# SSD in a TiVo?



## iNiv

Hey all. I've not seen any recent forums on installing an SSD drive into a TiVo. I have a Roamio, 500gb HDD (which is fine for my use, capacity-wise) that I've considered replacing with a 500gb Solid State Drive, which are quite affordable these days. 

Will it work? Anyone with experience with this, specifically with TiVo's newest hardware?

Thanks!

-Scott


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## tgenius

My 2c is ssd on TiVo is no good due to the amount of writes would cause it to fail quickly.


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## ramiss

Why would you want to? Clearly a spindle drive can keep up with the speeds the system needs. An SSD is more expensive for the size and potentially can fail sooner.

Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk


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## Philmatic

Short answer is that a SSD in a TiVo is useless and a waste of money.


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## jonw747

A longer answer is that SSD's are not typically used for DVR applications but they are improving and of course becoming more affordable.

"Garbage collection" may be problematic. TiVo probably doesn't perform "TRIM" and since the HD will never be idle, even a disk which performs it's own wear leveling and garbage collection may never get the chance.

Then ask yourself, if everything goes well, would you be happy with a 3 year life time? Because that's about what the numbers come out to be based on number of write/erase cycles.


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## LoneWolf15

jonw747 said:


> A longer answer is that SSD's are not typically used for DVR applications but they are improving and of course becoming more affordable.
> 
> "Garbage collection" may be problematic. TiVo probably doesn't perform "TRIM" and since the HD will never be idle, even a disk which performs it's own wear leveling and garbage collection may never get the chance.
> 
> Then ask yourself, if everything goes well, would you be happy with a 3 year life time? Because that's about what the numbers come out to be based on number of write/erase cycles.


That, and when SSDs go, they just "go". As in, done. Some allow some read-only access when they go, plenty just die. A few Intel models go read-only once, and if you reboot, they brick --and this is by design at end-of-life.

There are several spaces where platter storage just makes more sense -a Tivo is one of them.


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## jrtroo

So, as you are finding, the new posts are exactly the same as the old posts. No use for a SSD in a TiVo.


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## ej42137

Philmatic said:


> Short answer is that a SSD in a TiVo is useless and a waste of money.


No, the short answer is that it would work. The elaboration is that it is a foolish waste of time and money.


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## CinciDVR

Here's a link to a site that tested six SSD to see how much data could be written to them before they failed (http://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead).

Two of the drives failed at 700 Terabytes, but that was because of internal software that shut them down, not the actual failure of the SSD components. The other four drives were able to write at least 1 Petabytes of data before failure. Now these were 240 GB SSD, and I believe that the larger the SSD is, the greater the total data that can be written to it so a 500 GB SSD might have a slightly higher limit.

On my Roamio, a 1 hour long HD program takes up about 4 Gigabytes of space. So assuming that you have a six tuner Roamio that is running 24 hours a day, and each tuner is on an HD channel, then an SSD that fails after 700 TB would fail in about 3.5 years. If the SSD didn't fail until after 1 PB then it would fail in about 5 years.

Of course the example above doesn't account for other data that is written to the drive (e.g. guide data or firmware updates), but I'm assuming the size of that data pales in comparison to the size of actual video data.


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## jonw747

LoneWolf15 said:


> That, and when SSDs go, they just "go". As in, done. Some allow some read-only access when they go, plenty just die. A few Intel models go read-only once, and if you reboot, they brick --and this is by design at end-of-life.
> 
> There are several spaces where platter storage just makes more sense -a Tivo is one of them.


I suspect the SMART diagnostics would let you know it's about to go, but if TiVo isn't watching the diagnostics, it's not going to pass on the warning.

It actually makes sense for an Enterprise targeted HD to stop working once it reaches the point of unreliable operations. The idea here is that no data is better than corrupted data (assuming there's a safe copy somewhere else).

Not so much the case with a DVR where we'd rather preserve our recordings than avoid some of them becoming pixelated.

But hey, if someone's primary interest is eliminating noise, it can be done ... they just need to figure out how to eliminate the cooling fan too.


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## iNiv

Hey guys:

Thanks for the great responses! Interesting forum.

Mostly I asked because I recently put an SSD into my Mac and the difference is amazing. Not only is it more quiet, but the read/write speeds make it feel like it's a new machine. I avoided upgrading to the 'new hotness' iMac because of that, which saved tons of money. (I put in a 1TB SSD and now it boots in about 15 seconds from almost 2 minutes (!!))

... which brings me to my Roamio TiVo. If I were to do this, I'm not so sure it would be a "foolish waste" of time and money for several reasons:

1.) As pointed out in an earlier, very nice, analysis 3.5 YEARS is a long time for electronic equipment. And that figure was calculated assuming a 6-tuner machine (mine is only 4). I strongly suspect I'd upgrade to a new TiVo by the time the drive fails, and even if I don't I could set a calendar event to remind me to swap out the drive with a new SSD in a few years when they'll be even less expensive. Besides, how long do HDDs last in a TiVo? About 3.5 to 5 years? 

2.) QUIET. The fan and drive on my TiVo occasionally create a lot of noise, which is distracting when I'm viewing quiet moments in movies/tv shows.

3.) Speed. And this is where I'm theorizing... would the menu accesses and seek times for finding the shows be a lot quicker? If they are, bonus!

As for cost, $150.00 is what SSDs often sell for on a regular basis in the 500GB sizes these days (the same size as my TiVo's current HDD). That's cheap enough for me to be motivated to swap out the drive for all of the above reasons. 

Anything I'm missing? Thanks again for the input, guys.

-Scott


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## Dan203

CinciDVR said:


> Here's a link to a site that tested six SSD to see how much data could be written to them before they failed (http://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead).
> 
> Two of the drives failed at 700 Terabytes, but that was because of internal software that shut them down, not the actual failure of the SSD components. The other four drives were able to write at least 1 Petabytes of data before failure. Now these were 240 GB SSD, and I believe that the larger the SSD is, the greater the total data that can be written to it so a 500 GB SSD might have a slightly higher limit.
> 
> On my Roamio, a 1 hour long HD program takes up about 4 Gigabytes of space. So assuming that you have a six tuner Roamio that is running 24 hours a day, and each tuner is on an HD channel, then an SSD that fails after 700 TB would fail in about 3.5 years. If the SSD didn't fail until after 1 PB then it would fail in about 5 years.
> 
> Of course the example above doesn't account for other data that is written to the drive (e.g. guide data or firmware updates), but I'm assuming the size of that data pales in comparison to the size of actual video data.


In my experience the average bitrate of an HD channel is closer to 12Mbps, which is roughly 5.4GB/hour. Which means that the 700TB SSD would fail in about 2.5 years and the petabyte one would fail in about 3.5.

And with that immanent failure you get almost no benefit. Maybe the DB would load a bit faster but probably not since I think it's more CPU/memory bound then disk bound.


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## Anotherpyr

On my premiere, the loud noise ended up being the fan. Much cheaper to replace than an ssd drive.

But if want to go all Mythbusters and see how long it takes an ssd to fail in a TiVo and if there is any benefit, go for it and keep us informed.


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## ej42137

What slows down the menus is usually network access to the cloud, an SSD won't help a lot there. It might help with managing the One Passes and indexing the program data.

You would get a longer SSD life if you maximize the standby settings so that buffers are not recorded when your TiVo is in standby. Of course then you'd have to make sure to put your TiVo to sleep when you're done with it; a Logitech Harmony can be set up to make this automatic.

By all means, give this a try and report back your findings; it will be a service to TiVodom.


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## Dan203

Don't Roamios have built in flash for the OS and database anyway? I thought they only put recordings on the drive now?


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## ggieseke

The OS is in flash, so it's not going to boot any faster. The SQLite partition is on the drive. The MFS application partitions are also on the drive, and there are still quite a few 'tyDb' files there even though the guide data and most of the recording metadata lives in SQL these days.

P.S. Telemark's research shows that the SQLite partition on Bolts is drastically smaller than on Roamios. Apparently most of the database now lives in flash and the 250MB left on the hard drive is used as a cache.


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## ramiss

1) if you are willing to take that risk then so be it. 

2) the nose is the fan, or your regular drive is bad. A non SSD drive in good condition is quiet in a tivo.

3) you won't notice a speed increase. Computers of course benefit. The TiVo is an appliance and, as stated already, a non SSD can keep up with 6 tuners. The menu lag is network related. 

4) for $150, you can get a 3TB spindle drive. 

Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk


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## aaronwt

The WD AV drives are rated for 12 simultaneous HD streams. An SSD doesn't improve on the performance of a DVR. Well based on the WD AV drives, I guess if you had a DVR with more than 12 tuners then it would make sense. An SSD is just not cost effective for a DVR.

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-701250.pdf


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## iNiv

Thanks guys. Given me a lot to think about. If I decide to do this, I'll let y'all know...

-Scott


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## Nick I

Saw this thread was related to what I was doing so I am posting the results.

The Tivo HD in my bedroom may have been going bad because it is years old now and the drive was so noisy.
The unit is a TCD652160 with lifetime and a dual tuner. When the room was quiet you could really hear the drive ticking away.
It had the original 160 Gb drive. I got a 240GB SSD for $70 and did the WinMFS copy to it.
I also got a $10 70mm super quiet Nexus exhaust fan on Amazon.

The machine is running great with a 50% space increase and almost completely silent for $80.
I did the math of the SSD drive lifetime on a dual tuner and it comes out to over 4 years if i am always recording on both and I never am. I also have other Tivos on the home network to stream stored media from.
I my case the SSD silence is what I paid the space premium for.

Nick


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## jrtroo

You are always always recording. Always. The dual buffers never stop. I'm thinking that would not influence the work you did, but just to make sure you have set proper expectations.


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## JoeKustra

jrtroo said:


> You are always always recording. Always. The dual buffers never stop. I'm thinking that would not influence the work you did, but just to make sure you have set proper expectations.


Well, there is Standby. No buffers then. Recording and (maybe) guide updates still make the drive go active even in Standby.


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## Nick I

jrtroo said:


> You are always always recording. Always. The dual buffers never stop. I'm thinking that would not influence the work you did, but just to make sure you have set proper expectations.


But if you are not recording something specific only 1 tuner should be doing the "Always Recording."
Then the SSD would last 8 years with the same math.
Also the "math" I used is the manufacture spec.
Everything I read about SSD lifespan tests, the drives always far exceed that manufacturer spec.
The way I look at it is that SSD lifespan is not as much of an issue as price per Mb.

Nick


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## jrtroo

JoeKustra said:


> Well, there is Standby. No buffers then. Recording and (maybe) guide updates still make the drive go active even in Standby.


