Late night disk access is driving us NUTS!

[DaveHigh]

Hello Tivo'ers,

Has anyone else been driven nuts after the latest update with whatever the TiVo update did to the box? Let me explain -

We have had a Series 2 in our bedroom since 2006 when our daughter was born. We love it. After the very last service update every morning at about 2:00 a.m. PST the hard drive starts doing something. It isnt writing (recording) but it seems to be doing defrag or cleanup or something. Lots of random access "klunk, klunk, p-klunk" type noises. Very light, but enough to wake us both up. Happens every single night now, and it never happened up to about two weeks ago. Not sure exactly when as we had a humidifyer running for a week due to a sick kid sleeping with us but when we turned it off and got the "you have a new update" message... that is when it started

Does anyone have knowledge of TiVo "cleanup" or batch type processes it does in the middle of the night and/or is there a way to manually postpone things like that till daytime? I end up climbing out of bed at 2:00 a.m. (after my wifes shows have recorded) and pulling the power plug.

I am open to suggestions, and before you blame the HD - it is a brand new one that I put in two months ago and it was completely silent until the last update.

Thanks,

dave

[phox_mulder]

2am is when it usually records the "teleworld infomercial" and arranges the showcase content.

Is the record light on when you are hearing the noise, or is it on before you hear the noises.

I have had 3 TiVo's or other DVR's in my bedroom forever and have never been bothered by the noise.
OK, maybe my original Series 2 TiVo was kinda noisy in the middle of the night, but all the others have been quite quiet.

I have upgraded most of them with quieter drives, so that might be playing a part.
Maybe your new drive isn't the quietest?


phox

[tiassa]

Alternatively (if you haven't changed the hard drive and this just started happening), maybe your Hard drive is beginning to go south. The noises could be caused by trying (and failing) to do a write to a certain part of the drive.

[DaveHigh]

Thanks for the replies.

The record light is NOT on during this (at least not last night) and the drive that I bought I chose specifically for being quiet knowing it was going in the bedroom. Up until the last update it has been fine. We never heard the thing as compared to the stock drive that sounded like a jet taking off (high pitch whine).

Is there anyway (even a hack or something) to tell it not to do the showcase stuff till later in the day? My current plan, if there isnt, is to put the TiVo on a timer and kill it at 1:59 and start it back up at 6:00. I am tired of getting out of bed to do it manually. I may miss a TiVo Suggestion recording or two but at least I get to sleep.

Thanks again,

dave

[MichaelK]

along what tiassa said-

tivo has 2 sets of partitions for the OS type stuff. Set a and set b for clarity.

when you buy the box the software is installed on set A and it uses that- set B is untouched. At the next update the box downloads the update and installs it to set B- then uses set B while the set A partitions go untouched. Then the next update it switches from B to A and so on and son on....

So the new software update uses a section of the drive that hasn't been used in a while.

So it could be that part of the drive is going bad. CLunks as opposed to normal head seek clicking might indicate that the drive is having fits on that sector.

I honestly can't think of anything that happens at anytime regularly each day on the tivo. The downloads get staggered so they are not every 24hrs. I think the indexing and cleanup depend on the downloads so they are different times each day. Teleworld recordings are not typically daily and frequently are different times (whatever time discovery networks or pax is selling for cheap that day). So the fact that it's regular is a bid odd.

Maybe it's always noisier now but you dont notic it till the dead of night? (I'm stretching I know).

if you feel like diggin more you could buy spinright and test the drive in your PC and either eliminate that or confirm it.

[rainwater]

The record light is NOT on during this (at least not last night) and the drive that I bought I chose specifically for being quiet knowing it was going in the bedroom.

Did you change the AAM setting so it runs at it's quietest level?

[ZeoTiVo]

2am is when it usually records the "teleworld infomercial" and arranges the showcase content.

noy usually.

2am is the time it tries and applies updates if they come through. has the update fully applied for the original poster? It sounds like something did not work as it should and I would think thta in this case that points indeed to a hard drive going bad on the a or b OS sector that the TiVo just switched too.

[DaveHigh]

Lets see... I didnt change the AAM setttings on the drive... I just plugged it in.

