IDE to SATA converters - making the move to a new hard drive

[deswong]

Hi,

I've been considering moving my OzTiVo 300Gb hard drive to a larger capacity hard drive, to find that larger IDE hard drives are getting harder to find.

Can you use a SATA to IDE converter such as: http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.7533 to put in a SATA drive into a TiVo (Philips HDR110)?

The other question is if I can put in a 1Tb into it without any problems? The largest that I can recall in the forums seems to be a 750Gb, but if I am going SATA I am planning on using the Green Power SATA drives by Western Digital in it, I think 1Tb will last me another ... 4-5 years.

Des.

[Darren King]

Hi and welcome to the forums. Before you go any further can you please update your profile to show your location? It makes location specific questions easier to answer.

In answer to your question regarding ATA-SATA adaptors, the short answer is "no". The longer answer is from post 20 onwards in this thread: http://forums.oztivo.net/showthread.php?t=1022

There have been reports of people using 1TB hard disks (not SATA, of course). In reality 750GB is ample room and anything more is asking for trouble when the hard disk eventually fails and takes with it a whole library of recordings :D

[deswong]

Hi Darren,

Thanks for the reply - and also to add my location.

I haven't been unlucky enough to lose my TiVo drive - but a very valid point. I think back now I had a 40Gb to start off with, I think I have a 200Gb in there at the moment and I've noticed recently at work I cannot get anything above 160Gb in PATA/IDE hence the question of moving to SATA. I've quizzed most of our company suppliers and they are saying that they are moving it all over to SATA as well.

I'll have to hunt around and find a nice 500-750gb drive and upgrade over my holidays :) I am on the very old OzTivo 1.4 (?) image and am thinking of updating the digital tv box to HD, in anticipation of this freeview thing and some of the shows on HD...

Thanks!

Des.

[Darren King]

I'll have to hunt around and find a nice 500-750gb drive and upgrade over my holidays :)

Use the link Peter gave in the other thread. IDE hard disks are still out there and won't totally disappear for a while yet, but people will just have to go the extra mile than the local PC shop to find them :)

[Skolink]

In case you didn't see the notice - don't buy a Western Digital 500Gb Caviar Blue 16Mb cache (model WD5000AAKB ) as they are no longer compatible with the TiVo IDE controller (possibly due to their latest firmware). WD say there is no utility available to load a previous version of firmware onto the drive.

[deswong]

In case you didn't see the notice - don't buy a Western Digital 500Gb Caviar Blue 16Mb cache (model WD5000AAKB ) as they are no longer compatible with the TiVo IDE controller (possibly due to their latest firmware). WD say there is no utility available to load a previous version of firmware onto the drive.

Hi!

Thanks for that, I also discovered that looking through the faq's - a bit disappointed about that because those drives are so cheap!

Des.

[ciper]

If any of you have tried to use a converter please add your results to this thread http://tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=416883

If you plan on using one the previously mentioned thread has some advice on what to look for.

[petestrash]

That thread is fine for S2's, but haven't seen an IDE-SATA adapter that has worked on S1's for years.

With manufacturing costs being such an issue on what is now a mature product, I don't believe we will see a new S1 compatible card available again.

Peter.