Finding the perfect large drive for a DirecTivo

Pauli · Post by **Pauli** » Fri Apr 22, 2005 9:14 am

I'm starting to look for a 200GB+ drive for my next Tivo upgrade. My current Maxtor DM+9 120GB is still audible even with AAM enabled and the drive sitting on 1/2" Sorbothane strips. Also, I recently recieved the DirecTivo 6.2 software upgrade that supports >137GB drives, so a large disk is now possible and I want to maximize my recording capacity.

I'm looking for the perfect drive for the Tivo. Very quiet seek noise and is paramount -- AAM is mandatory. Seek noise in the Tivo unit is much more audible than in my SLK3700BQE (the same drive was almost inaudible in my desktop system without AAM enabled). Performance is not an issue -- even a 5400RPM drive is sufficient enough for this application.

Here are my thoughts about the current hard disks available with respect to these requirements:
1. Seagate 7200.7/7200.8: No AAM, not quiet enough, run a bit warmer than other brands(?)
2. Maxtor DM10 or Maxline III: Alot of support here but there are reports that AMSET doesn't work on these drives or does that only apply to SATA models?
3. New WD FDB drives: Very promising from the early reports here but also reports that AAM cannot be set or is this again only SATA drives?
4. Samsung Spinpoint P80: Only up to 160GB.
5. New Samsungs: Not widely available yet. I am worried about the vibrations - I know that my JVC 160GB P80 vibrates substantially more than any other drive I own. Perhaps this won't be an issue with the Sorbothane suspension. Is AAM still available?
6. Hitachi: Still scared by the IBM "Deathstar" fiasco. Perhaps I should reconsider.
7. Maxtor Quickview: Don't really know much about these 5400RPM drives but I have heard reports that the larger capacity versions are really not all that quiet. Also not as widely available and no very good deals on them. Lack of user reviews here for the larger capacity models.

All comments welcomed. This topic will probably apply to many people here.

ilh · Post by **ilh** » Fri Apr 22, 2005 9:17 am

Two 2.5" notebook drives?

I will likely replace the 40GB drive in my DirecTivo with an 80 or 120GB notebook drive mounted on sorbothane.

My reading indicates 7200RPM is not needed, and hence likely just increases heat and noise.

sthayashi · Post by **sthayashi** » Fri Apr 22, 2005 9:21 am

Early reports on the Samsung suggest that they use Nidec motors.
Sorbothane should eliminate any vibration problems that you might have, but I think that vibration noises may be a problem with any drive you get.

Pauli · Post by **Pauli** » Fri Apr 22, 2005 9:36 am

ilh wrote:Two 2.5" notebook drives?

I will likely replace the 40GB drive in my DirecTivo with an 80 or 120GB notebook drive mounted on sorbothane.

My reading indicates 7200RPM is not needed, and hence likely just increases heat and noise.

Good idea, but I've already decided against a dual-drive (married) Tivo. Gets a little pricey with 2 120GB notebook drives, too.

Pauli · Post by **Pauli** » Fri Apr 22, 2005 9:39 am

sthayashi wrote:Early reports on the Samsung suggest that they use Nidec motors.
Sorbothane should eliminate any vibration problems that you might have, but I think that vibration noises may be a problem with any drive you get.

Yeah, the 250GB model looks very promising. I haven't seen them available yet in the states yet, though. I guess I shouldn't be so concerned with the Samsung's extra vibration -- the Sorbothane should handle it OK.

m0002a · Post by **m0002a** » Fri Apr 22, 2005 9:41 am

Pauli wrote:6. Hitachi: Still scared by the IBM "Deathstar" fiasco. Perhaps I should reconsider.

I purchased a Gateway PIII 866 with a 30GB IBM ATA-100 "DeathStar" in 2000. Then I soon added another IBM 30 GB that I purchased at a retail store, but I noticed it had a slightly different model number and was made in a different country than the OEM drive.

My OEM drive failed after about 1 year (I "heard" it coming, so I was prepared with backups) and they replaced it under warranty with a 60 GB IBM drive.

The 60 GB replacement drive and the 30 GB retail drive have worked well (although noisy by today’s standards) since then (I just recently retired that machine). So I think that IBM had a problem with that one factory and they got it fixed a long time ago.

However, I am not necessarily recommending a new Hitachi, because I know nothing about how quiet they are (positive or negative).

m0002a · Post by **m0002a** » Fri Apr 22, 2005 9:44 am

I just noticed that you have a BQE. If you use this mounting system, you find that your drive noise is greatly reduced and the drive will be securely attached:
http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=10450

Pauli · Post by **Pauli** » Fri Apr 22, 2005 12:45 pm

m0002a wrote:I just noticed that you have a BQE. If you use this mounting system, you find that your drive noise is greatly reduced and the drive will be securely attached:
http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=10450

I appreciate the suggestion, but I'm pretty happy with the Sorbothane setup in my BQE. Anyway, I'd like for this topic to stay about Tivo hard drives.

