# SSD - Current State?



## TivoRocks193 (Aug 10, 2005)

Ok, this is an old question, but the only posts I can find on it are 3, 5, even 7-years old. Ignoring the question of why you would do so (and the obvious problems of writing too much to an SSD with limited writes - although I'm sure 10 people will state it), Does anyone *currently* use an SSD with their TiVo bolt?

You can get a 4TB for $500 and a 2TB for under $300 (both Samsung) so the prices of SSDs is no longer a major issue. 

I know a lot people say "dont do it" but I'm asking the people who have already done it. Did it work? Did it die after X number months? Was it a lot cooler? I've noticed my Bolt can run *very* hot at times. Any recommended drives or tools?


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

Not so old: https://www.tivocommunity.com/commu...over-dram-here-comes-universal-memory.571798/


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## fcfc2 (Feb 19, 2015)

TivoRocks193 said:


> Ok, this is an old question, but the only posts I can find on it are 3, 5, even 7-years old. Ignoring the question of why you would do so (and the obvious problems of writing too much to an SSD with limited writes - although I'm sure 10 people will state it), Does anyone *currently* use an SSD with their TiVo bolt?
> 
> You can get a 4TB for $500 and a 2TB for under $300 (both Samsung) so the prices of SSDs is no longer a major issue.
> 
> I know a lot people say "dont do it" but I'm asking the people who have already done it. Did it work? Did it die after X number months? Was it a lot cooler? I've noticed my Bolt can run *very* hot at times. Any recommended drives or tools?


I am in the "not recommended" camp, but as a way to get a cooler Bolt, it would be about 199th on my list of improvements to try first. 
The easiest way to help the amazingly designed Bolt series is to simply put almost anything under the 4 corners to raise the Bolt up, another easy thing is to just remove the cable card cover, and if those won't work to get your temperature down, just try a USB laptop cooler powered by one of the Bolt's USB ports.
PS. If you really think that spending $300-500 makes using an SSD *no longer a major issue* please do so and then you can be one of the folks who come back periodically and report your progress.


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## KevTech (Apr 15, 2014)

fcfc2 said:


> The easiest way to help the amazingly designed Bolt series is to simply put almost anything under the 4 corners to raise the Bolt up


Ya I just put metal condiment cups under the corners.

Easy cooling mod?


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## TivoRocks193 (Aug 10, 2005)

No, I'm not recommending upgrading to SSD for cooling reasons, that would be silly. I just meant has anyone installed a 2TB/4TB SSD in their TiVo Bolt? Did it work? Did it die after X amount of time? Performance better/faster than HDD? Any issues? Common temps?

While $300/$500 might seem a lot, a few years ago some HDD had those prices. And SSD of that size were ridiculously expensive.


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## Luke M (Nov 5, 2002)

1TB SSDs are cheap enough now (<$100) to make them attractive as an upgrade for 500GB Bolts, only question is reliability. The power saving Tivo mode should help with that (no idle recording), but I've read that it's buggy and causes problems...

Re: heat, an SSD will if anything use more power than an HD. Not that it matters, both are low power (<3W) and not a major factor in cooling the Bolt.


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## TivoRocks193 (Aug 10, 2005)

Luke M said:


> 1TB SSDs are cheap enough now (<$100) to make them attractive as an upgrade for 500GB Bolts, only question is reliability.


My question as well. I'm surprised on this forum there aren't more people who've taken the plunge with some Samsung SSDs and tried it out. Everyone seems very risk adverse.


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## KevTech (Apr 15, 2014)

Article from 2017 and SSD prices are way lower than what they were two years ago: Using SSDs in DVRs - in Koherence

I wonder if the Tivo knows how to perform trim on the SSD.


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## Luke M (Nov 5, 2002)

KevTech said:


> I wonder if the Tivo knows how to perform trim on the SSD.


Drives are normally always full (including deleted but recoverable stuff) though.


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## kpeters59 (Jun 19, 2007)

5TB Bolt Drive to 7.68TB SSD Upgrade, Best Approach?

-KP


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## TivoRocks193 (Aug 10, 2005)

kpeters59 said:


> 5TB Bolt Drive to 7.68TB SSD Upgrade, Best Approach?


That's pretty cool although 5% usage after 3 months.. come on, load it up!


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## fcfc2 (Feb 19, 2015)

Luke M said:


> Re: heat, an SSD will if anything use more power than an HD. Not that it matters, both are low power (<3W) and not a major factor in cooling the Bolt.


Not sure where this information is coming from but everything I have ever read indicates that an SSD will use *LESS *power and run cooler than a standard hard drive.


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## fcfc2 (Feb 19, 2015)

TivoRocks193 said:


> My question as well. I'm surprised on this forum there aren't more people who've taken the plunge with some Samsung SSDs and tried it out. Everyone seems very risk adverse.


In fact, there have been a few folks who have raised the issue of using an SSD on Bolt's from time to time including the link already posted, but I would suggest that the reason most folks have not tried using SSD's even with their declining prices has little if anything to do with "being risk adverse." The primary benefit of SSD's over standard hd's is speed, and time and again the extremely competent folks in the upgrade forum have pointed out that the 5400 rate hard drives are *more than adequate for any and all functions needed on a Tivo DVR* and have actively recommended against using even the 7200 rate hard drives as they will likely just increase heat and power use with zero functional benefit. 
Although heat and additional power issues are absent with SSD's, the fact that SSD's basically have a limited/fixed number of read/write cycles and that is counter indicated in an application like a DVR which is reading/writing to the hard drive 24/7. 
The available facts would seem to indicate that it is not "risk adversity" which has impeded the use of SSD's in the Tivo DVR's but just simple good judgment.
PS. Please do by all means try one of those "cheap" SSD's if you have the inclination and then you can come back and post all the benefits you find over the following months.
I would not encourage you to upgrade to the newest Tivo software aka Hydra/Mira however.


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## SullyND (Dec 30, 2004)

The current state? Solid.



