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Which Drive for an upgrade?
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Posted by: threadkiller

Haven't seen a recent thread, so here goes. Lost my first recordings this week due to space issues (standard 40g TiVo) thought thats Ok I'll clear some space & undelete with Tivoweb. Not a hope.

so time for a new drive methinks.

Following Iankb's thread & use of a maxtor, I can find a Diamondmax 120G 8Mb for Ł60 +del. but I know the flavour used to be Samsung drives.

so what do people recommend these days??

Posted by: iankb

I think that Samsung are still flavour of the month, mainly because of the 3-year warranty.

If you want performance, don't have a cachecard, and performance comes before price, I would go for the Western Digital Special Edition (8MB-cache) drives, which also come with 3-year warranties. The cache really seems to make a difference. However, they have a reputation for being noisy, so I wouldn't use one in a bedroom, or in a small room.

Although I'm no longer a great fan of Seagate (with six Seagate drives in my PC and TiVo, I've had five returns under their 3-year warranties), I notice that they are bringing out a 16MB-cache drive in Q3. Whilst that will be no use because it has a serial (SATA) interface, it does show a future trend towards a larger cache which other manufacturers will also follow. However, I suspect the initial premium paid for large cache drives will be no less than running a cachecard, which has a more-guaranteed performance increase.

Since I believe that 3-year warranties are essential (with five RMA's, why wouldn't I!), I would still recommend the Samsung if price is of an issue.

Posted by: stratos

My choice was a 120GB drive with 8MB cache from the old IBM/Hitachi 180GXP range.

These seem to have been replaced with a 7K250 range though, and the one I have in a PC at work makes an odd sound like a cat miaow which apparently is triggered by 10 mins of inactivity. According to Hitachi this is some special head movement pattern that increases the life of the drive.

In theory you should never get 10 mins of inactivity in a TiVo, so it might not matter. Still, it isn't a noise I wanted in my living room!

- Richard

Posted by: blindlemon

I like Samsung drives too.

The price is good (just a few Ł more than Maxtors) - but the reliability is, IMHO, much better. When you pick up a Samsung drive it really feels like it's made to last - and the 3 year warranty kind of confirms that ;)

They are also very quiet too - even out of the box with Acoustic Management turned off I can hardly hear the heads seeking. With AM on they are virtually silent.

Posted by: Heuer

I have had one Samsung failure after 9 months of use although I suspect the fault was there when I installed the disk. The GSOD arrived after the disk became 60%+ full. Running the Samsung Hutil confirmed the disk had unrecoverable errors but it was changed under warranty by return of post, no questions asked.

The Samsung disks are also almost totally silent - I have to put my ear to the TiVo to make sure they are still working. Suggest running Hutil before installing just to be sure of a long life.

Posted by: Milhouse

I've had 6 Seagate Baracuda 7200.7 8mb cache running 24x7 for the last 9 months - 4 SATA in PC's and 2 PATA in TiVo, all 120Gb - and (so far) no problems.

Speed/performance/price wasn't the issue for me (though they're not slow or expensive) rather it was low noise and in this respect the Seagates have delivered - the Baracuda range is well known for reduced noise compared to the competition.

Posted by: threadkiller

thanks guys, some usefull info, I'll take a look around at pricing etc. :up:

Posted by: Thaed

I have twin Samsung 120 drives and they pixelate a lot. One of these days I'm going to pull them and put in twin 160 GB WDs.

Posted by: mk-donald

Well my Samsung 120GB drive has given no problems whatsoever - and once I realised I should have activated its (extra) quiet mode during configuring it for Tivo, I haven't heard it at all either.

Next Thursday 2nd July, a 160GB Samsung hard-drive is on offer at Aldi stores (their website) for Ł69.99 with a 3 year guarantee 'and cabling & software'. Plus everything Aldi sells has a 1 yr satisfaction guarantee - if you don't like it/want to keep it, take it back with your receipt for a full refund - eg used that satisfaction guarantee to return a pair of DECT phones that I thought were weakly featured after 6 months.

NB: The website doesn't say Samsung, but the in-store leaflet has the Samsung logo on the item.

Posted by: pauljs

I bought 2 Western Digital Caviar 120Gb 5400rpm from Ebuyer for Ł43.18 plus VAT each.

I got these since they were cheap. they seemed to run hotter than my previous 80 gig Maxtors when I did the backup

They are however quiet, work well and I can't comment on the reliability yet

Posted by: Furball

Currently running a 120 maxtor and ..........so far........... no probs and a year down the line now.
As for the noise side of things .......I cant hear the darn thing at all, then again it might be the cooling fans on the AV amp that masks it :D

Fur