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The Hard Drive Will Wear Out!
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Posted by: dellis

I bought my Series II at Best Buy last week and elected NOT to Buy the 4-yr extended warranty for $80. I have always been told extended warranties are often unnecessary and foolish.

The young salesman at Best Buy informed me since the TiVo hard drive spins all the time - it's "gonna wear out fast!" He also said TiVo would never refund the $249 Lifetime subscription if (after setting up) I was unsatisifed and that I could not record one program watching another despite my configuration (which infact does allow me to do just that!!)

Does anyone feel the extended warranty is a must have? Are the TiVo units so delicate? My DELL computer has a hard drive in it - and has been running non-stop for five years - never had a problem. IBM PC before that - ran fine for years before selling it.

Posted by: GatorDeb

Everything can go bad... or it can stay fine. I bought the $80 warranty because it ended up being $20 a year... and for me $20 a year was more than worth it on a $650 item. It's also renewable.

I usually end up getting extended warranties from Best Buy. I feel they are worth it.

Posted by: georgecortes

The young salesman at Best Buy is either uninformed (as most of them are, anyway...), knowingly BS'ing you, or just trying to extract a few extra bucks from you. The hard drive will not wear out fast at all, although my belief is that TiVo should have programmed a spin down in some fashion.

But he was correct in saying you won't get your subscription money back. It applies to your specific unit ID (in a built in chip), and if it breaks down you're out of luck...

I agree that extended warranties are generally wasteful (they wouldn't knowingly lose money, would they...?), but 80 bucks doesn't seem outlandish for 4 years of peace of mind...

George

Posted by: kmccbf

For the most part I avoid all extended warranties with very few exceptions.
My TiVo was not one. Yes the hard drive will wear out, but the question is when? If I went by what I've on the boards, I would say sooner than latter. But I feel that the posts here are not typical as there are many more people who have not had any problems with their drives and we really don't hear from them

Extended warranties are a gamble by the store. They are gambling that nothing will go wrong (most likely) or that if something goes wrong you will, like so many people, forget you have an extended warranty after two years.

You simply have to weight the likelihood of the thing going bad after the first warranty runs out against the cost of the warranty.

Posted by: dgh

Usually the extended warrantee is the most profitable item in the store so naturally the sales people are trained to push them.

Posted by: GatorDeb

I had to ask the cashier to add the extended warranty to my order no less than three times before she did it. It was as though she didn't want to add it.

Posted by: dellis

I called TiVo after returning home - to clear up my misguided Best Buy sales rep. and they informed me I had 30 days upon initializing my Lifetime Subscription to cancel with a full money back guarantee. After that time expired - I would not receive my money back under any circumstances. Fair enough to me!

Posted by: Graymalkin

I've had one TiVo since August 1999 -- and it's doing just fine.

Posted by: vman41

Drives generally will run continuously for years without wearing out,
though occasionally the manufacturer can produce a bad batch of drives
that have a high failure rate. We once had a batch of 25 Dell PC's where
over 2 years, every one had their drive go south (the other couple hundred
Dell's have been much more reliable).

For drive longevity, I'd worry about power, vibration, and heat. The operating temperature inside a TiVo does concern me a little.

Posted by: JAB

quote:
georgecortes wrote:
But he was correct in saying you won't get your subscription money back. It applies to your specific unit ID (in a built in chip), and if it breaks down you're out of luck...

This is not entirely correct. While TiVo will not refund your Lifetime Service if your unit breaks, they will transfer it to another TiVo if the other TiVo is supplied to you under an authorized repair program.

In other words, if your TiVo breaks, and the manufacturer "repairs" it by sending you another one, or the Best Buy extended warranty replaces your TiVo instead of repairing it, your Lifetime Service is still good. However, if your TiVo breaks, and you decide to just go out and buy a new one rather than have the old one repaired, your Lifetime Service dies with the original TiVo.

/jab

Posted by: Timber

My father-in-law gave me good advice. He said that insurance is for things you can't afford to replace. Its a gamble (that is a high-markup item for the retailer) and Best Buy judges their employees on how many they sell, I don't know if its money or review judgement but you can tell its there 'cos they push it SO hard.

