[DarqueKnight]

@unincognito

Chris,

I read the memo where a 2 TB hard drive can be ordered as an option with the BDP-3. Some questions:

1. Would there be any problem with the owner installing a larger capacity HD inside the BDP-3? My music library is
stored on a 6 TB HD, which is in a fanned enclosure, which is connected to my BDP-2 via eSATA cable.

I do have some concern about whether the heat generated by the HD would adversely affect the BDP-3. The
HD's case temperature reaches 106 degrees F when operating in open air. The fanned enclosure brings the
case temperature down to 88 degrees.

2. The memo stated: "The advantage of an internal SATA drive is it bypasses the typical SATA to USB conversion."
Is the advantage in sound quality, data transmission speed, or both?

[DarqueKnight]

Since I recently acquired a BDP-3, I was able to answer my questions.
I installed a Western Digital Black 750 GB hard disk drive in my BDP-3



There were no issues with heat. After the player sat idle for 13 hours, the following measurements were taken
with a Fluke model 561 infrared thermometer:

Processor heat sink:  125.8 degrees F
Transformer coil:  106.0 degrees F
Chassis bottom: 101.3 degrees F
Hard disk drive: 98.0 degrees F

Note: The BDP-2 and BDP-3 do not spin down drives after a period of inactivity. Be aware that if you install an internal hard disk drive, with no power conservation feature, such as the WD Black drives, it is going to spin 24/7. The external hard drive enclosure that I use (Rosewill Armer 304X-APU3-35B) spins down the drive after 20 minutes of inactivity.

After playing music for 3.5 hours, the following measurements were taken:

Processor heat sink:  129.2 degrees F
Transformer coil:  106.2 degrees F
Chassis bottom: 102.7 degrees F
Hard disk drive: 96.6.0 degrees F

Music from the internal hard drive sounded better than music from an external hard drive with its stock power supply and stock USB 3 cable.
When I upgraded the external hard drive's power supply, music from it sounded better than from the internal hard drive.
When I upgraded the external hard drive's USB 3 cable, music sound quality further improved.

[unincognito]

Hi DarqueKnight,

Sorry I must have missed this post so many years ago.  The issue with hard drives is the magnets they use and the more heat you expose them to the faster they magnetic energy will wear out/dissipate.  One of the benefits of bolting the drive to the metal chassis is it helps to draw heat generated by the hard drive out of the drive and enclosure, which can be seen in the temp readings you have documented in your two posts (also thanks for sharing your results with us).  As far as I am aware the BDP will allow a hard drive to spin down, I have witnessed this with drives I've installed in units I use for testing.  The WD Black you have pictured, one of the things that make it a Black is WD has programmed it to never spin down, to always be ready so there's is no spin lag that you can experience with other drives. 

To answer the rest of the your questions,

No, its generally not a problem unless you break something via carelessness during the installation that we begin to care.  The technical reason for choosing a 2TB drive are as follows

• Didn't require any modification to the firmware for the erase feature (Disk Information will only create a partition of 2TB because it programmed to use an MBR partition table)
• 95% of our users have a library thats fewer then 1TB in capacity
• price point relative to how much we need to mark it up to avoid loosing wasn't to bad

with that said I've helped a handful of end users install 4TB 2.5" hard drives (maybe even 5TB 2.5") in the past, its possible it just requires to be formated before installation or we can remote in and format it after the fact.

Heat generated by hard drives is generally pretty consistent, but a drive like the WD black would be a bit of an outlier as its deigned to never spin down and I think its one of the few 2.5" drives that spins above 5400rpm.

Item number two, as far as i am concerned thats mostly subjective, there's no real technical reason I can think of to cause a change in sound quality.  With that said many people have approached me to say otherwise and all I can say is I'm not sure why.

Chris