# I am sick of the flashing lights.... what drive is safe in June 2017?



## genebopp (Dec 12, 2008)

I have a bolt with the seagate 2tb that I removed from an enclosure about a year ago. I bought 2 more Bolts and 2 more seagates a month ago. Both of the new drives have already failed. This morning the year old Bold/drive had the flashing lights. Pulling the plug got that one restarted again. 
I want to be done with Bolt drives. The Bolt drive flashing light threads have gotten really long.

I have a 3tb toshiba arriving today and a 2tb WD arriving next week.

Are either (or both) of these drives currently "safe" in the bolt?


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## HerronScott (Jan 1, 2002)

I'm looking to go with the WD 2TB (WD20NPVZ) since it's in the same family as the 3TB that they use in the Bolt+. Lots of people seem to have had success with the Toshiba 3TB although at least one user reported some issues but that can happen with any manufacturer. I don't like that Toshiba doesn't have any tools for testing their drive other than what's reported via SMART though. I wish that the WD WD30NPVZ could be found at a reasonable price. 

Scott


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## genebopp (Dec 12, 2008)

Thanks for your advice. I remember reading a post about the WD being in the same family. That is why I bought one of those. But the overnight shipping from amazon made almost the same price as the Toshiba 3tb overnight. Since I need 2 drives... I bought the 3tb overnight and the 2tb for next week. 

My year old bolt with the year old seagate did the flashing lights this morning again.... again pulling the plug got it running again... but for how long.

Thanks again.
Gene


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## fcfc2 (Feb 19, 2015)

genebopp said:


> Thanks for your advice. I remember reading a post about the WD being in the same family. That is why I bought one of those. But the overnight shipping from amazon made almost the same price as the Toshiba 3tb overnight. Since I need 2 drives... I bought the 3tb overnight and the 2tb for next week.
> 
> My year old bolt with the year old seagate did the flashing lights this morning again.... again pulling the plug got it running again... but for how long.
> 
> ...


Although not required, I would suggest you go to the trouble of using MSFR on the Toshiba drive. It is unlikely to do any harm and may just save some wear and tear on it. I have been using one for about 5 months now.


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

Has anybody tried a KS 58 on the bolts that have this intermittent problem. Would also be interested to know if running complete diagnostics shows up any problems. I did have an issue with a Roamio with a WD Red drive that developed intermittent problems. Turned out after I ran diagnostics, it found two bad spots that it remapped. Since then it has been doing okay.


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## genebopp (Dec 12, 2008)

When the flashing lights happen the unit is locked up. 

Exactly what happens is:
Plug it back in.
Tivo logo pops up.
The TV screen turns light black (normal)
The TV screen turns dark black and the lights are flashing. ..... It will never recover.


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

genebopp said:


> When the flashing lights happen the unit is locked up.
> 
> Exactly what happens is:
> Plug it back in.
> ...


 Can you run a KS 58?


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## genebopp (Dec 12, 2008)

I am sorry. I forgot that kinda takes place before the unit really starts. I already erased the last problem drive. Since they only seem to make it a week before failing and I dont have a replacement drive for the next unit till tuesday I expect one to fail over the weekend. I will see if I can get it to do KS.


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

I would recommend doing a full read, followed by a full write, followed again by a full read on the drive before using. 

I wonder if it is the firmware of these drives are the issue or if it is the country of manufacturing. After Japan got hit by the tsunami and drive manufacturing moved to china, I experienced more failed sectors on drives and had to send them in for warranty than I ever had to prior. WD has moved drives to Malaysia. Not sure where Seagate drives are made.


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## genebopp (Dec 12, 2008)

The drive tests good after it dies in the tivo. I the 2 drives that I have had die after a week were 1.04 firmware. I dont know about the the drive that I have had running for a year and is now acting up.

I have had problems with a tuning adapter preventing a TivoHD from running the GC and then getting the S03 error. I had them on 7 day timers so that once a week the tuning adapter would shut off. I am kinda wondering if there is any connection between the drives dieing after a week or 10 days and the tuning adapter with the bolts killing drives (actually killing the software, the hardware tests good). Seems that is about the time frame that the tivoHD would start complaining about the guide data.


