# $75 2TB Seagate at BestBuy



## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

Putting this in coffee house due to time sensitive nature.

The ST320005N4A1AS-RK, on sale through Saturday, 11/05/11 at BestBuy, and bestbuy.com, was apparently the ST32000542AS previously, a non-advanced format drive from what I could find online.

That was what I was hoping for.

Just picked up a couple.

It's now the ST2000DL003, and Seagate sort of admits that it's an advanced format drive.

(I'm amazed at how hard drive makers are working at keeping you from finding out if a drive is advanced format or not. You'd think they'd plaster it all over the box in big letters--New, Improved, Now with Advanced Formatting, Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread!

Guess they're hoping to snag a lot of XP users who won't want to hassle with returning them)

Going to put one of them through the long diagnostic and try jmfs'ing a 160GB S3 HD drive to it.

newegg's got the bare drive listed for over $200, limit 3 per customer.

The ones I got say Product of China, with a manufacturing date of 06/11 and 07/11

They come with a SATA data cable and a Molex to SATA power adapter.

More when I know more.

Edit, 11:25pm EDT

I've got an HD (TCD652160) I just acquired with the stock drive set to do GS (Just now got the caps in the mail and fixed the power supply).

I used jmfs to copy without expanding to the Seagate and it boots to the GS page.

Used jmfs to expand and it still boots to the GS page.

I'm not going to actually subscribe that 652 just yet, so can't test recording and playback.

Haven't tried it to see how it gets along with XP yet, I think that'll be next.

And of course I'll run the long test before I put it (and the other one--at that price I grabbed 2) wherever I actually decide to use it.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

ARGH, I should have ordered it yesterday. Now it's unavailable at all stores I could get to (ship to store). I almost ordered it yesterday, to get at a Best Buy I would be going near today, but they had no way to change the pick up date as far as I could tell.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

unitron said:


> Putting this in coffee house due to time sensitive nature.
> 
> The ST320005N4A1AS-RK, on sale through Saturday, 11/05/11 at BestBuy, and bestbuy.com, was apparently the ST32000542AS previously, a non-advanced format drive from what I could find online.
> 
> ....................


Thanks!! I didn't know they were on sale. With Hard Drive prices shooting Sky High from the Thailand floods we won't see prices like this for a while.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

mattack said:


> ARGH, I should have ordered it yesterday. Now it's unavailable at all stores I could get to (ship to store). I almost ordered it yesterday, to get at a Best Buy I would be going near today, but they had no way to change the pick up date as far as I could tell.


Is your zip code 94085, give or take about 5?

'cause it's showing me a bunch of stores they can ship to in that area.

Of course I don't know how bad traffic is there.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

unitron said:


> Is your zip code 94085, give or take about 5?
> 
> 'cause it's showing me a bunch of stores they can ship to in that area.
> 
> Of course I don't know how bad traffic is there.


It was showing a bunch of stores here that it could ship to. But when I tried to select each store it came up with a red strip that said "We're sorry, this item is no longer available".

Luckily there was one store near my Girlfriends church that still had some stock. I just need to stop by this weekend when I go over to her house. Although now I'll need to go to mass with her Saturday evening.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

aaronwt said:


> It was showing a bunch of stores here that it could ship to. But when I tried to select each store it came up with a red strip that said "We're sorry, this item is no longer available".
> 
> Luckily there was one store near my Girlfriends church that still had some stock. I just need to stop by this weekend when I go over to her house. Although now I'll need to go to mass with her Saturday evening.


So you've already paid for it and they're holding it for you?

If you're sure it's what you want, you might want to get a second one at that price while you can, if only because if one's bad out of the box the other one likely won't be, and with the way prices are going you can likely sell the spare on Craigslist as new except for exhaustively tested (run the long diganostic on both) for $100 or more in a couple of weeks.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

unitron said:


> So you've already paid for it and they're holding it for you?
> 
> If you're sure it's what you want, you might want to get a second one at that price while you can, if only because if one's bad out of the box the other one likely won't be, and with the way prices are going you can likely sell the spare on Craigslist as new except for exhaustively tested (run the long diganostic on both) for $100 or more in a couple of weeks.


