# Time to upgrade my HDD?



## WebAgents (Jan 3, 2003)

Hi,

My picture on Tivo is sometimes a bit stuttery and can become a little pixxelated.

Sign of HDD going?

I upgraded my original drives to 2 x 200gb drive a few years ago so it may be time to change.

If that is probably what is causing my faults, what is/are the drive(s) of choice at the moment?

VFM is most important. 

If I do need to change the drive(s) I will probably use the Hooch! disk so if that makes a difference to your recommendation please bear it in mind when replying.

Many thanks

Bryan


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

Best VFM? Probably the 1TB WD Green Power from Novatech.

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?WD-10EAVS

Although that might be a bit large.... 

You will need an IDE->Sata converter that looks like this too.










Cheers
Steve


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## mutant_matt2 (Dec 16, 2008)

You could of course run Spinrite (from grc.com) on them, which will show any problems, and more often than not, fix them too...

HTH

Matt


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

mutant_matt2 said:


> You could of course run Spinrite (from grc.com) on them, which will show any problems, and more often than not, fix them too...


Surely that is only a short term fix given that Tivo drives run 24/7.

Once a drive begins to show signs of failing sectors it is only a matter of time until it dies completely.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

blindlemon said:


> Best VFM? Probably the 1TB WD Green Power from Novatech.
> 
> http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?WD-10EAVS
> 
> Although that might be a bit large....


You don't seem to recommend the Intellipower version though - another tenner or so more. Is that supposed to spin down to slower speeds when not in active use or quite what exactly. And would Tivo not reap the benefit of such intended functionality?

Also I notice that the 2TB model of this drive is now out. Although my own experience of running 500Gb at Basic would suggest that many owners would probably not like the resulting slow down in menu operation times (even with a Cachecard and 512MB of RAM) when accessing items in the Now Playing list. 2TB at Best would be about 710 hours of recording time.

www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/dirresults.html?s=green


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

Pete77 said:


> You don't seem to recommend the Intellipower version though - another tenner or so more. Is that supposed to spin down to slower speeds when not in active use or quite what exactly. And would Tivo not reap the benefit of such intended functionality?


I have no idea what "intellipower" means - the OP asked for VFM suggestions and the 1TB drive I linked to seems to be about the best VFM bare drive around at the moment.

All the Green Power drives are very good on power consumption and that 1TB variant runs remarkably cool for a drive of that size so I assume it is pretty aggressive in its power management.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

I think all WD Green Power drives are Intellipower on further reading and Novatech have just left it out of the description of the cheaper 1TB drive.

Interesting further discussion about WD Green Power drives and their spec at:-

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/1133291.html

The difference between the cheaper and more expensive 1TB drive actually seems to be that one has an 8MB cache and the other has a 32MB cache.

No comment on the viability of a 2TB drive in a Tivo then?


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## WebAgents (Jan 3, 2003)

Hi thanks for the replies.

Seems my symptoms could well be the hdd's failing as no-one suggested an alternative 

Oh well. thanks BL for the heads up on the drive :up: - of course the adaptor adds to the price so did you factor that in against the price of an eide drive?

Also, on related note, if I use mode 0 on a 'hooch!'ed' drive, instead of the standard mode 'best', what disk space overhead will I need?

In other words if I had two tivos, one with 1tb hdd with tivo set to record all at mode 0 - and the other tivo with 1tb drive set to record all at tivo mode best, what sort of space/time differences would I see?


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

WebAgents said:


> of course the adaptor adds to the price so did you factor that in against the price of an eide drive?


If you can find a 1TB IDE drive for less than the cost of that GP drive + Converter then I would be very interested to hear about it 



WebAgents said:


> If I use mode 0 on a 'hooch!'ed' drive, instead of the standard mode 'best', what disk space overhead will I need?


As Mode 0 enables VBR whereas standard TiVo "best" does not you will actually normally find that a Mode 0 recording uses _less_ disk space than the same recording at standard "Best" quality.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

blindlemon said:


> If you can find a 1TB IDE drive for less than the cost of that GP drive + Converter then I would be very interested to hear about it
> 
> As Mode 0 enables VBR whereas standard TiVo "best" does not you will actually normally find that a Mode 0 recording uses _less_ disk space than the same recording at standard "Best" quality.


