# hard drive review: Toshiba MD04ACA400 4TB



## coredump4 (Aug 8, 2009)

I recently upgraded my Premiere XL4 to 4TB and thought I'd write a short drive review.

What I bought is a Toshiba MD04ACA400 (4TB, 7200 RPM, 128MB cache, 6Gbps SATA). It's an OEM drive sold in bulk at MicroCenter for USD$110.
I upgraded using the MFStools v3.2 live CD, and it worked perfectly; no issues or hiccups at all. It's an advanced format drive, so I wasn't sure if that was an issue, but it is fine.

It is noisier than AV drives, but not awful in normal use. If you're sitting right in front of your TiVo, you will hear it however. The drive does not support AAM.

The drive supports Advanced Power Management and came already set at level 128, which is the lowest power level without spin-down.

One odd thing is that this drive has an activity LED. I didn't think anyone made drives with these anymore, but I forgot to check for it, and now I can see a flickering amber light out the bottom of my TiVo. If it really starts to annoy me, I'll go back in and remove the LED though.

Overall, I'd give the drive 4 stars.

PROS: Fast; inexpensive
CONS: Noisy; has activity LED.

Mfr. link:
http://toshiba.semicon-storage.com/us/product/storage-products/client-hdd/md04acaxxx.html


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

coredump4 said:


> I recently upgraded my Premiere XL4 to 4TB and thought I'd write a short drive review.
> 
> What I bought is a Toshiba MD04ACA400 (4TB, 7200 RPM, 128MB cache, 6Gbps SATA). It's an OEM drive sold in bulk at MicroCenter for USD$110.
> I upgraded using the MFStools v3.2 live CD, and it worked perfectly; no issues or hiccups at all. It's an advanced format drive, so I wasn't sure if that was an issue, but it is fine.
> ...


Just slap a little Scotch 33+ across that LED.


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## coredump4 (Aug 8, 2009)

Some details I left off...

More drive specifics:
Model: MD04ACA400
Part #: HDETR11GEA51
Firmware: FP2A
Rev.: A1

Also, the Premiere XL4 was running the Fall 2015 update at the time of upgrade.

HTH!


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