SebRad · Post by **SebRad** » Fri Apr 22, 2005 3:06 pm

Hi, I have a Maxtor Diamondmax 10 300GB SATA and I can definitely change the AAM setting. In my system the drive is enclosed and decoupled from the case and the seeks are quiet but audible. Turning AAM on make a lot of difference, the seek noise disappears. The idle noise is nothing like as quiet as the Barracuda IV I had before but it's still pretty quiet, I don't hear it over the rest of my system.
(Noise makers: Zalman 7000a @ 1100-1200rpm [3-4v], 2x 80mm Panaflow L1A [5-7V], Q Technology PSU, now completely ducted to blowhole intake with blowhole fan removed and very free flow mesh in place.)
Hope this helps,
Seb

Pauli · Post by **Pauli** » Fri Apr 22, 2005 4:37 pm

Thanks SebRad, the DM10 is definitely a good candidate. However, I was just reading this thread about the new WD drives and there seems to be a utility available for setting AAM. This, coupled with reports of them being very cool running drives, puts the new WDs at the top of the list.

Pauli · Post by **Pauli** » Mon May 02, 2005 10:18 am

I looked at the info on the WD web site and they list the 200GB WD2000JB as having 3 platters. Does this mean that the higher density platters from the 320GB WD3200JB are not being used in the lower capacity drives? I'd really like to get the largest capacity 2-platter drive available.

Shining Arcanine · Post by **Shining Arcanine** » Mon May 02, 2005 2:50 pm

Pauli wrote:I'm starting to look for a 200GB+ drive for my next Tivo upgrade. My current Maxtor DM+9 120GB is still audible even with AAM enabled and the drive sitting on 1/2" Sorbothane strips. Also, I recently recieved the DirecTivo 6.2 software upgrade that supports >137GB drives, so a large disk is now possible and I want to maximize my recording capacity.

I'm looking for the perfect drive for the Tivo. Very quiet seek noise and is paramount -- AAM is mandatory. Seek noise in the Tivo unit is much more audible than in my SLK3700BQE (the same drive was almost inaudible in my desktop system without AAM enabled). Performance is not an issue -- even a 5400RPM drive is sufficient enough for this application.

Here are my thoughts about the current hard disks available with respect to these requirements:
1. Seagate 7200.7/7200.8: No AAM, not quiet enough, run a bit warmer than other brands(?)
2. Maxtor DM10 or Maxline III: Alot of support here but there are reports that AMSET doesn't work on these drives or does that only apply to SATA models?
3. New WD FDB drives: Very promising from the early reports here but also reports that AAM cannot be set or is this again only SATA drives?
4. Samsung Spinpoint P80: Only up to 160GB.
5. New Samsungs: Not widely available yet. I am worried about the vibrations - I know that my JVC 160GB P80 vibrates substantially more than any other drive I own. Perhaps this won't be an issue with the Sorbothane suspension. Is AAM still available?
6. Hitachi: Still scared by the IBM "Deathstar" fiasco. Perhaps I should reconsider.
7. Maxtor Quickview: Don't really know much about these 5400RPM drives but I have heard reports that the larger capacity versions are really not all that quiet. Also not as widely available and no very good deals on them. Lack of user reviews here for the larger capacity models.

All comments welcomed. This topic will probably apply to many people here.

I have a Western Digital 320GB Caviar hard drive and it has AAM. So does my ball bearing 200GB Caviar hard drive from 2003 (the same goes for my ball bearing Raptor). The only difference is that to my knowledge prior to the WhisperDrive Caviars, Caviar hard drives required a tool called WinAAM to turn on AAM. After that AAM could be accessed from the Hitachi Feature Tool. The new WhisperDrive Caviars can have AAM enabled by the Hitachi Feature Tool and don't require WinAAM to activate and enable it.

ilh · Post by **ilh** » Mon May 02, 2005 5:26 pm

I was able to turn on AAM on a WD400LB Caviar using Hitachi's tool.

sfeakes · Post by **sfeakes** » Fri May 06, 2005 10:20 am

I have tried lots of different drives & fans to make a quiet / silent DirectTivo, and after lots of iterations this is what has worked very well for me.

With the Tivo unit, the main problem is not the drive noise, but the drive mounting hardware. It is done in such a way in the DirectTivo (S2 unit) that
even if you put in the quietest of drives, you will hear the drive seek from 18ft away, or I could. I ripped out all their drive mounting hardware and used a Zalman drive cooler with it's rubber mounts bolted directly to the bottom of the Tivo case.
http://www.zalman.co.kr/eng/product/vie ... 9&code=019

After that I could not here the HD, but you can here the fan, after a lot of playing the best solution I cam up with was to remove the 60mm exhaust fan and use a 60 to 80mm adapter on the rear of the case, then bolt a quiet 80mm fan and under volt that. You end up with a big ugly wart on the back of the case, but you never see it, since it’s on the back.

