SPCR

I've had a series 2 Tivo for years now. Shortly after I bought it, I realized it was just way too loud. So I replaced the stock hard drive with a Samsung 120GB Spinpoint (7200rpm) and the stock fan with an 80mm Panaflo L1A on a 60mm-80mm adapter and a fanmate. It ran like this for years and was much quieter. But we all know "quiet" is never enough, right?

I've been wanting a capacity bump for a while and really wanted to go for a larger single-platter 5400 rpm drive. Tivo's original drive was a 5400 rpm model, so I knew any modern 5400rpm drive would be plenty fast. The HD502HI fit the bill perfectly. Below is the configuration right before this mod.



Notice that there isn't much room to decouple the hard drive.



The drive mounts to a removable tray, but it's all metal-to-metal contact. I could always feel the Tivo vibrating if I put my hand on it. My idea to decouple it was to remove the tray and strap the drive down to the case frame with some sorbothane in between.



Here you can see the sorbothane blocks as well as the rosewill sata-to-ide adapter (older Tivos are PATA only).



Here it is all wrapped up and ready to go.



The verdict? Huge improvement for sure. With my hand on the Tivo I can just barely detect some vibration. I think I may have zipped the zip-ties on too hard, I bet backing them off a bit or replacing them with bungie or stratch magic would lead to almost no vibration transfer. But it's good enough for now. I can only hear seeks (AAM on) if I put my head within 2 feet of the Tivo. I can still hear some noise from my couch when it's very late at night and quiet, but it is much reduced. I really think further decoupling would result in it being inaudible. I'm probably going tackle that soon.

I read your post in the Samsung HD502HI thread, nice to see how you got it done! Very impressive in fact

LodeHacker wrote:I read your post in the Samsung HD502HI thread, nice to see how you got it done! Very impressive in fact

Thanks! The hardware was the easy part... the software took me all friggin' day. For some weird reason, it is harder to upgrade a Tivo drive when you've already previously done an upgrade. I didn't know this and had a bunch of weird issues trying to get everything copied. Ended up not being able to copy over any shows, had to start with a fresh slate. Oh well.

if you decide to upgrade the HD, I suggest you look into the 1TB WD10EVCS or the EVVCS.

The EVCS is being discontinued, but the EVVCS is its natural replacement, less cache, butthat doesn't matter for the TIVO.

very silent drive. I've been running one for almost 1 year now with no problems.

*I gotta do the fan repalcement you did on my THD.

Update: I couldn't leave well enough alone... I could still feel some vibrations when touching the Tivo. The zip ties are great, but they are hard plastic and when tightened they allow some vibration to transfer to the case. So I got some shock cord (bungee cord) and some those spring-loaded cord locks and came up with this:



Now I can barely feel anything when touching the case... what little is there is probably caused by the fan. It is somewhat soft-mounted but I suppose it could be better. But it's now inaudible from the couch, which is all I care about.

Impressive! So, could you say... SilenTiVo?