@tablosupport Not sure this is the right place for this but seems the right people are here so I’ll throw it out there. While the HD still is not sleeping I was just about to brag about the fact that since performing the HD firmware update Tablo hadn’t locked up on a show when FF or REW and how fast it recovers now from FF or REW, however, it just froze right after a FF. I tried a couple of FF/REW moves to trick it into starting to play but I lost. I had to go back and start from the beginning. Why is it that FF/REW makes Tablo choke so bad?
@roraniel - just as a comparison, I checked my NAS server and looked at a couple of drives -
Hitachi 500Gbs (average of 3) - roughly 1000 start/stops against 34,918 hours (roughly 4 years)
Seagate 3Tb - 225 in 25,000
WD 3Tb Red (average of 5) - 49 in 22000
So the Seagate seems to be stopping/starting way more than any of the others, but even at that rate, it would take another 1000 years to get to the start/stop limit. If I look at Start/Stops not related to a power event…it gets even more stupid 
I guess I lucked out with my WD Reds and got them all without the idle timer
@sleeper - Google released a great study on close to 30,000 hard drives looking at failures, reported parameters, temperature, activity and all sorts of things back in about 2007. The general conclusion was that there was nothing you could point at that was a perfect cause and effect. Some reportable elements did correleate fairly well, but even those were not conclusive (example was a drive was 39 times more likely to fail once it reported its first scan error, than it was before reporting one). Busy drives faired no better than idle drives, hot drives weren’t significantly more prone to failure than cooler ones and so on. Seemed that if you had a drive that lasted the first 3 months, it had a pretty good chance of going 3, 4 or more years…
http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en/us/archive/disk_failures.pdf
@mullermj What app/device was this on? We’ve heard of this a few times for the Roku; and we’re using the native Roku player for this. The only real difference between Tablo and other Roku channels is that when you FF/RW the Tablo has to fetch the segments, which means they have to be fetched from the Tablo before they’re sent over the network.
@tablosupport Sorry, just realized I was not in the Roku forum and yes it was on the Roku 1. Fetch I get but rollover and play dead I don’t. The Roku, at the least the 1 anyway, seems to REALLY hate to deviate from play. Why would it just not play after FF or REW? Although it seems FF is the bigger problem.
Day 3 and no repeat occurrence of the hard drive going to sleep. Could it be?
Day 4 and I think I’m all good with the hard drive going to sleep issue. Thanks for the WD firmware update suggestion!
@tablosupport The FF causing Tablo to choke issue on Roku cropped up again. I was watching a show and hit the FF button twice for double speed then hit play when I saw it moved two minutes forward and the progress bar popped up without any text and shows it about half full of the blue bar and it’s been stuck there for 18 minutes. This freezing is what happens A LOT and just really destroys what should be a normal viewing experience. And note playback is via a Roku 1 which is wireless and that nothing else is using the Tablo and nothing is being recorded. Can you check on what the deal is here? Thanks. And maybe move this to a separate or more appropriate category?
Solid week of performance. Appears the firmware upgrade has done the trick. Thanks guys!
2+ weeks, not even a hint of a hiccup.
Same here!
Awesome - glad to hear this got things settled for you guys.
This happening with my WD elements drive - I’ve tried to locate a firmware update for my model but there isnt one available - I also tried to use the firmware updated mention in the prior comments but it wouldnt allow my HD (since its a different version).
Any other ideas?
Please post the exact model of your hard drive and its current firmware version.
Western Digital has a common firmware down loader. And thus when you go to the support page for an elements drive it implies there aren’t any updates. But you can find the link to the down loader in the upper right side of this page.
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp
On the bottom of the Elements box is P/N N/S number. The last 2 numbers are the suffix. I know for the non-SE elements the 03 suffix is very prone to disconnect. The WD release notes describe the fixes for various models and suffixes.
I just started seeing the same “No Hard Drive” error today. I have a Seagate Backup Plus Portable Drive. I’ve tried power cycling the Tablo unit, power cycling only the hard drive, pushing the Tablo reset button, etc, but nothing seems to work. Any ideas?
There was a batch of Seagate drives shipped with some alternate cables. These appeared to cause frequent USB disconnects to external devices like the Tablo.
We can take a look on our end to see what’s going on and make some recommendations. Feel free to give us a shout directly.
I just started seeing the same "No Hard Drive" error today. I have a Seagate Backup Plus Portable Drive. I've tried power cycling the Tablo unit, power cycling only the hard drive, pushing the Tablo reset button, etc, but nothing seems to work. Any ideas?
FYI, I unplugged the power to the Tablo unit for about 15 minutes, and it started working normally again.
For the last couple of weeks I’ve been dealing with the “no hard drive” error intermittently occurring. I tried going from wireless to wired, but it still happens. Most recently (today) I updated to the new firmware with the hope that the issue was resolved. Unfortunately, it just occurred. It mostly seems to occur while I’m watching live TV. After 20-30 minutes, the live TV stream falls back to the guide and if I try to replay I get an unknown error message. I then go check the table app and it says the hard drive is gone. I’m using one of the recommended WD elements drives (WDBUZG0010BBK). Sometimes pulling the use and reconnecting works, other times I’ve had to cycle power to the tablo.
Any suggestions or methods to fix this permanently?
did you get the latest firmware?
Yes got it today and was hoping I would not have this issue again. But, no luck.