Oldest upgrade TiVo hard drive ...

1466 Views 16 Replies 8 Participants Last post by chimaera, Sep 30, 2007

tenwiseman

Discussion Starter · Sep 26, 2007

Make & model please & date installed ;-)

From the bash prompt you can type the following for info.

hdparm -i /dev/hda
hdparm -i /dev/hdb

Must be in current operation 24/7. You have my offer of a virtual block of wood to 'touch' while making your admission that it's still in running order.

Me?

2 off Samsung 120GB SV1204H 5400RPM born/installed June 2003

1 - 17 of 17 Posts

AMc

· #2 · Sep 26, 2007

/dev/hda:
Model=SAMSUNG SV1204H,
/dev/hdb:
Model=QUANTUM FIREBALLlct15 30

I added my original 'A' back as 'B' when I did my 120GB upgrade as I figured it was worth the risk having just paid slightly under £100 for 120GB. Must have been 2003 but I don't he receipt anymore

The orginal drive came from a warranty swap out a month after I got my first Tivo from Mr Tonks about a week after I registered here in March 2002.

Pete77

· #3 · Sep 26, 2007

Why are the oldest original Quantim 30Gb and 15Gb drives still in operation without ever having been changed apparently excluded from this contest?

katman

· #4 · Sep 26, 2007

Pete77 said:
Why are the oldest original Quantim 30Gb and 15Gb drives still in operation without ever having been changed apparently excluded from this contest?

Im guessing that it might be to do with the word UPGRADE in the title of the thread

Pete77

· #5 · Sep 26, 2007

katman said:
Im guessing that it might be to do with the word UPGRADE in the title of the thread

But surely the real object is to find out how long drives can last in a Tivo.

Therefore any surviving Quantums that are now 7 years old ought to also be documented.

tenwiseman

Discussion Starter · #6 · Sep 26, 2007

Pete77 said:
But surely the real object is to find out how long drives can last in a Tivo.

Therefore any surviving Quantums that are now 7 years old ought to also be documented.

Fair point Pete ;-)

Any original Quantum's that have made it this far for that length of time have special entry to the contest as well. No Blue Peter badges for winners though ;-)

BTW Reason for my interest is the original bickering that went on years ago elsewhere on this board (or the other place, I forget) when folks were upgrading and getting some stern info (or was it a troll?) from someone about TiVo's reasons for choosing those Quantum's, and how "generic PC drive" replacements wouldn't fare so well...

I think we can safely say time has won on the side of the upgraders ...

George

· #7 · Sep 27, 2007

Maxtor 120Gb from late 2002/early 2003.

Who says they don't last well? Err, that block of wood, where is it again?

blindlemon

· #8 · Sep 27, 2007

I still regularly get orders from people whose original Quantum drives have just died or are still going strong but they just want more space.

The thing about the Quantums is that they are a) only 4800rpm and b) relatively low capacity, so not required to work to such tight tolerances as a modern 250gb or 400gb drive. They seem to be able to withstand a lot of bad handling (one customer posted his to me in a jiffy bag and it was fine) and apart from the annoying whine that gets worse as the bearings wear out, they tend to just go on and on...

A Maxtor surviving from 2002 though is definitely something to be amazed by

George

· #9 · Sep 29, 2007

blindlemon said:
A Maxtor surviving from 2002 though is definitely something to be amazed by

Oh great, that'll be the end of it then. I knew I should have kept my mouth shut...

On the other hand, if it does go I could order one of those glow in the dark remotes at the same time.......

chimaera

· #10 · Sep 30, 2007

I know of one from late 2000 that still has the original drives in it, and it's been in daily use the whole time.

Pete77

· #11 · Sep 30, 2007

If one looks at actual reports of longevity of hard drives at www.storagereview.com rather than simply accepting the urban myths perpetuated on these things you will find that Maxtors are actually considerably less unreliable than blindlemon implies. Similarly if you check out the reliability of the supposedly legendary and extremely overpriced Seagate Momentus notebook hard drive range you will discover an alarming level of failure in drives only a couple or so years old.

