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dead tivo?
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Posted by: wirobins

well, last night the tivo was making some clunking noises and I unplugged it because I couldn't deal with it right then. This morning it won't start up, it goes to the "Almost there, a few more seconds please" screen, then back to static. I installed a second 120gb drive in it about 6 months ago and it's been great up until now. Its a series 1, SVR-2000

I made the new hd the primary unit, is it shot, or is something else up? I'd hate to loose my lifetime service.

thanks, will

Posted by: Robert S

If it's a drive failure you won't lose your subscription.

This could be a modem problem. Had any big storms lately?

But the clunks suggest a bad block on one of the disks. Run diagnostics and see if they can repair the problem enough to get your TiVo back up and then take a backup and/or copy the failing drive to a new one to save your recordings.

Posted by: wirobins

well I don't know what's going on, I just checked each of the drives with their respective diagnostic utilities (western digital and quantum fireball (oem drive)) and they both checked out fine under the advanced tests.

I haven't really had any big storms, and even if i did the tivo is on a UPS and I only plug in the phone line once a week.

I just put them both back in the TiVo and I'm still getting static -> "Almost there, a few more seconds please" -> static....repeats every couple minutes

Is there anything else i can check before I recover from my backup image? I'd rather not lose all my stored programming.

thanks again, will

Posted by: Robert S

I take it you unlocked the Quantum first?

I suppose it might be a power supply problem, might want to ask weaknees about that.

If it is a disk problem then it means that the MFS set has become corrupt. Try triggering a GSOD by booting with just the A drive and then returning to the normal configuration.

Posted by: wirobins

yeah, i unlocked it back when i put in the new drive 6 months ago.

I have an extra drive sitting around that i was gonna try restoring my saved image to to make sure it's not the tivo hardware.

what does it mean to trigger a GSOD, is it as smiple as just plugging in the primary drive and starting it? How do I return it to the normal config?

thanks

Posted by: Robert S

Yes, but the TiVo would have relocked it. If it wasn't unlocked then PowerMax would have only tested part of the drive (and completed in seconds rather than 1/2 hour).

Testing a different drive is a very good idea

The GSOD - 'green screen of death' is somewhat similar to ScanDisk. If you boot with just the A drive of a twin the system realises something bad has happened and marks the MFS set as needing checking. When you plug the B drive back in the mark causes the GSOD to run instead of the TiVo software.

Posted by: wirobins

well good and bad I guess. I restored my backup to an 80 gig drive I borrowed from a friend, and it works fine in the Tivo. So at least the TiVo itself is working correctly.

Unfortunately I still have no idea which of my TiVo hard drives is giving me the problem. I checked the quantum fireball and it was in fact locked again. After unlocking it I ran Powermax again and it passed every test.

I'm not sure what to do at this point as I don't really trust either of the drives anymore. I haven't heard the clunking noises again coming from either of the drives while I've had them out, but I'm not sure I'd be comfortable formatting everything and starting from scratch with the same two questionable drives.

The newer drive is a 120 gig western digital caviar 7200rpm model if that makes any difference (seems like a lot of people have had failures with this drive actually)

thanks

Posted by: wirobins

is it worth trying to copy over my original tivo drive (now my B drive) to my borrowed 80 gig to see if that will boot?

I don't have anything big enough to try that with my new drive, but I'm not sure what else to do.

Posted by: wirobins

well crap, I can't believe that worked. I just transferred everything that was on my B drive over to a new drive using that dd command and plugged it back into the TiVo. I got the GSOD, but after about 10 minutes it restarted itself and seems to work fine now. I still have all my programs.

Does that likely mean that there was something wrong with my B drive, or did TiVo just take that time to repair itself when it got the GSOD. I guess I could format my B drive and copy everything back to it, otherwise I'm headed to the store for a new one.

anyways, thanks for the help Robert, any more suggestions?

will

Posted by: Robert S

Yes, I would think your B drive is faulty (those clunks were very suspicious). I'm surprised that the diagnostics didn't find a problem, but I don't think I'd trust it enough to use in a TiVo.