Would a TiVo HD work in a computer?

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Hobbit89

Limp Gawd
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May 9, 2005
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Hey, i just recived a broken TiVo from a relitive, and i was wondering if i could use the 40 GB Hard Drive from it in my computer. The Satelite inputs burned out on the TiVo, thats the only thing wrong with it. I took the cover off and it has a Western Digital Caviar HD, so any comments on what to do and how to reformat it would be appreciated! Thanks! :D
 
Hobbit89 said:
Hey, i just recived a broken TiVo from a relitive, and i was wondering if i could use the 40 GB Hard Drive from it in my computer. The Satelite inputs burned out on the TiVo, thats the only thing wrong with it. I took the cover off and it has a Western Digital Caviar HD, so any comments on what to do and how to reformat it would be appreciated! Thanks! :D
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Probably. There are instructions on the net for adding a HDD to a TIVO, so you can probably do the reverse.
 
I would imagine so. It's probably just a regular IDE / PATA drive. Just stick 'er in and reformat like a new drive. (Although i'd run scandisk and all that just to make sure the media is still good..)
 
ok
, thanks, but how would i go about reformating it? Do i just go to the menu at startup and follow the instuctions? I think i have that right, cuz it would be nice to add an extra 40 Gigs for nothing! :D
 
If you're using Windows, it should recognize the device at least, and then when you're all booted up you should be able to right-click on the HDD's icon in My Computer and then click Format. If it dosen't show up in My Computer then you may have to use one of Western Digital's HDD formatting programs. (I'm sure you'ld be able to find this online somewhere.)
 
Hobbit89 said:
Hey, i just recived a broken TiVo from a relitive, and i was wondering if i could use the 40 GB Hard Drive from it in my computer. The Satelite inputs burned out on the TiVo, thats the only thing wrong with it. I took the cover off and it has a Western Digital Caviar HD, so any comments on what to do and how to reformat it would be appreciated! Thanks! :D
Click to expand...

Yes, but I don't recommend using a WD Caviar for more than a doorstop. Especially if its the all-black casing. Yuck.
 
davidlem said:
Yes, but I don't recommend using a WD Caviar for more than a doorstop. Especially if its the all-black casing. Yuck.
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ok...................... but why? Has WD gotten a bad reoutation or something? If i could use it and if i get it to working, whitch i still hope to do, i was planning on storing most of my extra stuff, pictures, games, apps., to that instead of using my 80 gig hd with windows on it. In fact, i wish i could move windows to THAT hard drive, and use my 80 gig for storage, BUT unfortunately, my computer didnt come with a backup windows CD to reinstall, so instead, it has a seperate locked partition on it that has all of Windows and all the Junk stuff that came wiith this Qompaq that i have. Oh, and bty, the HD is NOT entirely black.
 
davidlem said:
Yes, but I don't recommend using a WD Caviar for more than a doorstop. Especially if its the all-black casing. Yuck.
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I have two Caviars at home: a 13 GB (1998) and a 20 GB (2000). Both work quite well and have 0 bad sectors.

If you're complaining that they're slow...meh. Who needs blazing speed if all you're doing is storing documents, backups, and video/music files on them?
 
DatHak512 said:
If it dosen't show up in My Computer then you may have to use one of Western Digital's HDD formatting programs. (I'm sure you'ld be able to find this online somewhere.)
Click to expand...

Nope, if it doesn't show up in my computer, you have to partition it, right click on my computer and choose "manage" then in disk management, find the drive and delete anything on it, then create new partitions.

==>Lazn
 
ok, thanks, ill do this porobly next weekseeing has how i have a free weekedn then. But what type should i format it? FAT, FAT32, NTFS, etc..................?...............
 
PopeKevinI said:
I have two Caviars at home: a 13 GB (1998) and a 20 GB (2000). Both work quite well and have 0 bad sectors.

If you're complaining that they're slow...meh. Who needs blazing speed if all you're doing is storing documents, backups, and video/music files on them?
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That's excellent - and as long as you have backups of everything (data stored in more than one place [redundant]) you should have no earth-shattering problems.

But if you dont have backups and your WDAC313000 or WD200BB fails, be prepared to cough up ~$1000 for recovery services. When they go, they do not go quietly.
 
davidlem said:
That's excellent - and as long as you have backups of everything (data stored in more than one place [redundant]) you should have no earth-shattering problems.

But if you dont have backups and your WDAC313000 or WD200BB fails, be prepared to cough up ~$1000 for recovery services. When they go, they do not go quietly.
Click to expand...

My personal experience has been that WD drives are more reliable than Maxtor drives.

Every single Maxtor drive I have ever owned has died on me, and at work I replace more Maxtor drives than any other brand, even though I use more WD drives and more Seagate drives than Maxtor drives by quantity.

