# Burned by 7200.9 for my UK S1



## thesentinel (Feb 23, 2003)

I bought two 7200.9 120gb disks last week and after spending nearly 6 hours pulling my hair out found an article on the web that said you cannot use two of these disks in the Tivo due to the PSU/drive power pull at startup.

I decided that as we have two Tivo's we could probably live with a single 120gb disk, so proceeded on that basis. 

Now everything seemed fine enough, but I've been watching some recordings and every now and again the sound speeds up and slows down. It happens very quickly and only lasts for a second or three, but it is happening and the only thing I can put it down to is the drive. Has anyone else experienced this/reported this? Is it connected to the power draw of the drive?

Would I be better off getting a single ST3400832A 400gb drive? It is the 7200.8 version. Will this drive be ok in my machine? I'm worried because of the sound problem I've got with the 7200.9.

Cheers


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

2x 7200.9 120gb drives work fine in my test TiVo. Are you saying you had problems with a pair in your TiVo? 

IME, the problem only surfaces if you try to mix bigger 7200.9 drives, and even the 500gb 7200.9 works just fine as a single-drive, so maybe your PSU is getting a bit past its sell-by date...?

To answer your second question, the ST3400832A is an excellent drive. I've sold loads of them with no reported problems so far - even when used in pairs


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## thesentinel (Feb 23, 2003)

Hi Blindlemon

Thanks for replying.



blindlemon said:


> 2x 7200.9 120gb drives work fine in my test TiVo. Are you saying you had problems with a pair in your TiVo?


Yep. I've got two identical drives and I couldn't get the Tivo to boot up with the two drives connected. This appears to be a known problem that the spin-up power requirements of two 7200.9 drives is more than the PSU can handle.

From the TivoHeaven website: "3. 500GB drives: Please note that due to limitations of the TiVo power supply it is currently not possible to add a 2nd Seagate 7200.9 series drive > 120GB or a 7200.8 series drive > 300GB to a 500GB upgrade drive."

More interesting is a post that you may of posted? Did you post this, as it is the same problem I've got?

http://forums.storagereview.net/index.php?showtopic=21066

"One drive works fine, but combine it with a second (or even a 400GB 7200.8) and the TiVo refuses to boot. The drives don't seem to spin up properly, and even with one drive powered from an external source (PC) the TiVo just reboots after getting to "just a few seconds more..."



> IME, the problem only surfaces if you try to mix bigger 7200.9 drives, and even the 500gb 7200.9 works just fine as a single-drive, so maybe your PSU is getting a bit past its sell-by date...?


It is possible. The Tivo must be getting on for a good few years now, but I've just taken out two Samsung drives (SP1213N) that were on the way out and up until the point they died they *never* had this problem (nor did any other previous drive config that I've had in that machine and the Samsungs must of been the 3rd set of disks), which makes me suspicious of the power requirements of these new Seagate drives. Surely these 7200.9 use more power?



> To answer your second question, the ST3400832A is an excellent drive. I've sold loads of them with no reported problems so far - even when used in pairs


Ok, that is good to know. Want to buy a pair of 120gb's?  I didn't realise you could upgrade the Kernel when I bought these disks. Things have moved on. I would of only bought a 400gb!

Question is what to do now. I would ideally like to keep the 120 to save all the hassle of selling, but the sound problem is annoying. Have you seen the sound problem I'm talking about?


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

thesentinel said:


> More interesting is a post that you may of posted? Did you post this, as it is the same problem I've got?


Yes, I stumbled across this when I was trying to get 2x500gb 7200.9 drives to work in a UK S1 TiVo. However, since that post I have found that 2x120gb 7200.9s (or 1x 120gb 7200.9 plus a bigger 7200.9) seem to work just fine and that it's only combinations where both are > 120gb that exhibit the problem.

As I mentioned though, these findings were made in my "test" TiVo - and that has a new PSU.



thesentinel said:


> Surely these 7200.9 use more power?


Yes they do - the startup power draw is considerably more than Samsung drives and more than all previous Seagate drives I've used. However, the single-platter 120gb drives seem to just sqeak in under the wire with my new PSU. It's clearly pretty borderline though.



thesentinel said:


> Have you seen the sound problem I'm talking about?


No I haven't, and I haven't had any reports of it from customers who have bought single 7200.9 drives. If you want to persevere with these then why not try a new PSU?


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## thesentinel (Feb 23, 2003)

Just out of interest, do you know if the power draw of the 7200.8's (e.g. 400gb) is less than that of the 7200.9's or is it the same?


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

I've not measured it, but the specs say that it's less and the fact that 2x 400gb 7200.8s work fine while 2x 160gb 7200.9s don't would seem to bear that out. 

The Seagate DB35 range, their "CE" drives, are claimed to be less power hungry than "normal" drives, but as the current (no pun intended) range is based on the 7200.8 series and doesn't include a 500gb drive, I haven't been able to check yet whether 2x 500gb DB35s will work.


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## thesentinel (Feb 23, 2003)

Just wanted to thank you for your posts. I've gone for one 400gb 7200.8 drive for myself and my folks. 

BTW I think I've noticed that the sound problem seems to happen when you are watching tivo and you press the Guide button. Maybe that uses a bit more power first time round to grab some of the guide data from the disk? It only seems to happen the first time you do it and then I guess some time interval between it will happen again.

Thanks again.

Cheers


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