# TiVo's Quality Loses Them a Customer



## moneytrain8 (Feb 8, 2005)

I have owned a TiVo since 2003. Not an early adopter, but someone who has loved his TiVo for many years and stood by it as the cable DVRs got better and better. Paid $299 for a TivoHD when my Toshiba DVD/TiVo crapped out, and bought a second one (with lifetime sub) so we could tape even more shows and share them.

I bought the THD in July 2007. Loved it with my new 46" LCD. In November 2007 they started offering lifetimes, so I bought another THD for the basement. All was good.

In December 2008, the basement THD stopped working. They said it was the hard drive. Um, okay. Since it was out of warranty by 2 weeks, it was going to cost me $149. I whined my way down to $79. Whoopie... still doesn't change the fact that a brand new THD failed a year after purchase. So it goes.

So about a month ago, my first THD started acting up. It would tape 10 minutes of Heroes and 24. When it taped a whole show, it would stutter and pause for long periods. I chalked it up to a one time thing... Until it happened again next week. Heroes and 24 yet again taped EXACTLY ten minutes. Not nine, not eleven, but exactly ten minutes. Two weeks in a row? That's not coincidence.

I contacted TiVo, and their techs tried to help, but insisted the fact that my SNR was 37dB (QAM 256 on Verizon), and it needed to be 34dB to stop it from running "hot." So I was told to buy a few 3dB attenuators to get the SNR down to 33-35dB. So, I went out and bought them and got it down to 34dB. And it did it again.. Heroes and 24 taped 10 minutes each, other shows like Office and 30 Rock taped the whole show but were full of stutters and stops.

I spoke to someone last night, who told me I actually needed to get the SNR down below 29dB. ::sigh:: Okay... So I went out and got a 12dB rated. I put that on, and it was still happening.

I called yet a third time. This tech had me run some "54" hard drive test. Within a minute of starting this test, I was getting a bunch of failure messages. He told me the hard drive was bad and I needed to do an exchange.

So, in 2.5 years, I would be buying my FOURTH TiVo. This CSR also offered me the same $79 price (instead of $149), but I think it's just too late. I was amused when he told me the THDs are supposed to last about 6 years. My average is under 2 years.

It just doesn't make sense for me to pay $79 for another TiVo (after paying $299 for this one) and paying the monthly fee just to have to get a refurbished TiVo, and maybe have it break again in another year or two.

I'm disappointed. I love my TiVo. I've defended it when friends ask why I don't use the cable co DVR. But why should I trust TiVo after having one TiVo after the next fail? My wife says to just pay Verizon for DVR... they have the on demand with shows for my son, TV shows for free and similar functionality to TiVo.

Sorry TiVo... Your quality level likely has cost you a customer.


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## reubanks (Feb 19, 2006)

OK, it sucks about the drive failures, but why do you keep replacing the Tivos when you can simply replace (and upgrade) the existing hard drive?

You've been here for 5 years, so it's not like it's news that you can upgrade the drive. 

I have been working on computers for 32 years and I realize that drives can, do, and will fail. You have had a string of bad luck, but hard drives last much longer than 2 years on average. Western Digital drives have a 3 year warranty, and Seagate has 5 years. (This varies depending on the drive family, but that's what is offered on the drives I have.)

Throw $90 down on a nice new 1TB, copy an image to it, and have fun!

Randy

PS. Tivo doesn't make drives any more than Dell does. They just sell them.


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## scandia101 (Oct 20, 2007)

> I whined


No doubt.



> still doesn't change the fact that a brand new THD failed a year after purchase.


A year after purchase the Tivo was a year old and used, not brand new.



> I called yet a third time. This tech had me run some "54" hard drive test. Within a minute of starting this test, I was getting a bunch of failure messages. He told me the hard drive was bad and I needed to do an exchange.


Replacing the drive is much easier.



> > *TiVo's Quality Loses Them a Customer*
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Pick one.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Replace the hard drive yourself.. they're out of warranty, it's easy, and cheap...


