TiVo Community Forums Archives - ATA-100 or ATA-133

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ATA-100 or ATA-133
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Posted by: Loky

How much do I care if HD I will use in Sony T60 upgrade will be ATA-100 or ATA-133?

Posted by: pyropete

Not one bit, DTiVo's can't take advantage of either. I think I heard that they are sub ATA-33 actually.

Posted by: stevel

The TiVo's IDE controller is ATA-33. The -66, -100 and -133 drives will automatically sense the proper speed and use it.

Posted by: Loky

Well, at least I cannot make mistake there

Thank you.:D

Posted by: stormsweeper

Well, you'll probably only care that the ATA-100 drives will be cheaper thn the ATA-133 ones. :)

Posted by: HTH

quote:
Originally posted by Loky
Well, at least I cannot make mistake there

Until they start dropping the 33 support from the drives.

Posted by: falz

quote:
Originally posted by HTH

Until they start dropping the 33 support from the drives.

That will never happen, as with any PC hardware, the IDE crontroller spec is done in hardware, and is not upgradeable. I could still plug in a 400mb IDE drive in in my ATA-100 controller on my PC and have it work no prob. That is, unless I had it floating on a bed of magnets for ten years.

Posted by: Gerg

quote:
The TiVo's IDE controller is ATA-33. The -66, -100 and -133 drives will automatically sense the proper speed and use it.

I've just fixed a weird problem that makes me wonder about that automatic sensing.

Back in November I upgraded my Philips 112 stand-alone with a 100GB Western Digital drive, using Kazymyr's 2.6i boot cd. All was well, and during the Olympics I even managed to fill the new drive (31 hours at Best quality).

Then in April, I moved to a new apartment. After a week, my TiVo's audio started acting up. It would change the pitch of the audio, sounding just like a tape that was being sped up for a couple of seconds, then slowed down to normal speed. Not constantly, but 2-3 times an hour. A week after that, the video would pause for perhaps 1/4 second, and then pixellate in various ways. The audio pitch shifting and the video pixillations didn't seem to happen at the same time. After a few days, the video pauses grew to be a second or two long, and the audio would also stop during those long pauses.

I swapped my original 14GB Quantum drive back into the unit and the problems disappeared. Swapped the 100GB drive back in, and the problems reappeared within a couple of hours. I tried running the 100GB drive with the cover off and a fan blowing cool air onto it, but that didn't help. I put the 100GB drive on a computer and ran a thorough read/write test on the entire drive, but found no errors. I restored my tivo.bak backup image from November onto the 100GB drive and tried it. The problems again reappeared after a couple of hours.

Two days ago, I downloaded some testing and config software from Western Digital's web site. One of the programs shows the drive's interface speed (ATA-33/66/100), and can also force the drive to use a particular speed. It said the drive was using ATA-100, which was correct for my computer's IDE interface and cable. However, I remembered that the TiVo uses ATA-33 or 66 (I didn't remember which), so I forced the drive to ATA-66 mode.

I moved the drive back to my TiVo and there have been no problems for the past 48 hours. Hooray!

I don't know how to explain it. Perhaps my drive was trying to talk ATA-100 (or 66) to the TiVo's ATA-33 controller and cable?

-Greg

Posted by: stevel

WD drives are funny in this (and other) ways. I haven't heard of other brands with this problem.

Posted by: HTH

Sounds just like my problems, Gerg, but I had them also when I set the WD to 33 and when set to 66. They also persisted when I reimaged the WD drive to a Maxtor (of equal size), and when I swapped drive pairs between hardwares (Philips standalones), the problem following the drives. Right now I'm running a new restore with their master/slave roles reversed.

Posted by: brianld

I'm getting ready to upgrade my Series2 with a WD 120gb drive. Do any of you know if this ATA-33/66/100 thing will be an issue for me?