TiVo Community Forums Archives - IS 5400 rpm too slow? Is 7200 rpm a good idea?

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IS 5400 rpm too slow? Is 7200 rpm a good idea?
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Posted by: biged968

I own a 30hour hdr31204 and I want to toss in a 120GB drive as a second drive. I'm worried that this will slow down my tivo and the menus, etc. I was considering getting a 7200 rpm drive, but it seems that most people get the 5400 drives for cost and heat issues.

How much slower will my tivo get after I put in a 120GB drive? Is this going to make the video slower or just the menus? For anyone that has a tivo with a big 5400 drive in it, is your tivo a lot slower? Is it annoying, or do you not care?

Will the 7200 yield any benefits? Would the menus be faster with a 7200 vs a 5400? I heard of some people using a 7200 without heat issues, but would heat be more of an issue with a bigger 120GB drive?

Would it be worth selling my tivo and getting a series2 and upgrade that so the menus aren't faster? (it has a 200mhz proc with 32MB ram as opposed to the regular tivo with a 50mhx proc and 16MB ram)

If the series2 isn't worth it - would a memory upgrade yield better results?

Posted by: feldon23

Pulling up Now Playing will be slower.

Posted by: DaveLessnau

TiVo moves information to/from the drives slowly enough that a 7200 RPM drive isn't needed. I believe the original TiVo drives are 5400 RPM and that's more than adequate. Some people report warmer (by a few degrees) temperatures with 7200s, some cooler, some have no change. Ditto for noise levels. I went with 5400s because they're less expensive and all that's needed. My Sony is currently running at 31 degrees (which I believe is a degree or two cooler than before. But, my Philips is running at 42 degrees (still normal, but I believe that's several degrees warmer). The Sony is in an open location, the Philips is in a tight location.

Regarding slowness, after almost a month since my upgrade, I'm finally seeing some of it. So far, it's confined to the time it takes to get back to the Now Playing screen (I guess it's because there are 14 or so pages of recordings). I usually see a couple of seconds delay when deleting a program at the end and waiting for TiVo to go back to that screen. Haven't noticed anything else. From what I hear, the faster hard drive won't help. You'll need to upgrade the amount of memory in the TiVo for that.

I don't know about the Series2. But, if the choice is between that and a memory upgrade, I guess I'd go for the new units. Though, I'm not smart enough to know how disk upgrades work with them.

Posted by: biged968

Anyone have a tivo overheat with a 7200 drive?