Posted by: Rob Helmerichs

I've had one TiVo since October 2000 and another since about March 2001, with hard drives added to each (in addition to the originals, not replacing them), and I've had no problems.

Posted by: Dan203

I have three TiVos which are all over 2 years old, and they all still work just fine. :)

Dan

Posted by: Rob Helmerichs

quote:
Originally posted by Dan203
I have three TiVos which are all over 2 years old, and they all still work just fine.

So, as you can see from scientific anecdotal evidence collected between 7 and 8 Central, TiVo hard drives never fail! :D

Posted by: kantonburg

I haven't done it yet but isn't it fairly easy just to pop a new drive in? I mean I'm sure there are threads all over here that explain how to backup your current config or at least all the necessary files and then get another drive. Am I correct?

Posted by: dgh

quote:
Originally posted by kantonburg
I haven't done it yet but isn't it fairly easy just to pop a new drive in?

That's a good point. The $80 you could spend today on a warrantee will probably buy you a 300 GB replacement drive a few years in the future.

Posted by: Sinnerman

quote:
Originally posted by vman41
For drive longevity, I'd worry about power, vibration, and heat. The operating temperature inside a TiVo does concern me a little.

Actually the inside runs fairly cool. I'd estimate it's about 35C internal ambient. More than acceptable.

Posted by: gregpr

quote:
That's a good point. The $80 you could spend today on a warrantee will probably buy you a 300 GB replacement drive a few years in the future.

True, but Series 2 won't support it....

Posted by: JAB

No TiVo will support a 300GB drive, or did you mean something else?

/jab

Posted by: dgh

quote:
Originally posted by gregpr
True, but Series 2 won't support it....

I was wondering how long that would take. :)

Posted by: MikeCG

quote:
Originally posted by kmccbf
....Extended warranties are a gamble by the store. They are gambling that nothing will go wrong (most likely) or that if something goes wrong you will, like so many people, forget you have an extended warranty after two years.....

Each individual extended warranty is a gamble, but for the seller, EWs are not a gamble and are a very profitable commodity.

This is a post a wrote here some time ago, and rather than rewrite on the same subject, I searched it out:

An extended warranty is like any other insurance. If you can afford to absorb the risk of loss, it is always cheaper for you to take that risk and not buy insurance. We buy auto insurance with a deductible because the cost of first dollar coverage would be prohibitive and we can afford a $250 or $500 or $1000 hit if we have to pay the deductible, but we can't afford a $100,000 or $1,000,000 hit if we are liable for injuring someone. While I have bought them from time to time, an extended warranty is, by definition, a "bad buy." The price of the warranty includes the risk of breakdown (and the cost of repair/ replacement), overhead (i.e, the share of the cost of doing business, including sales commission) and profit. If you can afford to repair/replace your Tivo, why pay overhead and profit as part of the cost of the warranty protection? Why do you think stores push the extended warranty so hard? Because it is a profit center. If the cost of repair/replacement is more than you want to risk having to pay, or if it makes you feel more secure having the warranty, by all means buy it. But understand what you are buying and what you are paying for it.

Posted by: qnx22

Meantime between failure on drive about 5 years ago was 150,000 hours. Not sure what the new specs are on the latest stuff.

Posted by: Brad Bishop

quote:
Originally posted by Timber
My father-in-law gave me good advice. He said that insurance is for things you can't afford to replace. Its a gamble (that is a high-markup item for the retailer) and Best Buy judges their employees on how many they sell, I don't know if its money or review judgement but you can tell its there 'cos they push it SO hard.

That's a pretty good way to sum up insurance. Unfortunately it is used for everyday items by many people today.

If I feel as though I need to buy an extended warranty on the item because of workmanship then I figure than it wasn't a very good item to start out with and I just shouldn't buy it. Each company that sells me a product has their shot to impress me and convince me to buy other products from them. If their product goes south (far too soon) and they don't take care of it in a reasonable way, then I just go somewhere else next time.

Brad

Posted by: Agent86

When I sat down and though about it, the only part in real danger on my Series2 AT&T unit is the hard drive.

Chips/Motherboards tend to be bad out of the gate or good forever (or as long as I'd ever want this model TiVo).

The modem could possibly go, but I use the Ethernet now.

