hours. (This is assuming you accept the default Keep Until). With a larger hard drive, you can have many more programs with exclamation points showing because they are only deleted when space is needed for additional recordings.


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## wscannell (Dec 7, 2003)

danny7481 said:


> how do you set the acoustic? i have a WD caviar and its the loudest hard drive ive ever heard!!!


There is a Hitachi Feature Tool that will set acoustic management on Hitachi, Maxtor, and Western Digital drives. Seagate does not support acoustic management controls, so the tool will not work with Seagate. The tool may work with other drives.


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