Sata Disk Unrecognized by OS

T

Tigertank

Weaksauce
Joined
Jan 11, 2007
Messages
95
Got a question for you experts out there. I recently pulled a couple hard disks out of some directv hd dvr boxes. They had 320gb western digital sata disks in them and are brand new. The particular model is wd3200avjs http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=281

I don't know alot about the the disks they manufacture for consumer electronics purposes, but is there any reason they cannot be used for a pc?

I hooked them up out of curiosity and they are listed in BIOS without any noticeable problems, however in Vista they are not recognized properly. They just come up in device manager as unknown ata devices asking for drivers. I also tried to do a fresh install on one of them with vista and halfway through the install it would blue screen. I'm guessing whatever firmware is used on those disks may not be standard or very friendly with pc's. I had thought of trying to get ahold of the firmware for a wd3200aajs model which is a pc model and reflash it. Beyond that they just seem like paperweights. Linux wouldn't install on em either.
 
It could just be a simple case of needing an F6 driver installed when you first start your windows install. That would definitely cause the BSOD at the time you mentioned. If they don't work on Linux either, then there is a pair of BIOS settings (don't recall ATM) that need to be set to let sata work if ata was used before.
 
Well, looking through WD website, I don't see anything saying they are compatible with windoz, but nothing saying they aren't. There are no Windows drivers that I can see, and no articles in their knowledge base.

You got me.

Wonder if Linux can use them.

In the overview, it says that the drives use some kind of Streaming ATA Command Set. Don't know what that is. I do know that Video Drives use much less stringent error correction routines because keeping a smooth stream of data is more important than making sure every bit is perfect. Regular desktop drives used in DVRs can cause jittery playback. Prolly not a good idea to use them in a desktop system anyway for that reason.

I did put a Seagate DB35 500 gig video drive in my Tivo a couple of years ago, and it has worked perfectly for me.

Don
 
Well here's an update to my little problem.

I was able to get them to function finally after playing around with different disk tools. None of the windows installers are able to partition/format them correctly apparently and neither is linux fdisk. They must respond to slightly different instructions than typical pc hard disks do, I have no idea. However, WD's data life guard utility was able to handle them and create ntfs partitions on them.

After rebooting they then showed up and were accessible. I ran HDTach on them to see just what kind of performance they were capable of and they spit out a not too shabby 67.0Mb/S although the average seek time was a horrid 18.0ms. What got me though is these disks are as close to silent as you could really get. Compared to my raptors you can't even tell they're running at all.

What you said about these drives using less stringent error correction is interesting, Don. Really the only reason I'm playing around with them is because they were free. I think all I'm going to do with them is put junk on them like large file downloads, definitely not anything too important and most certainly not as a primary drive for an OS or any applications. I'll test it out and see how reliable they are.

Well either way I think they're functional for now. I guess I have 640 gigs of space for more junk, just what I need...
 
Yea, they definately seem a little hokey. When I got the Tivo drive a couple of years ago, I used Linux and the mfstools disk to copy my old drives contents over to the DB35. I never tried to use it with Windows.

I wonder if they would format ok in a linux powered NAS box?

They are designed for the living room, so I am sure they limit the speed that the head can move to keep the noise to a minimum, hence the slow seek time. Streaming video also means lots of adjacent sectors, so the low seek time is also not an issue then.

Don
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top