# Maxtor QuickView model numbers



## uffa (Jan 6, 2006)

On the Maxtor site, both the QuickView and Diamondmax 10 300G drives have the same model number, 6L300R0. I ordered this drive from a vendor who also said it was a QV drive. I got it yesterday and there is no distinction on it being QV. I've seen pictures online of other QV drives and they all have "QuickView" written on the drive in a large font. Is this true for all QV drives?

I need to know so I can RMA this one and not suffer the DM10 problems I've read about. This drive was just born in December!

Related question: the QV and DM10 drives are essentially the same. How can the QV be designed for PVRs while the DM10 flat out stutters? Does it all come down to firmware?

-Uffa


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## funtoupgrade (Mar 15, 2005)

Buy a different manufacturer's drive and forget about your question. These have the worst warranty in the business.


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## uffa (Jan 6, 2006)

funtoupgrade said:


> Buy a different manufacturer's drive and forget about your question. These have the worst warranty in the business.


Well, that is an option, but contrary to what I've read here, I only use Maxtor and have never had a problem. I have had quite a few WD and IBM/Hitachi failures though.


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## purplerhino12 (Jan 3, 2006)

I just ordered a Maxtor Quickview online ($75 shipped) and the model number was listed as 6L300R0-QV. Maybe model number for the DiamondMax is 6L300R0 and Quickview has the QV attached.

I did not order from the Maxtor site though.


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## fade2grey (Oct 25, 2005)

I've got to say, in all the years I've used them (though I don't only use maxtor) I've never had any problems with either the drives or the warranty/RMA service.


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## mfryd (Nov 8, 2005)

I put the DiamondMax 10 in my DirecTivo (HDVR2) and it works very well. Initially, the noise from the seeks bothered me, but after putting the drive in Quiet mode with amset, all now it is quiet.

Maxtor's product line card (http://maxtor.com/_files/maxtor/en_us/documentation/data_sheets/product_line_card.pdf) shows the same model number (6L300R0) for both the 300GB DiamondMax 10 and the 300GB QuickView.

I have noticed that the amset utility, used for turning on 'quiet' mode, is no longer available on the Maxtor site.

I wonder if the ONLY difference between DiamondMax 10 and QucikView is the acoustic management setting (fast vs. quiet).

I wonder if they removed the amset utility becuase it turns the DiamondMax 10 into the more expensive QuickView drive?

Anyone have additional details? If the drives really are different, why do they have identical model numbers?


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## Jimboc (Nov 7, 2005)

Sorry to bump this... but I've noticed this also (the Model numbers being the same)
There are some really good deals on the 300GB Quickviews, and I want to make sure that I'me getting the right product. 

I see people complain about the warranties, but don't the 350/300GB Quickviews have a 3 year warrantee? Quite a bit better than the smaller QV drives.


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## mfryd (Nov 8, 2005)

Last week CompUSA had the Maxtor 300GB drive on sale for $80 after rebate. The Maxtor model number for the retail kit (includes cables and software in a nice box) is L01R300. 

Inside the box is the same 6L300R0 we've been discussing.

Once you run the avset utility, it's a nice quiet drive and gives me over 250 hours on my DiTivo.

Both the retail box version and the bare DiamondMax 10 only have a 1 year warranty. CompUSA will be happy to extend this to 3 years for an additional $20. hard to beat a deal like that.


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## uffa (Jan 6, 2006)

All the posts regarding problems with recent vintage DiamondMax 10s prompted me to return the drive. The vendor is taking it back since they claimed it was a QuickView but they are as confused about the Maxtor model numbers as I am.

I decided to go with the 300G Seagate from CompUSA this week for $100 after rebates.


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## Jimboc (Nov 7, 2005)

Now I'm second guessing it as well...

Leaning towards the Western Digital 320GB WD3200JB for about $125, since it is supposedly really quiet, runs cool, and has a 3 year warrantee. So far, I haven't heard much bad about it.

Maybe I'll just wait it, and look for a better deal.


