WD 120GB, which one?

[Edocecrous]

Hi!

I read it here:
http://www.public.asu.edu/~rwultsch/utv.html

that these drives will work with UTV:

80 or 100 GIG Western Digital
120 gig Western Digital 5400
some_ 120 GB Western Digitals 7200_ (only those with a LBA count of 234441648 wil work)
120GB Maxtor 7200 6y120L0_
The UTV will ony support a max of 137 gigs so If you buy anything more you are wasting your money.

I can choose from these 2:
-WD 120GB 7200RPM EIDE HARD DRIVE MODEL # WD1200BB
-WD "SPECIAL EDITION" 120GB 7200RPM EIDE HARD DRIVE MODEL # WD1200JB

Anyone can assist me on which one to buy?
I don't realy want to spend a $100 on a drive which is not compatible with UTV.

Please help!

ps.:It would be a good thing to have a list with compatible drives, ones that where tried and worked...

[satkid00]

the WD 120GB 7200RPM EIDE HARD DRIVE MODEL # WD1200BB works fine. i used it for an upgrade and it worked great. however i am now trying to use it for something else and it is locked. this has nothing to do with the hard drive, it is something the utv does. that is something you might want to keep in mind.

[David Bought]

Either the JB or the BB will work. Buy whichever one is cheaper as typically PVR performance is not improved with an 8MB buffer vs a 2MB buffer.

The instructions for unlocking your UTV drive are well-known and well-documented.

[Edocecrous]

I bought the WD1200BB, it will arrive soon. Thanks for the info...

Edo

[mtbdave1]

The Western Digital WD800BBRTL will NOT work (80Gb)

just my 2 cents..


mtbdave

[kgibbons]

Originally posted by David Bought
Either the JB or the BB will work. Buy whichever one is cheaper as typically PVR performance is not improved with an 8MB buffer vs a 2MB buffer.

The instructions for unlocking your UTV drive are well-known and well-documented.

Are you 100% certain that the 1200JB drive will work? The reason I ask, is because I'm attempting to use one on my UTV, and I'm encounting some problems.

Another board member had the same problem with a drive he was trying to use, and found out the drive wasn't compatible after all. Here's the link to his post:
http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/sh...threadid=26035

Scroll down to mtbdave1's post on this thread.

This is the exact same problem I'm having right now, but I could have fudged things up when overlaying the v3.5 image on my drive.

The one thing that wasn't really clearly explained was the drive preparation. Basically, I had a stock WD 1200JB drive with no partitions. So for me to be able to use WinHex on it, Windows had to be able to see the drive... so I dropped a full-size FAT32 partition on the drive. Full-size meaning I let it use all available space on the drive as one partition.

I then fired up Windows, and there was my drive.. but at that moment it wasn't formatted. So I formatted it, and then followed the instructions to apply the image with WinHex. Once this was completed, I installed back in my UTV, and started getting the dreaded "connecting to WebTV" crap that won't go away.

So like I said, I may have fudged things up by doing the partitioning and formatting first... but I didn't see any other way since WinHex is a windows program.

Any ideas/suggestions?

[wad]

I was wondering if I could replace my current 40 gb drive with a Maxtor 40 gb diamond max plus 6E040L0(can't find out on maxtors site yet if this one supports locking). Is there something special about unformated western digitals that make them work and not other manufacturers aside form the locking abilities that obviously must be avaliable in any drive you use?

My current drive is getting really noisy, wanted to do this before a crash is imminent.

Thanks

[kgibbons]

Originally posted by wad
I was wondering if I could replace my current 40 gb drive with a Maxtor 40 gb diamond max plus 6E040L0(can't find out on maxtors site yet if this one supports locking). Is there something special about unformated western digitals that make them work and not other manufacturers aside form the locking abilities that obviously must be avaliable in any drive you use?

My current drive is getting really noisy, wanted to do this before a crash is imminent.

Thanks

Hey Wad,

I don't think it's anything special about the WD 120gig drives other than they're at the "sweet spot" in terms of price now. With bigger and bigger drives always coming out, the 120gig drives have dropped down to the point where they're the best bang for the buck.

Actually, Circuit City just last week was having a rebate deal on the WD 1200JB drive. It was $159, with $80 worth of mail-in rebates. I believe some guys even made them price match Fry's down to $120, so there was a chance of getting one of these drives as low as $40. I picked one up for the $159 price.. unfortunately I don't have a Fry's nearby, so I couldn't do the price match But even still at $80 that's a good deal.

I know the locking aspect of the drive is paramount with the way UTV works. So I think aside from that, "most" drives should work as long as they do have that ability. The only real limit I've heard aside from the locking is that the unit will only recognize drives as large as 137gb.

Let us know how you make out with your unit...

[wad]

Well I found out that the smaller maxtors will not work. They are not lockable. I just bought a Western digital 120bj and I will try it tonight.

Let you know my results.

Thanks

[wad]

Please help!

I got hthe western digital 1200bj and I zeroed it in winhex and then wrote the image to the drive. Placed drive in utv and voila!! Dialing for an update!! NOOOOOOO!

Anyhow put the drive back into my pc and now it says hard drive 1 failure, the bios recognises it but it fails when I get past the bios, is this becasue it now needs to be unlocked?

If so should I use the unlocker?

Then what are my steps to write the 3.7 image to this drive?

I am starting to think that the drive is a now bad as even if it was locked it shouldn't fail should it?