You need to register by contributing a review on your drive at www.storagereview.com and the button for seeing results on other hard drive ranges is tucked away at the bottom of the screen. However the results do shows that Maxtor are not nearly as bad is claimed and old Quantum drives seems to be virtually bulletproof.

A check on the Maxtor DiamondMax 60 series that started in 1999 shows that a huge number of these drives (indeed more than 50% of them) are still in service after running faithfully for 7 years. It is really only early model IBM (now Hitachi) Deathstars (Deskstars) that actually seem to live up to their reputation for shocking product unreliability and early failure.

See www.storagereview.com/php/survey/su...&id=32510&ph=f5d7b40b9a20290ddc5bd4c5c76ce08d

But you will need to have registered and logged in first.

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Automan

· #12 · Sep 30, 2007

Many moons ago in the days of Netware 3.11 the company I worked for went over to using Micropolis hard drives - Sub 20Mb SCSI If I recall.

Netware had a feature then of read after write to make sure your data was safe.

However these were some of the first drives with cache memory in them so in fact Netware read this and did not check the actual data on the drive.

And yes, the Micropolis were all bad and several sites had a lot of problems restoring data to a known good state.

And where are Micropolis now? Out of business.

BTW The problem first showed up at one site who had their Mountain Tape software set to verify data which showed numerous error which at first was blamed on the tape drive.

Automan.

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Pete77

· #13 · Sep 30, 2007

Automan said:
Many moons ago in the days of Netware 3.11 the company I worked for went over to using Micropolis hard drives - Sub 20Mb SCSI If I recall.

Netware had a feature then of read after write to make sure your data was safe.

However these were some of the first drives with cache memory in them so in fact Netware read this and did not check the actual data on the drive.

And yes, the Micropolis were all bad and several sites had a lot of problems restoring data to a known good state.

And where are Micropolis now? Out of business.

BTW The problem first showed up at one site who had their Mountain Tape software set to verify data which showed numerous error which at first was blamed on the tape drive.

So is the moral of your story that if Maxtor drives are really as unreliable as is often claimed or if Hitachi drives were really as rotten as early IBM drives once were that no reputable PC manufacturer would in fact continue installing them?

Automan

· #14 · Sep 30, 2007

I am not sure I would trust any drive now.

In this day and age all that seems to count is the price and capacity and to achieve this they have to cut a few corners.

As then with those Micropolis drives good price but its the poor customer who has to find out the hard way that they are crap.

We had another batch to replace those and after a couple of months they all sounded like jet engines due to problem with their bearings.

In more recent times my firm bought Compaq spacesavers and again these drives would just fail at anytime.

A firmware fix was supposed to help but if I recall one insurance company made HP/Compaq replace thousands of drives and pay for all the labour involved in the changeover.

It is now very difficult to buy anything that has actually be tested properly by the manufacturer.

Automan.

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blindlemon

· #15 · Sep 30, 2007

Pete77 said:
If one looks at actual reports of longevity of hard drives at www.storagereview.com rather than simply accepting the urban myths perpetuated on these things you will find that Maxtors are actually considerably less unreliable than blindlemon implies.

Were these drives all running in TiVos?

I have never said that Maxtor drives are not suitable for use in desktop PC applications. However, I would not put one in a TiVo.

Pete77

· #16 · Sep 30, 2007

blindlemon said:
Were these drives all running in TiVos?

I have never said that Maxtor drives are not suitable for use in desktop PC applications. However, I would not put one in a TiVo.

I agree that where one has a choice Samsung and Seagate appear to be more reliable and quieter but Maxtors will still probably last quite a time in a Tivo, albeit that they may be more noisy and not last quite as long as Samsung or Seagate drives on average.

But there will still be Maxtor drives that continue to work in a Tivo after several years due to the wide spread of different longevity experiences between different individual drives in the same product line.

chimaera

· #17 · Sep 30, 2007

Well I've got a pair of 120GB drives RAID1 in my linux server, one Western Digital and one Maxtor, and the it was the Maxtor that died last weekend.

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