My Humax Forum » Freesat HD » HDR 1000, 1010, 1100S

HDR 1100s hard drive issue

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    batteryman

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    A big thanks for all replies, I'm in direct contact with Humax so we'll see how it goes from here.

    | Fri 11 Jan 2019 16:29:28 #11 |
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    johnway

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    Hi,
    I have also posted on here about HDD issues and contacted Humax who advise that they are out of stock for a £56 out of warranty replacement for my faulty HDR-1000S. Guess I am in a long queue!!

    While searching the web for repairs/upgrades and general interest I have come across many different ideas about which type of HDD drive to buy as a replacement. I believe the original HDD to be Seagate (not opened my box to have a look as do not want to break the warranty seal when there is a chance of a replacement). I don't expect the original HDD is top spec. so anyone know which model it actually is and can anyone recommend a good upgrade model to use please?

    | Wed 16 Jan 2019 17:22:18 #12 |
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    Martin Liddle

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    johnway - 21 minutes ago  » 
    I don't expect the original HDD is top spec.

    What makes you say that?

    | Wed 16 Jan 2019 17:45:01 #13 |
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    johnway

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    Martin Liddle - 1 minute ago  » 

    johnway - 21 minutes ago  » 
    I don't expect the original HDD is top spec.

    What makes you say that?

    Mass production and the sheer number of reported issues with PVR HDDs by disgruntled owners on the web. Has there ever been a "best HDD & components used" claim/advertisement by manufacturers in the PVR market? I don't believe so !!

    | Wed 16 Jan 2019 17:53:47 #14 |
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    batteryman

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    I've opened a few Humax boxes, freeview and freesat. Older units tended to use Western Digital Green drives. My HDR2000T had a Western Digital Blue video drive (1TB) and I replaced it with a Seagate Pipeline 2TB drive from a SKY box which seems to be working well. I also opened a (looked like) newish PVR9300T last week which had a Seagate Pipeline 500GB drive.

    I don't think PVR useage is particularly demanding of hard drive performance, more important is reliability and noise. I don't actually know what you mean by a top spec. drive unless you mean a super fast one suited to high speed gaming or other demanding application. I think it's more a case of a disk drive being suitable for PVR application and data retrieval speed above a certain point is not critical; it may become critical if any 4k PVRs come to market if the broadcasters start transmitting in 4k.

    I stand corrected if a hard drive expert disagrees but that's my understanding of the issue at the moment.

    | Wed 16 Jan 2019 18:03:20 #15 |
  6. grahamlthompson

    grahamlthompson

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    batteryman - 53 minutes ago  » 
    I've opened a few Humax boxes, freeview and freesat. Older units tended to use Western Digital Green drives. My HDR2000T had a Western Digital Blue video drive (1TB) and I replaced it with a Seagate Pipeline 2TB drive from a SKY box which seems to be working well. I also opened a (looked like) newish PVR9300T last week which had a Seagate Pipeline 500GB drive.
    I don't think PVR useage is particularly demanding of hard drive performance, more important is reliability and noise. I don't actually know what you mean by a top spec. drive unless you mean a super fast one suited to high speed gaming or other demanding application. I think it's more a case of a disk drive being suitable for PVR application and data retrieval speed above a certain point is not critical; it may become critical if any 4k PVRs come to market if the broadcasters start transmitting in 4k.
    I stand corrected if a hard drive expert disagrees but that's my understanding of the issue at the moment.

    I agree.

    I have a 10yr old Foxsat-HDR that has a WD AV-GP 1TB drive in it. It's still used every day.

    PVR's use low power low speed drives designed for 24/7 operation. An AV drive even though low speed has a data transfer that can easily support up to 10 HD streams at once nore than fast enough for the pvrs we currently have.

    Newer unit's tend to use Seagate pipeline AV drives. It's very simple to change hard drives which because of the moving parts is likely to be the first component to fail. My much used HDR-1000S is on it's second 2TB Seagate drive.

    I have a 5000T with a Seagate Pipeline 2TB drive. It has no problem recording up to 4 HD channels at once and replaying a recording or watching a 5th subject to Mux.

    All the drives removed from units removed from units with this fault are found to be OK. The issue is somewhere in the Sata hard drive controller circuitry.

    Although in theory 4K would have 4 times the data requirement of full-HD the increase in efficiency of the H265 Video compression codec used for 4K more than compensates when compared to H264/AVC as used for current HD broadcasting.

    That means a low speed current technology drive should still be able to support up to 10 4K channels.

    Look at the download speeds you need to use 4K streaming sources, it's way below the speed a AV drive can currently handle.

    The problem here is not HDD related.

    | Wed 16 Jan 2019 19:12:21 #16 |
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    Martin Liddle

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    johnway - 5 hours ago  » 

    Martin Liddle - 1 minute ago  » 

    johnway - 21 minutes ago  » 
    I don't expect the original HDD is top spec.

    What makes you say that?

    Mass production and the sheer number of reported issues with PVR HDDs by disgruntled owners on the web.

    Inherently a complicated device with rotating components operating to very fine tolerances is going to be less reliable than electronic circuit boards; that is just a fact of life. Hence a large proportion of reported hardware problems will be hard drive related. I do think some of the Seagate drive models used in the earlier Humax PVRs were less reliable than the manufacturers specifications indicated but the ones used in current models appear to me to be reasonably reliable. Seagate quote an expected annualised failure rate of 0.55% and an expected average lifetime of about 100,000 power on hours.

    | Thu 17 Jan 2019 0:00:15 #17 |
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    johnway

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    100,000 hours ? Power on for 10 hours a day (mine may be on for 5 at most) would be 10,000 days which is approx 27 years !! I think a zero has been mis-quoted here.

    | Thu 17 Jan 2019 8:43:09 #18 |
  9. REPASSAC

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    johnway - 24 minutes ago  » 
    100,000 hours ? Power on for 10 hours a day (mine may be on for 5 at most) would be 10,000 days which is approx 27 years !! I think a zero has been mis-quoted here.

    Not so.

    To explain:
    http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/174791en/

    Those who use the remote record function will greatly exceed "250 average motor start/stop cycles per year" by 100 times (less the period of the day the unit is not in standby)

    | Thu 17 Jan 2019 9:09:28 #19 |
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    johnway

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    Good knowledge to be learned here but : now my head is starting to spin as fast as the HDD !!

    | Thu 17 Jan 2019 9:21:40 #20 |

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