Any advice would be appreciated.

[kgibbons]

Originally posted by wad
Please help!

I got hthe western digital 1200bj and I zeroed it in winhex and then wrote the image to the drive. Placed drive in utv and voila!! Dialing for an update!! NOOOOOOO!

Anyhow put the drive back into my pc and now it says hard drive 1 failure, the bios recognises it but it fails when I get past the bios, is this becasue it now needs to be unlocked?

If so should I use the unlocker?

Then what are my steps to write the 3.7 image to this drive?

I am starting to think that the drive is a now bad as even if it was locked it shouldn't fail should it?

Any advice would be appreciated.

I agonized over this same situation a few weeks back -- do a search and you can read my previous posts.

First off, are you booting into Windows with the 120gb drive as a slave, and is the drive completely unformatted with zero's written to the drive? If it just came out of the box, then that will absolutely be the case... but if you were like me, you may have thought too much into things and stuck a partition on the drive

Like a dumbass, I said to myself "hmmm... how in the hell can I write to a drive in Windows if windows can't even see it??" So I partitioned and formatted it before I tried the Winhex stuff. Well, that was the wrong move --- the drive has to be completely unformatted and clean as a whistle.


So here's what to do... use the unlocker utility from this thread:
http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/sh...threadid=25827

This utility needs to be run in pure DOS, not a dos window. So create a boot disk, and copy the small executable file from the zip onto the boot disk. Then fire up the PC with your 120gb drive connected as slave still, and let it boot up from the floppy.

When you get to your a:\ prompt, launch the utility. You will then be presented with 4 numbers I believe -- which represent the physical disks you have connected to your system. Make sure to choose the correct disk (WD 1200JB in your case), and hit enter. You will then get a series of "..............." for probably a good hour or so. Let it completely finish its job -- when it's done, it will tell you it's done.

One thing... *sometimes this program ends prematurely. It happened to me the first time I used it. So if it stops working and tells you it's done after like only a few minutes, it did NOT wipe your drive clean. If that happens, reboot to floppy and run it again. For a 120gb drive it will take a good amount of time -- and will tell you when it's complete.

This utility unlocks your drive AND writes zero's to the drive -- so it's sparkling clean and ready for your image at that point. So when it's done, pop the floppy out of your drive, and reboot the PC.

Now launch Winhex...

I believe Winhex has a little "wizard" type of startup, where I usually just hit "cancel". This will then take you to the main screen of Winhex which is where you want to be.

While at the main screen, choose TOOLS>CLONE DISK from the top menu bar.

In source file, select read sectors from image file and browse to the location of your saved image file. Then of course choose the file You will also see a button for destination drive -- click this button and you will be able to choose where you want the image written to.

Here is where you choose the fixed disk that corresponds to your WD1200JB. In my case, it was fixed disk (b) -- being that I only had two hard drives in the system. Now remember, this drive doesn't have any windows partitions or formatting, so it's NOT going to show up as a regular drive letter --- it will only show up as a fixed disk. So choose the correct drive.

Once you've chosen your destination, make sure to enter 631811 as the start sector, and make sure you DO click the checkbox for "copy entire source".

You're now good to go... click on OK at the bottom of this window, and you'll get a couple prompts warning you about a backup and crap like that, just keep following the prompts to let Winhex do its work.

Once you get through the two or three safety prompts, Winhex will start to write the image to your 1200JB drive. It literally only takes like 30 seconds and it's done. When it's done, it will spit you out back at the main hex screen and you'll be looking at the raw hex data on your drive at location 13480600

At this point, you can close out of Winhex, and power down your PC. Then remove the WD1200JB from the system -- and make sure to set the jumper to MASTER. Or with WD drives, you can remove the jumper altogether and this will set it as master also.

Then pop this baby back into your UTV, and fire her up. You should come right up to the "Welcome to UTV" screen. If you get the dialout screen again, you've done something wrong. But if you follow the steps above, you absolutely shouldn't get the dialout screen.

Keep us updated...

[Maxr]

Thanks for the detailed post Kgibbons. I am new here and this is exactly what I have been looking for: A step-by-step on how to setup a new hard disk drive. I have been reading other threads which talk about removing the IDE ribbon cable and such and wasn't clear. Your post seems clear enough and puts it all together, although I don't know if I have to play with the IDE cable. (I hope not.)

I will attempt this upgrade following your instructions. Will let you know next year when I will have succeeded. Wish me luck!

And Happy New Year!

[Maxr]

Question:
If I have a brand new out-of-the-box WD 120GB JB drive, do I still need to unlock and zero it? I assume that it is "zero"ed since I have not installed it anywhere but I will still need to unlock it using the same utility, is that correct? The WD drives come as locked?

[kgibbons]

Question:
If I have a brand new out-of-the-box WD 120GB JB drive, do I still need to unlock and zero it? I assume that it is "zero"ed since I have not installed it anywhere but I will still need to unlock it using the same utility, is that correct? The WD drives come as locked?

No, you don't need to do anything to the drive when you get it... leave the drive as stock (unpartitioned and unformatted), and follow the steps above and you should be golden

[Maxr]

No, you don't need to do anything to the drive when you get it... leave the drive as stock (unpartitioned and unformatted), and follow the steps above and you should be golden

Ok, so basically, I just skip to where the WinHex starts. Plug in the new drive as primary slave (to my primary master HDD), run winhex and copy utv image at the specified sector, etc. Is that correct?