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## T1V0 (Jun 14, 2006)

moneytrain8 said:


> ...still doesn't change the fact that a brand new THD failed a year after purchase.


contradiction?

tivo uses 3rd party hardware (hard drives)

hard drives fail (FACT)

it costs tivo $ to swap your box for another with a functioning hard drive (FACT)

they're a business (FACT)

replacing your own HD is a walk in the park, prolly would take less time than it took to create your post

2+2=???

music


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## moneytrain8 (Feb 8, 2005)

I figured all the jackals would come out and provide their pithy responses. Thanks for not letting me down.

I shouldn't have to "upgrade" an out of the box item, regardless of how easy it is or the benefits it provides. They sold me something that is breaking regularly. The CSR himself even said the boxes last an average of 6 years. I've had three, and none have lasted longer than 2.

If I sold any of you something that breaks as regularly as the TiVo boxes have for me, you'd be a little irritated. I bought TiVo for the simplicity, positive customer experiences and functionality. My experience has been that while they meet those three requirements, the negative is that they have not been dependable (for me).

My "brand new" TiVo remark was to delineate that this was not a refurb or something I bought used on eBay. Obviously it's not new after a year, but the point was that this didn't come from some unknown source.

And you're right, I did contradict myself when I said "likely," because I am still on the fence. TiVo is a tough habit to break.

The point of my post was to vent a little bit and to relate my experience for other people to refer to if they have the same problem. If others encounter these issues and say something about them, maybe TiVo will take notice and make remedies. So thanks for all of your wonderfully kind and sensitive comments. Maybe I will try to drop a 1TB drive into this... It can't work any worse than it does now. Any recommendations on a drive?


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## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

Sorry about the HD failures. Hopefully a new drive can fix it.

My HD in the first TiVo didn't fail until IIRC 4 years into it. The other one got the HD replaced fairly quickly for a bigger one, so I don't know if it would have lasted longer or shorter.

But HDs will always fail. It's the rule, not the exception. My PC drives have usually failed within a few years too. It's sadly just something to be expected.


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## windracer (Jan 3, 2003)

The original 250gb drive in my Series3 died last weekend (box wouldn't get past the "Welcome!" screen). I pulled it out, used EASEUS DriveCopy on the Ultimate Boot CD to clone the drive to a spare 320gb drive. Let the GSOD on first boot do its thing, and I was back up and running in a few hours, no recordings lost.


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## reubanks (Feb 19, 2006)

moneytrain8 said:


> I figured all the jackals would come out and provide their pithy responses. Thanks for not letting me down.


Wow, sorry if I'm a "jackal". I thought I was giving you viable options that would help with your issue. Oh well.



moneytrain8 said:


> I shouldn't have to "upgrade" an out of the box item, regardless of how easy it is or the benefits it provides. They sold me something that is breaking regularly.


You won't be upgrading and "out of the box item", you'll be upgrading or repairing a one year old electonic device that includes moving parts. You could replace the failing drive with one of the same size, but that would be kind of silly since the cost of a larger capacity drive would be only a little more than an "as original" replacement. This would be, of course, your choice.



moneytrain8 said:


> The CSR himself even said the boxes last an average of 6 years. I've had three, and none have lasted longer than 2.


This does truly suck and I feel for you. Tivo DOES give a 1 year warranty, but you yourself said that the original drive died after this time. It could be worse... You don't happen to own a 2009 Camry do you? (I do, and I still think Toyota makes a quality car. My 1999 Camry is still running strong at almost 300k miles.)



moneytrain8 said:


> If I sold any of you something that breaks as regularly as the TiVo boxes have for me, you'd be a little irritated. I bought TiVo for the simplicity, positive customer experiences and functionality. My experience has been that while they meet those three requirements, the negative is that they have not been dependable (for me).


I won't even try to disagree with you on this one, and I don't think anyone here with a lick'o sense would even attempt it.



moneytrain8 said:


> And you're right, I did contradict myself when I said "likely," because I am still on the fence. TiVo is a tough habit to break.


