Lots of News from Team Summit

[mattb]

I bought a new Dell desktop last year and the hard drive lasted one month! It took 4 hours straight talking with half of the people in India before they diagnosed it. In fact they had me do the same test soooooooooooo many times that my finger sarted hurting from holding down the resart button for 10 seconds. It was only when I complained that I did not want to do it any more that the diagnosis was made!

Just a word of advice when dealing with dell warnity support, if you have a account on dell's website you can logon and click my account > My Systems and Peripherials and then choose resources and use the "request service" feature to contact warnity support, I did this when my laptop keyboard died and explained them the trouble shooting steps I had already took and they shipped me out a replacement keyboard that I installed without me having to ever call india.

 

[mike123abc]

With an average MTBF of 500,000 hours, HD failure isn't all that common anymore...

I have had very few drives last 5 years.

 

[lakebum431]

Hard drives are funny. I went through 5 hard drives in my last work laptop in 2 years (a Dell). I love Dells for home use, but I am convinced that they are not built for someone who travels 70% of the time and use it 12 hours plus per day.

 

[Sarang]

The internationals yes, only some local HD DMA's will go to this satellite (at least at this time).

A lot of people have been saying that it would have made more sense to put their core HD content on 118.7

I would like some real confirmation of this on the aspect of Internationals. I'm going to be REALLY pissed if Dish knocks the Korean channels off 148 since it was my best bet to pick up Korean, HBO and Showtime at a higher bitrate than the 110 and HD PPV at the best bitrate.

 

[rickaren]

I had an awful experience with DELL, too. Had a four year warrant but went through FOUR hard drives. Yes full warrant (parts & labor) but lost all info on first, second time I had bought a second hard drive as a back-up from them and it failed. Final time first drive fail and the back-up drive saved nothing but corrupt files. Took it to a computer shop and they couldn't help but said to write to DELL since no one should have that many hard drive failures! They didn't even return a letter, but called on the phone and gave me a "special number" to call if I had another problem, under warranty. That was a full-blown 8200 that cost over 4K 4 years ago! (had their new at the time 20" LCD mounter that was a $1,700 option) Just bought this new GateWay FX510XL with another four year warranty. It has two 500GB drives and I have a Maxtor external 500GB on the desk (same as shown to be an add-on for the VIP 622 from Team Summit by Scott) No doubt I will have a hard drive failure in the future even if it is covered under warranty, they all fail!

 

[Slamminc11]

I would like some real confirmation of this on the aspect of Internationals. I'm going to be REALLY pissed if Dish knocks the Korean channels off 148 since it was my best bet to pick up Korean, HBO and Showtime at a higher bitrate than the 110 and HD PPV at the best bitrate.

Internationals going from 121 to 118.7:
African, Armenian, Chinese, Filipino, French, German, Kroean, South Asian Bangla, Kannada, Maayalam, and Telugu.

 

[Stargazer]

I had a laptop hard drive that was starting to fail and it was a little over a year old.

 

[long_time_DNC]

Hahahahaha...

You actually believe that figure? That's > 57 years for the average drive to fail. Do you know how that figure is determined? It's very educational to learn the process of calculating these MTBFs.

Guess what the #1 hardware failure is with computers? Hard Drives. Always will be.

My laptop drive just conked out, and I'm in the process of recovering the data from it from the spindle itself and from backups.

Of course I don't believe that figure. It's derrived statistically and the industry loves to play with those numbers to sell more drives...but...drives have become significantly more reliable and long-lived in the past several years.

I had a drive in my desktop PC at my office run 24/7 for 5 years before it started failing, and I gave it a pretty decent workout nearly every day.

I don't think that kind of reliability is not all that uncommon anymore. Laptop drives are built to be durable, but they take more of a pounding (literally).

 

[John Kotches]

Of course I don't believe that figure. It's derrived statistically and the industry loves to play with those numbers to sell more drives...but...drives have become significantly more reliable and long-lived in the past several years.

You don't believe the number, but you'll quote it? Why bother quoting it then.

MTBF when talking about individual drives is an utterly meaningless metric. How do you derive a mean from a sample size of 1? Unless you have a bank of drives, the MTBF is not of particular value.

I don't disagree with the premise that drives have become more reliable. It hasn't been the last several years, it's been a gradual process.

I had a drive in my desktop PC at my office run 24/7 for 5 years before it started failing, and I gave it a pretty decent workout nearly every day.

Ok. That was a good drive. How many of the same model failed in that time period. You didn't even reach the 50K hours level on that drive and it failed. Yikes.

I don't think that kind of reliability is not all that uncommon anymore. Laptop drives are built to be durable, but they take more of a pounding (literally).

It depends. I've seen lots o' failures, but I actually deal with a significant number of machines.

 

[cjsmigelski]

It's not a matter of if a hardrive is going to fail... It's a matter of when.