I was responding to someone with a THD box, I don't believe those had standby.


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## jrtroo

Nick I said:


> But if you are not recording something specific only 1 tuner should be doing the "Always Recording."


That does not happen- the buffers are working on all tuners. Perhaps if they are all on the same channel there could be less recording, I don't know.


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## aaronwt

jrtroo said:


> That does not happen- the buffers are working on all tuners. Perhaps if they are all on the same channel there could be less recording, I don't know.


Each tuner has it's own buffer. Even if they are on the same channel they still have an individual buffer.


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## lpwcomp

Nick I said:


> Saw this thread was related to what I was doing so I am posting the results.
> 
> The Tivo HD in my bedroom may have been going bad because it is years old now and the drive was so noisy.
> The unit is a TCD652160 with lifetime and a dual tuner. When the room was quiet you could really hear the drive ticking away.
> It had the original 160 Gb drive. I got a 240GB SSD for $70 and did the WinMFS copy to it.
> I also got a $10 70mm super quiet Nexus exhaust fan on Amazon.
> 
> The machine is running great with a 50% space increase and almost completely silent for $80.
> I did the math of the SSD drive lifetime on a dual tuner and it comes out to over 4 years if i am always recording on both and I never am. I also have other Tivos on the home network to stream stored media from.
> I my case the SSD silence is what I paid the space premium for.
> 
> Nick


Unless a tuner is on an "empty" channel, it *is* always recording.


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## jonw747

Nick I said:


> But if you are not recording something specific only 1 tuner should be doing the "Always Recording."
> Then the SSD would last 8 years with the same math.
> Also the "math" I used is the manufacture spec.
> Everything I read about SSD lifespan tests, the drives always far exceed that manufacturer spec.
> The way I look at it is that SSD lifespan is not as much of an issue as price per Mb.
> 
> Nick


Something I've read in the past is that some of the SSD manufacturers treat their specified limit as a hard limit that once passed, the entire drive becomes read only.


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## lessd

Nick I said:


> Saw this thread was related to what I was doing so I am posting the results.
> 
> The Tivo HD in my bedroom may have been going bad because it is years old now and the drive was so noisy.
> The unit is a TCD652160 with lifetime and a dual tuner. When the room was quiet you could really hear the drive ticking away.
> It had the original 160 Gb drive. I got a 240GB SSD for $70 and did the WinMFS copy to it.
> I also got a $10 70mm super quiet Nexus exhaust fan on Amazon.
> 
> The machine is running great with a 50% space increase and almost completely silent for $80.
> I did the math of the SSD drive lifetime on a dual tuner and it comes out to over 4 years if i am always recording on both and I never am. I also have other Tivos on the home network to stream stored media from.
> I my case the SSD silence is what I paid the space premium for.
> 
> Nick


SSD drives have a limited number of write cycles and the TiVo is buffering each channel for 30 minutes, so its writing 24/7, your life of the SSD drive will be limited as compared to a normal hard drive.


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## mdavej

jonw747 said:


> Something I've read in the past is that some of the SSD manufacturers treat their specified limit as a hard limit that once passed, the entire drive becomes read only.


The few SSD's that have failed on me have all failed catastrophically, completely and utterly unreadable. So their end of life isn't pretty. At least with a hard drive, you can usually see it coming and take appropriate measures before total failure.

I think an SSD in a DVR yields nothing but a lighter wallet.


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## ej42137

mdavej said:


> The few SSD's that have failed on me have all failed catastrophically, completely and utterly unreadable. So their end of life isn't pretty. At least with a hard drive, you can usually see it coming and take appropriate measures before total failure.
> 
> I think an SSD in a DVR yields nothing but a lighter wallet.


It's quieter, and that's what he wanted. A dead SSD isn't any worse than a dead HD for a TiVo; you're unlikely to recovery anything in either case. I wonder if he tried disabling the fan?


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## aaronwt

ej42137 said:


> It's quieter, and that's what he wanted. A dead SSD isn't any worse than a dead HD for a TiVo; you're unlikely to recovery anything in either case. I wonder if he tried disabling the fan?


Along with the SSD, disabling the fan is the only way to make it quiet. Since the fans all make noise and any platter hard drive makes noise.


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## Nick I

aaronwt said:


> Along with the SSD, disabling the fan is the only way to make it quiet. Since the fans all make noise and any platter hard drive makes noise.


I replaced the fan with a super quiet 70mm Nexus. The machine is so quiet now I need to be right in front to hear anything from the fan. From the bed you cant hear anything. By the way the replacement fan from Weaknees is louder than the original.
I know I could have gotten a very big regular drive for $70 but I dont need the space and really wanted quiet.
Silence is golden


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## badams888

JoeKustra said:


> Well, there is Standby. No buffers then.


Another reason to get an easier way to go to standby. I made a suggestion that a long press of the tivo button should go to standby, but I didn't get much interest.

Since a long press currently just does a repeat loop of the tivo key (which is totally useless) having a simple intuitive way to get to standby with a single button press would seem to make sense here.

Short press to resume from standby (and other things) long press to go back to standby. Even if someone inadvertently long held the tivo key, a message saying to cancel standby hit the tivo key would simply appear. Or at worst, just hit the tivo key again to resume from standby. Right now, it takes several steps or more depending on whether there's an item on the bottom of the page or not. Seems the green thing to do here.


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## UCLABB

Nick I said:


> Saw this thread was related to what I was doing so I am posting the results.
> 
> The Tivo HD in my bedroom may have been going bad because it is years old now and the drive was so noisy.
> The unit is a TCD652160 with lifetime and a dual tuner. When the room was quiet you could really hear the drive ticking away.
> It had the original 160 Gb drive. I got a 240GB SSD for $70 and did the WinMFS copy to it.
> I also got a $10 70mm super quiet Nexus exhaust fan on Amazon.
> 
> The machine is running great with a 50% space increase and almost completely silent for $80.
> I did the math of the SSD drive lifetime on a dual tuner and it comes out to over 4 years if i am always recording on both and I never am. I also have other Tivos on the home network to stream stored media from.
> I my case the SSD silence is what I paid the space premium for.
> 
> Nick


Unless your unit is in standby, you are recording both tuners via the buffer or scheduled recordings. Your point is good if one is concerned with noise.


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## tomhorsley

I'd strongly suspect that the TiVo system software doesn't have TRIM support (since I imagine they'd strip out anything they didn't need for the designed hardware). With no TRIM, an SSD drive will eventually become a hopelessly sluggish lump :-(.


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## Nick I

tomhorsley said:


> I'd strongly suspect that the TiVo system software doesn't have TRIM support (since I imagine they'd strip out anything they didn't need for the designed hardware). With no TRIM, an SSD drive will eventually become a hopelessly sluggish lump :-(.


That was the case a few years ago when this thread was started but the current drives don't rely on the OS for that anymore and have internal maintenance mechanisms that work independently of trimming.


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## Worf

TRIM is an optimization. Early SSDs didn't have support for it either and they didn't suffer too much. All TRIM really does is prevent write amplification, which increases SSD life because a sector that contains deleted data is not being carried forward as the SSD wear levels its memory.

TRIM support is at the file system level - it doesn't matter if TiVo supports it or not - the upper layer filesystem needs to support it so delete operations can be translated into TRIM commands. If MFS doesn't support it (and it likely doesn't) then even if the rest of the disk stack supports it, it won't work.

Given the usual state of the TiVo is a full drive, even when TiVo deletes a video from MFS, it'll be rapidly replaced with something else that's being recorded, so TRIM won't actually get you too much since the sector involved will be written over again with new data.


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## philt56

_I did the math of the SSD drive lifetime on a dual tuner and it comes out to over 4 years if i am always recording on both and I never am. I also have other Tivos on the home network to stream stored media from._

Actually you are recording on both all the time. You may not be saving any programs for playback later but the buffering of the channel is essentially a recording.


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## JBDragon

I put a 3TB WD GREEN drive into my Tivo and I can't hear it with my ear next to it. It's spinning at only 5400RPM. It's pretty darn quite. Still, I put my Tivo in my Family Room. If it was making a little noise, who cares as I'm not sleeping there. I have Tivo Mini's in the Bedrooms where there's no HDD or FAN. They are 100% quite.


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## aaronwt

JBDragon said:


> I put a 3TB WD GREEN drive into my Tivo and I can't hear it with my ear next to it. It's spinning at only 5400RPM. It's pretty darn quite. Still, I put my Tivo in my Family Room. If it was making a little noise, who cares as I'm not sleeping there. I have Tivo Mini's in the Bedrooms where there's no HDD or FAN. They are 100% quite.


I can hear any green drive or red drive from around five feet away in any TiVo. The fan in any Tivo I can easily hear from 15 feet away. But it's a noise I have grown accustomed to over the years.


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## jonw747

aaronwt said:


> I can hear any green drive or red drive from around five feet away in any TiVo. The fan in any Tivo I can easily hear from 15 feet away. But it's a noise I have grown accustomed to over the years.


The Mini is a terrific product for that reason. If TiVo ever produces a 4K Mini, hopefully they'll be able to keep the fan out.


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## JBDragon

aaronwt said:


> I can hear any green drive or red drive from around five feet away in any TiVo. The fan in any Tivo I can easily hear from 15 feet away. But it's a noise I have grown accustomed to over the years.


WOW. Strange as I can't hear my Tivo Roamio with my ear near it. Still I keep it in the family room where I think it belongs as it does have a fan and is always recording. The MINI's are perfect for the bedrooms as they make no noise having no HDD and no fans.


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## aaronwt

JBDragon said:


> WOW. Strange as I can't hear my Tivo Roamio with my ear near it. Still I keep it in the family room where I think it belongs as it does have a fan and is always recording. The MINI's are perfect for the bedrooms as they make no noise having no HDD and no fans.


My GF also can't hear it unless her ear is right up on a TiVo.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk


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## JBDragon

aaronwt said:


> My GF also can't hear it unless her ear is right up on a TiVo.
> 
> Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk


So we either don't have the best hearing, or you have really good hearing. Any tiny little noise must drive you nuts. Are you blind, so you make it up with better hearing? Keeping the Tivo in the family room, even IF it made a little noise, who cares as you aren't sleeping in the room and when watching anything, it would mask whatever slight noise there was. Then have the MINI's in the Bedrooms are there's no HDD or fan's in them, They're 100% quite unless you can hear the electricity flowing though them.


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## ClearToLand

iNiv said:


> Hey guys:
> 
> Thanks for the great responses! Interesting forum.
> 
> Mostly I asked because I recently put an SSD into my Mac and the difference is amazing. *Not only is it more quiet*, but the read/write speeds make it feel like it's a new machine...*SNIP*


Yeah, before any 'Obvious Man' points out that I'm replying to a post from Oct 16, 2015 to "*iNiv was last seen: Oct 17, 2015*" - a SOLID STATE SSD is more quiet than a MECHANICAL SPINNING HDD - who woulda thunk... 