I hope you reconsider and choose to stick with Tivo. If not, I would be more than willing to take the defective unit off your hands. I have a nice new 1TB WD10EVDS sitting on the desk beside me that'd work wonders in it!



moneytrain8 said:


> The point of my post was to vent a little bit and to relate my experience for other people to refer to if they have the same problem. If others encounter these issues and say something about them, maybe TiVo will take notice and make remedies. So thanks for all of your wonderfully kind and sensitive comments. Maybe I will try to drop a 1TB drive into this... It can't work any worse than it does now. Any recommendations on a drive?


Feel free to vent, it helps on many levels. Please don't attack those who agree with you and/or offer advice though. THAT does not help. (It just makes you look like a sphincter.) As for my personal drive recommendation? I have the WD10EVDS in my THD and it works great. (You will probably need to run the wdidle3 utility to disable Intellipark, but that takes just a couple of minutes...)

Good luck! (And if you wanna get rid of the failed unit then drop me a line.)

Randy


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## av8or (Mar 20, 2008)

My own experience is that TiVos go through hard drives much faster than a typical desktop computer. Since 2003, I've replaced 5 hard drives in 3 TiVos. I assume it's due to the higher duty cycle. Replacing a TiVo hard drive is a simple procedure. For me, it's a small price to pay for the TiVo experience. YMMV.


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## oosik77 (Nov 22, 1999)

Blaming Tivo for hard drives failing is like blaming Ford or GM for the brakes on your car wearing out. Hard drives fail over time sometimes sooner than others. I have been lucky in that I've had very few issues with my Tivo drives but I do go through them on my computer.


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## Wil (Sep 27, 2002)

oosik77 said:


> Hard drives fail over time sometimes sooner than others. I have been lucky in that I've had very few issues with my Tivo drives but I do go through them on my computer.


Both my business and hobbies have involved massive banks of hard drives over the years. Big picture is you get a certain number of drive failures, it's precisely predictable. But the failures are not uniformly distributed; like all random data they clump. Sometimes you'd swear you're seeing patterns but mostly it is just random clumping.

When you have a small sample of drives, and you rarely if ever have failures, life is good. Your equipment (Tivo or whatever) is perfection; you can't understand why anyone would complain. Unfortunately some schmuck down the street is getting your share of the failures and, if he really walks under a dark cloud, a bunch of other people's as well.

When you're that schmuck, experiencing a clump of failures, it's no comfort to you that hundreds of other people aren't, and that the average is just what is expected. Life sucks.


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## HerronScott (Jan 1, 2002)

Wil said:


> Both my business and hobbies have involved massive banks of hard drives over the years. Big picture is you get a certain number of drive failures, it's precisely predictable. But the failures are not uniformly distributed; like all random data they clump. Sometimes you'd swear you're seeing patterns but mostly it is just random clumping.
> 
> When you have a small sample of drives, and you rarely if ever have failures, life is good. Your equipment (Tivo or whatever) is perfection; you can't understand why anyone would complain. Unfortunately some schmuck down the street is getting your share of the failures and, if he really walks under a dark cloud, a bunch of other people's as well.
> 
> When you're that schmuck, experiencing a clump of failures, it's no comfort to you that hundreds of other people aren't, and that the average is just what is expected. Life sucks.


Wil,

You are exactly correct. I also am responsible at work for 400 servers and 6 SANs and drive failures are a fact of life.

On the personal side, I've had 4 TiVo's over the last 10 years and never had a failure which includes an S1 which was still using its original 30GB drive when we retired it after 7 years and a second S1 which is still going unsubbed with an upgraded 120GB drive that's 7 years old. The 2 S3's are currently 3 years old with 2 year old upgraded 1GB drives.

Moneytrain8,

I definitely can understand the frustration in having 2 drive failures with less than 3 years, but as others have pointed out this is not TiVo's fault as others have pointed out. DVR's (and PC's) have drive failures whether they are TiVo's or the cable company's and I have several friends that have gone through several cable company DVR's due to hard drive failures.

