# Drive failed -what to replace with?



## lloyd (Feb 15, 2003)

Thursday evening playback started stutering, and then last night remote would do nothing and pulling the mains resulted in a number of reboots, so I suspect my drive has gone.

It was a Seagate 200GB, purchased April 2005, so not too far outside the 5 year warranty I got with it.

Anyhow, I've been out of the loop for a while, so what is the current recommended drive? I do want to have a drive that is as quiet as possible. Don't have a humungous plasma screen, so probably don't need mode 0.

And I assume moving from 200GB to something slightly larger (and keeping recordings) is fairly straightforward using mfstools or something similar (seems like a long time since I last used it, but I'm sure it will come back to me).

I should add that I have a cachecard installed, and various hacks.

Thanks

Lloyd


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## lloyd (Feb 15, 2003)

Well, after much reading, have gone for a WD Green 1TB (plus adaptor). I'd quite like to try and keep my recordings. I know this will be a lengthy process, but can anyone give me an estiamate of elapsed time? Copying from 300GB that was about 90% full.

Thanks


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

300Gb at 10meg/sec would be around 8 hours...


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## velocitysurfer1 (Sep 6, 2006)

Make sure you get a compatable wd drive. Those that end aacs are ok but those that end aaks aren't compatible. Also some of the ide sata convertors don't work with tivo.


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## lloyd (Feb 15, 2003)

Thanks for the info. I've ordered a WD10EADS, which was reported on one of the threads here as working with Tivo. The converter is a bit more of a gamble - but at only a couple of quid not a big deal. Those that attach to the drive seemed to be more successful than those that plug in the IDE socket, so I've gone for one of those, but I have the feeling that at the end of the day it is pot luck.

Lloyd


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## velocitysurfer1 (Sep 6, 2006)

I lost in the ide sata lottery! I got one off bay as you described but it failed to work with TiVo even though it worked on the pc. I then bought one from one of the regular tivo sellers on here (tivoland tivoheaven etc) and it worked fine.

Note that my 640gb wd green drive has failed after 10 months of use. I'd advise to run wd's data life guard diagnostics http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=608&sid=3&lang=en before you use mfstools


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## anyoneinracks (Jan 20, 2003)

I want to replace my drive for a smaller one (sic). When I went bigger I managed to buy one that Tivo would not admit was there. If I get a WD1600AVVS do we think it will work????


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## lloyd (Feb 15, 2003)

lloyd said:


> Thanks for the info. I've ordered a WD10EADS, which was reported on one of the threads here as working with Tivo. The converter is a bit more of a gamble - but at only a couple of quid not a big deal. Those that attach to the drive seemed to be more successful than those that plug in the IDE socket, so I've gone for one of those, but I have the feeling that at the end of the day it is pot luck.
> 
> Lloyd


As luck would have it , they've shipped me the 64MB cache version (WD10EARS). Normally I'd be a happy chappy about that, but on this occasion I'm not so sure.

Lloyd


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## lloyd (Feb 15, 2003)

Decided to send the WD10EARS back. The WDxxEARS disks use a 4KB sector size, compared to 512B that has been in use for as long as I can remember. Certainly in other PVRs this has resulted in poor performance and stuttery playback.

Lloyd


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## velocitysurfer1 (Sep 6, 2006)

My failed wd 640aacs is (caviar green) is being replaced under warranty for a 6401AALS (caviar black) which is the high performance version - I guess WD think they are doing me a favour!

Does anyone have any experience with this drive and TiVo? I need an answer before UPS delivery it!


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## tonywalk (Sep 10, 2002)

velocitysurfer1 said:


> My failed wd 640aacs is (caviar green) is being replaced under warranty for a 6401AALS (caviar black) which is the high performance version - I guess WD think they are doing me a favour!
> 
> Does anyone have any experience with this drive and TiVo? I need an answer before UPS delivery it!


Faster drive = more heat generated and higher drive spinup power requirement.

This is not really recommended for longevity of the Tivo, hence why the eco drives are popular. I'd insist on a "Green" replacement but would endeavor to try and get one of the compatable ones.


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## velocitysurfer1 (Sep 6, 2006)

tonywalk said:


> Faster drive = more heat generated and higher drive spinup power requirement.


I've looked at the specs on the wd website, and the black drive consumes an extra 3watts of power than the green drives. I guess that my new psu should cope with it!

