# Affordable upgrade drive



## grantsa4 (Jun 14, 2007)

Hi,

I am looking to upgrade my Tivo HD to a larger hard drive (1TB-2TB).
Clearly I waited too long and with the flodding in Thailand, to get a WD Green hard drive that so many have used successfully on these forums you have to shell out twice to 3 times to price of what it used to be.

Has anyone recently used a different drive with great success that could be more affordable or has anyone perhaps see the green drives available for a decent price?

I know Best Buy was selling the 2 TB for a good price, but it appears that those are all sold out.

Thanks for any advice/help.


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## lillevig (Dec 7, 2010)

grantsa4 said:


> Hi,
> 
> I am looking to upgrade my Tivo HD to a larger hard drive (1TB-2TB).
> Clearly I waited too long and with the flodding in Thailand, to get a WD Green hard drive that so many have used successfully on these forums you have to shell out twice to 3 times to price of what it used to be.
> ...


You might be able to find something online if you search enough but probably not. I did check out Office Depot online and saw that they were selling 20 packs of the WD10EARS drives for pretty cheap ($65/drive). You could buy a lot of those and share with your Tivo Community friends.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

lillevig said:


> You might be able to find something online if you search enough but probably not. I did check out Office Depot online and saw that they were selling 20 packs of the WD10EARS drives for pretty cheap ($65/drive). You could buy a lot of those and share with your Tivo Community friends.


We don't have an Office Depot in town, but I checked their website and what they're asking for internal drives one at a time is pretty painful.

Best Buy has a 1TB Seagate this week for $55, and CompUSA has what appears to be in-store only a 1TB Seagate (not sure if it's the same model) for $60 and a 1.5 for $70.

Everything else I've seen is well over $100 per TB.


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## grantsa4 (Jun 14, 2007)

Thanks. Would those Seagates work well in my TiVo HD?


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

grantsa4 said:


> Thanks. Would those Seagates work well in my TiVo HD?


Difficult to be sure without being able to find out the actual model number of the drive inside the retail package. The Google kinda let me down on that.

I suspect some of these might be older models, and once you open the box and find out the actual model number, you might want to check online to see if there is a firmware update provided and recommended for that particular version of that particular drive.

About the best I can tell you is week before last I got a 2TB Seagate ST320005N4A1AS-RK which contained an ST20000DL003, and I used jmfs to put it in an HD (TCD652160). It froze about every 24 hours for the first 3 days, but has been behaving itself since.


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## grantsa4 (Jun 14, 2007)

Do you think it's worth buying, checking the model number etc and then worst case returning it if it has a bad track history?


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

grantsa4 said:


> Do you think it's worth buying, checking the model number etc and then worst case returning it if it has a bad track history?


I think hard drive prices are probably going to be pretty painful between now and late next spring, and if you can't use the drive in a TiVo you can likely use it formatted as an NTFS partition in a computer, and use TiVo Desktop to store stuff copied from the TiVo on it.

If I had another $100+ to spare I'd grab a couple of those 1TB Seagates from Best Buy just to have them on hand for whatever.

One thing to consider, the Best Buy Seagate is a 7200rpm drive, which is faster than a TiVo needs and probably means a little more heat.

The 1TB at CompUSA is a 5900rpm.

Of course you have to actually have a retail outlet of either handy, 'cause they don't seem to be selling them online, so what you get may depend on which store is in your area.


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## grantsa4 (Jun 14, 2007)

Thanks for all the great advice. It is very much appreciated.

What is the ideal rpm for a Tivo hard drive?


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

grantsa4 said:


> Thanks for all the great advice. It is very much appreciated.
> 
> What is the ideal rpm for a Tivo hard drive?


I think the first Series 1s had 5200rpm Quantum brand drives.

Any of the current "green" drives should be more than fast enough for a TiVo.

That's a separate question from the drive's overall reliability.


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## grantsa4 (Jun 14, 2007)

unitron said:


> I think the first Series 1s had 5200rpm Quantum brand drives.
> 
> Any of the current "green" drives should be more than fast enough for a TiVo.
> 
> That's a separate question from the drive's overall reliability.


From what I have read it sounds like the EARS and EURS WD models are the gold standard for hard drive upgrades


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## grantsa4 (Jun 14, 2007)

I see that Best Buy is selling a Western Digital - Caviar GP 1TB Internal Hard Drive for $99. 

Model: WDBAAY0010HNC-NRSN

Does anyone know if this is a good hard drive for a Tivo HD?


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

grantsa4 said:


> I see that Best Buy is selling a Western Digital - Caviar GP 1TB Internal Hard Drive for $99.
> 
> Model: WDBAAY0010HNC-NRSN
> 
> Does anyone know if this is a good hard drive for a Tivo HD?


If the picure can be believed, specifically the wrap-around sticker on the right hand side that says 16MB of cache, the actual drive inside is probably a WD10EACS (at about what a WD20EACS was selling for, or more, about a month or two ago), and you can search this thread:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=370784

for that model number to see what others have said.


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## grantsa4 (Jun 14, 2007)

unitron said:


> If the picure can be believed, specifically the wrap-around sticker on the right hand side that says 16MB of cache, the actual drive inside is probably a WD10EACS (at about what a WD20EACS was selling for, or more, about a month or two ago), and you can search this thread:
> 
> http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=370784
> 
> for that model number to see what others have said.