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## NorthAlabama (Apr 19, 2012)

genebopp said:


> I have a bolt with the seagate 2tb that I removed from an enclosure about a year ago. I bought 2 more Bolts and 2 more seagates a month ago. Both of the new drives have already failed. This morning the year old Bold/drive had the flashing lights. Pulling the plug got that one restarted again.
> I want to be done with Bolt drives.


i stopped buying seagate drives almost 10 years ago following 4 or 5 failed drives within a couple of years - i've only had one wd drive fail, and it was over 5 years old.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

NorthAlabama said:


> i stopped buying seagate drives almost 10 years ago following 4 or 5 failed drives within a couple of years - i've only had one wd drive fail, and it was over 5 years old.


I used to use dozens of WD drives which were solid. But since switching to using dozens of Seagate drives, around four or five years ago, they have been just as trouble free as my WD drives have been. Even the two Seagate 4TB drives I use in my Bolts, since October 2015, have been problem free.

I'm currently using around forty Seagate Drives in my three unRAIDs. But I do still have a few WD drives in there. I've had the new 4TB Seagate Drives to replace the 3TB/2TB WD drives for over a year now. But I still haven't gotten around to replacing the last few WD drives in my unRAIDs.


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## genebopp (Dec 12, 2008)

I had 3 of the seagates 2tb do the 4 flashing lights in a month. 2 were new, one was a year old. The new drives would not ever start in the tivo again. The year old drive would start and run for a while. A fourth drive (new) ran fine till I removed it. The only thing common to the drives that did the flashing lights was they were about 30% full and the 4th was empty. I dont know anything more about what kills them and what doesnt. I was just sick of "guided set up" and the cable card calls to Spectrum.


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

I cannot recall if I have seen a good description of the flashing light problem. 
With Premiere and Roamio, if the drive is not bootable (No drive present or corrupted image on the drive) you get the initial welcome screen for a second or two followed by all the lights in front flash followed by the welcome screen and so on. 
Out of curiosity, has anybody who has a drive with the issue run mfsinfo from the MFSTools 3.2 iso to see if it can read the basic information of the MFS system?


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## bmwbiker (Sep 3, 2015)

My Roamio is exhibiting the flashing light failure. It appears randomly, it will run for days and then just die, sometimes in the middle of the night when nothing is being recorded. Almost always power-cycling the box allow it to recover, it took two tries once. The second time it didn't recover I left it powered down for about six hours and it recovered fine when I powered backup. I even bought a 2.5a power brick, but I can't say it really made a difference.


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

So far with my Basic Roamio I have not experienced any failure. It currently has a 3.3 A liteon power supply with a 6 TB drive in it and it is plugged into a UPS. 
What drive do you have in your Roamio. 


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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## bmwbiker (Sep 3, 2015)

I'd have to open it up to check, but if I recall correctly its generic (PC grade) 3TB seagate. I guess pushing up the PS amps (again) might be worth a try.


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

The TiVo will only draw the amperage it needs so having a little extra available is not going to hurt.


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## TydalForce (Feb 9, 2006)

I have the Toshiba drive + four-lights-flashing issue in my 500GB Bolt. I've done a lot of experimenting.

Short version:
- It's okay for weeks, months
- Starts occasionally rebooting at random; these are infrequent at first but become more and more frequent over a week or two (or three)
- These reboots are "oh look, it's back" at first, but start morphing into "four lights flashing"
- Eventually they're all FLF and a power cycle won't clear them
BUT
- Unplug it for several hours / overnight and plug it back in, and it's fine for a few days -- but will start FLFing again

I tried swapping the power adapter for one with more wattage; no help
I put it on top of a laptop cooling pad with fans; no help
Soon as I swapped the stock drive back in, it was fine

It almost feels like a data corruption issue AND an overheating issue, but the temperature reading never gets too high, the fans didn't help, and it's fine if it's left off for 8ish hours.

