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Resuscitating dead Tivos
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Posted by: tbaggett

Hello all,

I own two Sony Series 1 Tivos with lifetime subs that I upgraded a couple of years ago. I also installed TurboNET cards in them at a later time.

Over time, they have both developed increasing problems with stuttering. They now both lock up on a regular basis and are useless in their present condition.

I believe the source of this problem is disk read errors caused by overheating over extended periods of time. Before I toss them in the trash or sell them as junked Tivos on eBay, I would like to try removing the drives and reformatting them, possibly replacing them if needed.

I have the backups I made when I upgraded, but I would imagine the software is ancient nowadays and may not even be upgradable to current stuff via a Tivo login.

Also, if I do get them repaired, is there any way to stop them from constantly recording for the live buffer? I never used my Tivos more than an hour or two per day and believe the live buffer's constant grinding of my drives led to the problems I now have.

Could any of you pros offer any advice or possibly point me toward info/faqs on the net that deals with this issue? I miss my Tivos!

Many thanks,

Tom

Posted by: Robert S

Yes, I would think swapping the hard drives would fix the problems. You can try to copy everything to new drives with dd using conv=noerror,sync but it might be a bit late for that. I would certainly think you could make a fresh compressed backup with MFS Tools to image your new drives with.

Although we all hope to get more out of them, two years is a pretty good run for hard drives in a TiVo. There's nothing you can do to reduce the load on them (although if the TiVo is overheating that won't do the drives any good at all), but in two years time they'll be giving 120Gb drives away, so it should be a problem to change them again.

Just use the normal Hinsdale procedures, there aren't any dedicated TiVo repair tools. You can also try the manufacturer's diagnostic to try to repair the bad blocks if dd won't complete.

Posted by: Gun-HO

i am no tivo pro..

tried resetting the tivo and clear all the thumbs and and wishlist? you could do a complete reset where it clears all the thumbs passes and movies and can take upto an hour to do.

i set my tivo series 2 to record all scifi movies/shows along with my season passes and wish lists the to-do list got huge taking 1-3 minutes to look at it. now when the dvr was recording and.. i view a playback see shutters but not bad but only rarely.

as for disk read errors id remove the drive and use manufactures disk drive utility to rule out a hardware problem. if thats not the case there are bracket/fan packages out there. the fans might help with heat related heat errors.

live buffer is always active regardless.. the buffer gets deleted as you change the channel. duel tunners always recording the current and last channel you viewed. i like the fact if a phone call comes in and i miss a word or two i can rewind to that point and not miss a thing. not just have a record function go active because i hit the pause button.

i rarely watch tv live anymore. i love it!

Posted by: Gun-HO

i have to agree 2 years is good because the drive in a tivo is always active. always recording when not in standby. that eats up the operating time of the drives.

most drives are rated around 10,000 hours.
tivo always on and active you get 8736hr of use in a year.
so 2 full years is a good run.

in a PC 10,000 hours is good for average 3 years. thats why most manufactures have 3 year warranties. but recently some have dropped them down to only 1 year.

run manufacture disk utiliy check for drive failures. if you get errors then your looking at replacing them.

Posted by: Robert S

Actually I was assuming that this was a stand alone. They only have one recording stream, of course.

DTiVoes do stop recording a live buffer if you set them to Standby, but the drives do not spin down. I doubt this has any effect on the life of the drives.

Posted by: Gun-HO

ur right probbly a standalone

well while still spinning might put more time on the spindle motor saves on the disk heads.

i didn't know that stand alones recored streams even when there is no signel or it had not been commanded by some record button.
thats what made me think of a dtvio

Posted by: tbaggett

First, thanks for the quick replies. Yes, these are Series 1 SA units.

I'm surprised no one has come up with a hack that would stop the constant recording. I rarely watch "live" TV at all, with or without my Tivos. I'd really like to be able to turn the live buffer off to reduce what is undoubtedly 90+ percent of the use of my Tivo drives.

If I was a paranoid individual, I might think it's a Tivo conspiracy - force constant wear and tear on the drives to intentionally reduce the unit's life span. Okay, maybe I am a paranoid individual. :D

I will pull the drives and run the manufacturer utilities on them to see where that takes me. If I can't successfully pull a current Tivo OS image, would the unit be properly upgraded once I restore my old backup and reconnect with Tivo?

Thanks again,

Tom

Posted by: Mandabar

Hi! *Tivo postie Newbie*

This sorta scares me. I've had my Series One tivo since December '00 and I haven't had any problems. And 2 years is supposed to be a GOOD lifetime.

Now I'm worried that my old and decrepict 3 year old Tivo will suddenly die on me. I haven't seen any signs though. Oh well. I think i'll be throwing in a 80 gig soon, so hopefully it doesn't go kaput after that! =)

Posted by: Robert S

The Quantum drives in the original TiVoes seem to have been built a /lot/ better than the current consumer drives. I would certainly think of a four year old drive as 'mature' :)

I would definitely not add another drive to that one - make that nuew drive a replacement A drive rather than a B drive.