Does anyone know if this Western Digital drive would work?

Western Digital Caviar Blue (WD3200AAJB) 320GB IDE 7200RPM 8MB Buffer
I just installed this drive, and initially I got the hddF error message (hard disk drive failure).

However, I had it set to cable select, which was the same setting as my previous Seagate Barracuda 7200.8. However, I then changed the setting to master (removed the jumper completely) and reseated the cables, and now it seems to work.

I'll give it a good test over the next few days.

BTW, I spent about 1 hour trying to figure out how to set the acoustic management settings, but the software on my Windows machine simply wouldn't see it as a drive that supported acoustic management. The good news is that it seems quiet as is.

Hmmm... I wonder if my problems could have been a heat related issue. I recently reorganized my AV cabinet to fit a bigger centre channel speaker, which meant the space for the PVR was significantly smaller. There is likely more trapped heat in the cabinet, because there is reduced air flow now around the PVR.

I took the old Seagate drive out and I wonder if it ran warmer than the new Western Digital drive I just put in, but with the drive in open air running on my computer, there are no issues. It formats fine and there are no problems with file transfers. Also, the SMART info says the drive is perfectly fine too.

I know that drives can report that they are fine even if failure is imminent, but if I were to guess, my prior problems with recorded content playback seem to be more heat related than anything. With previous drives in my computers I sometimes would also sometimes get weird drive behaviour when I unplugged the case fans. These issues disappeared with adequate ventilation.

I think this is one area where laptop drives could prove useful. They generate a lot less heat. The problem is that (as 57's link sort of illustrates), there is very little information out there about 2.5" IDE drives in our 8300HD PVRs. Plus they're much more expensive, and it seems these days that all the available 2.5" IDE drives are 5400 rpm, like the Western Digital WD3200BEVE (320 GB) drive. I'm not sure if that would make a difference for our PVRs though.

If I were to ever get an 8642, the options are much better. I wanted to get a "green" drive for my 8300HD, but unfortunately they seem to have disappeared for IDE now. My Western Digital Caviar Blue 320 GB drive is rated at 6.0 Watts read/write, and 5.2 Watts idle, but the 3.5" Caviar Green SATA counterpart is only 3.6 r/w and 2.1 idle, which actually isn't that much higher than a fast laptop drive.

EDIT:

I took the old Seagate drive out and I wonder if it ran warmer than the new Western Digital drive I just put in, but with the drive in open air running on my computer, there are no issues. It formats fine and there are no problems with file transfers. Also, the SMART info says the drive is perfectly fine too.
Yep. Huge difference in power characteristics.

Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 (400 GB) (http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/support/disc/manuals/desktop/Barracuda%207200.8/100323825f.pdf):
Read/write: 12.8 Watts
Idle: 7.2 Watts

Western Digital Caviar Blue WD3200AAJB (320 GB) (http://wdc.com/global/products/specs/?driveID=768&language=1):
Read/write: 6.0 Watts
Idle: 5.2 Watts

If I were to ever get an 8642, the options are much better. I wanted to get a "green" drive for my 8300HD, but unfortunately they seem to have disappeared for IDE now. My Western Digital Caviar Blue 320 GB drive is rated at 6.0 Watts read/write, and 5.2 Watts idle, but the 3.5" Caviar Green SATA counterpart is only 3.6 r/w and 2.1 idle, which actually isn't that much higher than a fast laptop drive.


Beware the "Green Drives". They cause 'odd and intermittent' issues which I believe are load related. For a computer program, disks and data are accessed in a 'burst and rest' pattern. For the PVR one needs simultaneous streaming writes - possibly 2 streams (for 2 channel recordings) plus possibly a streaming read (to watch a recorded show at the same time).

I had a green drive and was forced to replace it with a non green one to resolve my issues. The drive was good, just the wrong tool for the job.

Beware the "Green Drives". They cause 'odd and intermittent' issues which I believe are load related. For a computer program, disks and data are accessed in a 'burst and rest' pattern. For the PVR one needs simultaneous streaming writes - possibly 2 streams (for 2 channel recordings) plus possibly a streaming read (to watch a recorded show at the same time).

