General SageTV Instability (recent)....

[Slack]

Lately I've been seeing my SageTV (version 5) 'locking up'. Meaning the home screen time has frozen, and the spinning SageTV logo is persistent. In all other respects the machine is running normally. I can log in to another account via remote desktop, and things seem fine.

Thinking it was software related, I uninstalled WiRNS which is software to support my ReplayTVs. that was the last thing I added to a previously very reliable SageTV box.

My usual test of SageTV perfection is to initiate two HD stream recordings (OTA via two discrete PCI tuner cards). Then wait a little while, and watch something previously recorded, or watch one of the streams a few minutes behind what is being laid down to disk.

Well, after nuking WiRNS, the problem persisted, and SageTV eventiually locked up, after a bit of stuttering when watching one of the streams.

So I imaged the C: drive back to an image I had from Dec of 07. Thinking that would be the end of it, because I made that image after several months of relable SageTV performance. But the problem persisted....

So I was going to go back to an image from Jan of 07. When I dragged the image from the NAS box to my D: drive (all Sage video goes to D: ) Explorer told me 16 minutes. which seems long for ~3gig file. so after the copy completed I dragged same file from NAS to desktop (C: drive). Took about a minute.

So now I think the D: hard drive is dying. I downloaded Seagate's tools for windows, and so far the drive has passed SMART, and the short self test. The long test self test is running now. And taking for ever, been about an hour now.

If the drive passes everything, I'm thinking I'll yank the box out the cabinet, and re-seat all the cards, re-plug all the SATA cables, and blow out the dust bunnies. If that doesn't fix I guess I'm getting a new drive.

SageTV brain trust have any other suggestions / things to try? Freezer trick?

This almost cost me the opening ceremonies. fortunately NBC re-braodcast later that morning, and SageTV hung in there long enought to get it all to disk. Whew! But I gotta get this resolved before football.

[Slack]

that whole bit about the copy to C: being faster than the copy to d: was a mistake.

The D: drive has passed all tests the the Seagate tools could do.

After learning that I was off-base. I shutdown the PC, and swapped the tuner's PCI slots, just for giggles. So currently tuner 2 is recording Olympic coverage in HD, and NFL preseason football in SD, and I can switch between the two, and previously recorded stuff without issue (fingers crossed). So I dunno what to think. Seems to be back to normal.

and to think I was actually contemplating a HD-Tivo/Cable-card setup for a few seconds there.

My fingers are crossed.

[JDJinTX]

I am having a similar problem. I was wondering if it had something to do with Windows updates since it seemed to start spontaneously. I have since updated the software & HD-100 firmware to the most recent betas in hopes that this would be a fix, and although it has been an improvement I still have trouble from time to time. Please keep us up to date if you sort out the cause or find a solution!

jdj