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## whatever (Mar 13, 2004)

For those of you close to a Fry's Electronics, yesterday I purchased a 160GB Seagate drive. With rebates, it will have cost me a total of $40. Better get down there quick. It looks like the rebates end soon.

I have a Phillips 704 DirecTivo, and when I cracked the case it had a Maxtor Fireball 3 drive (40GB). This new drive is faster (7200 vs 5400 RPM) and has a better seek time (8.5 vs 12 ms). Oh yea, it has a 5 year warranty also. The only downside so far is I can (barely) hear the drive heads reading/writing. It's a minor inconvenience, considering the original drive was starting to die.


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## Pauli (Mar 1, 2004)

whatever said:


> For those of you close to a Fry's Electronics, yesterday I purchased a 160GB Seagate drive. With rebates, it will have cost me a total of $40. Better get down there quick. It looks like the rebates end soon.
> 
> I have a Phillips 704 DirecTivo, and when I cracked the case it had a Maxtor Fireball 3 drive (40GB). This new drive is faster (7200 vs 5400 RPM) and has a better seek time (8.5 vs 12 ms). Oh yea, it has a 5 year warranty also. The only downside so far is I can (barely) hear the drive heads reading/writing. It's a minor inconvenience, considering the original drive was starting to die.


Faster with better seek times are completely useless qualities for a TiVo drive. It will either be fast enough or it won't. In TiVos, a 5400 RPM drive will perform exactly the same as a 7200 RPM drive and will likely run cooler and quieter, MUCH more important qualities. If high-capacity 5400 drives were readily available, I would be buying those for TiVo upgrades instead of 7200RPM models. That said, the Seagate drive you found is at a good price, but I prefer the 160GB WD drives or Samsung P80 160GB drives because they support AAM and Seagates don't and can also be had at that price point.


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## mfryd (Nov 8, 2005)

Pauli said:


> Faster with better seek times are completely useless qualities for a TiVo drive. It will either be fast enough or it won't. In TiVos, a 5400 RPM drive will perform exactly the same as a 7200 RPM drive and will likely run cooler and quieter, MUCH more important qualities. If high-capacity 5400 drives were readily available, I would be buying those for TiVo upgrades instead of 7200RPM models. That said, the Seagate drive you found is at a good price, but I prefer the 160GB WD drives or Samsung P80 160GB drives because they support AAM and Seagates don't and can also be had at that price point.


Are you sure about this?

I realize that as long as the disk is fast enough video will work, and a faster disk won't change anything.

What about all the various menu's and screens? Shouldn't a faster disk make the now playing list appear and scroll faster? Won't the faster disk reduce the pause time when changing a season pass or adding a recording to the to-do list?

Or is the bottleneck on these operations elsewhere?


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## whatever (Mar 13, 2004)

Pauli said:


> Faster with better seek times are completely useless qualities for a TiVo drive. It will either be fast enough or it won't. In TiVos, a 5400 RPM drive will perform exactly the same as a 7200 RPM drive and will likely run cooler and quieter, MUCH more important qualities. If high-capacity 5400 drives were readily available, I would be buying those for TiVo upgrades instead of 7200RPM models. That said, the Seagate drive you found is at a good price, but I prefer the 160GB WD drives or Samsung P80 160GB drives because they support AAM and Seagates don't and can also be had at that price point.


The choice was dictated primarily from availability. The WD drives available were more expensive ($20), and didn't have the rebates at the time. It would have been a $70 difference in price (after rebate of course).

I can't see how seek times and speed don't affect the performance. Rotational speed has a direct effect on disk I/O. Granted, you won't see the change in viewing video streams, as it's either fast enough or not. I imagine this is especially true in Tivo's, since they are really single use computers. However, I can imagine a faster drive would make a difference in non-video viewing tasks. My Tivo was dog slow for just about any operation (menus, season pass changes/updates, etc.) even well before the disk started to fail. However, reading all the threads here about increases in capacity lead me to believe I was going to get a reduction in non-viewing perfomance. That was not the case. I was waiting 1-2 minutes for a season pass change before, now it happens in under 15 seconds.

