721 hard drive spindown?

[doode968]

Anyone notice if their 721 spins the hard drive down at any time?

The drive in my system is always on and is getting louder and louder. Its the typical hard disk whine, my laptop makes the same sounds. I think this is just the nature of hard drives.

The 721 is really annoying at night. If only it had the smarts to spin down the drive just like my 501 does.

Echostar PLEASE add this as a feature!!!

[dbronstein]

Are you turning the 721 off at night?

[Bill R]

The hard drive of the 721 never spins down (neither does the TiVo if you are comparing them). The fan on the 721 is where most of the noise comes from. The 721 fan only kicks on when the receiver gets above a certain temperature (the TiVo fan runs all the time).

You might want to put your 721 in another room and wire it to the bedroom as I have done. I'm using 62 feet of S-video cable (plus two runs of RG-6 for the audio) and the picture quality is very good. I also bought another 721 remote.

[Jerry Abbanat]

If all else fails do what I did after hearing the hard drive whine all of the time. Call Dish and have them send you a new 721. My new one is VERY quiet. Mine was not the fan but the hard drive--it was obvious because at times I could, if near the unit, hear the fan and other times not. The hard drive continually whined. It seemed to get worse as time passed.

[Jacob S]

It should not be making many noises that are loud. The first dishplayer I had which was 7100 and it was a lot noiser than the 501 and the 721 is even quieter than the 501 was.

[tm22721]

My 721 is behind a wooden cabinet door and it is still loud.

It was quiet for the first 2-3 weeks but it has gotten louder as time goes on.

E* needs to come clean on why this occurs since so many have reported it. None of my computers exhibit this behavior. It seems DN's extended insurance policy is a necessity for any of their PVRs.

[jerryyyyy]

This has been a constant problem- it is mostly the fan. They have a cheap fan in without ball bearings.... Probably saved 75 cents.

[marshalk]

The problem I was having was the drive and not the fan. I went to the trouble of confirming this by opening the case and pulling the plug on the fan (it is a normal 4 pin PC drive/fan style power connector) for a few seconds while it was turned on. After I tried the fan I unplugged the drive while it was on. NOTE: This is not for the faint of heart or those afraid of voiding their warrenty. It was clear in my case that the ever increasing noise was coming from the drive and NOT the fan. These experiments established for me that the fan was in fact a fairly quiet one. Nearly as quiet as the special extra quiet fans (from pc power and cooling) I use to put into my PCs to replace their noisy fans, but fairly quiet anyway.

Now I am not saying that every noisy 721 is the drive, just relating my experience based on an emperical test, not just assumptions. E* replaced my noisy unit with a new one that is much quieter. I also placed a piece of cloth beneath the 721 to absorb vibration and not reflect as much noice that comes from the bottom of the unit (fan and drive). The cloth provides some, not a lot but some, noise dampening.

All of this aside, the 721 should still spin the drive down when it has not been used for some user setable amount of time. This will reduce heat, reduce noise and reduce general wear and tear. They should also use drives with fluid dynamic bearings to further reduce noise.

[Jerry Abbanat]

As mentioned above, mine was definitely the hard drive. As I said, I had DISH replace my noisy unit. I can still barely hear the fan once in a while. I no longer hear that whiney hard drive. I don't think it is the fan in most 721's. I would call DISH and see if you can get it replaced.

[Jacob S]

No ball bearings in the fan? Cheap fan? What the heck is going on with Dish on cheap parts? DirecTv PVR units are cheaper and better built not as cheap it seems. Why can't Dish fix their problems at least when they come upon them? The problems with the 501 should have led to fixes to later 501's/508, and to the 721. If they keep making them the same way having the same mistakes then someone is just ignoring the issues.

I have a right to rant having 4 PVR's going bad with them expecting me to pay $14.95 each time for THEIR mistake refusing to give me a new receiver until I called a million numbers talking on the phone for hours and hours emailing and the such. This is pathetic! Even the dishplayers never went out this bad if at all. It has software issues instead. If it is not one thing its another.

By the time you have to keep paying $14.95 to get a replacement receiver you might as well pay a little extra each month for the Tivo fee or buy the lifetime fee.

[doode968]

I have replaced my 721 two times already. First was a bad tuner, second was a noisy drive, now this third one. Initially the unit was very quiet, but has been getting louder. Its definitely not the fan.

Its loud enough to be heard in the adjoining room.

I had a DishPlayer that would turn the drive off (one of its best features).