The USB could go, but the TiVo and network switch are well surge supressed. The supressor carries a "equipment replacement" warranty (APC - the best).

The fan is a $10 thing. It could go, and I could replace it easily and without fanfare.

That leaves the hard disks. They could, indeed, blow out. That could render the TiVo worthless.

So, when I got mine, I popped it open and backed up the hard drive after testing all the other components.

Now I can re-image a new disk, pop it in, and keep going if/when the drives in there die.

Easily the best way to make your "Lifetime" subscription last a lifetime, and I didn't need any warranties besides the 90 day one I get from TiVo.

- Agent 86

Posted by: Otto

The hard drive will last *longer* because it never spins down, assuming of course, it lasts a month or two.

Mortality on hard drives is usually in infancy or very old age.

Posted by: mishagray

quote:
Originally posted by dgh

I was wondering how long that would take. :)

Aha! But in a few years the latest Tivo software WILL support the larger drives! (Since we are speculating anyways...).

Posted by: feldon23

quote:
JAB said:

This is not entirely correct. While TiVo will not refund your Lifetime Service if your unit breaks, they will transfer it to another TiVo if the other TiVo is supplied to you under an authorized repair program.

Which costs more ($129) than fixing the TiVo yourself.

In other words, coughing up $129 and going through the Sony/Philips replace/refurbish nightmare (2-3 months to get a DIFFERENT TiVo back with a high probability of failure) to protect $250.

Posted by: GatorDeb

That's why just get the 4-year BB warranty for $80 and don't have any out-of-pocket expenses for 4 years :D (it is renewable btw).

Posted by: mishagray

There are also certain members of the internet that will purchase a broken Tivo with an active Lifetime membership. Series 1 tivo's can be fully "revived" in many ways!

Posted by: markp99

Series 2 run hotter that 35C...Mine runs at consistent 49C, I've seen tales of poorly vented ones in low-mid 50'sC....and some shut-down msgs...

TiVo disks NEVER spin down...they are always recording (buffer, at least)... Disk wear and tear is a valid concern...and is a very common failure mode described on this forum... Head read/write is the wear factor.

Extrended warr is probably a good idea... I did noy buy into Lifetime Sub, though many argue 18+ months return is assured... I'm not quite on board with that assessment...

Posted by: adavidw

quote:
Originally posted by Agent86
When I sat down and though about it, the only part in real danger on my Series2 AT&T unit is the hard drive.

Don't overlook the possibility of the power supply failing. I've seen three different TiVos have their power supply go south, rendering them useless. I personally think the extended warranty is a bad deal, and a surge suppressor protects against a lot of potential power supply problems, but just wanted to point out that there are other components that could potentially fail.

-Aaron

Posted by: Otto

quote:
Originally posted by markp99
Head read/write is the wear factor.

Yeah, those floating heads doing them wacky magnetic things to the disks without even touching them really cause huge major amounts of wear... ;)

Posted by: adavidw

quote:
Originally posted by Agent86
When I sat down and though about it, the only part in real danger on my Series2 AT&T unit is the hard drive.

Posted by: mmascari

quote:
Originally posted by markp99
Extrended warr is probably a good idea... I did noy buy into Lifetime Sub, though many argue 18+ months return is assured... I'm not quite on board with that assessment...

Aren't these 2 statements at odds with each other? If you recommend insuring the Tivo for 3 years, I would assume you are going to keep it for at least that long, and the Lifetime Sub makes sense. If you go monthly, the argument would be you may not keep it for the entire pay off period (other arguments about up front costs not included), so why insure it for that long? I suppose, you could say the insurance is for between 3 months and 18, but for that time frame, it's way overpriced.

Posted by: markp99

quote:
Originally posted by Otto

Yeah, those floating heads doing them wacky magnetic things to the disks without even touching them really cause huge major amounts of wear... ;)

Aside from keeping the disk spinning (& bearings)...head movement is the primary moving part...so...yes, a wear/tear factor...NO?

Not speaking of physical disk surface wear...:)

Posted by: markp99

quote:
Originally posted by mmascari

Aren't these 2 statements at odds with each other? If you recommend insuring the Tivo for 3 years, I would assume you are going to keep it for at least that long, and the Lifetime Sub makes sense. If you go monthly, the argument would be you may not keep it for the entire pay off period (other arguments about up front costs not included), so why insure it for that long? I suppose, you could say the insurance is for between 3 months and 18, but for that time frame, it's way overpriced.

