HDD Help

[imilne]

Decided to upgrade my tried and trusted 500GB Samsung HDD to a 2TB model so I could finally rip some DVDs, but since doing so I've had the following issue with GBPVR (not tested it with NPVR yet).

When playing HD video files recording from UK television (mainly BBC HD) I'm getting random playback freezes every 10 to 15 minutes. After a minute, it unfreezes and catches up on itself. Windows (7, 32bit) itself hasn't frozen, just the video/audio playback within GBPVR.

There's no way this is a GBPVR problem though, because if I play the same files from my SDD boot drive, or the old 500GB drive then everything is fine.

- Tried a different video decoder but it still did it
- I've swapped both its sata cable and the port it's plugged into
- I've swapped it for another drive (same model) but the problem continues
- It's been scanned for errors and comes up clean
- Its performance looks fine via HDTach and appears faster than the old drive too
- Windows has been told not to let the drives idle
- Other files I've tested with a smaller bitrate (SD, 720p mkv, etc) all play fine
- Tried NTFS and exFAT formatting: no difference

I'm now beginning to wonder if it's some sort of built-in auto-idle that the drive might have, but if that was the cause, surely it would screw up with all files.

I'm pretty much out of ideas now. Help!

[ACTCMS]

Over the last couple of years, there have been a few threads about large 5400rpm drives (I assume that's what yours is) and their suitability for use in HTPCs. I've never seen a real conclusion one way or the other.

Try searching the hardware forum for 'green drive' - this is one of the threads I just found.

My 1TB 7200rpm drives are both running out of space and I'm considering upgrading to 2TB, so I'd be interested to see how you get on...

[BigMoose]

What model is the new drive? Not one of those eco green drives??

[imilne]

Some interesting stuff on that thread, thanks guys.

It is a 5400rpm drive, but I doubt that's its problem. It actually has faster read speeds than the drive it's replacing, probably because the data density is so much higher. It's an F4 Samsung "ecogreen" or something.

I'd actually thought about knocking up a quick always-write-to-the-drive app, and I see that thread mentions it too when discussing idle/auto park stuff. It already uses less power than the old one, so I'm not fussed in the slightest at whatever negatives (power wise) writing to it all the time might have.

I figured a good test for it though would just be to have other stuff recording in the background; I guess (well I think anyway) that we'd never had that happening since it was installed. Tried it just now, and touch wood, but we've just watched a full hour of something without a single freeze.

[BigMoose]

I was never completely convinced that my issues were down to the green drive. But in the end I got annoyed and replaced it with a black 1Tb one which seemed to exhibit the same problems but then went away. Absolutely no idea why! I have the green one back in the box too for ripped stuff (inc Blurays) and record to the black drive and never have an issue. It's all very strange, but when I recorded to the green one it was crap, esp HD stuff.

[wtg]

Just for kicks and if you have one available or a friend does, mount the 2TB drive with a USB drive enclosure. If the problem doesn't occur with an enclosure I believe you could conclude somehow it's driver-related. Also, make sure your BIOS is up-to-date and your MB drivers.

Another thing to try is to format the drive as several smaller drives instead of one big 2TB beast. And finally, you could download one of the various Linux boot CDs and see if the problem occurs in Linux. Those weird hardware errors can be troublesome to identify... good luck!

[smajor]

This almost sounds like a power saver setting, but it wouldn't make sense why it's spinning down the HD (causing the pause) during playback.

All the same, did you check your Power Options? The default "spin down hard drive" setting is 20 minutes in Win 7. Perhaps try turning that off as a test?

[pBS]

yep, samsung drives do have an internal power saving feature..there's a utility on their site to config it...[acoustic and power modes]
my 1.5tb samsung green drive does it and it's audible, so i turned it off...but never had any playback issues...
they are screaming fast drives, faster than several of my 7200 rpm drives, go figure..
what cluster size did you use? i tried all of them and found almost 0 difference in performance...[cache helps that]

and they're definitely the coolest drives i've *ever* used...never even reached 30 degrees C..
so far haven't ad a single one die either..but haven't had nearly as many as other brands..

[imilne]

Thanks again for all the comments. Most helpful!

@smajor - sounds like a power thing to me too but the weird thing is not just why it would spin down during playback, but why it only does it with HD stuff. The power options in Windows is set to never idle.

@pBS - I wonder if this is what you mean: http://www.samsung.com/global/business/h...HUTIL.html - it doesn't specifically list my drive but I'll be trying it as soon as I get home! (Edit: seems there's also another one called ESTool that might be a bit newer but looks like it does the same thing. God I hope it fixes it!).

I think these drives are faster because of the higher data density (more data read in the same amount of physical head movement), but they still have slower seek times than 7200rpm ones. Mine sits in a 5 1/4 bay inside a heatsink/vibration suppression thingy I bought years ago for 15 quid and is excellent for eliminating that final - little - amount of noise these drives make. I was amazed at how much louder the old 500GB drive was when it was outside of the case for the first time in years.

When it was formatted NTFS I just used the default settings. It's exFAT just now which uses 512K as its default I think (vs 4K for NTFS). Not sure whether to leave it or reformat to NTFS again (after moving all the data off it. Again). You can't normally format an internal drive as exFAT unless you change its properties to enable quick-removal (as I discovered).

[imilne]

A small update:

Messing about with various combinations of AAM, APM and spindown values (via hdparm for Windows) has not helped. It looked like the drive's defaults had the power management stuff turned off too. Go figure.

Anyway, I knocked out a quick program that - currently - writes 100KB to disk every second. It does this for an hour before deleting the file and then starting again. We've not watched much with it running yet, but it seems to be keeping the drive awake. I was worried that it might stop Windows sleeping after its normal 5 minute idle timeout but thankfully it doesn't seem to have affected that either.

*If* it's solved the problem, and I'm not convinced it has yet, then I may mess around with seeing if it can write less (and less often).