Do the drives spin on an unsubbed receiver?

[newsposter]

T60 currently sits at the screen where you have the orange (trying to acquire, go to live tv) screen. When I want to watch some old stuff or burn a dvd, i just go to the list and everything is fine.

But I was just wondering if the drives are spinning since there is no satellite hooked up to it?

I wont unplug the unit because last time i did (for 2 weeks), i had a problem upon restart

[maharg18]

Yes the drives continue to spin, but obviously nothing is being written to them.

[BillyBob_jcv]

Unless there is some sort of power mgmt controlling the drive, an IDE drive spins as long as power is applied.

[newsposter]

gotcha...so why do some people care about tuning to channels they dont receive to 'stop' the hard drives? It is just to stop them from writing and that's where the wear takes place? The writing?

[rminsk]

gotcha...so why do some people care about tuning to channels they dont receive to 'stop' the hard drives? It is just to stop them from writing and that's where the wear takes place? The writing?There are two different things. Putting your DirecTiVo in stand-by causes the TiVo to stop the 30 miniute buffer on the channels. This causes less disks writes which may cause less wear and tear on the drives. The second thing is tuning to channels you do not receive. This is useful when you are manipulating season passes and such. This causes less video writes to the drive (highest priority writes) and allows the TiVo to access the database on the drive faster.