A 1TB drive at Best will record about 350 hours of programs. So a Mode 0 VBR enabled drive might record in excess of 400 hours of programs. This is on the borderline of suffering a big slow down in Now Playing menu speeds etc, even with a Cachecard and 512MB of RAM. It might be ok but 600 hours certainly causes too much slow down in the menus for most Tivo owners to be happy with.


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## DanielB (Sep 7, 2007)

Pete77 said:


> A 1TB drive at Best will record about 350 hours of programs. So a Mode 0 VBR enabled drive might record in excess of 400 hours of programs. This is on the borderline of suffering a big slow down in Now Playing menu speeds etc, even with a Cachecard and 512MB of RAM. It might be ok but 600 hours certainly causes too much slow down in the menus for most Tivo owners to be happy with.


I have a 320Gb drive, a Cachecard and 512Mb RAM and the menus are too slow, anyone any ideas on speeding it up?


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

DanielB said:


> I have a 320Gb drive, a Cachecard and 512Mb RAM and the menus are too slow, anyone any ideas on speeding it up?


What quality are you recording your programs at? The higher the quality you record at and the fewer hours of programs you consequently have recorded on the hard drive the faster your Tivo menus will run.

As it doesn't affect navigation speeds within a recording once it is playing the slow down with a larger hard drive doesn't bother me that much.


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## DanielB (Sep 7, 2007)

Pete77 said:


> What quality are you recording your programs at? The higher the quality you record at and the fewer hours of programs you consequently have recorded on the hard drive the faster your Tivo menus will run.


Recording in best, mode 0.

Thanks,


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

DanielB said:


> Recording in best, mode 0.
> 
> Thanks,


Should only be about 110 hours recording time then so menus shouldn't be very slow. What size is your swap file?


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## DanielB (Sep 7, 2007)

Pete77 said:


> Should only be about 110 hours recording time then so menus shouldn't be very slow. What size is your swap file?


Bash /var/tmp #cat /proc/meminfo
total: used: free: shared: buffers: cached:
Mem: 14151680 14000128 151552 241049600 81920 3846144
Swap: 471851008 6443008 465408000
MemTotal: 13820 kB
MemFree: 148 kB
MemShared: 235400 kB
Buffers: 80 kB
Cached: 3756 kB
SwapTotal: 460792 kB
SwapFree: 454500 kB


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

May be the unsighted citrus one can offer some further suggestions.

I can't see anything wrong with those numbers.


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## ciper (Nov 4, 2004)

Drives larger than 1TB probably may not work, or at least not give the full capacity.

In all factory LBA48 kernels (s2/s3) there is a problem with partitions larger than 1TB. It is possible that the custom LBA48 kernels have the same issue.

A work around has been created in the newest version of WinMFS which limits partition sizes to 1TB. This allows a drive size of 1tb + whatever the unit came with originally.

If the custom kernels have this issue and you wanted to work around it to get full capacity it is possible to create your own filesystem by hand. A 2TB drive could be split into two 900gb or three 600gb MFS regions (for example)

More information can on the limitations found here (especially later in the thread) http://tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=416133

If you do end up using a SATA to PATA bridge please add your results to this thread http://tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=416883


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

Just found an even cheaper supplier for the 1TB Green power drives :up:

http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials...r+-+SATA2+-+8MB&utm_campaign=newsletter090209

Enjoy!


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## mutant_matt2 (Dec 16, 2008)

Pete77 said:


> Surely that is only a short term fix given that Tivo drives run 24/7.
> 
> Once a drive begins to show signs of failing sectors it is only a matter of time until it dies completely.


Pete, that is reasonable logic, but I would say, not necessarily. Drives have such high data density these days that they are error correcting, under the hood, so to speak, all the time. It's easy for a sector to be slightly too far out for the ECC on board to fix/spot/deal with.

Spinrite overrides a lot of the standard drive control, and can often get back data that the drive firmware can't (or more likely, the firmware coder couldn't be bothered (even more likely, was on a clock) to write the code for). Spinrite can take a very long time to "fix" a sector, as it has all the time in the world (and will keep trying until it absolutely can't do any better), the firmware is trying to keep your drive going and the data flowing. Drives also now have a bunch of spare sectors to map out any sector that the drive is having trouble with.