Whether you stay with your TiVo or switch to the cable company DVR, I would check your environment (power) to be sure you don't have a problem which could be aggravating the drive failures.

Scott


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## Phantom Gremlin (Jun 20, 2002)

moneytrain8 said:


> If I sold any of you something that breaks as regularly as the TiVo boxes have for me, you'd be a little irritated. I bought TiVo for the simplicity, positive customer experiences and functionality. My experience has been that while they meet those three requirements, the negative is that they have not been dependable (for me).


Unfortunately for you, the product you want isn't the product TiVo is selling.

Yes, the TiVo boxes break. A lot. Way too often. But there's nothing that can be done about this. Not many people are willing to pay more for a "premium" TiVo that's more reliable. TiVo couldn't afford to build a product that used higher quality hard disks and still sell it for anywhere near the current price. The "consumer grade" hard disks that TiVo buys will fail when operated at a 24/7 duty cycle.

I get much more frustrated by a different aspect of my TiVos, and that is the occasional software flakiness (which is relative; cable company DVRs are much worse in that regard). The difference is something called "scale". If TiVo buys a higher quality hard disk, maybe the drive failure rate goes down to 1/2 or 1/3 the current value. Nice, but not a "game changer". If TiVo fixes a bug that occasionally hits 100,000 boxes, that annoyance goes down to 1/100,000 of the current value. That's scale!


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

moneytrain8 said:


> I figured all the jackals would come out and provide their pithy responses. Thanks for not letting me down.
> 
> I shouldn't have to "upgrade" an out of the box item, regardless of how easy it is or the benefits it provides.


come on, you have been here long enough to know the second box was hard drive failure as well. You have also been here lomg enough to know you could swap out the same drive for less than 79$ or get a 1 TB drive for around 100$.
Sure you should not have hard drive failures after a year or so but you did and there is nothing TiVo could do about your bad luck save for perhaps giving you a break on the standard repair bill, oh wait....
So call people jackals for pointing out the rational fix for your issues. Though really an open mind to the best way to keep your TiVo DVRs running will save you time and frustration in the long run. Oh and attenuating the signal may well have your next hard drives last longer as the TiVo does not record so hot a signal and has a lot less errors during the recording process.


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## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

moneytrain8 said:


> I shouldn't have to "upgrade" an out of the box item, regardless of how easy it is or the benefits it provides. They sold me something that is breaking regularly. ...
> If I sold any of you something that breaks as regularly as the TiVo boxes have for me, you'd be a little irritated.


Speak for yourself. I bought a S1 TiVo that started to stutter within the first few weeks of purchase -- it was an open box model, so it may have been taken back to the store and exchanged because it was bad.

We upgraded the hard drive, and it has worked fine ever since. The lifetime service I bought has more than paid for itself.

I bought a second S1 from a friend because a friend was having difficulty with the OTA tuner. Since we have cable, it wasn't an issue. After many years, it too started to stutter, so we got a drive from Weaknees as a drop-in replacement. It has not given us a bit of trouble since then.

You say you "shouldn't have to upgrade" but the end result is, I have two working TiVos which have given me many years of good service. You don't. So whose strategy is more effective, yours or mine?

Jan


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## test drive (Jan 23, 2010)

windracer said:


> The original 250gb drive in my Series3 died last weekend (box wouldn't get past the "Welcome!" screen). I pulled it out, used EASEUS DriveCopy on the Ultimate Boot CD to clone the drive to a spare 320gb drive. Let the GSOD on first boot do its thing, and I was back up and running in a few hours, no recordings lost.


Sorry for the newbie question, but can you point me to the thread for novice tech users on how to replace a failed hard drive, copy an image, and not lose prior recordings? On my last failed drive, Tivo CSR reported that there was no way to do that. Just to calibrate, I am a Tivo user since 2004, but have never opened a Tivo box, so any pointer to "replacement for beginners" thread or a pointer to a cost-effective 3rd party vendor that would enable me to retain my prior months of recordings would be greatly appreciated...my current box of interest is a 3 year old Tivo HD Series 3 w/ Western Digital My DVR Expander 500 GB eSATA Desktop External Hard Drive WDG1S5000VN - thanks in advance!