Probably at odds...but, I did not buy an extend warrantee (was not an option from TiVo when I bought)...and I have voided anyway with my upgrade... I guess I was thinking my TiVo will be dead/replaced in ~24 months...just like my computers...

Posted by: Rob Helmerichs

quote:
Originally posted by Otto
Yeah, those floating heads doing them wacky magnetic things to the disks without even touching them really cause huge major amounts of wear...

I knew this is how it worked, but never thought about one thing.

What's that crunching noise?!?

Posted by: markp99

Solenoid...push/pull, or linear motor...
http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/hard-disk11.jpg

Posted by: steuert

In addition to being a sucker deal financially, BB extended warranties don't always provide the service you expect, i.e., a prompt over-the-counter replacement of your broken unit.

There have been several recent posts to the Forum from DTiVo owners who wanted to take advantage of their extended warranties. Since DTiVo's are out of stock at every BB and are relatively costly on the open market, and evidently it is too expensive or troublesome for BB to have the unit repaired, BB offered a refund of the cost of the DTiVo + warranty, as permittted by the fine print. This amounts to about 1/2 the cost of a new DTiVo today, not to mention the hassle you will go through to locate and buy the unit, or the loss involved if you have a lifetime TiVo subscription linked to your old box.

You can have any TiVo repaired by the factory for around $150 (less within the first year). As posted above, it does not make good economic sense to pay $80 for insurance against an expense of this size. Would you pay $15,000 for similar coverage for a $30,000 car?

Posted by: TheSimpsons

Best Buy people are idiots. There isn't any doubt about it, so keep that in mind when they tell you anything. Then you also have to realize that they are trying to sell you on the warranty, so they obvioulsy have to give you a reason as to why you should get it. They always tell you the worst possible thing that could happen to a product. I remember when I got my PocketPC, the guy gave me literally 8 or 9 "what ifs". What if you drop it, what if this...blah, blah, blah. They're trying to sell you on this so they are going to tell you stuff like this.

-The Simpsons :) :D :cool: :eek: :p

Posted by: Sinnerman

quote:
Originally posted by markp99
Series 2 run hotter that 35C...Mine runs at consistent 49C, I've seen tales of poorly vented ones in low-mid 50'sC....and some shut-down msgs...

Actually that's just hot spot tempuerature, which is most likely the main CPU/processor. SO that's internal or near field temp. The HDDs see much less than that.

Think of a desktop CPU, just because it reports an internal temperature of 50C, doesn't mean that the rest of the box sees that. In act, my Athlon runs at ~45C with ambient case temp at 27C.

Posted by: markp99

Agreed on spot temp. None of my other "consumer electronic devices" run so hot, however. My TiVo is actually HOT to the the touch...

My 2 GHz PC may run hotter (spot) but is better vented in a larger cavity. I think TiVo cavity pretty small, especially with 2 drives...my guess is nearly ALL devices, including disks will see very close to max SPOT temp.

Posted by: Sinnerman

I doubt that, but then I have no proof or seen otherwise. However, the general priniciple of cooler is better works well.

My DTiVo ran at about 47C stock. With the addition of a second HDD (80GB 7200rpm) that rose to 52C. So, using simple math that means the new HDD contributed 5C to overall ambient temp.

Posted by: Agent86

I have 2 120GB HDs in my Series2 AT&T TiVo, and my temp never moves from 50C. The room could be 80 degrees - and has been - and the TiVo stays at 50C.

With one additional drive, which is the config I ran in since day one, it was 47C. Adding another drive to mine added 3C.

Just for kicks, I added some heatsinks and thermal epoxy (Arctic Silver) to some chips in the TiVo while I had it open.

Temperature didn't change at all, but for the $10 it cost me, I think it was worth it.

- Agent 86

Posted by: eison

Once your warranty is up, open up the TiVo, pull the HD, put it in your computer and make a backup (see Hinsdale FAQ), burn the backup to CD (mine is 140 megs), then stick it back in the TiVo and buy a new HD years later when you need it.