Spoiler



SSD = Solid State Drive


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## TivoRocks193 (Aug 10, 2005)

The fact that I come on the forum and everya


fcfc2 said:


> The available facts would seem to indicate that it is not "risk adversity" which has impeded the use of SSD's in the Tivo DVR's but just simple good judgment.
> PS. Please do by all means try one of those "cheap" SSD's if you have the inclination and then you can come back and post all the benefits you find over the following months.


The fact that I come on the forum and nearly everyone's response is "you shouldn't do that, but none of us have tried" or better yet "you go try for us and let us know" is a pretty big indication that everyone here is pretty risk adverse. I'm just surprised more people haven't given it a shot. Many of the HDD vs SSD threads are almost a decade old now. There seems to be a lot of fear around using an SSD, someone above even posting an pseudo-academic study, but very few people who've just said "screw it, I'll try an SSD".

Given the rapidly failing prices of SSD, the lower heat/power (esp with Bolt which is an oven), and the general (non-TiVo specific) drastic performance increase in using SSDs, I'm surprised tons of people haven't installed them.

Also, since TiVo discontinued the 3TB Bolt because the HDD they were using was discontinued, and now only makes a 1TB Bolt due to lack of replacement... it's a good indication we're all going to have to switch to SSD in the future. Maybe the Arris TiVo will use SSD.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

TivoRocks193 said:


> The fact that I come on the forum and everya
> 
> The fact that I come on the forum and nearly everyone's response is "you shouldn't do that, but none of us have tried" or better yet "you go try for us and let us know" is a pretty big indication that everyone here is pretty risk adverse. I'm just surprised more people haven't given it a shot. Many of the HDD vs SSD threads are almost a decade old now. There seems to be a lot of fear around using an SSD, someone above even posting an pseudo-academic study, but very few people who've just said "screw it, I'll try an SSD".
> 
> ...


What always has dissuaded me is, the SSD limited write-over issue--it seems to be a real barrier for a device like a TiVo box. In contrast, my Series 2 TiVo has 10+ years with its original hard drive. And then, of course, there's the cost difference.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

kpeters59 said:


> 5TB Bolt Drive to 7.68TB SSD Upgrade, Best Approach?
> 
> -KP


I see that $1k 7.7TB SSD is rated for a whopping 17600TB TBW!! Based on that it shouldn't have an issue in a TiVo. Heck even some of the Samsung SSDs have lasted over 800TB TBW. But 17,600TB TBW takes it to another level.
If there was a huge benefit to having an SSD in a TiVo, I would have installed one many years ago to try out. But even a slow 5400rpm platter drives has zero issues reading/writing twelve HD streams in a TiVo. But if I had a bunch of spare cash, and I still used my TiVos like I did a few years ago, I would be all over this Micron 7.7TB SSD in a TiVo, for all that extra storage space.

EDIT: I see the OP in that thread used an earlier version of the Micron SSD I looked at . I couldn't find the TBW spec for that one. But it also costs a few hundred less than the $1k one I looked at .


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## chicagobrownblue (May 29, 2008)

TivoRocks193 said:


> The fact that I come on the forum and everya
> 
> The fact that I come on the forum and nearly everyone's response is "you shouldn't do that, but none of us have tried" or better yet "you go try for us and let us know" is a pretty big indication that everyone here is pretty risk adverse.


Or, you have a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

I'm quite happy with my Roamio and its, according to some, pathetically slow hard drive and processor. If I do ever feel the need for speed there is the Bolt with a faster processor and just around the corner the Edge with, I assume a faster processor. All those engineers at Tivo are unaware of SSDs? No, it does nothing for the customer experience so they don't include it.


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## UCLABB (May 29, 2012)

chicagobrownblue said:


> Or, you have a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.
> 
> I'm quite happy with my Roamio and its, according to some, pathetically slow hard drive and processor. If I do ever feel the need for speed there is the Bolt with a faster processor and just around the corner the Edge with, I assume a faster processor. All those engineers at Tivo are unaware of SSDs? No, it does nothing for the customer experience so they don't include it.


Yes, I'm not adverse to risk when there is GAIN. There is no performance gain for using a SSD. Box might run cooler, but a cheap fan solves that issue.


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## mdavej (Aug 13, 2015)

SSD current state? I'd say Solid as always.

What I absolutely love about them besides the price is that when they die, everything on them is totally unrecoverable. Great choice for reading/writing video files 24x7 and realizing zero performance gain at all. Also, why spend $50 on a 1TB drive when you can spend at least twice that and do it at least 4 times as often.


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## jakerock (Dec 9, 2002)

The new definition of risk averse is: There isn't a compelling reason to do something but there are downsides, so we're not going to bother.


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## BobCamp1 (May 15, 2002)

mdavej said:


> SSD current state? I'd say Solid as always.
> 
> What I absolutely love about them besides the price is that when they die, everything on them is totally unrecoverable. Great choice for reading/writing video files 24x7 and realizing zero performance gain at all. Also, why spend $50 on a 1TB drive when you can spend at least twice that and do it at least 4 times as often.


Bolt's don't usually give a warning before their HDD dies -- you just wake up one morning and there's four flashing lights. SSDs are very reliable until the end - there's fewer unexpected failures with them. I think at this point Bolt+ owners would love an HDD that lasts more than 1.5 years.

Also, SSDs usually enter a read-only mode once the number of write cycles has been exceeded. The content is obviously still recoverable.

The Bolt has a power saving mode, so you're not writing 24x7. And you can manually put in standby if you want to be aggressive.

You don't know for a fact there is no performance gain at all, since you have never tried it. You're theorizing that.

Finally, it's possible that the OP has a discounted SSD or has acquired a free one.

I did calculate this at some point a while ago, but since content these days is more compressed (especially Comcast's) and the expected life of affordable SSDs has increased, I may have to revisit those calculations.


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## chicagobrownblue (May 29, 2008)

BobCamp1 said:


> You don't know for a fact there is no performance gain at all, since you have never tried it. You're theorizing that.


