[Jake025]

I just wanted to know if someone has anything new on the possibility of attaching additional hard drives to the original one.

I have a couple more hard drives that pertained to other UTV's and I was wondering if I could do something to use them as additional recording space in one single IRD...

Thanks for your help.

 

[lgodavid]

Hi,


As of the moment the only "known" UTV Configuration is with a Single/Master ATA Security Enabled IDE Hard Drive.


Alternative configs like having another ATA Security IDE HD installed as a Slave OR Cable Select (One I'd like to test out myself)... have been tried but with no success as of yet.


Using an external USB Hard Drive (assuming ATA Security) I suspect have also been done... as of yet no luck.


If you'd like to test out some theories, be my guest... It took a while before we figured out how to upgrade the UTV Hard Drive reliably (Anyone want to give a history?) and then be able to unlock the drive (Again History?)...


It might be possible to do additional things with the UTV that until it is found to be possible, are going to be considered IMPOSSIBLE.


I hope you will find adding another Hard Drive to the UTV to be possible.


That said... the UTV design probably never considered TWO Drives as an option... It also has a built in 137GB limit, which probably has to do with when the UTV was originally designed and built... until recently computers didn't usually recognize HDs over 137GB... If it where still in production we might find NEWer UTVs with the BIOS updated to recognize larger HDs...


I'd personally look into seeing what CABLE SELECT would do on a UTV. (MASTER is the First IDE Connector and SLAVE is the Second IDE Connector... Both IDE Drives are set to CABLE SELECT)


Beware at your own Risk! Pull that access card before you try anything.


Good Luck,

 

[fearlessrogue]

Has anyone tried to add an additional drive (slave) when they are formatting the original?


It is crazy/simple enough to work.

 

[micheldb]

Tried it (using the drive I was using to upgrade and the original drive), didn't recognize the second drive.

 

[fearlessrogue]

It still might work. It might need for both drives to be in the same conditon.

 

[Jake025]

I'm sorry but what do you mean by "both drives to be in the same condition"?

How would you set them up? I mean, I understand this is quite different from a PC hd...

 

[lgodave]

Hi,


I'd assume by same condition is that both drives are unformatted/unpartitioned...


Uncertain if different size drives would matter, but it wouldn't hurt to have two identical supported drives right out of the box... to test with..


Good Luck,

 

[Jake025]

The extra hard drive that I have is from another UTV, so I guess it probably has the same format just as the one I'm currently using.

I can see in the label that you can actually set it up as slave...

My concern is if the software will recognize it...

All your comments are really appreciated.

 

[lgodavid]

Hi Jake025,


As you already know... adding a second Hard Drive to an UTV has been attempted before, and as of yet... has been unsuccessful.


As far as I know, there hasn't actually been a "Add a Second Hard Drive to your UTV" Project/Experiment conducted (by more then one or two people)which has made an effort to detail what DOES NOT WORK and what,if anything, DOES WORK when trying to upgrade the UTV to two drives.


IF a second Hard Drive is possible under current UTV Software (3.5/3.7) I'd like to suggest that ONLY an ATA Security Supported Hard Drive would work. (Like two identical UTV 40/45 GB drives)


Based on what we know about getting just one drive to work under UTV it seems likely that you MUST have ATA Security before a second drive would work...


This may all be a pipe dream (How would the UTV OS "span" two drives? How does Tivo do it?) but if we start with the assumption it is possible and carefully see what a UTV will do with two Hard Drives configured in various ways we may discover something...


Has anyone been able to configure the UTV to "ignore" a Second Drive? (No Error codes) Even if it doesn't (seem to) add recording capacity?


Good Luck,