Does the Seagate 500GB ST3500841A hard drive cause stuttering?

[killme]

I bought two of the Seagate 500GB ST3500841A drives at Outpost. I have two TiVo DT units. I put one hard drive into each DT unit. I experience an occasional stutter every few minutes to 30 minutes on both DT units. I exchanged the 500GB drives for new ones and the problem still happens.

I put the original drives back into each unit and the stutter problem hasn't happened since. I think the problem is with the hard drives and I'm wondering if anyone else had these problems or if someone had success with these drives? I liked having 500GB and would like to get rid of these for some that are known to work.

[HomeUser]

My theory is the modern hard drives data is so tightly packed that errors are considered normal (see the SpinRite videos at http://grc.com). In the Hard drive there is an internal recovery routine that attempts to correct these read errors if the error is not corrected a re-read is issued. This read correct cycle happens many many times before the drive logic gives up and returns the error to the drive controller now the Operating System can decide wether or not to accept the corrupted data or issues a re-read. While all this is happing the data buffer is being emptied if the data or an error has not been returned to the OS there is a momentary freeze or chunk of missing data in the display. I think that this is the difference between the PC drives and the QuickView drives. The QuickView drives have its internal re-read set to a smaller number so the error can be returned to the OS quicker now the OS can decide what to do. A missing pixel in the video probably will not be noticed by the viewer where a pause or large chunk of missing pixels is very noticeable.

If I were you I would run the drive diagnostics on the drives monitoring the SMART values for the number of correctable and uncorrectable attempts.

[killme]

I ran the Seagate diagnostics on each drive and they all returned no errors.

[killme]

I'd still like to know of a 500GB drive that works as I'll get those to replace the ones I have now. I can use the ones I have now for my PC's.

[BobCamp1]

My theory is the modern hard drives data is so tightly packed that errors are considered normal ..... [snip]



Yes, but that's not his problem.

It could also be the hard drive is drawing too much power. The Tivo's power supply is puny compared to a PCs. Or there's an incompatiblity issue with the HD using the ATA66 or ATA 100 interface. Either way, it doesn't work, and he's right to ask people if there's a 500 GB drive known to work with a Tivo.

Unfortunately, I don't know of one myself, as I use smaller HDs for my upgrades.
:(

[blindlemon]

FWIW I've sold a number of these 500gb drives preconfigured for use in a UK (Series 1) TiVo and nobody has yet complained about stuttering.

I did some extended testing on these 500gb drives when I first received them and discovered that you can't use two at once in a Series 1 TiVo due to PSU insufficiency issues as they do suck a lot of power at startup. However, it could be that your PSU is slightly out of tolerance and would benefit from replacement. S1 PSUs are cheap as chips too :)