Anybody have a 721 hard drive failure ?

[Jacob S]

Has anybody had a 721 hard drive failure? I know that the 501's were bad about this, I dont know if the 508 has fewer failures with their hard drives. Are there less hard drive failures with the 508 than the 501? Less with the 721?

[boba]

I can say as a dealer I have seen much, much, much less trouble with 508 hard drives

[Jacob S]

Is that compared to the 721, 501, or both?

[TomCat]

HD manufacturers can have runs of bad HD's. IBM had a problem a couple years ago and Segate has had such problems in their professional (non-consumer) lines. But that should not reflect on existing new HD's, even from those manufacturers. Such problems pass quickly and normally don't mean a vendor deserves a tainted reputation. And, PVR makers change HD vendors regularly due to pricing.

Deducing that since the 501 had problems a year ago with HD's the 721 might have problems this year is over-thinking it, to say the least. That should not be a conclusion jumped to easily or lightly.

So, the answer to this needlessly alarming and off-putting issue is that as far as we know there have been NO failures. Zero. Has a Replay HD ever failed? How about Tivo? Might as well get everyone stirred up while we're at it.

[Jacob S]

Yeah, I never thought about it, but am curious if anyone had problems with their Tivo's and Replay's and the other ones out there too. I was just talking mainly about Dish Network PVR's since that is the forum this is and that some have Dish Network service. I was just curious because I have heard about problems on the 501 but not on any of the other ones, and was curious if they had fixed the problem that was occurring before.

[TopCat99]

My 501 was being goofy for a couple days. Turned out it was a loose IDE cable (it would spin down and back up whenever the cat moved on top of the box).

I agree with TC (the other one ;)) that a manufacturer can have bad runs. Nokia is (in)famous for this with the cheap phones (the <$20 jobs). I saw so many come back with dead screens when I sold them that it was laughable. The problem is if you do see enough bad runs, you do tend to steer clear of Brand X. For instance, I will never buy another Maxtor or Seagate ;) Why? Of the six Maxtors I've owned over three years, four died and one is dying. And I can't tell you how many Seagates I've swapped out at work. In all fairness, all these drives were older, so I would hope QC has improved since :D