9200 Flakey PVR

[erazmus]

I've blogged about my experiences with my brand new 9200 PVR. One theory that my son came up with was that the Maxtor drives (which appear to be the ones with the stuttering problem) may have Maxtor's Acoustic Management feature enabled. If this is true, it might make just enough of a performance hit to cause the stuttering. I'm seriously contemplating voiding my warranty and putting the drive into a PC to see if acoustic management is on. If I do, I'll post my results.

[fogd00d]

Originally Posted by benven

I have just recently been noticing this stuttering. I have the 0x6132 and didn't have a problem for 2 months. Got the box in Jan. Must have watched Madagascar HD 50 times. Never an issue. Have been recording The Sopranos and get drop outs about 5 times per episode. All other HD recordings have not been giving me a problem?? SD recordings are OK.

Thanks for reporting your drive ID/signature, benven. If you haven't already, could you respond to the poll? Thanks.

If your machine has not been stuttering on other programming then you're encountering something else.

What we're seeing happens on any channel, any program, any time of day and happens many times a minute continually on recorded content or when you're in a cached state (you've paused or rewound and are not "live").

Everyone else: Can we move the Sopranos-related stuttering to a different thread? Its already confused one reader.

[erazmus]

Okay, I broke down and pulled the unit apart. I'll post a story on the blog tomorrow with pictures. I was able to plug the SATA drive into my Windows PC without removing the drive from the PVR (and thus not voiding the warranty by breaking the little sticker on the hard drive mount). The drive was recognized by the BIOS as a 'MAXTOR SABRE' drive. I tried the Hitachi drive tool to view the AAM (Advanced Audio Management) setting, but it was unable to detect the drive. The only tool I could find that could see the drive was 'Doc's AAM Tool'. Unfortunately, this tool was in German, and my German is non-existent. From what I could gather, it said that the drive didn't support AAM. I haven't been able to find a spec sheet on the drive to confirm or deny that AAM is an option on this drive.

[fogd00d]

Originally Posted by erazmus

... theory that my son came up with was that the Maxtor drives (which appear to be the ones with the stuttering problem) may have Maxtor's Acoustic Management feature enabled. If this is true, it might make just enough of a performance hit to cause the stuttering.

Now that is a theory worth following up on.

Although I cannot find any link between the Maxtor 6L250S0 (identified as 0x6012 in your Diagnostics/Counts list) which stutters and the technology erazmus is referring to (also apparently known as "Silent Store" or AMSET) it could explain how the drive looked fine on paper (sufficient specs) but underperformed in the real world due to a default setting that sacrifices performance for quiet operation.

This page goes into some detail on the noise vs. performance. Some exerpts:

from http://www.adriansrojakpot.com

Maxtor's Acoustic Management technology aims to reduce the seek noises by a very simple and direct method - reduce the seek speed ... [but] as you can probably guess, this reduces the seek performance ... Maxtor, by default, enabled acoustic management for all shipping acoustic management-equipped drives. This means all Maxtor drives that came with acoustic management have had their seeks slowed down right from the factory ... while Maxtor quote specifications with Silent Store disabled, your hard disk is normally shipped with Silent Store set to Quiet. This means that your Maxtor DiamondMax hard disk is actually under performing!

Now bear in mind this page these quotes are from a page dated November 2000. Maxtor may have long since moved onto some other silent-operation techniques that do not hurt performance.

The Maxtor 6L250S0 does, however, list "Quiet Drive Technology for acoustics-sensitive applications" as a feature.

So, we now have ... 4 possible names for this "technology"

Quite Drive Technology
Acoustic Management
Silent Store
AMSET (acronym anyone?)

Add AAM to the list, but notably this starts to give us a promising avenue for tinkering:

from http://www.silentpcreview.com/article29-page1.html

Automatic Acoustic Management (AAM). This technology sacrifices some seek latency in favor of softer, quieter seeks. The performance hit is often small enough that AAM is well worth using. Almost all manufacturers these days allow AAM to be enabled, although its effectiveness varies wildly from drive to drive. Not all manufacturers provide a utility to enable and adjust AAM, but almost all drives work with Hitachi's feature tool.

from Hitachi's utilities download page

Feature Tool (v2.01)

This is a DOS-bootable tool for changing various ATA features. The Feature Tool allows you to:
...

* Change the drive Automatic Acoustic Management settings to the:
o Lowest acoustic emanation setting (Quiet Seek Mode), or
o Maximum performance level (Normal Seek Mode).
...

[fogd00d]

Originally Posted by erazmus

Okay, I broke down and pulled the unit apart. I'll post a story on the blog tomorrow with pictures ... Unfortunately, this tool was in German, and my German is non-existent. From what I could gather, it said that the drive didn't support AAM. I haven't been able to find a spec sheet on the drive to confirm or deny that AAM is an option on this drive.

In the feature sheets, Maxtor refers to something called "Quiet Drive Technology". I wonder if thats the same thing.

You must have followed up while I was spilling out some more detail I'd looked up after reading your post. Looking forward to seeing your disassembly pictures! I'm surprised one can open the case without doing anything obvious to void the warranty.

p.s.: Not trying to steal your thunder there, just went a-Googling for myself and figured the folks at home could benefit from a little more detail/background.

[erazmus]

Originally Posted by fogd00d

Looking forward to seeing your disassembly pictures! I'm surprised one can open the case without doing anything obvious to void the warranty.

Pictures are up now. Poor quality from my camera phone. Next time I pull it apart (there will be a next time), I'll try to get some with a better camera.

Originally Posted by fogd00d

p.s.: Not trying to steal your thunder there, just went a-Googling for myself and figured the folks at home could benefit from a little more detail/background.

