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TIVO rebooting and got GSOD after successful upgrade
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Posted by: Indyracing

I upgraded my 60hr S2 TIVO last Sunday. I was very careful and meticulous and it all went well. I was pleased with myself. I watched TV and record some program on TIVO.

Yesterday (Monday), I turned on the TV at 6pm (PST) and noticed TIVO was going through the reboot phase when it should have been recording a program. The reboot was in the very early stage and made me wonder if it was just coincidence that I happened to switch on the TV when TIVO was rebooting. Anyway, I thought nothing of it until it did it again at around 8pm. This time I got the GSOD, left it a while and it eventually reboot itself.

I don't know how many times it has been rebooting itself when I haven't been watching TV. The upgrade involved replacing a single 60GB with 2x120GB drives. The temperature increased from 46C to 51C.

Does anyone have any ideas, clues, suggestions, etc?

Posted by: Robert S

I would think one of your new drives is faulty. Run diagnostics on them.

Posted by: Indyracing

Yikes! It was a bare drive and didn't come with a diskette. Any suggestions on where I could get the diags., perhaps from the Samsung website!?

Posted by: Robert S

Yes, these things are kept in the support section of the manufacturers' websites.

Posted by: HDTiVoNow

I had two 120Gig Samsungs in two Series 2 60hrs. A week after the 4.0 upgrade I started getting the GSODs on both machines. I ran all the diagnostics, even did a complete cleanup of the HDs. No luck. Sent HDs back to Samsung to get new ones. No luck.
I am now just using one 120Gig HD in each of the Series2 and they have been working great.

Nobody else seems to have this problem though, so I am curious to hear if you can fix yours.

Posted by: Indyracing

I haven't seen the GSOD when I have been watching TV this week since the upgrade and reporting the initial GSDO but then I haven't watched much TV this week. I don't know if the GSOD and TIVO rebooting has been happening any other time.

I already have 4.0. So I'll see if I get similar problems. Hope not!

Posted by: Indyracing

Spoke too soon. My TIVO got the GSOD and is rebooting.

HDTivoNow: How did you remove the other 120GB HD? Did you have to do anything to the other HD? Do I have to perform a restore from the original onto a single 120GB HD?

Posted by: Robert S

You can't backup a drive set in the GSOD condition, so you'll have to work from an existing backup. Compressed backups drop any upgrade partitions, so you should be able to restore a backup from a twin-drive TiVo to a single drive one, as long as that drive is not smaller than the original A drive.

Posted by: HDTiVoNow

Indy - I did a clean install from a 3.0 backup onto one of the drives. Do not do a backup from a 4.0 unless it came from your machine!

Posted by: Indyracing

My TIVO has v4.0 so I will no option but to upgrade from that. I still have my original TIVO 60GB HD so that's what I'll use to upgrade to a single 120GB.

I wonder what could be causing the intermittent GSOD with 2x120GB drives!

Posted by: HDTiVoNow

I don't know for sure what caused it... I posted this problem in April but nobody seemed to have the problem.

My best guess was that there's a problem with the low power from S2 60's power suplly and the required power of the Samsungs when running the new 4.0 software. It happened only a week after the 4.0 upgrade and to 2 machines only days apart.
Could be a coincidence, all I know is that since April I've been running with only one 120 in each TiVo and I haven't seen one GSOD. I really work my TiVos hard too, there's rarely space for TiVo suggestions because I have hundreds of shows programmed to be recorded.

Posted by: Indyracing

Thanks. I hope there's a solution out there somewhere 'cos I'd love to keep two drives. I guess I could put a 3rd drive in my PC but I bought two for TIVO.

So it was okay with v3.0 but started when you got v4.0. I don't see the connection with the S2 60hr power supply. Not saying there isn't one just hard to see.

Guess I'd better start the upgrade, again (or should that be downgrade). If a solution becomes available later I guess I can simply add the 2nd drive back in?

Posted by: HDTiVoNow

It seems the $40hr 60 hr and 80hr all have different power supplies. I was thinking that the 4.0 required more disk read/write time than the 3.0 software so maybe the HDs were "sucking more juice". But you're right I think my guess at the problem is a little far fetched.

I put one of the old 60 gig TiVo HDs in my PC and it's working great I kept the other one with 3.0 on it as an emergency in case I have to send one of the TiVos in for repairs.

I was thinking of getting another 120Gig HD and adding it to the two unused 120 Gigs and doing a RAID 5 in my home PC but then that would be a bit of an overkill. I think I'll just wait for the HD TiVo and upgrade that instead. It is going to require tons of space.

Posted by: Indyracing

I remember what I wanted to ask in my last post but forgot. When I upgraded, MFSTOOLS told me the source had 55GB of data, and the upgrade took approx. 1.5hrs to complete. Does this sound right?

I read elsewhere that it was taking many more hours for other people. I don't believe I've lost anything so it must be 100% okay.

Posted by: HDTiVoNow

I think it just depends on the speed of your PC.

Posted by: Indyracing

Phew! The upgrade is complete, again it took approx. 1.5hrs on a 1GHz PC. This time I used dd as per instructions from Hinsdale to upgrade from a single 60GB to a single 120GB. Fingers crossed no trouble with this upgrade.

Posted by: Indyracing

Damn! I made one fatal mistake. After I plugged in the new drive A:, TIVO told me the capacity was only 60hr. I reread the Hinsdale instructions and realised I had to increase the capacity. I made the mistake of using the wrong mfsadd command and increased the capacity with my original A: drive. I ended up marrying the two together. Now the TIVO continually reboots using either drive. Is there any way of undoing this.

I am trying to get an image for my TIVO SA2 60hr 3.0 or higher.

Posted by: Robert S

Well, assuming the problem is in the TiVo, you should be able to make a compressed backup off your newly-married drives. This would be the same as if you'd backed-up the original A drive.

Posted by: Indyracing

Can I create a compressed backup image with my recordings or will those only create an image of the TIVO software without recordings? I have 52GB of data including recordings!

Is there a way to unmarry the two so I can have my original A: drive back and start the upgrade from scratch?

Posted by: Indyracing

Is it possible to restore an image directly from CD using the MFSTOOLS without first having to copy it to a FAT32 PC drive? I have two drives in my PC which are formated NTFS and don't have a FAT32 drive available to use.

Posted by: Indyracing

When restoring a 60hr image to a new 120GB A: drive would I need to increase the swap file size now if I decide to add a 120GB B: drive later on? Does the swap file need increasing at all?

Do I need to peform the restore differently to the Hinsdale instructions because I may want to add a 120GB B: drive in the future?

Basically, do I need to do lay down any foundations now because of my future plans?

Thanks

Posted by: Robert S

If you're restoring to any drive other than your original A drive, then use -s 127 to get additional swap. It'll only cost you a few minutes of Basic recording time, but it's very difficult to increase swap later.

You need extra swap if you have more than a critical amount of disk space in your TiVo. For Series 1 Stand-alones this value is at least 150Gb (ie. 30+120 is OK). DTiVoes and all Series 2 TiVoes have twice as much RAM so they can take at least 180Gb (ie. 60+120 is OK). -s 127 gives you enough swap for 2x137Gb, which is the most you can put in with the official TiVo kernel.

Just follow the instructions in Hinsdale. MFS Tools will set everything up for you.