Darwin? Upgrade to 2Tb on new box?

[MartinDBaker]

OK cheers...& the WD20EARX ? Finger hovering over the buy button....

[Scubbie]

Looking at the Spec sheet, that is a PC drive. This would be unsuitable.

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/librar...879-701229.pdf

Drives for PCs have better error correction systems than is required for a PVR drive. The error correction potentially could cause your programme or film to pause for several seconds, where as a quick glitch whilst watching a video is tolerated, loosing valuable data on a PC isn't.

[mrmt32]

Just a thought - a have a pre-darwin drive. You don't - but need one for testing. If you shipped me a 1Tb HDD could I someone clone it to yours & ship back to you? Obviously need to sort out in private...

I unfortunately do not have any spare hard drives I can send, if you send me the output of the diagnostics tool (pH-Mb • View topic - How to Obtain a Diagnostics Report) when ran on that disk however that would be helpful. This creates a zip file containing the non-video data on the disk (which is small enough to send over the internet).

OK cheers...& the WD20EARX ? Finger hovering over the buy button....

The WD20EARX can work, but some people have a large amount of trouble with it in the past (I have a feeling it was to do with it supporting 6mbit which cased some kind of incompatibility with the hard drive enclosures used, but 3 users have had trouble in the past, one of them solved it by connecting the drive directly to their PC). If possible I would recommend choosing a different drive to avoid any potential problems (many people have reported that the WD20EARS worked well).

[mc*redevil]

Looking at the Spec sheet, that is a PC drive. This would be unsuitable.

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/librar...879-701229.pdf

Drives for PCs have better error correction systems than is required for a PVR drive. The error correction potentially could cause your programme or film to pause for several seconds, where as a quick glitch whilst watching a video is tolerated, loosing valuable data on a PC isn't.

Just upgraded my Amstrad DRX890 500GB STB to a WD20EARS 2TB hard drive using the excellent ExPVR software. Having upgraded the hard drive on my Sky+ Pace 3100 STB several years ago, the job was fairly straight forward.

My question is when you upgraded your STB with the EARS HD did you notice any increase in hard drive noise? My Amstrad with the 500GB Seagate Spinpoint HD was silent and the since the change to the WD HD, it has become pretty noisy. The HD clicks every 4 to 8 seconds non stop when the STB is on and not recording or playing back.

When recording or playing back it is a constant stream of clicks. Putting the STB into standby will stop the clicks but only after about a 15 second drum roll of clicks. I can hear the clicks standing 10 feet away from the box with the TV on mute and my hearing is not the best.

Wondering what other users have experienced noise wise with this hard drive. I think the issue could be with my specific EARS HD as there are other noise complaints about this drive on the net.

[Scubbie]

I never used to notice any noise, but when the room is silent I can hear some noise which is the sound of the heads moving. My friend noticed it on hers before me.

It doesn't spoil my viewing and listening pleasure. I guess if I turned the volume low I would hear it more though.

It is very low though and something that is not a sign of a fault.

[mc*redevil]

I never used to notice any noise, but when the room is silent I can hear some noise which is the sound of the heads moving. My friend noticed it on hers before me.

It doesn't spoil my viewing and listening pleasure. I guess if I turned the volume low I would hear it more though.

It is very low though and something that is not a sign of a fault.

Noisy WD20EARS hard drive update.

After learning more technical features about hard drives this week than I ever wanted to know, I am sharing this information so hopefully other people who upgrade and have issues can avoid the problems I encountered. The EARS drive I purchased came from a reputable online electronics shop. I considered buying off Ebay as I have done with other HDs in the past but did not mainly to get next day delivery.

After installation, the drive was four to five times more noisy compared to the 500GB Seagate Pipeline it replaced. This was basically much louder and more HD clicks. The drive also periodically emitted a loud graunch noise when recording but not all the time. Thankfully the shop agreed to exchange the HD for a replacement even though the HD was functional. Glad I decided to not buy off Ebay!

Before I installed the replacement drive, I modified the automatic head parking program called Intellipark that all EARS drives have installed. The factory setting parks the heads after eight seconds of no activity which I changed to sixty two minutes. That is the maximum possible using Western Digital’s tool wdidle3. The net is full of problem stories with this feature. Apparently EARS drives will not work in a TiVo STB without having this feature modified.

Also looking at the replacement HD, it was very different for the original EARS drive I installed. Now I know there are at least three different versions of this drive currently being sold. The first one I received was version 00JZGBO manufactured in Malaysia which has four platters while the second was a 00MVWBO manufactured in Thailand which has three platters and a very different case housing. Before my experience I thought all EARS drives were the same but they are not, before you buy find out the version you will receive.

With a sample of one, I can’t say for sure if the platter configuration, manufacturing location or modifying Intellipark has any impact on the quality or noise from the drive. I do know that my replacement EARS HD is now just as quiet if not quieter than the Seagate it replaced and my Amstrad DRX890 is only 13% full.

[Scubbie]

Thanks for that. any chance that you could provide a link to where you gained the instructions / software to modify it please?

It might also be worth suggesting that 62 minutes is a little excessive. It might be prudent to set it to 5 minutes for others. I am guessing that this doesn't disable the head parking once the power is disconnected though.

With regards to the % remaining figure, it is nice seeing it so high.

[MartinDBaker]

Hi,

Just bought ExPVR. How do I format the 2Tb HDD please?

[Scubbie]

Just bought ExPVR. How do I format the 2Tb HDD please?

You will need to copy the contents of an existing drive, or an image, to format the 2TB drive to its maximum capacity. Currently there is no Format option on v3.

[MartinDBaker]

Bit stumped then. I bought a brand new 2Tb HDD, but I have a Thomson - which is non Darwin. Can I grab an image from somewhere? Just an empty drive?

Just had a thought...what about the 500Gb HDD in the new Amstrad box - could I use that as the source? Got nothing on it of course.... just installed today....