TiVo Community Forums Archives - My hard drive is dead! What to do?

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My hard drive is dead! What to do?
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Posted by: jakerome

Hi,

Boy, did I run into some problems. I recently bought a TurboNet card (for my DirecTiVo) and installed that along with the "hack" software, enabled bash and telnet. The card worked fine, but I could not telnet to the machine. I didn't have the proper serial cable, so I couldn't test it that way. The TiVo booted fine, and I could ping it no problem.

This morning, I decided to troubleshoot it again. I hooked up the hard drive to my PC with the Windows drive disconnected. This is the same drill I had used previously. Well, this time I got a disk error. To make a long story short, it appeared that the TiVo drive wasn't getting any power at all, and I tested that theory in both my TiVo & PC. Basically, the hard drive never started up-- complete silence. This is before I ever tried to do anything to the drive- it worked in my TiVo, before I could ever mount it, it was DEAD.

That's bad enough. I bought a new 120GB drive and tried to restore an image from a Hughes Series 1 TiVo ( I have the DSR6000). The restore seemed to work, but TiVo refused to boot from the drive. Do I need to get an image from a DSR6000?

Finally, I had a 40GB/120GB in my TiVo before disaster struck. I'd like to get the 40GB drive working again so I don't lose my saved programs (the whole Pats season!). My thinking is that I fried something on the drive's circuit board; if I swap that with an identical unit, is it possible my drive will come back to life?

Obviously, this "upgrade" didn't go well. First priority is to get a working TiVo again (well, not including the one I bought today for $90!), with the new 120GB drive all by itself. Next priority is to recover the 40GB drive so I can get at my old stuff. Barring that, is there a way to salvage the recordings on the working "B" drive (120GB)? I added that with BlessTiVo year ago.

My little $70 upgrade is getting more & more expensive! Thanks for your help.

Posted by: Robert S

Using a Hughes image in a Phillips TiVo would make you a Type II Moron. The TiVo should have booted, though. Perhaps you need to do the runideturbo=false thing?

If you lose either drive in a two-drive set then the whole lot is lost.

The circuit board swap has been known to work, but it's a long shot and you risk destroying another drive.

Posted by: jakerome

I'll be damned. Turns out, i just thought I was a type II moron; I did use the DSR6000 image. It was the 2.0 software, so there's a good chance I did need the ideturbo=false thing, right? I'll try again when I get my nerve back. Thanks for your help so far. I'll let any readers know how it went.

Posted by: Robert S

Yes, despite what Hinsdale says, for DTiVoes 3.1 appears to be the first version that does not require that little hack to get the TiVo to boot on a non-Quantum drive.

Posted by: jakerome

So do I just run this command with the drive attached to my PC, correct?

mad/edit_bootparms hdX –i

where I'd just replace "hdX" with my actual drive designation?

Posted by: Robert S

Yes, something like that.