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TiVo gone very unstable
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Posted by: deryk

Recently our TiVo has become very unstable. It's constantly locking up or resetting in the middle of things (watching or recording, the latter being *very* annoying). A few programs have also recorded badly, resulting in a garbled unwatchable mess.

The current software revision is 2.5.5-01-1-023

Are there known problems with this version of the software, or is it something wrong with the hardware?

Posted by: pauljs

It's not normal, you may want to consider taking it back to the shop for a replacement. Or phone TiVo Customer services.

Posted by: slim

happened to me just before my hard disk died - all fixed now FOC, I'm happy to say.

Posted by: deryk

Ta for the feedback.

The disk died this evening... I heard it rattling away trying to spin up.

That's Seagate for you - I've been through a good few of theirs inside PCs as well. Wish they'd use a decent make (as standard) like IBM!

(Why IBM are pulling out of the hard drive market is beyond me)

Oh well, guess this is goodbye to a couple of Enterprise episodes and stuff until they finally get repeated :( I'll "look forward" to the 10 hour setup again LOL

Cheers

Posted by: eric23

Seagate make the reliable drives in my experience as a storage techie in the past.

The drive in your TiVo will be a Quantum lctXX. Quantum HD division is now handled by Maxtor, and Quantum are no longer making HDs themselves.

Thank god Conner went bust before TiVo was around otherwise if they had been chosen to supply drives for TiVo, we'd all be having problems. They had to be the most unreliable brand out there.

IBM have got a lot of bad press about drive reliability. Many batches had to be recalled in the past, so I'm not surprised that they're selling off the best part of their drive division to Hitachi. (They're going to be keeping a 30% interest in the new company they're setting up with Hitachi for the manufacture of drives by the way, so they're not pulling out of the market completely).

Maxtor have a pretty good reputation for reliability, so if you're ever thinking of upgrading, choose Maxtor. Many here have had success with Maxtor drives.

Posted by: deryk

Hmm... I was pretty sure the hard drive in ours was a Seagate! The box is a Thompson. But maybe I'm thinking of something else.

Quantum have been fairly bad my experience - I have a stack of 3 dead ones here out of my own PC (I kept giving them 'another chance')

Hard drive manufacturers seem very well suited to the phrase "your mileage may vary".

Some say Seagate are bad, some swear by them (must admit, I like the Barracuda ATAIV and haven't had any trouble with those). The reason I don't like them is the stack of 4 on my drive graveyard.

Some hate IBMs (the 120GXP or whichever it was, was the one that spoiled it) whilst some swear by them - especially Scan who are generally very fussy about manufacturers. I have one dead on the pile, and I was in two minds whether it was caused by a large bump the box got at one time.

Conner - yuck. Got a stack of 4 dead ones here from over the years, and even more that I chucked out before starting the graveyard, beating even Quantum with the population count in Silicon Hell. Glad they are no more...

Maxtor... I'd have to agree there actually, as I only have *one* dead one, and it's very old anyway (about 6 gig I think). I'd always seen them as a slow/mediocre drive... whether that's still true, I'm unsure.

Posted by: TiVoPony

Sorry to hear you're having trouble. Hope the refit goes smoothly.

To my knowledge we've never used Seagate drives in a TiVo, but then, it may be possible that they were qualified for the UK production. I just haven't heard of it having been done.

And Maxtor owns Quantum now. They're one and the same.

Good luck, I hope your TiVo is up and running again soon!

Cheers,
Bob

Posted by: Tim Browse

quote:
Originally posted by deryk

Hard drive manufacturers seem very well suited to the phrase "your mileage may vary".

Definitely. I have heard just about every drive manufacturer being praised to the heavens or slagged off, such that I have never really been able to work out who's 'good' and who's not.

Maybe it's a case of only being as good as the last hard drive they made? I know Seagate had a reputation for drives that leaked oil onto the platters years ago, and I've heard large amounts of complaints about Maxtor being cheap and nasty and unreliable. Also IBM are usually held in high regard...except for all those GXP models that died.

And so on, and so on.

These days I tend to go for quiet drives myself :)

Tim