# Need Drive Upgrade Suggestions for Premiere and Tivo HD



## Resist (Dec 21, 2003)

I've been searching for a 2TB drive upgrade for my Tivo Premiere and Tivo HD. Not exactly sure which drives to get but I do know I want Tivo formatted drives, as I don't have the patience right now to set up blank drives myself. I had purchased a WD 1TB Tivo formatted drive from a forum member on ebay around a year ago for my other Series 3 Tivo, but I can't find him on ebay anymore. And yes, I know I could purchase the drives from Weaknees or DVRupgrade, but I'm not willing to pay $300 per 2TB drive. Any suggestions?


----------



## Soapm (May 9, 2007)

Resist said:


> I've been searching for a 2TB drive upgrade for my Tivo Premiere and Tivo HD. Not exactly sure which drives to get but I do know I want Tivo formatted drives, as I don't have the patience right now to set up blank drives myself. I had purchased a WD 1TB Tivo formatted drive from a forum member on ebay around a year ago for my other Series 3 Tivo, but I can't find him on ebay anymore. And yes, I know I could purchase the drives from Weaknees or DVRupgrade, but I'm not willing to pay $300 per 2TB drive. Any suggestions?


I hear DVRDude comes recommended but I haven't personally used their drives.


----------



## Resist (Dec 21, 2003)

I will have to check out DVRDude. Is he a forum member or just on ebay?


----------



## lillevig (Dec 7, 2010)

Resist said:


> I've been searching for a 2TB drive upgrade for my Tivo Premiere and Tivo HD. Not exactly sure which drives to get but I do know I want Tivo formatted drives, as I don't have the patience right now to set up blank drives myself. I had purchased a WD 1TB Tivo formatted drive from a forum member on ebay around a year ago for my other Series 3 Tivo, but I can't find him on ebay anymore. And yes, I know I could purchase the drives from Weaknees or DVRupgrade, but I'm not willing to pay $300 per 2TB drive. Any suggestions?


I ran across a seller called The-DVR-Pro on eBay who is selling 1 and 2 TB drives for the S3HD and Premiere. 1TB for $90 and 2TB for $114 with free shipping.


----------



## Resist (Dec 21, 2003)

lillevig said:


> 1TB for $90 and 2TB for $114 with free shipping.


What brand and model are they? But at that price they can't be the good ones.


----------



## lillevig (Dec 7, 2010)

Resist said:


> What brand and model are they? But at that price they can't be the good ones.


They are the WD10EARS and WD20EARS, like many in this forum use. They have the noise level tuned and the image pre-loaded. I don't have any qualms about doing my own drive upgrades, but at that price I'm seriously thinking about buying one after my Premiere gets past the 90 day mark.


----------



## Resist (Dec 21, 2003)

What about the WD20EURS drive? DVRDude and others sell this and they want a lot more money for it, I'm wondering why? DVRDude's not giving me any information as to why. He basically said that I should go buy from someone else if I didn't like his prices, that kind of strikes me the wrong way.


----------



## lillevig (Dec 7, 2010)

Resist said:


> What about the WD20EURS drive? DVRDude and others sell this and they want a lot more money for it, I'm wondering why? DVRDude's not giving me any information as to why. He basically said that I should go buy from someone else if I didn't like his prices, that kind of strikes me the wrong way.


According to an online search, the EURS is listed as an AV drive and costs a little more. I've seen some claim that it has "better mechanicals" for 24/7 operation. No personal experience here so I would put some extra weight on what real users in the Tivo Community have to say. The eBay seller I mentioned does say to contact him if you would like a different drive than his standard issue. Can't hurt to ask.


----------



## Resist (Dec 21, 2003)

lillevig said:


> I ran across a seller called The-DVR-Pro on eBay


Do you have a link? I can't seem to find him on ebay.


----------



## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

I find this a little funny. You are asking a million questions about the drive, but don't have enough patience to do it yourself?

It is truly a very simple process. And, in a way, depending upon your circumstance, it could be much easier to do it yourself. Doing it yourself retains your recordings, thumbs, channels, ect. and avoids the need to re-pair your cablecard.


----------



## Resist (Dec 21, 2003)

jrtroo said:


> I find this a little funny. You are asking a million questions about the drive, but don't have enough patience to do it yourself?
> 
> It is truly a very simple process. And, in a way, depending upon your circumstance, it could be much easier to do it yourself. Doing it yourself retains your recordings, thumbs, channels, ect. and avoids the need to re-pair your cablecard.


Not so much I guess that I don't have the patience, it's just that I've never done it before. But considering I can get the WD20EURS from Amazon for $95, I may just do it myself. I understand the benefits, but am not sure I have all the correct hardware to do it with my PC. And when you read DVRDude's ebay listings, he makes it sound as though his upgrade formatting process is the most stable.


