TiVo Community Forums Archives - Bad drive -- Please check my assumptions...

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Bad drive -- Please check my assumptions...
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Posted by: HerbM

Phillips original 14-hour TiVo, long upgraded with 2 80 GB Maxtors.
Have backup on disk and test of backup on original drive which worked ok last year when last tested and did downloads.

TiVo started skipping and freezing then wouldn't boot after a day or two before I could take it down. Booted to "just about there", then rebooted infinitely.

14-hour backup boots ok, so problem is likely the drives -- might still be power supply since two 80 GB drives draw more power. Modem dials and seems to download but fails repeatedly during indexing and never completes the schedule update -- TiVo is 30+ days out of date so no schedule is available, etc....All recordings are not manual.

Test drives in PC using DOS diskette and PowerMax software.
Powermax fails BOTH drives, but clears the screen when is says to record the error code -- result is the drives both seem to fail but no error code is available.

Plan 1: Replace with two new 80 GB drives (or larger); first trying to do a "dd" drive copy (I am not a Linux expert but can read through the FAQs etc.) This way I keep my data, season passes, etc. (Unlikely to work.)

Plan 2: Assuming drives won't copy, then copy the backup and extend the drives again using MFS Tools etc.

Please provide any ideas, hints, references to specific FAQ or Guides that would help me recover these drives or copy them.

Are these drives worth anything? Will reformatting give them new life?
Pitch them in the trash? Isn't it odd that both died concurrently?

All suggestions or thoughts welcomed....

Posted by: Robert S

It's odd that PM crashes, but if it says the drives are bad, you'd better believe it.

I would think you have a very good chance of copying the drives with dd. Make sure you use conv=noerror,sync and, of course, that the new drives aren't smaller than the originals. Even if the drives won't copy, there's a good chance that you can make a fresh compressed backup and at least salvage your settings.

The drives can not be regarded as reliable. RMA them if possible.

Posted by: StanSimmons

And check the Hinsdale "How-To" document in the sticky at the top of this section of the forum for details.

Posted by: HerbM

quote:
Originally posted by Robert S It's odd that PM crashes, but if it says the drives are bad, you'd better believe it.

Oh, I believe it.

I don't know that PowerMax actually "crashes", it just clears the display part of the screen on the left and reports on the right a generic failed message that indicates the (missing) error code should be reported. This is new PowerMax, downloaded two days ago.

quote:
Originally posted by Robert S I would think you have a very good chance of copying the drives with dd. Make sure you use conv=noerror,sync and, of course, that the new drives aren't smaller than the originals. Even if the drives won't copy, there's a good chance that you can make a fresh compressed backup and at least salvage your settings.

Uggh, last night I was going to dd the drives and discovered that I had another Maxtor 80, supposedly the same model, that was smaller than these two failed drives by a few meg, so it and my spare 180 won't work for the test. I must go buy drives before the test.

Thanks for the encouragement; I wondered if the dd was worth the effort and might have overlooked the "compressed backup" attempt to save settings.

quote:
Originally posted by Robert S The drives can not be regarded as reliable. RMA them if possible.

They are pretty old. I still find it odd that two drives failed at the same time.

Posted by: Robert S

You may be able to copy the drives with an MFS Tools pipe - you can use a slightly reduced -s value to shrink the swap partition and thus make the A drive part of the image small enough to fit.

You can also do this manually by rebuilding the partition table with the smaller partition 8, dd all the partition (except 8, naturally) from the old drive and use mkswap (see the Fixes thread) to initialise the swap.

The drives could have had bad blocks for months without you noticing, it's just that one has developed in an awkward spot.

Posted by: HerbM

quote:
Originally posted by StanSimmons
And check the Hinsdale "How-To" document in the sticky at the top of this section of the forum for details.

Thanks, all over it, but if you think of any specifics to point out please do.