I'll now continue reading up until today's NEW post - sorry for the interruption in your viewing...


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## ClearToLand

Nick I said:


> Saw this thread was related to what I was doing so I am posting the results... SNIP
> ...I my case the SSD silence is what I paid the space premium for.
> 
> Nick


SEE!

It was @Nick I, the "_sniper_" (*Nick I was last seen: Mar 16, 2017*), who dug this old thread out of the archives and got the rest of you to start posting in it again. 

Still reading...


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## ClearToLand

JBDragon said:


> *I put a 3TB WD GREEN drive into my Tivo and I can't hear it with my ear next to it.* It's spinning at only 5400RPM. It's pretty darn quite. Still, I put my Tivo in my Family Room. If it was making a little noise, who cares as I'm not sleeping there. I have Tivo Mini's in the Bedrooms where there's no HDD or FAN. They are 100% quite.





aaronwt said:


> *I can hear any green drive or red drive from around five feet away in any TiVo.* The fan in any Tivo I can easily hear from 15 feet away. But it's a noise I have grown accustomed to over the years.





JBDragon said:


> *WOW. Strange as I can't hear my Tivo Roamio with my ear near it.* Still I keep it in the family room where I think it belongs as it does have a fan and is always recording. The MINI's are perfect for the bedrooms as they make no noise having no HDD and no fans.





aaronwt said:


> *My GF also can't hear it unless her ear is right up on a TiVo.*
> 
> Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk





JBDragon said:


> *So we either don't have the best hearing, or you have really good hearing. Any tiny little noise must drive you nuts.* Are you blind, so you make it up with better hearing? Keeping the Tivo in the family room, even IF it made a little noise, who cares as you aren't sleeping in the room and when watching anything, it would mask whatever slight noise there was. Then have the MINI's in the Bedrooms are there's no HDD or fan's in them, They're 100% quite unless you can hear the electricity flowing though them.


I've read through this entire 'old' thread to get to, and reply to, this point.

I really didn't pay any attention to the HDDs spinning 24x7 in my Roamios (since the HDDs have been spinning 24x7 in my ReplayTVs for over a decade) until @mickinct recently posted about TiVo breaking 'StandBy' (It's late and I'm lazy - easy to find thread if you're interested).

I can see the green power LED is now 'Extinguished' / OFF the following morning, so I know that 'StandBy' kicked in. When I press the 'TiVo Button', there's now a delay (Previously I saw the 'Screen Saver' - I try to remember to select channel 0 before I "Hit the Hay" and when under four tuners are in use); now it's a blank screen). But, *BEFORE* I press the 'TiVo Button', *all I can hear is the FAN running*. ensive: :thinking: (The Smilies here STINK!)

@aaronwt, if the FAN is louder than the HDD, unless the bearings are failing on the HDD, how can you differentiate between the two? 

P.S. I posted in another thread recently that the *ONLY* way I believed that one could tell if 'StandBy' was shutting the down HDD was to either use a 'Kill-A-Watt' or remove the cover from the TiVo and place your fingers on the HDD. @aaronwt's ability appears to be '_unique_'...

P.P.S. *RED* vs *GREEN* formatting - only to point out *HEAR* vs *NOT HEAR*.


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## aaronwt

JBDragon said:


> So we either don't have the best hearing, or you have really good hearing. Any tiny little noise must drive you nuts. Are you blind, so you make it up with better hearing? Keeping the Tivo in the family room, even IF it made a little noise, who cares as you aren't sleeping in the room and when watching anything, it would mask whatever slight noise there was. Then have the MINI's in the Bedrooms are there's no HDD or fan's in them, They're 100% quite unless you can hear the electricity flowing though them.


The original Minis would sometimes make a high pitched squealing noise when using MoCA. My GF couldn't hear that but I could.

Yes I hear too much stuff. Even a ticking watch is extremely annoying to me. I can't just put it in a drawer because I will still hear it. I have to wrap it in a towel, then in the drawer so I don't hear it. For me, a ticking watch and the sound of water are the two types of noises I can't stand and will keep me from sleeping. Other noises I am typically fine with. Or I just turn the Blower on from the HVAC system to drown out the extraneous noise bothering me.


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## aaronwt

ClearToLand said:


> I've read through this entire 'old' thread to get to, and reply to, this point.
> 
> I really didn't pay any attention to the HDDs spinning 24x7 in my Roamios (since the HDDs have been spinning 24x7 in my ReplayTVs for over a decade) until @mickinct recently posted about TiVo breaking 'StandBy' (It's late and I'm lazy - easy to find thread if you're interested).
> 
> I can see the green power LED is now 'Extinguished' / OFF the following morning, so I know that 'StandBy' kicked in. When I press the 'TiVo Button', there's now a delay (Previously I saw the 'Screen Saver' - I try to remember to select channel 0 before I "Hit the Hay" and when under four tuners are in use); now it's a blank screen). But, *BEFORE* I press the 'TiVo Button', *all I can hear is the FAN running*. ensive: :thinking: (The Smilies here STINK!)
> 
> @aaronwt, if the FAN is louder than the HDD, unless the bearings are failing on the HDD, how can you differentiate between the two?
> 
> P.S. I posted in another thread recently that the *ONLY* way I believed that one could tell if 'StandBy' was shutting the down HDD was to either use a 'Kill-A-Watt' or remove the cover from the TiVo and place your fingers on the HDD. @aaronwt's ability appears to be '_unique_'...
> 
> P.P.S. *RED* vs *GREEN* formatting - only to point out *HEAR* vs *NOT HEAR*.


the hard drive sounds completely different than the fan.


----------



## ClearToLand

aaronwt said:


> The original Minis would sometimes make a high pitched squealing noise when using MoCA. My GF couldn't hear that but I could.
> 
> *Yes I hear too much stuff. Even a ticking watch is extremely annoying to me.* I can't just put it in a drawer because I will still hear it. I have to wrap it in a towel, then in the drawer so I don't hear it. For me, a ticking watch and the sound of water are the two types of noises I can't stand and will keep me from sleeping. Other noises I am typically fine with. Or I just turn the Blower on from the HVAC system to drown out the extraneous noise bothering me.


I feel so bad for you Aaron. 


aaronwt said:


> *the hard drive sounds completely different than the fan.*


And the majority of us can't "Hear the HDDs for the Fan" / "See the Forest for the Trees".

Wow. Old age has given me tinnitus - which pisses me off no end "When I'm Aware of It". As long as I'm blasting 70s & 80s Rock n Roll or Blues or listening to TV, I'm fine. But in a quiet room, or trying to get to sleep, I'm pissed...

BTW, I referenced you in a post, either here or on AVS, regarding something to the effect of "How Did I Get Here?"
4x WD Red 3TB for RAID
1x WD Red 4TB for Roamio Basic
1x WD Red 4TB for Roamio OTA
3x Toshiba Canvio 3TB External HDD for 'whatever' - currently TiVo overflow
1x WD Elements 2TB External HDD for ???
I remember looking at your 'Sig' and thinking "Boy, that guy has the bucks!". Now that Medicare has finally kicked in (vs self-insured healthcare), I have a few bucks to spare too!!!


----------



## Jim5506

The main advantage of an SSD in a TiVo would be reduced heat from the drive and no spindle noise, offset by the SSD'd limited lifetime when constantly being written to and read from as in ALL TiVos and the much higher cost per GB.

I have never owned a TiVo that had Standby (not Series 2 SD, not Series 3 HD TiVo, not Premiere, not Roamio). Even Dish and DirecTV receivers when in "StandBy" the drive is still spinning and buffering at least one tuner.

A WD green drive will outlast an SSD by at least 3 times maybe 6-8 times and costs at least double.


----------



## Diana Collins

Jim5506 said:


> The main advantage of an SSD in a TiVo would be reduced heat from the drive and no spindle noise, offset by the SSD'd limited lifetime when constantly being written to and read from as in ALL TiVos and the much higher cost per GB...


Another SSD advantage is that when a hard drive fails your data is usually lost. When a SSD fails you can still recover data (in this case your recordings) by simply copying it (the SSD becomes read only). Transfer to a another TiVo via LAN or copy to another drive with MFSTools and you have lost nothing.


----------



## aaronwt

Jim5506 said:


> The main advantage of an SSD in a TiVo would be reduced heat from the drive and no spindle noise, offset by the SSD'd limited lifetime when constantly being written to and read from as in ALL TiVos and the much higher cost per GB.
> 
> I have never owned a TiVo that had Standby (not Series 2 SD, not Series 3 HD TiVo, not Premiere, not Roamio). Even Dish and DirecTV receivers when in "StandBy" the drive is still spinning and buffering at least one tuner.
> 
> A WD green drive will outlast an SSD by at least 3 times maybe 6-8 times and costs at least double.


All my Roamios spin down in standby using the High power saving mode. Assuming there is nothing being recorded.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk


----------



## waynomo

philt56 said:


> _I did the math of the SSD drive lifetime on a dual tuner and it comes out to over 4 years if i am always recording on both and I never am. I also have other Tivos on the home network to stream stored media from._
> 
> Actually you are recording on both all the time. You may not be saving any programs for playback later but the buffering of the channel is essentially a recording.


To split hairs...

If you tune your TiVo tuners to channels with no signals I believe the HD stops recording.


----------



## DeltaOne

Diana Collins said:


> When a SSD fails you can still recover data (in this case your recordings) by simply copying it (the SSD becomes read only)..


Your mention of a SSD becoming read-only upon failure is interesting. Some research tells me this is possible, but rare. I've learned that when the SSD's controller fails (the most common type of failure) all the data is lost. When the SSD's flash chip fails, it sometimes leaves the data readable. Sometimes.


----------



## kdmorse

DeltaOne said:


> Your mention of a SSD becoming read-only upon failure is interesting. Some research tells me this is possible, but rare. I've learned that when the SSD's controller fails (the most common type of failure) all the data is lost. When the SSD's flash chip fails, it sometimes leaves the data readable. Sometimes.


Yes, this very much depends on the manufacturer, firmware, and mode of failure. In reality, I've never seen it happen. I would argue that 'dead' HDD's are far easier to coax back to life long enough so I can copy data off of them than dead SSD's.