Now I can not hear the Tivo unit unless my face is next to it, and I have managed to keep all temperatures the same as the stock unit.
Motherboard is 38~42 and Drive 43. Not bad since the drive runs a lot hotter that stock, so their is more heat to get rid of. BTW, I use a Seagate Barracuda.

Hope this helps.
Shaun

ilh · Post by **ilh** » Fri May 06, 2005 10:49 am

How do you know your hard drive temperature in a DirecTivo? I don't think my Samsung unit is reporting it. I wonder if my WD400LB drive doesn't report temperature? I only see one "System Temperature" for mine, and that is typically 45-48C for me.

sfeakes · Post by **sfeakes** » Fri May 06, 2005 11:30 am

If you have a hacked tivo, you can run smartctl on it, and that will tell you everything about the drive, as long as it supports SMART, which most drives do.

Here is my output from the Tivo, sorry if the formatting doesn't work.

smartctl version 5.26 Copyright (C) 2002-3 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 10
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000f 056 054 006 Pre-fail Always - 58541554
3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0003 097 097 000 Pre-fail Always - 0
4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 020 Old_age Always - 0
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 036 Pre-fail Always - 0
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x000f 072 072 030 Pre-fail Always - 19356210
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 21
10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0013 100 100 097 Pre-fail Always - 0
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 020 Old_age Always - 8
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 045 048 000 Old_age Always - 45
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered 0x001a 056 054 000 Old_age Always - 58541554
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0012 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0010 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x003e 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0000 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 0
202 TA_Increase_Count 0x0032 100 253 000 Old_age Always - 0

Pauli · Post by **Pauli** » Fri May 06, 2005 12:17 pm

sfeakes- I have written in another thread about my customization with Sorbothane drive mounting and a 92mm Nexus in a new "blowhole" and it has been very effective in quieting down (and cooling) my unit. I'm pretty pleased with it, but my 120GB Maxtor DM+9 (AAM enabled) is still audible from ~8 feet.

I have no doubt that a Seagate Barracuda in this setup would be near-silent like your system, but those are no longer available and don't come in large enough sizes anyway (now that I have the 6.2 Tivo update).

I think I am leaning towards a new 160GB WD JB drive right now. I would like 200GB or more, but I really want the quietest and coolest drive possible that's > 120GB. Samsung 160GB is still an option, too.

Pauli · Post by **Pauli** » Fri May 06, 2005 12:24 pm

ilh wrote:How do you know your hard drive temperature in a DirecTivo? I don't think my Samsung unit is reporting it. I wonder if my WD400LB drive doesn't report temperature? I only see one "System Temperature" for mine, and that is typically 45-48C for me.

ilh- what is the ambient temperature for you to be getting 45 - 48C system temps?

When ambient temps are around 22C, my system is reporting in the mid to high 30's. I estimate that the blowhole+Nexus has reduced my temps at least 5-7C (no scientific methodology used, though).

sfeakes · Post by **sfeakes** » Fri May 06, 2005 12:43 pm

Just read your other post, very interesting and a good idea about the top vent, wish I had thought of that at the time.

One other thing that I did, that I forgot to mention, that *may* help you is use that noise isolation padding in the case. Don't think it made much
differance, but you may want to try it, and it'll help a little with your drive.
http://www.directron.com/paxmate.html

Shaun

ilh · Post by **ilh** » Fri May 06, 2005 7:34 pm

Pauli, I'm not sure. The room's ambient is about 22C, but the DirecTivo is in a (usually open) entertainment center, stacked on top of some other components including the A/V receiver. About 2in above the DirecTivo is a shelf supporting the TV. Thus, it is likely considerably warmer in there. I'll see if I can get a thermometer in there.

ejl10 · Post by **ejl10** » Mon May 09, 2005 5:52 am

My Series 2 Tivo has a 137GB limit on disk size. Its easy to overwrite the firmware to allow bigger drives, but regular Tivo updates re-overwrite it meaning I'd have to go back in and do it again. Kind of a PITA, so I decided to use 2 drives instead. I don't know if its the same with the Direct Tivo models, but its worth looking into.

That said, I have 160GB (only 137 used) and 120GB Seagate 7200.7 drives in mine. I can hear them across the room. I wish I'd gone with the Samsungs like I did for the PC... they are definitely quieter. I record everything at the highest quality setting, and have an unreal number of recorded programs (6+ pages with movies, etc.).

