# anyone else have trouble with a newer seagate?



## annoyed99 (Nov 19, 2003)

I have a Hughes sd-dvr40 Directivo in which the hard drive just died. It was a 200gig seagate that has been running just fine for a couple years with an mfsrestore of the original disk image.

I first tried a new 400 gig seagate (ide of course) and a new 160 gig seagate (also ide). Neither worked with the mfsrestore of my original disk, or an instantcake, or a zipper.

Get this, neither disk would even spin up in the tivo, even with only the power cable attached. Isn't that weird? What is going on here?

Luckily I had an old 46gig drive handy which I put the Instantcake on, and it is getting me by until I figure this out.

Any ideas???

Thanks,
-K


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## MurrayW (Aug 28, 2005)

annoyed99 said:


> I have a Hughes sd-dvr40 Directivo in which the hard drive just died. It was a 200gig seagate that has been running just fine for a couple years with an mfsrestore of the original disk image.
> 
> I first tried a new 400 gig seagate (ide of course) and a new 160 gig seagate (also ide). Neither worked with the mfsrestore of my original disk, or an instantcake, or a zipper.
> 
> ...


Yes, I had problems with a 400G Seagate in both an HDVR2 and a Philips DirecTiVo. I think it is drawing too much power on boot-up that prevents it from booting up sucessfully.

Murray


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## annoyed99 (Nov 19, 2003)

You are right, I have confirmed that it is a power supply issue.

So... Guess what I did about that???

I took an old PC I was about to throw in the trash, connected the power supply to the disk and the longer IDE connector from the tivo to the disk. VOILA!!!!!!!!!!!

Is this crazy or what? I must be the first person in the world to do this. I was ready for sparks or an explosion or something. 

-K


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## pokegol (Feb 24, 2003)

annoyed99 said:


> You are right, I have confirmed that it is a power supply issue.
> 
> So... Guess what I did about that???
> 
> ...


You may be the only person to use this as a permanent solution, but I bet theres a lot of us that have used this method to troubleshoot power supply issues. I know I have .


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## MurrayW (Aug 28, 2005)

annoyed99 said:


> You are right, I have confirmed that it is a power supply issue.
> 
> So... Guess what I did about that???
> 
> ...


So how do you have the power supply mounted or secured?


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## annoyed99 (Nov 19, 2003)

I took the power supply out of the old PC and shorted two of the pins together from the connector that goes to the motherboard. I think it was pins 16 and 15, it has been a couple of days now and I don't remember exactly, just short the green wire to a black one on either side of it (pinouts can be found all over the net). That way as long as the power supply is plugged in, it is on. I actually cut the wires and used a red butt connector to connect them.

I have the power supply sitting next to the tivo and the cover is off the tivo. The longest power connector can reach the drive no problem. I ended up using the short IDE cable that comes in the tivo and put the drive where it normally goes. It isn't very pretty but nobody can really see inside the cabinet where the amp/tivo/dvd are sitting.

Some guy on ************* says that something is wrong with my tivo power supply and it should be able to power two 750gig drives no problem. He also says using the other power supply like this is going to burn up the tivo. Whatever, I don't have much other choice at this point.

-K


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## MurrayW (Aug 28, 2005)

annoyed99 said:


> I took the power supply out of the old PC and shorted two of the pins together from the connector that goes to the motherboard. I think it was pins 16 and 15, it has been a couple of days now and I don't remember exactly, just short the green wire to a black one on either side of it (pinouts can be found all over the net). That way as long as the power supply is plugged in, it is on. I actually cut the wires and used a red butt connector to connect them.
> 
> I have the power supply sitting next to the tivo and the cover is off the tivo. The longest power connector can reach the drive no problem. I ended up using the short IDE cable that comes in the tivo and put the drive where it normally goes. It isn't very pretty but nobody can really see inside the cabinet where the amp/tivo/dvd are sitting.
> 
> ...


I thnk that it is something specific to this series of Seagate drives (the .10 series I believe), maybe in combination with power supplies that are marginal to begin with. I have two HR10-250's (I think the power supplies are basically the same for all series 2 DirecTiVo's) that each have 2 500G drives in them -- one is using WD drives and the other is using Seagate .9 series drives. There is no problem with either of these. I also have several other 2 drive non-HD DirecTiVo's that have either WD's or older Seagate drives in the 250G to 300G range each and I have never had any problems.

Glad you found a solution. My solution was to send the 400G Seagate series .10 drive back and buy a 320G drive.