But we can figure it out. The performance gain from Premiere to Roamio to Bolt is attributed to startup, reboot and app loading because of the faster processor. *All display video and audio the same once you're watching content.* If the OS is stored on the hard drive, then we can expect startup and reboot might be faster on an SSD. *Watching content will be at the same speed.* If the apps are stored on the hard drive, we might expect them to load faster on an SSD.

Hard drives typically have 64MB caches and decades of software improvement to make them fast. Ditto for Tivo to make their software faster. The two combined leaves very little improvement possible but again only in startup, reboot and app loading. Viewing is at the same 1x or 1.3x speed.



BobCamp1 said:


> Finally, it's possible that the OP has a discounted SSD or has acquired a free one.


Not based on his words:


TivoRocks193 said:


> You can get a 4TB for *$500* and a 2TB for under *$300* (both Samsung) so the prices of SSDs is no longer a major issue.


$500 is not significant? The new Edge will probably cost $199 to $299. A faster processor might make a noticeable improvement in ... but not in viewing content.


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## Joe01880 (Feb 8, 2009)

TivoRocks193 said:


> My question as well. I'm surprised on this forum there aren't more people who've taken the plunge with some Samsung SSDs and tried it out. Everyone seems very risk adverse.


That's because long time TiVo users have found if it ain't broke, don't muck it up! Tweaking is one thing, losing all your saved season recordings are another.....

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk


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## BobCamp1 (May 15, 2002)

OK, I figured it out.

I just recorded a bunch of shows on FIOS, ABC (720p) and they averaged 4.5 GB/hour. It's one of the channels with the highest bitrate on FIOS. 

So if each channel is encoded at that rate on average, and four tuners are active for 8 hours a day, that's 144 GB a day. The 1 TB Samsung 860 EVO yields at least 600 TBW. So it would last 11.4 years if high power savings were used to enforce 8 active hours/day with 16 hours in standby.

If the Tivo were active 16 hours/day, the approximate lifetime halves that down to a still respectable 5.7 years.

It is unknown if the SSD is compatible with a Tivo. The speed will be faster than expected and you never know what that'll do with an embedded product. But that is no different than HDDs, as we know that some of those are also incompatible with the Bolt.


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## jakerock (Dec 9, 2002)

BobCamp1 said:


> If the Tivo were active 16 hours/day, the approximate lifetime halves that down to a still respectable 5.7 years.


I haven't been following the latest TiVo HW releases (I'm back a couple of generations at this point I'm guessing). But aren't TiVo's active 24 hours a day? The new ones aren't buffering all the tuners all the time?


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## Luke M (Nov 5, 2002)

fcfc2 said:


> Not sure where this information is coming from but everything I have ever read indicates that an SSD will use *LESS *power and run cooler than a standard hard drive.


In a laptop, sure, because the drive is idle most of the time, and SSDs can use less power when idle. In a Tivo, idle power doesn't matter, and active SSD power is similar to hard drives.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

jakerock said:


> I haven't been following the latest TiVo HW releases (I'm back a couple of generations at this point I'm guessing). But aren't TiVo's active 24 hours a day? The new ones aren't buffering all the tuners all the time?


If you use the higher power saving modes on the Bolts and Roamios, it will not buffer while in standby. The drive will power down while in standby. It's been that was for a few years now.


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## mdavej (Aug 13, 2015)

BobCamp1 said:


> OK, I figured it out.
> 
> I just recorded a bunch of shows on FIOS, ABC (720p) and they averaged 4.5 GB/hour. It's one of the channels with the highest bitrate on FIOS.
> 
> ...


Your math is sound. Unfortunately, it's not that simple. Real world lifetime would be 1/2 to 1/3 of what you calculated. See "Why The TBW Rating Is Misleading" below:
Intel Clarifies 600p SSD Endurance Limitations, But TBW Ratings Can Be Misleading (Updated)

In my own personal experience with SSD's I never get anywhere near the rated life. Mine typically die the day after the warranty runs out.

I still would never waste money on an SSD for a Tivo. But SSD's are fantastic in PCs, servers and laptops.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

mdavej said:


> Your math is sound. Unfortunately, it's not that simple. Real world lifetime would be 1/2 to 1/3 of what you calculated. See "Why The TBW Rating Is Misleading" below:
> Intel Clarifies 600p SSD Endurance Limitations, But TBW Ratings Can Be Misleading (Updated)
> 
> In my own personal experience with SSD's I never get anywhere near the rated life. Mine typically die the day after the warranty runs out.
> ...


I've yet to put 600TB on my largest SSD, a 1TB Samsung EVO I got five years ago. But I'm well over 100TB written. I use it in my Blue Iris PC. So video from fifteen IP cameras are constantly being written to the SSD and being read off it as well.

Since all that video data first gets written to an NVME drive. Then gets moved to the 1TB Samsung EVO SSD. Then gets moved to a 500GB Samsung EVO SSD. And then goes from there to a 2TB platter drive. So all the drives are basically being written to and read from 24/7/365. Since they are always full.

And my oldest SSDs, from 2009 and 2010, are still working well in other devices and PCs. But they don't get constantly written to or read from.


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## BobCamp1 (May 15, 2002)

mdavej said:


> Your math is sound. Unfortunately, it's not that simple. Real world lifetime would be 1/2 to 1/3 of what you calculated. See "Why The TBW Rating Is Misleading" below:
> Intel Clarifies 600p SSD Endurance Limitations, But TBW Ratings Can Be Misleading (Updated)
> 
> In my own personal experience with SSD's I never get anywhere near the rated life. Mine typically die the day after the warranty runs out.
> ...


That article explains the TBW rating for *Intel* drives. Yes, TBW is an approximation and each vendor will do it differently. Samsung gives a very conservative value for their SSDs apparently, as many customers can go well beyond the specified values.

One could use a smaller SSD to record, then transfer the ones they want kept to a larger HDD (one should do that anyway, it's tough finding reliable 2.5" 3 TB HDDs). I wonder if the transfer speed would benefit at all from using an SSD?