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## windracer (Jan 3, 2003)

Good places to start are the troubleshooting tips:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=416062

and the "internal" setion of the Drive Expansion/Upgrade FAQ:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=370784#S5


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## CrispyCritter (Feb 28, 2001)

test drive said:


> On my last failed drive, Tivo CSR reported that there was no way to do that.


I just wanted to note that while the methods are well-known how to do it, TiVo itself can never point that out to folks; TiVo would be subject to legal liability then, since the power in the TiVo interior is not shielded like it is in a computer. It's not particularly dangerous, but TiVo has to claim that the box is not consumer serviceable.

So in reality, as others have said, you have several options depending on what you want to do and are willing to pay. Your options may not work; sometimes the shows are not recoverable, but you can often get them back.


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## test drive (Jan 23, 2010)

windracer said:


> Good places to start are the troubleshooting tips:
> 
> http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=416062
> 
> ...


Thanks Windracer and CC...I have reviewed the threads and have few additional basic questions - 1) if the hard drive "fails", can we still preserve the recordings (in most cases) using drive "upgrade" instructions (ie, does the failed drive corrupt the existing recordings as opposed to a working drive that is electively being upgraded)?; 2) does my add-on external expander make preserving recordings less likely because I have to uncouple the 2 units? and 3) since I am personally likely to mess this up, is there a 3rd party vendor who specializes in this type of preservation (ie, Weaknees, or DVR upgrade) that the forum participants generally trust for cost-effective quality service?


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## windracer (Jan 3, 2003)

test drive said:


> 1) if the hard drive "fails", can we still preserve the recordings (in most cases) using drive "upgrade" instructions (ie, does the failed drive corrupt the existing recordings as opposed to a working drive that is electively being upgraded)?


Depends on the kind of failure. If it's a hardware failure (controller, power, etc.) and you can't copy anything off of it, you're going to lose the content obviously. If it's some bad sectors that make the drive not able to boot the TiVo software, sometimes you can use an OS-agnostic diagnostic utility (like SpinRite) to relocate the bad sectors. In my recent experience, I was able to clone my failed drive to another, with read errors. When I booted the box the first time with the new drive, it triggered the Green Screen of Death which then cleaned up whatever else was wrong and then the box booted normally. YMMV of course.



> 2) does my add-on external expander make preserving recordings less likely because I have to uncouple the 2 units?


It does make it more complicated, since to make a complete backup you'd need both drives connected to the PC you're making the backup from. Even though I have Expanders on two TiVos I have no personal experience with this.



> 3) since I am personally likely to mess this up, is there a 3rd party vendor who specializes in this type of preservation (ie, Weaknees, or DVR upgrade) that the forum participants generally trust for cost-effective quality service?


I've purchased parts from Weaknees, and read good things about pre-formatted drives (and InstantCake) but have no first-hand experience with them.


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## mshurpik (Oct 18, 2005)

How's the AC power in your house? Is it an old house, with old wiring?

Take a tip from someone who has been running PC's for 20 years. Computer equipment failure has a LOT to do with the quality of the power outlet. 

If you're even slightly uncertain about the quality of the wiring in your house, go buy a cheap-ish battery backup. Better yet, buy a bigger one and put both the Tivo and the television on it. 

I haven't had any hard drives (or any other parts) fail in the past few years since I started using battery backup. Before that, I've seen all kinds of parts fail.


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## moneytrain8 (Feb 8, 2005)

murgatroyd said:


> You say you "shouldn't have to upgrade" but the end result is, I have two working TiVos which have given me many years of good service. You don't. So whose strategy is more effective, yours or mine?


So you chose to take a OEM item and alter it. Good for you. That doesn't change the fact that TiVo sells a bill of goods on this product out of the box. I can go out and buy a new <<INSERT WHATEVER CAR YOU THINK IS GOOD HERE>> and promptly put a new engine in it, but aren't people buying TiVos for the quality of the product, the software and the service? That's why I bought mine, and became addicted, and am just disappointed in it right now.

