TiVo Community Forums Archives - Questions as drive is failing

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Questions as drive is failing
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Posted by: tivovan

I have a DTivo with 160MB and 120MB Maxtor drives. One of them is failing - I haven't taken the hood off to see which one as of yet. A couple of questions:

1. The backup I have is from before Tivo handed over the reigns to DirecTV. I assume the box will upgrade again, is that right?

2. What are your thoughts on using Maxtor's POWERMAX and attempting to "fix" the drive vs. getting a replacement.

3. Can I use MFSTools 2.0 to recover - even though I did not make the backup with MFSTools 2.0. I used an earlier version.

4. I think that I will get a UPS - this is the second drive that has gone bad in this unit. The drives came approproately packed, so power would be my next idea for a culprit. Thoughts?

5. Any way to not lose whatever recordings I have on the DTivo? I've read on the Forum about swapping the circuit boards, which may work. Any other ideas?

Thx for the input.
joe

Posted by: Chris Gerhard

1. Yes
2. That is what I would do first.
3. Yes
4. A UPS is a very good idea for a TiVo. Try to keep the temperatures below 50C. Elevate it and place an obstruction between the inflow and outflow vents on the bottom if you aren't doing that already.
5. Swapping circuit boards won't work. Backing up the existing drives is the only way I can think of to save the recordings. If one of the drives is bad, that probably won't work either.

Chris

Posted by: weaknees

I would respectfully disagree on the issue of the drive "fixing" versus a replacement. In the few times we've tried to fix a drive, it invariably has problems again way too soon. If PowerMax finds problems, get it replaced under warranty. This will mean losing your recordings and running with one drive for a while, but at least you'll know about the outage in advance, rather than having the TiVo just go down one day, after you've recorded three season finales.

Michael

Posted by: Robert S

That assumes that PowerMax identifies a failing drive. If it doesn't, you're in real trouble.

If you do an advance return you will get the replacement drive before you send the faulty one back. You can then use dd to clone the drive and save your recordings.

PowerMax's 'fix' appears to be block remapping. If a drive gets to the point where it needs this procedure then it's on the point of dropping dead anyway, so it's not surprising that Michael's drives continued to give problems, but it may make the drive work well enough for dd to copy it before you return it.