It's no longer silly to consider using an SSD in a DVR. Their short and mid-term reliability beats HDDs. Just ask Bolt owner's if they're happy with their HDDs lasting 18 months or less.


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## TivoRocks193 (Aug 10, 2005)

BobCamp1 said:


> It's no longer silly to consider using an SSD in a DVR. Their short and mid-term reliability beats HDDs. Just ask Bolt owner's if they're happy with their HDDs lasting 18 months or less.


That was the original reason I started this thread! But the reply from people using SSD in TiVo seems rare. Most people just seem to comment that $300 was too expensive for a 2TB drive (must be young people!) or that using a SSD in a TiVo was a terrible idea. Would love more hands on feedback.


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## chicagobrownblue (May 29, 2008)

BobCamp1 said:


> It's no longer silly to consider using an SSD in a DVR.


What SSD are you using in your Tivo? OP wants to know about your actual usage in Tivos.

aaronwt is using SSDs in PCs:


aaronwt said:


> I've yet to put 600TB on my largest SSD, a 1TB Samsung EVO I got five years ago. But I'm well over 100TB written. *I use it in my Blue Iris PC*. ...
> 
> And my oldest SSDs, from 2009 and 2010, *are still working well* in other devices and *PCs*. But they don't get constantly written to or read from.


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## chicagobrownblue (May 29, 2008)

BobCamp1 said:


> Just ask Bolt owner's if they're happy with their HDDs lasting 18 months or less.


The ancedotal evidence here of Bolts overheating started about a year after the Bolt was introduced. You need to take one of the many suggestions here to prevent the overheating -- OR -- do as I've done and stick with my perfectly fine Roamio which may outlast the entire product cycle of the Bolt.


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## TivoRocks193 (Aug 10, 2005)

chicagobrownblue said:


> The ancedotal evidence here of Bolts overheating started about a year after the Bolt was introduced. You need to take one of the many suggestions here to prevent the overheating -- OR -- do as I've done and stick with my perfectly fine Roamio which may outlast the entire product cycle of the Bolt.


The question was about how people using Bolt liked using SSD. We are quite off topic at this point.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

TivoRocks193 said:


> The question was about how people using Bolt liked using SSD. We are quite off topic at this point.


You must be new around here.


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## Joe01880 (Feb 8, 2009)

BobCamp1 said:


> It's no longer silly to consider using an SSD in a DVR. Their short and mid-term reliability beats HDDs. Just ask Bolt owner's if they're happy with their HDDs lasting 18 months or less.


I've had my Bolt 500gb 4 tuner TiVo since they first came out, a few months after I think.. I'm old and can't remember crap anymore...
I replaced the original 500gb HDD the day it got here with a 3TB internal Seagate HDD. I set it on a laptop fan, plugged it into one of the USB ports on the Bolt and it's been going strong ever since (knocking on wood). Suits my needs...

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk


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## BobCamp1 (May 15, 2002)

chicagobrownblue said:


> The ancedotal evidence here of Bolts overheating started about a year after the Bolt was introduced. You need to take one of the many suggestions here to prevent the overheating -- OR -- do as I've done and stick with my perfectly fine Roamio which may outlast the entire product cycle of the Bolt.


To my knowledge only two Bolts have overheated. Everybody thinks they run hotter than they should, but unless the hard drive temperature exceeds 50 C there's no cause for concern. That goes for both HDD and SSD.

There are a couple of posts of Bolt+ owners who cooled their DVR yet still experienced early hard drive failure. Others have reported early hard drive failures with different HDD models or compatibility problems.

Also to my knowledge, nobody has tried an SSD. It's always been frowned upon, but recently SSD longevity has increased and video data rates have decreased to the point where it is now feasible. If the OP does it, he'll be the first one to try it.

My recommendation is to put in a 500 GB/1 TB hard drive in the Tivo then transfer the shows via PC to a larger hard drive.


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## ggieseke (May 30, 2008)

There *are* a few recent TCF posts from people who have tried SSDs. I haven't heard of any failures yet other than some recent TE4 initial formatting issues that also affect platter drives, but it's hardly a statistical universe. One point to consider is that I don't think TBW ratings really apply. From what I have seen in the past, TiVos tend to pick a specific area of the drive to use for the live buffer and just rewrite it over and over. That would take a solid state drive rated for X TB of writes in total and seriously screw with those numbers because it beats the heck out of one spot.

To the OP: Try it and let us know how it goes if you can afford it. I don't think anyone here can give you any hard data yet.


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## multiple (Aug 26, 2007)

zombiephysicist and I are trying out the Micron 5210 ION SSD with 7.68TB. You can now pick it up for $630 or so.

See this thread 5TB Bolt Drive to 7.68TB SSD Upgrade, Best Approach?

I was running a Micron 1100 2TB SSD without issue for quite some time, but it stopped working when one the SW upgrades (back in late 2018) when TiVo started disabling some drives. Not sure if it was intentional or just a software bug, but WD 4TB and other drives stopped working unless you reverted to older software. I reverted the TiVO SW and in all cases my 4TB WD drives and Micron SSD started working again and then proceeded to fail again once I upgrade the SW to the latest release.


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## kdmorse (Jan 29, 2001)

ggieseke said:


> One point to consider is that I don't think TBW ratings really apply. From what I have seen in the past, TiVos tend to pick a specific area of the drive to use for the live buffer and just rewrite it over and over. That would take a solid state drive rated for X TB of writes in total and seriously screw with those numbers because it beats the heck out of one spot.


Shouldn't be a problem - because the 'spot' isn't an actual spot any more. The linear association between physical location and logical blocks just doesn't exist. Repeated writes to the same 'spot' will still march through the disk as blocks are allocated.

SSD's in Tivo's are like any other "I want to try this, because I want to try this" subject. If you want to try it, go for it. There's no ROI to compute. Every time I swag the numbers, it comes out to an expected life time of ~5+ years on a six tuner box on comcast. And if it dies before that, or after that, you replace it.