I ordered three and got the "ready for pickup" emails. The only reason I ordered them was to sell them in a few weeks when all the prices have almost tripled. I didn't get them for my TiVos. The profit can go toward Christmas presents.


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## wmcbrine (Aug 2, 2003)

I must be out of touch... what's an advanced format drive?

Edit: Oh, it's a marketing name for large-sector drives.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

wmcbrine said:


> I must be out of touch... what's an advanced format drive?
> 
> Edit: Oh, it's a marketing name for large-sector drives.


From practically the start of DOS until a couple of years ago, hard drives were marked off in 512 byte sectors (actually it's something like 579, or 593, or some oddball number, but that's including the "this sector starts here" bytes, the "this sector ends here" bytes, the "this is the number of this sector" bytes, and some other overhead/housekeeping, in addition to the 512 that's actually available to the OS to write data to.

Once you get to a hair above 2TB, the number of sectors exceeds the number which that scheme can keep track of, so they've got a new scheme that replaces the Master Boot Record and partition tables with something else that can handle larger numbers, and it increases the size of each sector to 8 times 512, or 4 binary thousand, i.e., 4K

That's "advanced format".

In order to maintain backwards compatibility with stuff older than Windows Vista, and some older versions of Linux, and I guess older versions of whatever Apple runs, the drives have to be able to lie to the computer or to the OS or maybe both.

How they go about doing that lying, and, I suspect, how well it works out not losing your data-wise, seems to vary from one brand of drive to the next.

WD has either a jumper or some special software, and Seagate says it's all built into their drives.

Until now, I've managed (with some difficulty thanks to manufacturers doing their best to obscure which drive has it and which one doesn't, and changing which actual model they put in the same part number box or external enclosure) to avoid buying any non 512 byte sector drives.

We'll see how this goes.


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## davecharlson (Oct 24, 2011)

aaronwt said:


> Thanks!! I didn't know they were on sale. With Hard Drive prices shooting Sky High from the Thailand floods we won't see prices like this for a while.


I bought a 2TB drive for my Tivo HD upgrade a week ago for $99. I thought about doing the same for my Tivo S3, but the same hard drive is now $199!


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## dwit (May 5, 2004)

davecharlson said:


> I bought a 2TB drive for my Tivo HD upgrade a week ago for $99. I thought about doing the same for my Tivo S3, but the same hard drive is now $199!


AFAIK, the S3 cannot be (self)upgraded to 2 TB like the Tivo HD. Aftermarket outfitters like weaknees, etc. have the resources and wherewithal to prepare/sell 2 TB drives for the S3, but their methods are secrets, at this time.


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## lyee (Oct 29, 2011)

I've got the 1Tb version of this drive (ST1000DL003) and I was able to get it to work in my TivoHD using jmfs and winmfs. However, it has a problem where it powers off or goes to sleep mode after a period of time and the Tivo is completely unresponsive when using the remote control. Does anyone know of a utility that can disable this power saving feature similiar to wdidle3.exe on the WD drives?


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## dwit (May 5, 2004)

lyee said:


> I've got the 1Tb version of this drive (ST1000DL003) and I was able to get it to work in my TivoHD using jmfs and winmfs. However, it has a problem where it powers off or goes to sleep mode after a period of time and the Tivo is completely unresponsive when using the remote control. Does anyone know of a utility that can disable this power saving feature similiar to wdidle3.exe on the WD drives?


(AFAIK)A hard drive never really has an opportunity to go into sleep mode as as long as the Tivo is on. It is always/continuously recording about 30 minutes of buffered programming(for each tuner).

Something else must be going on, and this doesn't seem to be posted on here as a common issue. Granted, one doesn't read a whole lot on Seagate drive use here(afaik).

How long have you been using this Seagate drive? Has the Tivo been malfunctioning from the day you installed it? Have you run any diagnostics on the Seagate drive? Do you have the original(and functioning) Tivo hard drive to help confirm the Seagate drive is the issue? Tried exchanging the seagate drive where purchased?

Drive does this after both winmfs and jmfs?