At worst, that's just a fact of life for SSD's. Their deaths are generally sudden, and devoid of early warning indicators. I'll still probably never buy another spinning disk ever again. *

* (I lie, I don't think I'm going to fill my new NAS with SSD's. I *want* to, but the economics vs size isn't where I need them to be yet)


----------



## Diana Collins

I was specifically talking of the number of erasures limit of SSDs, since that is the limiting factor for use in DVRs. SSDs have a fixed number of times the flash memory can be erased, which must done BEFORE any data can be written. There are many utlitities (from the drive manufacturers, and third parties) which will tell you how much "life" has been consumed. For example, the Micron/Crucial Storage Executive and the AData utlitity will both report percentage of erasures used so far across the drive (wear leveling keeps the average value pretty accurate). There is even a utility called "SSDLife" that specializes in giving you an estimated "fail date" for the drive. To be clear, there are a ton of things that can wrong with an SSD that will make it a doorstop, but even assuming nothing goes wrong, every SSD will become read only after the maximum erasures limit is reached. At that point the drive is still fully readable, but cannot be written to.


----------



## waynomo

Diana Collins said:


> I was specifically talking of the number of erasures limit of SSDs, since that is the limiting factor for use in DVRs. SSDs have a fixed number of times the flash memory can be erased, which must done BEFORE any data can be written. There are many utlitities (from the drive manufacturers, and third parties) which will tell you how much "life" has been consumed. For example, the Micron/Crucial Storage Executive and the AData utlitity will both report percentage of erasures used so far across the drive (wear leveling keeps the average value pretty accurate). There is even a utility called "SSDLife" that specializes in giving you an estimated "fail date" for the drive. To be clear, there are a ton of things that can wrong with an SSD that will make it a doorstop, but even assuming nothing goes wrong, every SSD will become read only after the maximum erasures limit is reached. At that point the drive is still fully readable, but cannot be written to.


You make the erasure limit sound like a hard limit that is set in the firmware or something. Is that what you mean?


----------



## Diana Collins

Yes.


----------



## aaronwt

It should still last many years. At least if it's a Samsung SSD.


----------



## Diana Collins

Depends on your definition of "many"...if you mean 5 years or so, I wouldn't disagree. But I think given the way most people keep their DVR drives relatively full (reducing the number of NAND blocks available for wear leveling) and the fact that most people will have 4 or 6 tuners buffering 24x7, I would not expect a SSD drive to last much longer than that in a TiVo (or any multi-tuner DVR).


----------



## ClearToLand

Diana Collins said:


> Yes.


Is that a new hair style?


----------



## Diana Collins

ClearToLand said:


> Is that a new hair style?


Aren't you sweet for noticing! Yes, moved the part to the side and swept the bangs across. This photo is about a week or so old.


----------



## ncbill

Diana Collins said:


> Depends on your definition of "many"...if you mean 5 years or so, I wouldn't disagree. But I think given the way most people keep their DVR drives relatively full (reducing the number of NAND blocks available for wear leveling) and the fact that most people will have 4 or 6 tuners buffering 24x7, I would not expect a SSD drive to last much longer than that in a TiVo (or any multi-tuner DVR).


But surely somebody on these forums has the $ to buy a 4TB SSD, stick it in their 4 (or more) tuner Tivo, and let us know how long it lasts.


----------



## astrohip

ncbill said:


> But surely somebody on these forums has the $ to buy a 4TB SSD, stick it in their 4 (or more) tuner Tivo, and let us know how long it lasts.


While I realize you're being humorous, the real question is WHY. Why all the talk of an SSD in a TiVo? It's not faster, it doesn't last longer, unless you are part of the .01% who can hear a hard drive from 10' away... why?

I love me some SSD, and every PC I've used for years has them. I have a Samsung EVO NVMe 2. drive, which is the cat's meow. So I know and love SSD drives.

But in a TiVo?


----------



## ncbill

"because I can?"

the same mindset as the "will it blend?" folks.

*my* last upgrade was a $50, used 3TB WD AV-GP drive off ebay.


----------



## ClearToLand

astrohip said:


> While I realize you're being humorous, the real question is WHY. Why all the talk of an SSD in a TiVo? It's not faster, it doesn't last longer, unless you are part of the .01% who can hear a hard drive from 10' away... why?
> 
> *I love me some SSD, and every PC I've used for years has them.* I have a Samsung EVO NVMe 2. drive, which is the cat's meow. So I know and love SSD drives.
> 
> But in a TiVo?


*OT: *I have two NOS OCZ Vertex 3 120GB SSDs (bought ~2011-2012 before my health, my Dad's and my MIL's went south) and one new Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSD that I'm preparing to install Win7 (fully updated via WSUS then AIK's DISM to the WIM) on. I see (via GOOGLE) 'old talk' about updating the OCZ firmware asap but since OCZ no longer exists (the firmware is still available though), and this is my first experience with SSDs, I'm unsure of the path to take. i.e. I'd rather use the original firmware than "brick 'em" before I even get a chance to use them.

Regarding the fully-updated Win7 installs - I'm looking into building a bootable, menu-driven flash drive and doing my first install to a spinner / HDD. Then I'll use Macrium Reflect to copy the drive / partition and restore it to the SSD. Sound OK?

I also plan to put two copies of Win7 on each HDD (and the EVO) that I build in the following week or so, boot menu selectable. [My HP G7-1310US laptop came with a nice 'Diagnostics' partition that I also plan to add to each new build. That will give me 3 boot menu selectable primaries and 1 extended for DATA / STORAGE - limit 4.] This old Vista 32-bit desktop still has 24% free of the original 64GB partition after all these years but my 4 year old Win7 64-bit laptop quickly used up the 80GB I gave it (just OS and APPS; DATA gets its own HDD / partition on all my PCs). I'm thinking 128GB for the spinners but, regarding the EVO SSD, 'wear leveling' (correct term?) comes into play and if I'm only using 50% of the SSD, am I shooting myself in the foot? Maybe forget about 2 copies of Win7 on any SSDs and just give it the WHOLE SSD to maintain as its built-in firmware / hardware sees fit? 

Thanks in advance for any hints / tips / advice on the topic of SSDs. 

Sorry everyone else for the OT - we now return you to our regularly schedule programming...


----------



## aaronwt

Vista?? Windows 7??? What is this 2009? I have Windows 10 on SSDs in all my desktops and all but one laptop.


----------



## ClearToLand

aaronwt said:


> Vista?? Windows 7??? What is this 2009? I have Windows 10 on SSDs in all my desktops and all but one laptop.


*Old Dog** != New Tricks *​
I still have one PC on NT4 SP6a (AMD K6-III/400; first File / Print / MP3 'House' Server; has a SCSI Scanner with a 14" bed; first 10Mbps NICs used RG59 coax!), a laptop on Win98SE (P266; last laptop used when still in the workforce; 100 Mbps NIC is on a PCMCIA card) and a couple of 'Servers' on Win2K Pro (P3 933MHz and P4 2.4GHz - Passmark 324!; latest File / Print / MP3 / DVArchive / WiRNS / IVSMagic 'House' Servers).

While the WinXP laptop the church gave us wasn't too bad (compared to Win2K), Vista and then Win7 were 'Royal PITAs' to get used to - NOTHING is where you remember it's supposed to be. Yeah, I DON'T want to be on Vista but it's the only PC currently operational.

Win7:
is a solid OS
doesn't have the 'Telemetry Problems' of Win10
doesn't FORCE me to do daily updates which may, or may not, 'break' the PC
is an OS I already know how to:
navigate
customize the registry
have apps, hardware and drivers KNOWN to work
yada, yada, yada... 

P.S. I know that your just playing around - re: OSes, to each his own...


----------



## tomhorsley

ClearToLand said:


> doesn't have the 'Telemetry Problems' of Win10


It also doesn't have the Windows 10 problem I just ran into doing my taxes: Reason number 1,040 why automatic updates are the worst idea ever


----------



## ClearToLand

tomhorsley said:


> It also doesn't have the Windows 10 problem I just ran into doing my taxes: Reason number 1,040 why automatic updates are the worst idea ever





> ...AARGH! Now I have to wait forever for the *furshlugginer* updates to finish...


Sounds Jewish, but doesn't look Jewish.
*Wiktionary*
*Urban Dictionary*
:lol:

Is Horsley a Jewish name?

P.S. I'll move over to some flavor of Linux before I let an OS like Win10 '_attempt_' to control me.


----------



## scott franco

CinciDVR said:


> Here's a link to a site that tested six SSD to see how much data could be written to them before they failed (The SSD Endurance Experiment: They're all dead).
> 
> Two of the drives failed at 700 Terabytes, but that was because of internal software that shut them down, not the actual failure of the SSD components. The other four drives were able to write at least 1 Petabytes of data before failure. Now these were 240 GB SSD, and I believe that the larger the SSD is, the greater the total data that can be written to it so a 500 GB SSD might have a slightly higher limit.
> 
> On my Roamio, a 1 hour long HD program takes up about 4 Gigabytes of space. So assuming that you have a six tuner Roamio that is running 24 hours a day, and each tuner is on an HD channel, then an SSD that fails after 700 TB would fail in about 3.5 years. If the SSD didn't fail until after 1 PB then it would fail in about 5 years.
> 
> Of course the example above doesn't account for other data that is written to the drive (e.g. guide data or firmware updates), but I'm assuming the size of that data pales in comparison to the size of actual video data.


Note that the test performed was not related to the type of wear seen in Tivos, but to a test specifically designed to continually write data until failure was seen.


----------



## atmuscarella

scott franco said:


> Note that the test performed was not related to the type of wear seen in Tivos, but to a test specifically designed to continually write data until failure was seen.


? That is exactly what TiVos do - continually write data 24/7.


----------



## scott franco

atmuscarella said:


> ? That is exactly what TiVos do - continually write data 24/7.


That was not the point of what I said. Simply that in reading the original post, you might get the idea that the wear test was done in a tivo. It wasn't, and wasn't in fact related to a Tivo. The test environment is capable of issuing writes as fast as the drive can take them. The tivo rates and scatter pattern are different.

This gets solved definitively by actual user data, ie, how long a drive lasts in a tivo.


----------



## ncbill

Well, if a Tivo would be writing to disk at a slower rate than a "let's write to the SSD as fast as possible until it fails" test, wouldn't that mean a SSD would last much longer inside a Tivo than in their test results?


----------



## scott franco

ncbill said:


> Well, if a Tivo would be writing to disk at a slower rate than a "let's write to the SSD as fast as possible until it fails" test, wouldn't that mean a SSD would last much longer inside a Tivo than in their test results?


Yes.


----------



## slowbiscuit

astrohip said:


> Why all the talk of an SSD in a TiVo? It's not faster, it doesn't last longer, unless you are part of the .01% who can hear a hard drive from 10' away... why?





ncbill said:


> "because I can have more money than sense?"