I had a green drive and was forced to replace it with a non green one to resolve my issues. The drive was good, just the wrong tool for the job.
Good to know, thx. I guess the same would apply to at least some laptop drives then. If we are to attempt a laptop drive, perhaps, only 7200 rpm models are recommended. What model green drive was your 3.5" drive, and what is the rotational speed? I think the "IntelliPower" feature of WD's drives have it being variable speed, between 5400 to 7200 rpm.

BTW, did you notice the issue right away, or did it only manifest itself once the drive began getting full (and potentially fragmented)?

So far the 8300HD with Western Digital Caviar Blue 320 GB (WD3200AAJB) - a moderate power 7200 rpm unit - works fine including with multiple records, but I've only had it a couple of days, and there isn't much content on the drive yet.

EDIT:

Hmmmm... Interesting. Seagate no longer makes green drives (http://www.storagereview.com/seagate_kills_green_hard_drives_plans_launch_barracuda_hybri d_hard_drive).

I have two 8300HDs, and in this thread (http://digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?p=1390052#post1390052) wondered what the comparative power utilization between the 8300HD vs. the 8642HD would be. I can't test the 8642, but here are my numbers for the 8300HD.

WD1200BB (http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/703/~/specifications-for-the-120-gb-eide-drive-(model-wd1200bb,-wd1200lb)):
Seek: 12.0 Watts
Read/write
Idle: 7.75 Watts
Overall 8300HD idle power utilization: 25 to 26 Watts
Overall 8300HD playback power utilization: 26 Watts

WD3200AAJB (http://wdc.com/global/products/specs/?driveID=768&language=1)
Seek: ?
Read/write: 5.99 Watts
Idle: 5.18 Watts
Overall 8300HD idle power utilization: 22 Watts
Overall 8300HD playback power utilization: 22 Watts (rarely hit 23)

What model green drive was your 3.5" drive, and what is the rotational speed? I think the "IntelliPower" feature of WD's drives have it being variable speed, between 5400 to 7200 rpm.

BTW, did you notice the issue right away, or did it only manifest itself once the drive began getting full (and potentially fragmented)?

So far the 8300HD with Western Digital Caviar Blue 320 GB (WD3200AAJB) - a moderate power 7200 rpm unit - works fine including with multiple records, but I've only had it a couple of days, and there isn't much content on the drive yet.

The issue was inconsistent. I suspect it was load related to disk access. Even live tv is recorded temporarily.

Switching to non "Green" drive fixed it all. Blue drive should be good. Black would likely live longer. (Enterprise vs "home" quality drives)

Just over 3 years ago, I had my iHDD cloned by slyboy. I believe I was one of the first to add additional capacity (320 instead of 160) and clone.

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?p=857671#post857671

Well, two days ago my iHDD would not spin up properly and I got the usual messages - Video Recorder Not Ready, etc.

Tried a couple of reboots (first soft and then hard) and I could hear the drive spin up, but after a few seconds it would spin down again. It would do this several times during a reboot and then the PVR would boot up as a STB, not a PVR. After the PVR was on for a while it would try to start up the iHDD, but it would do as before - try to spin up, but then spin down after a few seconds. After that I got a message "disk trouble". I knew this was not a good sign...

I had a fair number of recordings on my PVR and on the 1 TB eHDD, so I was hoping to clone it again. I contacted slyboy and he said he'd give it a try, but in light of what I already found out, he (and I) thought it seemed unlikely.

Sure enough, connected to a computer the drive would not even spin up. slyboy then checked out my new iHDD to make sure it was OK and then installed my new iHDD in the PVR and checked the operation.

The PVR is back in its usual place with the 1TB eHDD and should be good for another 3-4 years I guess. 3-4 years may seem like not very long, however, I record many programmes each day and probably watch 3-4 hours each day - all recorded and all with lots of FF, etc. I am therefore not surprised that after that much use the HDD "fails" in some manner.

Many thanks to slyboy for again "reviving" my PVR.

PS. There was almost no "warning" before the failure - other than sometimes it would take a little longer to delete a programme after I watched it... I guess I should have heeded that warning, but at least I now have lots of recording space and as I say to everyone, this is not an "archive". ;)

PPS. We briefly discussed the fact that although the data was probably fine, rather it was a hardware failure, I wouldn't send a HDD from a PVR for "recovery" ($$$).

