Hard drive space?

sjthomp · 03-07-2007, 11:09 PM

The most recent post on hard drive size I was able to find is from last year, and says there are (were) no plans to increase the hard drive size from 40Gb or allow for users to add additional or larger drives, but that you can plug in USB drives to increase the space.

A couple of questions...

1. Is this still the case?

2. Has anyone installed additional drives via the rear USB port? I'd appreciate any info you can share about how you did it. I'd like at least 180Gb, and I'd like it to be out of sight and tidy. What kind of drives/enclosures would work well for this? How did you handle cooling? (I live in Arizona, and temperature can definitely be an issue with car hard drives.)

Thanks in advance for any info.

2k1Toaster · 03-07-2007, 11:13 PM

Harddrive space with what? Are you referring to the Infill T3?

HDTechnology · 03-08-2007, 07:36 AM

What a coincedence i was about to ask the same thing about the T3!

DarquePervert · 03-08-2007, 08:09 AM

If you buy the hardware-only package, you can replace the HDD with whatever size you want, although you're still getting the 40GB.

And there should be no reason you couldn't connect a USB drive to the USB port. Now, I don't know if it's been done, but there is no reason why that wouldn't work.

RedGTiVR6 · 03-08-2007, 08:29 AM

The T3 comes with a 40 gig drive.

StreetDeck is hardware locked, so if you changed out the HDD you will have to reregister StreetDeck.

StaggRLee · 03-08-2007, 10:38 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by RedGTiVR6

The T3 comes with a 40 gig drive.

StreetDeck is hardware locked, so if you changed out the HDD you will have to reregister StreetDeck.

For a boot drive a 40GB drive is just about right if you consider things like swap/hiber files, SD caching of VirtualEarth maps etc.

It actually makes more sense to have a removable and seperate media drive. I have stayed away from USB because there are no set rules for bandwidth sharing on USB and this can result in bus congestion and contention issues when streaming media. USB treats storage no differently than any other device and operates in a polling mode.

1394 is better suited to this kind of application but still has its own problems in my experience. Most notably "Delayed Write Failures" (I see them most often on Resumes when the system was put into hiber/stdby with media playing), which can cause the drive to fail to enumerate or be removed by the OS when these are encountered. This can corrupt the SD index and then eventually the entire drive itself. I then have to reformat, scan for bad sectors and put the media back on the drive.

I've tried everything I can think of to eliminate this problem including trying enclosures using the Oxford, Genesys, and other, IDE->1394 bridge chips, XP patches for the 1394 driver stack, firmware hacks, filter drivers etc. with no luck. See a great write-up of at least one of the source of the problem at: http://http://www.bustrace.com/delayedwrite/index.htm

I've finally given up on 1394 and I'm waiting on the return of my OPUS case modded to add a removable 2.5" SATA caddy in place of the optical drive. The other option I considered was adding an eSATA header cable to one of my iBase board's SATA connectors and then using a Vantec NexStar 2.5" eSATA enclosure, but eSATA is not bus-powered and that means two cables to the external drive. I decided not to mess with that.

sjthomp · 03-08-2007, 11:04 AM

Thanks for the replies. A few follow-up questions...

What kind of hard drive does the Infill T3 use? Notebook drives?

How many drive bays does the T3 have?

Is replacing the hard drive pretty straightforward? Will I void the warranty by doing so?

Other than warranty/support, is there any advantage of buying with the software preloaded instead of buying hardware-only + Windows + StreetDeck and installing myself? Is there any Windows/StreetDeck optimization I won't get if I go that route?

Other than having to reregister StreetDeck, would I have any trouble buying a T3 with the software, then just cloning to a larger drive?

Thanks again.

HDTechnology · 03-08-2007, 11:12 AM

Thanks for that guys!

Zip-Lock · 03-08-2007, 11:51 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by sjthomp

What kind of hard drive does the Infill T3 use? Notebook drives?

Yes. 2.5"

Quote:

How many drive bays does the T3 have?

One.

Quote:

Is replacing the hard drive pretty straightforward?

Not hard but not easy, keep track of your screws. It's layered, have to take things like the DVD drive out, to get to the HD.

Quote:

Will I void the warranty by doing so?

Yes.

Quote:

Other than warranty/support, is there any advantage of buying with the software preloaded instead of buying hardware-only + Windows + StreetDeck and installing myself?

The hardware only is intended for advanced hobbyists only. No support is offered. StreetDeck won't necessary help you get it working, if you need a driver or something weird happens. I can't speak for StreetDeck because I just don't know. Don't count on it.

Quote:

Is there any Windows/StreetDeck optimization I won't get if I go that route?

Nope.

Quote:

Other than having to reregister StreetDeck, would I have any trouble buying a T3 with the software, then just cloning to a larger drive?

I'm not sure I understand your question. You shouldn't have any problems buying the pre-bundled package.

2k1Toaster · 03-08-2007, 12:08 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by Zip-Lock

I'm not sure I understand your question. You shouldn't have any problems buying the pre-bundled package.

I think he means using a disk cloning utility to copy the contents of the original drive to a bigger drive, and will it still all work.

If that is the case not without registering Streetdeck because it is hardware locked. Not software locked that can be transfered via disk cloning, but the actual harddrive ID.

I think that is what he is asking!

sharpmat007 · 03-08-2007, 02:35 PM

Not sure on the cloning if it will work...guessing yes if its already activated, but streetdeck may check your hardware code everytime you startup, but all it takes is an email to support to get a new code when you change your hardware. I successfully changed out my hardrive as soon as I got my T3 to an 80gb with no issues. I have also used a number of external drives without issue.

DarquePervert · 03-08-2007, 03:14 PM

StreetDeck's registration is tied to the physical HDD.
So no, the cloning would not work.

sjthomp · 03-08-2007, 03:18 PM

Okay, it sounds like the best way for me to go is to buy the whole package and clone the disk to a larger drive.

Is reregistering any big deal? If I clone to a new disk, will I just need to get a new activation code from StreetDeck and enter it, or will anything be fundamentally broken?

Also, is the interface for the hard drive ATA or SATA?

Thanks very much for all the answers.

sjthomp · 03-08-2007, 04:19 PM

Thanks very much for all the info. I'll contact StreetDeck to verify whether and how cloning and reregistering would work.

One last question. Is the hard drive interface ATA or SATA?

Thanks again.

sharpmat007 · 03-08-2007, 04:36 PM

Ata