FTFY.


----------



## JLGomez2667

When I first got my tivo bolt the noise was driving me nuts.. I first thought it was the drive but was 100% wrong it was the tivo fan it was garbage.. I checked all around and couldnt find a replacement fan.. I saw a video about someone that made a hole on the top of a roamio and installed a fan on the top.. So I did exactly that made a hole on the top of my bolt and put in the following fan on top connected to the USB port on the bolt and also installed the following drive and you cant hear it at all.. IM HAPPY with it now..
fan.. APEVIA CF4S-UBL Case Fan - Newegg.com
drive.. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01C4W2P18/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1


----------



## aaronwt

I used the Black Silent Fans for replacements in my Bolts.


----------



## JLGomez2667

aaronwt said:


> I used the Black Silent Fans for replacements in my Bolts.


You mean an actual replacement to the internal one..


----------



## Bigg

Diana Collins said:


> Depends on your definition of "many"...if you mean 5 years or so, I wouldn't disagree. But I think given the way most people keep their DVR drives relatively full (reducing the number of NAND blocks available for wear leveling) and the fact that most people will have 4 or 6 tuners buffering 24x7, I would not expect a SSD drive to last much longer than that in a TiVo (or any multi-tuner DVR).


Isn't the drive on a TiVo basically always almost full because of the un-delete functionality?


----------



## ej42137

Bigg said:


> Isn't the drive on a TiVo basically always almost full because of the un-delete functionality?


Deleted files are constantly being reused and written over when space is needed for a new recording. What DC is talking about is the fact that many people have drives mostly full of permanent files that never gets deleted, so there is no opportunity to manage the blocks when they are rewritten. In that case a small number of blocks are written over repeatedly, which is less than optimal for SSD drives.


----------



## Worf

ej42137 said:


> Deleted files are constantly being reused and written over when space is needed for a new recording. What DC is talking about is the fact that many people have drives mostly full of permanent files that never gets deleted, so there is no opportunity to manage the blocks when they are rewritten. In that case a small number of blocks are written over repeatedly, which is less than optimal for SSD drives.


That may be true back in the 80s when flash media first came out and no one really wrote good wear levelling systems, but it's not true at all since the turn of the millennium.

All blocks on flash media are wear-leveled constantly. If the data hasn't changed, it hasn't changed and is simply moved to a new block during consolidation. This comes as part of the "write amplification" - if you write one sector to an SSD, how many sectors get actually written in the end and it generally includes counts of sectors needed to be moved. It's why features like TRIM aren't necessary, but an optimization - use of TRIM simply tells an SSD to stop caring about those sectors so when it's time to consolidate, it won't move the no-longer-needed data there anymore, so it lowers the wear on the device by not having to preserve what is unwanted user data by moving it.

It is not an unusual mode of operation - everyone has files on their hard drives that haven't been modified in years, be it a favorite photo, music or other thing, or even parts of the operating system itself that don't need to be touched (like say, media or icon files), so letting those blocks wear less doesn't make sense and it's taken into account.

The only real problem with SSD usage in an TiVo is the constant writing. SSDs are measured in write cycles because it is the erase-write cycle that actually wears them out. That's why write amplification is a thing - because writing one sector will generally cause more than a sector's worth of writes to occur. But even given that, given several longevity tests of SSDs by people who do nothing but write to them 24/7, they can last surprisingly long - a couple of years at least (at full rate - TiVos would write data slower so not as much gets written a day). And these are generally small SSDs - if you're sticking in huge TB sized SSDs, the time to wear also goes up proportionately (more flash blocks you have to wear out).


----------



## Diana Collins

Bigg said:


> Isn't the drive on a TiVo basically always almost full because of the un-delete functionality?


Exactly...as a result, the same blocks are used for buffering over and over. A SSD would work great for the long term recordings, but the live buffer would burn through the rewrite life span pretty quickly. So the result is read/write errors, and a subsequent reduction in storage space. That's why I say I would not expect much beyond 5 years from current SSDs in a DVR - particularly since I don't know if the TiVo OS's device drivers supports TRIM.


----------



## Bigg

ej42137 said:


> Deleted files are constantly being reused and written over when space is needed for a new recording. What DC is talking about is the fact that many people have drives mostly full of permanent files that never gets deleted, so there is no opportunity to manage the blocks when they are rewritten. In that case a small number of blocks are written over repeatedly, which is less than optimal for SSD drives.





Diana Collins said:


> Exactly...as a result, the same blocks are used for buffering over and over. A SSD would work great for the long term recordings, but the live buffer would burn through the rewrite life span pretty quickly. So the result is read/write errors, and a subsequent reduction in storage space. That's why I say I would not expect much beyond 5 years from current SSDs in a DVR - particularly since I don't know if the TiVo OS's device drivers supports TRIM.


I'm getting two difference answers here, both of which could make sense.

Does TiVo:

1. Keep a few gigs free, switch the buffer to where something rolled off the deleted shows list and then record a schedule recording into what was the buffer, effectively wear leveling the drive?

2. Or does it use the same part of the hard drive all long for live TV buffering, at least until you record something that was already in the buffer?

I would think option 1. would be better, even for a hard drive, given that they write 4 or 6 channels 24/7/365 for 5+ years on a drive. Even if the user turned over 20% of the content in a month, I would think TiVo could still switch around where the drive is written to a decent amount. If people are just hoarding stuff, then it wouldn't work too well.

Option 2 would be a death sentence for an SSD.


----------



## ggieseke

From what I've seen in the past I think it's mostly #2. That observation is based on the behavior of failing drives back in the IDE interface days, but they don't tend to change any of the kernel code unless they have to. The EXACT same code that I wrote to predict how they would lay out a Series 1 drive still predicts how they lay out a Bolt drive today even though it fails on 4TB and larger drives.

If it ain't broke don't fix it has always been the motto. They have never built a TiVo over 3TB or one with a SSD, so it's unlikely IMO that any consideration of wear-leveling is likely.


----------



## Jonathan_S

ggieseke said:


> From what I've seen in the past I think it's mostly #2. That observation is based on the behavior of failing drives back in the IDE interface days, but they don't tend to change any of the kernel code unless they have to. The EXACT same code that I wrote to predict how they would lay out a Series 1 drive still predicts how they lay out a Bolt drive today even though it fails on 4TB and larger drives.
> 
> If it ain't broke don't fix it has always been the motto. They have never built a TiVo over 3TB or one with a SSD, so it's unlikely IMO that any consideration of wear-leveling is likely.


I think the question would be now smart is the SSD's firmware at wear leveling without any hinting or direction from the OS or it's SATA drivers?

TiVO can lay the logical drive partitions and files out however they want but the drive firmware is free to map (and dynamically remap) the logical presentation onto the actual sectors pretty much at will. That should give the firmware the freedom to spread the buffer's 24/7 recording wear around the SSD by relocating sectors containing longer lived material (at the cost of some write amplification. But better that than burning out the sectors used for the buffers long before the rest of the drive)


----------



## rdrrepair

ggieseke said:


> They have never built a TiVo over 3TB ...


 You have to wonder, with so many people upgrading to 4,6,8 & 10 for their internal drive, why would TiVo leave that money on the table?


----------



## Bigg

rdrrepair said:


> You have to wonder, with so many people upgrading to 4,6,8 & 10 for their internal drive, why would TiVo leave that money on the table?


It's way too small of a market. I'd bet that the T6 is their biggest seller _by far_, and that's a 1TB unit.


----------



## aaronwt

rdrrepair said:


> You have to wonder, with so many people upgrading to 4,6,8 & 10 for their internal drive, why would TiVo leave that money on the table?


Would those people that upgraded themselves want to spend an extra $100 or $200, over what they spent for a self upgrade, to get it from TiVo? I would think most would not.


----------



## Diana Collins

Bigg said:


> I'm getting two difference answers here, both of which could make sense.
> 
> Does TiVo:
> 
> 1. Keep a few gigs free, switch the buffer to where something rolled off the deleted shows list and then record a schedule recording into what was the buffer, effectively wear leveling the drive?
> 
> 2. Or does it use the same part of the hard drive all long for live TV buffering, at least until you record something that was already in the buffer?
> 
> I would think option 1. would be better, even for a hard drive, given that they write 4 or 6 channels 24/7/365 for 5+ years on a drive. Even if the user turned over 20% of the content in a month, I would think TiVo could still switch around where the drive is written to a decent amount. If people are just hoarding stuff, then it wouldn't work too well.
> 
> Option 2 would be a death sentence for an SSD.


With a 100% (or nearly) full drive, there is no difference. If recordings only get replaced with new recordings (i.e. nothing is explicitly deleted), the DVR has no choice but to keep reusing the same part of the drive for the buffers.


----------



## Mikeguy

aaronwt said:


> Would those people that upgraded themselves want to spend an extra $100 or $200, over what they spent for a self upgrade, to get it from TiVo? I would think most would not.


I actually was thinking the opposite, but thinking on those who are not comfortable changing PC components and if TiVo had an easy swappable drive system (like replaceable batteries)--TiVo could market a few swappable large-capacity drives and make some $ (charging a bump up for the swappable drives). But then, it might not be worth it $-wise in the end for TiVo, as it would need to build in the swappable architecture into all TiVo boxes. 
​


----------



## JoeKustra

Bigg said:


> 1. Keep a few gigs free, switch the buffer to where something rolled off the deleted shows list and then record a schedule recording into what was the buffer, effectively wear leveling the drive?
> 2. Or does it use the same part of the hard drive all long for live TV buffering, at least until you record something that was already in the buffer?


I can't prove this, but:
A new TiVo (or new drive) has two or three hours in use. I speculate that that's used for the buffers and other stuff.
My drive wear leveling: I have one box (1TB) that gets used to record weekday prime time and late night. I watch and delete late night daily. I watch prime time on weekends and kill (permanently delete) the programs. This makes my Deleted Recordings folder increase in size. When my drive gets physically full, seen by oldest late night being killed, I kill that whole month. This happens at about 160 programs. Now I have an "empty" space.
There is the question of where does a buffer go when I hit the red button to record? I guess it's moved and the same buffer location gets used for live TV again. But it's just a guess.
I can't disagree with Diana's post. I have no information about how things really work. Just guesses. If I want to reuse the same area of a drive I would record and kill programs frequently.


----------



## Diana Collins

I don't know how they convert buffer to recordings when you "record the buffer" but I doubt they copy anything. However, the 6 tuner TiVos always have to have enough disk space reserved to accommodate six 30 minute buffers.

