Help: Dying device/noise concern

Most likely, it is the hard drive going bad and its readily replaced. You would need an image since the old drive image may not be usable/salvageable.

 

You can do it yourself and cheaper. Just get a WD Red drive (up to 8TB) and an image from @ggieseke, expand with MFSTools 3.2.

 

If money isn't a concern and noise is, maybe consider using an SSD.

 

The fans in my three basic Roamio units are silent. My basic Premiere is almost silent.

 

HDs are typically the noisiest part in TiVos. Fans are quiet unless going bad. Do your research on a quiet HD that is quiet and works in a TiVo.

 

And remember the HD is always on and writing in a TiVo.

 

Ditto for my Roamio basic. Even on rare occasions when my ears are within a foot or so of it I hear nothing.

 

It's interesting, since so many SMR drives out there now, and so many different "types" of drives I've done a bit of reading. In a NAS group one person says it is not good to use a NAS drive as a standalone drive for any purpose. Because NAS firmware assumes there are other drives available so will "give up" earlier on a tough read or write. No idea if that is true but kind of makes sense. I miss the "old days" of hard drives, everything was PMR, maybe a regular drive and an enterprise type drive, that was it. Now PMR/SMR, desktop, archive, NAS, video etc etc.

 

Well if your S4 is a two tuner model and you don't want to try to replace the drive yourself with image it might be cheaper to just buy another S4. Can get them used with lifetime for $150-200. Bit more for 4 tuner models and/or larger drives. Not sure what they charge for a drive replacement but I doubt it is cheap, even for an S4 drive. Of course buying used does include the chance that the drive in THAT one may be old................