# Single 2 TB drive - WD20EADS



## hoyty76 (Oct 17, 2007)

Not sure how soon it will be released, but who wants to be the first to fill up 2 TB or maybe 4 TB in a RAID? It is supposed to be a Green Power drive based on part number.


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

I have already notified BUY.COM to Notify me when they get it in stock so I can put it in my HR23-700 and then add 2 to my RAID Configuration with the External Drive Enclosure that I have hooked up to my HR21-700.


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## Tom Robertson (Nov 15, 2005)

Already being discussed here: http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=150986

(including expectations that richierich would be the first to have one...)


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## litzdog911 (Jun 23, 2004)

Is there ever such a thing as TOO MUCH recording capacity?!?


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

litzdog911 said:


> Is there ever such a thing as TOO MUCH recording capacity?!?


I DON'T THINK SO!!! :lol:


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

litzdog911 said:


> Is there ever such a thing as TOO MUCH recording capacity?!?


Ranks right up there with TOO MANY HD Channels...of course not.


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

Awesome capacity. I wonder how long it will take to format that puppy? /steve


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

Not Very Long!!! Just Set It And Forget It!!!

Or is that for my Rotisserie Chicken Thingie I Just Bought!!!


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

richierich said:


> Not Very Long!!! Just Set It And Forget It!!!


You mean start it and then go to sleep! :lol:

All kidding aside, does anyone know how safe it is to rely on factory pre-formatting for these things? Whenever I start using a new drive, I'm still in the habit of doing my own format, the way I was taught to do it way back when I bought my first 10 or 20 meg hard drive. I thought I was in hog heaven back then, because it was such a huge step-up over 360k floppies!

Actually the first "home" (i.e., small form factor) hard drive I ever saw, but couldn't afford to buy, was a 5 mb external that Apple was selling for the IIe. I think it went for something like $3000 (in the '70's!), and the only place to get it in NY was the McGraw-Hill bookstore. That was also the place you could buy the first Texas Instrument hand-held calculators, for something like $200-$300, depending on the functions! Who remembers RPN? /steve


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## Jhon69 (Mar 28, 2006)

Think maybe if you have to install that monster(2TB) you should start buying your programming on DVD,think it will last longer.


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

I think "Formatting" the New Drive on your PC is alot better than Formatting it on your DVR but then some other folks have said that it is a Different Formatting Process so I just don't know but I did Format my drives for my External Enclosure and it worked like a CHARM!!!


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## Tom Robertson (Nov 15, 2005)

"Format" means two different things:
1) preparing for an OS use
2) low level laying down of the sectors and blocks, typically verifying everything.

Drives now come with the low level format done. That is the part we "used" to do with the format on an MFM drive, long time ago. And takes a long time.

So preparing for an OS can be very quick depending on how many data structures the drive needs to have. A raw linux partition can be darn near instantaneous for any sized partition. 

Cheers,
Tom


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## litzdog911 (Jun 23, 2004)

When I installed my WD 1TB eSATA drive (Antec MX1 enclosure), the DVR formatted the drive very quickly. I was very suprised. It must not take very long to set up a drive for the DVR's file system.


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

litzdog911 said:


> When I installed my WD 1TB eSATA drive (Antec MX1 enclosure), the DVR formatted the drive very quickly. I was very suprised. It must not take very long to set up a drive for the DVR's file system.


Ya. I was thinking in terms of preparing it for use in a PC. Regular Windows format, as opposed to Windows "quick" format). /steve


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

litzdog911 said:


> When I installed my WD 1TB eSATA drive (Antec MX1 enclosure), the DVR formatted the drive very quickly. I was very suprised. It must not take very long to set up a drive for the DVR's file system.


In fact other posters have posted that when it Formats it is so Fast that they have been led to believe that it really didn't Format the Drive because they were thinking in terms of a low level format.


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## rsblaski (Jul 6, 2003)

litzdog911 said:


> Is there ever such a thing as TOO MUCH recording capacity?!?


The answer, my friend, is in my signature. ;-)


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## Bish (Apr 20, 2007)

I always run the manufacturers diagnostic FULL TEST before using a new drive. I have found a few drives over the years that failed on this initial test. At least it tests every block on the platters. No promise of a solid drive but like I said, I have had brand new drives fail the surface test.


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

What did you do when you found a drive that failed the test?

Does it FLAG bad sectors so they are not used in the Future?


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## Stuart Sweet (Jun 19, 2006)

I would think that being based on Linux, it does all the same things that any Linux OS does when bad sectors are discovered.


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## Bish (Apr 20, 2007)

richierich said:


> What did you do when you found a drive that failed the test?
> 
> Does it FLAG bad sectors so they are not used in the Future?


I took them back to the store and exchanged them or had the manufacturer replace them.. It is SUPPOSED to flag and remap any bad sections. I figure if it has media problems out of the box, I don't want it.

The majority of drives I have purchased have passed with flying colors. I may have tested 30 or 40 new drives over the past 10 years and had maybe 5 that failed out of the box.


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

How do you run that test?

Also, does anyone know where I can pre-order this drive?


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

richierich said:


> How do you run that test?
> 
> Also, does anyone know where I can pre-order this drive?


Not sure about this one, but most drives I've purchased came with a utilities disk that contained low-level diagnostics. /steve


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## gnahc79 (Jan 12, 2008)

From reading this thread images of Tim Allen and a monster DVR with fans and HDDs galore come to mind .


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## bdcottle (Mar 28, 2008)

I've always liked a software program called Spinrite for lowlevel HD diags.


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

I've used SpinRite since I bought my first HR10-250 on April 12, 2004 and it works great. I completely forgot all about it but I used it to remove bad sectors after I started having problems with pixellation and macro blocking and slowing down and sluggish remote commands.


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## dgobe (Dec 8, 2008)

Bish said:


> I took them back to the store and exchanged them or had the manufacturer replace them.. It is SUPPOSED to flag and remap any bad sections. I figure if it has media problems out of the box, I don't want it.
> 
> The majority of drives I have purchased have passed with flying colors. I may have tested 30 or 40 new drives over the past 10 years and had maybe 5 that failed out of the box.


That's a pretty high failure rate. As a computer consultant that works on hundreds of systems per year, I stopped doing the "long" formats a few years ago. I can name a number of things I'd like to do rather than wait for a drive to format. I do make sure there is a quality backup system in place though.

If I'm concerned about it I'll do a chkdsk/fsck with sector checking after the system install. Modern drives do have spare sectors that are used to remap bad sectors dynamically. But it's no guarantee that data won't be stored in a sector before it fails and gets remapped(and potentially corrupted). I certainly wouldn't worry about it in a DVR application.

Block size is another factor in how fast that format goes, with smaller block sizes having more overhead and taking longer. I wonder if the OS in the HR20 accounts for overall drive size and adjusts the block size accordingly. If it doesn't that might account for the reports I've seen where the system slows down when people install larger drives.


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## Tom Robertson (Nov 15, 2005)

richierich said:


> What did you do when you found a drive that failed the test?
> 
> Does it FLAG bad sectors so they are not used in the Future?


The drivers know what to do with some brands' hard drive intelligence including remapping. I presume it also can do some bad sector flagging on less familiar drives.

There is a built in test that can be run to verify the file system that is not destructive. Tho it can take some time on a 750gb drive. Don't even want to know how long it can take on a 2TB drive...

(Ok, actually I do want to know. I'd be very happy to test a drive if someone gave me one.)


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

Wll, I should have 3 WD20EADS Drives in my possession shortly but I think I can test them thoroughly by myself but thanks TOM for the thought and help in testing these puppies. I have been waiting a year for these to come out and I can hardly wait.


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## dgobe (Dec 8, 2008)

The sector remapping/sector sparing is handled by the drive firmware and is transparent to the OS/drivers.


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

dgobe said:


> The sector remapping/sector sparing is handled by the drive firmware and is transparent to the OS/drivers.


Interesting...


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## dgobe (Dec 8, 2008)

hdtvfan0001 said:


> Interesting...


Yes, that's not to say that the filesystem can't implement it's own methods when controller errors are reported.

The old Novell Netware OS had a separate Hotfix partition where it would remap blocks when there were read errors on a block. NTFS has cluster remapping. It's just happening on a different level.


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

dgobe said:


> Yes, that's not to say that the filesystem can't implement it's own methods when controller errors are reported.
> 
> The old Novell Netware OS had a separate Hotfix partition where it would remap blocks when there were read errors on a block. NTFS has cluster remapping. It's just happening on a different level.


It would make sense that the firmware had a major role, as that allows the manufacturer to address changes, problems, etc. that way...


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## bdcottle (Mar 28, 2008)

Tom remember this?
C:\>debug
-g=c800:5
Number of cylinders: 604
Number of heads: 4
Number of sectors per track: 17
Number of bytes per sector: 512
Do you want to enter any bad sectors y/n: n
Lowlevel format drive? (warning this will erase the drive) y/n: y

sorry, too far off topic?


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## bdcottle (Mar 28, 2008)

Spinrite can also do sector remapping, which is one of it’s selling points, especially verses NTFS. Big difference between 512 bytes and 64 Kbytes for a cluster back in the NT 4.0 days. These days with lba48 we are back down to 4 Kbytes but 512 bytes is still 1/8 the loss.


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

Tom Robertson said:


> [...]There is a built in test that can be run to verify the file system that is not destructive. [...]


I can confirm it is non-destructive. I've run it overnight and my recordings were fine the next day. During the boot process, press SELECT when you see the "Running receiver self-check" message on-screen. You'll enter the diagnostic menu system. /steve


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## MountainMan10 (Jan 31, 2008)

bdcottle said:


> Tom remember this?
> C:\>debug
> -g=c800:5
> Number of cylinders: 604
> ...


Yes I remember...

One of the first harddrives I ever bought was supposed to be a 30meg. The tech entered the parameters for a 30, but it was really a 20. All was fine until I reached the 20 meg point. Computer store was out of business by that time.

This is a bit of a sidebar, but I had D* replace a hard drive in a Tivo. The old hard drive held 30 hours. The one they replaced it with only had 20. I sent it back and the drive said it had 30. Then when I got to 20 hours it crashed and came back up that it only had 20 hour capacity. D* entered parameter to fool the Tivo. It took 3 tries, but they finally gave me the correct drive. Still running 7 years later.

When my 1TB drive dies, I'll get one of the 2TB ones.

Isn't 2TB the largest that the HR* series recognizes?


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## dgobe (Dec 8, 2008)

bdcottle said:


> Tom remember this?
> C:\>debug
> -g=c800:5
> Number of cylinders: 604
> ...


Not at all. Calling the LLF ROM routine from debug is still relevant today.

Why just the other day I had to slam my hard drive on the desk because the heads became magnetized and were stuck to the platters. The darn thing wouldn't spin up


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## Tom Robertson (Nov 15, 2005)

MountainMan10 said:


> Yes I remember...
> 
> One of the first harddrives I ever bought was supposed to be a 30meg. The tech entered the parameters for a 30, but it was really a 20. All was fine until I reached the 20 meg point. Computer store was out of business by that time.
> 
> ...


HR20 currently limited to 2TB, HR21/22/23 limited to 16TB.

(and I remember those commands too. As well as formatting dectapes via toggle switches...)

Cheers,
Tom


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## dgobe (Dec 8, 2008)

Steve said:


> I can confirm it is non-destructive. I've run it overnight and my recordings were fine the next day. During the boot process, press SELECT when you see the "Running receiver self-check" message on-screen. You'll enter the diagnostic menu system. /steve


Cool!


