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dying hd?
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Posted by: markn

A few months ago I upgraded to a maxtor 5400 rpm 120 gb hd which was previously used for occasional video use on my pc without problem.

The upgrade went basically okay, but I do remember a glitch which seemed to resolve itself with a tivo reboot.

Since that time there have been 3 incidents always during playback. The picuture stutters then freezes, if I take no action tivo crashes. If I fast forward a little it seems to recover. This never seems to happen during recording. If I rewind to the same point the glitch is reproducible.

So the question is faulty disk (bad blocks?) bad upgrade, or something else?

Any ideas?

Mark

Posted by: rsnaider

Sounds like the HD. Take it out of the TiVo and connect it back to your PC and run the Maxtor diagnostics available from their website. In some cases if bad blocks are present these utilities can mark them and TiVo should never attempt to use them again.

It sounds like you have a few and TiVo is having a hard time resolving things when it encounters them.

Good luck,

Posted by: Robert S

Yes, PowerMax is what you need. If it does find bad blocks, return the drive to Maxtor. You should be able to do an advance return where they send you a replacement disk and give you a month to return the faulty one.

Once you've got the replacement disk, do an Advanced test with PowerMax and get it to repair any bad blocks and then immediately use dd to clone the disk on to the replacement.

The hard drive should detect and repair bad blocks automatically. The fact that bad blocks are visible to the TiVo means that the drive now has so many bad blocks that it's used up all the space allocated for repairing them. So even though a few bad blocks may look rather trivial, infact the drive is in serious trouble.

Posted by: markn

Okay, thanks. It will probably have to wait till I get the time. I have the origonal drive so I'm not too worried.

If I understand correctly powermax wont damage the tivo file system then?

As for returning the drive I'll have to figure out how long I've had it. It possibly only had a one year guarantee.

I'm not sure I'll buy maxtor again as not so long ago I had 27 gb maxtor drive die and its rma'd replacement went shortly after replacement. I know all brands have bad stories but I'm beginning ro feel jinxed by Maxtor :(

Thank again

Mark

Posted by: rsnaider

quote:
Originally posted by markn
As for returning the drive I'll have to figure out how long I've had it. It possibly only had a one year guarantee.

Unfortunately it does not matter how long you had the drive. The replacement criteria is based on the manufacture date which is on a sticker on the top of the drive. That number determines whether or not they will cover it.

They do make exceptions however.