[ale] Seagate's DB35 DVR drives don't work with PCs

[rekoil at semihuman.com (Chris Woodfield)]

Hey, this is more of a heads-up and a bit of a "WTF?" than an actual  
question:

newegg.com has an OEM Seagate DB35 series 32G drive in stock for $70  
each. These are drives that are supposedly "designed for DVRs"  
according to the product page.

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16822148287

What the page (or seagate's own product page) doesn't tell you is that  
these drives do not appear to work at all in standard PCs. In my case,  
the BIOS recognized the drive, but it never became available to the  
Linux kernel. Looking at the product reviews on the page I'm not the  
only one who's run into this.

Which brings the question: what is so different about these drives  
that they work in DVRs but not in PCs? From what I've found via google  
one feature of these drives is that they spin up slower than other  
drives, avoiding a large power draw at startup. Could this be causing  
an issue?

Anyone have any more insight into this?

-C