Sorry if it reads like I'm grillin". Just trying to help.


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## lyee (Oct 29, 2011)

I've done drive upgrades on S2/S3's in the past without any problems but I had always used a recommended HD; unfortunately, this one is not on the list. I originally bought it to upgrade a PC during a Newegg sale but decided to try it on a newly acquired TivoHD that wasn't in a quiet environment.
To isolate the root cause, I put in the original HD for a few days and it works fine. I then swapped power supplies with a backup TivoHD and the unit experienced no problems over a few days. Once I put in the Seagate drive, the unresponsive behavior returned within one day. 
I guess I'll run diagnostics just in case it is a defective drive. My thought is that there's probably something related to it being a "green" drive or the advanced format compatibility.


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## dwit (May 5, 2004)

lyee said:


> I've done drive upgrades on S2/S3's in the past without any problems but I had always used a recommended HD; unfortunately, this one is not on the list. I originally bought it to upgrade a PC during a Newegg sale but decided to try it on a newly acquired TivoHD that wasn't in a quiet environment.
> To isolate the root cause, I put in the original HD for a few days and it works fine. I then swapped power supplies with a backup TivoHD and the unit experienced no problems over a few days. Once I put in the Seagate drive, the unresponsive behavior returned within one day.
> I guess I'll run diagnostics just in case it is a defective drive. My thought is that there's probably something related to it being a "green" drive or the advanced format compatibility.


The "recommended drive list" is obsolete and virtually meaningless, as far as currently manufactured drives are concerned(imo).

If the original drive works fine, the issue most likely is with the drive. If you could exchange or RMA, that probably is the thing to do.

Although since you are running a diagnostic, see if there are tools to "turn off power saving". If so, that would be *welcome news* here.


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## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

aaronwt said:


> I ordered three and got the "ready for pickup" emails. The only reason I ordered them was to sell them in a few weeks when all the prices have almost tripled. I didn't get them for my TiVos. The profit can go toward Christmas presents.


One viewpoint:
Shameless profiteering and gouging.  An example of what's wrong with capitalism and why we need government to regulate it to death!

Other viewpoint:
:up: Thanks for providing a useful "arbitrage" function to the HDD marketplace. Because of you, there will be three more HDD's on the market in a few weeks, which will decrease the price of them slightly at a time when that is really needed.

Personally, I like the second viewpoint.


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## Worf (Sep 15, 2000)

... Or I has a consumer, who refuse to pay more than $100 for a 2TB drive, will simply wait for drive prices to come back down again, thus lowering demand for said hard drives and lowering the prices further still.

After all, I've lived without them for so long, what's another few weeks? Also helps knowing that the holiday season tends to inflate prices anyhow.

Or that there'll be Black Friday deals.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

Worf said:


> ... Or I has a consumer, who refuse to pay more than $100 for a 2TB drive, will simply wait for drive prices to come back down again, thus lowering demand for said hard drives and lowering the prices further still.
> 
> After all, I've lived without them for so long, what's another few weeks? Also helps knowing that the holiday season tends to inflate prices anyhow.
> 
> Or that there'll be Black Friday deals.


The Seagate sale ended Saturday (11/05/11), but apparently BestBuy has the WD20EACS (16MB cache, advanced format) Caviar Green for $80 or $90 just now.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

I had two different Seagate drives that they gave me. A Barracuda Green and a Barracuda LP. One had 32MB of cache and one had 64MB of cache. Both had the same model number listed on the box. I guess I need to open the box and verify what is in there.


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## Dpordy99 (Nov 7, 2011)

My seaggate died 6 months after owning it


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

Dpordy99 said:


> My seaggate died 6 months after owning it


I'm using around twenty five of the 2TB Seagates in my unRAID and WHS. So far they have been fine in the the ten to twelve months since I installed them.


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## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

aaronwt said:


> I'm using around twenty five of the 2TB Seagates in my unRAID and WHS. So far they have been fine in the the ten to twelve months since I installed them.


LOL! Do you call your house "home" or "the server farm"?


