# Need help analysing a problem and advice on upgrading



## the_moog (Jan 8, 2002)

My TiVo keeled over last week  It had been running for close to 4 years with a pair of 160Gb drives (although only using 137Gb as they were installed before the kernel patch stuff was around).

The way it died seemed like disk failure. Picture was hugely distorted and would keep jumping back a fraction and trying again, during which time the TiVo was very unresponsive to the remote control. If I left it viewing live TV then within 30 mins playing it would be 15 mins behind the live signal due to all the retrying etc. The AUX signal (NTL box) is 100% fine. Old programmes would suffer the same problems on playback, too. Thus, it seemed to be a HD failure.

I pulled a spare TiVo from the loft, which had my previous set of disks in, 2 x 80Gb drives. That ran fine for 5 days but is now suffering exactly the same problem! I now wonder if that's purely coincidence or if the problem is the TiVo itself or even that the TiVo is 'killing' the drives due to a fault.

So my first question is... with a standard TiVo install, is there any way to check logs to see if it is HD failure?

Second question... I now see it's quite easy to use biiiiiiiig drives, so I was thinking of trying a pair of 250Gb Seagates. Should my TiVo be able to power a pair of these?


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

the_moog said:


> Second question... I now see it's quite easy to use biiiiiiiig drives, so I was thinking of trying a pair of 250Gb Seagates. Should my TiVo be able to power a pair of these?


I have been running 2 x 250Gb Samsung HA250JC drives for 18 months here fine (175 Hours Best and 613 Hours Basic). Its now been discovered 548Gb is the maximum size per disk that can be formatted without using very complicated processes.

See www.tivoheaven.co.uk and www.tivoheaven.com plus also www.steveconrad.co.uk/tivo for more info.

You need a Cachecard with 512MB of RAM if you are going to exceed much over 150 hours of available recording time. Without a Cachecard beyond this point Now Playing menus get very slow.


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

Pete77 said:


> . Its now been discovered 548Gb is the maximum size per disk that can be formatted without using very complicated processes.


I've not seen proof of this assertion. This post makes the original conjecture that -r3 will allow a single partition up to 548Gb, but suggests that -r4 will permit a partition over 1TB. However, until somebody tries using a 750gb drive in a UK TiVo, I don't think we'll know for sure.


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

the_moog said:


> I was thinking of trying a pair of 250Gb Seagates. Should my TiVo be able to power a pair of these?


Not if they're 7200.9 or 7200.10 series it won't! 

All Seagate drives after the 7200.8 series seem to have some quirk with power consumption that causes the TiVo PSU to freak out when two drives > 120gb in size are used in a pair. You can use a single 500gb 7200.9 series drive with no problems, but NOT two 160gb ones  Even the Seagate DB35 series drives which are designed for PVR use won't work in pairs in a UK TiVo. Again, single drives are fine - and the 400gb "CE" drives are actually very quiet - but don't try using a pair of them.

On the other hand, Samsung HA250JC drives (250gb, 5400rpm) work fine in pairs (as Pete77 will readily testify!) and the bigger HD400LD (400gb, 7200rpm) drives are also extremely quiet and work fine in pairs too. However, I would always recommend going for a single-drive system if possible as a big single drive will normally be quieter, cooler and less likely to fail than 2 smaller ones.

FWIW, I would concur that your problems sound like a drive issue. I would also agree that you will likely start to feel the need for a cachecard with RAM with a drive capacity over 250gb - although YMMV


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

There were also some extremely reasonably priced 500GB Hitachi IDE drives being offered for only just over £100 each that somebody on here had managed to fit a pair of successfully a couple of months ago. So no power consumption issues with a pair of those drive it seems. Hitachi drives (IBM) do have a poor historic reputation for longevity though, although so long as people get around 18 months life I expect they won't be too unhappy. Also Hitachi do seem to have improved things a bit since IBM days.

1000GB in a Tivo will give 350 hours at Best or about 450 hours in Mode 0 with Variable Bit Rate (VBR) enabled. And having run with 613 hours for some time at Basic I can tell your that 450 hours is at the very limits of what Now Playing can acceptably handle, even with a Cachecard and 512MB of RAM. With 613 hours and around 600 programs you get a serious slow down in all menu operations like entering each program item in the Now Playing list to play it or backing out to the Now Playing menu even though the box is perfectly stable and recordings play without issue. There is no impact on using TivoWeb to control the box with a lot of recording hours but unfortunately you can't actually start any program item on the box playing with TivoWeb.

Its not the number of GB in use by a Tivo that slow down the box but the number of hours of program space and therefore the number of items in Now Playing. So for all practical purposes I would tend to regard 1000GB (2 x 500GB) as the final maximum capacity of our UK Tivo S1s. I'm sure that somebody will manage to fit 2 x 1024GB (2048GB) in due course but that would be 700 hours at Best, even with VBR disabled which is really beyond the comfortable capacity of the Now Playing menu system to handle unless you are extremely patient and don't mind waiting for things to happen.......