Often, Spinrite can fix a drive, that isn't inherently about to have a catastrophic failure, and often can bring back a drive that is on the verge of one, long enough to pull everything off of it. I have saved more than one friend/family pc drive that was either not booting at all, or constantly blue screening, and years later, are still working perfectly, thanks to Spinrite.

I also run it in maintenance mode, on all my machines at least once per year (should really do it more regularly!), as this helps head off any problems before they become show stoppers (it does a full read/invert/write-back/invert and write-back again, on every sector on the whole disc, forcing it to find and try to fix any marginal sectors, and if need be, the drive can map any bad sectors it didn't know about, out).

If I had time though, periodically, I'd take the TiVo drive out, run Spinrite on it, copy it to another drive for a backup purposes, and put it back again, just in case 

HTH!

Cheers,

Matt


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## ciper (Nov 4, 2004)

A normal error on the drive will be hidden from your view through automatic sector remapping. If you see bad spots on the drive has exhausted its reserve of backup locations and is on its way out. 

The only drives I would consider trusting to be put back into service after being saved by spinrite are those where a drive had a head crash (laptop being dropped) was the cause. Even then the failures may continue as those chunks of drive surface fly around and damage other areas of the head.


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## Andy Leitch (Apr 30, 2005)

Pete77 said:


> Surely that is only a short term fix given that Tivo drives run 24/7.
> 
> Once a drive begins to show signs of failing sectors it is only a matter of time until it dies completely.


I concur with Pete77.

My Sammy 400Gb drive failed yesterday after 3 years of TiVo use. There's lots of click clicking, so it's definately terminal. It is currently being tested with Spinrite, and so far has thrown up 3 surface errors. Even if Sprinrite could fix it, given the cost of large IDE drives these days, it's not really worth fixing an old drive.
Actually this is the first drive failure which threw up this error. Strange that it was in a room at a chilly 11c.


And just to confirm that it was faulty, upon a reboot....


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Andy Leitch said:


> I concur with Pete77.


I know that there is a first time for everything in life but wouldn't this be the second time.



> My Sammy 400Gb drive failed yesterday after 3 years of TiVo use. There's lots of click clicking, so it's definately terminal. It is currently being tested with Spinrite, and so far has thrown up 3 surface errors. Even if Sprinrite could fix it, given the cost of large IDE drives these days, it's not really worth fixing an old drive.


Its good to hear you are still running your Tivo. What drive will you be using as a replacement? Will it be a currently fashionable 1TB Western Digital Green Power driver with IDE to SATA adapter. Especially with them now only costing 70 quid or so delivered - as mentioned by the citrus in post 18.

For a man who once declared Tivo dead some three or four years ago you seem to have remained suprisingly loyal to the product, whereas most of the supposed founding fathers (TCM/Sanderton, iankb, Automan et al) all seem to have now mothballed or sold their Tivos in favour of PVR systems from Satanic rival suppliers (i.e. Sky and Microsoft).:down:


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## mutant_matt2 (Dec 16, 2008)

Of course, I suppose I should have said, it depends on what the problem was in the first place! The larger the drive, the more likely a recoverable, non-fatal type problem is to appear, and the more likely it is that it can be fixed.

Of course, if you're getting clicky sounds of out your drive, it's probably not long for this world  (and I personally, would replace any drive I knew to have had a head crash (in the unlikely event it isn't already toast), due to as said, bits flying around inside are bound to cause physical damage sooner or later...). I'd replace any drive that had more than a couple of fixed sectors also, as said, as they're cheap these days!

Does anybody still buy PATA drives anymore for TiVos, BTW? I was wary of using an SATA converter when I last upgraded (went for 400GB PATA Spinpoint IIRC), but it sounds like most people are happily using them with no problems?

Matt


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

mutant_matt2 said:


> Does anybody still buy PATA drives anymore for TiVos, BTW? I was wary of using an SATA converter when I last upgraded (went for 400GB PATA Spinpoint IIRC), but it sounds like most people are happily using them with no problems?