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## multiple (Aug 26, 2007)

ggieseke said:


> From what I have seen in the past, TiVos tend to pick a specific area of the drive to use for the live buffer and just rewrite it over and over. That would take a solid state drive rated for X TB of writes in total and seriously screw with those numbers because it beats the heck out of one spot.


That won't apply to SSDs because the drives remaps "sectors pages" to improve wear leveling. SSDs will use memory locations even in other partitions or even in unallocated space to make sure the drive wears evenly. The are articles on how you can improve SSD performance and longevity by under partitioning the device. The under partitioning can become very important when the SSD is nearly completely full. A full drive can make the wear leveling more challenging, which can then reduce longevity and in some cases significantly reduce performance. This is why most SSDs also have sizes smaller than the physical memory size on the device, this unused memory is reserved just to help the wear leveling SW work efficiently. The 7.68TB drive is likely 8TiB of FLASH, which means 996GB is unavailable to the user. 7.68TB is base 10 (trillion), while the flash size is base 2 or 8 * 2^40 (K=1024, M=1048576, etc.)

<edit> kdmorse beat me to it.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

multiple said:


> zombiephysicist and I are trying out the Micron 5210 ION SSD with 7.68TB. You can now pick it up for $630 or so.
> 
> See this thread 5TB Bolt Drive to 7.68TB SSD Upgrade, Best Approach?
> 
> I was running a Micron 1100 2TB SSD without issue for quite some time, but it stopped working when one the SW upgrades (back in late 2018) when TiVo started disabling some drives. Not sure if it was intentional or just a software bug, but WD 4TB and other drives stopped working unless you reverted to older software. I reverted the TiVO SW and in all cases my 4TB WD drives and Micron SSD started working again and then proceeded to fail again once I upgrade the SW to the latest release.


I'm glad that never affected my 2.5" Seagate 4TB drive I've been using in Bolts since October 2015.


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## shwru980r (Jun 22, 2008)

If someone has several different models of Tivos S3, S4, S5 and S6 and tries the SSD in the S3, S4 and S5 and it the performance is improved to the next model, then I think the cost of an SSD might be worth it. If someone could turn the performance of a Premiere into a Roamio or a Roamio into a Bolt, I think that would be compelling. It might also spell financial trouble for Tivo if customers could buy older models and install an SSD instead of buying a bolt.


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## ej42137 (Feb 16, 2014)

An SSD isn't going to make an S3 transfer as fast as a Roamio, that isn't where the bottleneck is. An SSD isn't going to make a Bolt emit a 4k signal. An SSD isn't going to make Vox work on a Bolt if it didn't have it previously. Even if an SSD were to improve the responsiveness of a TiVo (unproven and unlikely), features are what sell new hardware. Speed is a factor mostly when it is so bad it makes the product hard to use, like a Premiere with HD menus.

On the other hand, an 8 TB SSD is getting into about the range of the mean time to failure comparable to a hard drive if Standby is used. For a Bolt, it might be the best choice for someone with TE3 who wants more recording capacity.


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## shwru980r (Jun 22, 2008)

[


ej42137 said:


> An SSD isn't going to make an S3 transfer as fast as a Roamio, that isn't where the bottleneck is. An SSD isn't going to make a Bolt emit a 4k signal. An SSD isn't going to make Vox work on a Bolt if it didn't have it previously. Even if an SSD were to improve the responsiveness of a TiVo (unproven and unlikely), features are what sell new hardware. Speed is a factor mostly when it is so bad it makes the product hard to use, like a Premiere with HD menus.
> 
> On the other hand, an 8 TB SSD is getting into about the range of the mean time to failure comparable to a hard drive if Standby is used. For a Bolt, it might be the best choice for someone with TE3 who wants more recording capacity.


But I've read that the improved responsiveness of the Bolt is largely attributed to the OS residing on flash storage. I think an SSD is significantly faster than flash storage. An SSD is definitely a significant performance improvement to even a computer several years old. Based on what I've read on this forum, responsiveness seems to be a significant motivator for upgrading a Tivo.


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## ej42137 (Feb 16, 2014)

shwru980r said:


> [
> 
> But I've read that the improved responsiveness of the Bolt is largely attributed to the OS residing on flash storage. I think an SSD is significantly faster than flash storage. An SSD is definitely a significant performance improvement to even a computer several years old. Based on what I've read on this forum, responsiveness seems to be a significant motivator for upgrading a Tivo.


Hmmm. Up to this point I haven't been motivated to put an SSD into a TiVo because I doubted there would be any benefit and the lifetime issue seemed to be a serious drawback. But with 4TB SSDs available it might be fun to see if I'm wrong. I'll report back my results if I go ahead with this idea.


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## DeltaOne (Sep 29, 2013)

shwru980r said:


> But I've read that the improved responsiveness of the Bolt is largely attributed to the OS residing on flash storage.


I've thought the Bolt's performance is due to a slightly faster CPU than the Roamio line.

Also, I believe both the Bolt and Roamio only have their firmware and set up scripts on flash storage. When a hard drive is initialized and being set up the operating system is copied to the hard drive.


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## ggieseke (May 30, 2008)

DeltaOne said:


> Also, I believe both the Bolt and Roamio only have their firmware and set up scripts on flash storage. When a hard drive is initialized and being set up the operating system is copied to the hard drive.


The OS stays in flash on the motherboard. It never gets copied to the hard drive.


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## DeltaOne (Sep 29, 2013)

ggieseke said:


> The OS stays in flash on the motherboard. It never gets copied to the hard drive.


Thanks!