Really really weird. 
I chronicled my adventure in the latter pages of 4 Lights Flashing on Bolt


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## ClearToLand (Jul 10, 2001)

bmwbiker said:


> *My Roamio is exhibiting the flashing light failure*. It appears randomly, it will run for days and then just die, sometimes in the middle of the night when nothing is being recorded. Almost always power-cycling the box allow it to recover, it took two tries once. The second time it didn't recover I left it powered down for about six hours and it recovered fine when I powered backup. *I even bought a 2.5a power brick, but I can't say it really made a difference*.






jmbach said:


> *So far with my Basic Roamio I have not experienced any failure. It currently has a 3.3 A liteon power supply with a 6 TB drive in it and it is plugged into a UPS.*
> *What drive do you have in your Roamio*...






bmwbiker said:


> I'd have to open it up to check, but *if I recall correctly its generic (PC grade) 3TB seagate*. I guess pushing up the PS amps (again) might be worth a try.



[THINKING OUT LOUD Mode]

@bmwbiker ,
Is your "*generic (PC grade) 3TB seagate *" 7200 or 5400 rpm?
.
Did you install the *2.5a power brick* BEFORE or AFTER you installed the "*generic (PC grade) 3TB seagate *"?
.
Is it possible that "Current Starvation" created IRRECOVERABLE multiple sector errors on the "*generic (PC grade) 3TB seagate *" (i.e. PREMATURELY filled up the error mapping table) ?
 [/THINKING OUT LOUD Mode]


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

Why do all these drives keep having issues? My two 4TB drives from October 2015 in my two Bolts are still humming along without issues. I just checked one of my Bolts and I have over 6.8 million seconds of uptime right now. 79.5 days.


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## ggieseke (May 30, 2008)

I think you have the only two non-SMR 2.5" 4TB drives ever made.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

ggieseke said:


> I think you have the only two non-SMR 2.5" 4TB drives ever made.





aaronwt said:


> Ruh-roh!! I came home today and one of my Bolts had four flashing lights with the fan spinning at full speed. I unplugged the power and reconnected it and the Bolt booted up without issue. So I'm hoping this is just a one off and not a sign of things to come. My 4TB drives have been in use for 22 months now and had been working great so far. This is the first time I've ever seen four flashing lights with any of the seven or eight Bolts I've owned.
> 
> The Bolt had updated to RC22 a couple of weeks ago without issue. I thought maybe it had updated to RC24 but it was still on RC 22. And I'm still waiting for my other 4TB Bolt to update to 20.7.2, It's still on 20.7.1.


And it figures. I see this is post number 20K for me.

I guess only time will tell whether I have more flashing light issues.


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## ShinySteelRobot (Apr 2, 2010)

aaronwt said:


> And it figures. I see this is post number 20K for me.
> 
> I guess only time will tell whether I have more flashing light issues.


Hi @aaronwt, have you had more flashing light issues, or was it truly a one-off?


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## Jim.Rice (Dec 3, 2016)

aaronwt said:


> Why do all these drives keep having issues? My two 4TB drives from October 2015 in my two Bolts are still humming along without issues. I just checked one of my Bolts and I have over 6.8 million seconds of uptime right now. 79.5 days.


If you installed your drives back in 2015, I bet the drive firmware is a lot older than the drives available new today. Lots of people have discussed the problem in other threads, but apparently somebody did some thorough testing and discovered that the firmware changes the way the data is written to the drive. I don't remember exactly in what way, but the "improved" method of writing data wrecks the drive for use in the TiVo.

Essentially, as far as I can tell there is no easy solution for upgrading the TiVo with a new, larger drive. I certainly hope that someone has a good solution... My 500 GB Bolt could use an upgrade!


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

Jim.Rice said:


> If you installed your drives back in 2015, I bet the drive firmware is a lot older than the drives available new today. Lots of people have discussed the problem in other threads, but apparently somebody did some thorough testing and discovered that the firmware changes the way the data is written to the drive. I don't remember exactly in what way, but the "improved" method of writing data wrecks the drive for use in the TiVo.
> 
> Essentially, as far as I can tell there is no easy solution for upgrading the TiVo with a new, larger drive. I certainly hope that someone has a good solution... My 500 GB Bolt could use an upgrade!


Yes. I had firmware 0001 on both of my 4TB drives that I got in October 2015. I had one drive fail last month. The other 4TB drive is still fine though. At least for now. I'll run it in my Bolt until it fails.

The one that failed was recording multiple shows, 20 hours a day, 365 days a year. While the one that is still running only records 6 to 12 hours a day.


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