First Purchase; OG 4-Tuner or wait for Quad?

[djk44883]

Some modern drives have that burned into their firmware, that they will sleep and spin down.

I tried to salvage a drive from a DirecTV DVR. After a lot of frustration I discovered power up in stand by. The drive doen’t spin up with the pc, so it’s not found. It’s not exactly burned in, as much as a setting for SATA drives. I found HDAT2 to turn it off.
From my experience, it’s not really worth the hassle, considering the going price for drive on ebay.

[adam1991]

So the drive that DirectTV used had that feature.

I can tell you, some big cheap external drives have the sleep feature permanently burned in, and not changeable. You’ll see the discussions about this as people try to get the most DVR storage for their dollar, and wonder why the externals are cheaper than the bare drives from various manufacturers.

[Radojevic]

I can tell you, some big cheap external drives have the sleep feature permanently burned in, and not changeable.

Are you saying those drives have firmware installed on read-only memory?

[adam1991]

Not changeable.

[djk44883]

I can tell you, some big cheap external drives have the sleep feature permanently burned in, and not changeable. You’ll see the discussions about this as people try to get the most DVR storage for their dollar, and wonder why the externals are cheaper than the bare drives from various manufacturers.

Out of boredom, I searched google “power up in standby not changeable” and couldn’t verify it.
I’ve found it to be configurable, part of the SATA command set. Just because it’s not accessible from windows…
The same drives are in the enclosures as inside a PC case. To keep costs down - they don’t make so many different models for the exact same purpose. It was a WD Green 500GB drive.

[djk44883]

Are you saying those drives have firmware installed on read-only memory?

At least originally, I believe that’s where it’s name came from, as obsessed to software. It doesn’t change - under normal uses. aka non-volatile memory such as ROM or EPROM.
But that’s just my understanding.

[scottieiufan]

Personally I’m waiting on the quad. On top of what has been listed above, it also has a gig ethernet port whereas the old 4-tuner is only 10/100.

I think the newer tech is worth the wait. You are going to buy the lifetime anyways…why delay it a year?

[Lysander]

I am interested in avoiding this, can you tell me which models have this “feature”?

So the drive that DirectTV used had that feature.

I can tell you, some big cheap external drives have the sleep feature permanently burned in, and not changeable. You’ll see the discussions about this as people try to get the most DVR storage for their dollar, and wonder why the externals are cheaper than the bare drives from various manufacturers.

[pawnslinger]

I can tell you, some big cheap external drives have the sleep feature permanently burned in, and not changeable.

I guess it could be a problem… one way or the other… but the HDD connected to my Tablo never seems to stop… so never gets the chance to “sleep”. Now depending on the quality of the drive, this constant usage could be a problem in and of itself. But so far, the drive runs cool and quiet, and I can’t ask more from any HDD.