No problems at all. This is a collaborative effort - the more info we can all get out, the better!

New blog entry with pictures: http://www.broadbandpig.com/archives...embling_t.html

[fogd00d]

Originally Posted by erazmus

... I tried the Hitachi drive tool to view the AAM (Advanced Audio Management) setting, but it was unable to detect the drive.

In a review of another Maxtor DiamondMax 10 drive (the 6L250S0 is in that product family)here it appears the reviewers were able to use the Hitachi tool to set AAM on the Maxtor drive.

Looking in the forums for messages about this post, one reader had a similar problem you describe, erazmus, in the Hitachi tool not recognizing the drive.

The reviewer replied with this:

from http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=22020 re: A review of the Maxtor Diamondmax 10/300 & Hitachi 7K250 Hard Drives.

Sorry to hear about your difficulties Michael. We used the Hitachi FTool v. 1.97 to set AAM on the Maxtor (yes, using SATA). As I recall, we also had some compatibility issues with FTool detecting SATA drives on one of our motherboards, though I can't remember offhand what chipset we had problems with. Since AAM only ever needs to be set once, I would suggest taking the drive in to your retailer and ask them to help set it. I believe the chipset that we ended up using to set the Maxtors was an Intel 865 board (although this chipset had issues with some other drives). Either that or find a friend with who doesn't have these issues...

One other (remote) possibility is to use the CD-bootable version rather than the disk-bootable version; I think the boot sequence they use is slightly different.

[fogd00d]

From a TiVo thread, looks like a few guys there were able to use the ISO image from Hitachi to make the AAM setting change on their Maxtor DiamondMax 10 series drives:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb.../t-291789.html

The direct link to the ISO from Hitachi:

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/suppor.../ftool_200.iso

Care to burn that to CD and try again, erazmus?

If I had a PC with an SATA interface, I'd be all over this.

[erazmus]

Originally Posted by fogd00d

Care to burn that to CD and try again, erazmus?

If I had a PC with an SATA interface, I'd be all over this.

That's one of the tools I tried - the CD version - no floppy drives! I tried on two motherboards - an Abit AS7 and a Asus K8V SE Deluxe (a 64-bit machine). These are the only two machines that I have with SATA. I might have something at the office I can try with. I'm suspecting a different motherboard might work. The Hitachi tool didn't even see my drive on either motherboard.

[fogd00d]

Originally Posted by erazmus

That's one of the tools I tried - the CD version - no floppy drives! I tried on two motherboards - an Abit AS7 and a Asus K8V SE Deluxe (a 64-bit machine). These are the only two machines that I have with SATA. I might have something at the office I can try with. I'm suspecting a different motherboard might work. The Hitachi tool didn't even see my drive on either motherboard.

Damn, so close!

By the way, from your pictures ... that sticker ... looks like its on the drive cage but not the drive itself. If you removed the screws holding the cage to the motherboard, could you 'fold' it out of the way without tearing the sticker?

[erazmus]

Originally Posted by fogd00d

Damn, so close!

By the way, from your pictures ... that sticker ... looks like its on the drive cage but not the drive itself. If you removed the screws holding the cage to the motherboard, could you 'fold' it out of the way without tearing the sticker?

The sticker is on the chassis and the drive cage. It is probably possible to unscrew the cage and fold it over, but one wrong move would tear the sticker. Folding the cage over will only get you to the bottom of the drive, not the top, so I don't know what information would be visible. Folding the cage over and removing the drive from the cage would definitely need some dexterity to not tear the sticker.

[fogd00d]

Originally Posted by mrcandy

Yup - the ROHS (made from lead free parts) is the give-away. The 6L is ROHS compliant, the 7Y is not.

Ironically, when you get the lead out, it means to hurry up.

[fogd00d]

Originally Posted by erazmus

The sticker is on the chassis and the drive cage. It is probably possible to unscrew the cage and fold it over, but one wrong move would tear the sticker. Folding the cage over will only get you to the bottom of the drive, not the top, so I don't know what information would be visible. Folding the cage over and removing the drive from the cage would definitely need some dexterity to not tear the sticker.

We wouldn't learn much more, I don't think (now that WestCDA has sleuthed that out with flashlight and tech support contact with Maxtor) but I was thinking it would allow one to walk the drive to another machine easier, Hitachi CD in hand.

You could take the strain off the sticker by putting some duct tape on either side maybe, or something strong that wouldn't permanently mark the chassis or cage.

[erazmus]

This document:

http://maxtor.com/_files/maxtor/en_u...anual_sata.pdf

(which is what I strongly believe the drive to be) suggests that it does indeed have 'QDT' (Quiet Drive Technology). It gives seek times with and without QDT.

[fogd00d]

There is also the SETACM utility from Maxtor (good luck finding it through their site) which apparently controls the setting:

http://service.maxtor.com/rightnow/downloads/setacm.exe (link tested, downloads OK)


And this thread on CNet claims the IBM Feature Tool will change Acoustic Management settings for Maxtors as well. Download is here: http://ftp.uevora.pt/pub/Windrivers/...k%20ATA66/IBM/


And finally, this thread at StorageReview.com indicates ftp://ftp.heise.de/pub/ct/ctsi/winaam18.zip might also work for SATA. At least one reader was successful in using it on an Intel 865 chipset. A note from that thread:

-Maxtor's AMSET (http://*******.com/3fpsd) does work fine for SATA drives, at least for me, if you go into the BIOS and temporarily set your SATA into "legacy/compatibility" mode (terminology may vary by vendor). Then just set it back afterwards.

I still haven't found "AMSET" although other references to AMSET went to that SETACM.EXE utility.