But the point remains that, in the case of a user that keeps their DVR 100% full (which means that old recordings only get deleted when a new recording takes place) the TiVo has no choice but to use the same buffer space over and over, simply because there is no place available to which it can be moved. For a magnetic drive that's not ideal, but not deadly. For a SSD you'll quickly exhaust the life of the memory cells, which will cause R/W errors, which will mark the blocks bad, forcing a reduction in overall storage space. In a relatively short period of time you'll lose so much space you'll need to replace the drive. How long is that? My guesstimate is about 5 years.


----------



## Bigg

Diana Collins said:


> With a 100% (or nearly) full drive, there is no difference. If recordings only get replaced with new recordings (i.e. nothing is explicitly deleted), the DVR has no choice but to keep reusing the same part of the drive for the buffers.


So then what happens with an 80% full drive. It may have been the rate of recordings I was doing (probably 12+ hours of recordings a day, many high bitrate MPEG-2) but the last time I was up in that range, my TiVo puked at about 80% and started randomly deleting stuff well before recording anything else. Their space management is terrible.



JoeKustra said:


> There is the question of where does a buffer go when I hit the red button to record? I guess it's moved and the same buffer location gets used for live TV again. But it's just a guess.
> I can't disagree with Diana's post. I have no information about how things really work. Just guesses. If I want to reuse the same area of a drive I would record and kill programs frequently.


I highly doubt it moves it. It would take too long and it would cause the box to freeze up for a bit. That might be the only way to force the TiVo to wear level, making a new area for live TV buffering.


----------



## Bigg

Diana Collins said:


> But the point remains that, in the case of a user that keeps their DVR 100% full (which means that old recordings only get deleted when a new recording takes place) the TiVo has no choice but to use the same buffer space over and over, simply because there is no place available to which it can be moved. For a magnetic drive that's not ideal, but not deadly. For a SSD you'll quickly exhaust the life of the memory cells, which will cause R/W errors, which will mark the blocks bad, forcing a reduction in overall storage space. In a relatively short period of time you'll lose so much space you'll need to replace the drive. How long is that? My guesstimate is about 5 years.


Right, but the real question is what happens to a normal TiVo where the user isn't running a digital garbage dump on their TiVo? It has a big folder of deleted recordings to delete, so is it using a bit of extra space to move the buffer around? Or only when you record your buffer, forcing it to another area? I suppose every few months, you could force it to record a couple hours from each buffer, and then delete those recordings, putting them at the top of the deleted shows list, meaning that part of the SSD wouldn't be used again for quite a while. Granted, you wouldn't put a 3TB SSD in a TiVo, maybe a 480GB, but on my Roamio OTA with a 3TB drive, my deleted recordings go back to about November, and I stopped recording the news every day, as I wasn't watching it, so now it will likely go 6-12 months. It will vary depending on how much stuff you record, particularly the stuff that's turned over every few days, but still, stuff sits out there for a while, even on a smaller drive.


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## JoeKustra

Bigg said:


> Their space management is terrible.
> I highly doubt it moves it. It would take too long and it would cause the box to freeze up for a bit. That might be the only way to force the TiVo to wear level, making a new area for live TV buffering.


I have one TiVo with a 1TB drive that becomes full about every month. I have never had an unexplained deletion.

So if the tuner buffers are dynamic, any speculation on when a buffer moves? If the disk is full, could that be related to unexplained deletions? So many TiVo secrets.


----------



## Bigg

JoeKustra said:


> I have one TiVo with a 1TB drive that becomes full about every month. I have never had an unexplained deletion.


Interesting. My 2TB XL4 puked at about 80% and started deleting stuff like crazy. I did have some 6+ hour recordings of NBCSN at 17mbps though, as that was during Rio.



> So if the tuner buffers are dynamic, any speculation on when a buffer moves? If the disk is full, could that be related to unexplained deletions? So many TiVo secrets.


That's what we're trying to figure out. Does it only move when you record a show from the buffer, or does it move periodically on it's own based on channel changes?


----------



## Diana Collins

From a code writing point of view it is far easier to just declare a buffer file size and write to it recursively (there is built-in support for FIFO buffer files in many programming languages). Trying to either "move" a buffer around, or to keep extending the end while contracting the start, would be considerably more work. If that's how they do it, then only when the buffer gets converted to a recording would a new buffer file be allocated.


----------



## Bigg

Diana Collins said:


> From a code writing point of view it is far easier to just declare a buffer file size and write to it recursively (there is built-in support for FIFO buffer files in many programming languages). Trying to either "move" a buffer around, or to keep extending the end while contracting the start, would be considerably more work. If that's how they do it, then only when the buffer gets converted to a recording would a new buffer file be allocated.


Good point. So likely the solution on an SSD TiVo is to periodically record whatever is on the buffers, forcing it to move to new buffers when the recordings are completed.


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## HerronScott

Bigg said:


> So then what happens with an 80% full drive. It may have been the rate of recordings I was doing (probably 12+ hours of recordings a day, many high bitrate MPEG-2) but the last time I was up in that range, my TiVo puked at about 80% and started randomly deleting stuff well before recording anything else. Their space management is terrible.


My experience is the same as Joe's and we've had 2 S1's with tiny drives, 2 S3 OLED's which went from 250GB drives to 1TB drives to 2TB drives and our current Roamio Pro 3TB. I've never had any major deletion of shows but we don't do any KUID or drastic changes in recording/watching habits and typically kept most of them pretty full (lots of movies and series that we would watch over the summer).

Scott


----------



## Bigg

HerronScott said:


> My experience is the same as Joe's and we've had 2 S1's with tiny drives, 2 S3 OLED's which went from 250GB drives to 1TB drives to 2TB drives and our current Roamio Pro 3TB. I've never had any major deletion of shows but we don't do any KUID or drastic changes in recording/watching habits and typically kept most of them pretty full (lots of movies and series that we would watch over the summer).


Interesting. That's just not my experience. Could the failure mode only be under extremely high recording volume (12+ hours a day at high bitrate)? For a sense of scale, 20% of a 2TB drive is 400GB, and I was recording well over 100GB a day for several days in a row. Normally I KUID everything, but in that case I hadn't due to the volume of stuff involved, but at the time with 4 roommates we were running 40-60% normally on 2TB, now with just me, I'm in the single digits on 3TB, as I've now been successful at running lean.


----------



## shwru980r

So it seems like you would want to put in an 8TB drive in a Bolt, Roamio or Premiere even if you would never use that much space, to take advantage of wear leveling to extend the life of the drive.


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## JoeKustra

Bigg said:


> Interesting. That's just not my experience. Could the failure mode only be under extremely high recording volume (12+ hours a day at high bitrate)? For a sense of scale, 20% of a 2TB drive is 400GB, and I was recording well over 100GB a day for several days in a row. Normally I KUID everything, but in that case I hadn't due to the volume of stuff involved, but at the time with 4 roommates we were running 40-60% normally on 2TB, now with just me, I'm in the single digits on 3TB, as I've now been successful at running lean.


Perhaps the high workload needs some help. If I ran my car at 100mph all the time I would change the oil weekly. Maybe find a day when you have the lowest load and restart/power cycle the TiVo. I have always done a monthly power cycle of all my stuff. All 1P are Keep At Most: Everything. I just hate yellow dots. I have a 3TB drive in one basic Roamio. I added the drive last October. It has yet to become full. Just a thought.


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## HerronScott

Bigg said:


> Could the failure mode only be under extremely high recording volume (12+ hours a day at high bitrate)? For a sense of scale, 20% of a 2TB drive is 400GB, and I was recording well over 100GB a day for several days in a row. Normally I KUID everything, but in that case I hadn't due to the volume of stuff involved


If you still had KUID set on existing programs (not just the new stuff that you were recording), that was probably the cause.

Scott


----------



## Bigg

JoeKustra said:


> Perhaps the high workload needs some help. If I ran my car at 100mph all the time I would change the oil weekly. Maybe find a day when you have the lowest load and restart/power cycle the TiVo. I have always done a monthly power cycle of all my stuff. All 1P are Keep At Most: Everything. I just hate yellow dots. I have a 3TB drive in one basic Roamio. I added the drive last October. It has yet to become full. Just a thought.


I don't power cycle TiVos, they're not meant to be power cycled. Plus, during the 17 days of Rio, it was going pretty much non-stop recording this or that or the other thing. I probably won't ever have cable again, so it's sort of a moot point at this point, but I am now aware that TiVo's space management is unreliable above 80%, even with a large drive.



HerronScott said:


> If you still had KUID set on existing programs (not just the new stuff that you were recording), that was probably the cause.


Some of the stuff was clearly not KUID because it was not deleted.


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## aaronwt

Bigg said:


> Interesting. That's just not my experience. Could the failure mode only be under extremely high recording volume (12+ hours a day at high bitrate)? For a sense of scale, 20% of a 2TB drive is 400GB, and I was recording well over 100GB a day for several days in a row. Normally I KUID everything, but in that case I hadn't due to the volume of stuff involved, but at the time with 4 roommates we were running 40-60% normally on 2TB, now with just me, I'm in the single digits on 3TB, as I've now been successful at running lean.


That shouldn't cause any issues. I've been recording for around 20 hours a day on the TiVo Bolt I use to record news programs for years and it's never had any issues. And no issues when I used a Roamio Basic for the same news recordings. And when I use a Roamio Pro, with a 5TB drive for all recordings, it also was never an issue. The only time I've seen a TiVo where there would be this issue is if you have a bunch of recordings/1Ps set for KUID. But that is something I rarely ever use.


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## Bigg

aaronwt said:


> That shouldn't cause any issues. I've been recording for around 20 hours a day on the TiVo Bolt I use to record news programs for years and it's never had any issues. And no issues when I used a Roamio Basic for the same news recordings. And when I use a Roamio Pro, with a 5TB drive for all recordings, it also was never an issue. The only time I've seen a TiVo where there would be this issue is if you have a bunch of recordings/1Ps set for KUID. But that is something I rarely ever use.


I may have had some set for KUID, but I don't recall.


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## Sptrader

I tried a Samsung 250gb SSD about a year ago while I was waiting for a WD red 3tb drive to arrive from Amazon. The SSD setup and ran perfectly, just like an ordinary drive, slightly quicker I think, but not a huge improvement. I didn't run it long enough to test durability but it was fine to use as a temporary drive at least.


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## Telnetdoogie

Sorry for resurrecting an older and long running thread... But I noticed noone here has talked about temperature benefits of SSD. Every Tivo I've owned has suffered with high temperatures in the summer, and I've experienced a number of drive failures. High heat is terrible for mechanical drives and so my primary desire to try an SSD was for temperature resilience. My bolt in an entertainment cabinet, in Texas, runs super hot. And this summer for example I noticed significant recording glitches and visual artefacts when the temperature gets up there. I fear a pending failure (of course it could also just be age combined with temperature since the first and second summer I had the bolt I didn't have issues)

So if SSDs are otherwise impractical for a DVR application, is there another method by which the temperature of the mechanical drive can be lowered? My Tivo is already noisy so I don't love the idea of a bigger / louder fan but I'm open to some suggestions.


