"Seagate is investigating an issue where a small number of Barracuda 7200.11 (1.5TB SATA) hard drives randomly pause or hang for up to several seconds during certain write operations. This does not result in data loss nor does it impact the reliability of the drive but is an inconvenience to the user that we are working to resolve with an upgradeable firmware."
"We are therefore asking customers if they feel they are experiencing this issue to give our technical support department a call with any questions."
"Affected part number: 9JU138-300, 336 with firmware revisions SD15, SD17, or SD18."
The official statement is slightly misleading...
1) When the problem occurs all hard drive operations stop until the OS times out the ATA command - typically 30 seconds. This results in the computer freezing for 30 seconds.
2) The problem can result in data loss if using a RAID system. Depending on the OS/RAID configuration the problem may cause a RAID system to think the drive has died. The RAID system automatically removes the drive and continues to run degraded (as designed). 20 minutes later when another drive exhibits the problem the RAID system drops the second drive and dies.
3) The problem may be a systematic problem rather than a small number of drives - all drives have I tested running the SD17 firmware have exhibited the problem.
I have a few of these drives... they are very fast for sequential read (>120MB/s sustained)
However, if write-cache is enabled (default) Linux will freeze intermittently reporting a SATA timeout executing a cache-flush command.
Tested with the 2.6.24 and 2.6.26 kernels. Other people have reported the same problem with the 2.6.27 kernel.
Tested with multiple drives and multiple SATA controllers (different chipsets). No SMART errors logged.
Two tuners and plugs into your Ethernet network. You can watch content from any computer on your network.
Works with MCE 2005 and Vista MCE - both 32 and 64-bit versions.
Works with SageTV, BeyondTV, etc.
Works with MythTV under Linux.
Mac support is rumored to be coming soon.
To get cablecard support you need a cablelabs certified PC.
You can't buy a cablecard tuner for a PC - Vista or otherwise. The only PC-based option is to buy a PC that the manufacturer had certified as a complete system (software, hardware, monitor, etc).
The fallback option is to use an analog capture card and to prioritize the digital tuners over the analog capture so you get high-def whenever possible.
I use both a MythTV DVR (64-bit Ubuntu) and a MCE DVR (64-bit Vista) at home. The MythTV machine is primary and the Vista machine is secondary.
The automatic commercial skip in MythTV is fantastic!
You watch TV shows and there are no adverts. Simple as that.
The biggest problem is resisting to urge to pick up the remote when the show is leading into an ad break:-)
Both machines can record ATSC HDTV and Digital Cable (QAM) - running a total of 4 digital tuners (2 x HDHomeRun network digital tuners with two tuner each - http://www.silicondust.com/)
Slashdot Mirror
"Seagate is investigating an issue where a small number of Barracuda 7200.11 (1.5TB SATA) hard drives randomly pause or hang for up to several seconds during certain write operations. This does not result in data loss nor does it impact the reliability of the drive but is an inconvenience to the user that we are working to resolve with an upgradeable firmware."
"We are therefore asking customers if they feel they are experiencing this issue to give our technical support department a call with any questions."
"Affected part number: 9JU138-300, 336 with firmware revisions SD15, SD17, or SD18."
The official statement is slightly misleading...
1) When the problem occurs all hard drive operations stop until the OS times out the ATA command - typically 30 seconds. This results in the computer freezing for 30 seconds.
2) The problem can result in data loss if using a RAID system. Depending on the OS/RAID configuration the problem may cause a RAID system to think the drive has died. The RAID system automatically removes the drive and continues to run degraded (as designed). 20 minutes later when another drive exhibits the problem the RAID system drops the second drive and dies.
3) The problem may be a systematic problem rather than a small number of drives - all drives have I tested running the SD17 firmware have exhibited the problem.
I have a few of these drives... they are very fast for sequential read (>120MB/s sustained)
However, if write-cache is enabled (default) Linux will freeze intermittently reporting a SATA timeout executing a cache-flush command.
Tested with the 2.6.24 and 2.6.26 kernels. Other people have reported the same problem with the 2.6.27 kernel.
Tested with multiple drives and multiple SATA controllers (different chipsets). No SMART errors logged.
Thread on the Seagate support forum: http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/message?board.id=ata_drives&thread.id=2390
The workaround is to disable write-cache on the drive.
With the HDHomeRun you can watch/record the unencrypted channels on digital cable:n
. shtml?tid=117&tid=39
http://www.silicondust.com/wiki/products/hdhomeru
Two tuners and plugs into your Ethernet network. You can watch content from any computer on your network.
Works with MCE 2005 and Vista MCE - both 32 and 64-bit versions.
Works with SageTV, BeyondTV, etc.
Works with MythTV under Linux.
Mac support is rumored to be coming soon.
Linux review:
http://servers.linux.com/servers/07/04/18/1531247
For watching unencrypted digital cable on a PC, take a look at the HDHomeRun:n
t -hdhomerun-qam-tuner-review.html 2 47
http://www.silicondust.com/wiki/products/hdhomeru
Two tuners, works with MCE (2005, Vista, x86, x64), BeyondTV, SageTV, etc.
Linux - works with MythTV and VLC.
Mac support is rumored to be soon.
http://brentevans.blogspot.com/2007/03/silicondus
http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=07/04/18/1531
BTW - You can also use the analog output from a STB to record the encrypted digital channels.
With MythTV you either need an IR blaster or a serial cable (I use a serial cable myself).
Locally we get a few of the premium channels unencrypted so they get recorded on the digital tuners (HDHomeRun).
To get cablecard support you need a cablelabs certified PC.
You can't buy a cablecard tuner for a PC - Vista or otherwise. The only PC-based option is to buy a PC that the manufacturer had certified as a complete system (software, hardware, monitor, etc).
The fallback option is to use an analog capture card and to prioritize the digital tuners over the analog capture so you get high-def whenever possible.
Nick
I use both a MythTV DVR (64-bit Ubuntu) and a MCE DVR (64-bit Vista) at home. The MythTV machine is primary and the Vista machine is secondary.
:-)
The automatic commercial skip in MythTV is fantastic!
You watch TV shows and there are no adverts. Simple as that.
The biggest problem is resisting to urge to pick up the remote when the show is leading into an ad break
Both machines can record ATSC HDTV and Digital Cable (QAM) - running a total of 4 digital tuners (2 x HDHomeRun network digital tuners with two tuner each - http://www.silicondust.com/)
The silicondust website is currently having issues. Google cache: http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:LJZMm-6NRmkJ: www.silicondust.com/wiki/products/hdhomerun+silico ndust.com&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us
9thtee:
http://www.9thtee.com/hdhomerun.htm
Third time lucky... link
http://www.roombacommunity.com/forum/viewtopic.php ?t=24