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

I would definitely favour a pair of 400gb Samsung drives over a pair of 500gb Hitachis 

Pure prejudice, of course, but I have had very good luck with Samsung drives, particularly the HA250JCs, and although the 400gb are 7200rpm they don't seem to run desperately hot and are certainly very quiet in terms of seek noise - virtually silent in fact - and the ones I've handled have low vibration for 7200rpm drives too 

Personally, I fail to see why most people would need more than, say, 500gb of storage, as the 400gb combined capacity of my two TiVos is more than enough for everyday use - although I can imagine that if you're a sci-fi geek who wants to keep entire series of Dr Who or Babylon 5 online, the prospect of 800 or 1000gb would start to seem attractive


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

blindlemon said:


> Personally, I fail to see why most people would need more than, say, 500gb of storage, as the 400gb combined capacity of my two TiVos is more than enough for everyday use - although I can imagine that if you're a sci-fi geek who wants to keep entire series of Dr Who or Babylon 5 online, the prospect of 800 or 100gb would start to seem attractive


Or a Formula 1 geek like me who wants to have several years worth of races on tap. :up:

Blindlemon have you amassed any evidence yet from your many customers as to how many Now Playing items are actually required in order for unacceptable slow down in menu speeds and operations to start to cut in, even with a Cachecard and 512MB of RAM?

I would say it starts somewhere around 350 recordings in Now Playing and is bad by 400 recordings or more. This is why more than a 1000gb Tivo providing 350 hours of Mode0 with no VBR is probably about the most capacity that its really wise to try to run with on a Tivo S1.

Any view of your own on this score though?


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## PaulWilkinsUK (Mar 20, 2006)

You fellows watch far too much telly !


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## the_moog (Jan 8, 2002)

I've been running the TiVo on an old 40Gb drive for a couple of weeks to make sure it was coincidence that both sets of drives failed with the same problem within a few days of each other and it has been working fine.

So, I'm now ready to upgrade to a big drive again.

Does anyone know if the Western Digital RAID edition drives are compatible with TiVo... eg: quickfind 65928 and 94400 at ebuyer... "Designed and manufactured to enterprise-class standards, WD RE drives provide enhanced reliability in a 24x7, continuous duty cycle environment" which sounds like it could be more suitable for a TiVo.

Would I have a problem fitting 1 or 2 of those 250Gb or 320Gb RAID Edition drives?

Else I'll probably go for a single 500gb Seagate 7200.9 drive.

MTIA.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

the_moog said:


> Would I have a problem fitting 1 or 2 of those 250Gb or 320Gb RAID Edition drives?


I believe RAID drives have to be supported at the hardware level by the motherboard so almost certainly no chance with our primitive little Tivo processors and motherboard. No doubt Blindlemon can provide the definitive answer.

Samsung offer both 250Gb and 400Gb IDE hard drives that are very suitable for Tivo use. More recent larger Seagate 7200.8 and 7200.9 drives consume too much power to be able to fit two of them in a Tivo although you may be able to get away with just one drive. Again Blindlemon would be able to advise.

See www.steveconrad.co.uk/tivo or www.tivoheaven.co.uk or www.tivoland.com for more info on upgrading hard drives.


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

Pete77 said:


> More recent larger Seagate 7200.8 and 7200.9 drives consume too much power to be able to fit two of them in a Tivo although you may be able to get away with just one drive.


It's the 7200.9 and 7200.10 drives (plus the 'PVR-friendly' DB35 series) that have problems in pairs in a UK TIVo. The 7200.8 drives are fine, but now discontinued unfortunately 

I haven't found a Seagate drive that won't work on it's own in a UK TiVo, although I haven't tried a 750gb yet 

And no, UK TiVos definitely don't support RAID


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## the_moog (Jan 8, 2002)

I'm pretty sure the WD Raid drives are just standard IDE hard drives but designed with 24x7 use in mind...

ATA-100
40 pin connector
100MBps
8.9ms
7200rpm
8MB buffer

"Life in a desktop computer doesn't compare to the extreme environment in an always-on, high duty cycle RAID system. What's needed is a drive engineered to thrive in a high-intensity RAID system while still offering traditional low cost-per-capacity desktop value. That drive is the WD RE. Designed and manufactured to enterprise-class standards, WD RE drives provide enhanced reliability in a 24x7, continuous duty cycle environment."

whereas I've seen other IDA HD specifications which talk about being designed with 3 hours user per day in mind!!!

I just thought a drive specifically designed with 24x7 use might be better suited to a TiVo installation.

So has anyone tried a WD RE drive?


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

The Seagate SV35 (video surveillance) series are also supposed to be designed for longevity, but their specs are virtually identical to the DB35 which is supposed to be designed for PVRs.

Personally, I expect the WD RE series are, like the Seagate DB35 and SV35, basically the same drives with a different label and (maybe) slightly modified firmware. The costs of developing completely separate chassis and mechanisms would be prohibitive.

So to answer your question: yes, I expect you could use the RE series drives in a TiVo, but how will you be able to tell if they last any longer than a standard WD drive? If the price is comparable then it may be worth a try, but as it's not in their interest to have _any_ of their drives fail early, I wouldn't personally pay very much more for a drive based on the manufacturer's claim of increased longevity...


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## jdwood37 (Dec 6, 2002)

I think the WD RAID would be a good choice--I've got a Maxline Pro which is Maxtor's equivalent---although the Maxline II was probably more suited (5400rpm low power). Both have 5 year warranty and 1million MTBF. It's just theory though-hard disks these days are exceptionally reliable (unless you drop to a concrete floor!)


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