Hard drive rejection

[DVR MAN 0]

Why do some brands of hard drives work in DVRs, and others with same spec's not work? This has been bugging me for a long time.

Thanks in advance!

DVRMAN

[Soundy 1]

Have you found that certain drives actually DON'T work, or are you curious as to why manufacturers only list specific drives as being supported?

 

I can't think of any reason these days why any drive with the appropriate specs shouldn't work in any DVR (or computer, for that matter). Back in the day, when IDE was new, there were assorted compatibility problems, most often arising from single/master/slave configurations, but that shouldn't be the case today.

 

Sometimes a manufacturer will test specific brands and models of drives in their systems and list them as "supported", then note that any other drives aren't "supported"... all that means is, if you have drive problems, they won't "support" it; it doesn't automatically mean they won't work.

[DVR MAN 0]

I have a mobile DVR. Seagate ATA Ultra does not work (Says it formatted, but it says to format next time it is turned on). Hitachi ATA Ultra works!

[FranciscoNET 0]

I have observed that some hard drives comes with different jumper settings as their defaults and I have observed that different mainboards behave differently with different jumper configuration on the hard drives.

 

For example, Brand X hard drive might come preset to "Cable Select" on the back of the hard drive, while Brand Y hard drive might come preset as "Master" in the back of the hard drive. Maybe, your particular stand alone DVR might not support hard drives that has been set as "Cable Select" in the back, if that's the case, you will need to remove that jumper and place it as "Master" and try again.

 

Also, watch for hard drives that has "Master if Slave Present" option, those hard drive expects that you remove the jumper pin all together and leave it jumperless if there wont be any Slave drive within the same IDE channel and this is true for some stand alone DVRs, there can't and there is no SLAVE drives capability within that DVR's mainboard as its IDE channel was meant for only 1 IDE device (Unless the DVR comes with a DVD burner, even tho on some models that comes like that, it comes with TWO dedicated IDE channels, one for Hard drive, and the other for DVD, in which case both IDE devices gets to be set as MASTERS within their jumper sets)

Edited September 3, 2009 by Guest

[DVR MAN 0]

THANKS