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## MountainMan10 (Jan 31, 2008)

Tom Robertson said:


> HR20 currently limited to 2TB, HR21/22/23 limited to 16TB.
> 
> (and I remember those commands too. As well as formatting dectapes via toggle switches...)
> 
> ...


Cool. I hope my 1TB lasts until the 8 or 16TB drives come out


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## t_h (Mar 7, 2008)

The firmware handles read errors and bad blocks up to a point. Depending on the type of drive and what stream commands have/havent been sent to it, it may take a very long time to retry a read and remap a block or it may fail off with an error code quite quickly. The latter is typical of "enterprise" type drives where you have a raid controller handling remapping and dont want a drive error tying up things for a long time doing retries. AV drives can accept stream commands that reduce retry time significantly.

Bad blocks that fail are generally remapped by the firmware until the drives limit of bad blocks has been reached, then bad things start to happen.

My experience with linux is that facing drive errors that get handed back to the operating system, the system resets the sata bus a few times, drops its rate from 3 to 1.5Gb/s, then drops it further. On a reboot it'll reset but until then it stays in the lowered mode.

Which might explain why some people have slow HR's until they reboot them, then they're good again for a while.

I experienced an interesting failure mode where one of my HR20's dropped a sata link into the cellar. It'd play back and tune to SD channels but not HD channels or play HD material. Slow and jerky. I had bumped the esata cable moving the tv. Reset fixed it.


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

Good Post t_h!!! 

Very Interesting!!!


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## Bish (Apr 20, 2007)

richierich said:


> How do you run that test?
> 
> Also, does anyone know where I can pre-order this drive?


Download the utility from the manufacturer website. Burn it to a CD. Boot from CD with drive attached and run full or extended test.


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## t_h (Mar 7, 2008)

Newegg says they have them. $299.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136344


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

My 2 TB WD20EADS Hard Drive will arrive on my doorstep on Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2009. 

Can't wait to install that puppy on my HR23 which will be a DVR just for Sports Viewing such as Golf, Football, etc.

My other HR21-700 with a 1 TB Drive is for News, Weather, Entertainment Tonight, etc. Can't have too much storage space now can we?


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

richierich said:


> My 2 TB WD20EADS Hard Drive will arrive on my doorstep on Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2009.
> 
> Can't wait to install that puppy on my HR23 which will be a DVR just for Sports Viewing such as Golf, Football, etc.
> 
> My other HR21-700 with a 1 TB Drive is for News, Weather, Entertainment Tonight, etc. Can't have too much storage space now can we?


Those are going to be mammouth units.

Just read this about them too..

*"The hard disk model WD20EADS has a volume of 2048 GB and 32 Mb buffer; it uses the SATA-300 interface, and the technology intelliPower which change the rotation speed from 5400 to 7200 rp/Min in order to reach a considerable electric power saving and worthy speed."*


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

That is why I am willing to pay a Premium to get them early before I put too much stuff on my HR23 and then lose it.

There is alot of technology with this hard drive that is designed for use in a DVR and also optimize it and save energy.

Can't wait.


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

Just got my UPS notice that the WD20EADS that I will have my puppy on my doorstep on Thursday. Can't wait.


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## t_h (Mar 7, 2008)

hdtvfan0001 said:


> the technology intelliPower which change the rotation speed from 5400 to 7200 rp/Min in order to reach a considerable electric power saving and worthy speed.


Incredible marketing-speak. There is no consumer grade technology to adaptively change the drive speed. Its simply a 5400 rpm drive. WD does have the ability to set a fixed drive speed between 5400 and 7200 rpm on these drives, but it never changes after it leaves the factory.

When pinned down, the marketing droids over there admitted that the drive is at a fixed speed and made some comment that it was 'between 5000 and 6000rpm, in general'.

I do enjoy how they imply that the drive changes its rotational speed to accommodate loads and energy use.

It makes sense to use a 5400 rpm drive in many cases. In benchmarking typical 5400 and 7200 rpm drives, most performance numbers will be pretty close. Where you have problems is during highly random disk accesses involving small amounts of data when you frequently have to wait for that sector you want to come around at 5400 instead of 7200.

Which begs a question or two. The HR may or may not be good about storing video data sequentially or not, but thats irrelevant. Since it may be recording or downloading 3 or more video streams, playing 2 or more, transcribing guide data as it comes down, along with system/OS read/writes that are part of regular housekeeping...I'm betting the drive does a ton of highly random reads and writes.


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

t_h said:


> Incredible marketing-speak. There is no consumer grade technology to adaptively change the drive speed. Its simply a 5400 rpm drive. WD does have the ability to set a fixed drive speed between 5400 and 7200 rpm on these drives, but it never changes after it leaves the factory.
> 
> When pinned down, the marketing droids over there admitted that the drive is at a fixed speed and made some comment that it was 'between 5000 and 6000rpm, in general'.
> 
> I do enjoy how they imply that the drive changes its rotational speed to accommodate loads and energy use.


I guess we'll find out if your "theory" is right...as they could get into alot of trouble publishing that information if it was not true....

We'll see what RichieRich and others report as soon as they get some of their very soon...


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## t_h (Mar 7, 2008)

Its definitely not a theory, check this out:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article786-page2.html

Specifically:

"Western Digital has caught a lot of flak for withholding the rotation speed of the Green Power, especially when the product was first launched and the marketing material listed the rotation speed as 5,400-7,200 RPM. This led some to speculate that the rotation speed changed dynamically during use - which would have been an impressive engineering feat had it been true. The reality is revealed by a sentence that Western Digital added to the description of IntelliPower: "For each GreenPower™ drive model, WD may use a different, invariable RPM." In other words, Western Digital reserves the right to release both 5,400 RPM and 7,200 RPM drives under the Green Power name - without telling you which are which.

We were able to confirm that our 750 GB Green Power had a spindle speed of 5,400 RPM by doing frequency analysis on a sound recording of it. Why sound? Sound is vibration; the pitch of the sound corresponds to the frequency of the vibration. Hard drives vibrate at the speed of their motor, so they produce a noise at the same frequency as their rotation speed. Our sample had a sharp spike at exactly 90 Hz (cycles per second). Multiplying that number by 60 (to get cycles per minute) yielded a measured rotation speed of 5,400 RPM."

And:
http://www.storagereview.com/1000.sr?page=0,0

"The manufacturer is careful in not directly citing spindle speed, instead nominally positioning the Caviar GP as a "7200 RPM-class" drive. Under its "IntelliPower" moniker, WD claims a "A fine-tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate and cache size designed to deliver both significant power savings and solid performance." Some folks have misinterpreted some admittedly vague specs on WD's website. Under "Rotational Speed," the manufacturer cites "IntelliPower (5400 to 7200 RPM)." This does not mean the drive dynamically changes its spindle speed during operation... indeed, such a feature would entail considerable mechanical engineering and would in many ways defeat the point -- rapidly accelerating and decelerating the spindle's speed would increase rather than decrease net power draw. Rather, the IntelliPower term indicates that the GP family as a whole does not have a set spindle speed (nor a set buffer size, for that matter). Different capacity points may feature differing spin speeds and buffer sizes. For those that must know, WD admits "sub-6000 RPM operation" for the 1-TB Caviar GP"


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

That's a blog site....

In any case...we'll get the "field report" from an actual user in the next couple of days....they'll have no problems running the spin report....

If it is indeed always below the 7200RPM rate....its clearly false advertising.


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## t_h (Mar 7, 2008)

hdtvfan0001 said:


> That's a blog site....


Not sure what you mean. Both are legitimate hardware reviewers that test and report on performance information regarding disk drives and htpc related products. Storagereview has been in operation for more than 10 years and Silentpc has been around for six. Both have a staff of testers and writers.

If you read the full text of the reviews, you'll see that its not false advertising. WD has done a good job of wording their marketing materials to create an easy implication without actually saying anything absolutely false.

Further, again on reading the details...the technology to create a variable speed drive would be enormously complex and expensive, and as far as anyone knows doesnt exist at this time...and the benefits would be questionable.

It was a nice way to make a 2002 era speed drive look good. WD wants to try and distract people away from pure statistics like rpm and seek times, perhaps go the route the processor manufacturers went in taking people away from MHz numbers.


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

All I care about is that It Works and that I have 2000 Gigs of space to store Sports but it does sound like False Advertising and there are alot of games played by Marketing Types in alot of technological companies such as Amps, Receivers, Video Displays where they play alot of marketing games with the numbers.

One that comes to mind is the game of stating "Contrast Ratio" and my Samsung has a 500,000 to 1 ratio and the new one that replaced mine is 1,000,000 to 1 ratio if you can believe that!!!

Oh Well, we will see if it works. Kind of like Directv giving me a HD PPV download of "THe Bourne Ultimatum" which was bitstarved and in Dolby Digital 2.0 (WOW) instead of DD 5.1. I demanded a Refund and finally had to talk to "Customer Retention" to finally get my refund.

The Games People Play!!!

I also think that they have tested these drives and feel they do indeed work well for A/V type applications where most reads and writes are Linear in nature and not Random.


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

t_h said:


> It was a nice way to make a 2002 era speed drive look good. WD wants to try and distract people away from pure statistics like rpm and seek times, perhaps go the route the processor manufacturers went in taking people away from MHz numbers.


I guess we'll see soon enough, with real people using real devices in the real world....


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## t_h (Mar 7, 2008)

richierich said:


> tested these drives and feel they do indeed work well for A/V type applications where most reads and writes are Linear in nature and not Random.


And yet neither tivo nor directv uses these drives. Both use AV type drives and tivos only recommended external is a WD product that uses an AV drive. And two of the moderators here have quietly recommended a pair of external drives that use AV drives.

Given how much cheaper one of these greenpower drives can be had, and the low heat/power demand, vs a regular drive that the DVR people would be all over them.

If you'll read the info at places like storagereview and tomshardware, these drives tended to score very low on server/database load patterns.

I'm pretty sure that writing 2-3 streams, reading 1-2, and doing other stuff at the same time will lead to a lot of non-linear reading and writing.

Does it matter? My most heavily used receiver had all sorts of problems with its original internal drive (a non AV WD drive...DTV used them in the original HR20-100's and then changed to the WD AV drives), same with a seagate 7200.11 in an mx-1, and with a WD 1TB greenpower in both a cavalry and mx-1 cases.

All sorts of hangs, glitches, freezes, gray screens, slow responses, ate half my shows for no reason, failed to record a lot with goofy error messages.

I replaced the greenpower with a seagate 7200rpm AV drive supposedly made for HD DVR's. Knock wood, but I've had much less trouble over the last week and a half. Same MX-1 and cable the greenpower and 7200.11 drive were in.

So I guess if you consider me a real person with a real device in the real world, it matters. 

Also note that directv uses the WD AV drives in all of their products, and those drives currently only go up to 500GB. Directv could go to 1TB or higher with non AV drives or other vendors, but seems to want to stick with the WD AV line.


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## galtsfan (Jul 30, 2008)

t_h said:


> directv uses the WD AV drives in all of their products, and those drives currently only go up to 500GB.


This drive is a WD AV and is 1TB (WD10EVCS)


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

Well, I have the WD10EADS in 3 or my DVRs and they all work perfectly so if there is no difference between the WD10EADS and the WD20EADS other than twice the storage capacity then I should be GOOD TO GO!!!