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## ej42137 (Feb 16, 2014)

shwru980r said:


> If someone has several different models of Tivos S3, S4, S5 and S6 and tries the SSD in the S3, S4 and S5 and it the performance is improved to the next model, then I think the cost of an SSD might be worth it. If someone could turn the performance of a Premiere into a Roamio or a Roamio into a Bolt, I think that would be compelling. It might also spell financial trouble for Tivo if customers could buy older models and install an SSD instead of buying a bolt.





shwru980r said:


> But I've read that the improved responsiveness of the Bolt is largely attributed to the OS residing on flash storage. I think an SSD is significantly faster than flash storage. An SSD is definitely a significant performance improvement to even a computer several years old. Based on what I've read on this forum, responsiveness seems to be a significant motivator for upgrading a Tivo.





ej42137 said:


> Hmmm. Up to this point I haven't been motivated to put an SSD into a TiVo because I doubted there would be any benefit and the lifetime issue seemed to be a serious drawback. But with 4TB SSDs available it might be fun to see if I'm wrong. I'll report back my results if I go ahead with this idea.


I replaced the 4TB WD Blue drive in a Roamio TCD-848000 with a 4TB Samsung 860 EVO SSD. (I copied the HD onto the SSD with dd; fortuitously both drives had exactly the same number of sectors). It turns out to be slightly faster, but not enough to notice without using a stopwatch. For example, rebooting went from about 2:45 to about 2:15; based on my experiences with SSDs for Windows and Linux, I would have expected reboot to be dramatically improved, but such was not the case. To test the UI, I measured the sequence TiVo Central -> My Shows -> six screens down; on the HD it it took about 7.2 seconds, with the SSD it took about 6.7 seconds.

Unfortunately, it seems that putting an SSD into a Roamio doesn't turn it into a Bolt, and it certainly isn't cost effective so long as a 4TB SSD costs about 10x as much as a 4TB HD. Somebody with money to burn might like to put an 8TB SSD in a Bolt, because you can't get an 8TB 2.5" HD that isn't SMR no matter how much you have to spend, but an 8TB SSD remains a very dear solution to this problem.

Still to be answered is how long I could expect the SSD to last; the 4TB 860 EVO is warrantied at 5 years or 4800 TBW (whichever comes first). I plan to check SMART in about a month to find out the TBW actually written to see where I stand.


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## shwru980r (Jun 22, 2008)

ej42137 said:


> I replaced the 4TB WD Blue drive in a Roamio TCD-848000 with a 4TB Samsung 860 EVO SSD. (I copied the HD onto the SSD with dd; fortuitously both drives had exactly the same number of sectors). It turns out to be slightly faster, but not enough to notice without using a stopwatch. For example, rebooting went from about 2:45 to about 2:15; based on my experiences with SSDs for Windows and Linux, I would have expected reboot to be dramatically improved, but such was not the case. To test the UI, I measured the sequence TiVo Central -> My Shows -> six screens down; on the HD it it took about 7.2 seconds, with the SSD it took about 6.7 seconds.
> 
> Unfortunately, it seems that putting an SSD into a Roamio doesn't turn it into a Bolt, and it certainly isn't cost effective so long as a 4TB SSD costs about 10x as much as a 4TB HD. Somebody with money to burn might like to put an 8TB SSD in a Bolt, because you can't get an 8TB 2.5" HD that isn't SMR no matter how much you have to spend, but an 8TB SSD remains a very dear solution to this problem.
> 
> Still to be answered is how long I could expect the SSD to last; the 4TB 860 EVO is warrantied at 5 years or 4800 TBW (whichever comes first). I plan to check SMART in about a month to find out the TBW actually written to see where I stand.


Did you measure how long it took Youtube and other apps to load? I think app load time is the biggest performance issue.


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## ej42137 (Feb 16, 2014)

shwru980r said:


> Did you measure how long it took Youtube and other apps to load? I think app load time is the biggest performance issue.


YouTube takes about 22 seconds to load. Netflix takes about 20 seconds to load. It was that same for both cases; the SSD drive didn't make any difference at all.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Did you know that with the Romaio and newer the whole OS is on an SSD already? That's likely why you didn’t see an improvement. From what I understand the HDD is only used for recordings now, which is why you can just drop in a blank drive and it works.

So all the important stuff that an SSD would be better for are already on an SSD. And the part where HHDs are better are on the HDD. As far as storage is concerned the newer TiVos are already optimized.


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## DocNo (Oct 10, 2001)

KevTech said:


> I wonder if the Tivo knows how to perform trim on the SSD.


Or just get an SSD like the Sandforce based ones that are over provisioned and can garbage collect without relying on TRIM 

Which brings up a point - on SSDs that rely on TRIM and if not given TRIM commands on a routine basis in order to do garbage collection/consolidate partially filled flash blocks to create completely empty ones ahead of time to maximize write performance, they can and will perform WORSE than a hard drive one writes. You can't partially write to a flash memory cell - it's all or nothing. Hard drives can write individual bits. If you have a partially empty flash memory cell and need to write to it, all the contents in the cell you need to keep have to be read and cached, the cell has to be erased (a relatively slow operation in and of itself) then you have to write back the good info that wasn't changing as well as (finally!) the new info you want to also add to that cell.

That's what TRIM is for - a way for the computer to tell the drive in advance "Hey, this data I don't care about any more - feel free to do what you need to do with that space".

It lets the drive shuffle multiple partially empty flash cells into new, full cells and then erase cells in advance of new data needing to be written so you get max write performance.

Another way to do it is to have say 10% extra capacity that's reserved strictly for the controller built into the SSD to use. Then it doesn't need to know what data is good or not - it has enough space to work even if the drive is 100% "full". Many of the sand force controller SSDs work like this. The downside - extra flash costs more money.

SSDs are NOT hard drives and have their own performance characteristics. Enterprise SSDs, especially those rated for heavy use for things like databases, have multiple paths to the flash memory so one bank can be garbage collected while other banks are servicing live loads (heck, they can have multiple controllers too!). All of that costs money. Consumer SSDs tend to have fewer or only one or two paths (keeps costs down!) so if the drives are in constant use (like, say, in a DVR that constantly records things like shows or live buffers) it may never have available time to do said garbage collection.

So many variables - how many paths from the SSD controller to flash, how good is the controller, how much does it rely on TRIM, etc. It really depends on the exact SSD.


