The topic says it all. I’m just curious if anyone tried these new large drives.
There’s no technical reason why they shouldn’t work (unless maybe it’s a drive array?), but we haven’t tested these personally.
Wouldn’t a 18TB drive allow a user to have over 34,000 30 minute recordings?
Does tablo have enough internal memory to store the information for that many or more recordings and how long would it take to load the recordings menu.
“What do you record?”
Answer: Everything!
(waiting for the 212 tuner Tablo)
My thinking is down the same path. It would take forever to load the contents of a mostly full 18tb drive if it loads at all. I’m sure there are some ways to get around the issue. I doubt we have too many people that decide to go that big but drive prices are going down.
If you had a 4-tuner and recorded at 720p quality and recorded 24 hours per day using all 4 tuners, how many days would it take to fill up 18 TB(180 days?).
If you are in your house hiding from covid-19 and get all of your supplies delivered to you door and if you watched TV for 18 hours a day, how many days would it take to watch all of your recordings (980 days?).
Of course you would have to buy a second 4-tuner tablo with a 18TB drive so you didn’t miss any recordings.
18TB why who has time just to park yourself in front of a box, try going outside it’s heathier and do some productive stuff.
What about video hoarding? How many of us have complete series of more shows than …can fit on less than an 18TB drive?
Not really sure why. Some I’ve never gotten around to watching. A few I catch a few select episodes on occasion, rarely. But we continue to accumulate collections - until we fill the space availabe(?)
But I’d be concerned trusting terabytes of videos to semi-propritary device. (If “the device” fails, videos are intact on drive - but not readiably accessible) important data need backup and redundancy.
If you lived in a large market with lots of TV stations you would need multiple 4-tuners. Each with their own 18TB drive. Plus a number of PC’s ripping the recordings across to 64TB NAS system and plex.
And of course you would go outside. You need to see your psychologist concerning your hoarding. And traveling to see your psychologist raises deep seated fear that while you are gone someone will stage an intervention and take apart your recording system.
Maybe you could appear on the A&E show Hoarders.
…and then probably need to archive the entire series 
I have the complete NYPD series, about 200 Rawhide shows and most of Black Sheep. And then about 200 movies, etc. Still have about 620GB left on 2TB disk. I think even 8TB is a waste of space. Larger disks also tend to have a lower MTF.
I use an 8TB because that way, I can mark shows “watched” and leave them on the drive until the entire season/series is over. In that way, it only downloads a given episode once and we don’t end up starting to watch a show and then realizing we have seen it. I know you can use “NEW” but that doesn’t work for old series like MAS*H.
This seems very vague and generalized, so I went to see what I could find… Recollecting it something about failure timings… that was “then”. Seems the definitions for MTF has changed dramatically - https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/MTF
after searching for MTF lower for larger drives - I’ll just accept it.
I only have a 4TB attached to my Tablo. I just asked this question because someone is definitely going to do it and I’m curious if it works.
I bet there has to be some other Datahorders here. 22TB useable in my NAS.
Tablo will have to get back to us with an answer. They will have to hook up a 18TB drive to a 4 tuner and record 30 minute episodes at 720p for 180 days.
Of course if they transcode down to 480i they may have an answer by next August. It could take 30,000 recordings at 480i to fill up 18TB. I want to what the load time is for the recordings menu.
I know we’re making fun of this a bit, but … the future…
Example, the other day, somebody needed a tiny flash drive for a recovery save… all they had was a 3TB USB lying around. So they used it. Sometimes we’re victims of tech advancement.
I use 8TB.
There is no block by software. If you are trying to access the hard drive directly you are doing things the hard way. Use Tablo Ripper.
If you absolutely need to direct access the hard drive you need to do it on linux or install the correct drivers on your PC because Windows can’t read Linux drives natively.
This statement is factually incorrect.