Looking for a good Hard Drive

General Discussion
1

Is there any consensus on a hard drive that everyone found to work with Tablo? Maybe there are a few that have worked well for many of you so it might save me some time looking around for one. Haven’t bought my Tablo yet so I’m like shopping around for the best components.

2

Western Digital Elements seems to be the “Go To” model. I think it is the one most recommended by Nuvyyo

3

The entire line?

4

I have Model WDBU6Y0020BBK-NESN It is a 2TB drive, works great.

5

I also have this model and can confirm it works great

6

Thank you both

7

I have the 1 TB model only because there was a deal going on at the time. In reality, I hope the next time there is a deal with Newegg, they allow us to pay the difference between the 1 TB and 2 TB drives. The 1 TB works fine except not as much space.

8

Please let us know how your HDD endeavours go as I’m looking to upgrade my current 320 GB HDD.

Thanks!

9

What’s nice is that WD Elements are pretty cheap (price wise) compared to most too. You can find the 1TB on sale every 3rd week and save another 15-25%

10

@ToddExyz Just chiming in to say that the Elements line is our #1 recommended disk!

11

I have had nothing but trouble with my WD Elements 1TB drive. Every time I log in the Tablo I see the dreaded “No Hard Drive”. I have to trudge down to the basement, unplug the drive and plug it back in. The Tablo shows it as a WD Elements 10A8 1042 (WDBUZG0010BBK-NESN). I have even tried setting up a cron job that runs SurLaTablo every 4 hours but that hasn’t helped.

12

Have you tried updating the firmware using the WD utility? That has helped many users.

13

@gspaul
The ‘1042’ is the noted firmware version of the Elements disk which causes the drive to go offline. You can follow this link to upgrade the firmware on the disk - and you won’t lose any of your existing recordings.

14

Thanks! I will try that tonight.

15

Thanks for responding. I thought I had looked into a firmware update a few weeks ago but must have missed it.

16

I’m expecting to get a check in a few weeks that I’ll be buying Tablo & the other required items, so that’s why I haven’t really responded in a few days. That & this has been a pretty hectic week but I’m glad to see all the comments you guys have posted. In doing ‘my homework’ on the Tablo I haven’t yet read the manual but I’m already learning a lot from this community, so, THANKS!

17

I had another question about hard drives: Can’t you just swap them out when they get full or just watch the content of what is on a particular drive?

Also, what about SSDs [solid state drives]? Since they have no moving parts they might last longer & have potentially other benefits?

18

I think @marjamar might be able to answer that for you.

19

Swapping out the hard disk allows you to continue recording, but Tablo keeps track of what has been recorded even when the drive has been swapped out. In other words, Tablo will say shows are recorded that are not on the current drive. I haven’t found a way around this, so it is another item for Tablo to consider fixing.

You can reset the Tablo after swapping out to a new drive, but then you will have to schedule all of your recordings again.

Just these last few days I have been testing Jestep’s Tablo Exporter and I do believe this is a much better solution then swapping out Tablo’s hard disk. Tablo Exporter works very easy and gives you a permanent copy of all your recordings you care to save. Once save, delete the recordings from you current hard disk to replenish space and keep current what is physically recorded on the hard disk.

Jestep has done more then a great job on this and quite honestly I don’t know why everyone isn’t using Tablo Exporter to save at least select recordings for future use. Outside of this discussion, but I also use PLEX as my media server and storing saved recordings as well as other content using PLEX is the best solution I have ever found for putting together a personal home media center.

Here’s Jesteps (soon to be famous) Tablo Exporter Thread - Tablo Exporter - Export Tablo Recordings

-Rodger

20

You really have not answered @ToddExyz

Have you actually yet tried to put an old drive back on the Tablo and see if you can watch those recordings? You may be unpleasantly surprised that it may not work, as the Tablo was not intended or designed to swap out drives.

We’re all curious - please let us know.