DVR is at 80% full

[Josephinelcajon]

WD is the way to go.

Especially for this application! My last one currently on the Hopper is a regular HD in a HD case. I recycled the HD from a computer and bought the case at Frys some 15-20 years ago and still running. I do see occasionally a message that says HD is spinning up. So its only running when in direct use.

 

[Josephinelcajon]

From what I've read, you can get away with a 7TB drive but if you plug in a single 8TB drive it will not recognize it. You can try it and see if any of the many firmware fixes may have changed that.

Thanks! I knew its a gamble. I will let you know. It might be here tomorrow.

 

[Josephinelcajon]

Thanks! I knew its a gamble. I will let you know. It might be here tomorrow.

Update so the WD is not seen or detected at all by the Hopper. I tried it on my computer and its acting slow and strange. I will exchange it for the smaller 4GB. 4 times what I had should last me. I am still working on it such as trying to partition it.

Here is a very BIG Suprise! I also bought a SSD and it works perfectly! Extremely fast read and write! It took a bit to format but once done zero problems. SSD would not be good because of the constant reading and writing??? Or is this not a problem IF you transfer anything you want to watch to minimize it???

Portable SSD T7 Shield USB 3.2 2TB (Black) Memory & Storage - MU-PE2T0S/AM | Samsung US

Discover the latest features and innovations available in the Portable SSD T7 Shield USB 3.2 2TB (Black). Find the perfect Memory & Storage for you!

www.samsung.com

 

[TheKrell]

I think an SSD is overkill for a Hopper EHD. Price/TB is too high IMHO. I don't think there are too many read/write cycles as there would be for the Wally EHD. But there is no need to waste the money on an SSD for a Hopper.

 

[bookworm370]

Update so the WD is not seen or detected at all by the Hopper. I tried it on my computer and its acting slow and strange. I will exchange it for the smaller 4GB. 4 times what I had should last me. I am still working on it such as trying to partition it.

Here is a very BIG Suprise! I also bought a SSD and it works perfectly! Extremely fast read and write! It took a bit to format but once done zero problems. SSD would not be good because of the constant reading and writing??? Or is this not a problem IF you transfer anything you want to watch to minimize it???

Yeah, that exactly what I've seen, anything drive over 7TB is just not recognized. (The T7 you found is just a 2TB drive. I have a couple of those very compact babies for my Acronis or Carbon Copy Cloner full PT/MAC backups. )

Maybe because they left a little room for you to plug in a smaller 1TB 2nd drive? The funny thing is that hardly any manufacturers have EVER made 7TB drives. They go from 6TB to 8. The way I got my 7 is that I bought a 5600 rpm surveillance drive which does/did come in 7TB sizes..

As for SSD's, that's been discuss at length before. Just do search on SSD. It's not about the R/W speeds or amount of R/W's, it's about the fact that cells in a SSD can only be used a certain amount of time before the are marked bad or burned out. In which case the internal SSD controller has to fool the operating system and move the block to another part of the SSD and lie as to where it actually is. With enough R/W's which the Hopper does whether it's on or off and SSD can fail very quickly.

Now, if you just want to use it as long term program/movie storage and leave the programs alone, and SSD should work fine. Other than you'll see or gain no performance improvement as the Hopper will pre-buffer anything played back from the EHD, just look at the lights, the EHD will blink about 5-10 seconds before the next scene is displayed. The hopper if pre-reading the next set of blocks to keep the stream continuous. Add the fact that the max transfer speed is USB 2 (not 3) and you are limited to USB 2 speeds which just about any Hard Drive will easily loaf though. That's why the Hopper pre-buffers the program because it can't pull the data fast enough off the EHD to keep a constant video/audio stream so it has to read ahead.

 

[Josephinelcajon]

Yeah, that exactly what I've seen, anything drive over 7TB is just not recognized. (The T7 you found is just a 2TB drive. I have a couple of those very compact babies for my Acronis or Carbon Copy Cloner full PT/MAC backups. )

Maybe because they left a little room for you to plug in a smaller 1TB 2nd drive? The funny thing is that hardly any manufacturers have EVER made 7TB drives. They go from 6TB to 8. The way I got my 7 is that I bought a 5600 rpm surveillance drive which does/did come in 7TB sizes..

As for SSD's, that's been discuss at length before. Just do search on SSD. It's not about the R/W speeds or amount of R/W's, it's about the fact that cells in a SSD can only be used a certain amount of time before the are marked bad or burned out. In which case the internal SSD controller has to fool the operating system and move the block to another part of the SSD and lie as to where it actually is. With enough R/W's which the Hopper does whether it's on or off and SSD can fail very quickly.

Now, if you just want to use it as long term program/movie storage and leave the programs alone, and SSD should work fine. Other than you'll see or gain no performance improvement as the Hopper will pre-buffer anything played back from the EHD, just look at the lights, the EHD will blink about 5-10 seconds before the next scene is displayed. The hopper if pre-reading the next set of blocks to keep the stream continuous. Add the fact that the max transfer speed is USB 2 (not 3) and you are limited to USB 2 speeds which just about any Hard Drive will easily loaf though. That's why the Hopper pre-buffers the program because it can't pull the data fast enough off the EHD to keep a constant video/audio stream so it has to read ahead.

I had/have no intention of using the SSD for this. It was purely a test to see if it would work. I have been using 1TB for a long time so 4 TB is more than enough.

Partitioning did not work either. It might be the number of platters inside and the Hopper cant see/read or control a double platter.

 

[bookworm370]

I had/have no intention of using the SSD for this. It was purely a test to see if it would work. I have been using 1TB for a long time so 4 TB is more than enough.

Partitioning did not work either. It might be the number of platters inside and the Hopper cant see/read or control a double platter.

The number of platters are completely irrelevant to the size of the drive. Different encoding techniques used to compress the data allows more data to be put on a platter.. So a 4TB drive just uses a different encoding technique than a 16TB drive, which is a lot more complicated and sealed with helium. Even an SSD, for compatibility, will report a random number of platters so that the controller won't freak. The SSD has other attributes such a TRIM support availability, etc. that are passed also in the hardware header. Of course, the TRIM command is useless on a physical HDD but won't cause an error, but rather treated as a NOP.

But there is a hard stamped (electronically) identifier on each drive that gives it what is generally called a unique MAC address and also it's capabilities, buffer size and also un-formatted (available) space as formatting can give you more or less final space. So it's the total raw available space that the HD controller reads and the software in the PC/MAC/Hopper then knows what size the drive is. Not as simple as putting a camera in each bay to pick up a picture of what size it says on the label LOL