----------



## lillevig (Dec 7, 2010)

Resist said:


> Do you have a link? I can't seem to find him on ebay.


On eBay, click on "Community" and search for user "the-dvr-pro". Once you get to his info, click on "Seller's Items".


----------



## lillevig (Dec 7, 2010)

Resist said:


> Not so much I guess that I don't have the patience, it's just that I've never done it before. But considering I can get the WD20EURS from Amazon for $95, I may just do it myself. I understand the benefits, but am not sure I have all the correct hardware to do it with my PC. And when you read DVRDude's ebay listings, he makes it sound as though his upgrade formatting process is the most stable.


If you decide to do it yourself, what you need depends on whether you are upgrading the S3HD or the Premiere, but you probably already knew that. I have used WINMFS to image drives for S1, S2DT, and S3HD. I use an inexpensive USB to universal drive cable (could be just a SATA to USB cable) so that I don't have to open any computer boxes. I can point you to a virgin image for the S3HD. I have not done a Premiere yet but it requires JMFS and must be done as a copy of one drive to the other. If/when I try that, I will use my universal cable and another SATA to USB cable. I've been told in this community that that should work.


----------



## Resist (Dec 21, 2003)

My plan is to upgrade the drives in a Tivo HD and Premiere. But I don't know anything about JMFS or WINMFS, so I would have to learn them.


----------



## Soapm (May 9, 2007)

Resist said:


> My plan is to upgrade the drives in a Tivo HD and Premiere. But I don't know anything about JMFS or WINMFS, so I would have to learn them.


Nothing to learn on either. They are very strait forward and pretty much fool proof. No directions really needed...


----------



## lillevig (Dec 7, 2010)

Resist said:


> My plan is to upgrade the drives in a Tivo HD and Premiere. But I don't know anything about JMFS or WINMFS, so I would have to learn them.


If you have a spare SATA drive of at least 160 GB, then you can practice using WINMFS on that. Like I said previously, I can point you to my WINMFS image for the S3HD and the WINMFS download is free at MFSLIVe.org. In my experience, the hardest part is getting WINMFS to recognize the drive intially, because Windows wants to mount it. There is a "Delete Format" command in WINMFS that will take care of that but I've always had to restart my computer after that and re-run WINMFS. You will want to run right click on winmfs.exe and run it as Administrator if you are using Vista or Win7. Again, I highly recommend using a SATA to USB adaptor cable. PM me if you further questions.


----------



## Resist (Dec 21, 2003)

I'm still using Windows 98 on my PC. Don't use it much since getting a MacBook Pro.


----------



## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

Resist said:


> I'm still using Windows 98 on my PC. Don't use it much since getting a MacBook Pro.


That PC running 98 may not run WinMFS, but as long as it can boot from a cd it should be able to run MFS Live, and apparently JMFS is available as a bootable cd as well, so it should probably work also.

Of course if that PC is very old, it may not recognize drives bigger than 137GB.

If it does, it may or may not have SATA ports.

If it has SATA ports, they may not work with drives as large as 1TB.

You may be able to get around that last part by using a Marvell or JMicron chipset based SATA to IDE adapter that will let you connect a SATA drive to your PC's IDE controller.

As strange as it seems, some motherboards whose SATA ports can't deal with 1TB drives have IDE controllers that can handle what the adapter makes them think are 1TB IDE drives.

Of course you'll need to get a copy of an S3 platform image made with MFS Live instead of WinMFS as the two can't use each other's backup images, even though both programs are written by spike.


----------



## Resist (Dec 21, 2003)

I made a mistake, my PC actually has Windows XP on it. Not sure why I said Windows 98, that's how long it's been since I used my PC after getting a Mac.


----------



## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

Resist said:


> I made a mistake, my PC actually has Windows XP on it. Not sure why I said Windows 98, that's how long it's been since I used my PC since getting a Mac.


Okay, if you've got XP (make sure you've gone online and gotten all of the updates from Billy boy), then you can run WinMFS.

(the MFS Live cd v1.4 is still handy to have around)

Depending on the age of the computer itself, you may still have over 137GB problems or SATA drive too large for the SATA controller problems, you'll just have to experiment and see.


----------



## Resist (Dec 21, 2003)

I've been going back and forth trying to decide which drive to get, the WD20EARS or WD20EURS.

Then I found this which helps me realize the WD20EURS is a better choice even though it's a bit more expensive.

_*The A/V Green Power drives ignore errors, the normal drives will do an error recovery to attempt to get back any data from the platter.

When recording video (security cameras etc) you want an A/V drive that will just record whatever you throw at it, and keep going even if it misses a byte or two. An error in a couple of bytes just causes a minor blip in the video stream, but the rest won't stop. On a normal drive it could go into an error recovery mode and stop recording for 10-30 seconds - and this is much worse for security.