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## DocNo (Oct 10, 2001)

ggieseke said:


> From what I have seen in the past, TiVos tend to pick a specific area of the drive to use for the live buffer and just rewrite it over and over. That would take a solid state drive rated for X TB of writes in total and seriously screw with those numbers because it beats the heck out of one spot.


SSD's don't work like that. The controller in the SSD spread reads/writes out (wear leveling) to maximize longevity. The computer has ZERO control about what get's written to what cell. Which is why using a drive wipe utility is useless with an SSD to ensure data is erased on it. The only thing that works is if you use whole disk encryption. Even then, if you really care about data security or are in a regulated industry, physical destruction is the only way to be sure with an SSD.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised about people wanting to throw money at problems that don't need solving (using SSDs instead of good 'ol spinning rust for video), but then again I find it hard to believe Monster Cable is still a thing too


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## BobCamp1 (May 15, 2002)

DocNo said:


> I suppose I shouldn't be surprised about people wanting to throw money at problems that don't need solving (using SSDs instead of good 'ol spinning rust for video), but then again I find it hard to believe Monster Cable is still a thing too


Well, Tivo owners would love to find a 2.5" drive greater than 2 TB in capacity that does not use SMR and lasts more than 18 months in a DVR. So would Tivo.


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## ej42137 (Feb 16, 2014)

BobCamp1 said:


> Well, Tivo *Bolt* owners would love to find a 2.5" drive greater than 2 TB in capacity that does not use SMR and lasts more than 18 months in a DVR. So would Tivo.


Here you go: Samsung 860 EVO 4TB is warrantied to last 5 years or 2400 TBW (whichever comes first). 2400 TBW is about seven years of 6 HD tuners in a Bolt.

It's only $500.


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## BobCamp1 (May 15, 2002)

ej42137 said:


> Here you go: Samsung 860 EVO 4TB is warrantied to last 5 years or 2400 TBW (whichever comes first). 2400 TBW is about seven years of 6 HD tuners in a Bolt.
> 
> It's only $500.


Well, Weaknees charges $500 for a six-tuner 3 TB Bolt and $900 for the 6.5 TB model. He charges $300 for a 3 TB hard drive. So $500 for 4 TB is reasonable if you wanted that much capacity.

Note that he no longer offers any models with an internal hard drive over 3 TB. I'd be nervous putting in a 4 TB hard drive internally, but if somebody wants to do that they can.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

BobCamp1 said:


> Well, Weaknees charges $500 for a six-tuner 3 TB Bolt and $900 for the 6.5 TB model. He charges $300 for a 3 TB hard drive. So $500 for 4 TB is reasonable if you wanted that much capacity.
> 
> Note that he no longer offers any models with an internal hard drive over 3 TB. I'd be nervous putting in a 4 TB hard drive internally, but if somebody wants to do that they can.


I still have a 4TB Seagate drive working in a Bolt. It has been used in Bolts since October 2015. And has been in it's current Bolt for around two years.


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## ej42137 (Feb 16, 2014)

BobCamp1 said:


> Well, Weaknees charges $500 for a six-tuner 3 TB Bolt and $900 for the 6.5 TB model. He charges $300 for a 3 TB hard drive. So $500 for 4 TB is reasonable if you wanted that much capacity.
> 
> Note that he no longer offers any models with an internal hard drive over 3 TB. I'd be nervous putting in a 4 TB hard drive internally, but if somebody wants to do that they can.


Another choice is the Micron 5200 Series MTFDDAK7T6TDC 7680GB for about a grand. (Larger drives shouldn't be a problem so long as you're on TE3. If you choose TE4, you're dead to me and not relevant.)


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## BobCamp1 (May 15, 2002)

aaronwt said:


> I still have a 4TB Seagate drive working in a Bolt. It has been used in Bolts since October 2015. And has been in it's current Bolt for around two years.


Yes, but others have had problems after a Tivo software upgrade with certain 4 TB models. My guess is Tivo is not spending a lot of time regression testing the 4 TB internal drives since that's not an officially supported size.

I personally would use a smaller drive in the Tivo and then transfer the recordings to a larger PC drive that could be an SMR or whatever. The Tivo drive takes a relative beating and is more likely to fail than a drive that is used for archiving. But then, I watch shows within a day or two of recording them and never rewatch anything. So I'm happy with a 500 GB drive.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

BobCamp1 said:


> Yes, but others have had problems after a Tivo software upgrade with certain 4 TB models. My guess is Tivo is not spending a lot of time regression testing the 4 TB internal drives since that's not an officially supported size.
> 
> I personally would use a smaller drive in the Tivo and then transfer the recordings to a larger PC drive that could be an SMR or whatever. The Tivo drive takes a relative beating and is more likely to fail than a drive that is used for archiving. But then, I watch shows within a day or two of recording them and never rewatch anything. So I'm happy with a 500 GB drive.


I have a 500 GB drive in another Bolt. That one used to have another 4TB drive in it. But it had some issues. And then I dropped it hard on a piece of metal on the way to attaching it to a PC to check out the Smart Data. And then it wouldn't spin up any more so I had to trash it.

If/when my current 4TB drive fails, I will put a 500GB drive in there. Since I have a bunch of them from other Bolts. I had my two eBay scam Bolts that are only good for parts. And I have another two Bolts that came with one year service. Which was canceled after the one year. Since the current two Bolts I use I got with the $99 lifetime transfer deal.

Plus I don't watch content from my Bolts very often any more. Mostly news. So I have no need for a large drive. But I am curious how long that 4TB drive will last.


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## chicagobrownblue (May 29, 2008)

BobCamp1 said:


> To my knowledge only two Bolts have overheated.


Source?


BobCamp1 said:


> Everybody thinks they run hotter than they should, but unless the hard drive temperature exceeds 50 C


Source? This would be an instantaneous discontinuity in a electronic component. You and Einstein don't believe in probability...

You might want to head on over to
Bolt reliability?

For several instances of failed Bolts, overheating and the correct assertion:


snerd said:


> This is simple physics -- *raising* the temperature of any electronic device *always* increases the failure rate. Any reasonable cooling of a Bolt can only help.


