Features:

  • Power-conserving WD AV-GP drives offer significant power savings and thermally optimized operation resulting in lower cost of ownership and unsurpassed reliability for PVR/DVR, IPTV boxes and media server manufacturers.
  • Silk Stream - Optimized for smooth, continuous digital video playback of up to twelve simultaneous HD streams. Silk Stream is compatible with the ATA streaming command set so CE customers can use standard streaming management and error recovery options.
  • Ideal for set-top boxes (PVR, DVR and IPTV), media servers, media centers, and surveillance applications.
  • 2TB capacity holds up to 400,000 digital photos, 500,000 MP3 files, and 240 hours of HD video.
  • 1 year limited warranty.
  • Package includes a hard drive only - no screws, cables, manuals included. Please purchase mounting hardware and cables separately if necessary.
It holds things for you. It's a drive of holding.

Acquired to upgrade a system used for karaoke and other such music things where all I need to do is run one program for playing audio and some smaller mp4 or avi files. I wouldn't use it for gaming or other things that require haste in r/w operations else you'll be taken back to the days of eternal "area loading" screens. Other possible uses: stick it in a JBOD or NAS because the more storage space you have, the bigger your. . . well, you get the idea. Fill it with your recipe collection. Archive your Twitch streams to it. Just don't try running your 4k UHD games off it expecting it to keep up. It probably won't. It's for holding, not intense applications.

New-old stock, but still a solid workhorse.

A 2TB drive (not the same brand) in my old FreeNAS recently went and I purchased this one to replace it. Yeah, it not the appropriate drive for a professional NAS device, but FreeNAS ain't exactly a enterprise level stuff. That and all the drives in my NAS was this make and model, if not a bit older drives. So to my surprise, the drive I received was dated 2018, still wrapped in the factory sleeve, but effective new-old stock. Swapped out the bad drive, turned on the server, and a few clicks later on FreeNAS UI, drive was resilvering. Operation took about 1-1.5 hours, but it completed and as far as application was concerned, everything was back to normal. Terabytes to dollars, these drives are a good deal. Not the fastest drives out there, but pretty resilient for what I been using them for. Simple put, these drives are solid workhorses.

Works great along with a Thermaltake case and Comcast DVR

I have a Comcast DCX3400M DVR box which recently received the A31 update, which allows it to work with external drives up to 2TB. But it has to be connected via eSATA. Unfortunately, WD no longer makes their 2TB DVR Expander, and their 1TB model sells for $100. So I decided to make my own with a Thermaltake Max 5 case and a WD 2TB AV-GP drive, for a total of $125. The Thermaltake Max 5 case is made well, but you have to use their included tool to open it up. Why they didn't just use regular screws? Now if you lose their tool, you can't open it! But besides that, it was easy to install the WD 2TB drive (no mounting screws required). The power cable is long enough at 6ft, but the included eSATA is too small at about 3ft, so I'm having to order a longer one. The dual cooling fans do produce a slight wind-hum that you can hear up close, but not if you are a few feet away. They also provide good cooling for the drive. I like the fact that the blue LEDs on the fans can be turned off, yet there is no way to disable the power/activity LED on the front, which is quite bright. I had to cover this with tape. This WD 2TB GP-AV Hard Drive is very quiet and you can't even hear it while in use. I've tortured tested it by recording 2 HD broadcast while playing back a 3rd HD recording. The recording went just fine and playback was smooth without any issues. It is clear that WD makes this AV-GP drive specifically for DVR use. I had no issue connecting this to my Comcast DCX3400M box, as it recognized it on start up and formatted the drive. Now I have 2TB of expanded DVR space at a reasonable price. I've been using it for several day now without any problems. I would recommend this case along with the WD 2TB AV-GP drive if you want to expand your DVR storage.

Great for Tivo upgrade

I got this to upgrade my Tivo DVR storage. I followed a youtube video and it was simple to replace in my Roamio. Didn't have to do anything special, put it in and Tivo formatted it and did whatever it needed and now I have bunches of storage. Based on what I read, any larger size drive for Tivo purposes, it's a lot more complicated to replace. I have over 50 shows recorded, most are an hour and it's at 12% used. Pleased that it was easy and that people are awesome for making videos and writing about how to do stuff.

Easy upgrade for TiVo HD and TiVo Series 3 to 2TB

Using WinMFS, it was an easy to upgrade both TiVo HD and Series 3 to 2TB. Now at over 300 HD hours on each! Performed a full copy to keep all existing shows (took 4 hours for previous 1TB drive), although truncated copy only takes 5 minutes. Very easy upgrade. Requires TiVo software running 11.0h or higher on the source drive to use 2TB. Read reviews that wdidle3 utility might be required to disable IntelliPark (as this causes lock ups on soft reboots) but the drives arrived with IntelliPark disabled, so the step was unnecessary.

Easiest Upgrade to a Tivo/DVR I've Ever Done.

After reviewing my options and reading some of the posts online about DIY upgrading of Tivos, I placed my order. I used this drive in the base model Tivo Roamio to upgrade form the stock drive and now have 300+ hours of HD recording capacity. As others have indicated, Tivo made the physical upgrade process a 10 minute activity. Pretty much pop open the Tivo, remove a few screws, plug in the new drive, put the screws back in and fire up the Tivo. The Tivo will format and set up the drive for use so there's no more having to format the drive in some special way, etc... It took longer for the Tivo to format drive and get it ready for use, about 20 min, than it took for me to do the physical replacement of the drive. The drive is very quiet and there's less fan noise than before with the stock Seagate ST3500414CS drive. If you are looking to upgrade a Tivo Roamio or Roamio Plus, this drive is currently the best option, the Amazon price is the cheapest. It's not a hard decision to make it you want to increase your recording capacity.

Saved My NAS

I have a 4 TB NAS that was configured as RAID1 mirror. One of the hard drives failed, so I needed a matching 2TB hard drive to get the system back online. This was easy to install and within minutes the NAS was back to rebuilding the mirror configuration. There was no need to format the drive; it just worked. Great option if you need a 2TB replacement drive or if you're in a similar situation as I was.

Worth every penny.

I bought this hard drive for use in my surveillance system and found that it works great. It has a large storage capacity for video files and was very easy to install. I compared this hard drive with several others before my purchase. This one had the best storage capacity and performance requirements for the purchase price of the item. I would recommend this to anyone considering the purchase of a hard drive similar to this one.

Tivo drive upgrade

Bought this 2TB drive to upgrade my Tivo Roamio. In my case the drive worked right out of the box, no issues with any factory settings. After I swapped the drive and ran the setup process, I wasn't receiving any channels so I called to get the Tivo and cable card (re)paired thinking that was the issue. But I still couldn't receive any channels. Then I figured out I had bent the end of my coax cable. Replaced the cable and everything's working great... so I don't know if you have to have the cable card paired again, but there are some people online that say they had to. Just fyi. I got my drive from ISellAll and I believe the date on the drive was 10/2015.

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