I think you will find that www.tivoheaven.co.uk still recommend the Samsung HA250JC 250GB PATA drive as their drive of choice for a Tivo despite its now significantly greater cost per GB over cheaper WD PATA and SATA alternatives.

Having said that I notice they are currently out of stock of the aforementioned Samsung PATA drive. So perhaps they have finally exhausted all remaining supplies?


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## mutant_matt2 (Dec 16, 2008)

IMHO, 250GB is way too small for anyone running Mode0, Best type settings, and records quite a bit (like my wife & I). I guess, it helps if you don't have kids, and actually have time to watch the stuff you record  

I find for me, 400GB is a good balance between amount of space, and not recording so much that we'll never get round to watching it all 

Surely, you won't actually be able to buy PATA drives that much longer anyway, so the adapter solution might be forced next time I need a new drive anyway...

Matt


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

mutant_matt2 said:


> Surely, you won't actually be able to buy PATA drives that much longer anyway, so the adapter solution might be forced next time I need a new drive anyway...


I suspect PATA drives will be available for quite a while for legacy reasons but it seems the manufacturers have under-estimated the continuing demand for large capacity PATA drives (perhaps wrongly thinking all of those kinds of customers must be using a recent PC so can easily move across to SATA) judging by the speed at which stockpiles of those drives have run down.


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

Pete77 said:


> I think you will find that www.tivoheaven.co.uk still recommend the Samsung HA250JC 250GB PATA drive as their drive of choice for a Tivo despite its now significantly greater cost per GB over cheaper WD PATA and SATA alternatives.
> 
> Having said that I notice they are currently out of stock of the aforementioned Samsung PATA drive. So perhaps they have finally exhausted all remaining supplies?


Yep, they seem to have all gone 

I'm keeping them on the site but "out of stock" for a while in case any more turn up, but realistically a 500gb GP drive with a converter is probably the most sensible solution these days.

The 1TB GP drives are better value, but how many people _really_ need 1TB in a single TiVo? And of course, the bigger the drive, the more platters it has, so the more power it will consume and the more heat it will generate and probably the less reliable it will be, despite the fact that the GP drives (even 1TB) run remarkably cool.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

blindlemon said:


> The 1TB GP drives are better value, but how many people _really_ need 1TB in a single TiVo?


Well I for one need that much capacity as if I record everything in Best mode (I can't take the Mode 0 flashes at least on this particular Tivo) that would still nearly halve my total number of recording hours in Basic on 500Gb. I'm prepared to do that when these two Samsung HA250JC drives fail (looks like they may fail soon as I have had a recording that wouldn't play and caused a reboot and some other very long hangs for menu operations to complete of late) as really 613 hours was too slow for the menus to handle with any ease and I ended up hanging on to far too much stuff I never could find the time to watch. 350 hours would be about right and should avoid most of the big menu slow down issues. Also ciper seems to maintain that a 2TB WD Green Power drive won't actually work in our S1 Tivos?



> And of course, the bigger the drive, the more platters it has, so the more power it will consume and the more heat it will generate and probably the less reliable it will be, despite the fact that the GP drives (even 1TB) run remarkably cool.


But in three and a half years time even I may be looking at moving on to a more HD based tv recording solution and it is debatable if either the UK Tivo service won't have been withdrawn and/or Tivo itself have gone bust or been taken over by a hostile competitor (who would bet against any of that happening at the present time with such a debt ridden company that has never turned a profit) by that time.


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

Pete77 said:


> Well I for one need that much capacity as if I record everything in Best mode (I can't take the Mode 0 flashes at least on this particular Tivo) that would still nearly halve my total number of recording hours in Basic on 500Gb.


Reset the bitrates back to what they _should_ be and enable VBR for standard Best 

That will probably nearly double your recording capacity.


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## WebAgents (Jan 3, 2003)

blindlemon said:


> Just found an even cheaper supplier for the 1TB Green power drives :up:
> 
> http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials...r+-+SATA2+-+8MB&utm_campaign=newsletter090209
> 
> Enjoy!


Drive ordered, many thanks :up:

oh, and an adaptor and a hooch! disk 

Now.. my dilemma is whether to put the 1tb in the tivo or put the 500gb disk from my pc in the tivo and put the new 1tb in the PC...


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