I have had ZERO PROBLEMS with my WD10EADS Drives once they got the software fixed. They are all running FAST with no hiccups whatsoever so I can't wait to install my WD20EADS which will be on my doorstep come Thursday unless the UPS driver has a wreck and if he does I will blame it on HDTVFAN0001!!! :lol:


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## John4924 (Mar 19, 2007)

richierich said:


> Well, I have the WD10EADS in 3 or my DVRs and they all work perfectly so if there is no difference between the WD10EADS and the WD20EADS other than twice the storage capacity then I should be GOOD TO GO!!!
> 
> I have had ZERO PROBLEMS with my WD1-EADS Drives once they got the software fixed. They are all running FAST with no hiccups whatsoever so I can't wait to install my WD20EADS which will be on my doorstep come Thursday unless the UPS driver has a wreck and if he does I will blame it on HDTVFAN0001!!! :lol:


I for one am hoping that the UPS driver gets there safely...and you can start posting your experience with the drive by Thursday afternoon


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

richierich said:


> ...I can't wait to install my WD20EADS which will be on my doorstep come Thursday unless the UPS driver has a wreck and if he does I will blame it on HDTVFAN0001!!! :lol:


I know nottttthhhhhing.....notthhhhhhinnnnng....


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## t_h (Mar 7, 2008)

galtsfan said:


> This drive is a WD AV and is 1TB (WD10EVCS)


Thats a greenpower 5400 rpm drive that uses AV firmware.

Directv does not use the greenpower AV series, they use the 7200 rpm WD AV drives. So far those only go up to 500MB.

Only thing I can tell you to expect with the 2TB version is that since it may have more platters and heads, it may throw off a bit more heat, possibly a little more vibration, and maybe a little more noise than the 1tb model. The original greenpower used 4 250GB platters, a subsequent upgrade changed it to 3 x 333. This one has 4 x 500.


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

Well WD says it develops less heat so I am confused.


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

t_h said:


> Only thing I can tell you to expect with the 2TB version is that since it may have more platters and heads, it may throw off a bit more heat, possibly a little more vibration, and maybe a little more noise than the 1tb model. The original greenpower used 4 250GB platters, a subsequent upgrade changed it to 3 x 333. This one has 4 x 500.


Except for a couple of more watts power consumption, looks the 2TB drive is essentially the same as the rest of the line, including noise levels. Specs here. /steve


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## galtsfan (Jul 30, 2008)

[QUOTEt_h;1984960]Thats a greenpower 5400 rpm drive that uses AV firmware.


> Directv does not use the greenpower AV series, they use the 7200 rpm WD AV drives. So far those only go up to 500MB.


The draw back to 5400 RPM would be?

The obvious advantage would be. Less heat! Less noise!


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## t_h (Mar 7, 2008)

Steve said:


> Except for a couple of more watts power consumption, looks the 2TB drive is essentially the same as the rest of the line, including noise levels.


Steve - the one item I think may differ is temps, but I dont think it'll be that much. And it'd only be different if you compared the 4 platter 2gb with a 3 platter 1tb. Much of a drives temperature output is derived from platter rotational friction. At the same speeds and components, a drive with more platters will run hotter than a drive with less. Not sure it'd be enough to make a big diff, but a 3 platter 1TB drive might work well with a particular passive cooling enclosure while a 4 platter 1TB or 2TB might run a little warmer. Either way, I doubt it'd make a huge difference unless you were running a passive cooled enclosure in an enclosed space.



galtsfan said:


> The draw back to 5400 RPM would be?


Asked and answered. Read above.



> The obvious advantage would be. Less heat! Less noise!


And lower performance. The only thing we havent ascertained is whether that matters. That the manufacturers dont use them and the moderators of this forum arent recommending them is rather telling.

Looking at these charts:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/wd-caviar-gp,1703-6.html

I'd consider the load of an HR to be more like a server than a desktop computer. Perfectly arguable. But what this illustrates is that you're giving up a good degree of performance for the lower heat and noise.

And there are a fair number of disk drives that dont have the performance penalty, still use a low amount of juice, and throw a small amount of heat. Do note that you're looking at a few degrees of temp and difference of about a buck per year of electricity per drive.

Trust me, I was a believer in this sort of drive for this sort of application up until a few months ago. I didnt think performance mattered in a DVR, and for one that records one or two streams and plays back one and thats that, I dont think it does.

I think it matters for some applications in a device that is recording up to 3 streams, playing back a couple, doing VOD, and a bunch of other stuff all at the same time. Its not straight line performance, its throttle response and turning ability. Fast rotational speed and a well tuned segmented cache give you the latter.

Plus I havent heard a rational argument yet as to why vendors like tivo and directv will spend an extra $2-5 on a disk drive they dont need while they're concurrently trying to squeeze a buck a box out of manufacturing costs.


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

Well, I am happy with the WD10EADS and I will be happy to post the results positive or negative about this NEW WD20EADS DRIVE!!!


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## MountainMan10 (Jan 31, 2008)

A 5400 RPM SATA drive is faster than USB 2.0.
USB 2.0 is about 400mb (someone provide the exact value if it matters)
Assume the data streams are 40mb (they are less, much less)
4 concurrent streams = max 160mb.

There is a thread with a poll to determine if the slow DVR response is related to external or internal hard drive. The poll shows it is not. It is HR model specific not hard drive specific.


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## t_h (Mar 7, 2008)

The issue has nothing to do with straight line performance. Of course the slowest disk drive on the planet can outdo a single stream or four of them measured linearly.

But the HR is a computer. Its reading from the drive at full drive speed, all the time, for everything it does.

Doing 6, 8 or 12 things at once doesnt correlate to single threaded performance.

Never saw that poll you mention, got a link? Note that different disk drives were used throughout the production of the HR's. A non AV WD drive at one size was used for the HR20-100's. WD AV drives of three different sizes were used for others. All 7200rpm.

I cant provide any hard numbers here, because nothing is published (or likely to be published) about how the HR works with the drive and what the data structures look like. Just reading the tea leaves. Manufacturers using 7200rpm AV disk drives. Moderators quietly recommending them and then not explaining why. Some people have problems. Some dont. Some receivers have problems. Some dont.

I'll read the tea leaves a little further. Directv plays it pretty close to the vest. Its rare for the people "in the know" here to show any cards related to futures and inner workings of the product. Several times a couple of the mods have said "Use these particular models of external, 7200rpm, AV/DVR type disk drives" and then been unresponsive to questions why.

I'm thinking directv told them "put something out their recommending use of these drives, because those are the ones we'll support and the ones people should use to avoid problems".

Then everybody can take their chances with brand X, and if it stops working they can say "Hey, we told ya..."

Too much tin foil?


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## DanoP (Sep 29, 2006)

richierich said:


> Well, I am happy with the WD10EADS and I will be happy to post the results positive or negative about this NEW WD20EADS DRIVE!!!


WD10EADS here also....up and running for the past two days with no issues. It's quiet and from what I've read, runs relatively cool and pulls only a three to five watts of juice from your walls. Right now it's in the MX-1....wondering if it would be OK to stick it in an unfanned enclosure should the Antec become noisy (or simply remove the top and disconnect the fan from the Antec).


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

richierich said:


> Well, I am happy with the WD10EADS and I will be happy to post the results positive or negative about this NEW WD20EADS DRIVE!!!


OK...where's the report...where's the photos.....it's Thursday past Noon (EST)..........slacker....:lol::lol::lol:


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

UPS hasn't arrived yet. They normally come around 3:00 P.M.


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## Tom Robertson (Nov 15, 2005)

richierich said:


> UPS hasn't arrived yet. They normally come around 3:00 P.M.


You didn't think about us and get the overnight, 5am delivery service? We're dieing here waiting for information and you skimp on a few pennies for shipping? :lol:


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

Well, I did pay extra for Rush Shipping which gets it out the door faster and would have had it Overnighted if I had realized it was coming from California. 

Oh well, it will be here soon and I will sip a Glass Of Gewurztraminer from the South African Robertson Winery as I go about installing it in my "OWNED" HR23-700 which I paid an arm and a leg for but I also had to have it. 

Won't be long now!!! :joy:


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

It's HERE!!! Got to go Install the WD20EADS!!! :hurah:


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## Tom Robertson (Nov 15, 2005)

It's been 4 hours, 54 minutes! Where's the pix! Where's the never-ending space available bar? And where's the open bar for that matter?


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## t_h (Mar 7, 2008)

Pffft...I started a format/bad sector scan on a 1TB drive at 9 this morning and its still only 92% done. I guess I should have fished it out of the USB case and stuck it in the desktop.


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

I drank up the Open Bar so now it is Closed.

That is why I couldn't install it yesterday and today is the day!!!


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

Tom Robertson said:


> It's been 4 hours, 54 minutes! Where's the pix! Where's the never-ending space available bar? And where's the open bar for that matter?


No kidding.....still no report now 14 hours later.....maybe we need a new anticipation (of the installed 2TB drive) thread.....Noooooooooooooooooo!! :lol:


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

Well, the Drive is Installed and Ready To Go!!!

I think I might have enough room to record all of my Sports Programming for a while with a little left over for Jay Leno, and of course The Food Channel with shows like Giada's Weekend Getaways, Giada etc. etc. etc.


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

richierich said:


> Well, the Drive is Installed and Ready To Go!!!
> 
> I think I might have enough room to record all of my Sports Programming for a while with a little left over for Jay Leno, and of course The Food Channel with shows like Giada's Weekend Getaways, Giada etc. etc. etc.


As Homer would say, "Hmmmmm. Giada"  /s


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

Now, I have to set up my Favorite Channels, Series Links, etc. Too bad this info isn't on a Directv Server which automatically downloads it to your new DVR.


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

richierich said:


> Now, I have to set up my Favorite Channels, Series Links, etc. Too bad this info isn't on a Directv Server which automatically downloads it to your new DVR.


It's beginning to look like "film at 11", instead of photos or more details posted here...


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

Hey, it's working and I've got lots of room and you've seen the insides of an HR23 with a hard drive in it so just pretend that the picture has a 2 TB Hard Drive in it and you are there.

Gotta set up all of this stuff again.


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## CCarncross (Jul 19, 2005)

richierich said:


> Now, I have to set up my Favorite Channels, Series Links, etc. Too bad this info isn't on a Directv Server which automatically downloads it to your new DVR.


If you are replacing another drive, you just migrate all that over with the GParted disk, takes a few hours at best


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

Thanks but I just bought an HR23 a couple of weeks ago and paid an arm and a leg to get it because I couldn't get one from Directv because my installer said they don't have them yet in Atlanta so I didn't have alot of recordings on it as they were on my HR21-700.

I am not that savvy when it comes to all that stuff so I won't lose too much stuff but thanks anyway. 

2000 Gigabytes ought to hold me for a little while.


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

richierich said:


> 2000 Gigabytes ought to hold me for a little while.


Unlikely....

I'll bet you have more of those fellows installed soon....after all...having 4-6 HD DVRs with less than 1TB on each seems like such a waste....:lol:


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

Looking forward to seeing some kind of feedback on how that big boy drive performs once you have some significant record content stored plus how much drive space is left...after say...100 hours of MPEG2 or MPEG4....

The idea that you could record perhaps 150 or more hours of HD and then still have 1/2 or so of your drive left makes me want to hunt down my wallet....


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

Here is the Calulation of how many hours of MPEG-4 HD I can Record on my 2 TB HR23-700 which is 528 hours.

Subtract 100 Gb from the drive size (2000 Gb) for housekeeping space reserved by DirecTV.

HD MPEG-4 uses ~ 3.6 GB/hour (or 180 GB for 50 hours).