My main concern is one of compatability as the later blue drives had firmware which was not compatible with TiVo.


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## tonywalk (Sep 10, 2002)

velocitysurfer1 said:


> I've looked at the specs on the wd website, and the black drive consumes an extra 3watts of power than the green drives. I guess that my new psu should cope with it!
> 
> My main concern is one of compatability as the later blue drives had firmware which was not compatible with TiVo.


Is that the peak draw? If so then should be ok, particularly if you tweak the acoustic settings (using WD's drive tools) to make it run quieter (=slightly slower but less power draw). I'm currently running a pair of 7200rpm drives in my two Tivos (Samsung 250Gb IDE) so treated and they seem ok.

On compatability, then yep, it seems like the WD drives can be very odd indeed. May have to spring for a pair of SATA drives (I've got the adaptors) to try and avoid this potential situation myself, though I am likely to go for Sammy's again.


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## lloyd (Feb 15, 2003)

velocitysurfer1 said:


> I've looked at the specs on the wd website, and the black drive consumes an extra 3watts of power than the green drives. I guess that my new psu should cope with it!


It is worth pointing out the differences. I guess the Tivo is doing read/write all the time (live buffer), so the first figure is the most important. The Black drive consumes 1.7x the power of the Green one. I know which one I would go for .

Read/Write Black 8.30 Watts​Green 4.86 Watts​ Idle Black 7.70 Watts​Green 4.85 Watts​ Standby Black 1.00 Watts​Green 0.38 Watts​ Sleep Black 1.00 Watts​Green 0.38 Watts​


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## lloyd (Feb 15, 2003)

lloyd said:


> Decided to send the WD10EARS back. The WDxxEARS disks use a 4KB sector size, compared to 512B that has been in use for as long as I can remember. Certainly in other PVRs this has resulted in poor performance and stuttery playback.
> 
> Lloyd


After a week away I returned to my new WD10EADS, dropped it into my PC along with the old drive, and used mfsbackup/mfsrestore to copy everything across. Seemed to be dead slow, so enabled DMA mode on both drives, and the copy probably completed in 3-4 hours. (I was fast asleep by this stage, so I've estimated the copy time from the initial progress.)

Only thing to do now is run copykern. Tried a couple of times this morning (stopped the first one to enable DMA, as backing up the kernel was taking a age), but ended up with an error message which I failed to note down . Will have another go this evening after work.


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## lloyd (Feb 15, 2003)

Tried again, and copykern failed with "tpip error reading kernel: Input/output error".

If I ran tpip without the kernel backup option, then it completed and initialised the swap. Unfortunately, installing back in the Tivo it failed to boot. Time to buy a SATA converter from Tivo Central.


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## lloyd (Feb 15, 2003)

So I'm still struggling to make this work. New adaptor helps - now always get the powering up screen. But I can't keep old recordings and get it to boot.

Using mfslive 1.4 :

backup -qso -/dev/hdc | restore -s500 -nxzpi - /dev/hdb will boot.

but
backup -qaTo -/dev/hdc | restore -s500 -zpi - /dev/hdb will NOT boot (nor will restore with -xzpi)

Running msinfo on the image that will not boot gives the error volume header corrupt, but pdisk shows a partion table that on the face of it looks ok.

I,m getting more and more confused. Anyone offer any clues?


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

In the first case you need to add *-l 32* for UK tivos:

"shrunk" backup with no recordings:
*backup -so -l32 -/dev/hdc | restore -s500 -xzpi - /dev/hdb *


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## lloyd (Feb 15, 2003)

mikerr said:


> In the first case you need to add *-l 32* for UK tivos:
> 
> "shrunk" backup with no recordings:
> *backup -so -l32 -/dev/hdc | restore -s500 -xzpi - /dev/hdb *


Thanks Mike, I'll include that if I give up on keeping recordings.

Any idea why my command for keeping everything fails? I even tried without -x, intending to extend the partitions later with mfsadd, but that fails.

As my existing 200G has LBA48 kernel, should I be using -n? (I know I have to initialise swap with tpip later.)

Thanks to anyone who can help.

Lloyd


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## lloyd (Feb 15, 2003)

Finally sorted 

My problem was the partitions being re-arranged. I've documented the process I used here:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=452967

Lloyd


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