[mythtv-users] warnings and recommendations on my new mythtv box

[Ryan Steffes]

On 9/17/07, Taco Mel <taco_mel at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Here is some feedback regarding your system:
>
> Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 500 - I like this card.  Newegg
> was unable to guarantee me that they would send me the
> "type A" tuners (Philips) which are reputed to be
> vastly superior to the "type B" tuners (Samsung).  I
> ended up getting my card off eBay ("new") because the
> seller there could guarantee type A tuners.
>
> SAMSUNG SpinPoint T Series HD501LJ - I have purchased
> 5 of these drives over the last year for MythTV and
> non-MythTV applications.  One came DOA (immediately
> failed SMART on my 3ware controller) and one died
> after about a month (clicking, timing out IO,
> reporting "cable failure" with multiple cables).  I
> RMA'd the DOA one through Newegg and got a
> replacement.  The one that died later was about 3
> months old and is currently shipping to Samsung for
> RMA.  So when you get this please make sure that you
> have SMART monitoring configured on your system and
> that you turn it on right away in case you get a DOA
> drive.  While these drives were cheap and highly rated
> at Newegg, the 33% failure rate I have encountered is
> too high for my comfort and I am switching to a
> different brand.
>
> This also points out that you might want RAID if you
> don't want to lose your recordings; fortunately mine
> was set up this way and my recordings survived.
>
>

Samsung's are supposed to be good drives, but I've had nothing but
praise for my Seagates  (WITH their especially long warranty period).
Of the 12 Seagates I've had, in a mixture of large capacity, smaller
drives, and laptop drives, I've had only one failure after years of
abuse, after it spent some time in a non-ventilated homemade acoustic
box.   When that one failed, they overnighted me the replacement along
with shipping material to send the other drive back after I recovered
the data off it for something like $20 bucks shipping.  Their response
to my drive failure made me a life long Seagate fan, and they are only
slightly less quiet than the best Spinpoints.

Ryan