2000 Gb minus 100 Gb = 1900. 1900 Gb/3.6 Gb per hour = 528 hours of MPEG-4 HD Recording Capacity.

1 TB = 250 hours of MPEG-4 Recording Capacity.
2 TB = 528 hours of MPEG-4 Recording Capacity.


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

WOW...even with a mix of MPEG2 and MPEG4...thats a ton of stored HD content.


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

I don't know that I am Recording any MPEG-2 stuff because I am not Recording OTA on this DVR nor anything in the 70s range so I think I am recording all MPEG-4 stuff.


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

One thing I have found is that the Percentage of Amount of Space Available is just a GUESSTIMATE and not very precise but better than having nothing.


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## Tom Robertson (Nov 15, 2005)

richierich said:


> One thing I have found is that the Percentage of Amount of Space Available is just a GUESSTIMATE and not very precise but better than having nothing.


Yeah, but have you filled it yet? !rolling


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

Tom Robertson said:


> Yeah, but have you filled it yet? !rolling


If the estimate in the 500 or so hour range is right...it'll take about 3 weeks of full time recording to fill that puppy...


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

richierich said:


> Here is the Calulation of how many hours of MPEG-4 HD I can Record on my 2 TB HR23-700 which is 528 hours.
> 
> Subtract 100 Gb from the drive size (2000 Gb) for housekeeping space reserved by DirecTV.
> 
> ...


Do you realize that if you wanted to (and had a way of programming it in), you could do a manual SD recording of a single channel, non-stop, for over two months (72.5 days)?

What would the PROGRESS BAR look like, I wonder? :lol: /steve


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## Tom Robertson (Nov 15, 2005)

Steve said:


> Do you realize that if you wanted to (and had a way of programming it in), you could do a manual SD recording of a single channel, non-stop, for over two months (72.5 days)?
> 
> What would the PROGRESS BAR look like, I wonder? :lol: /steve


Daily manual recording for 24 hours...


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

Tom Robertson said:


> Daily manual recording for 24 hours...


Ya, but they'd be split up, right? Not one fat one? /steve


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## Tom Robertson (Nov 15, 2005)

Steve said:


> Ya, but they'd be split up, right? Not one fat one? /steve


True enough.


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

Tom Robertson said:


> True enough.


Just think. A recording that big, the Wish List would have a request for SKIPTOSEASON.  /steve


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

OY VAY....

It might take an hour just to scan the playlist to see everything....:eek2:


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

I have 10 Hours of MPEG-4 Recording on it and it still says I have 99% Available Space which is not true since that would mean I would have 1000 Hours of MPEG-4 Recording Capacity and I only have 528 Hours so it is only a GUESSTIMATE!!!

However with my HR21-700 with 1 TB and my HR23-700 with 2 TB I have 3000 Gbs of space and 4 tuners and 100 Series Links so I guess I won't have alot of conflicts or decisions to be made about what to record when. I can record 3 Football Games along with the Golf Tournament and still watch something else. 

SIMPLY AMAZING!!! I may not have DLB but I can now record 2 things at once and flip back and forth with no problems and then delete that recording when I am done.


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

Well, now I've got 16 Hours of MPEG-4 Recordings and it is now at 98% so I am going to keep tabs on this just out of curiosity to see how accurate it is.


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

richierich said:


> Well, now I've got 16 Hours of MPEG-4 Recordings and it is now at 98% so I am going to keep tabs on this just out of curiosity to see how accurate it is.


We'll be watching the updates....and also reports on performance changes as it fills up (if any)....


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## Podkayne (Nov 1, 2007)

My 2TB JBOD array has stablilized at 70% to 80% remaining space on my HR20-100. The calculation shows a capacity that varies from 510 to 530 hours, depending on the amount and composition of the programming stored at any given time; the calculation is of course dependent on the accuracy of the app that measures "remaining space". I believe 2TB is the most an HR20 can "see", so this is the theoretical max for this particular DVR.


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

I am taking notes on how much recording is used up for each 1% of capacity and when it starts to slow down I will make a note of that percentage and then delete stuff to stay under that percentage.

I believe that alot of the slowdown is caused by reorganizing the database and deleting stuff even if it says it still has enough space left which takes some time which doesn't happen if you have 10% or more Free Space left.


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

You had me at 2000 GIG....


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## Tom Robertson (Nov 15, 2005)

Tom Robertson said:


> HR20 currently limited to 2TB, HR21/22/23 limited to 16TB.
> 
> (and I remember those commands too. As well as formatting dectapes via toggle switches...)
> 
> ...


I need to correct myself. I was mistaken, my bad.

The entire HR2x line is limited to 2TB at this time.

(Please don't shoot the messenger, just the guy who got it wrong... wait... Thats me! Don't shoot him either.) 

Cheers,
Tom


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## t_h (Mar 7, 2008)

I think that difference had been reported many times previously, and I was always a little curious as to the rationale: that the 20 used a different linux kernel than the 21-23's. Seemed rather odd.

By the way, I wrote parts of the operating systems that ran those dectapes you were using. Those were the good old days...


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

Can't wait until I have it 95% Filled Up to see if it Slows Down!!!


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

Tom Robertson said:


> I need to correct myself. I was mistaken, my bad. The entire HR2x line is limited to 2TB at this time.
> 
> Tom


Always thought that anyway....it only makes sense that the HR2x series would be consistent in this way...

2TB is alot of storage....just ask RichieRich....


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

Yes 2 TB is ALOT OF STORAGE and it evens sounds like more when you say 2000 Gigabytes of Storage. Unbelievable and in a couple of years, who knows maybe 10 Tb Drives.


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

Well, I now have 62 Hours of Recording on my HR23-700 with 2 TB Capacity and I still have 90% Available so the Guesstimate is not that accurate but a pretty good barometer or measure of available storage left if not exact.

Therefore I have about 470 Hours of MPEG-4 HD Recording Capacity left so I guess I will survive!!!


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## MountainMan10 (Jan 31, 2008)

I have added up the hours of recordings on my 1TB drive a couple times to get an estimate of capacity and have always come out much higher than the guesstimates that are posted.

Are the guestimates based on 1080 recordings? I have a mix of 1080 and 720. Many of my recordings are upscaled SD. I have very little SD recorded.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

t_h said:


> I think that difference had been reported many times previously, and I was always a little curious as to the rationale: that the 20 used a different linux kernel than the 21-23's. Seemed rather odd.


This may have something to do with the fact that the 21-23 use a different processor.


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

My Guesstimates are based on 1080I recordings.


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

harsh said:


> This may have something to do with the fact that the 21-23 use a different processor.


Just like both devices share the same 2TB maximum recording storage limit...the processors don't vary in terms of impacting anything on storage capacity.

Its purely a function of the hard disk space and how Linux deposits the data onto them.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

hdtvfan0001 said:


> Always thought that anyway....it only makes sense that the HR2x series would be consistent in this way...
> 
> 2TB is alot of storage....just ask RichieRich....


I think I could have gone well over 2TBs on my Cavalry eSATA. It went to 2TBs very easily. Of course it did die a week after I filled it up...

Rich


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

*richierich *will be happy to know that I had occasion to look inside an HR22-100 recently, and I noticed it uses a WD "green power" drive as well. /steve

[Tom Edit: Added the R in HR]


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## t_h (Mar 7, 2008)

Straight GP or AV-GP?


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

t_h said:


> Straight GP or AV-GP?


AV-GP. See attached. /steve


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## dgobe (Dec 8, 2008)

That's an H receiver only or an HR DVR?


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

dgobe said:


> That's an H receiver only or an HR DVR?


HR22-100. /s


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## t_h (Mar 7, 2008)

Doesnt help Richie much. His drive isnt an AV-GP, just a GP.

I fear the lack of the AV capabilities far more than the 5400rpm speed.

Interesting to see that directv is mixing up the drive speeds a little, but sticking with AV models. I dont think there was an HR22 first look and the HR23 first look doesnt show the drive model.


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

t_h said:


> Doesnt help Richie much. His drive isnt an AV-GP, just a GP.
> 
> I fear the lack of the AV capabilities far more than the 5400rpm speed.
> 
> Interesting to see that directv is mixing up the drive speeds a little, but sticking with AV models. I dont think there was an HR22 first look and the HR23 first look doesnt show the drive model.


I don't know if they all use the same (av-gp) drive model, but I'm glad I could shed a little more light on the subject. /steve


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

Well, according to the Documentation of both drives there is very little difference that I can discern and mine is working Flawlessly. In fact I am P!SSED because now I don't have anything to ***** about except no MRV or DLB!!! :lol:


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

richierich said:


> Well, according to the Documentation of both drives there is very little difference that I can discern and mine is working Flawlessly. In fact I am P!SSED because now I don't have anything to ***** about except no MRV or DLB!!! :lol:


My latest gripe is no 3d tuner recording for OTA users. I want what the Dish users have.  /steve


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## t_h (Mar 7, 2008)

The difference is in the firmware. The two drives handle cache partitioning and error control quite differently.


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## Tom Robertson (Nov 15, 2005)

dgobe said:


> That's an H receiver only or an HR DVR?


I corrected Steve's post. It is an HR22.

Cheers,
Tom


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## Tom Robertson (Nov 15, 2005)

t_h said:


> The difference is in the firmware. The two drives handle cache partitioning and error control quite differently.


Doesn't that result in noise differences as well?


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## t_h (Mar 7, 2008)

These two WD drives, the GP and AV-GP have the same acoustics and are essentially the same drive with different firmware. Same for the Hitatchi deskstar/cinemastar and the seagate db35/7200 and WD caviar/caviar AV. In some cases fine tuning of the firmware and operations can result in reduced by improving seek ordering. Usually you give up a little performance for quietness, but not always.

Some of the newer AV drives like the Seagate Pipeline are made for reduced acoustics both in the physical hardware and in the firmware design.

A lot of the acoustic stuff is also somewhat BS, since there arent a lot of industry standards around how drive noise is measured. Everyone plays with the numbers. You cant look at the spec sheets and come away with one drive definitely being quieter in your application than another.

The WD GP 1tb drive I have was fairly quiet in the mx-1 and cavalry cases. Sometimes if I had the tv off I could hear some rapid fire seeking. Now that I have it in a desktop as a system drive, its really, really noisy.

The Pipeline in the mx-1, to my ear, is the quietest drive I've ever heard. The little whoosy fan noise from the mx-1 overwhelms the seek noise from the drive and I have to put my ear right to it to hear it.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

t_h said:


> These two WD drives, the GP and AV-GP have the same acoustics and are essentially the same drive with different firmware. Same for the Hitatchi deskstar/cinemastar and the seagate db35/7200 and WD caviar/caviar AV. In some cases fine tuning of the firmware and operations can result in reduced by improving seek ordering. Usually you give up a little performance for quietness, but not always.
> 
> Some of the newer AV drives like the Seagate Pipeline are made for reduced acoustics both in the physical hardware and in the firmware design.
> 
> ...


Read your post and ran downstairs and placed my ear atop my MX-1 with a 1TB Cuda drive and all I can hear on that is the fan noise from the enclosure and (I guess) the drive's running noise is blended in with that. Heard no "seeking" noises. Are the Seagate Cudas rated AV?

Gotta admit I always wondered what that "seeking" noise was called. My two Cavalrys make that noise and it is so loud you would not want one in a quiet bedroom. In fact, every Cavalry I have ever had was noisy.

Learned something today. "Seeking noise". Good day so far.

