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Argh! Stopples
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Posted by: highwire

I have a Philips 212 that was upgraded to 120 hours last year, and then to 193 hours in June with two Maxtor 80Gb drives.

It has worked flawlessly until Saturday morning when it started macro-blocking and freezing frequently (several times a minute).

Here's what I've tried:
1) Restarting (numerous times). No change.
2) Clearing and deleting everything, and re-running guided setup. No change.
3) I put my original 22Gb drive back in (with version 1.3 of the software) and the problem almost disappeared - I only saw macroblocking once in the three hours I had it set up this way.
4) I ran powermax on both 80Gb drives. One reported an error but it was successfully fixed by powermax. I low-level formatted both drives and re-imaged the 80Gb + 80Gb configuration from my original version 3.0 backup (actually, I switched drives - A is now B and B is now A). After making the daily call and re-building the guide info, macroblocking and freezing are occuring 2 or 3 times an hour.

What the heck is going are darnit!? I'm out of ideas... any help is appreciated...

Posted by: Robert S

Is the temperature OK?

Posted by: Robert S

Also, I think it's a bad idea to try and debug a TiVo with a ?hard drive fault in to two-drive configuration. You really ought to go back to a single drive system.

Ideally put an A drive image on both drives and see if the behaviour is different between the two drives.

TiVo seems to be a lot less forgiving than PowerMax when it comes to drives with problems. I don't think this is a bad block issue - this seems to be the more common failure mode where drives progressively take longer and longer to deliver the data.

Posted by: highwire

quote:
Originally posted by Robert S
Is the temperature OK?

Temperature is fine - 32 to 34 degrees C.

If the problem continues, I may try to use the 80Gg that tested OK with Powermax, and try it in a one-drive configuration and see if that helps.

Posted by: korn316

Everytime I'm about to upgrade my tivo I read something like this and stop. I look at upgrading and just see things like this and think of losing 600 dollars from a broken tivo. Anyone else like me or does everyone upgrade?

Posted by: highwire

A followup on this annoying problem. I have two Maxtors: a 6L080J4 - ATA/133 80Gb, and a 4K080H4 - ATA/100 80Gb. The 6L080J4 is the newer drive (only about 2 months old). When the stopples started, I ran PowerMax on both drives and the 4K had no errors but the 6L had some that were, presumably, corrected by PowerMax.

Anytime both drives are in the TiVo, I get stopples. It doesn't matter if the 6L is the A or B drive. A low-level format and re-image did not help. Running the TiVo with either drive by themselves works fine. Weird.

I'm going to exchange the new drive (since it's really noisy anyway) and hope that the replacement works with the other.

This is getting old. Fast. I just want the thing to work.

Posted by: David5150

2 drives = twice the chance that one of them will fail. I have not upgraded my TiVo yet, but when I do I will replace the drive that is in my TiVo now with another one. Then when the upgraded drive fails, I can use the original drive.

Failed logic?

Posted by: Robert S

Sounds good to me David, but do take an MFS Tools backup as well as shelving your old drive.

(Use MFS Tools 2.0 as described in New Hinsdale).

Posted by: highwire

Latest update. I exchanged the Maxtor 80Gb (a 6L080J4) for a Western Digital WD800BB - an ATA 100 80Gb 7200rpm.

I backed up image from my (working) 80Gb (which I have been using by itself for the past few days) and restored it to the Maxtor (A drive) and the WD (B drive).

No stopples!! It must have been the Maxtor 6L! This is one instance where a bad drive causes stopples irrespective of it being the A or B drive.

I'm just glad it's working again.

P.S. The WD drive is a lot quiter than the Maxtor.

Posted by: Antebios

That's GREAT! Now I feel better about upgrading my Tivo by replacing my HD this weekend. I'll let everyone know how it goes.

Please pray that everything goes as planned.

Posted by: Dancar

quote:
Originally posted by korn316
Everytime I'm about to upgrade my tivo I read something like this and stop. I look at upgrading and just see things like this and think of losing 600 dollars from a broken tivo. Anyone else like me or does everyone upgrade?

Korn:

Good question. Even reading the coffee house forum I get the impression that everyone else has two hard drive upgraded systems with hundreds of hours of recording time. But I can't imagine the average guy & his wife at Best Buy - even the ones with computers at home - messing around with moving hard drives & linux commands.

I guess its just that this forum attracts people who like to tinker with their computers & electronic gizmos, and they would keep every Star Trek episode ever made on their TiVos for immediate viewing if they could.

My advice is that if you're not getting "stopples" or freezes, and you're not bumping against your recording capacity, then don't upgrade. Last night's The West Wing isn't going to look any better on a 300 hour TiVo than it does on a 30 hour TiVo. A big factor in my decision to upgrade was that Circuit City no longer stocked TiVos, so using my extended service plan to fix the freezing problem would have ment at least 10-14 days with no TiVo, which was unacceptable to us.

Dan

Posted by: csuich

I upgraded my 3 year old HDR112 to a WD1000BBRTL, 100GB 7200RPM, 1 year ago an I regularly get stopples. It does NOT get progesssively worse.
Reading several of these posts would imply I have a bad drive. What is it about the drive that is bad you think is bad?

I have a friend who upgraded the same type box and same new drive and his is fine.

I often wonder if it is related to satellite feed dropping out momentarily or "big pixels" to the point that the video stream has too much "damage" too compress...

Any thoughts?

Chris

Posted by: Antebios

Of course the average Joe Schmoe isn't going to mess with transfering hard drives and linux commands, just as I know nothing about HAM radios. This is a hobby, where we get obsessed about gizmos. It's usually men who have these obsessions and I wouldn't have it any other way!

Posted by: Robert S

Chris, if a disk is failing you'll either see

bad blocks, which will cause severe picture break-up at a fixed point in a recording and will appear in a new recording if that recording is deleted.

or

a sort of slow-down where the drive just can't deliver the data fast enough. This is a continuous thing, but it may be worse on Best than it is on Basic and you should find that the recordings are OK - if you rewind the stutter will be somewhere else.

Very occasional, irregular picture break up suggests a source problem and I would expect the slow-down problem to get worse quite quickly (usually people report their failure happened over a few weeks), so again your symptoms don't look like a drive problem.

If you still have the original A drive you could try running with that again.