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## JoeKustra

My Awesome BOLT Cooling Mods ;-)

There may be 20 threads about cooling. Upper right corner is a search box.


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## JLGomez2667

Telnetdoogie said:


> Sorry for resurrecting an older and long running thread... But I noticed noone here has talked about temperature benefits of SSD. Every Tivo I've owned has suffered with high temperatures in the summer, and I've experienced a number of drive failures. High heat is terrible for mechanical drives and so my primary desire to try an SSD was for temperature resilience. My bolt in an entertainment cabinet, in Texas, runs super hot. And this summer for example I noticed significant recording glitches and visual artefacts when the temperature gets up there. I fear a pending failure (of course it could also just be age combined with temperature since the first and second summer I had the bolt I didn't have issues)
> 
> So if SSDs are otherwise impractical for a DVR application, is there another method by which the temperature of the mechanical drive can be lowered? My Tivo is already noisy so I don't love the idea of a bigger / louder fan but I'm open to some suggestions.


Do what I did .. I made a square hole on top and installed a computer fan connected with the wires to a usb plug that I then just connected to the back of the TIVO.. Looks different but never had a heat issue.. I dont think ssd would be good because of the way it writes and rewrites to the drive and therfore would not last plus if your ssd is on the fuller side they tend to get slower..


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## ggieseke

You live in Texas and DON'T have air conditioning???


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## JLGomez2667

ggieseke said:


> You live in Texas and DON'T have air conditioning???


Go sit at the little kids table.. Smart little boy..


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## Sptrader

You could rig up a computer chassis fan (cheap and quiet) above the hard drive and if the noise still bothers you, put the TIVO further away from you, like in a closet (if you have an rf remote).
SSD's aren't designed for constant read-write cycles as the TIVO does, but they DO work. I tried a 250gb Samsung SSD and it worked great. I used it after the HD in my Tivo died and I needed to get it working temporarily, until my new 3tb NAS drive arrived. Not sure how long it would last but might be a fun experiment.


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## ggieseke

JLGomez2667 said:


> Go sit at the little kids table.. Smart little boy..


That's rude. Do you live in South Texas, and if so do you have AC in your house and your car?


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## Telnetdoogie

ggieseke said:


> You live in Texas and DON'T have air conditioning???


Of course I do. But it's generally hotter in my home in the summer. 10 degrees makes a difference, especially in an entertainment cabinet where air conditioning air doesn't exactly flow. I'm comfortable, but the TiVo gets generally warmer in the summer (especially when no one's home, i don't want to pay AC bills to keep a TiVo box cool)


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## Anotherpyr

Telnetdoogie said:


> Of course I do. But it's generally hotter in my home in the summer. 10 degrees makes a difference, especially in an entertainment cabinet where air conditioning air doesn't exactly flow. I'm comfortable, but the TiVo gets generally warmer in the summer (especially when no one's home, i don't want to pay AC bills to keep a TiVo box cool)


The bolt is cooling challenged. Putting it in a cabinet makes it worse. I'd check out the cooling mods link mentioned earlier. The fans help but the case itself seems to retard airflow. Short of taking the top off or drilling holes in the case, removing the cable card door and setting it on top of a usb fan makes a big difference.


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## Bigg

Telnetdoogie said:


> Of course I do. But it's generally hotter in my home in the summer. 10 degrees makes a difference, especially in an entertainment cabinet where air conditioning air doesn't exactly flow. I'm comfortable, but the TiVo gets generally warmer in the summer (especially when no one's home, i don't want to pay AC bills to keep a TiVo box cool)


You need to deal with your entertainment cabinet. I wouldn't let my house get above about 80-85F, which I guess means leaving AC on in Texas, since it's hot as hell down there. Here in CT, we can pretty much leave the AC off and it rarely, if ever, gets to 85 indoors.


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## Davelnlr_

Nick I said:


> I did the math of the SSD drive lifetime on a dual tuner and it comes out to over 4 years if i am always recording on both and I never am. I also have other Tivos on the home network to stream stored media from.
> I my case the SSD silence is what I paid the space premium for.
> 
> Nick


Been two years now. How is the drive holding up? My bolt+ 3TB HDD failed after 1 yr, 6mo, and I lost all my programs. They sent 3 refurbs before sending one that worked. I was thinking if it goes out again, to replace with an SSD. Its a 6 Tuner. I am just not convinced 3TB drives are any good. I had TWO of them for my computer that both failed at just over a year also. My 2TB drives in my Premiers have been running great for over 5 years now. I just do no like 3TB drives, so if this fails again, its either a 2TB SSD or a 2TB HDD I think.


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## JLGomez2667

Davelnlr_ said:


> Been two years now. How is the drive holding up? My bolt+ 3TB HDD failed after 1 yr, 6mo, and I lost all my programs. They sent 3 refurbs before sending one that worked. I was thinking if it goes out again, to replace with an SSD. Its a 6 Tuner. I am just not convinced 3TB drives are any good. I had TWO of them for my computer that both failed at just over a year also. My 2TB drives in my Premiers have been running great for over 5 years now. I just do no like 3TB drives, so if this fails again, its either a 2TB SSD or a 2TB HDD I think.


Im understanding that the reason besides short lifespan of an SSD is also when they get filled up over a certain percentage they become slower then a regular drive because of the way they handle the read and write of data.. Look into this if your thinking of keeping your SSD pretty full..


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## Bigg

Davelnlr_ said:


> Been two years now. How is the drive holding up? My bolt+ 3TB HDD failed after 1 yr, 6mo, and I lost all my programs. They sent 3 refurbs before sending one that worked. I was thinking if it goes out again, to replace with an SSD. Its a 6 Tuner. I am just not convinced 3TB drives are any good. I had TWO of them for my computer that both failed at just over a year also. My 2TB drives in my Premiers have been running great for over 5 years now. I just do no like 3TB drives, so if this fails again, its either a 2TB SSD or a 2TB HDD I think.


Backblaze Drive Stats: 2018 Hard Drive Failure Rates


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## Anotherpyr

Bigg said:


> Backblaze Drive Stats: 2018 Hard Drive Failure Rates


Sad to see that the WD drives had the highest lifetime failure rates.


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## aaronwt

JLGomez2667 said:


> Im understanding that the reason besides short lifespan of an SSD is also when they get filled up over a certain percentage they become slower then a regular drive because of the way they handle the read and write of data.. Look into this if your thinking of keeping your SSD pretty full..


That depends on the drive. My Samsung 840 EVO 1TB SSD drive is always full. It's speeds are still over 500MB/s(4Gb/s). And it's constantly being written to and read from. 24/7/365 for the last 3.5 years.


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## Davelnlr_

Anotherpyr said:


> Sad to see that the WD drives had the highest lifetime failure rates.


FWIW, Beside the drive in the Bolt+ which I think was a Toshiba 3TB, all my 3TB drive failures were Seagate. I am using one 2tb WD and three 4TB WD's, and havent had any issues with any of them. I have never had a Seagate Barracuda 2TB failure either.


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## tommeboy

this is a longer thread .. anyone actually been running an SSD for more than a year ?
I have a spare 2 TB WD BLUE SSD .. and figured I'd put in my BOLT since I no longer need this ssd
I am fine if it only lasts 3 years or so .. I just want to know it's going to work well while it's in there


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## JLGomez2667

tommeboy said:


> this is a longer thread .. anyone actually been running an SSD for more than a year ?
> I have a spare 2 TB WD BLUE SSD .. and figured I'd put in my BOLT since I no longer need this ssd
> I am fine if it only lasts 3 years or so .. I just want to know it's going to work well while it's in there


Well the first part is whether the tivo will even work with it. I tried a 1tb ssd and it didnt. But I do know that all even regular drives dont work with it.. so I guess the first step is to find a compatible one.. but there r 2 reasons why u might not want and ssd .. first is lifespan the memory that ssd write like clusters in a hard drive have a limited amount of writes and reads unlike a reg drive.. second as an ssd gets more filled up it actually slows down meaning that if u run an ssd with let's say 80% filled I dont know the actual amount it tends to slow to a crawl.


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## ej42137

I replaced the 4TB HD in a Roamio with a 4TB SSD back in July, and have been using it ever since. In October I opened it up and checked the SMART data. Based on my usage as reported by SMART, the SSD won't exceed its warranted TBW until another fifteen years have passed. I wouldn't count on a hard drive lasting that long.

Of course, this doesn't answer tommeboy's question about whether it would work at all, since I am running TE3.


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## tommeboy

replaced tonight .. so far so good 
using a 2TB WD BLUE SSD

The menus seem slightly faster but not hugely different.

Another reason I swapped out was I had been having issues with HD shows on the History Channel stuttering during playback .. 
and although the stutter still seems to be there .. it does seem a little better

I replaced the HDD on the Roamio .. still stuttered
swapped out the Roamio with a 4K BOLT .. still stuttered with HDD
swapped out HDD in the 4K BOLT with SSD .. and although still stuttering .. seems slightly better


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## mattyro7878

Garbage in, garbage out. Thanks Comcast!


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## tommeboy

mattyro7878 said:


> Garbage in, garbage out. Thanks Comcast!


Yep starting to think that's the case with COMCAST

for now SSD in BOLT seems to work mostly well


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## tommeboy

For those interested in will an SSD help with the heat within a BOLT ?
I can say even with an SSD .. my BOLT still seems pretty hot while running
No real difference between an HDD or SSD
I think the cramped design and lack of airflow in the BOLT just causes this


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## JoeKustra

From TiVo: TiVo Holiday Trade-In, Trade-Up Sale: trade in your Roamio OTA/VOX (plus $299.98) for a Bolt OTA


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## Mikeguy

JoeKustra said:


> From TiVo: TiVo Holiday Trade-In, Trade-Up Sale: trade in your Roamio OTA/VOX (plus $299.98) for a Bolt OTA


Here you got me excited, thinking that there was a new holiday deal right now!


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## JoeKustra

Mikeguy said:


> Here you got me excited, thinking that there was a new holiday deal right now!


Yeah, I should have just done a cut & paste of his post. Next time.


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## Bigg

JoeKustra said:


> From TiVo: TiVo Holiday Trade-In, Trade-Up Sale: trade in your Roamio OTA/VOX (plus $299.98) for a Bolt OTA


Bleh. I don't see the point. The Bolt OTA doesn't do anything that my Roamio OTA doesn't. I don't count 4k since I have a Roku and a Chromecast for that.