Rich


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## dgobe (Dec 8, 2008)

There's a voice coil that positions the heads over the platters. When they come to an abrupt stop it'll make those clicking noises you hear. It's moving the assembly in the low millisecond range.

There are youtube videos of people doing all kinds of goofy things with the hard drive covers off.


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## t_h (Mar 7, 2008)

rich584 said:


> Are the Seagate Cudas rated AV?


The db35 model and pipeline models are, but the regular 7200 series arent. Seagate usually makes a pretty quiet drive.

Your cavalry's were filled with western digital greenpower (non AV) drives. I've found those to be noisier than the db35's, 7200's and pipelines. The spec sheets have them all in the same area db/bel wise, but in implemented situations thats not the case to my ear.


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

My WD20EADS is so Quiet I haven't even noticed it even though it is behind a Glass Door but I do occasionally hear my eSATA External Drive particularly if the Home Entertainment System is off. I'll have to listen to it with it off to see if I can hear it but I haven't heard it yet and it is supposed to be Quiet and Cooler to run which is good in a semi enclosed Rack.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

t_h said:


> The db35 model and pipeline models are, but the regular 7200 series arent. Seagate usually makes a pretty quiet drive.
> 
> Your cavalry's were filled with western digital greenpower (non AV) drives. I've found those to be noisier than the db35's, 7200's and pipelines. The spec sheets have them all in the same area db/bel wise, but in implemented situations thats not the case to my ear.


Does anybody (company wise) tell the truth?

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

richierich said:


> My WD20EADS is so Quiet I haven't even noticed it even though it is behind a Glass Door but I do occasionally hear my eSATA External Drive particularly if the Home Entertainment System is off. I'll have to listen to it with it off to see if I can hear it but I haven't heard it yet and it is supposed to be Quiet and Cooler to run which is good in a semi enclosed Rack.


All my HRs are quiet. My TiVos were always noisy. Just another added benefit with the HRs. The HRs that did make noise went right back to D*.

Rich


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## cartrivision (Jul 25, 2007)

Steve said:


> Do you realize that if you wanted to (and had a way of programming it in), you could do a manual SD recording of a single channel, non-stop, for over two months (72.5 days)?
> 
> What would the PROGRESS BAR look like, I wonder? :lol: /steve


During the recent guide data glitch, I had a recording with a 7 day long progress bar. As far as I know, there is no easy way to recreate that or even create a recording that is more than 24 hours long.


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## t_h (Mar 7, 2008)

rich584 said:


> Does anybody (company wise) tell the truth?


As a former marketing guy, I can say with some certainty...no. Problem is that everyone lies, so even if you're an honest bloke you've gotta lie too or your products wont sell.

Its no wonder people are often dissatisfied with the products they buy. Money gets taken away from customer service and tech support to increase the marketing and advertising budget. So you're getting 50-75% of what you think you're buying, and when you have problems there arent enough competent people to help you.


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## t_h (Mar 7, 2008)

t_h said:


> The Pipeline in the mx-1, to my ear, is the quietest drive I've ever heard. The little whoosy fan noise from the mx-1 overwhelms the seek noise from the drive and I have to put my ear right to it to hear it.


Indeed, I saw a review of the Pipeline in silentpcreview this afternoon. Although the spec sheets were all over the place, their actual measurements of drive noise had the Pipeline as the quietest drive they've tested, by a good margin.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article914-page2.html

Their test room with no equipment running was 11db. The pipeline was 15-16db and other drives tested were 16-27db.

They did measure a high rate of vibration, but the mx-1 uses soft mounts which should all but eliminate that as a noise factor.

Powerwise, the Pipeline used much less electricity than the standard 7200.11 seagate, but a couple of watts more than the greenpower series.

It was also substantially faster than the 7200.11 drive, which is substantially faster than the greenpowers.


----------



## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

My WD20EADS has "soft rubber mounts" to dampen the vibration I guess. That was the Biggest Pain when replacing the drive was re-inserting the rubber mounts so I could correctly line up the screws.


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## newsposter (Nov 13, 2003)

aren't you all scared about having all this space? I have a factory drive and cant even keep up with it and my 63 hour hdtivo. Theres 1 year old stuff there that i need to watch. If i had over 400 HD hours, i dont know what id do with it. And heaven forbid it crash! 

the one reason i may consider getting a drive ( but it would be not 2tb) is to start recording on it and watch down the hr20 drive to get a replacement under the protection plan.


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## t_h (Mar 7, 2008)

Its a paradigm change. At somewhere between 200 and 300 hours it stops being something you "keep up with" and becomes more like self-served video on demand. Its not about watching what you have, its about watching what you want.

Its also nice to 'marathon' a series and watch all the episodes in a week or two, so you actually can get some continuity in the story line.

Then you've got the holiday and summer 'breaks' to catch up on shows. Sometimes the new episodes of stuff start up again in the fall before we finish watching the series from the year prior.

Sort of nice intermediary and not necessarily reliable archival storage medium. On my old 400 hour directivo I had three seasons of football playoffs and superbowls kicking around, along with a dozen or so really good games.


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

With that 2000 Gig drive...you can simply record just about anything you want and watch it just about anytime you want...:grin:

Better make sure you have a really comfy chair and plenty of beverages...


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## Tom Robertson (Nov 15, 2005)

I have one DVR with mostly movies on its 750gb drive. And I want more space, just for the ability to watch any of "my" movies at any time.


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

newsposter said:


> aren't you all scared about having all this space? I have a factory drive and cant even keep up with it and my 63 hour hdtivo. Theres 1 year old stuff there that i need to watch. If i had over 400 HD hours, i dont know what id do with it. And heaven forbid it crash!


Well, as t_h stated I have it so I can "Watch What I Want When I Want To Watch It". I also an HR21-700 with a 1 TB Drive attached to this system so in essence I have 3000 Gig of Space available with 4 Tuners and 100 Series Links.

I keep Sports on the HR23 particularly Golf (so I can go back and watch the U. S. Open or whatever) and other stuff such as Nostradamus, Apocalypse 2012 and other related stuff regarding 2012 and really Important stuff I also record on my HR21 so if I do have a problem with my 2 TB Drive on my HR23 I can replace the drive but I still have a version to watch on my HR21.

I then go in and clean up the recordings and if there is something that has been there a long time and I don't think I will watch it I watch it then and delete it or I just delete it so I am constantly monitoring what is recorded and what I really don't want to keep.


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## newsposter (Nov 13, 2003)

You forgot to mention it's nice to record all the fox shows and see if the network cancels the show before you start even watching them 

I definitely understand the 'what i want when i want it', i guess having over 1 year old stuff i dont think ill ever even get to just got my wondering why i'd want 2tb to make my decisions even harder lol.

Also regarding the comment above about going through and deleting what you don't want. thats the problem with me, i record what i definitely want to watch, just dont have the time! I'd say there are less than 10 shows i've ever recorded that i just threw in the towel and deleted. And even less SPs. 

so where's the support forum for people who record but never watch


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## l8er (Jun 18, 2004)

newsposter said:


> ....so where's the support forum for people who record but never watch ....


 Hello, I'm Gary, and I'm addicted to DIRECTV DVRs.


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

I also have people I know tell me that they don't need a DVR as they don't have that much time to watch TV and I tell them they are the exact people who should have it because then when they do have time to sit down and watch TV they can pull up whatever they want and watch it.

Alot of times I want to watch the Evening News but I get home too late so I record all of the different network news shows and then watch them when I want and also use the 30 second skip feature to get thru the commercial breaks so I can quickly watch just those segments that are important to me.

I can watch a football game in under an hour by skipping thru the commercials and using skip after a play or while they are reviewing a play that I could care less about waiting on.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

newsposter said:


> aren't you all scared about having all this space? I have a factory drive and cant even keep up with it and my 63 hour hdtivo. Theres 1 year old stuff there that i need to watch. If i had over 400 HD hours, i dont know what id do with it. And heaven forbid it crash!
> 
> the one reason i may consider getting a drive ( but it would be not 2tb) is to start recording on it and watch down the hr20 drive to get a replacement under the protection plan.


I've got a total of 8.25TBs of space (gross capacity, not including any drive space that D* "keeps" for itself) and it is not enough. We'll catch up this summer and probably increase space for next season. If you're gonna do something, you might as well do it right.

Rich


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

EXACTLY!!! Why play around, just do it right and be done with it. When I go back to clean up and I see recordings that are over 6 months or so old I either view them or delete them but it's nice to have OPTIONS when it comes to what you want to watch depending upon your mood or if a friend comes over or whatever, can't have enough CAPACITY in my humble opinion.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

richierich said:


> EXACTLY!!! Why play around, just do it right and be done with it. When I go back to clean up and I see recordings that are over 6 months or so old I either view them or delete them but it's nice to have OPTIONS when it comes to what you want to watch depending upon your mood or if a friend comes over or whatever, can't have enough CAPACITY in my humble opinion.


I just watched the "Train Robbers" with John Wayne and I was shocked. I had never seen it. And Ann-Margaret was in it, must have been in her early 20's. I thought I had seen every movie he made and because I have so much capacity I just recorded it and thought that if I had seen it I would delete it.

Today, I found a movie with Ahnold, the Governator that I have never seen. Seems as if the more I record, the more good movies I find. And of course, lots of movies that are so bad that it boggles the mind. All because of capacity. And it can only go up.

Rich


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

Here is The Conclusion Of A Review Of The WD20EADS 2TB Drive.

Conclusions and Final Thoughts

Capacity over Speed

With many out there making the switch to SSD for their OS partitions, users are finding that a mentality shift is in order, as you can't fit anything and everything on a single super-fast drive these days. So long as you can get accustomed to having your large, stagnant data on a separate 'mass storage' drive, the slower access times and rotational speeds will have little effect on your daily use. The Caviar Green series starts to make sense when you realize your bulk data does not necessarily need to be spinning at 10,000 RPM, and the lower heat output will likely result in greater longevity of your storage medium. This is especially true if you don't have the greatest ventilation in your particular application (i.e. DVR's).

Final Thoughts

For those who need as much as can possibly be crammed into a 3.5" form factor, the Western Digital WD20EADS Caviar Green is sure to please. While the performance is nowhere near Raptor territory, the sequential transfer rates are admirable given the near 50% drop in spindle speed. An added bonus is the almost eerie silence of the 2TB model. Our drive received many double takes during seek testing, as we truly believed we were benching the wrong device. With huge storage and cool / quiet operation, I see this drive going into many DVR's and media center PC's in the near future.

Here is a Link to the Conclusion Of A Review of the WD20EADS Drive.

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=676&type=expert&pid=10

Here is a Link to the Entire Review.

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=676

So this Drive appears to be a good candidate for DVRs.


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

Also, the Review stated that this Drive was VERY QUIET and ran VERY COOL which is important for a DVR in perhaps an enclosed environment.


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## dave29 (Feb 18, 2007)

I also saw yesterday that WD just released a 1.5 TB drive as well.


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

Yes, they released the 1.5 TB right before the 2 TB Drive and I was actually surprised as I thought it would take another 3 or 4 months until they released the 2 TB Drive after the 1.5 TB Drive came out.


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

Great review and more important....great and impressive drive!


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

Yes but the sad part is that I only have 78% left!!! :lol:


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

richierich said:


> Yes but the sad part is that I only have 78% left!!! :lol:


And no problems with slowdowns, I bet. That's the big difference between an internal and external drive, I think.

Rich


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

richierich said:


> Yes but the sad part is that I only have 78% left!!! :lol:


Uh huh....after how many hours of recordings...???


