TiVo Community Forums Archives - Very specific stuttering after upgrade

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Very specific stuttering after upgrade
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Posted by: mmarionsd

Has anyone seen stuttering that happens mostly (well, almost only) during the show that's being recorded when being viewed a few minutes back?

a little background:
Following the FAQ, I upgraded my HDR31201 with a 7200RPM Maxtor 30 Gig (no 5400 RPM locally, and didn't want to wait for shipping from an online site), and a 5400RPM Maxtor 60Gig. The upgrade went fine, then I suffered the freezing due to "write verify." After reading here, I decided to not only set the parameters with wvset, etc.. I decided to also do full write tests using maxdiag on both disks. All tests went flawlessly.

What I'm seeing:

The upgraded unit has been working great for 3 days.. then suddenly I started getting stuttering while watching the new Voyager episode tonight. This is the first stuttering I've gotten (other then _very_ sporadic, which I saw before upgrading mostly during housekeeping like others have reported), and it started to become very bad: at least 2 to 3 times every minute! I was watching the show only about 15 minutes behind "live" so, on a hunch I dropped back to "7 Days" which was on right before Voyager. It was fine... now that Voyager is over and it's recording the next show (which just happens to be another Voyager, a syndicated ep) it seems to be fine too.

I wonder if perhaps watching a show so close to it's live time, that perhaps it's maximizes any issues with the 2MB cache in the Maxtor disk(s)? I know that people have talked about the cache lately, and thought that perhaps the drive is trying to read what it thinks the OS wants.. and when watching close to live it's just barely missing the cache each time.. but when watching a completed show, it's seeking much farther.. so the drive isn't "guessing" as much?

Anyway.. I've been watching Voyager for about 20 minutes now without any stutters, whereas it started stuttering less then 5 minutes in before.

Just thought I'd toss that out to see if anyone else has seen this kind of activity and/or in case it helps with figuring out the quirks some people see after upgrades.

Oh, and in case anyone thinks that maybe it's the first program on the 60Gig disk... I thought of that. I had something like 34 hours of programs before 7 Days recorded, so (I would assume) 7 Days was already on the 60Gig disk too.

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"Nasdaq crashed this week... guess it must've been running on Windows 2000.
You know Bill Gates lost 12 Billion Doll.. oops, he just made it back."
-- Dennis Miller Live 4/7/2000

Posted by: tom_h

it could be a caching issue...the stock maxtor drives are made for a 90/10 read to write ratio. i believe they adjust this in firmware for a/v drives in the replaytv, but in my talks with them they arent interested in releasing these changes for retail drives. I watch almost everything a day or two (or more) in the past, little live tv and almost nothing concurrent with it being recorded. if you get that stuttering again, stop watching it, and go back when its done, re-play it and see if the stutters occur at the same rate during the time you were watching/recording and if they go away right around the time you stopped watching it.

the 7200 thing and maxtor as a-drive single you out somewhat...some folks are using 7200's and having good luck, some folks are using non-quantum a-drives...but unless i'm mistaken you're in a minority situation.

be interesting to see what happens if you do the following:

- copy your original quantum back to a maxtor as a backup copy.
- install the original quantum as a-drive
- retest the prospective maxtor b-drive with maxdiag
- re-bless/marry the maxtor b-drive with write verify off and acoustic management set off
- see if the stuttering is still there

then you're at an equivalent set of drives/setup to a lot more people that are having success with it. if that setup doesnt work your problem is probably not drives.

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Sometimes a vacuum is better than the things nature decides to fill it with.

Posted by: mmarionsd

quote:
Originally posted by tom_h:
I watch almost everything a day or two (or more) in the past, little live tv and almost nothing concurrent with it being recorded

Thanks for the suggestions... luckily I too rarely watch things that aren't done recording yet.

quote:

if you get that stuttering again, stop watching it, and go back when its done, re-play it and see if the stutters occur at the same rate during the time you were watching/recording and if they go away right around the time you stopped watching it.

I already did that, and it does not stutter after backing up.. which is what makes me think it's somehow related to the drive(s). I did realize after posting that I forgot to mention the fact that I'm still using the stock IDE cable. I'm thinking about picking up an 80wire cable and trying it, as I've seen a lot of people say the issue goes away when they do this. Plus I'm going to make extra sure that the cable is as far away from the PS as I can get it.

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-
"Nasdaq crashed this week... guess it must've been running on Windows 2000.
You know Bill Gates lost 12 Billion Doll.. oops, he just made it back."
-- Dennis Miller Live 4/7/2000