Thank you


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## Resist (Dec 21, 2003)

grantsa4 said:


> From what I have read it sounds like the EARS and EURS WD models are the gold standard for hard drive upgrades


And good luck finding any at a decent price right now, thanks to price gouging due to limited supplies because of the flooding in the country they are manufactured.


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## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

unitron said:


> I think the first Series 1s had 5200rpm Quantum brand drives.


I believe they were only 4500rpm, IIRC.

FYI - I just replaced a 2TB WD20EARS green drive under warranty. I got an advance replacement, which means I had to supply a credit card number to cover the cost of the drive in case I didn;t send mine back within 30 days. WD only charged me $150 for the new drive. I believe the same drive is currently selling for about $209 at Newegg. Of course, I'll be sending back the defective drive, but I thought the price differential was interesting.


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## grantsa4 (Jun 14, 2007)

I'll be getting the 1TB later today. Will hopefully try upgrading tongight or tomorrow and will report back with what the drive actually was and how it went...etc


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## dwit (May 5, 2004)

mr.unnatural said:


> I believe they were only 4500rpm, IIRC.
> 
> FYI - I just replaced a 2TB WD20EARS green drive under warranty. I got an advance replacement, which means I had to supply a credit card number to cover the cost of the drive in case I didn;t send mine back within 30 days. WD only charged me $150 for the new drive. I believe the same drive is currently selling for about $209 at Newegg. Of course, I'll be sending back the defective drive, but I thought the price differential was interesting.


Warranty "replacements", typically, are *not* brand new.


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## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

dwit said:


> Warranty "replacements", typically, are *not* brand new.


It mostly depends on what they have on hand at the time. I've gotten both new and refurbished units as warranty replacements. IIRC, all drives I've received over the past five years or so have been new drives and not refurbs.

My 2TB replacement arrived today just before noon. It appears to be a brand new WD20EARX green drive.


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## JulianSF (Nov 12, 2011)

I'm just now looking to upgrade my Tivo HD. Thanks for all the good advice!


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## grantsa4 (Jun 14, 2007)

The drive is a WD10EADX and I can't find anything about it on this forum. Any advice on this one?


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

grantsa4 said:


> The drive is a WD10EADX and I can't find anything about it on this forum. Any advice on this one?


That's the trouble with hard drives in retail boxes, you don't know for sure what you're getting until you open it up.

There seems to be very little about this drive anywhere online.

There used to be a WD10EADS (1TB) and a WD20EADS (2TB), and I've got some of the 20EADS that I've been using in computers with no problems so far.

I'm guessing this is the successor to the 10EADS, only 6Gb/s instead of 3, although unlike the EADS line it may be "advanced format".

The 20EARS is AF, and lots of people here seem to have used them in TiVos successfully.

Best Buy currently has a 1TB Seagate on sale for $40 less. It's a 7200 rpm drive, whereas yours is a 5200 or 5900 or whatever those "green" drives run at, so I'd expect the WD to be quieter and cooler, though maybe the noise part isn't that great a difference.

Technically the EADX doesn't meet the specs Best Buy has listed for the WDBAAY0010HNC-NRSN ('cause it exceeds them) if you want a reason to return it.

Does the box have a sticker saying anything about cache size?

Does it actually say WDBAAY0010HNC-NRSN on the bottom?

Is there anything on the sticker on top of the drive about "advanced format" or special things that need doing to use it with Windows XP?

That EADX should probably work okay in a TiVo, as long as intellipark can be disabled with wdidle3.

Did you order this from Best Buy online, or pick it up at one of their stores?


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## grantsa4 (Jun 14, 2007)

I picked it up from the store.


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## grantsa4 (Jun 14, 2007)

And I may have screwed up my Tivo - damn! I hooked up the 2 drives to my laptop with sata to USB cables and I think I ruined the partition on my Tivo HD drive.

ARGH!

Is there anyway out of this?


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

grantsa4 said:


> I picked it up from the store.


I was hoping for an answer to my other questions as well.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

grantsa4 said:


> And I may have screwed up my Tivo - damn! I hooked up the 2 drives to my laptop with sata to USB cables and I think I ruined the partition on my Tivo HD drive.
> 
> ARGH!
> 
> Is there anyway out of this?


There might be.

What were you going to use to copy the HDs drive to the new drive?

Is that laptop running some version of Windows?


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## grantsa4 (Jun 14, 2007)

Sorry, having heart attack because I think I messed up my Tivo 

I don't see anything special on the box, just says model : WDBAAY0010HNC-NSRN.
Actual drive says 32MB cache, WD10EADX.

Nothing about rpm


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

grantsa4 said:


> Sorry, having heart attack because I think I messed up my Tivo
> 
> I don't see anything special on the box, just says model : WDBAAY0010HNC-NSRN.
> Actual drive says 32MB cache, WD10EADX.
> ...


There is, or should be, a wrap-around sticker on the lower right hand front and side of the box. What does it say?


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## grantsa4 (Jun 14, 2007)

black wrap around says 1TB, up to 120 hours HD, 250000 mp3's, 200000 jpg's


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