And of course I realize TiVo is using third party hard drives... and a goal of my post was to let TiVo know that they are seemingly supplying crap hard drives that potentially costs them customers.

I'm actually going to try to drop a 1TB drive in here and see what happens during the "snow day" the entire region will have tomorrow. We'll see if I can do it without mucking it up.


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## Southcross (Nov 28, 2008)

T1V0 said:


> music


ROTFFLMFAO... must save that link


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

moneytrain8 said:


> And of course I realize TiVo is using third party hard drives... and a goal of my post was to let TiVo know that they are seemingly supplying crap hard drives that potentially costs them customers.


without your TiVo mnfg dates so they can compare to hard drive lot numbers and so forth your 2 hard drive data point is meaningless. Also it could well be conditions in your house that are causing the failures. I know of 20 various TiVo DVRs and only one hard drive failure in the whole lot and that failure was a replacement drive that went totally dead. Does that mean that TiVo is above the norm for Hard Drive failures? likely not.


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## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

The truth here is that it wasn't the Tivo that broke but the hard drive that was supplied by a third party. The hardware designed and built by Tivo is still working fine based on what you've told us. Any DVR you buy or lease will have the same chance of having a hard drive failure. It's a fact of life so deal with it.

The OP's first mistake was thinking that Tivo would fix his problem. All they can do is overcharge you for a replacement hard drive and provide you with a warranty that is far less than what you would have gotten had you replaced the drive with one you purchased separately. If the replacement drive died then you would have the full manufacturer's warranty to work with rather than the pathetic warranty that Tivo provides.

Whining about it won't fix your problem or get you any sympathy. I understand your frustration but taking it out on the rank and file won't change your situation. As stated previously, because you are a member of this forum you should already have been aware of the process for replacing hard drives in a Tivo. It takes only basic computer skills and is actually fairly simple to perform. It's definitely worthwhile to learn the process just for the cost savings alone. It will also make you self sufficient so you won't have to rely on Tivo's customer service to bail you out.

FYI - I've owned dozens of Tivos since they were first released and I've only had one drive fail in all that time, and it was an aftermarket drive that was replaced under warranty.

The recommendation of using a UPS with your Tivo is sound advice. I'd definitely look for one that also has power conditioning and surge protection built in so that your line voltage will always be constant. Fluctuating supply voltage can wreak havoc on consumer electronics.


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## moneytrain8 (Feb 8, 2005)

I put a 1TB drive into the TiVo two days ago. Except for apparently not following the correct directions and only copying the settings and not settings/recordings, it seems to be working fine. I was going to cancel, but after FiOS told me their DVR would cost me $20 a month, fiduciary concerns took over!

I don't think the third party nature of the HD matters... but, it's everyone's right (and on forums, everyone's basic nature) to disagree.

Like someone once said: "Fool me once, shame on... Shame on you. Fool me... You can't get fooled again"


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## retired_guy (Aug 27, 2004)

I've had seven TiVos and three of the early S2s had a drive failure over the years. I now upgrade the drives on systems when I first buy them. The upgrades not only provide a lot more space but this allows me to save the original disks for backup along with the backup images on my PC. On the most recent failure, I almost immediately installed a backup drive and had that TiVo back up for my daughter right away--she did lose her recordings but the TiVo is working fine. It's difficult to know for certain but I suspect that at least some of the failures were due to power problems; I've now got all of my systems on UPS and have not had any failures since (knock on wood).


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## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

moneytrain8 said:


> I put a 1TB drive into the TiVo two days ago. Except for apparently not following the correct directions and only copying the settings and not settings/recordings, it seems to be working fine. I was going to cancel, but after FiOS told me their DVR would cost me $20 a month, fiduciary concerns took over!


Atta boy. That wasn't so hard, was it?



> I don't think the third party nature of the HD matters... but, it's everyone's right (and on forums, everyone's basic nature) to disagree.