My 80 gig expansion drive had trouble after 2 years of continuous TiVo duty, so I put in a 160 (yes, I know I can only use 137). And I'm much happier than if I had brought it back to best buy and got a replacement under a warranty I had paid for years earlier.

Posted by: Otto

quote:
Originally posted by Medieval Guy
I knew this is how it worked, but never thought about one thing.

What's that crunching noise?!?

Depends.. if you mean the normal operation noise, it's the heads moving back and forth. The heads mount on the arm which is hooked to the pivoting thing (real technical I know).. it's basically held to the middle of the disk by a spring. The arm is moved back and forth via a fixed positon magnet near a coil of wire on the other side of the arm. To move the arm, the wire changes charge, which changes the magnetic field, which pops the arm into the right position, pulling against the spring. It's a very fast motion, and the clankish noise is the arm moving very, very rapidly. If the power dies, the spring pulls the arm back to the middle of the disk before it stops spinning, because when it does, the heads are no longer floating above the disk and crash into it. They land in the landing zone, which is dead space on the disk for just that purpose. The heads float above the disk when it's spinning by a cushion of air generated by the spinning of the disk itself.

Errr.. ahh.. here's a link I found from google: http://www.duxcw.com/digest/guides/hd/hd5.htm

Posted by: Sinnerman

quote:
Originally posted by eison
Once your warranty is up, open up the TiVo, pull the HD, put it in your computer and make a backup (see Hinsdale FAQ), burn the backup to CD (mine is 140 megs), then stick it back in the TiVo and buy a new HD years later when you need it.

My 80 gig expansion drive had trouble after 2 years of continuous TiVo duty, so I put in a 160 (yes, I know I can only use 137). And I'm much happier than if I had brought it back to best buy and got a replacement under a warranty I had paid for years earlier.

That's exactly what I did when I upgraded. I followed Hinsdale's FAQ to the letter. And the 140MB A drive image was written to a CD-R. CD-R and a full print out of the FAQ is now filed away in case of a rainy day. ;P

Posted by: pony_boy_rider

My TIVO is two years old and now needs a hard drive replacement. I decided to upgrade w/ a bigger drive.

Posted by: Keatonbdb

quote:
Originally posted by Agent86
I have 2 120GB HDs in my Series2 AT&T TiVo, and my temp never moves from 50C. The room could be 80 degrees - and has been - and the TiVo stays at 50C.

With one additional drive, which is the config I ran in since day one, it was 47C. Adding another drive to mine added 3C.

Just for kicks, I added some heatsinks and thermal epoxy (Arctic Silver) to some chips in the TiVo while I had it open.

Temperature didn't change at all, but for the $10 it cost me, I think it was worth it.

- Agent 86

I'm a little confused. Is the room 80 degrees centigrade or farenheit? If it's farenheit, then it makes sense since that's about 26.7C. However, if it's centigrade then wouldn't that be about 176 degrees farenheit? That's a hot room.

Posted by: dgh

quote:
Originally posted by Keatonbdb
However, if it's centigrade then wouldn't that be about 176 degrees farenheit? That's a hot room.

Not only that, but then his TiVo would then be running at 30 degrees BELOW room temperature. Pretty impressive performance from just a fan, don't you think?

Posted by: kibo

I second what eison said. My TiVo's going on 2 years old, and I've had one drive failure (several months ago). Bought a new drive, restored from backup, continued TiVo'ing. The only pain in the backside is getting your SPs and WLs back to normal.

Posted by: Numanoid

I love it when the BB employees use arguments such as "that hard drive is bound to fail" and "we get these returned all the time" in order to sell the extended warranty. Their logic is flawed.

Next time, respond with the following:
1) You want me to give you $80 because you 'know' that I'll need to take advantage of this warranty due to the constantly spinning drive.
2) When my unit breaks, which you claim it is bound to, you'll have to spend $150 or so to replace or repair it?
3) Since the new hard drive is bound to fail 'from constant use', you'll have to replace it again.
4 - Infinity) And so on.
Seems like you guys would be losing A LOT of money by convincing me to buy the extended warranty."

