Double TWC HD DVR Hard Drive Crash (Raleigh, Cary: house, manufactured)

[ApexIntruder]

I have (had) (2) 8240HDC TWC Cable boxes in my house. Late Friday night BOTH of them had a fatal hard drive crash at the SAME time. It was freaky. There was no power surge that I am aware of and no other components in the house had an issue. I called TWC and got through on the first call, as usual. They had a tech out the very next morning. They tested the boxes and confirmed the hard drives were fried. He replaced them both with 8300HDC's and now I am back in business. Thanks TWC.

I have a couple of questions:

1. Did anyone else in the area have a similar problem? I am basically at the intersection of Raleigh, Cary, Apex and Fuquay-Varina. Yes, there is a location where all four places finger out and come close to each other. The very northeast corner of FV. I am wondering if there was some sort of surge through the cable line that blew them out.
2. What is the difference between the 8240HDC and the 8300HDC? One would usually think the higher the number, the newer the model, but I don't think that is the case on this one. I don't see any difference between them, except for one pair of RCA jacks in the front.

Well, I am so happy with how quickly TWC responded and how there is no charge for repairs. This is only the second time in several years I have had any issue at all and both times they were prompt and corrected the issue. I am just curious as to what could possibly cause a double HD fry at the same exact time.

[TuborgP]

Raleigh, NC - HDTV - Page 367 - AVS Forum
The latest that I am aware of is the 8300HDC, which runs the same software as the 8240HDC, which itself is basically the 8300HDC minus some hardware that is needed to decode analog cable, so the 8300HDC can take analog or digital cable while the 8240HDC can only handle digital cable. The 8300HD, 8000HD, and other boxes that do not use CableCARDs for decryption have been outlawed by the FCC except those that already have been manufactured. These have been granfathered in.

The 8300HDC and 8240HDC are engineering rush jobs in which Scientific Atlanta basically rushed to get the great 8300HD converted to use a CableCARD and to support the then-current version of OCAP. Scientific Atlanta basically wanted to change as little as possible, and changed too little. For example, its CPU is very good at running DVR code that is written specifically for it because such code does not force it to make many decisions, but is slow at code that requires lots of decision making like translating Java bytecode to native machine code. (The code that runs on ODN boxes is in Java to allow ODN to run on anything, anywhere; as long as there is a CableCARD, there are analog and digital tuners, and there is a DOCSIS cable modem in the device that needs to run ODN.) This is probably because the hardware to make decisions is very minimal which reflects the lack of need of the CPU's original target to make lots of decisions, saving lots of money on high-performance circuits that were anticipated to be wasted. Newer CPUs for cable boxes now probably have lots of logic to minimize the downside of decision making because Java demands it. Also, many of these rush jobs either have inadequate cooling or inadequate power supplies that are heat sensitive. These boxes were rush jobs because the FCC refused to budge on a deadline which many not-so-forward-thinking cable companies like Comcast

The above is from the link in the AVS forum
scroll down the link to find the full post.
Hope this helps.

[zinner]

Sounds to me like a failed software update than a failed harddrive....