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## Dpordy99 (Nov 7, 2011)

aaronwt said:


> I'm using around twenty five of the 2TB Seagates in my unRAID and WHS. So far they have been fine in the the ten to twelve months since I installed them.


These were external hard drives. All of the sudden they died


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

Dpordy99 said:


> My seaggate died 6 months after owning it


All hard drives dye. Just some last longer than others, it really is just luck if any individual one is going to last longer or shorter than the average.

I just had a Hitachi go after 5 months someone else was complaining the drive in their Premiere just died (under warranty) which would be a Western Digital. Others can tell you about drives going strong after many years.

There have been bad batches of drives in the past (think IBM) but I am unaware of anyone identify any currently. The Seagate drives that best buy had on special came with a 5 year warranty which is as long as hard drive warranties get.

Thanks,


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

Dpordy99 said:


> These were external hard drives. All of the sudden they died


If they were not replaced under warranty you might open the cases up and see if the drive died or the case went bad. I had a Western digital USB external go bad a few years back - it ended up being the case still have the drive and it works fine.

Good Luck,


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## Jeff_DML (Mar 3, 2009)

so this week on sale is this drive, will this not work in a Premiere?



> Western Digital - Caviar Green 2TB Internal Serial ATA Hard Drive


http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Western...rive/9234465.p?skuId=9234465&id=1218064150518

thanks


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## Jeff_DML (Mar 3, 2009)

thinking about buying a premiere and trying to figure out if worth paying $100 for the 1TB premiere or just get the standard and upgrade the HDD to 2TB.

thanks


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

Jeff_DML said:


> so this week on sale is this drive, will this not work in a Premiere?
> 
> http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Western...rive/9234465.p?skuId=9234465&id=1218064150518
> 
> thanks


THANKS!!! That's a few more I can get at a low price. I have alot of the older 2TB WD green drives in use, but I switched to Seagate a year ago for my storage servers.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

Jeff_DML said:


> so this week on sale is this drive, will this not work in a Premiere?
> 
> http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Western...rive/9234465.p?skuId=9234465&id=1218064150518
> 
> thanks


There's a separate thread about that drive

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=477585

which judging from the picture on the Best Buy site is the 16MB cache 3Gb/s, advanced format WD20EACS, but one poster seems to have gotten a 64MB cache, 3Gb/s, advanced format WD20EARS at that same price, waiting for him to post back the model number on the bottom of the box (which is not the same as the model number on the sticker on the drive itself).


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## Jeff_DML (Mar 3, 2009)

unitron said:


> There's a separate thread about that drive
> 
> http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=477585
> 
> which judging from the picture on the Best Buy site is the 16MB cache 3Gb/s, advanced format WD20EACS, but one poster seems to have gotten a 64MB cache, 3Gb/s, advanced format WD20EARS at that same price, waiting for him to post back the model number on the bottom of the box (which is not the same as the model number on the sticker on the drive itself).


thanks:up:


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Jeff_DML said:


> so this week on sale is this drive, will this not work in a Premiere?
> 
> http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Western...rive/9234465.p?skuId=9234465&id=1218064150518
> 
> thanks


So this one will work in a TivoHD, right? My drive went bad (mentioned in another thread -- it's seemingly OS - it reboots permanently right when it's "fully booted" -- and I'll try a straight copy at first which probably will fail, then will re-try manually copying OS from old original good drive + video partitions from existing drive to hopefully recover recordings).

I swear I saw something about a $10 gift card with a over-$50 purchase, but now I can't find info about that again..

argh, unavailable for ship to store to local stores.. available in one store way too far away to drive to.. Will check again in the next few days..


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

mattack said:


> So this one will work in a TivoHD, right? My drive went bad (mentioned in another thread -- it's seemingly OS - it reboots permanently right when it's "fully booted" -- and I'll try a straight copy at first which probably will fail, then will re-try manually copying OS from old original good drive + video partitions from existing drive to hopefully recover recordings).
> 
> I swear I saw something about a $10 gift card with a over-$50 purchase, but now I can't find info about that again..
> 
> argh, unavailable for ship to store to local stores.. available in one store way too far away to drive to.. Will check again in the next few days..


