# hard drive size limit



## spaaa (Jan 11, 2005)

Hello, i've just bought a tivo, for use with my NTL system, and its working pretty well so far. 

I've opened it up and i have 30gb and 15gb hard drives in there. I've just ordered a large (200gb maxtor) and just had a nasty thought that there might be a size limit....

Anyone know?????

Cheers


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## spaaa (Jan 11, 2005)

Done a bit of searching and have found the answer in another post.

Cheers, and sorry for a n00b.


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

I hate to say it, but I would not advise putting a Maxtor drive in a TiVo 

Is there no way you can change the order to, say, a Seagate drive?

See this thread for more discussion on drives.


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## spaaa (Jan 11, 2005)

I'm afraid i've bought the drive already.....

I'm planning on archiving the tivo content onto dvd anyway so i won't have much to lose. If it does go, i'll be the first to have a ***** about it, but i'll see how it goes for the moment.


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## zippy7272 (Dec 29, 2004)

Sorry to be a noob and lazy - have you got a link - for the upgrade solution for a 200gb drive?


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

Hinsdale and this


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## zippy7272 (Dec 29, 2004)

I don't think I ever said thank you...

...THANK YOU





blindlemon said:


> Hinsdale and this


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## mike0151 (Dec 13, 2001)

And just to show that Maxtor drives are not always a big risk, look at my sig. All 3 are that make.

Mike


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## Malibyte (Jun 12, 2005)

mike0151 said:


> And just to show that Maxtor drives are not always a big risk, look at my sig. All 3 are that make.
> 
> Mike


Both of the big drives in my TiVos are Maxtors. So far, so good.


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## b166er (Oct 24, 2003)

Malibyte said:


> Both of the big drives in my TiVos are Maxtors. So far, so good.





mike0151 said:


> And just to show that Maxtor drives are not always a big risk, look at my sig. All 3 are that make. Mike


Maxtor drives aren't things that should be avoided like the plague, it's not that bad, but those who deal with fixing TiVos on a regular basis have found that the Maxtor drives are the most troublesome. They go wrong more often than the seagates and samsungs and aren't as quiet. I've got two 300GB drives in my PC, one is a samsung and one is a maxtor. When I access the maxtor I can hear it making noises. Also I had an external 300GB maxtor drive that died after 6 months. I personally will avoid them whenever possible.


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## BaggieBoy (Dec 4, 2000)

I wouldn't touch Maxtor with a barge pole. Here at work we had something like 15 new Dell workstations delivered about a year ago, all with 2x160GB Maxtor drives. Since then we have had something in the order of 12 failed disks!

Since at the time of installation someone thought Raid 0 was a great idea, a single disk failure is fairly fatal. I bit the bullet and changed mine to RAID 1 as soon as it became clear we had a general problem (and of course my two disks have run flawlessly).


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## b166er (Oct 24, 2003)

BaggieBoy said:


> I wouldn't touch Maxtor with a barge pole.


I would quite enjoy touching my failed 300GB Maxtor drive with a barge pole. By touching of course I mean hammering the hell out of and smashing to bits. I'm not even motivated to claim under guarantee as I don't want a replacement one.


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## Ian_m (Jan 9, 2001)

The A drive of my pair of 80GB Maxtors installed Summer 2001 failed in November, not bad, over 4 years of 24/7. Should have taken notice of the warning signs, a complete lockup whilst on holiday in 2005.

Mind you I am glad I replaced them cos boy are they noisy compared to my current Seagates.


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

b166er said:


> I'm not even motivated to claim under guarantee as I don't want a replacement one.


Why not? You can always sell the RMA replacement drive on eBay 

<pedant mode>
...making sure you clearly specify that the warranty will only extend to 
end of the original drive's warranty period, of course.
</pedant mode>


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## digital_S (May 15, 2002)

I have one 80Gb Maxtor drive in my TiVo - Along side the original 30Gb drive - Both running together, they're not noisy at all!! It lives in my bedroom, and I don't even get disturbed at all whilst I sleep. 

spaaa - When ur maxtor drive arrives... Still use it, but maybe along side a current TiVo drive.


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## ffakr (Dec 6, 2007)

Apparently the posters in this thread are not aware that Maxtor is owned by Seagate.
EDIT: doh, I just noticed how old this thread is. Damn google. I'm not sure if Seagate owned Maxtor in 2002.

I work in IT so I see a good amount of bad drives. My impression is that major vendor drives tend to fail within product lines more than within vendors. That is, one particular revision of Seagate laptop drives are failing in previous generation of Apple MacBook Pros. This doesn't mean that seagate laptop drives are faulty.. but they did have one bad product run.

This wasn't always the case. About 8-10 years ago, samsung and hitachi 3.5" IDE drives were terrible,.. samsung in particular. We purchased 2 cases of them [lab machines] and they ALL went back on RMA 2-3 times over their lives. Run after run, they would fail. Other samsungs were coming in bad at the same time. I'm still gun-shy but It's my understanding that they got their production problems under control like all the manufacturers.

I've got 300GB Maxtors in my servers. They're fluid-dynamic bearings, quite, fast, and they've been purring without a failure [24x7] for over 3 years now.

It's important to remember that failure Trends ARE important but failures are not. Just because Jack or Joe Schmoe's drive failed doesn't mean Manufacturer X makes bum drives. Look at the drive specs, see if they match what you want, then buy and cross your fingers.

On a personal note.. I do personally prefer Seagate. They were, for a time, the quietest. This isn't always the case anymore. I've heard plenty of Seagates that are louder than other vendors these days. Seagate does make a drive that is designed to be extra quiet (or at least they did a year ago).

Almost forgot.. just a tip. Most vendors have Windows utilities that can be used to tune your drive performance. You can make a lot of hard drives quieter by tuning them. Performance degrades but the drive quiets down.
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm (hitachi bought IBM's storage division)


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

ffakr said:


> EDIT: doh, I just noticed how old this thread is. Damn google. I'm not sure if Seagate owned Maxtor in 2002.


Seagate only decided to buy Maxtor in December 2005 and no doubt any amalgamation of design processes and production lines took a year or so after that to kick in.

See www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2005/12/21/seagate-to-buy--maxtor-for-2-billion

Current problems with it being impossible to run two Seagate and two Maxtor drives in a Tivo (due to a firmware issue) whilst this is not the case for Samsung, Hitachi or Western Digital drives appear to suggest the Samsung and Maxtor drive design and production facilities have now begun to be amalgamated. A year or so ago this problem with two drives not working in a Tivo was only afflicting large Seagate drives.


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