# Seagate's new DVR hard drives



## Pete38 (Oct 24, 2002)

Hi all,

Seagate says that their new hard drives, announced yesterday, are designed specifically for DVRs. Could E* be looking at a hardware change in the 921 this late in the development cycle?

"Seagate said the new drives, which include up to 160-Gbytes of total capacity, are being shipped to eight consumer electronics manufacturers: Toshiba, Thomson, Sony, Pioneer, Pace, Nokia, Motorola and Echostar."

Entire article here:

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1233698,00.asp

Pete


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## Bob Haller (Mar 24, 2002)

Has to be a improvement over the existing drives, they fail constantly. Might explain some of the latest delays too..


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## Jacob S (Apr 14, 2002)

I wonder if you could still use them for a PC then and how much these would cost? Sounds promising.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

I am not sure if this would explain the delays. My guess would be the delay would be more do to software related issues. As for using them in a PC. I have a feeling that you might be able to but would not want to. From what I read it looks like they removed the error detection and correction piece of the drive. No need to do that when reading video back. Based on that piece of info I would not suggest this device for PC use unless you were using it as a temp drive or a video drive. 

Obviously the DVR market has some growth potential to warrent the investment .


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## DarrellP (Apr 24, 2002)

160 GB is not big enough for the 921. I thought it was spec'd out at 200 GB?


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## Bill R (Dec 20, 2002)

DarrellP said:


> 160 GB is not big enough for the 921. I thought it was spec'd out at 200 GB?


You are correct.

My guess is that DISH is looking at the new Seagate drive for some future DVR product.


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## Peluso (Sep 11, 2002)

Makes me wonder if Dish has a single code base for every DVR, or do they build from the ground up for every different hardware implementation.


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## Jacob S (Apr 14, 2002)

Perhaps as the delays continue for the 921 so does the changes in technology as it also continues therefore needing to plan on a larger hard drive for the 921.


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## Peluso (Sep 11, 2002)

no, the HDD is a passive component in the system. The difference in size or make shouldn't matter all that much. I would guess it'll be easy to drop in an even larger HD when folks start hacking the 921 and bigger drives become available.


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

WeeJavaDude said:


> I am not sure if this would explain the delays. My guess would be the delay would be more do to software related issues. As for using them in a PC. I have a feeling that you might be able to but would not want to. From what I read it looks like they removed the error detection and correction piece of the drive. No need to do that when reading video back. Based on that piece of info I would not suggest this device for PC use unless you were using it as a temp drive or a video drive.
> 
> Obviously the DVR market has some growth potential to warrent the investment .


Removing error detection and correction is nonsense for any HDD !
Particulary for PVRs/DVRs what keeps on the disks not just video recordings but system files and swap partition !


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## Jacob S (Apr 14, 2002)

If someone were to spend a grand on a DVR/VOD receiver it should be made upgradable just as an expensive computer would be, since it is such a large investment. This would be whether it comes to memory expansion or to getting a bigger hard drive. They should have some slots for upgraded memory later or some inputs for upgrades to connect an external hard drive to and memory. This would help a bit.

This reminds me, whatever happened to Dish's idea of adding external cd-rw, dvd-rw, etc. to the DVR's? I thought it was mentioned that they was going to make these receivers able to do this in the future with a serial or other connection.


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## toad57 (Apr 23, 2002)

P Smith said:


> Removing error detection and correction is nonsense for any HDD !
> Particulary for PVRs/DVRs what keeps on the disks not just video recordings but system files and swap partition !


Maybe they are going to let the DVR OS take care of that... yea, sounds like a step backwards...


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

toad57 said:


> Maybe they are going to let the DVR OS take care of that... yea, sounds like a step backwards...


It's NEVER happen ! NONSENSE !!!


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