Until Tivo starts manufacturing their own drives they are at the mercy of whoever supplies the drives for them. I believe the two primary suppliers are Western Digital and Maxtor. I'd be willing to bet that the majority of drive failures belong to the Maxtor-equipped Tivos. They have never been my favorite drive supplier and the quality of Seagate drives seems to have suffered ever since they acquired Maxtor.

It's unfortunate that Tivo takes the bad rap because the majority of Tivo failures are the result of hard drives going bad. It's just the nature of the beast and the one shortcoming that most of us have learned to live with. The good news is that it's the one thing we consumers can fix ourselves and not have to rely on Tivo, Inc.

FWIW, I have upgraded every Tivo I've ever owned. I have probably voided the warranty on every one of them by upgrading the drives right out of the box. Out of several dozen Tivos, I have never had one that failed because of a hardware failure other than a hard drive. I have that much faith in the Tivo box, which is more than I can say for most other consumer electronics.


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## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

retired_guy said:


> . It's difficult to know for certain but I suspect that at least some of the failures were due to power problems; I've now got all of my systems on UPS and have not had any failures since (knock on wood).


:up::up:

I have all my expensive electronics powered through UPSes. This is mainly to have them stay up through short lived electric blips which happen quite often during the summer thunder storm season here in DC.

I just had two hard drives fail in two months. One was quite old, but the other was on a seldom used external drive that had maybe 100 hours of use on it. (replaced under warranty with no problems.) I know people who have had drives fail within days of purchasing. It happens.

By and large the drives we have today are really pretty reliable when taken as an aggregate. The manufacturers know that consumers don't want to pay what it would cost to manufacturer drives with a much higher degree of reliability than the ones we have now.

It looks like you just got the short end of the stick with those two. Yeah, it sucks, but it does happen.


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## MediaLivingRoom (Dec 10, 2002)

moneytrain8, I would walk. TiVo is going to be bought and they will not be the same anymore.


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## Phantom Gremlin (Jun 20, 2002)

waynomo said:


> It looks like you just got the short end of the stick with those two. Yeah, it sucks, but it does happen.


On the positive side, many people have bought "lemon" cars that cost them thousands of dollars to maintain once the warranty expires. Compared to that, fixing a TiVo is practically free. And I spend a lot more of my time watching TiVo than driving around!


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

av8or said:


> My own experience is that TiVos go through hard drives much faster than a typical desktop computer. Since 2003, I've replaced 5 hard drives in 3 TiVos. I assume it's due to the higher duty cycle. Replacing a TiVo hard drive is a simple procedure. For me, it's a small price to pay for the TiVo experience. YMMV.


I've owned at least 20 TiVos since 2001. I've never had a hard drive failure. In this century I've owned over 100 hard drives used in PCs and NAS devices. I've never had a failure with those once put into use. I did have two or three new WD drives, out of the 100+ WD drives I've owned, have a problem when I took it out of the package. But I've never had a problem with one once I've put it into service.

My old DirecTiVos I have given away to friends. Six of them and those hard drives were last installed around 2003. They are still going strong, no issues.
My friends are enjoying them.


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## Wil (Sep 27, 2002)

aaronwt said:


> I've owned at least 20 TiVos since 2001. I've never had a hard drive failure. In this century I've owned over 100 hard drives used in PCs and NAS devices. I've never had a failure


You realize you are the Dorian Gray to the OP's portrait in the attic.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

moneytrain8 said:


> I don't think the third party nature of the HD matters... but, it's everyone's right (and on forums, everyone's basic nature) to disagree.


did you not state that TiVo was going to repair the units? Also they had taken some off the standard fee charged for out of warranty repairs. Sounds like TiVo was stepping up to take care of their product. It is just the nature of business that somethings you can do either cheaper or better yourself. Replacing a hard drive in a TiVo is definitely one of those things


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## fullmetaljester (Feb 15, 2006)

tldr;

try putting the unit on a UPS battery backup. You would be surprised how many issues that resolves when you stop putting bad/dirty power into the device


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