Possibly ditching TiVo for HTPC ...

S

Spidey329

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Dec 15, 2003
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Well, my TiVo got sick over the weekend. So I ganked the 120gig Maxtor I had in there and ran PowerMax today. PowerMax confirms that it is failing and I need to contact Maxtor with the numbers to get it RMA'd under warranty.

To add insult to injury, this is what I see:

Y3JW9D4E - ATA - 6Y120P0131211 - Out of warranty - 08/24/2004

Note the Expiration Date! Not sure if that is just a sick Maxtor joke (putting the current date as the expiration date) or what. But none the less ... this got me thinking. TiVo not only costs per month, but also seems to be pretty notorious for killing harddrives (or at least, that's the impression I get from some TiVo boards).

So I thought I may choose to build a SageTV powered HTPC. For those running this (or a similiar program) any harddrive problems after 12 months?
 
I got SageTV a month or so ago. It definitely grinds the bejesus out of my drive when it's doing stuff with the epg. That might just be because the drive is scsi. I haven't tried to resolve this at all so it might be a fixable thing.
 
djskankho said:
I got SageTV a month or so ago. It definitely grinds the bejesus out of my drive when it's doing stuff with the epg. That might just be because the drive is scsi. I haven't tried to resolve this at all so it might be a fixable thing.
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Well, if I did build one, I was planning on installing Diskeeper to do defrags on non-peak hours (times that my shows would never be on). So hopefully it'd help.

But yeah, SCSI's can be loud by themselves anyways :)

I did pick up a SeaGate 160gigger for $49 at Fry's anyways, too big of a deal to pass up, so it's looking like I may just make this a project.
 
I've been running Sage on and off for the last...two or three months I believe..or was it four? Anyways I don't really notice much with my WD 120 giger (8mb cache version) but I do have torrents constantly running in the background so I guess your mileage may vary.

Maxtor drives are notorious for failing but they are pretty good, I'd go with a Samsung Spinpoint instead though.

I thought XP defrags the HD in the background on it's own? Atleast thats how I have it setup.
 
CrimandEvil said:
I thought XP defrags the HD in the background on it's own? Atleast thats how I have it setup.
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It does? Don't mean to thread hijack, but do you know how to turn that off/on?
 
I believe its built in to all xp versions to defrag when the pc is not in use. It moves all your most used programs to the center of the disc for better access times (those programs that are in the left panel when you press the Start button).
 
reading this thread reminded me to take a peek at this systems drives... LOL

fragged.jpg
 
CrimandEvil said:
I've been running Sage on and off for the last...two or three months I believe..or was it four? Anyways I don't really notice much with my WD 120 giger (8mb cache version) but I do have torrents constantly running in the background so I guess your mileage may vary.

Maxtor drives are notorious for failing but they are pretty good, I'd go with a Samsung Spinpoint instead though.

I thought XP defrags the HD in the background on it's own? Atleast thats how I have it setup.
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Yeah, that's what a lot of TiVo's come stock with, Maxtor drives. I've never had a problem with them in a PC, but they aren't being grilled as bad.

I didn't know that XP defragged on it's own. But I do know that the built in defragger for XP isn't all that dandy. I've noticed a good performance boost while using Diskeeper to defrag over doing manual defrags with XP, so I'll stick with DK. :)

STRESSTEST
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I've seen some systems here at work that have been used constantly for 2+ years and never defragged. Take your bar and make it completely red across with a few traces of other colors :)
 
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