True I have RMAed some WD drives, and some Seagate drives, but I have RMAed more Maxtor drives than WD and Seagate put together. (this is personal experience, other people have had different results)

I do recommend backup to everyone though, you can not backup enough, and there is no HD or even no data storage medium that is truely trustworthy. Always backup your data, and your important stuff to more than one place and more than one kind of media.

==>Lazn
 
davidlem said:
That's excellent - and as long as you have backups of everything (data stored in more than one place [redundant]) you should have no earth-shattering problems.

But if you dont have backups and your WDAC313000 or WD200BB fails, be prepared to cough up ~$1000 for recovery services. When they go, they do not go quietly.
Click to expand...

Because a dead Maxtor, Seagate, or Hitachi drive costs less to have the data recovered?

No one should trust a single drive with irreplaceable data, EVER. I don't care if you've got the best drive in the world, it can still fail, take your data with it, and cost you way more money than you want to spend to recover it.

The 20 GB and 13 GB are used in test systems that I have so I'm not loading every piece of software that catches my eye on my two primary systems. If they fail, they fail. If I had anything critical on them, I'd back it up to another hard drive, just like i do every other drive in my house.
 
OK, but what should i format it as? (FAT, FAT32, NTFS) And i do not have hardly any data that i just HAVE to keep, my most important files might be a report i turned in like 4 weeks ago, or maybe if you count saved games ffrom differant games? But i dont HAVE much pesonal stuff on here, so..................
 
PopeKevinI said:
Because a dead Maxtor, Seagate, or Hitachi drive costs less to have the data recovered?
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No, any drive will cost ~$1000 for a physical recovery. But WDs in general tend to have a higher percentage of catastrophic failures - meaning no recovery possible. There are some seriously bad Maxtors, some seriously bad IBM/Hitachis, and some hard to get Seagates.

I dont want any of your drives to fail, personally. I wish everyone long drive life. But it'll happen sooner or later.
 
Lazn_Work said:
My personal experience has been that WD drives are more reliable than Maxtor drives.

Every single Maxtor drive I have ever owned has died on me, and at work I replace more Maxtor drives than any other brand, even though I use more WD drives and more Seagate drives than Maxtor drives by quantity.

True I have RMAed some WD drives, and some Seagate drives, but I have RMAed more Maxtor drives than WD and Seagate put together. (this is personal experience, other people have had different results)

I do recommend backup to everyone though, you can not backup enough, and there is no HD or even no data storage medium that is truely trustworthy. Always backup your data, and your important stuff to more than one place and more than one kind of media.

==>Lazn
Click to expand...

Very interesting Lazn. I see more failed WD drives than every other manu combined. But I'm looking at a different segment of the HD world. You're within a single company and your own personal experiences - hell I've never had a WD fail on me (only owned one) but multiple Maxtor, Quantum, and one Hitachi/IBM. However the majority of the failed drives I see come from all over the world and, sadly, many PC manus ship with WD drives. Dell, Compaq, HP, Gateway...etc. Apple is the only PC manu I can't say I've seen a failed WD from.
 
davidlem said:
No, any drive will cost ~$1000 for a physical recovery. But WDs in general tend to have a higher percentage of catastrophic failures - meaning no recovery possible. There are some seriously bad Maxtors, some seriously bad IBM/Hitachis, and some hard to get Seagates.
Click to expand...

I've never had a recoverable hard drive crash. Every drive I've had die (six, I think) ate the data with it. The drive was simply unresponsive to any requests. I've seen only a handful of recoverable drives in the eight years I've been doing this sort of work.

Like I said, back up EVERYTHING. It's a lot cheaper to have a low-end high capacity drive to use for backups than to spend the time and money trying to recover irreplaceable files. That way you don't have to worry about what brand your free hard drives are :D
 
Yes, but "simply unresponsive to any requests" is possibly recoverable in the world of clean-room data recovery. Just because you weren't able to perform a logical recovery doesn't mean a professional recovery specialist wouldn't be able to get it back. An unresponsive drive isn't a crashed drive. A drive with grooves cut in the platter and a casing full of dust is a crashed drive. Matter of fact, I saw a Quaxtor (drive from the Quantum/Maxtor days) with all platters literally severed from the spindle motor just a few weeks back. Now THAT is a crash.
 
Tivo, maybe. UltimateTV, no.

When my UTV died, I tried to use the Seagate as 40g spare. Never could get it formatted, even low-level.

It had some sort of funky firmware that prevented Windows or DOS from being able to do anything with it.

-Larry

Hobbit89 said:
Hey, i just recived a broken TiVo from a relitive, and i was wondering if i could use the 40 GB Hard Drive from it in my computer. The Satelite inputs burned out on the TiVo, thats the only thing wrong with it. I took the cover off and it has a Western Digital Caviar HD, so any comments on what to do and how to reformat it would be appreciated! Thanks! :D
Click to expand...
 
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