Assuming that you are referring to the WD drive and not the Seagate about which this thread originally was, a quick search shows no one having used the WD20EACS successfully OR unsuccessfully in a TiVo, but I'd think it'd work as well as the WD20EARS, and apparently there's even a chance that if you buy the box with that model number (WDBAAY0020HNC-NRSN) on the bottom, you might even get an EARS model instead. Apparently the only thing that box number guarantees is 2TB and Caviar Green.


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## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

Jeff_DML said:


> thinking about buying a premiere and trying to figure out if worth paying $100 for the 1TB premiere or just get the standard and upgrade the HDD to 2TB.
> 
> thanks


Just upgrade a base unit to 2TB using the Comer tool. Save yourself about $100 and have twice the space. These days, there is NO benefit to having a PXL over a base Premiere.


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

atmuscarella said:


> All hard drives dye.


What colors do they pick?


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## BigBud (May 20, 2012)

Hey!
If some one wants to change his HDD to newer one!!!
I strongly need WD20eacs 2tb with 16mb cash!!!
I will buy used but working HDD for the price of new one (135$).

Write me on my e-mail or here!


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

??? Why don't you just buy a new one? I bought a 2 TB Samsung drive from newegg for $99.99 the other day.. (it's not that price anymore).

I don't get why you want a used one.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

mattack said:


> ??? Why don't you just buy a new one? I bought a 2 TB Samsung drive from newegg for $99.99 the other day.. (it's not that price anymore).
> 
> I don't get why you want a used one.


Apparently he needs that specific model.

RAID array?

Needs paddle board to attempt data recovery?

Whatever, he needs the 2TB EACS, and not just any old 2TB.

I wish I could find some EADS models. (no 4K "advanced format" to have to worry about).


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Yeah, I thought that might be the reason, it just seemed like it would be clearer if he gave a more exact reason. (I want/need to find a specific drive to match my S3 fried drive at some point.. will eBay search for it at that time.)


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

mattack said:


> Yeah, I thought that might be the reason, it just seemed like it would be clearer if he gave a more exact reason. (I want/need to find a specific drive to match my S3 fried drive at some point.. will eBay search for it at that time.)


Maybe he's a Nigerian prince and needs it to get his money out of the country.


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

mattack said:


> Yeah, I thought that might be the reason, it just seemed like it would be clearer if he gave a more exact reason. (I want/need to find a specific drive to match my S3 fried drive at some point.. will eBay search for it at that time.)


If the drive is fried, why do you need an exact match? Just curious.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

lpwcomp said:


> If the drive is fried, why do you need an exact match? Just curious.


Paddleboard swap?


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

unitron said:


> Paddleboard swap?


In an S3?


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

lpwcomp said:


> In an S3?


From hard drive to hard drive, to recover data.


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

unitron said:


> From hard drive to hard drive, to recover data.


He said the drive was fried.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

lpwcomp said:


> He said the drive was fried.


But if it's only the drive electronics gone bad, and not the motor or acuator arm, you can put another circuit board on and get your data off.


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

unitron said:


> But if it's only the drive electronics gone bad, and not the motor or acuator arm, you can put another circuit board on and get your data off.


Now _*that*_ makes sense.


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## BigBud (May 20, 2012)

I've bought a year ago WD20EACS and putted all my data on it with all pics with my little son. And my son dropped it on the floor. So the specialist told me that I need to buy the same HDD as mine was for recovering data.
He will use parts from working one to fix old broken one. 
I can't find it. I've got WD20EARX but it is not what I need to recover my data.

So if some one have it please sell it to me.

My sister live in US, so she can pay with paypall or Visa or cash.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

BigBud said:


> I've bought a year ago WD20EACS and putted all my data on it with all pics with my little son. And my son dropped it on the floor. So the specialist told me that I need to buy the same HDD as mine was for recovering data.
> He will use parts from working one to fix old broken one.
> I can't find it. I've got WD20EARX but it is not what I need to recover my data.
> 
> ...


I suggeest that we confine discussion of your problem to this other thread

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=477585

where anyone else who thinks they might be able to help can join us.


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