Pauli · Post by **Pauli** » Mon May 09, 2005 8:12 am

ejl10-
Direct has been rolling out the 6.2 upgrade for their Series 2 units which has support for LBA48, so larger than 137GB single drives can now be used. I don't want a 2 drive system because that means more heat, a higher chance of failure, and more noise - not to mention that it is simply much easier to upgrade single drive systems.

I'll probably be upgrading within 2 weeks, so I'll keep this thread updated.

ejl10 · Post by **ejl10** » Mon May 09, 2005 9:00 am

Cool. I didn't realize that they had rolled out official support for it. In that case, single drive is definitely the way to go. I wish I could offer you some big drive advice, but I'm still back in the stone age with my 160's! Definitely let us know how it goes.

One warning- you're going to find that once you have a big drive, changing your season passes and wishlists takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r. Tivo didn't have this much storage space in mind when they wrote the software for managing your preferences. Its a small price to pay, though.

Pauli · Post by **Pauli** » Mon May 09, 2005 11:30 am

ejl10 wrote:Cool. I didn't realize that they had rolled out official support for it. In that case, single drive is definitely the way to go. I wish I could offer you some big drive advice, but I'm still back in the stone age with my 160's! Definitely let us know how it goes.

One warning- you're going to find that once you have a big drive, changing your season passes and wishlists takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r. Tivo didn't have this much storage space in mind when they wrote the software for managing your preferences. Its a small price to pay, though.

I think you'll be pleasantly surprised after you receive the 6.2 upgrade. In addition to adding support for folders and LBA48 support, menus and operations on WLs and SPs are orders of magnitude faster.

You should get your 6.2 upgrade sometime this month or early next month (you'll be getting a notice in the mail very soon). I'm in Southern California, which is the first region to get the upgrade -- I've been using it for over a month now and I love it. BTW, I already know about the slowness in the previous version because I am already running a 120GB drive.

Pauli · Post by **Pauli** » Wed May 11, 2005 3:19 pm

I picked up a WD Caviar WD1600JB yesterday at Circuit City for $60 (after rebate). It's not the 200GB+ drive I was hoping for, but it was cheap enough and its the largest 2-platter drive in this line. It will still be a nice extra 40GB (~37 hours) over what I'm currently using, so it definitely will hold enough saved shows (for now, anyway).

I'm hoping I got a good one -- it's got the black top and its manufacture date is March 6, 2005. I won't be able to install it for a week or so -- I'll keep this thread updated when I do get it up and running.

Pauli · Post by **Pauli** » Mon May 23, 2005 11:34 am

I installed the 160GB WD yesterday in my DirecTivo. Unfortunately, I had already upgraded from the original 40GB drive to the 120GB Maxtor DM+9, so I couldn't perform the "expand" step when upgrading to the 160GB drive without losing all of my current recordings (I hadn't realized this until I read more about it last week). Therefore, I simply did a direct copy of the 120GB onto the 160GB and for now, will live with the wasted space.

Anyhow, I enabled AAM using the Hitachi feature tool and my first impression of it acoustically are that it has slightly quieter seeks than the AAM-enabled DM+9. The improvement was just enough so that I can no longer hear the seeks from normal TV viewing distance of about 8 feet. The seek noise (from close distance) is also slightly lower in pitch than the Maxtor, which is also an improvement. I don't really hear the "metallic" sound that the review of the 320GB model described. Perhaps this is due to there being only 2 platters instead of 3.

I have not yet tried to characterize the Idle noise because the fan is running and I didn't have time yesterday to test it in a quieter environment. There does seem to be a very faint high pitched squeal coming from the unit now, but I'm not sure of the source. I'll try to test it tonight.

Pauli · Post by **Pauli** » Mon May 23, 2005 8:22 pm

I'm too lazy to do a direct comparison to my other drives, but the idle noise from the 160GB WD is pretty darn quiet. I'd say about the same as my old 80GB Barracuda IV that I just installed into my wife's computer. Also, I don't hear the high "squeal" today from the unit -- really not sure what that was. Overall, I'm pretty happy with this 160GB Caviar. I think I made the right choice.

Pauli · Post by **Pauli** » Mon May 23, 2005 8:25 pm

sfeakes wrote:...With the Tivo unit, the main problem is not the drive noise, but the drive mounting hardware. It is done in such a way in the DirectTivo (S2 unit) that even if you put in the quietest of drives, you will hear the drive seek from 18ft away, or I could. I ripped out all their drive mounting hardware and used a Zalman drive cooler with it's rubber mounts bolted directly to the bottom of the Tivo case...

The most amazing thing is that the original 40GB Fireball 3 that shipped with the DirecTiVo unit has virtually silent seeks when hardmounted! Too bad those drives maxed out at 40GB.

Finding the perfect large drive for a DirecTivo

Finding the perfect large drive for a DirecTivo

Re: Finding the perfect large drive for a DirecTivo

Re: Finding the perfect large drive for a DirecTivo