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## aaronwt

JLGomez2667 said:


> Well the first part is whether the tivo will even work with it. I tried a 1tb ssd and it didnt. But I do know that all even regular drives dont work with it.. so I guess the first step is to find a compatible one.. but there r 2 reasons why u might not want and ssd .. first is lifespan the memory that ssd write like clusters in a hard drive have a limited amount of writes and reads unlike a reg drive.. second as an ssd gets more filled up it actually slows down meaning that if u run an ssd with let's say 80% filled I dont know the actual amount it tends to slow to a crawl.


I cant say I've ever run into that. I've been using a 1TB Samsung SSD in a Blue Iris machine for around five years. It is constantly around 99% full and being written to and read from 24/7/365 with my fifteen IP cameras.. I have never run into any issues with it. It has never slowed to a crawl.

Sent from my Galaxy S10


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## aaronwt

tommeboy said:


> For those interested in will an SSD help with the heat within a BOLT ?
> I can say even with an SSD .. my BOLT still seems pretty hot while running
> No real difference between an HDD or SSD
> I think the cramped design and lack of airflow in the BOLT just causes this


Because most of the heat is not from the hard drive in a Bolt.

Sent from my Galaxy S10


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## aaronwt

Bigg said:


> Bleh. I don't see the point. The Bolt OTA doesn't do anything that my Roamio OTA doesn't. I don't count 4k since I have a Roku and a Chromecast for that.


Much, much faster transfer from Bolt than from a Roamio OTA. The Bolt can hit up to 500mbps throughput. While the Roamio is below 100mbps.

Sent from my Galaxy S10


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## tommeboy

Ok well after just 1 week of running my BOLT using a 2TB SSD a few conclusions

PROS for using a SSD
- menus do seem slightly faster (maybe 10%) but not super noticeable
- download updates seem faster to load (maybe 40%) but again not super noticeable
- no noise .. some hdds make noise, but my old HDD did not .. so no real gain here
- did slightly help a stuttering issue I was having .. but still did not solve
- drive produces less heat, but not noticeable in a BOLT as the unit itself gets pretty hot

CONS for using a SSD
- higher cost (obviously)
- less expected lifetime

CONCLUSION
Interesting experiment .. but really not good enough reasons to use an SSD in a TIVO (as others have mentioned here)
In the end, I am going to replace with a cheap HDD and will find a better use for my 2TB SSD


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## tommeboy

On a side note (unrelated to this SSD thread)

I've also determined that for my provider (COMCAST) .. a 4K TIVO has no improvement at all in my picture quality as everything is always 1080 or less anyways
My Roamio does just as well .. so really no reason for me to upgrade unless I want to stream (but I use Roku for this)

So reasons to switch to a 4K TIVO are pretty much none


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## ej42137

tommeboy said:


> Ok well after just 1 week of running my BOLT using a 2TB SSD a few conclusions
> 
> PROS for using a SSD
> - menus do seem slightly faster (maybe 10%) but not super noticeable
> - download updates seem faster to load (maybe 40%) but again not super noticeable
> - no noise .. some hdds make noise, but my old HDD did not .. so no real gain here
> - did slightly help a stuttering issue I was having .. but still did not solve
> - drive produces less heat, but not noticeable in a BOLT as the unit itself gets pretty hot
> 
> CONS for using a SSD
> - higher cost (obviously)
> - less expected lifetime
> 
> CONCLUSION
> Interesting experiment .. but really not good enough reasons to use an SSD in a TIVO (as others have mentioned here)
> In the end, I am going to replace with a cheap HDD and will find a better use for my 2TB SSD


When I replaced my HD with an SSD I timed the performance of menus and downloads; I used a stopwatch and did multiple trials. I say this with love, but I think you are suffering cognitive dissonance when you report a performance change. (Not that it in any way invalidates your conclusion.)

I'm not a psychologist, nor do I play one on TV; but I did spent thirty years writing performance monitoring software for a living.


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## tommeboy

ej42137 said:


> When I replaced my HD with an SSD I timed the performance of menus and downloads; I used a stopwatch and did multiple trials. I say this with love, but I think you are suffering cognitive dissonance when you report a performance change. (Not that it in any way invalidates your conclusion.)
> 
> I'm not a psychologist, nor do I play one on TV; but I did spent thirty years writing performance monitoring software for a living.


Sorry EJ .. not as technical as you're analysis .. I was trying to summarize that there is hardly any appreciable difference in menu speeds (something that might be a benefit to some)


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## ej42137

tommeboy said:


> Sorry EJ .. not as technical as you're analysis .. I was trying to summarize that there is hardly any appreciable difference in menu speeds (something that might be a benefit to some)


I certainly don't disagree with your conclusion. I merely caution you that changes in response time are extremely subjective; they don't really mean anything unless you actually measure them.

Oh, and do you know that SMR hard drives are reputed to fail very quickly in a TiVo? If you can't find a PMR 2.5" drive you'd be better off keeping the SSD in it.


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## tommeboy

I found a Toshiba 3TB MQ03ABB300 5400RPM SATA 6Gbps 16MB Cache (512e) 2.5-inch Hard Drive
3TB 2.5 inch hdds are becoming scarce these days
This model seemed to be recommended in the BOLT awhile ago on several threads


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## Mikeguy

tommeboy said:


> I found a Toshiba 3TB MQ03ABB300 5400RPM SATA 6Gbps 16MB Cache (512e) 2.5-inch Hard Drive
> 3TB 2.5 inch hdds are becoming scarce these days
> This model seemed to be recommended in the BOLT awhile ago on several threads


The earlier U.S. sources seemed to have run out of stock. I did find some alternate U.S. source when I checked a bunch of months ago, as well as what seemed to be a well-established EU electronics store that ships worldwide (and which had a great price)--https://www.grooves-inc.com/toshiba-toshiba-mq03abb300-hdd-3000gb-serial-ata-iii-internal-hard-drive-toshiba-hardware-electronic-pZZa1-2098341320.html?language=en&currency=USD&utm_source=froogle_us&utm_campaign=froogle_us&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIsYicv5Gd5gIV-SCtBh19gwuxEAYYASABEgKrXfD_BwE.


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## BobCamp1

ej42137 said:


> Oh, and do you know that SMR hard drives are reputed to fail very quickly in a TiVo? If you can't find a PMR 2.5" drive you'd be better off keeping the SSD in it.


2 TB CMR drives are also becoming scarce. Which is why the Edge (not from U2) is using SMR drives.

SMR drives won't fail quickly. They used to have really bad latency which would cause Linux to freak out. But now that they have 128 MB or 256 MB of cache in them, and the OS has apparently learned to deal with it, and more importantly (hopefully) knows how to buffer and write to it, it might be worth a try on a unit running TE4 software.

I say TE4 because there's a difference in the hard drive interface between TE3 and TE4, and the Edge is running TE4 only, so I'm guessing SMR support has been snuck into TE4.

For TE3 owners who don't want to try the Samsung Spinpoint M9T or an SMR drive, an SSD drive is the only thing that's left.


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## Bigg

aaronwt said:


> Much, much faster transfer from Bolt than from a Roamio OTA. The Bolt can hit up to 500mbps throughput. While the Roamio is below 100mbps.


Seems like a very small benefit for something I'd only use once in a blue moon.


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## aaronwt

Bigg said:


> Seems like a very small benefit for something I'd only use once in a blue moon.


Of course it depends on your use case. But for me around 75% of what i record gets transferred to a PC with kmttg. And then Plex aggregates the content.


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## Bigg

aaronwt said:


> Of course it depends on your use case. But for me around 75% of what i record gets transferred to a PC with kmttg. And then Plex aggregates the content.


Wow, I want to see your network! It seems like every other day you've got some cool new setup that pushes everything to it's limits.


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## shwru980r

I wonder what effect an SSD would have on a Premiere, since the software runs from the hard drive instead of flash storage.


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## ggieseke

shwru980r said:


> I wonder what effect an SSD would have on a Premiere, since the software runs from the hard drive instead of flash storage.


The boot time and menus should be noticeably faster, but the CPU on Premieres is still pretty slow.


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## JLGomez2667

Has anyone tried if a tivo would accept this.. I am sure the performance would increase without the issues in installing an SSD .. 
*Seagate FireCuda 2TB Solid State Hybrid Drive Performance SSHD - 2.5 Inch SATA 6Gb/s Flash Accelerated for Gaming PC Laptop (ST2000LX001)*


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## aaronwt

JLGomez2667 said:


> Has anyone tried if a tivo would accept this.. I am sure the performance would increase without the issues in installing an SSD ..
> *Seagate FireCuda 2TB Solid State Hybrid Drive Performance SSHD - 2.5 Inch SATA 6Gb/s Flash Accelerated for Gaming PC Laptop (ST2000LX001)*


Those are also SMR drives.

I've been using one for a few years my launch PS4 Pro. It's worked fine for that, but the Hybrid drive probably won't see any benefit in a TiVo.


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## ej42137

JLGomez2667 said:


> Has anyone tried if a tivo would accept this.. I am sure the performance would increase without the issues in installing an SSD ..
> *Seagate FireCuda 2TB Solid State Hybrid Drive Performance SSHD - 2.5 Inch SATA 6Gb/s Flash Accelerated for Gaming PC Laptop (ST2000LX001)*


Performance doesn't noticeably improve with an SSD; what makes you think this kluge would be any better?


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## mgianni1

iNiv said:


> Hey all. I've not seen any recent forums on installing an SSD drive into a TiVo. I have a Roamio, 500gb HDD (which is fine for my use, capacity-wise) that I've considered replacing with a 500gb Solid State Drive, which are quite affordable these days.
> 
> Will it work? Anyone with experience with this, specifically with TiVo's newest hardware?
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> -Scott


I have on older Tivo. I installed a 100gb Kingston SSD in an old Series 2. It works fine. You need some additional equipment namely a IDE to SATA bi directional convertor and a couple of cables. The one I used was from Startek. I ran it for two years and then a power surge took out my Tivo power supply. Once I replaced the power supply it all worked again. So I say go for it.


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## zombiephysicist

I have a pretty long running thread on this topic, which might be of interest, here:








SSDs in TiVos/DVRs, Yes You Can Do It (was: 5TB Bolt...


Hi All: I'm about to upgrade my (already upgraded) 5TB bolt to a 7.68TB Micron SSD. If possible, I would like to get the shows off my current 5TB drive onto the 7.68TB SSD. I'm not sure what the best way to go about doing that and would like any suggestions. OPTION A: I think MFS Tools 3.2...




www.tivocommunity.com


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