home made 2nd drive bracket

[Sk33t3r]

I made this here at hoem with some left over plex and standoffs and screws from a pc.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v196/misseianna/tivo/tivodrive001.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v196/misseianna/tivo/tivodrive002.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v196/misseianna/tivo/tivodrive003.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v196/misseianna/tivo/tivodrive004.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v196/misseianna/tivo/tivodrive005.jpg

[Greubin]

Looks good to me, just what I was looking for. I have the PTV upgrade bracket in my HR10-250 and was looking at alternatives for my SD DTivo.

[Sk33t3r]

You just have to use a plexiglass or glass cutter and score it several time why its clamped down and then snap it why it clamped. When drilling use a sharp bit and drill it on a peice of wood other wise it will crack, and drill slowly

[chrised]

Just wondering how the temperature on the HD control board will do with that "insulating" surface across the bottom of the drive...

And why anyone would choose to add the risks of a second drive (double the failure risk) to add 80 gig to the original 40 gig when replacement hard drives are so cheap these days..

[captain_video]

Check out the brackets I made in this post:

http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/showthread.php?p=232292#post232292

They're basically a knockoff of the 9th Tee S2 Tivo brackets but they're made of alumuminum plate with shock isolators.

The problem I see with your design is the fact that it's made of plexiglas and the drive is attached directly to it with no gap for air flow. A metal bracket plate acts as a heat sink to provide some cooling for the drive. The shock isolators raise the drive off the plate to provide an air gap.

You also have the supports mounted on the PC board. The PC board now has to support the weight of the drive, which can be a bit risky. If the unit sustains any sort of shock, such as dropping it a few inches or even setting it down hard, you run the risk of cracking the mainboard. All other bracket designs have a 3rd support located off the mainboard to avoid this situation.

[vurbano]

cut some of the plexi glass out for ventilation

[mbellot]

Just wondering how the temperature on the HD control board will do with that "insulating" surface across the bottom of the drive....

I was actually wondering how hot that drive gets sitting over those two ICs with the big heatsinks.

Probably not the best place to put a hard drive, but defnitely nice work.

[captain_video]

Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of placement options available when installing a 2nd drive. Most bracket installations take advantage of the two standoffs on the left side of the chassis since they provide a good attaching point for the bracket.

[Sk33t3r]

Actually there is a small standoff under the pcb that is sitting on the chasis and supporting the longer standoff that the bracket is conncted to, heat hasent been an issue, the receiver is at 104F or 40C, I do need to hack a hole in the bottom of the bracket near the drive motor im thinking, and reduce the length of my cable. I used th 80 gig because I had it laying around and my mother doesnt want dad to record a bunch of BS, 106 hours is too much now!!! :) Its been up for 3 days now, no problems. I could go to home depot and pick up some aluminum flashing and cut that up, i agree the metal would act as a heat sink of sorts.

[Sk33t3r]

Replaced with aluminum same temp as the plexiglass.

[chrised]

Replaced with aluminum same temp as the plexiglass.

What temp are you looking at? The Tivo reported temperature? Wouldn't expect that to change.

What I'd be concerned about is the drive controller temp. If the electronics under that drive get too hot, the drive will shut down and/or malfunction. It would be really neat if someone could figure out how to access the drive SMART parameters (and temp) from the Tivo Linux.

Perhaps the aluminum will help the drive temperature, as it conducts heat rather than insulates. But, the question will be does this help the drive eliminate heat better, or does this help the tivo chips transfer heat upward better?

If you've got the clearance, add some spacers to raise the drive off the aluminum to provide another ventilation path and let the heat escape.

[Jamie]

It would be really neat if someone could figure out how to access the drive SMART parameters (and temp) from the Tivo Linux.
bash-2.02# /tivohacks/bin/smartctl -a /dev/hda | grep -i temp
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0032 253 253 000 Old_age Always - 40

[chrised]

Cool... all we need now is a tivoweb interface! <just kiddin>

btw, what drive do you have? My WD 320 didn't return the temp parameter.

[Jamie]

Cool... all we need now is a tivoweb interface! <just kiddin>

btw, what drive do you have? My WD 320 didn't return the temp parameter.Here are the drives I tried it on, and all returned a temperature:
Maxtor 6Y250P0
Seagate ST3200822A
Seagate ST3160021A
Seagate ST3400620A
WDC WD3200JB-00KFA0

[chrised]

ok, figured it out. I renamed it to smartctl like you did, but apparently 6.2 has a stripped down version of smartctl in the /bin directory, and was executing that by accident.