This thing is running linux, just have the system execute hdparm -S 15 at bootup. Unless there is some process that has to always write to disk, in which case, make a ram disk or fix it some other way. PLEASE!!!!

[bsobel]

The 508's also turn off the drives when off. Any chance 1.10 will include this drive spindown feature?

[Scott Greczkowski]

There is no drive spindown feature in L1.10 that I know of.

[bsobel]

Darn. Scott, anyway of getting this onto the list of requests for 1.11? I just got a second 721 for the bedroom (literally installed it last night) and this morning we decided the 508 is going back in. Was just too loud with the drive on, and the fan spun up a number of times to cool the unit off (since the drive was on generating heat).

Really wanted 721 in that room, looks like it has to go to my home office until they add it :(

[mgavin]

We will never see a harddrive spin down option for the 721. There is way too much going on in the 721 for it to spin the harddrive down. If it had way more ram and could go hours without monitoring the satt stream then it might be possible.
Keep in mind the 501/508 only use the harddrive for PVR events and guide data - the 721 uses the harddrive for its operating system, pvr events, timers, favourites and for swap space.

[Bill R]

Mgavin has it exactly right. There will NEVER be a spin down option on the 721. The same is true for the Hughes HDVR2 and it will likely be true for all future two tuner PVR/DVR receivers.

[BobFly]

what is the total amount of RAM in a 721? thats disappointing about the spin down!

[mgavin]

E* was quite cheap when they decided on ram, only 32 megs - the 721 typically has 100 processes running and uses all of the ram and 20 to 30 megs of swap.(721 has 128 megs of swap)

[Jacob S]

I remember when dishplayers were at first staying on and then later in a software update they allowed them to shut down while not in use.

[STXJim]

Hey,
If you want a spindown......
Do it manually;
Pull the plug every 'now and then'.
Would that work?:shrug:
Look at it like setting a manual timer.:)

[Jacob S]

Then you would miss your recordings, lol.

[doode968]

Looks like the monthly equipment maintenance fees are going to be worth the expense afterall. :)

A new (or refurbished) 721 every 3 moths.

Its a low-tech solution, but it works!

Has anyone tried Dynamat (http://www.dynamat.com) insulation?

[doode968]

I just can't accept that hd spindown can't be done. I have a linux box (PC104) running with 16M RAM with the normal Linux processes (including X). I can make the hd spindown and stay down, except when cron kicks off the log cleanning process.

Granted that the 721 is a bit more than a linux box, but...

operating system and swap space - Linux does not need access to HD all the time.
pvr events and timers - A smart sleep algorithm can handle this. A menu item allowing a user to specify "quiet" time where no timers are allowed may be acceptable.
favorites - ignore during "soft-off

If E* can put together the 721, they can go the extra step and polish the thing off. Its the little things that matter.

[Jacob S]

Yeah, the only good thing about the Dish PVRs going bad is that you get a new one every so many months. Pay the $1.99 a month extended warranty and you get to have it replaced for now on.

I personally think that sometimes it is just plain better to have one good solid receiver that will not keep going bad that is reliable and works better.

Does Tivo or other PVR companies offer an extended warranty? I believe DirecTv offers one for $4.99 a month but does it cover the PVR receivers if you have them on the account and can you just add tem on the account later on and it cover it still just as you do with Dish?

[Jerry Abbanat]

Doode: I bought and tried the Dynamat on my first 721 because, according to their claims, it should take care of the hard drive noise problem. I was very disappointed in its ability to quiet the 721. I also installed it on my regular computer, which has a rather loud fan, with similar results. I would save your money. It is also a bitch to get off as I found out when I took it off prior to returning my noisy unit.

[dbronstein]

Originally posted by bsobel
Darn. Scott, anyway of getting this onto the list of requests for 1.11? I just got a second 721 for the bedroom (literally installed it last night) and this morning we decided the 508 is going back in. Was just too loud with the drive on, and the fan spun up a number of times to cool the unit off (since the drive was on generating heat).

Really wanted 721 in that room, looks like it has to go to my home office until they add it :(

Why don't you just put it in another room and run the output back to the bedroom?

Dennis

[Bob Haller]

My fera is that someone looks at PVR warrany costs and they jack up the price.:(

They really should look at making them more reliable and adding a drive bay for easy drive replacing or something like that.

[Jacob S]

I also think they should add a hard drive bay to where you can ''upgrade'' the hard drive or replace it in the future. Their receivers should be upgradable.