Samsung HD and Seagate ST31000322CS Playback Issues

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Samsung HD and Seagate ST31000322CS Playback Issues

Postby KevinH » Tue Nov 02, 2010 2:28 pm

Hi

A few months ago I upgraded my Samsung HD box with a Seagate ST31000322CS. There were no issues with the transfer and the box has been no more or less reliable than it was before the upgrade. However there have been a couple of niggles, one of which is getting to the point where the wife is saying "fix it".

The first minor niggle is you can clearly hear the disk working. Before the box was effectively silent. I can't hear the fan. I can live with this, esp. given the problem below.

The second niggle which does need addressing is the stalling of HD playback. What happens is the picture and sound freezes for a few seconds and then re-starts but not at the point of where it froze (so it's not effectively paused - you just miss the few seconds of picture/audio). If you re-wind the program back to before where the missing segment was it will again miss this out, so I imagine it must be caused by the recording. It only happens on HD. It seems to be worst on ITV HD and Corrie but I've also seen it on other HD channels. The wife is now getting to the point where it needs to be fixed and I'm concerned that with BBC1 going HD from tomorrow we'll be seeing this problem more often.

It will do it with just one channel recording. The frequency of the problem occurring is as far as I can tell not increasing, but it probably occurs in two corrie recordings every week.

Anybody have any thoughts?

If it means a new disc that's fine - I can use this once else where. I can't really afford to do a full re-installation as there are too many programs we'd lose. I could tell the wife not to watch Corrie but there may be unintentional consequences with this course of action :lol:

Cheers - Kev
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Re: Samsung HD and Seagate ST31000322CS Playback Issues

Postby pcbbc » Tue Nov 02, 2010 2:36 pm

KevinH wrote:The first minor niggle is you can clearly hear the disk working. Before the box was effectively silent. I can't hear the fan. I can live with this, esp. given the problem below.
Head stepping can be reduced by enabling the AMM feature (if the drive supports it).
Use HDDScan as this can usually set the AMM even when attached via a USB caddy (most tools require direct attachement via ATA).

The second niggle which does need addressing is the stalling of HD playback. What happens is the picture and sound freezes for a few seconds and then re-starts but not at the point of where it froze (so it's not effectively paused - you just miss the few seconds of picture/audio). If you re-wind the program back to before where the missing segment was it will again miss this out, so I imagine it must be caused by the recording. It only happens on HD. It seems to be worst on ITV HD and Corrie but I've also seen it on other HD channels. The wife is now getting to the point where it needs to be fixed and I'm concerned that with BBC1 going HD from tomorrow we'll be seeing this problem more often.
If you are sure this is not a reception issue then this sounds like a drive incompatibility. Test by reinstalling the OEM drive and seeing if it still happens.

Unfortunately, if your box has received the Darwin update, you are out of luck for a transfer to a new disk with Copy+ for the moment.
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Re: Samsung HD and Seagate ST31000322CS Playback Issues

Postby KevinH » Tue Nov 02, 2010 2:56 pm

Thanks.

I picked this drive as it appeared to be the one that everybody was calling out as the model to get for the Samsung box :( This problem never happened with the original drive in. I'll try running the old HDD for a week but I guess it's time to look for another HDD.
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Re: Samsung HD and Seagate ST31000322CS Playback Issues

Postby pcbbc » Tue Nov 02, 2010 3:05 pm

KevinH wrote:I picked this drive as it appeared to be the one that everybody was calling out as the model to get for the Samsung box :( This problem never happened with the original drive in. I'll try running the old HDD for a week but I guess it's time to look for another HDD.
Have you run the Seagate fault diagnostics on it? Might be worth a go.
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Re: Samsung HD and Seagate ST31000322CS Playback Issues

Postby stricko » Thu Nov 04, 2010 8:21 am

I'm having exactly the same issues with the same drive in a day 1 Thomson box. Installed a few weeks ago, fine at first, now basically unusable for HD. And it seems to crash the box randomly if using 30x back or forward, even on SD recordings.

After ongoing domestic grief I'm more than ready to buy a new drive, and swap the Seagate into one of the PCs.

Any views on a decent replacement? Samsung F2 and F3 drives seems to get a lot of praise.
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