Quickview Drives Better Or Fud?

[newbie]

Michael (Weaknees) just posted this on TCF. Are the maxtor quickview drives really better (no error correction) or is just BS so people overpay for hard drives?

Clearly, neither cheaper nor lower priced.

They are, in fact 5400 RPM drives with 2 MB cache for a reason: who wants a 7200 RPM drive doing 33% more revolutions per day/week/year? That just shortens its lifespan and generates more heat. A 2 MB cache for streaming video is just as effective as an 8 MB cache.

In addition, these drives are tuned differently to be quieter (partially due to the slower spindle speed) and cooler. But they also have another key feature which is error recovery.

A desktop drive, when it encounters an error, hangs trying to re-read that data time and again. This is important when you want your Excel spreadsheet to work - every bit of data is important, so the drive must re-try until it ascertains that the data is bad. But do you care if one bit is wrong in your "ER" show? No - you won't even notice. But you will notice a stutter in a desktop drive because, rather than move ahead, it'll keep re-trying that data block. These QuickView drives will move ahead and get the next data and you'll never notice that one tiny blip.

Finally, how many people out there have found upgrade drives to cause problems when the boot drives were fine? We've seen several pretty old units where a drive causes a problem. A three-year-old Maxtor QuickView (or Quantum QuickView) drive is fine, but a newer Samsung desktop model is to blame.

[captain_video]

I've used all of the major hard drive brands for Tivo upgrades and I can't tell the difference in performance between any of them when used in a Tivo. I agree with what he says about the higher speed, cache, and heat related issues but this is pretty much common knowledge and not exactly a revelation. Whether or not the Quickview drives improve performance I sincerely doubt it, at least not to the point where it would make any difference to the viewer. The original Quantum drives used in Tivos only spun at 4500rpm so anything faster is just a heat and noise generator. The extra cache isn't an issue because you're just streaming a continuous video file from the drive to the Tivo.

[newbie]

The only thing new (to me) is the issue of error checking/recovery. I agree for video it would make sense to skip an error instead of retrying. Just not sure if that makes any real life difference.

I've used all of the major hard drive brands for Tivo upgrades and I can't tell the difference in performance between any of them when used in a Tivo. I agree with what he says about the higher speed, cache, and heat related issues but this is pretty much common knowledge and not exactly a revelation. Whether or not the Quickview drives improve performance I sincerely doubt it, at least not to the point where it would make any difference to the viewer. The original Quantum drives used in Tivos only spun at 4500rpm so anything faster is just a heat and noise generator. The extra cache isn't an issue because you're just streaming a continuous video file from the drive to the Tivo.

[AVD]

The extra cache isn't an issue because you're just streaming a continuous video file from the drive to the Tivo.

just a technaciality,

but if all you were doing was streaming a large file off the drive, the extra cache would improve things considerably, the problem is you are streaming (on a stock tivo) one file off the drive, at least one onto the drive, and all the other os and background stuff at the same time 24/7.

[captain_video]

My statement was a bit oversimplified so you are correct about the other processes that are taking place. While it may seem like having extra cache would be a good idea the reality is that it has no affect on performance whatsoever. When you consider the original Quantum drives that were used they were slower speed and had very little cache yet they worked fine for the purpose of recording and playback of tystreams. The "icing on the cake" you get with the extra cache is nothing but empty calories.