This article is intended for end-users that have upgraded their out-of-warranty legacy DVR with a Seagate or Maxtor-brand hard drive. The hard drive may have been purchased either on-line or from a retail outlet, and may still be covered under warranty.

If you have a DVR or Set-Top box that may still be covered under the original equipment manufacturers (OEM) warranty and you attempt to disassemble and diagnose the problem or replace the disk drive, this will most likely void the OEM warranty. Please contact the manufacturer of the unit for further instructions or for warranty claims.

Some DVR units will automatically modify drive settings, which will not allow proper testing or diagnosis with Seagate's SeaTools diagnostic utility in a PC application.

Indicators that your drive may have been modified by a DVR unit include:

• The capacity of the hard disk is displayed as 0 to 10 Megabytes in your system BIOS or on-screen during the boot process.
• Upon boot-up during the device detection process, (black screen) your system may report an error auto-sensing the hard disk.
• The PowerMax current drive information screen will report a maximum of 20,000 LBA or less. (20,000 LBA is about 10 MB).
• The Seatools quick test completes in only a few seconds, and always returns a congratulations that your drive is tested error free.

If any of the above conditions apply, the drives settings have likely been modified by the DVR unit, and must be reset for the drive to be tested properly. If your Seagate or Maxtor drive is still under warranty and believed to be defective it must be tested with the SeaTools utility.

For more information regarding resetting the drive parameters for SeaTools testing, please read the DVR disclaimer page.