Does having Tivo Suggestions enabled shorten Hard Disk life?

[mikedmeyer]

Like the title asks, do you think having Tivo Suggestions enabled shortens the life of the hard drive? My S3 has failed 3 times, all hard drive failures. The average lifespan has been less than a year, and as short as 3 months in one case. That seems like more than just bad luck. Should I turn suggestions off?

TIA,
Mike

p.s. I searched for a similar thread/question and was surprised not to find any. My apologies if I'm asking an old question; a redirect to the relevant thread would be appreciated.

[MikeMar]

It's ALWAYS recording no matter if it's a show for you or just the buffer

[richsadams]

Mike's right, TiVo is recording the buffer 24/7 and then of course any scheduled programming plus any broadband downloads as well as TiVo's own communications with the Mother Ship...so it's never idle.

I suppose an argument could be made that if it were only recording the buffer, and the buffer were only recording SD programming and the programmed recordings were SD (as opposed to HD) as well, that the I/O data writing stress on a drive would be less and perhaps the drive might last longer. But canceling suggestions probably wouldn't make a lot of difference in the long run IMHO.

Three hard drives and less than a year for each is a string of bad luck and not normal though. Most hard drive failures (besides just plain old, worn out equipment) are caused by things other than the workload however including heat, vibration, static electricity and power surges.

Is your TiVo well ventilated? You can check drive temps on the Account Information screen. 42 to 49 C seems to be the norm here. Anything hotter could shorten the lifespan.

You probably don't have to worry about vibration or static electricity, but having TiVo on a UPS at minimum or a power conditioner is strongly recommended, especially if you're in an area that experiences power fluctuations of any sort on a regular basis.

"Head crash", when the read/write heads touch the platter, can also cause hard drive failure. When moving your TiVo it should always be unplugged for at least 10 to 15 seconds to allow the drive to spin down and the heads to park.

Usually a hard drive will give notice before it fails completely...freeze up's, slow response, video and/or audio problems. (Of course there are other causes for the same problems.) Often times they will get noisy. If odd noises start showing up...create a back up quickly and get ready to replace the drive. Here's a web site that has sample sounds failing hard drives can make:

Failing Hard Drive Sounds (http://datacent.com/hard_drive_sounds.php) (It's kind of fun to listen to the various and horrendous sounds hard drives can emit. Caution, cringing zone!)

Hope your current drive lasts many more years!

[westside_guy]

I turn suggestions off simply because I'm not interested in MORE TV :D - but I agree with the others here, it shouldn't matter.

My Series 2 units both lasted 4 years. One is still going; the other was obsoleted by our Tivo HD.

I suppose there's one open question though - are these "stock" Tivo drives, or did you upgrade the drive yourself? I know it's common (on this forum anyway) to upgrade your Tivo's hard drive; but I would suspect not every HD is equally capable of 24/7/365 operation.

[sinanju]

Also, keep a clean house. I swapped my sister's S2 out for a S2DT. She had it sitting in a rec room that doesn't see a vacuum as often as it should. I opened it up and it looked like the innards was covered with snow. Dust blocks airflow and retains heat.

[ciper]

On a somewhat related topic - I had an S1 that I was using to archive only a few shows. I setup a repeating recording on a channel I didn't receive so that overnight it would switch to this channel and reduce load on the CPU and hard drive. It helped when I was migrating the videos to my computer.