Ultimo Internal HDD Capacity Limit

[Amwtheman]

Hi All.

This is my first post, and i have tried looking for the information prior to posting, but it does not seem readily available so please forgive me if it has already been answered.

I took delivery of a new ultimo yesterday ordered from the sponsor and was wondering what is the biggest hdd i can add to it internally that will stay reliable, and are there any preferred makes / models to use?

Many Thanks
Tony.

[Sandman]

2TB is fine...not sure about 3TB at the minute...

I'd recommend a Western Digital Eco drive...WD20EARX, WD20EARS

the 2.5TB version is the WD25EZRX and the 3TB is the WD30EZRX

All decent drives...I use a fair number in my HTPC's and haven't had a failure yet!

[Amwtheman]

Many thanks Sandman. Are there no issues with using eco / green drives? Do they not spin down and cause any issues in time taken to spin back up and respond? I know i avoided green drives in my raided NAS after reading warnings about not to use them.

Cheers
Tony

[Sandman]

Many thanks Sandman. Are there no issues with using eco / green drives? Do they not spin down and cause any issues in time taken to spin back up and respond? I know i avoided green drives in my raided NAS after reading warnings about not to use them.

Cheers
Tony

Well you know what its like...YMMV! I can't say I've ever had any issues...both my boxes have WD20EARS drives and I've never had a crash or problem playing back content...

I use 30 in my HTPCs and have set up any number for friends...all with EARX or EARS drives and nobody has had an issue yet!

[Rob van der Does]

You'd best use special DVR-HDD's; they run at 5400rpm, have a quick spin up and produce less warmth. Drives up to 2GB should always work, larger drives will probably work.

Using a 2.5" drive is an alternative, but they are more expensive (price per GB is much higher) and maximum size is smaller.

[im85288]

Will attaching an external hard drive via USB cause any unwanted side effects? The reason I ask this is because I have done this with my Ultimo that has the black hole image installed and recordings etc are fine but for some reason I cannot do a backup of the image (even though I have a USB key attached too)

[Rob van der Does]

An USB-HDD should be fine as well.

[im85288]

Thanks, the USB HDD does work fine. The problem I had was that the USB key was not marked as being Mounted, once I did this the backup worked fine.

[Huevos]

Drives up to 2GB should always work

I haven't seen one of those in about 10 years.

[Rob van der Does]

Drives up to 2GB should always work,....

I haven't seen one of those in about 10 years.

Yeah, G&T are close together (on the keyboard)..........

[Huevos]

Yeah, G&T are close together (on the keyboard)..........

Just teasing.

[Rob van der Does]

But I do remember a 1.2GB HDD to be an expensive luxury! More expensive then a 2.1TB is now.

[parkher]

I just got Ultimo yesterday. I put into it a new Samsung 2 TB 5400 rpm HD204UI drive.
So far so good. But the initialization was pretty stressful, it seems that it was performed in background without any progress indication and a reboot was required afterwards.
So I did not know what was going on, I was getting "disk full" error messages when trying to record.

Anyway, I am able to record to this drive, but I think it might be important to record more than 1 TB.
I remember sometime ago, when I got Duo, somebody reported that > 1 TB drive was fine with Duo until he recorded more than 1 TB, then problems began.
After deleting some of the recorded stuff so that again more than 1 TB was free - again everything was ok.
So because of that feedback I put in Duo 1 TB drive - to avoid that problem.

But now with Ultimo I risked 2 TB.

[Huevos]

parkher, initialisation is a background function. You can tell when it is done by going to menu/info/devices. Before it is initialised it will display 0 space. Once it is initialised just do a reboot and you will be able to record to it.

Also, I've 2TB in my Ultimo and am over 1.2TB capacity and recording without any problem.

[pooface]

Anyway, I am able to record to this drive, but I think it might be important to record more than 1 TB.
I remember sometime ago, when I got Duo, somebody reported that > 1 TB drive was fine with Duo until he recorded more than 1 TB, then problems began.
After deleting some of the recorded stuff so that again more than 1 TB was free - again everything was ok.
So because of that feedback I put in Duo 1 TB drive - to avoid that problem.

But now with Ultimo I risked 2 TB.

As Huevos says, that > 1tb problem was a problem a long time ago. At the time, I used to get around it by splitting my 2tb hdd in to 2 x 1tb partitions. Currently, I have a 2tb partitioned hdd in my et9000 with about 77% full (1.4tb used). It's working fine. In the ultimo, I have a 1.5tb 2.5" hdd, but it's currently only 47% used (660gb). But, it will be fine when it gets over 1tb... So, don't worry