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Ultimate TV (UTV) Hard Drive Upgrade

Posted by timothy on from the geniuses-meet-the-idiot-box dept.

BubbaJoeBob writes: "I just read this thread over at the AVSForum that jeffm7 was able to upgrade his UTV 40GB drive to a WD 100GB drive. Other users are reporting that they were also successful using the WD 120GB drive." And aside from ending up with an apparently useless original drive, this sounds much less painful and involved than various homebrewed TiVO upgrades; according to posters on this thread, it's nearly plug-and-play (with a necessary download step in the middle).

4 of 112 comments (clear)

  1. Upgrade comparison... by Tyger · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The UTV upgrade is, unsurprisingly, not unlike the DishPlayer upgrade. In fact, it is pretty much the same. Surprised this was not found earlier, unless it is drive specific, and early attempts tried the wrong drive type.

    The upgrade itself is pretty painless. I do not have a UTV myself, nor have I upgraded one, but I do follow the forums. It is pretty much just putting it in and letting it download software. Only catch, from what I see, is the drive cannot have anything on it. At all. Not even an unused partition. While (In theory) slower than the TiVo upgrade, it is easier, and harder to end up with useless hardware. But I believe there is only space for one drive in UTV, so you can only get half the space of a TiVo.

    As it is, the TiVo upgrade these days is pretty painless, and is only likely to get less so. If you can swap drives in the unit, it is only a little harder to do the necessary PC work. Of course, it does require a PC. And with the drives that come prepared for TiVo upgrade, it is actually just as easy to upgrade TiVo, and much quicker to boot, involving only a few seconds to add the new drive, instead of hours to download software to install.

  2. Drive noise? by deano · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I upgraded my replayTV a few months back, and I've since noticed that the 120GB drive I put in (Maxtor 5400rpm) makes a very audible clicking noise as it writes/scans... I'd just warn anyone considering an upgrade to definitely ear-test the drive first if possible... What is perfectly acceptable/quiet in terms of in-computer use, can be deafening when watching a tense moment of (intended) silence on-screen.

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  3. Re:40 GB pretty small by todays standards by GeorgieBoy · · Score: 3, Insightful
    A year ago 40GB drives weren't considered small and 40GB for a DNS server?! You don't need anywhere near that amount of disk space. A DNS server could get by with just a Compact Flash card!.
    Not to mention that 40GB of music(thousands of tracks) or data isn't exactly shabby, and if it isn't enough for you, it's certainly easy enough these days to add the drive to a RAID. And who needs "disk utility software?" Just do
    dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdc
    for the appropriate drive then add a DOS parition table using fdisk.
  4. Re:UltimateTV vs TiVo by linzeal · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Excuse me I don't have time to check the site thoroughly but is [tivonews.com] unbiased, or do they lean toward the tivo?

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    An Education is the Font of All Liberty