However if you store documents, a single byte error could corrupt megabytes or even gigabytes of important data.*_

Any thoughts?


----------



## lillevig (Dec 7, 2010)

Resist said:


> I've been going back and forth trying to decide which drive to get, the WD20EARS or WD20EURS.
> 
> Then I found this which helps me realize the WD20EURS is a better choice even though it's a bit more expensive.
> 
> ...


Supposedly WDIDLE3 will allow you to tweak the error correction as well as turning off the idle mode. Can't say from personal experience.


----------



## Resist (Dec 21, 2003)

lillevig said:


> Supposedly WDIDLE3 will allow you to tweak the error correction as well as turning off the idle mode.


What does your response have to do with my post? I was asking about thoughts on the two different drives. But people can buy the drives pre Tivo formatted from vendors on ebay, so WDIDLE3 wouldn't even be a thought.


----------



## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

Resist said:


> What does your response have to do with my post? I was asking about thoughts on the two different drives. But people can buy the drives pre Tivo formatted from vendors on ebay, so WDIDLE3 wouldn't even be a thought.


Because you posted about how TiVos and other video recording devices benefited from a certain approach to error correction that differs from that used by drives intended for data storage.

Those different approaches are really opposite ends of a continuum, and a drive can sometimes be adjusted along that continuum.

This article is about RAID arrays, and not video recorders, but it gives some insight into the concept.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-Limited_Error_Recovery

You may have to do some more googling of your own to get a better understanding so as to make an informed decision as to what to do in your own circumstance.

As to whether wdidle3 or some other utility is needed to make the adjustment, if the adjustment can be made, I do not know.


----------



## lillevig (Dec 7, 2010)

Resist said:


> What does your response have to do with my post? I was asking about thoughts on the two different drives. But people can buy the drives pre Tivo formatted from vendors on ebay, so WDIDLE3 wouldn't even be a thought.


As Unitron said, the error correction on some drives can be adjusted and maybe even disabled. I read somewhere that this is the case with the WDxxEARS drives and that WDIDLE3 supposedly has a utility to do so. Why don't you ask the eBay vendor I pointed you to about that? Or do some Googling on the drive and the utility. Or just spend the few extra bucks and buy the WDxxEURS.


----------



## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

Resist said:


> I've been going back and forth trying to decide which drive to get, the WD20EARS or WD20EURS.


For use in a Tivo, the only difference between the two is the default AAM (noise) level. If you get an EARS, you can set AAM yourself. (Many can't even hear the difference, though).

All the other differences you mention are features that the Tivo doesn't use.

So, from a Tivo standpoint:

EARS + adjusting AAM == EURS.


----------



## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

jfh3 said:


> For use in a Tivo, the only difference between the two is the default AAM (noise) level. If you get an EARS, you can set AAM yourself. (Many can't even hear the difference, though).
> 
> All the other differences you mention are features that the Tivo doesn't use.
> 
> ...


Does that mean that the EURS does or does not need intellipark disabled?

(that's the thing you do with wdidle3)


----------



## Stuxnet (Feb 9, 2011)

lillevig said:


> Supposedly WDIDLE3 will allow you to tweak the error correction as well as turning off the idle mode. Can't say from personal experience.


WDIDLE3 does not directly affect error correction. Judge for yourself, here's the screen output...


```
WDIDLE3 Version 1.05 for DOS


DESCRIPTION
- DOS Level utility to setup or report the idle3 value.


FEATURES
- Scan for all drives. Non-WD Drives shall only show the model and serial 
  numbers.
- Uses a Vendor Specific Command to set or get the idle3 timer.
- Timer can be set from 8 to 25.5 seconds on older drives.
- Timer can be set from 8 to 300 seconds on newer drives.


USAGE
WDIDLE3 [/S[<Timer>]] [/D] [/R] [/?]
where:
/S[<Timer>] Set timer, units in seconds. Default=8.0 (8.0 seconds).
            Resolution is 0.1 seconds from 8.0 to 12.7 seconds.
            Resolution is 30 seconds from 30 seconds to 300 seconds.
            Note, times between 12.8 and 30 seconds will be set to 30 seconds.
/D          Disable timer.
/R          Report current timer.
/?          This help info.

DOS ERRORLEVEL
0     No error
1     Drive problem
254   Internal program error
255   Invalid command line argument
```


----------



## lillevig (Dec 7, 2010)

Stuxnet said:


> WDIDLE3 does not directly affect error correction.


Thanks for clearing that up. As I indicated, all I knew about it was what I read elsewhere.

Added (2:45 CST): I did find some references to a WDTLER utility that apparently can be used to turn off error correction. Anybody with direct experience?


----------



## Resist (Dec 21, 2003)

So what about using this instead of a computer to mirror a Tivo Disk with an upgraded drive? What else would need to be done to the new drive?

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRrJtEYHOj8&feature=related[/media]


----------

