eSATA functionality

[lrhorer]

Well. since this is going in an external enclosure, I don't see that the low spin-up current is an issue, and Seagate bills their own Barracuda drives as the quietest in the industry, so I'm going to give a whack at an MX-1 enclosure with a 750G Barracuda drive in it. I just ordered both from Compusa at $60 for the MX-1 and $280 for the drive. I'll let everyone know how it goes. (In know I couldhave gotten them a bit cheaper from other vendors, but I like the fact there's a Compusa right down the block if I have any problems with the units.)

[bcc]

Well. since this is going in an external enclosure, I don't see that the low spin-up current is an issue, and Seagate bills their own Barracuda drives as the quietest in the industry,

Ordinary desktop seagate sata drives are the noisiest in my experience. See also the maxtor/quantum patent on acoustic management, which used to leave seagate SOL when it comes to tuning the acoustic vs performance state of the drive.

[jonbig]

Of course Maxtor is now part of Seagate, so the quiet technology can appear across the Seagate line now.

[bcc]

Of course Maxtor is now part of Seagate, so the quiet technology can appear across the Seagate line now.

And of course, the seagate baracuda line was architected before the acquisition and so it would not be safe to assume they retrofitted quiet drive technology in the short period since then.
For the seagate 750gb, http://www.silentpcreview.com/article611-page2.html, some highlights:

"Unfortunately, AAM (Automatic Acoustic Management) is not supported...
All four of the high capacity drives were relatively loud at idle...
The implementation of Automatic Acoustic Management (AAM) to reduce the seek noise is sorely missed..."

Still noisy like the 7200.9 series it seems. Poor choice for the living room IMO.

[edentel]

I tried out the Maddog Megavault as an experiment in reuse of my IDE DB35 pulled from my HR10-250. The enclosure is advertised as having internal IDE and SATA connectors with external SATA and USB. Since I had the drive, and COMPUSA down the road carried the enclosure I figured why not....

Well after 4 or 5 shots at trying to get the TiVo to recognize the drive without luck I remembered my new pc motherboard had E-SATA connectors. Sure enough my PC wouldn't find it either. Flipped the drive caddy switch to USB and the PC finds it fine. It would appear the SATA to IDE portion doesn't work as alluded to.

Just information for anyone else who notices it on the shelf.....

[lrhorer]

Oh, this is so cool! The kickstart code worked fine and now I'm showing 132 hours of HD capacity, and it's so much less worrisome than opening the enclose, pulling the drive, putting it in an external PC, marrying the drives, and installing everything back in the TiVo. 'Much less hassle and time, too.

By the way, at least in the MX-1 housing, the drive is very quiet - certainly a lot quieter than the fan in the projector or even the air conditioning when it's running. (In Texas, it's pretty much always running.) I can certainly hear it if I sit right next to the drive in a perfectly quiet room, but 12 feet away in a room that is not sound-proofed I cannot say with any authority I can hear it at all.

[lrhorer]

Well, this is worrisome. I turned on the video system today to watch a bit of TV, and the TiVo's response to remote commands was rather sluggish. The system seemed to freeze several times while browsing the Now Playing list. Then I selected a program and deleted it, only to be greeted by the GSOD. "Oh, darn!" I said (or something like that, anyway). Of course at this point there were only really two choices: turn off the TV and do something else or sit and stare at a white on green text screen for several hours. Of course, I had no real expectations of the GSOD working, as I have never seen it actually work before, but I dithered around doing a few simple chores for about 20 minutes. Just out of fatalistic optimism, I checked the TiVo only to be greatly surprised at seeing the power up screen! The TiVo finished booting normally, and not only is the external drive still there, but all the recordings seem to be intact. I hope this isn't something systemic related to the addition of the drive, though.

Has anyone else been greeted by the GSOD one or two days after adding the external drive?

[lrhorer]

I had another GSOD a couple of days later, but none since. The symptoms were pretty much the same. The arrow key response became very sluggish. There were two programs recording, and when they both finished, the TiVo rebooted to the GSOD and recovered in about 10 minutes. It's been working fine, since.

[Jamie]

Thanks - I was hoping to find a dedicated chip. In this case I can only speculate how they might try to manage the external eSata drive. Check out this site: http://www.siliconimage.com/products...ct.aspx?id=108

Look at the diagram of the storage processor and then download the White Paper Capacity Expansion. Tell me what you think.

Rumor has it the new tivoHD is using a relative of this chip for its SATA controller, the SIL5723.

[lrhorer]

TiVoHD? Is this a new offering from TiVo? Any details?

[Jamie]

TiVoHD? Is this a new offering from TiVo? Any details?

Lots of discussion over at TCF. Of course, you could check tivo.com where it is featured prominently. Or the review here, one on cnet etc.

[megazone]

Rumor has it the new tivoHD is using a relative of this chip for its SATA controller, the SIL5723.

Indeed it is - the BCM7401 is connected to a SiI5723, which, in turn, leads to the two SATA headers in use. (For the internal drive and the eSATA port.)