 

[Stargazer]

This sure makes me wonder what Dish Network is going to do when they start seeing a lot of failures in the DVR hard drives. Maybe they will have all MPEG-4 DVR's by then. It sure would be cheaper for them if they allowed the hard drives to be user upgradable instead of having it sent off for hard drive replacement.

 

[Purogamer]

Why do you think they release new boxes so soon and are constantly encouraging us to dish it up? To AVOID the hdd failures. I'd like to know the % of CSR-Diagnosed HDD failures that actually arrived to Dish with HDD failures...Probably a single digit number...

The common factor for all the failures in this thread is laptops. They just take more abuse. It doesn't take a 2 story drop to make an HDD stop ya know...

If you buy an HDD alone, it comes in that super-padded box. I believe these drives will always last more than a drive in a laptop or other computer pre-built because they've been banged around more during the various shipping methods, setups, etc...

Technical? No, but it makes sense that the less you move the drive, the better/longer it will work.

 

[dslate69]

Why do you think they release new boxes so soon and are constantly encouraging us to dish it up? To AVOID the hdd failures. I'd like to know the % of CSR-Diagnosed HDD failures that actually arrived to Dish with HDD failures...Probably a single digit number...

The common factor for all the failures in this thread is laptops. They just take more abuse. It doesn't take a 2 story drop to make an HDD stop ya know...

If you buy an HDD alone, it comes in that super-padded box. I believe these drives will always last more than a drive in a laptop or other computer pre-built because they've been banged around more during the various shipping methods, setups, etc...

Technical? No, but it makes sense that the less you move the drive, the better/longer it will work.

I have had a new 625 that has locked up twice with the Hard Drive Error on screen usually preceeded with a high pitch squeal, OKing the error I could still view just with no Hard Drive capabilities (pause, recorded programs, etc). I tried a Power Button reset both times to no avail. I unplugged the receiver each time to get it back up and it now works perfect again. I will probably swap it out next time it happens.
I support 1000's of Hard Drives at work and the failure is a very small percentage but it does happen. Usually what we notice is a bad run of them from the same order of computers.

 

[Smith P.]

There is big difference if you're support 1000s disks in server/SAN racks or desktops or worst - 1000s of them in notebooks. From my long experience supporting all types of that equipment, third group have unacceptable high level of failures; especially if you take in account a _heat_ from VIP ppl here .

 

[rickaren]

If DISH uses the new hard drives that Weakness use in their TiVO up-grades they may last a lot longer since they run @ 5400 RPN, instead of 7400. I have had both and with the lower speed comes lower heat. So far I have not had a failure with one of these new drives and I do use them a lot! I went to their Site and did not find info on this DRV drive so maybe it did not work out, however a DVR designed hard drive could last longer than one installed in a computer I suspect.

 

[Purogamer]

Plus there is less access required by a DVR drive than a computer right? You're always seeking files in WAY different parts of a computer drive, the stuff on a DVR is in big chunks and is easier to sort through unless you have 100's of events...

 

[Stargazer]

I guess people should not take those Dell commercials to heart that they saw a while back where they saw the laptop slap down on the hard concrete floor.

How about those rugged laptops (it is made by Sony or Panasonic I cannot remember which) that is about $3,000 and is waterproof? How do those do? I saw someone from the electric company using one of those a year or so ago.

 

[philhu]

I have had alot of hd failures in the last 12 years.

But, saying that, I have a linux 1.0.32 box up and running on a 850meg HD since 1994! IT has never been down, never need reboot, and just runs. It is on a 1400 watt battery, and the house has generator power. Even survived the ice storms in 1996 here in Boston when we had no power for 3+ days!

It is a small mail server for my home domain. And plays a great game of mille bornes in character mode!

It has 2 meg of memory, and a pentium 80 processor.

isone:~$ uptime
1:17pm up 4327 days, 15:14, 5 users, load average: 0.03, 0.17, 0.27

 

[RandallA]

I have had alot of hd failures in the last 12 years.

But, saying that, I have a linux 1.0.32 box up and running on a 850meg HD since 1994! IT has never been down, never need reboot, and just runs. It is on a 1400 watt battery, and the house has generator power. Even survived the ice storms in 1996 here in Boston when we had no power for 3+ days!

It is a small mail server for my home domain. And plays a great game of mille bornes in character mode!

It has 2 meg of memory, and a pentium 80 processor.

isone:~$ uptime
1:17pm up 4327 days, 15:14, 5 users, load average: 0.03, 0.17, 0.27

Wow! I bet you that if you reboot it, it doesn't come back. :devil:

 

[HDTVFanAtic]

They report that Dish Home Channel 100 is the seond most watched channel on Dish Network (I never watch it myself dont know where they got that number)

The only way they can know that is if the STB (via the sacred telephone connection) reports back to Dish what channels and amount of time you spend viewing each.

Either that or its a total fabrication and lie. Dish lie?!?!?!?!?

You can't have it any other way. And if they are lying, what other parts of this are they lying about?

And I suppose no one questioned them about the statement?