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

Well over 100 hours of HD Recordings. I have no operational problems at the moment and it is still Fast but does not seem as fast at deleting things as it once was after I had installed the WD20EADS.


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## Podkayne (Nov 1, 2007)

richierich said:


> Yes but the sad part is that I only have 78% left!!! :lol:


LOL...that's exactly where my 2TB array is sitting this evening:lol:

I always thought 1 TB would be more than enough but it's amazing how much stuff winds up on the DVR with three (and sometimes 4 - when my college student kid comes home to visit) family members watching their own stuff.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

richierich said:


> Well over 100 hours of HD Recordings. I have no operational problems at the moment and it is still Fast but does not seem as fast at deleting things as it once was after I had installed the WD20EADS.


Remember, that is caused by the HR, not the hard drive. Try refreshing it by using the restart on the menu. That cleared up my 2TB and allowed it to reach full capacity without slowdowns. Perhaps that will work on an internal drive too. Be interesting to know.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

Podkayne said:


> LOL...that's exactly where my 2TB array is sitting this evening:lol:
> 
> I always thought 1 TB would be more than enough but it's amazing how much stuff winds up on the DVR with three (and sometimes 4 - when my college student kid comes home to visit) family members watching their own stuff.


I've never hit the point where I've felt I have enough capacity or enough tuners. Just when you think you're set, something craps out and if you don't have everything backed up, you lose a lot of valuable recordings. I use four HRs to back up each other.

Rich


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## herkulease (Jul 29, 2007)

is 2tb too much at this time? The tv season is almost up and prices will continue downward. June perhaps when the USA season starts up again. Plus 2tb is a hella of a lot to fill up on. are you guys keeping all episodes or just 10?


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## Tom Robertson (Nov 15, 2005)

herkulease said:


> is 2tb too much at this time? The tv season is almost up and prices will continue downward. June perhaps when the USA season starts up again. Plus 2tb is a hella of a lot to fill up on. are you guys keeping all episodes or just 10?


Like anything else, all depends upon your priorities. 

2TB is just a good start for some; way, way too much for others. 

I think I could easily use a couple just for the movies I want to save.

Cheers,
Tom


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

How can 2 TB of Space be too much? If you don't use it at least you still have it for down the road when you will use it. I record alot of Sports such as Golf Tournaments, Football, etc. and go back and watch them later as I can watch a 3 Hour Golf Event in less than 1 Hour after skipping thru commercials, rulings, etc. I go back once a month and delete things that I think I will never want to see again.

This way I can Watch What I Want, When I Want To Watch It!


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

Based on having once said myself "gee...I don't know how I'd ever use all of that 20 Meg hard Drive".....I can now testify that there cannot ever be "too much storage".


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## DarinC (Aug 31, 2004)

richierich said:


> How can 2 TB of Space be too much?


You could say it's too much in the sense that the more space you have, the more content you may have saved, and the higher your potential frustration when something goes awry and you lose it all. :grin:

After the last update where they added "enhanced" HD error detection, my HR determined it had an issue with the external drive. I still haven't looked at the drive to see if it _really_ has a problem. But I've decided I'm better off with not so much space in the DVR, and more space in a server where I can just archive the data with some added RAID redundancy.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

herkulease said:


> is 2tb too much at this time? The tv season is almost up and prices will continue downward. June perhaps when the USA season starts up again. Plus 2tb is a hella of a lot to fill up on. are you guys keeping all episodes or just 10?


You have to look at the HRs and the way they react to an almost full hard drive to appreciate a 2TB drive. Most of us that have 2TB drives have them in eSATAs.

Back to the way an HR reacts to an almost full hard drive: At about 30% Available (give or take) the HR will become sluggish in some respects. The playback doesn't seem to be affected, but the menus slow down, the guide slows down, stuff like that.

I have tried filling up a 750G eSATA and had the above results. I have tried filling up two 1TB eSATAs and had the same results. I have tried filling up a 1.5 Seagate Xtreme and had the same results. I have tried filling up a 2TB Cav eSATA and had the same results. See a pattern here? When an eSATA gets to between 30% available and 20% available it bogs down. The size of the drive in the eSATA doesn't seem to matter, the percentage available seems to be the cause of the HR bogging down. This can be cleared up by "refreshing" the HR from time to time by using the menu restart option. After restarting, the bogging down usually goes away for a good while.

Bottom line: Better performance from a 2TB with 50% Available than a 1TB that is almost full. With a 2TB, you get past 1.5TB without the HR bogging down.

Why does this happen? I don't know. I just know that it happens and I know how to clear it up most of the time.

What about an internal drive on "owned" HRs? *richierich* has noted that the 2TB internal that he has in his "owned" HR23 has displayed some symptoms as he passed the 30% Available mark, so perhaps the internals suffer the same symptoms as the externals do.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

DarinC said:


> You could say it's too much in the sense that the more space you have, the more content you may have saved, and the higher your potential frustration when something goes awry and you lose it all. :grin:
> 
> After the last update where they added "enhanced" HD error detection, my HR determined it had an issue with the external drive. I still haven't looked at the drive to see if it _really_ has a problem. But I've decided I'm better off with not so much space in the DVR, and more space in a server where I can just archive the data with some added RAID redundancy.


There is always gonna be the chance that either the HR or the hard drive will fail. Backing up valued recordings is something everyone should do. I recently lost one of my 2TB Cavalry eSATAs and even tho it was half full, I lost nothing. I use four HRs for backing up and everything that I lost on the bad drive was recorded on the other three drives.

I had the same problem you had and didn't want to keep the eSATA that the HR wasn't happy with and dumped it and bought a bigger one. The RAID solution only works in one direction. If the HR fails, the programming is lost. I'd rather "mirror" my recordings on another HR & eSATA than go the RAID route.

Rich


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## DarinC (Aug 31, 2004)

rich584 said:


> The RAID solution only works in one direction. If the HR fails, the programming is lost. I'd rather "mirror" my recordings on another HR & eSATA than go the RAID route.


I wasn't talking about an external RAID enclosure directly connected to an HR, but rather, archiving off of the HR (with something like a Hauppauge HD PVR). It's certainly more work, but it's the most flexible since the content now "stands alone" and can be backed up however you want. Mirroring on another HR certainly has it's advantages, not the least of which is additional tuners, and will become even more advantageous when MRV is fully implemented. But that means additional lease fees, and the content is still "trapped" in the HR(s). If a lightning strike took out your HRs, you're still out even if the content on the hard drives is intact.


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## turey22 (Jul 30, 2007)

Why do you need 2000gs? lol


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## t_h (Mar 7, 2008)

Even with 1TB, I could use more space. We tend to let about 12-14 series record in their entirety over the season and then watch them when we have time. Generally we've finished them up before the new season starts in the fall. With a 4 year old, we've also got about 400GB of kids movies and shows. A handful of NFL Replay games, 10-15 movies, bunch of food shows. I regularly have to trim out some stuff to keep it >20% free.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

DarinC said:


> I wasn't talking about an external RAID enclosure directly connected to an HR, but rather, archiving off of the HR (with something like a Hauppauge HD PVR). It's certainly more work, but it's the most flexible since the content now "stands alone" and can be backed up however you want. Mirroring on another HR certainly has it's advantages, not the least of which is additional tuners, and will become even more advantageous when MRV is fully implemented. But that means additional lease fees, and the content is still "trapped" in the HR(s). If a lightning strike took out your HRs, you're still out even if the content on the hard drives is intact.


I wasn't really considering "archiving" any programming. If I want to save a series, I buy the DVD box set, such as the Sopranos. And if lightning strikes and takes out my HRs, well, first I don't think it could take them all out at once. If that were to happen, my HRs would be the least of my problems. And if one is taken out, no big deal, everything is backed up and on different circuits all protected by GFIs and surge protectors (I do consider surge protectors virtually useless, but buy them because I like the way they are configured).

I gotta admit I'm kinda surprised by the whole MRV thing. I like the idea and am using it now to some degree. What surprises me is that I think people will use less HRs once MRV is implemented. I don't get that kind of thinking. Unless they plan to charge a lot for MRV. I thought that their main thrust would be to get more receivers out there, not less.

Rich


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## DarinC (Aug 31, 2004)

rich584 said:


> I gotta admit I'm kinda surprised by the whole MRV thing. I like the idea and am using it now to some degree. What surprises me is that I think people will use less HRs once MRV is implemented. I don't get that kind of thinking.


The minority will use it from PCs, most will access it via other receivers. So most will still need receivers (of some type) in the rooms they watch TV. From DirecTV's perspective, they'd probaby _prefer_ it if it caused people to have fewer HRs and more standard receivers. Same monthly revenue, and the higher up-front lease fee of the HR probably doesn't offset the higher support costs. But the bottom line is: it has value in the marketplace, so it's something to give their product an edge over (or keep up with) the competition.


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

turey22 said:


> Why do you need 2000gs? lol


I am now watching ELO ZOOM CONCERT after watching TOM PETTY on SOUNDSTAGE (Part 1 & 2) and that is AWESOME!!!

You can't have TOO MUCH STORAGE SPACE as I have found on my Yamaha MusiCast Music Server with a 750 Gig Hard Drive. If I don't use it now I probably will in the future.

Why not just watch LIVE TV??? Because you may not like what is on or it may be half way thru the telecast, etc.

Or set up things for the DVR to catch when you aren't looking such as Concerts by "Tom Petty" or whomever. Then when you select the PlayList there it is and what a delight that you now have something to watch that you want and you forgot that you even asked for it to be recorded.


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

turey22 said:


> Why do you need 2000gs? lol


Because its there...


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

And it is THERE WHEN YOU NEED IT!!! :lol:

Can't wait to Record The Masters Golf Tournament in it's entirety!

P.S. And go there for the Monday Practice Round!


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

DarinC said:


> The minority will use it from PCs, most will access it via other receivers. So most will still need receivers (of some type) in the rooms they watch TV. From DirecTV's perspective, they'd probaby _prefer_ it if it caused people to have fewer HRs and more standard receivers. Same monthly revenue, and the higher up-front lease fee of the HR probably doesn't offset the higher support costs. But the bottom line is: it has value in the marketplace, so it's something to give their product an edge over (or keep up with) the competition.


I agree with your reasoning, but many of us only use HRs and don't want to go back to receivers and I would think that with MRV the number of actual receivers would go down too. I keep seeing that commercial for MRV on FIOS (I think, wasn't D*) where the basketball player says something like: Oh boy, now I can put TVs everywhere in my home. First time I saw it, my first thought was that that type of viewer would end up with one receiver and a whole lot of TVs, which doesn't do FIOS, D* or the cable providers any good that I can see. Should be interesting to see how it shakes out.

Rich


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## t_h (Mar 7, 2008)

I can see the whole house dvr model working out pretty well for directv or for a customer.

One big box with a large hard drive and 2-4 tuners, no tv hookups or response to a remote, just a tuner/storage box. One SWM wire from the dish to that box, which could be placed anywhere in the house meeting the temps and power requirements. Base receivers on all the tvs. Wireless N or powerline between the box and the receivers or PC's. Storage box just records shows and serves up ~4 playback streams to the receivers or pc's.

Easy and cheap to install, much simpler to implement (no one box 'doing it all'), easy to troubleshoot, and much lower equipment cost in the home to service more than one television.

Oh yeah, and it'd also be "better than MRV" since you'd be able to watch anything anywhere, just by throwing a cheap base receiver there.


