A-100 Hard Drive Recommendation

[slr_65]

Hi Guys,

I have two htpcs running GBPVR. I bought an Egreat 34a for my son and he's loved it, but he uses it as a stand alone unit.

I saw on the GBPVR board that these make great client units for GBPVR and I saw they had some A-100 refurbs in stock tonight so I ordered one.

I just noticed though that they say Western Digital drives are not recommended. Why not? What brands work best with the A-100?

I'm kinda bummed as I have a couple spare WD 80 gig drives. I probably don't need a drive at all though since I'll be hooking it up to the network with the other two htpcs anyway, but I might occasionally want to take it with me when we travel so a hard drive would be nice, especially since it can mount internally.

Can anyone enlighten me on the A-100 hard drive issues?

Thanks!

Steve

[cheaper_popcorn]

Quote:I just noticed though that they say Western Digital drives are not recommended. Why not?

Power ripples causing erratic remote control response was the main issue as far as I can recall, but hold on and others may be able to specify that, or fill out the picture further.

That being said, I use a Western Digital inside of my A-100, but it's a 2.5" laptop drive with a 3.5" to 2.5" IDE adapter. I think it's a good solution personally, low noise, better air circulation, almost noiseless (unless you're in a well insulated small room close to the player).

[slr_65]

Wow, there's hardly any IDE drives listed in the WIKI!

Do I take it that no one puts hard drives in the A-100s???

[Willem53]

(08-14-2009 09:49 PM)slr_65 Wrote:  Wow, there's hardly any IDE drives listed in the WIKI!

Do I take it that no one puts hard drives in the A-100s???

No they do, just as the A-110 users, choice of IDE drives is a lot less these day and maybe the A-100 user don't contribute much to this WiKi page...

putting in the old WD 80's wont be any problem except maybe for a bit of noise....

[chris57]

I had a WD 500Gb HDD in my A100 and along with others we had a hell of a time. The power ripples caused IR repeats and in the end IR Repeat On/OFF was introduced into the NMT Settings to stop it happening.

I use an old 80GB 2.5" fujitsu in mine. I have also use a CF card with a CF adapter.

[slr_65]

Thank you Chris57!

Did the firmware ir on/off fix the problem satisfactorly?

I'm asking because I have a Western Digital 320gb ide in my main pc and I was thinking I may pull it for the NMT and replace it with a SATA drive since my main pc supports SATA and drives are pretty cheap right now.

THANKS again!

---

OK, This info is in the archives but I'm just sticking it here to make it easier for new owners like me to find.

The hard drive issue is because there is a design flaw in the PCH -> they forgot to put a filter cap on the power input to the remote control ir sensor. The hard drive pulls it's power from the same spot and some hard drives create enough voltage ripples that it causes the ir sensor to become much less sensitive.

Pucco found the problem and a fix can be made by anyone with competent soldering skills.

In the "Remote Control; Solved!" thread in the A-100 Archives Pucco wrote:

In the A small capacitor must be soldered between the supply pin and the ground pin of the IR receiver. This is very simple to do for any one
with minor soldering skills on the bottom side of the PCB. But for every one without soldering skills it is nothing to do except try to get it fixed
by PCH (unlikely).
It is definitely a design flaw.

He later expanded with:

The application circuit in the data sheet has a 47uF capacitor. I think that any capacitance between 1uF and 100 uF will work. It is a 5 volt circuit so the capacitor should be 6.3V or more.

IDE hard drives are getting hard to find so I don't like a design flaw limiting my choices. I will probably use my unit disk-less for a bit to make sure it's working OK and then I will install a hard drive and see if it works OK, if it doesn't then with the full understanding that I'm voiding my warranty, I will install the missing filter cap and see if that fixes the problem.

Since I'm getting a refurb though maybe PCH has already fixed this problem, I'll post back after I get my unit and try a couple of my spare Western Digital hard drives.