Using White Label IDE Drives?

Give us a link. If they are not the right model number they will not work.

Someone's bad experience with a MediaMax drive...

http://www.techsupportforum.com/hard...wl2000gsa.html

On some additional searching I found this...

http://www.pricewatch.com/gallery/ha...ultra_ata_80gb

Which as of 10-3-2010 @ 4:17PM (CDT) included the "White Label" 80GB mentioned on ebay except for $25 with free shipping... Which means that you'll save around $4 going via that particular pricewatch vendor... YET you can see that there are several other name brand drives available for about the same price and free shipping which have been ATA-3 compatible for quite some time and usually have decent 3-5 year warranties (For ATA-3... Seagate I think was considered a good bet... WD certain models were/weren't... Maxtor was late to the game but mostly they've all been compatible for the last 5-7 years)

I'd go for the 120GB (or even a 160+GB) drive if you can spare the extra cash.

By "pull" units I assume you mean "used" units? Not sure I'd spend good cash on used stuff when new stuff (with a better warranty?) is available for the same price. If by "pulled" you mean it's new but was "salvaged" from a system that was maybe upgraded/replaced with a larger drive... (Like all the UTV 40GB Seagates I've got around here?) I'm fine with that... if the price is right.

If that is the case and he was "giving" them away... I might consider it but then maybe only in a RAID setup where I could have TWO drives with identical DATA so I could have a backup if one failed.

As the UTV is largely "set it and forget it"... not sure I'd want to trust my recordings to something with unknown miles. Maybe if you upgraded your own PC drive (from say 120/200GB to 500GB) and you'd been able to run diagnostics and you've got a history on it (clean/dirty/hot/cold/dusty conditions)... then you might feel better on it.

Yet, even in "good" conditions a drive can fail at any time. My cousin's Dell with a WD drive just gave up the ghost with no warning. Now granted her business's "workshop office" was rather dusty by which I mean it took us like 10 minutes using a full fledged Air Compressor and narrow tip Air Gun to clean all the fine dust and webs from the nooks and crannies. So I'm suspecting heat might have gotten that one...

You might want to treat yourself and see what pricewatch/ebay has in the way of new 160GB+ IDE drives with full warranties. I remember when my 160GB Seagate failed (I transferred it from a Sony UTV to a Tivo... Seagate honored their 5 year warranty and I had a new 160GB in just a few days... I think the replacement is good for another year still... It's back in another of my UTVs I think...)