It is worth nothing, as I was just checking out, that the Western Digital website lists Model: WDBAAV5000ENC-NRSN for $109.99, available and in stock.

Uh oh. I had stuck an ancient 120 GB drive in my secondary 8300HD PVR and it was working fine but today the drive started to whine (http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?p=1394345#post1394345). I unplugged it to reboot it and the whine went away, but then came back minutes later. Quite noticeable, and irritating.

The weird part is the drive still works fine, even with the whine. I can even record and what not.

I am assuming it is the drive, and it's about to die, even though it actually works fine. Worn hard drive bearings or something? Or is there anything else I should be looking at inside the case? Fan whines are often a culprit in computer cases, but from memory, AFAIK there is no fan in the 8300HD.

Make sure it's not the top of the 8300 case vibrating. Put your hand on the top and see if it stops.

Make sure it's not the top of the 8300 case vibrating. Put your hand on the top and see if it stops.
Already tried that. Didn't do anything.

I might just chance sticking my 400 GB drive from my other 8300HD into this secondary 8300HD. You may remember the drive had been acting up, but that only started happening after I reduced the PVR compartment space inside the AV cabinet, thereby causing the space where the 8300HD was to be much warmer. (I did this to cram in a Paradigm Center 3 (http://www.paradigm.com/products/products-by-category/center/paradigm/monitor-series-7/center-3) underneath it after my much smaller prior Paradigm CC-150 center channel blew.)

This secondary 8300HD is in full open air, so should run much cooler. The 400 GB drive I took out of the other 8300HD actually has been running perfectly repurposed as a backup drive for my computer, even after doing hundreds of GB of file transfers continously for hours on end.


It is worth nothing, as I was just checking out, that the Western Digital website lists Model: WDBAAV5000ENC-NRSN for $109.99, available and in stock.
No longer in stock. They don't have the 320 GB model in stock anymore either.

Canada Computers still has the WD 320 Blue for $109 (WD3200AAJB). I just put a new one in my PVR - post 787.

I am having the same problem with my WD Black 500GB in my deskotp... it just started to make the whining high pitched hissing noise but the drive works fine... its probably time for a new drive...

WD Caviar Black? How old is it? My 120 drive is probably a decade old and has been in constant use for the last few years. Before that it was only used periodically as a backup drive. Perhaps this 24/7 usage in a PVR is a little too much for these end user drives.

Then again, your Black is supposed to have a 5 year warranty I thought.

BTW, I'm running my old drive in a Firewire enclosure right now, and no whine. I'm sure it will reappear though at some point. We'll see how well my heat-sensitive 400 GB drive does. I really don't want to buy yet another drive (although the WD Caviar Blue drives are effectively silent).

How do I get the previously recorded programs off my old drive before replacing it with a 500gb drive

Lietch As discussed in post 1 of this thread, you can only clone to the new drive if you replace it with a drive of the same size. If you want a larger iHDD, you'll be starting fresh and lose any existing recordings.

If you want a larger drive and wish to keep existing recordings, you can add an eHDD (external), as discussed in another sticky in this forum.

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=23773

How do I get the previously recorded programs off my old drive before replacing it with a 500gb drive
You don't.
Roger's fixed that "bug".:rolleyes:

I guess it is time to change the HD, again, in my 8300hd as for the last few weeks I have noticed frequent freezes on play back or live while recording.

I have even experience full control freeze, just nothing and unit will not respond to remote input and then all of a sudend all the command sent are processed. Could this also be due to the iHD.

If this is the issue, i belive the best option is the WDBAAV5000 or does any one suggest otherwise.

I have had the unit since Nov 2007 and replace the iHD I think a little less than 2 years ago.

Any advice welcomed.

Hmm, is that why mine stutters and has dropouts sometimes?
I used to be dead reliable (I've had a PVR since 2005).

Maybe you should test your theory first by running an external drive for a while, so you don't pull the drive for nothing.

I've had the remote problem you mention on and off - send several commands and nothing, suddenly ALL are processed.
I don't think THAT one is hard drive related.
The other stuff - maybe.

- Bill H.