US Cable Support > Comcast Cable TV > SA 8300HD - new guide & drive keeps spinning up/down

SA 8300HD - new guide & drive keeps spinning up/down

Try a power cycle?

That was the first thing I tried...thanks.

reply to jcyuen
Only other option would be to format the drive (will loose all settings, recordings, etc.)
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Retired Tech at the Beach.
I speak for myself, not my former employer.

reply to jcyuen

It used to do it every night around midnight. But it wasn't this frequent until the new guide. Of course, the other option is to leave it on all the time, but that will probably use more electricity.

I may have to format it and see if that remedies it.

Not a whole lot more power.

Mine will spin up/down every few hours and has always done it. Not really a bother. Just like any device with a drive, it has to do maintenance sometime.
--
Retired Tech at the Beach.
I speak for myself, not my former employer.

reply to jcyuen
I live in Arlington too and I have the 8300HD, and also notice the same thing. The drive seems to spin up (quite noisily) every hour. Before the guide change it would just spin up after midnight, I assume to get the new guide data. Now it's spinning up so often I'm afraid it will probably burn itself out.

reply to jcyuen

said by Ted Hodgins, Comcast Sr. Director, Video Product Development - Navigation, in Media & Entertainmen :

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Leaving the DVR on allows for your cable box to easily get software and firmware updates as well as updated TV listings. This should not significantly impact the lifespan of the cable box or the hard drive. A lot of our customers leave the DVR on and turn the TV off. There is a slight power variance between the SA/Cisco box and other set top boxes being on and off (most consumer electronic equipment is never really all the way "off" unless it's physically unplugged.). The variance I see between power on mode and sleep mode on a Cisco HD set top is roughly 0.3 W

At 9 cents per kwh that would equate to about 2 cents a month to leave the cable box on 24 hours a day. Better DVR power management is something that is also being reviewed.

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reply to jcyuen
My 8300's do the same thing. Spin up, spin down every hour or so. The one in the bedroom is noticeable as it's the most quiet place. Scared the crap out of me the first few nights.

Sometimes the drive will spin up for a minute and spin down then it will spin back up a second later.

I just figure it's the DNCS pining all the boxes every so often so they wake up.

reply to jcyuen
We got the "new" guide last September and my drive spins and stops every hour, too. It appears to be normal from what I can tell.

reply to jcyuen
Sounds annoying. I wonder why they don't just leave the drive idling like the Motorola's? Is there really that much of a power saving?

Last night our cable was out for about four hours, and the box spinned up every ten minutes until it came back on. Very annoying as I kept thinking that the cable was back on and we could go back online.

reply to jcyuen
My SA 8300HD on TimeWarner Cable with the Navigator guide does the same thing. It's crazy annoying. So it's not limited to Comcast and the iGuide.

This is a normal process on all Cisco DVRs. There is a fix and it is slowly being rolled out across Comcast markets with no impact to the customers.

reply to Russ

On August 10, 2011, Comcast's Ted Hodgins posted in his "New Guide for Scientific Atlanta Cable Boxes" blog:

quote:

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We recently instituted a configuration change in all locations that removed the automatic overnight DVR spin down mode. The DVR spin down was unintentionally interrupting overnight linear and On Demand TV viewing.

»blog.comcast.com/2010/05/new-gui···nt-40071

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I don't know when it stopped, but I haven't heard my DVR spin up in a while unless I actually turn it on now.

Now that you mention it, I haven't heard the DVR frequently spinning up/down anymore either. I must have just mentally blocked out the noise.