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

t_h said:


> I can see the whole house dvr model working out pretty well for directv or for a customer.
> 
> One big box with a large hard drive and 2-4 tuners, no tv hookups or response to a remote, just a tuner/storage box. One SWM wire from the dish to that box, which could be placed anywhere in the house meeting the temps and power requirements. Base receivers on all the tvs. Wireless N or powerline between the box and the receivers or PC's. Storage box just records shows and serves up ~4 playback streams to the receivers or pc's.
> 
> ...


Yup. Assuming the box had a enough horsepower to walk and chew gum at the same time, I'd love a SWM-3 dish on my roof connected to a 4-tuner/2TB "HR40". It wouldn't need any audio or video output connections... just coax in/out to H21-200's connected to each display in the home. It should also have RJ-45 for VOD and Media share. I'd like to see the "HR40" network with the H21's via RG6, however.

The H21's would also need to be fed with SAT signal for LIVE TV. Not sure how that would be done, tho. :scratchin

/steve


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## t_h (Mar 7, 2008)

The RG6 networking would be nice for current subs, but wouldnt it be sweet for new subs if directv could avoid drilling holes in the house and running a lot of coax? One wire, and maybe its the same cable tv wire you've already got coming in from the side of your house?

The live tv thing is pretty straightforward. "tuning" to a channel would lock a tuner on that channel and it'd stream the feed to the receiver.

Cool part about this idea is the set top box doesnt need to be very much, more like the Roku player than a directv receiver. Or a PS/3 or an xbox 360, any DLNA compliant player.

Wouldnt need tuners or any sort of encoder, just an mpeg 2/4 decoder, a little cpu, network chip, bit of ram, not even a fan.


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

t_h said:


> The RG6 networking would be nice for current subs, but wouldnt it be sweet for new subs if directv could avoid drilling holes in the house and running a lot of coax? One wire, and maybe its the same cable tv wire you've already got coming in from the side of your house?


Actually I think I read somewhere that for short runs (under 40' ???), you can use RG59. Don't quote me on that tho. 



> The live tv thing is pretty straightforward. "tuning" to a channel would lock a tuner on that channel and it'd stream the feed to the receiver.


I was thinking H21's for LIVE TV, in case all tuners on the "HR40" were recording at the time. /steve


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## t_h (Mar 7, 2008)

I was thinking that with current limitations, if both tuners on an HR2x are recording, you cant watch live tv. Same limitation would exist with the "whole house dvr".

Dontcha just love idle speculation?


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

t_h said:


> I was thinking that with current limitations, if both tuners on an HR2x are recording, you cant watch live tv. Same limitation would exist with the "whole house dvr".
> 
> Dontcha just love idle speculation?


I was hoping the MRV would be wireless. My main viewing room is not accessible anymore for cable runs. Too hard to explain why, if you saw it, you'd understand. Oh well, if it's not wireless, I guess I'll just stick with my own MRV wiring system. The MRV system that Monster Cables is coming out with is wireless and I had hoped...

Rich


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

rich584 said:


> I was hoping the MRV would be wireless. My main viewing room is not accessible anymore for cable runs. Too hard to explain why, if you saw it, you'd understand. Oh well, if it's not wireless, I guess I'll just stick with my own MRV wiring system. The MRV system that Monster Cables is coming out with is wireless and I had hoped...
> 
> Rich


MRV will work wired or wireless....although wired will work better, unless you have 801.11 "N" wireless speeds to handle the bandwidth flawlessly.


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

MRV will be transmitted via the Directv HR2X DVRs at "G" Speed and nothing above 100 Mbps so "N" Speed want help you unless there is something I am not seeing or knowing about.


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

richierich said:


> MRV will be transmitted via the Directv HR2X DVRs at "G" Speed and nothing above 100 Mbps so "N" Speed want help you unless there is something I am not seeing or knowing about.


"G" speed is effectively 27 mbps in an "ideal" setup. I.e., no interference from microwaves, walls, girders or other obstructions, and no loss due to distance from the antenna. What if there are several folks using the network at the same time? That 27 mbps can drop to 4-5 pretty quick, and you probably want a solid 8 mbps or more for HD, especially with trickplay.

"N" is nominally about double "G" speeds, so gives you lots more leeway. Just my .02. /steve


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## Tom Robertson (Nov 15, 2005)

As Steve points out (and experience has shown), reliable HD at G speed is not likely. You really want N wireless to overcome the effects of the "rest of the network" and the other overhead.

Cheers,
Tom


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

hdtvfan0001 said:


> MRV will work wired or wireless....although wired will work better, unless you have 801.11 "N" wireless speeds to handle the bandwidth flawlessly.


I do have an "N'' router. Fast, very fast. How do the HRs receive the signal? Must need some doodad, no?

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

Steve said:


> "G" speed is effectively 27 mbps in an "ideal" setup. I.e., no interference from microwaves, walls, girders or other obstructions, and no loss due to distance from the antenna. What if there are several folks using the network at the same time? That 27 mbps can drop to 4-5 pretty quick, and you probably want a solid 8 mbps or more for HD, especially with trickplay.
> 
> "N" is nominally about double "G" speeds, so gives you lots more leeway. Just my .02. /steve


So, my "N" cable router will be all I need? Besides the receiving doodad? I can hard wire five of my HRs but the other three are in a room that, well you'd have to see it, there is no way to get an ethernet wire in there neatly.

Rich


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

rich584 said:


> So, my "N" cable router will be all I need? Besides the receiving doodad? I can hard wire five of my HRs but the other three are in a room that, well you'd have to see it, there is no way to get an ethernet wire in there neatly.


I'm not using wireless with my HR2x's, but you can either use a wireless bridge that connects up to the HR2x's ethernet port, or DirecTV added built-in support for a Linksys WGA600N adapter. Check this out. /steve


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

I have heard that "G" Speed is up to 100 Mbps and that the Fastest Speed the DVRs can support is 100 Mbps so anything over that is OverKill. Mine transmits so Fast with the "G" Speed Router that by the time I get upstairs it will be ready for me to watch.

If your DVR such as an HR21-700 or HR23-700 transmitted at 54 Mbps that would still be fast enough for a smooth video transfer of an HD Movie even if you had several others on the network at the same time. The only problem would be is Gaming was being played on the network as it is a resource hog.


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## CCarncross (Jul 19, 2005)

G is up to 54, N is up to 108, and don't forget those numbers are in Mb, not MB. Even in the best circumstances, G cannot really stream HD content reliably, you need N or hardwired 100Mb.


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## Tom Robertson (Nov 15, 2005)

richierich said:


> I have heard that "G" Speed is up to 100 Mbps and that the Fastest Speed the DVRs can support is 100 Mbps so anything over that is OverKill. Mine transmits so Fast with the "G" Speed Router that by the time I get upstairs it will be ready for me to watch.
> 
> If your DVR such as an HR21-700 or HR23-700 transmitted at 54 Mbps that would still be fast enough for a smooth video transfer of an HD Movie even if you had several others on the network at the same time. The only problem would be is Gaming was being played on the network as it is a resource hog.


Let the voices of people who've actually tested ring. Turbo G on a silent network (only one HR2x) and one PC will do HD with some burps--if the antennas are all nicely aligned and close (strong signals.)

But add a few more HR2x and or DLNA clients or servers and Turbo G goes toast each time all those devices start nattering away asking "Who's there", which is often.

So go N 

Cheers,
Tom


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## crasmus22 (Jan 12, 2009)

CCarncross said:


> G is up to 54, N is up to 108, and don't forget those numbers are in Mb, not MB. Even in the best circumstances, G cannot really stream HD content reliably, you need N or hardwired 100Mb.


Depends on the HD stream. HD isn't defined by bitrate.


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

CCarncross said:


> G is up to 54, N is up to 108, and don't forget those numbers are in Mb, not MB. Even in the best circumstances, G cannot really stream HD content reliably, you need N or hardwired 100Mb.


Oh really....ya need to come over and see it doing HD here all the time over "G" my friend.... 

Running MRV here right now with "G" Wireless Ethernet converters, and have watched a number of HD programs playing off HD DVRs in other parts of the house.

As for speed....there are a number of variables involved, including distance, as well as the source router's capabilities and speed. In my case, my DLink "N" router supports up to Gigabit speed....my "G" remote location speeds are regularly at 54 Mb, with HD content sent to 3 other home locations without any problems.

If someone is starting from scratch...of course it would make sense to go to "N" as the new standard...but your "observation" about "G" is plain wrong.

So now back to the original topic...its been weeks now and RichieRich is still not even near making a big dent in his storage...holey moley.


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

hdtvfan0001 said:


> Oh really....ya need to come over and see it doing HD here all the time over "G" my friend....
> 
> Running MRV here right now with "G" Wireless Ethernet converters, and have watched a number of HD programs playing off HD DVRs in other parts of the house.
> 
> ...


Agree that "G" under ideal circumstances can handle 1 or 2 8-10 mb streams, good enough for 2x MPEG-4 HD. Disagree that you're getting 54 mbps, tho. Effective throughput for G is somewhere between 22 mbps and 27 mbps, depending on which one of these you believe.  54 mbps is the "signalling" rate, and does not represent actual throughput. /steve


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

Steve said:


> Agree that "G" under ideal circumstances can handle 1 or 2 8-10 mb streams, good enough for 2x MPEG-4 HD. Disagree that you're getting 54 mbps, tho. Effective throughput for G is somewhere between 22 mbps and 27 mbps, depending on which one of these you believe.  54 mbps is the "signalling" rate, and does not represent actual throughput. /steve


Ok....who's got a meter and the time to measure here....:lol:

Perhaps a simple translation....IT WORKS with "G" here - including MPEG4 HD.


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## dgobe (Dec 8, 2008)

hdtvfan0001 said:


> Ok....who's got a meter and the time to measure here....:lol:
> 
> Perhaps a simple translation....IT WORKS with "G" here - including MPEG4 HD.


Are you using any encryption?

G will be marginal at best for most configurations.


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

dgobe said:


> Are you using any encryption?
> 
> G will be marginal at best for most configurations.


WEP only for now....not marginal here...solid for over 18 months now...even better with the Dlink "N" router as of 4 months ago...

Actually, I was all sorts of anxious to go to "N" on the client locations..and now not so urgent anymore...


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## vurbano (May 15, 2004)

G works fine here. Also have hardwired 100 throughout the house but no problems with laptops using G and Directvpc


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

So....how about a content (hours) and %-used update on that big boy, RichieRich?


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

Well, I have 184 Hours of HD Content with some SD Content mixed in but not alot and I am at 67% so I guess I can Record about 530 Hours of just HD Content but with some SD Mixed in I think I will be able to Record about 550 Hours of mostly HD with a little SD thrown in.

Does that sound right?

I'm very concerned that I am running out of room and we have the TPC Tournament and THE MASTERS (anyone out there going to the Practice Round on Monday) and alot of Golf to Record along with Nascar and College Football so I am going to need my 3000 Gigabytes on my 2 Directv DVRs for Storage so it seems.


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## Podkayne (Nov 1, 2007)

richierich said:


> Well, I have 184 Hours of HD Content with some SD Content mixed in but not alot and I am at 67% so I guess I can Record about 530 Hours of just HD Content but with some SD Mixed in I think I will be able to Record about 550 Hours of mostly HD with a little SD thrown in.
> 
> Does that sound right?
> 
> I'm very concerned that I am running out of room and we have the TPC Tournament and THE MASTERS (anyone out there going to the Practice Round on Monday) and alot of Golf to Record along with Nascar and College Football so I am going to need my 3000 Gigabytes on my 2 Directv DVRs for Storage so it seems.