I just received another update message when I turned on the TiVo this morning (well, turned on the TV I should say) so it looks like there was something downloading and getting installed last night. Maybe tonight will be better. If this only happens every month or two I can probably live with it. If not, well... not sure what the next step is. Maybe putting the TiVo in a cabinet and using RF to change the channels.... or sleeping pills!

Thanks again for the suggestions. I really dont think it is the hard drive. It is a brand new ... er... I think Maxtor 500GB. Whoever Seagate bought a year ago. I just know from when I install something on my computer that there is a lot of random access disk reads and writes generated that sound very similar to what I am hearing at 2:00 in the morning, so it seemed that it was an update or a defrag running. Would be nice if there was a way to tell TiVo not to do that sort of thing at night.

Cheers,

dave

[rainwater]

Lets see... I didnt change the AAM setttings on the drive... I just plugged it in.


If your drive supports AAM, you should pull it and set it to its lowest acoustic level. You can do that by burning the Hitachi Feature Tool to disk and hooking the drive up to your PC. It doesn't affect anything on the drive by using the tool but does make it quieter.

[greg_burns]

If you check the System Information screen does it say pending restart? Does it still say it after rebooting? If so, then it is probably doing something with a corrupted update every night possibly.

[wscannell]

Seagate drives do not support AAM. The most recent Maxtor drives are just Seagates and do not support AAM.

[SpiritualPoet]

Suggestions:

1. Install the TiVo behind a glass door in an a/v cabinet as a sound dampner.

2. If the machine is in a bedroom, purchase a "white noise" machine (it makes the sound of "rain" or a "waterfall" and once you get used to that noise it will provide a peaceful sleep and drown / mask out the sound the TiVo machine makes). [I know because I use such a machine and it works wonders to drown out traffic noise].

[gastrof]

Alternatively (if you haven't changed the hard drive and this just started happening), maybe your Hard drive is beginning to go south. The noises could be caused by trying (and failing) to do a write to a certain part of the drive.


At the end of his post, Dave said
"...before you blame the HD - it is a brand new one that I put in two months ago and it was completely silent until the last update."

Did you read the entire post?

[gastrof]

Suggestions:

1. Install the TiVo behind a glass door in an a/v cabinet as a sound dampner.

2. If the machine is in a bedroom, purchase a "white noise" machine (it makes the sound of "rain" or a "waterfall" and once you get used to that noise it will provide a peaceful sleep and drown / mask out the sound the TiVo machine makes). [I know because I use such a machine and it works wonders to drown out traffic noise].

The OP said the problem with noise has only manifested recently. This suggests putting it behind a door wouldn't be the answer (nor would spending money on a noise machine), but rather finding out what's suddenly causing the noise would be.

[MichaelK]

noy usually.

2am is the time it tries and applies updates if they come through. has the update fully applied for the original poster? It sounds like something did not work as it should and I would think thta in this case that points indeed to a hard drive going bad on the a or b OS sector that the TiVo just switched too.


that's a good thought- 2 am is the upgrades and sometimes the database gets rebuilt with newer versions.

maybe it's trying to update everynight but choking and not completeing so the next night it tries again and starts trying to convert the database again....

are you on the newest version already? (have to look around here what the people with the fall update say they are getting)

[David_NC]

If this is happening every night, it sounds like a failing software update. Check the software version, and see if it is "pending reboot" every night. I would suspect either a bad hard drive, or the software you put on the drive when you installed it was from a different model Tivo.

A 2 month old hard drive can go bad. I've had a couple of hard drives that didn't last 6 months in my computer, and they weren't running 24/7 like the one in a Tivo.

[rainwater]

Every time the TiVo does its daily connection it starts indexing the new data so it isn't uncommon for this to happen every night regardless of it getting a software update or not. In fact there should be less disk activity for a software update other than the first few minutes after the reboot.

[MichaelK]

but daily connections are not every 24hrs at 2am.

they vary.

the count down clock starts from when the last one finished if I recall, and i dont think they are using 24 hrs anymore- i think they are something like 30 ish hrs between at this point (but admit i haven't looked in a long while)