TiVo Community Forums Archives - TiVo with 4 or 6 HDDs?

TiVoCommunity.com
(c)opyright 1995-2005 All rights reserved
indexcheckTC
This area is a static history of posts in the TiVo Community Forum Archive.
This archive history was made for the simple indexing of search sites like Google.

Pages:1

TiVo with 4 or 6 HDDs?
(Click here to view the original thread with full colors/images)

Posted by: Fleegle

Reading some of these posts. I had a brainstorm. Has anybody investigated using teh PCI adapter on the motherboard to add a PCI or ISA HDD controller? I'm sure someone could figure out how to do that. Than all you have to do is figure out an enclosure that would house the new drives.

Can this be done? Does the TiVo OS even know how to addresses more than 2 HDDs?

Posted by: stormsweeper

quote:
Originally posted by fleegle
Reading some of these posts. I had a brainstorm. Has anybody investigated using teh PCI adapter on the motherboard to add a PCI or ISA HDD controller? I'm sure someone could figure out how to do that. Than all you have to do is figure out an enclosure that would house the new drives.

Can this be done? Does the TiVo OS even know how to addresses more than 2 HDDs?

It's not a PCI adapter, it just uses the same kind of connector.

Posted by: Fleegle

Ok, but if someone's figured out how to use that connector to install an ISA NIC, would it be possible to use it to install an additional IDE controller? Can a PCI slot be conencted like the ISA slot is conencted? Does anyone make an ISA IDE controller?

Posted by: joevivona

Yeah, but then you'd have to re-write the Linux PPC IDE driver to address more than 2 drives.

Posted by: HTH

And considering the size of drives needed for video storage, you'd probably want an ATA controller, not IDE. Or, more usefully, a SCSI controller to which you could hook up some impressive RAID-based storage.

Posted by: stormsweeper

quote:
Originally posted by HTH
And considering the size of drives needed for video storage, you'd probably want an ATA controller, not IDE. Or, more usefully, a SCSI controller to which you could hook up some impressive RAID-based storage.

I think trying to feed a SCSI RAID array through ISA would kind of defeat the point.

Posted by: HofstraJet

Ahhh, but imagine the possibilities! Let's have the next series of DTiVos come with a SCSI port for external HDs, like the high end laser printers do, so we can add as many as we need! Imagine that!

Posted by: Chuck_IV

Well the series 2 come with USB ports. Dunno if its USB version 2.0 tho, but you could probably connect external harddrives via that connector, if they program that in. I would think it would be fast enough for recording purposes, or if it isn't, at least program it to be able to offload some programs onto an external device.

Posted by: Fleegle

Those USB ports add so many possibilities! Think of an add-on USB DVD Player, or snap-in units with a hard drive or two. They could make an assembly that latches onto the top of the unit to house another drive or two. Just add an exhaust fan and you're all set!

Posted by: gschoen

quote:
Originally posted by HofstraJet
Ahhh, but imagine the possibilities! Let's have the next series of DTiVos come with a SCSI port for external HDs, like the high end laser printers do, so we can add as many as we need! Imagine that!

Yah, Tivo can keep the SCSI ports and stick with nice cheap IDE drives that function perfectly.

Posted by: HTH

quote:
Originally posted by gschoen
Yah, Tivo can keep the SCSI ports and stick with nice cheap IDE drives that function perfectly.

Aren't most RAIDs--even SCSI RAIDs--made up of ATA drives anyway? The ID in RAID stands for Inexpensive Drives, you know. (It's the Array that is the expensive part.)

IDE (properly ATA-1) is obsolete and was withdrawn as an ANSI standard in 1999. The current technology is ATA-5, standardized in 2000. The Maxtor 160 GB drives are ATA-6.

TiVo Series1 appears to be either ATA-4 (1998) or a DMA speed-limited ATA-5.

Posted by: Fleegle

quote:
Originally posted by HTH

Aren't most RAIDs--even SCSI RAIDs--made up of ATA drives anyway? The ID in RAID stands for Inexpensive Drives, you know. (It's the Array that is the expensive part.)

No, SCSI and IDE are completely different. If you have a SCSI RAID, it only uses SCSI disks. The ID of RAID meand INDEPENDANT disks, not inexpensive.

Don't worry. I took an A+ class that taught the "inexprnsive disks" myth. It's a common misconception.