Re: Verizon begins testing Motorola QIP 7232 with 320GB HD
Tomato
Newbie
The partition size is set up in the firmware in the box. It has been tried and will not work. DO NOT open the DVR, because tampering with the internals, or damaged hardware can be very expensive for the customer. IE: The full retail price of the DVR. Also if it were able to recongnize the new drive, you would not have the required software image on the newly installed drive. I have heard of someone trying to copy the drive image from one drive to another and it did not work.

On my Tivo I was able to upgrade the drive because I purchased the DVR and the software image is available to be loaded onto the new drive prior to installation. But DO NOT TAMPER WITH THE VERIZON HARDWARE.


It is possible to expand a Tivo because Tivo uses the Linux operating system, Verizon does not use Linux.

Yes, it seems unlikely that it is possible to replace the hard drive. Theoretically it could be possible if Verizon wanted to support it, but they don't want to. Something else they could do is to make room for a second hard drive and allow a second drive to be installed, but they are not likely to do that. Support of an external hard drive is possible theoretically; I hope they do that.

One possibility is that testing a 320GB system also tests support of larger hard drives. Other people say that the Motorola operating system that Verizon is using can not (was not able to) support hard drives larger than 160GB. Hopefully the operating system has been modified to support larger hard drives.

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Re: Verizon begins testing Motorola QIP 7232 with 320GB HD
jmw1950
Specialist - Level 2

I find it hard to believe that the software or hardware in the box is arbitrarily limited to 160gb. Virtually all such limitations involve a power of 2. The original IDE specification breaks down at 512 mb. The Logical Block Addressing (LBA) as originally spec'd breaks down at 128gb  (where 1k is really 1024).

The 16bit FAT file system is limited to representing 65,536 blocks, which depending upon block size can bas little as 32mb (and early version of MS-DOS had trouble with HDD's larger than 32mb)  or as much as 2 GB . Anyway if it isn't a power 2, it is unlikely to be a 'hard' hardware or software limit.

My guess is Motorola made a conscious decision to impose the 160gb limit. I have some ideas about why, but I'll keep those private..

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Re: Verizon begins testing Motorola QIP 7232 with 320GB HD
nXt1
Contributor - Level 1

@jmw1950 wrote:

I find it hard to believe that the software or hardware in the box is arbitrarily limited to 160gb. Virtually all such limitations involve a power of 2. The original IDE specification breaks down at 512 mb. The Logical Block Addressing (LBA) as originally spec'd breaks down at 128gb  (where 1k is really 1024).

The 16bit FAT file system is limited to representing 65,536 blocks, which depending upon block size can bas little as 32mb (and early version of MS-DOS had trouble with HDD's larger than 32mb)  or as much as 2 GB . Anyway if it isn't a power 2, it is unlikely to be a 'hard' hardware or software limit.

My guess is Motorola made a conscious decision to impose the 160gb limit. I have some ideas about why, but I'll keep those private..


160gig is a normal hard drive size, nothing software imposing about it.

Flash sizes go from 8megs/16/32/64/128/256/512 etc.

Hard drive sizes are

40gig/80/160/320/, then the weirdness starts 500gig/1tb/1.5tb.

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Re: Verizon begins testing Motorola QIP 7232 with 320GB HD
Tomato
Newbie

@jmw1950 wrote:

I find it hard to believe that the software or hardware in the box is arbitrarily limited to 160gb. Virtually all such limitations involve a power of 2. The original IDE specification breaks down at 512 mb. The Logical Block Addressing (LBA) as originally spec'd breaks down at 128gb  (where 1k is really 1024).

The 16bit FAT file system is limited to representing 65,536 blocks, which depending upon block size can bas little as 32mb (and early version of MS-DOS had trouble with HDD's larger than 32mb)  or as much as 2 GB . Anyway if it isn't a power 2, it is unlikely to be a 'hard' hardware or software limit.

My guess is Motorola made a conscious decision to impose the 160gb limit. I have some ideas about why, but I'll keep those private..


The operating system is neither DOS nor Windows! There is nothing about Microsoft software that is relevant to the Motorola operating system.

Yes, it seems strange that the operating system has the limitation, and the limitation might not be exactly 160GB. The limitation has been used in the past to explain why Verizon DVRs have such small hard drives.

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Re: Verizon begins testing Motorola QIP 7232 with 320GB HD
prisaz
Legend

Verizon with Motorola QIP boxes is not the only provider with Motorola limits. The Motorola DCT boxes used by other providers also have their limits. If you read this Wiki page you will see some of the issues Verizon has had to deal with. Other providers that use them have very similar issues. Read these release notes and you will see some of the issue that Verizon deals with are not Verizon issues but Motorola. Some of the items on this Wiki post also apply to the Verizon boxes, being almost the same hardware. Everytime Motorola comes up with a fix, Verizon has to incorporate that into their custom load. So upgrades are slowed because Verizon may be waiting for more then one thing to be fixed. Perhaps we can look forward to bigger and better Motorola DVRs or another vendor. I have a TiVo.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/How_to_use_a_Motorola_DVR/Firmware_and_Software

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Re: Verizon begins testing Motorola QIP 7232 with 320GB HD
jmw1950
Specialist - Level 2

MS was used an example because those are products many are familiar with. In my career I've probably worked on more than a dozen operating system, and every one of them had limits that involved a power of 2. Consequently any 160gb limit that is claimed, had to be designed into the software. It is not a limit imposed by any hardware constraint, or obvious software constraint.

 The limit of 160gb is a 'designed in' constraint by Motorola.

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