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## ej42137 (Feb 16, 2014)

BobCamp1 said:


> Yes, but others have had problems after a Tivo software upgrade with certain 4 TB models. My guess is Tivo is not spending a lot of time regression testing the 4 TB internal drives since that's not an officially supported size.
> 
> I personally would use a smaller drive in the Tivo and then transfer the recordings to a larger PC drive that could be an SMR or whatever. The Tivo drive takes a relative beating and is more likely to fail than a drive that is used for archiving. But then, I watch shows within a day or two of recording them and never rewatch anything. So I'm happy with a 500 GB drive.


The folks having problems with larger drives are running TE4 on Bolts. I believe that TE3 isn't going to have these problems.

I took my 4TB Roamio apart in October and checked the results. Based on the SMART data, I should reach the warranted TBW for my 4TB Samsung EVO in about fifteen years. If I went crazy and replaced it with an 8TB Micron, I would have fifty years before reaching the rated TBW.


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## Vito Anagram (May 11, 2002)

ej42137 said:


> Here you go: Samsung 860 EVO 4TB is warrantied to last 5 years or 2400 TBW (whichever comes first). 2400 TBW is about seven years of 6 HD tuners in a Bolt.
> 
> It's only $500.


Anyone thought about installing a Samsung 860 TVO 8TB SSD configured with a 4TB partition and doubling the operational life to 10 TBW years?


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## ej42137 (Feb 16, 2014)

Vito Anagram said:


> Anyone thought about installing a Samsung 860 TVO 8TB SSD configured with a 4TB partition and doubling the operational life to 10 TBW years?


Anyone think TiVos will still be useful in 10 years? Anyone?


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## shwru980r (Jun 22, 2008)

ej42137 said:


> Anyone think TiVos will still be useful in 10 years? Anyone?


The SSD drive could probably be repurposed for some other use anyway, if ATSC 1.0 is eliminated.

I think ATSC 3.0 will be significantly delayed or even fail with the current economic climate that will remain in place indefinitely. There is only one $200 ATSC 3.0 network tuner for sale now and maybe a few models of ATSC 3.0 TVs and a $250 set top box will come out this year. The current ATSC 1.0 channels in my area continue to add standard definition sub channels that reduce the bit rate of the main HD channel.

ATSC 3.0 can only broadcast one channel in 4K. I'm not sure a local channel is going shut down three or four subchannels so they can broadcast the main channel in 4k. Seems like it would cost them significant advertising revenue. 4K is nice, but I wouldn't want to lose 80% of the over the air channels so I could watch the other 20% in 4K and I think most people watching OTA would agree.

Seems like they would need to maintain the existing sub channels on ATSC 3.0 which would mean there wouldn't be enough bandwidth for a 4K channel. Even then they would have to provide low cost converter boxes. The general public isn't going to want to pay $100s of dollars for converter boxes or network tuners to keep watching the same shows they were watching before with little to no noticeable difference.

With the NTSC to ATSC 1.0 transition years ago, the customer benefited from more channels and lighter and more compact TVs or a low cost converter box. With ATSC 3.0, the customer could lose sub channels and have to pay through the nose for a converter box or a network tuner.


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## TivoRocks193 (Aug 10, 2005)

1.5 years later update!

TiVo bolt (6-tuner) running perfectly fine with SSD 4TB Samsung EVO (2,400 TBW)
Performance (especially on startup) is noticeably better/faster
Power Saving = ‘Low’ (sleep after 4 hours of no use, tivo suggestions recorded)
Current Terabytes Written = 193 TB
Estimated Harddrive lifespan based on TBW = 18+ years
Pretty awesome if you ask me. Drive is currently on sale on Amazon for $299 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08QBL36GF


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## djones18 (Jan 6, 2006)

TivoRocks193 said:


> 1.5 years later update!
> 
> TiVo bolt (6-tuner) running perfectly fine with SSD 4TB Samsung EVO (2,400 TBW)
> Performance (especially on startup) is noticeably better/faster
> ...


Are you running TE3 or TE4? I have one of these SSDs and haven't thought about dropping it into my TiVo Bolt+ running TE4. Might give it a try. Thanks.


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## TivoRocks193 (Aug 10, 2005)

Old interface, I can’t stand the newer one.


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## KevTech (Apr 15, 2014)

TivoRocks193 said:


> 1.5 years later update!
> 
> TiVo bolt (6-tuner) running perfectly fine with SSD 4TB Samsung EVO (2,400 TBW)
> Performance (especially on startup) is noticeably better/faster
> ...


Only thing I wonder is if the Tivo does Trim or just defrags the drive.
Tivo OS may not know what Trim is.


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## kdmorse (Jan 29, 2001)

KevTech said:


> Only thing I wonder is if the Tivo does Trim or just defrags the drive.
> Tivo OS may not know what Trim is.


I would still not expect the Tivo to have any idea it's on a SSD, do anything special for the SSD, have any knowledge of TRIM, or do anything other than treating the drive as a linear string of 512 byte blocks. Neither does it really do anything that fall under the category of "defrag". The MFS media partition is essentially a large (huge) block allocation file system that does not tend towards any form of fragmentation. The MFS data partition is kinda who cares. The OS partition is read only. The writable filesystems are so small as to be back in the 'who cares' category.

If the platform were actively developed, things might be different. If new version of the platform openly supported or used SSD's, things might be different. But chances are they're functionally doing nothing fancier than they did in, say, 2015... (because why would they - incentive wise)

As a result, any block the Tivo writes is expected to be considered "used" forever by the SSD, and once the entire drive is written once, it from the SSD's allocation map point of view, will be "full", and after that point virtually every write will require a scatter-gather either ahead of time (if the firmware's garbage collection and spare sectors can keep ahead of the tivo), or on demand. 

But at the end of the day, all the SSD has to do is keep ahead of the Tivo. All it has to do is, in it's worst case scenario, be faster than a HDD. And all it has to do, is live long enough for the experience to not be negative. And chances are it'll do just fine in those regards.


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