TiVo Community Forums Archives - Original Tivo Drives

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Original Tivo Drives
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Posted by: MikeekiM

I notice a lot of discussion on upgrade hard drive brands... Questions such as: What manufacturer to buy? Which manufacturer fails more often? Which is the quietest? Which is the most reliable?

But I have a different set of questions: Do any of you know any information about the drive that comes shipped with the Tivo?

What brand (or brands) are used? How reliable are they in your opinion? Are they noisier or quieter than the typical upgraded drives? Are the more or less reliable? Etc...

Posted by: stevel

Series 1 TiVos used Quantum LCT10 (and later LCT15 and LCT20) drives. Series 2 uses a Western Digital drive. You may have a hard time finding the Quantum drives anymore.

You'll get almost as many answers to your questions as you will get responses. The most popular upgrade drive is the Maxtor D540X series - it is quiet, inexpensive and usually reliable (plus Maxtor offers a three year warranty on drives that are labelled as Maxtor - you may find the same drive labelled from an OEM, in which case the OEM warranty, if any, applies.)

Avoid IBM drives - they are known to be trouble. Western Digital seems to be a distant second in popularity, but they are noiser on average and reliability doesn't seem to be up to Maxtor's level.

Posted by: RC3105

I've had just the opposite experience, maxtor drives are crap and IBM are rock solid.

Now that IBM sold their drive division and maxtor swallowed quantum (excellent scsi, lousy ide) it'll probably change again.

Seagate used to be junk until they bought connor.

but then I repair these things for a living, I see all the defective one's, my perspective may be a bit skewed.

--
Riley

Posted by: ADent

Remember that most of the consumer IBM drives are not rated for TiVo use, they are limited to 333hrs/month - but I have had to send back one of those CompUSA by Maxtors for replacement.

The early TiVos came with Quantum Fireballs.