Beware of 1TB WD Caviar Green 64MB WD10EARS

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Beware of 1TB WD Caviar Green 64MB WD10EARS

Postby Gabe62 » Tue Jan 11, 2011 6:14 pm

BEWARE of Caviar Greens !!!!

I have just tried the Caviar Green 64MB 5400 rpm 1TB HDD WD10EARS and it stutters like hell on audio.

Apparently these drives have some wierd optimisiation system that allows very low power consumtion and noise.

Not happy at all in my Thompson HD box.

I thought being slow and quiet it would be fine, but it uses some new-ish tech "Advanced Format Drive". It has specific jumper settings for XP, but says leave as it is for other systems.

Now, whether it is this system or a combo of everything, I don't know.

But, I would stay clear if I were you.

Luckily it will make a great storage drive for all my gentleman's video entertainment - hurumphhhh....... !!! :lol:


The last two Samsungs F1 and F3 worked just fine though - both the 500 and 750 GB were fine..
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Re: Beware of 1TB WD Caviar Green 64MB WD10EARS

Postby Gabe62 » Tue Jan 18, 2011 3:38 pm

A week in now, and nothign but constant spluttering and glitches.

Seriously bad HDD with my Thompson.

Avoid at all costs !
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Re: Beware of 1TB WD Caviar Green 64MB WD10EARS

Postby pcbbc » Tue Jan 18, 2011 4:28 pm

Yep, "Advanced Format" has 4K sectors instead of 512 bytes.
Sky+ is not at all optimised for reading and writing to these, as it does nothing to align its clusters on 4K boundries.
Basically it requires the drive to read and write extra 4K sectors in order the "merge in" the 512 byte sectors on each write.
Nasty.
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Re: Beware of 1TB WD Caviar Green 64MB WD10EARS

Postby Gabe62 » Fri Jan 21, 2011 12:33 am

Ah, a reply at last.

Yes, research has shown this is the problem.

However, there may be a way around ti by formating the drive with a tool first, or using a jumper prior to copying.

It is also complicated by Windows XP.


My search for a solution continues, or it's a long re-copy back to another drive, replacmeent drivr, and re-copy !!!


:evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil:
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Re: Beware of 1TB WD Caviar Green 64MB WD10EARS

Postby pcbbc » Sun Jan 23, 2011 1:20 am

Gabe62 wrote:However, there may be a way around this by formatting the drive with a tool first, or using a jumper prior to copying.
No.
From what I have read this just aligns the first sector of the partition at sector 64 instead of 63, this making the boot record aligned.
Without extra steps to align the clusters at 4K boundaries, and then perform all disk reads and writes in 4K increments, this is practically worthless.
Enhanced Format requires support from the operating system, which at the moment I see no signs that Sky have implemented.
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Re: Beware of 1TB WD Caviar Green 64MB WD10EARS

Postby Gabe62 » Sun Jan 23, 2011 1:48 pm

This is true.

And don't think that be realigning it using the WD tool, it will make it work. It won't !

I fromatted the drive, realigned it, deleted the partition and stuck it in the Sky box. Still piss poor.

These drives will not run smoothly in a Sky box... period.

But, it works great in Win 7 !
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Re: Beware of 1TB WD Caviar Green 64MB WD10EARS

Postby pcbbc » Sun Jan 23, 2011 3:29 pm

Gabe62 wrote:I fromatted the drive, realigned it, deleted the partition and stuck it in the Sky box. Still piss poor.
Well, deleting the partition undoes the alignment.
Besides the Sky software expects the first sector of the partition at sector 63 not 64.
As you have confirmed there is currently no way to use these disks successfully in a Sky box.
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Re: Beware of 1TB WD Caviar Green 64MB WD10EARS

Postby Gabe62 » Sun Jan 23, 2011 5:57 pm

Yes that makes sense.

It explains why it will not work... the Copy+ software effectively repartitions and formats to unallocated space - hence you would need to realign after the data has been copied - and of course this does not work as the alignement tool will not recognise a partition formatted by the Sky box, or Copy+

So, yes... it is basically unuseable at the moment in a sky box.

Avoid EARS drives.
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Re: Beware of 1TB WD Caviar Green 64MB WD10EARS

Postby scotal » Tue Feb 01, 2011 10:17 am

FYI, I installed a 1TB WD Caviar Green 64MB WD10EARS in my Pace HD box last night and no problems at all so far. I appreciate it's still early days but have had no glitches on recordings and the EPG etc is just as responsive as before.
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Re: Beware of 1TB WD Caviar Green 64MB WD10EARS

Postby Gabe62 » Tue Feb 01, 2011 2:43 pm

That's interesting.

Maybe it's the box - mine is a Thompson. Perhaps the Pace box firmware plays nicely with the different tech of the EARS drives ?

Please report back in a week or so, so we know.

BTW, did you use it "as is" ... ie. no realignment tool or using a jumper ?
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Re: Beware of 1TB WD Caviar Green 64MB WD10EARS

Postby scotal » Tue Feb 01, 2011 3:14 pm

Hi, never used alignment tool or jumpers. All I did was initialise it on PC then restored a blank pre-Darwin image (which I aquired on these forums) using copy+ to ensure I the whole drive was useable.

No problem, I'll post back in a few days to let you know how things are going.
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Re: Beware of 1TB WD Caviar Green 64MB WD10EARS

Postby Gabe62 » Tue Feb 01, 2011 5:19 pm

Hmmm... that's interesting.

Because... we did different things: namely, I copied a full 500 GB disk with around 70% full of recordings, whereas you "restored a blank image"... which I am guessing may or may not, be the same as copying a single recording from a smaller disk that has been in the Sky box already.

There are so many ways of installing a large disk, I guess it could be down to that.

I'm just wondering i there may be a way of getting my 1TB EARS drive to work in my box after all.


Maybe, I should try this "image" you mention ? I did try copying a "1 recording" disk (ie. letitng the sky box format a 500GB disk and making 1 recording... then copying that to the new 1TB using Copy+ in the usual fashion)... but it still wasn't happy.
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Re: Beware of 1TB WD Caviar Green 64MB WD10EARS

Postby scotal » Tue Feb 01, 2011 6:42 pm

I had no other option but to use this blank image really....my box is running Darwin so I couldn't copy the contents of my old drive to my new one and if I'd put the drive straight into the box it wouldn't format it so I could use full capacity so that's why I restored the image using copy+.

If you're interested, I've recently posted a link to the blank pre-Darwin image I used on another thread. Although as you say it could well be down to your Thompson box not liking that drive but might be worth a try.
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Re: Beware of 1TB WD Caviar Green 64MB WD10EARS

Postby scotal » Mon Feb 07, 2011 1:59 pm

Hi, just an update on how my Caviar Green drive is holding up....absolutely no problems so far. I've recorded and played back lots of content and no faiures or glitches.
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Re: Beware of 1TB WD Caviar Green 64MB WD10EARS

Postby stug101 » Mon Mar 07, 2011 6:28 pm

Just thought I'd add to this - replaced the drive in my Amstrad DRX780 STB last week with the 1TB WD Caviar Green 64MB WD10EARS. Works absolutely fine at the moment, and my original drive was stuttering before I replaced it. Procedure was simply to remove old drive and copy all contents to new using copy+ 1.2.0.8. Went on holiday for a week and made numerous recordings which all play fine. I'll update this in a month or so if I have any issues.
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