Granted, I may have had a questionable drive in the thing from the beginning. However it did last 2 years before starting to fail. No glitches before last saturday night (1/7/2006). I was lucky to get the drive out and and transferred to the new one.

I was concerned about the potential for it running hotter than before. It's been running between 40-42C since I replaced the drive, which is the same as the old drive.


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## BobCamp1 (May 15, 2002)

mfryd said:


> Are you sure about this?
> 
> I realize that as long as the disk is fast enough video will work, and a faster disk won't change anything.
> 
> ...


The "now playing" menu generally comes up about 20% faster on a 8MB 7200 rpm drive then it does on a 2MB 5400 rpm drive. It takes 8 seconds to come up using a 137 GB 8MB 7200 rpm drive on an HDR212.

Haven't timed a season pass edit yet. All other menus are the same speed.


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## laurentm (Jan 17, 2005)

purplerhino12 said:


> I just ordered a Maxtor Quickview online ($75 shipped) and the model number was listed as 6L300R0-QV. Maybe model number for the DiamondMax is 6L300R0 and Quickview has the QV attached.
> 
> I did not order from the Maxtor site though.


Where did you get it from?


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## Pauli (Mar 1, 2004)

BobCamp1 said:


> The "now playing" menu generally comes up about 20% faster on a 8MB 7200 rpm drive then it does on a 2MB 5400 rpm drive. It takes 8 seconds to come up using a 137 GB 8MB 7200 rpm drive on an HDR212.
> 
> Haven't timed a season pass edit yet. All other menus are the same speed.


This is the first report that I've seen here of a performance improvement because of upgrading to a 7200RPM drive. I didn't notice any improvement when I upgraded my system, but when I made the switch on two machines, both did not have very much Season Pass info on them. So, I stand corrected. I would still go with a 5400RPM drive given the choice, because I think the heat and noise benefit outweighs a 1 or 2-second improvement in bringing up the "Now Playing" list (although, I think my NP list comes up much quicker than 8 seconds anyway).


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## BobCamp1 (May 15, 2002)

Pauli said:


> This is the first report that I've seen here of a performance improvement because of upgrading to a 7200RPM drive. I didn't notice any improvement when I upgraded my system, but when I made the switch on two machines, both did not have very much Season Pass info on them. So, I stand corrected. I would still go with a 5400RPM drive given the choice, because I think the heat and noise benefit outweighs a 1 or 2-second improvement in bringing up the "Now Playing" list (although, I think my NP list comes up much quicker than 8 seconds anyway).


I used to agree with you, but over the past year 7200 rpm drives have become cool and quiet enough so that there is no need to get a 5400rpm drive anymore. Plus, they are starting to get difficult to find!

I'm using the Samsung Spinpoint drive (7200 rpm), and cannot hear it at all. My Tivo's internal temeprature rose just one degree compared to the OEM drive. (HDR212) Your experience, of course, may vary.


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## jshorr (Mar 29, 2005)

While on the subject of noise and performance, have you guys ever experimented with the Hitachi Feature tool for acoustic management? This tool works on Hitachi, Western Digital and Maxtor drives, and of course there's also the amset utility for the Maxtor's. I used amset /quiet on a maxtor I have and then ran the hitachi too. Setting it to /quiet changed the setting to 192, the range is 128 to 256 I believe. I wonder if setting this or any other drive down all the way to 128 would negatively impact the performance too much to the point of causing a problem viewing or recording video. I know sometimes my tivo will be recording, viewing and transferring tivo to go all at the same time....I want as quiet as possible without compromising stability. Any thoughts?


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## EmDub (May 10, 2002)

BobCamp1 said:


> I'm using the Samsung Spinpoint drive (7200 rpm), and cannot hear it at all. My Tivo's internal temeprature rose just one degree compared to the OEM drive. (HDR212) Your experience, of course, may vary.


Which model of drive are you using, and where did you puchase it? I'm looking seriously at the Spinpoint drives, and am curious which model it is that you're so happy with. Thanks!

Michael


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