WD AV drives not for desktop use

I have left a ticket with Western Digital asking if AV drives are ok for
PC data, so we'll see what they say.
--
Ed Light

Better World News TV Channel:
http://realnews.com

Iraq Veterans Against the War and Related:
http://ivaw.org
http://couragetoresist.org
http://antiwar.com

Send spam to the FTC at

Thanks, robots.

From Western Digital:

"The AV drives are designed to be used on Audio/Video equipment but
using it on a computer would not create any problems. We know that it is
save to use our AV drives with computers and no error would occur."
--
Ed Light

Better World News TV Channel:
http://realnews.com

Iraq Veterans Against the War and Related:
http://ivaw.org
http://couragetoresist.org
http://antiwar.com

Send spam to the FTC at

Thanks, robots.

On 29/06/2011 2:17 PM, Mike Tomlinson wrote:
En el ,
escribió:

Hmm, not good. These are not general-purpose components. If
I read it right, they do not do any error correction.

Exactly. Or they do very minimal correction, favouring keeping up a
stream of data over data accuracy.

Such drives are sometimes also marked "CE" (consumer electronics), not
to be confused with the European CE symbol.

I don't think so, you would need to enable certain special modes of this
drive to skip error correction like that. I would assume that they come
configured like standard drives out of the box, and only go into these
special modes, when they are attached to some sort of PVR.

Then that brings up the question, how many PVR's actually can make use
of this special mode? I would guess not many of them are aware of this
feature.

Yousuf Khan

En el artículo , Yousuf Khan
escribió:

I don't think so, you would need to enable certain special modes of this
drive to skip error correction like that.

Perhaps, then, you could explain the CE-marked Western Digital drive I
have in my PVR?

http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showt...php?p=13294509

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/pro...r_electronics/

http://www.astra2d.com/sky+2.html

"Better streaming video performance - ensuring that you always get a
great picture. CE drives are optimized for streaming to avoid the
stutters and jerkiness that can be caused by repeated error checking
that occurs on regular desktop PC drives. Hard disk drives designed for
PC applications are optimized for data integrity through enhanced error
detection and correction routines. These error correction 'features' on
PC drives cause the data flow to be paused until an error is corrected,
which causes jerky playback of video and audio."

I would assume that they come
configured like standard drives out of the box, and only go into these
special modes, when they are attached to some sort of PVR.

No, they're supplied already configured in those "special modes", which
is why they should not be used in desktop PCs.

Then that brings up the question, how many PVR's actually can make use
of this special mode?

They don't need to. The drive does it.

--
(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")

Ed Light wrote:
From Western Digital:

"The AV drives are designed to be used on Audio/Video equipment but
using it on a computer would not create any problems. We know that it is
save to use our AV drives with computers and no error would occur."

Good to know. So this is a commend extension only and if you do not
use the "no retry" commands, no prolems arise.

Thanks for investigating and posting this!

Arno
--
Arno Wagner, Dr. sc. techn., Dipl. Inform., CISSP -- Email:
GnuPG: ID: 1E25338F FP: 0C30 5782 9D93 F785 E79C 0296 797F 6B50 1E25 338F
----
Cuddly UI's are the manifestation of wishful thinking. -- Dylan Evans

On 07/01/2011 03:08 AM, Mike Tomlinson wrote:
I would assume that they come
configured like standard drives out of the box, and only go into these
special modes, when they are attached to some sort of PVR.

No, they're supplied already configured in those "special modes", which
is why they should not be used in desktop PCs.

Then that brings up the question, how many PVR's actually can make use
of this special mode?

They don't need to. The drive does it.

No, Frank Z. explained it here, there is no special streaming mode, but
there are special streaming versions of the ATA commandset. Standard ATA
commands like "Read DMA" would have an complementary streaming command
like "Read DMA without retries". A PC running the same drives would only
ever use the retriable commands, whereas a PVR would use the
non-retriable commands.

Yousuf Khan

On 7/1/2011 8:42 AM, Arno wrote:

Thanks for investigating and posting this!

Thanks for sharing your experience!
--
Ed Light

Better World News TV Channel:
http://realnews.com

Iraq Veterans Against the War and Related:
http://ivaw.org
http://couragetoresist.org
http://antiwar.com

Send spam to the FTC at

Thanks, robots.

On 30/06/2011 9:56 PM, Ed Light wrote:
From Western Digital:

"The AV drives are designed to be used on Audio/Video equipment but
using it on a computer would not create any problems. We know that it is
save to use our AV drives with computers and no error would occur."

Now, I wonder if a Cisco 8642HD PVR would be able to make use of this
special streaming commandset? I wouldn't want to go buy one of these and
find out that it's simply being used as a normal drive with the standard
commandset.

Yousuf Khan

En el artículo , John Turco
escribió:

Your e-mail address ends in "uk" -- so, Miguel, it's
logical to assume you're in Britain, not Spain.

El español es el idioma más hablado del planeta, Juan. )

--
(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")

Arno wrote:
Ed Light wrote:
http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.a...tno=659&pgno=4

Fortunately these should be more expensive and not
show up in cheap computers. But some people will
recycle them and run into problems.

A mpeg file can be copied over 100 times faster than it takes to play it.
The disk's speed therefore seems to be so much faster than needed for video,
why is it even necessary to speed it up by reducing the error-correction?


--

Reply in group, but if emailing add one more
zero, and remove the last word.