This coincides nicely with my 2x1 TB array...500 - 550 hours capacity, depending on mix of programming. The vast majority of our recordings are HD.


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

I just love not having to go into the Menu each day and deciding on what programs to delete to make room for other recordings even though it will do it automatically I would rather make the choices as I trust myself more than this technology which is prone to mistakes and snafus.


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

Podkayne said:


> This coincides nicely with my 2x1 TB array...500 - 550 hours capacity, depending on mix of programming. The vast majority of our recordings are HD.





richierich said:


> Well, I have 184 Hours of HD Content with some SD Content mixed in but not alot and I am at 67% so I guess I can Record about 530 Hours of just HD Content but with some SD Mixed in I think I will be able to Record about 550 Hours of mostly HD with a little SD thrown in.
> 
> I'm very concerned that I am running out of room and we have the TPC Tournament and THE MASTERS (anyone out there going to the Practice Round on Monday) and alot of Golf to Record along with Nascar and College Football so I am going to need my 3000 Gigabytes on my 2 Directv DVRs for Storage so it seems.


I suspect you'll be just fine with recording for some time still, before you even need to "visit" the menu for deleting anything...


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## aleicgrant (Sep 26, 2007)

I just got a 5 bay esata enclosure and 5 2tb drives. Am I correct that an HR22 or 23 can handle that sort of capacity?

At one point some time back I recall someone saying 2tb was the max but that might be for the older generation HR's


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

All of the HR2Xs have a Kernel Limitation of 2 TB.


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

richierich said:


> All of the HR2Xs have a Kernel Limitation of 2 TB.


Yup....and 2000 GB (as you have called it before) is a ton of recording time.

DVRs are not intended as archival systems, but that surely allows alot of storage and its 10X the capacity of FIOS and most cable HD DVRs.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

richierich said:


> All of the HR2Xs have a Kernel Limitation of 2 TB.


Seen anybody selling those things cheaper than WD itself? BB wants $299. Got an owned 20-700 the other day and would like to drop one in it, but I know as soon as I do, someone will start selling them for half that price. I put a Seagate Cuda 1.5 in the 700, but would sure like to upgrade that one or buy another owned unit and drop the 2TB in.

Rich


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

Well, I am down to 30% Available Space on my HR23-700 with the 2 TB Internal Drive so I better start deleting some stuff soon. BAH HUMBUG, I only have room for 160 Hours of HD Recording Material.

Also, no problems whatsoever with this drive as it is working GREAT!!!

Newegg.com now has this drive for $229.99.


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

richierich said:


> Well, I am down to 30% Available Space on my HR23-700 with the 2 TB Internal Drive so I better start deleting some stuff soon. BAH HUMBUG, I only have room for 160 Hours of HD Recording Material.
> 
> Also, no problems whatsoever with this drive as it is working GREAT!!!
> 
> Newegg.com now has this drive for $229.99.


Gee...getting "low" huh? :lol:

Somehow, I suspect that 2000 GB (aka 2TB) drive would suffice for most of the rest of us. 

At $229, there may be more takers too.


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

Time to do some Serious Maintenance on that Puppy!!! :lol::lol::lol:


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

Thank God I Upgraded or I would be in serious deep dark do do!!! :lol:


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

Now I am down to 25% Available Capacity so I better do some more Serious Maintenance on this Puppy!!!

Who would have ever thought that I would use up this much space but HD does take up alot of capacity!!!


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

richierich said:


> Now I am down to 25% Available Capacity so I better do some more Serious Maintenance on this Puppy!!!
> 
> Who would have ever thought that I would use up this much space but HD does take up alot of capacity!!!


I filled up one 2TB eSATA, and three 1.5s this season. Finally got to watch some shows and am at over 30% on all of them now. Glad to see yours is still working well.

Rich


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

Rich, it is Working Flawlessly!!! Well, I finally reached 2,000 Posts!!! I have been spending way too much time here but I just love the Enhancements ot the DVR!!!


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

richierich said:


> Now I am down to 25% Available Capacity so I better do some more Serious Maintenance on this Puppy!!!
> 
> Who would have ever thought that I would use up this much space but HD does take up alot of capacity!!!





rich584 said:


> I filled up one 2TB eSATA, and three 1.5s this season. Finally got to watch some shows and am at over 30% on all of them now. Glad to see yours is still working well.
> 
> Rich


Geez - you gents needs to stay home once in a while and actually WATCH some of that recorded content. :lol:

I figure in about 6 months, you'll be caught up, and can hit the delete button over and over...:lol:


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

And now I am Recording 4 Different Golf Events or Channels of the U.S. Open Golf Championship and that will eat up alot of capacity so I will have to Perform Maintenance tonight prior to doing that 11:00 P.M. thingy.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

richierich said:


> And now I am Recording 4 Different Golf Events or Channels of the U.S. Open Golf Championship and that will eat up alot of capacity so I will have to Perform Maintenance tonight prior to doing that 11:00 P.M. thingy.


You need more HRs. Can't have enough. :lol:

Rich


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

I have 6 DVRs with 7,000 GBs of Capacity so I guess I am a Sick Puppy but I just Love to Watch What I Want To Watch When I Want To Watch It!!! :hurah:


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

richierich said:


> I have 6 DVRs with 7,000 GBs of Capacity so I guess I am a Sick Puppy but I just Love to Watch What I Want To Watch When I Want To Watch It!!! :hurah:


Never totaled up mine. In one room, I have four HRs with 6.5TBs and 3.5TBs on the rest. 10TB total. I win :lol:. That's gross capacity.

The way these things are running, I'm actually revisiting the whole "archiving" thing. I trusted the SD TiVos enough to record the whole original Star Trek series on and I'm beginning to feel like I could do it with the HRs. I have not lost one show this season. I did have that problem with the 22, but ended up with a 23 that will get a drive like yours in an enclosure. In a couple months.

Don't need all that capacity in the summer.

Rich


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

I do perform Maintenance on my DVRs about once a month to either watch something that is a month old or older or to Delete it. Priorities change which then says I may not still need that recording or I need to watch it and then delete it as it is not as important as I thought at the time I recorded it.


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## Steve Rhodes (Oct 4, 2006)

hdtvfan0001 said:


> DVRs are not intended as archival systems.


Devices can be used for whatever the user wants.

We have some shows archived from two years ago. We backed them up to DVDs just in case, but we like having the ability to see them again easily on our DVR. We view the DVR as main storage medium.


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

I am using my 6 DVRs as not only Directv Receivers but also as Storage Mediums so I can Watch What I Want When I Want and not have to be bothered with finding a DVD and loading it up, etc.

I believe that Huge Archival Systems will be the Wave of the Future as more and more people will want Instant Access to their Favorite TV Shows or Sporting Events or Movies and as Memory gets cheaper and better ways to backup up DVRs then you want have to worry about losing Recordings or having to find that archived DVD.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

rich584 said:


> You need more HRs. Can't have enough.


Alternatively, DIRECTV could decide to implement proper archiving to external drives. Why have a large number of relatively sophisticated devices with their attendant monthly fees to store all of your movies when you really only need two or three and alot of relatively cheap storage?

Think outside the boxes.


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## bsnelson (Jul 6, 2007)

Those of you who are asking "Duh! Why not bigger drives, DirecTV? Duh!": The answer is: They do not WANT us archiving shows. They tolerate short term timeshifting because the customers demand it, but they don't WANT you keeping all of last season's CSI on the DVR; they want to make the content producers happy by getting you to buy it on DVD instead. 

There is no value added for DirecTV with bigger drives, except if they use the space themselves to expand their "pseudo-on-demand" services. Letting the user archive "free" recordings doesn't help them in any way. 

Brad


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

richierich said:


> I am using my 6 DVRs as not only Directv Receivers but also as Storage Mediums so I can Watch What I Want When I Want and not have to be bothered with finding a DVD and loading it up, etc.
> 
> I believe that Huge Archival Systems will be the Wave of the Future as more and more people will want Instant Access to their Favorite TV Shows or Sporting Events or Movies and as Memory gets cheaper and better ways to backup up DVRs then you want have to worry about losing Recordings or having to find that archived DVD.


Keep believing, I'm believing right along with you. I see a new acronym! Huge Archival Systems (HAS). You named it and should get the credit for it. Let us all take a moment and believe that HAS will become a common acronym in the next couple years. We should start a thread, name it "What are your thoughts about HAS?". :lol:

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

harsh said:


> Alternatively, DIRECTV could decide to implement proper archiving to external drives. Why have a large number of relatively sophisticated devices with their attendant monthly fees to store all of your movies when you really only need two or three and alot of relatively cheap storage?
> 
> Think outside the boxes.


That would take a lot of faith in the HRs and eSATAs. Faith that I don't have at the moment. Took me an awful long time to trust computers, since 1962 as a matter of fact.

I did lose two eSATAs in the past year and I'm just not ready to proclaim that I trust any of the devices that are connected to my dish. And as long as the wife (boss) doesn't complain about the D* bill, I'll stick with my many HRs and their attendant eSATAs.

I agree wholeheartedly with your proposal, but not now.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

bsnelson said:


> Those of you who are asking "Duh! Why not bigger drives, DirecTV? Duh!": The answer is: They do not WANT us archiving shows. They tolerate short term timeshifting because the customers demand it, but they don't WANT you keeping all of last season's CSI on the DVR; they want to make the content producers happy by getting you to buy it on DVD instead.
> 
> There is no value added for DirecTV with bigger drives, except if they use the space themselves to expand their "pseudo-on-demand" services. Letting the user archive "free" recordings doesn't help them in any way.
> 
> Brad


Ah, a conspiracy. One I'd agree with if D* sold DVDs. Do you really think that D* and the producers of shows and the DVD producers got together and decided that bigger drives would cause negative effects on their bottom lines? Serious question, not busting.

Rich


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## Richierich (Jan 10, 2008)

Well, it is the same concept as AOL uses. All of your Profile Data and Emails are stored on an External Server which is downloaded to your PC when you log into AOL. It is not stored on your PC but downloaded to it when needed as when you log in.

The Directv Scenario could be very similar where they have huge Storage Servers and our Movies, Shows, etc. are stored and retrieved from that server.

Another Scenario could be that you just have a Backup Server or Site where your data is stored or backed up and you just download it on demand. As wireless gets faster and storage gets cheaper I believe this will be the Wave of the Future so if your PC fails you just buy another one and log into the Backup Storage Server and download your content including Profile Data and Settings. etc.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

richierich said:


> Well, it is the same concept as AOL uses. All of your Profile Data and Emails are stored on an External Server which is downloaded to your PC when you log into AOL. It is not stored on your PC but downloaded to it when needed as when you log in.
> 
> The Directv Scenario could be very similar where they have huge Storage Servers and our Movies, Shows, etc. are stored and retrieved from that server.
> 
> Another Scenario could be that you just have a Backup Server or Site where your data is stored or backed up and you just download it on demand. As wireless gets faster and storage gets cheaper I believe this will be the Wave of the Future so if your PC fails you just buy another one and log into the Backup Storage Server and download your content including Profile Data and Settings. etc.


My Lenovo Ideapad keeps trying to get me to do just that. A dialog box keeps popping up asking me if I want to put all my valuable info on their server. Don't remember the site's name. Next time it pops up I'll send you a link. I have no valuable stuff on any of my computers, just use them as Internet portals, so I've just been ignoring the dialog box.

Rich


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