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Seeking feedback on options for dead drive in series 2.
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Posted by: jedwards

I found one of TiVos stuck on the gray "Welcome. Powering up." screen this morning. After a call to tech support, I was asked if I wanted to exchange it for "$149".

Before saying yes, I want to know what my possible options are.

If there is a good change of recovering my season passes and/or existing saved programs, then I would like to pursue an upgrade solution. If not, I am leaning toward going with an exchange.

I own 2 unmodified 80GB Series 2 Tivos. Both have hmo option and lifetime subscriptions. Both have service numbers beginning with "240-".

I know that I could crack both boxes make a backup of the working box, and use that to restore an image to the failed box if its disk proves unreadable. However, Murphy's Law being what it is, I am choosing to chicken out, and rejecting that as on option. If I had a known good backup already, it would be a different story, but I am unwilling to risk downtime on both boxes at once.

Given the situation (and my unwillingness to use the second TiVo to bootstrap the other), I see 3 options.

Options:
1. Just go with the exchange and leave upgrades as a future option.
2. Purchase a preloaded drive from a 3rd party like Hinsdale.
a. Backup that drive using mfstools.
b. Remove the possibly dead drive, and see if I can recover the contents of that one.
c. Depending on b, and the outcome of diagnostics, end up with either a single or dual drive TiVo.
3. Just purchase a new bare drive locally, and either blindly attempt recovery of the data. Resulting in longer delay if that proves impossible.
4. ??? Any other ideas?

Specific Questions:
1. Is there a way for me to get a mfstools compatible backup image from a third party? Net? Someone local to me in the Boston area?
2. How likely am I to recover the seasons passes, and/or currently saved programs from the failed drive? Hard drives rarely fail all at once, is it possible to do something like a manual fsck using mfstools, and then grab a backup of whatever data is readable?

Resources at my disposal:
1. I downloaded both the mfstools 2.0 floppy and
the hard disk image.
2. I have local copies of the msftools howto and Hinsdale+mfstools howto.
3. I have a MacOS X laptop running 10.3 and an Intel server running FreeBSD 5.1. I have sufficient temporary space to make an mfs2 formatted partition on my server, but have no access to any DOS or Windows systems, partitions, or software. (I am old Unix guy, and I've never owned or run any Windows software either at home or professionally). Will that cause a problem? Is it possible to store a small backup to an mfs2 style partition, and do a full backup and restore between a pair of Tivo Disks via a pipe?

General request for advice:
That's my story. I would appreciate any suggestions on where to go from here. I have done some research, but still have insufficient knowledge to make an informed decision. I welcome any advice on things I will need if I upgrade, and of course, advice on whether I should go for an upgrade at this time, or just kiss my data goodbye, and skip upgrading now.

Thanks in advance.

Posted by: tivoupgrade

Although it is likely to be a bad hard drive, it is not guaranteed to be that particular problem. Before making any decisions, you might want to briefly exchange the drives among your TiVo units to ensure that it really is a bad drive -- if it is, its unlikely that you'll be able to retrieve your data, although there is a remote possibility you could backup the bad drive and restore it onto a newer one to save your stuff... when I say remote, I mean VERY remote... if the drive has failed in a way such that the unit doesn't pass the grey starting up screen, then its likely that you won't get anything useful off it...

Posted by: jedwards

That is thanks, even though I don't much like the answer...

I'm new the the IDE scene, having been strictly a SCSI user until quite recently. With spare block tables, and OS support for detecting soft failures before they become hard ones, I find myself transported back to the 70s (except for capacity and speed of course) as far as reliability goes.

Your suggestions that I am unlikely to wrest a backup from the drive leads me to believe that I should just let Tivo handle it this time.

I delete more than I watch already, so the biggest benefits I see to an upgrade are faster turnaround times and not having to re-enter all my configuration the event of a disk failure.

Posted by: tivoupgrade

From one old unix guy to another, I feel your pain... But again, I'd stress that it isn't necessarily a drive problem, so it might be worth that initial diagnostic before heading for TiVo; once you've determined that its a bad drive (or not), then there's much to worry about if you just want to swap it for a preconfigured drive; the jumpers will already be set, and its just a straightforward swap... of course, you'd still have the option to send things to TiVo, but it would be good to know beforehand, wouldn't it?