TiVo Community Forums Archives - T-60 is very slow after upgrade

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T-60 is very slow after upgrade
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Posted by: mule714

Is this expected behavior? I upgraded my Sony T-60 and added a 120gb (5200 RPM) as a second drive. The box works fine however, I've noticed extremely slow response, sometimes up to a minutes. Especially, when building the Now Playing list or Selecting a program to record. In addition, normal menu response times seem to get a lot longer.

I've compared it to the other T-60 I own and it's unbelievable faster in comparison.

Otherwise, I'm definitely enjoying having the large amount of recordings and suggestions lists. On the whole, I'm satisfied I did the upgrade, but wondering if something has gone wrong with one of the drives.

thanks!

Posted by: mattdb

Mine is doing the exact same thing. I posted a message about this over a month ago and got no responses.

I have no clue and it can be really annoying.

Posted by: Greenwing

What brand of drives did you use? I will soon do an upgrade on 2 T60s with WD1200AB (5400 rpm) drives...

Posted by: krymaney

I've upgraded my T-60 three different times, because of the menu speed difference.

The trick that worked like a charm for me was when I restored using the -r 4 command....

mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -xzpi /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdb

The -r 4 doubles the block size from the default.

Check out this thread....

It of course means you would have to re-do your upgrade (yuck!) but I thought the speed difference was well worth it!!!

I have the original 40 gig Maxtor and a 120 gig Western Digital...and it behaves as it did with the orignal 40 gig...YMMV

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-v...peed#post710125

Hope this helps!

Posted by: mule714

Thanks for the tip. I've got a similar configuration. I couldn't pass up the 120 GB WD drive when it was on sale at CC for $90 a few months ago.

I don't mind re-doing the upgrade. IIRC, I won't lose my recordings, right? Or do I need to reformat my B drive (120 GB)?

quote:
Originally posted by krymaney
I've upgraded my T-60 three different times, because of the menu speed difference.

The trick that worked like a charm for me was when I restored using the -r 4 command....

mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -xzpi /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdb

The -r 4 doubles the block size from the default.

Check out this thread....

It of course means you would have to re-do your upgrade (yuck!) but I thought the speed difference was well worth it!!!

I have the original 40 gig Maxtor and a 120 gig Western Digital...and it behaves as it did with the orignal 40 gig...YMMV

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-v...peed#post710125

Hope this helps!

Posted by: krymaney

You don't need to re-format your hard driver per se cause the restore will just ignore what is on the drive....BUT...you WILL lose your recordings....

I may be wrong, but I don't think there is a way to increase your block size (-r 4) without mfsrestoring from your backup...

You just need to pop the drives back into the puter and use the command I put in my other post...(of course that assumes that you followed Hindsdale's instructions exactly (with regard to drive placement)

So, you remount your DOS drive.....then MFSRestore....

Posted by: krymaney

One other thing, you might just make the 120gb the Master drive...and expand using the original Tivo drive....

Robert S suggests that you run the 120gb alone for a few weeks to make sure it is not a bad drive...

(My Western Digital died after only 3 weeks!)

Then it's REAL easy to run MFSADD to marry the two drives and expand..

Still leaves you with 105 hours...:)

Posted by: CRego3D

I simply added a 120GB (7200rpm) as the B: drive (so, there was no "restore" needed .. just made it so A; coudl see b: ) .. but I experience a slowdown compared to the single 40gb previously .. any tips on this ?

Posted by: Greenwing

quote:
Originally posted by krymaney
The trick that worked like a charm for me was when I restored using the -r 4 command....

mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -xzpi /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdb

The -r 4 doubles the block size from the default.

Why isn't this documented in the hinsdale procedures...It doesn't mention the -r 4 option nor using -xzpi ???

Posted by: krymaney

All I know is that it's a new feature built into MFS Tools 2.0...and not many people explored the option when MFS 2.0 came out.

Everyone was trying to fix the swap drive problem (BIG PROBLEM!)

It IS documented on the MSF 2.0 Tools disk, but it just recommends you keep it at it's default of -r 2.

Posted by: bkzoller

Thanks for the information! I started my first Tivo upgrade last night on a Sony T-60. I copied my original drive to a new larger drive, which was successful. Both drives are still hooked up to the computer, because I was going to install the new drive in the Tivo tonight. Instead, this would be a perfect time to re-copy the original drive with the "-r 4" option. I'm really glad I checked this forum again today. :)

Posted by: hinsdale

quote:
Originally posted by Greenwing
Why isn't this documented in the hinsdale procedures...It doesn't mention the -r 4 option nor using -xzpi ???

-xzpi is documented clearly in the How-To and -r 2 (increased block size) is default for Mfs tools 2.0 restore so does not need to be specified.

In my experience, using -r 2 restored to one TiVo has the same menu lag times after upgrade as an identical TiVo restored with -r 4.

In fact, My other 230hr DirecTiVo, completely full now, has approximately the same menu delay times after restoring using the Mfs Tools 2.0 larger block size (specified -r 4) than it had previously under the DTiVoMad/BlessTiVo expansion (with no block size increase at all). I wish I had not completely overwritten all of my recordings (granted - nothing important) to re-do the upgrade to test reports of increased speed due to block size. It has been my experience that block size has little if any impact and that the occassional slowdowns are a factor of greatly expanded capacity, Now Showing lists, season passes, background activity (more suggestions, season passes, means more conflict resolution, indexing) - in relation to limited RAM and tiny processor.

I have not found, nor have I been able to reproduce, any evidence that the increased block size (-r 2, -r 3, or -r 4 ) offers any improvement in speed. I would welcome a test to demonstrate the differences in perfomance though. Until then, I have to assume it's the power of suggestion that effects the anecdotal reports of increased speed.

Posted by: mule714

Thanks for your input hinsdale. I originally suspected it to be a memory/CPU problem. Or a bad HDD. Not really knowing much about how Tivo really works, however, it still left me guessing.

Most certainly I can tell that when the Tivo is busy recording on two channels at the same time, response times are extra slow. Especially, when trying to delete a program or setup a recording, wishlist, etc. However, it does comfort me a bit to know that I'm not alone with this problem.

For now, I guess I'll live with the degraded performance.

Posted by: bkzoller

My T-60 upgrade was successful with the "-r 4" option. I have fortunately observed faster menu speeds after upgrading. My new disk is not full, maybe 35 entries in Now Playing, and it displays in a couple seconds. Others have suggested that a large full disk is a contributing factor. On my upgraded machine, however, other menus appear to be faster. I am specifically talking about the ones under Messages & Setup.

I wonder if there could be performance differences in different drive models that might be causing the slowdowns. I replaced my original 40 GB drive with a 180 GB Western Digital "JB" drive which has the 8 MB buffer. Maybe that large buffer causes it to perform better with the larger block size. I never used it with the "-r 2" option, so I don't have a comparison. Also, I am only using one hard drive, and possibly the Tivo performs slower when using two hard drives that are not identical in performance.

The other thing to consider is whether there is a difference in behavior of the Tivo when making a copy of a drive that has already been copied. Maybe those that are experiencing slowdowns copied their 40 GB drive to an 80 GB drive, and then they copied the 80 GB drive to a 120 GB. If that was done, what tool was used to copy the drive from the 40 GB drive to the 80 GB one? Would the performance be better after copying an image from the original drive using the latest tools?

I don't know the answer to the problem, and there are lots of potential causes to consider. Maybe someone else could think of something that I have left out.