Murray


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## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

The latest Seagates put too much of a load on the power supply when they first boot up. If you're using it in a dual drive configuration then try using the Seagate as the B drive. Two Seagates in the same Tivo will definitely cause boot problems (as in, it just won't boot). There is a little gizmo marketed by either 9th Tee or Weaknees (I can never remember which) that inserts a delay so that both drives don't power up simultaneously. It should resolve your boot issues, at least in theory. Once you've got both drives booted you shouldn't have any issues with the power supply.


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## granoff (Jul 9, 2001)

An interesting thread, as I am about to drop a 320GB Seagate drive into my SA S2.

According to Seagate (if I read the datasheet correctly) is that the drive draws 2.8 AMPs _peak_ of 12VDC (+/- 10%, which I guess makes it effectively anywhere from 2.6 to 3 AMPs peak), which I assume would be at spinup time.

Is that too much for the S2 powersupply? I am replacing the existing drive, so there would ultimately be just this one drive. For what its worth, its a Parallel Recording drive, so it has "only" 4 heads and 2 disks inside (if that matters for spinup stress on the PSU).

Anyway, I just don't want to spend all the time to do this upgrade (which is necessary as the original 80GB disk is beginning to fail) if, in the end, the new drive isn't going to spinup once back in the TiVo!

Thanks for any insights. I am not new to messing with hardware, but this will be my first TiVo upgrade. So I am hoping for a very smooth process. 

-Mark


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## MurrayW (Aug 28, 2005)

mr.unnatural said:


> The latest Seagates put too much of a load on the power supply when they first boot up. If you're using it in a dual drive configuration then try using the Seagate as the B drive. Two Seagates in the same Tivo will definitely cause boot problems (as in, it just won't boot). There is a little gizmo marketed by either 9th Tee or Weaknees (I can never remember which) that inserts a delay so that both drives don't power up simultaneously. It should resolve your boot issues, at least in theory. Once you've got both drives booted you shouldn't have any issues with the power supply.


My Seagate 400G drive (SEAGATE 400GB PATA ST3400632A-RK) wouldn't spin-up when I tried in in a 1 drive only system -- I actually tried it in 2 different Series 2 SD DirecTiVo's -- I think it was a DVR2 and a Philips.


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## MurrayW (Aug 28, 2005)

granoff said:


> An interesting thread, as I am about to drop a 320GB Seagate drive into my SA S2.
> 
> According to Seagate (if I read the datasheet correctly) is that the drive draws 2.8 AMPs _peak_ of 12VDC (+/- 10%, which I guess makes it effectively anywhere from 2.6 to 3 AMPs peak), which I assume would be at spinup time.
> 
> ...


Just is only from my experience...the only Seagate drive I have had a problem with was a 400G .10 model. I have used many others and not had problems.


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## granoff (Jul 9, 2001)

Thanks.

What does that *.10* suffix mean, anyway? The 320GB drive I bought says 7200.10 in the description. The 7200 part is the RPMs, I know. What's the .10 mean?

-Mark


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## MurrayW (Aug 28, 2005)

granoff said:


> Thanks.
> 
> What does that *.10* suffix mean, anyway? The 320GB drive I bought says 7200.10 in the description. The 7200 part is the RPMs, I know. What's the .10 mean?
> -Mark


I think it is just Seagates internal versioning number. I don't think the number really means anything other than it is the next version/techonology after their previous one they called .9. Let us know how it goes.
Murray


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## A J Ricaud (Jun 25, 2002)

granoff said:


> Thanks.
> 
> What does that *.10* suffix mean, anyway? The 320GB drive I bought says 7200.10 in the description. The 7200 part is the RPMs, I know. What's the .10 mean?
> 
> -Mark


I think it's the designation for "perpendicular" recording--new technology. Most new HDs will be going in that direction.


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## granoff (Jul 9, 2001)

I had great success today, upgrading both of my TiVos using MFSLive. Read the details in this post.

-Mark


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## bnm81002 (Oct 3, 2004)

I got of those Seagate 7200.10 drives and it's been in a "welcome powering up" screen reboot cycle loop, even after I zippered the drive with version 2.8 of the zipper but my other Seagate drive that is 7200.9 has had no problems at all (knock on wood), I guess the best Seagate drives to use should be the older models below 7200.10  
hopefully I can save the recordings off the 7200.10 drive to the 7200.9 drive using the dd commands


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