Posted by: Cward

I paid $69 for a three year warantee for my tivo 30hr series1 at sears.. I got one brand new replacement with bad hard drive, then I could have used it one more time (assuming they carried tivos anymore) to get a third.. But I opted to fix it myself..

Posted by: f0gax

Hi.

I just poked around the Net and found that an older Maxtor drive (7 GB) was rated at 500,000 Hours MTBF.
That's half a million hours between failures. Which comes out to be about 57 years! I did find MTBF numbers in the range of 300k to 1M hours here and there.
I would guess that today's parts are closer to the 1M MTBF (114 years).

Of course, your milage may vary. But on average (the M in MTBF) your drive won't fail.

Of course, there are other reasons to (or not to) purchase extended warranties. I tend to take them on a case by case basis.

--Jeff

Posted by: jroysdon

quote:
Originally posted by GatorDeb
Everything can go bad... or it can stay fine. I bought the $80 warranty because it ended up being $20 a year... and for me $20 a year was more than worth it on a $650 item. It's also renewable.

I usually end up getting extended warranties from Best Buy. I feel they are worth it.

I bought a Handspring Visor about 18 months ago a BB. Bought the 3-year extended warranty. I've crackred the screen twice. Each time, I just bring it in, they swipe my BB credit card to see the purchase, then open a new Visor box, and we swap. I hook the new one up to my laptop and run a sync and the Palm Desktop software restores my data.

I can't recall the exact cost, but I think it was $40. $20 for each cracked screen is worth it, plus I've still got 18 months to go.

I bought a 5-year extended warranty for my drier about a two years ago for $75 at BB. The knob broke a month ago and had to have a service guy come out and replace the switch and knob... knob wasn't covered in the warranty ($10), service visit was covered ($120/hr, he had to make two trips, and billed $240). Still got 3 years to go on that warranty plan, and even if I don't have any more problems I've made out pretty good. Of course, I wish they'd just sell products that didn't break.. but, oh well.

Posted by: 1138

quote:
Originally posted by Otto
If the power dies, the spring pulls the arm back to the middle of the disk before it stops spinning, because when it does, the heads are no longer floating above the disk and crash into it. They land in the landing zone, which is dead space on the disk for just that purpose. The heads float above the disk when it's spinning by a cushion of air generated by the spinning of the disk itself.

Yep. And that's the problem of spinning down the disk and why cycling it up and down is worse than letting it spin. When the head comes to rest in the dead zone, it can pick up junk that's sitting there. Then, when it cycles back up over the platter, it can damage the platter with the picked up junk. The junk physically contacts and damages the platter.

Physical contact with the platter is bad. That's why shaking/jarring a running hard drive is bad. The head hits the platter and damages it.

Now granted, this often doesn't cause instant death, but instead damages sectors of the platter over time until the drive finally gives up the ghost.

When I did testing of SCSI cards creating RAID arrays and stressing them, we had to watch a hard drive do's/dont's video from one of the major brands that also talked about what hurt the drives. And the idea put across was that platter damage was much more likely than the head mechanism giving out. Since it works on a spring system it's fairly durable.

Posted by: avaloncourt

There have been so many threads on the extended warranty question here. It comes down to the fact the many people have had many failures on their Tivos. I bought my T60 at Circuit City and got a 3 year extended warranty because, in my opinion, the hard drive would likely be the first thing to fail. Guess what? It did. After 14 months of use the drive went to crap. Had I been without an extended warranty I would have had to pay for the repair and my Lifetime Subscription would have been a problem because it wasn't a warranty repair.

As it was, I had the extended warranty. I had a replacement from CircuitCity in my hands within 3 days and the Lifetime Subscription transferred without any problems at all.

Posted by: dellis

I agree with f0gax. It is certainly a case-by-case issue. But it does seem economically infeasible for stores like Best Buy to offer "low-cost" insurance if they believed the items were so likely to breakdown.

To paraphrase and agree with eison, it would be only slightly more expensive to "upgrade" my TiVo with a significantly larger hdd that to buy the extended warranty and receive the one I have today.

Posted by: ellinj

Have the modems improved in series 2. That is a sore spot with me on my series 1 since I have had two go on me. Reason enough for me to buy the warranty if I got myself a new Tivo.

Posted by: MikeLaw

There are few subjects with as much BS in the computer business as in hard drive reliability. MTBF figures are often blatent lies and it is impossible to verify claims. Although MTBF figures are typically listed in the hundreds of thousands of hours (usually around 300,000 for IDE drives), drive manufacturers also quote "annualized failure rates" of 1%, meaning 1% of drives fail in a given year. Ask anyone who runs a large data center (we have probably 3,000 drives in our server farm) and they will tell you that drive failures are overwhelmingly the most common failure.

Originally, it was believed that most failures were caused by bearing problems. This confirms Otto's observation of drives lasting either a short time or quite a while. Lubricant failure in the spindle typically occurs in the first 60 days or the bearings wear out slowly over time. Current research suggests that tempurature is the most accurate predictor of drive lifespan. According to IBM's Ultrastar group, every 1C rise in temperature is associated with a 2-3% increase in failure rate and "operating a drive below the recomended temperature can extend drive life". See http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/tech...p/drivetemp.htm for a general discussion of the role temps are believed to play in drive life.

IBM also maintains a pretty exhaustive technical library on HDD issues at: http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/hddlibry.htm

As for the claim that continuously running the drive makes it more likely to wear out, that is pretty much conclusively false. In the early 90s drive manufacturers used to quote MTBF as x many hours or x many on/off cycles. Modern drives have MTBF quotes in total hours (on or off) and if you twist the manufacturer's arm they will usually say that always on is better for the drive. I can tell you that on those rare instances where we have to shut down a storage array, there are always a number of dead drives when we power it back up.

Posted by: krusty

Perhaps an explaination on the meaning of MTBF (mean time between failure) would help some. Obviously they have not tested these drives and found they break down every 100 years. What a MTBF of 500,000 means is this. For every 500,000 hours of time on this model expect one breakdown. So, if there are 500,000 of them in use, one is expected to breakdown every hour.

In actual practice a drive lasts about five years regardless of the MTBF rating.

Posted by: flea

Well, let's do a little simple math.... CAUTION: *wild suppositions to follow*

Let's say that over the course of a year you buy these things from Best Buy (note prices are guesses only for the purpose of illustration):
Tivo: $250 Warranty: $80
TV: $500 Warranty: $120
Computer HD: $120 Warranty: $35
Refridgerator: $1100 Warranty: $200

Okay, so you've paid $435 to cover these items over the course of 4 years. But putting that money away would give you enough money to buy 2 of the 4 "items" above, and almost enough for the TV. The fridge will likely outlive all of those components, and the mfg warranty should cover it in the first year or two at least.

So, it makes little economic sense unless...
a. You just like giving your money away to BB
b. You can't keep track of money like that, but you're sure you can keep track of warranty info.
c. You're rich enough not to need the warranty.

Why not just open a special savings account, and put money into it whenever you get offered an extended warranty. Just match what they want to charge you, and before too long, you'll be able to insure yourself. Unless you're really unlucky. Plus, you'll have "insurance" for medical deductables, financial crunches, and any other type of emergency where you need a couple of hundred bucks right away.

Posted by: Cward

What best buy sells $250 tivos?

I look at it like this. all those other things I would not buy a warantee for.

Tivo.. I have had two fail in two years.. Sorry I just dont think the hardware is as hardy as it should be. This tied in with a 250 lifetime warantee makes the $80 seem like a good deal..

Reminds me of the Radio shack headphone club (as we called it) they sold these $50 headphones with a 3 year warantee for $7 or so.. all you had to do was bring them in and get a new pair, up to once a year.. worked like a charm.

Anyone remember Silo? Was like a best buy.. I used to get these GREAT sony V2 headphones about $75 I think, but if you dropped them onto a hard surface (more than a foot or so) one of the channels would fail.. I ended up getting 4 pairs for $12.95, I was going abck again but they went out of business.

On the other hand, I stupidly got a warantee on a snowblower, as I HATE shoveling snow.. Well of course on the worst day of winter (12+ inches) it stopped working.. they said they would be out in about a week.. Hell of alot of good that does.. Fixed it myself for $8.

My wife got us a dryer with an extended warantee, it failed 4 days out of warantee. I fixed it myself for under $100, new motor and belt. not much more than the cost of the warantee..

So I guess you win some you lose some.