TiVo Community Forums Archives - Upgraded TiVo Series 2 now stutters, with no picture.

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Upgraded TiVo Series 2 now stutters, with no picture.
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Posted by: bettingr

I recently tried to add a new hard drive to my Series 2 TiVo following Hinsdale's instructions, but when I powered up the upgraded TiVo (booted fine into TiVo Central), there was no video from Live TV, and the audio would cut in and out.

Thinking that that cheap HD I bought at Fry's was the problem (Hitachi Deskstar 180Gb), I switched to a Western Digital WD2500 250Gb, but with the same result. I also used a different IDE cable in the two installs, but no change.

Has anyone else had experience with the stuttering TiVo? :confused:

Keith

Posted by: weaknees

Does the original drive work as it should?

What exact commands did you use, if you remember?

Michael

Posted by: bettingr

quote:
Does the original drive work as it should?

What exact commands did you use, if you remember?

Michael

I have not removed the extra drive and tried the original drive alone. I assume it is fine because all my program listings are still there, and TiVo Central behaves as normal. I'll put old TiVo back together and see -- my housemate will appreciate that... :)

Exact commands: In either case, I followed the Hinsdale instructions religiously. Of course, I found the backup that I made of the TiVo verrry handy when I had to try a second drive...

Keith

Posted by: bettingr

After returning TiVo Series 2 to its original configuration (one drive, restored from backup), now it freezes on "Powering up..." :mad:

Keith

Posted by: BlueXanaX

quote:
Originally posted by bettingr
After returning TiVo Series 2 to its original configuration (one drive, restored from backup), now it freezes on "Powering up..." :mad:

Keith

This seems like one of two things, one being a jumper problem. Usually if it hangs on boot, then you have the jumpers on the drive in the tivo, set incorrectly, and it therefore cannot find the drive. Try master, try cable select.

Another thing I have noticed is, I have a 180 gig w.d. hard drive, and have had it working in my sddvr40 units, with intermitted problems. Audio problems, video problems, and I have had to redo the drive 3 times, tried it in different units, tried it as a single a drive, or with a new b drive. It would even run ok for weeks then one day I would reboot the tivo, and nothing. Hangs on boot. I finally took it out of all existence and it's in a pc, does fine there. I don't know the exact reason for this, so I won't even attempt to explain.

You said your second attempt was with a 250 gig, same thing. Very Large Drive. Reguardless of the reason, there is no need for a drive larger than 160 gig, because your unit will only see 137 gigs of any drive. Unless you add the lba48, can be alot of work. You do better to buy 2 160 gig drives to get the most time, or 2 120 gigs, is plenty in my opinion at least. Even one single 160 gig gives you alot of time. If you want more space than that, get another tivo, and upgrade it, easiest, cheapest way I have found.

Try your upgrade with a 120 gig or a 160 gig, and sit and watch it as it does the backup, and/or restore, to make sure it does not have errors, if all goes well there, I bet it works.

Posted by: Robert S

As you said 'add' rather than 'replace', I take it that the original drive is married to the new one. If so, you wouldn't expect it to boot on its own, regardless of jumper settings (although I would expect it to get to 'almost there' before rebooting, that might be a jumper issue (master with slave vs single drive)).

There isn't a good way out of this - you're probably going to lose your recordings.

If you have already lost your recordings, use your backup to put an A drive image on all the drives and run them on their own. It should then be obvious which ones work and which don't. It's not impossible that the problem results from an interaction between the drives, but it's not likely.

Did you take any steps to accomodate the large drives, or did you just do the normal Hinsdale procedures with the mfstools2noJ.iso disc?

Posted by: bettingr

Thanks to those who pointed me in the right direction regarding the hanging on "Powering up...". It was because I left the "Master w/ slave" jumper in. I am now back to my original problem.

As for large drives, no special accommodations were made. Fry's had a cheap 180Gb on sale, so I went for it. 20Gb didn't seem a lot to sacrifice.

I forgot to mention that I did the "restore A drive to new upgrade drive and test it" step of the Hinsdale instructions, and TiVo Central ran fine, suggesting to me that the new hard drive isn't totally poisonous to my TiVo.

Any ideas?

Posted by: flapbreaker

I don't know if this will help or even applies as it has been about 3 years since I upgraded my Tivo but when you format the drive you should have it do a full surface scan so it can block out the bad sectors. Every drive has bad sectors. My upgrade went fine but I would get corrupted video on some playback. I finally saved 2 recorded shows that had quite a bit of corruption and now I don't get that problem anymore. so I am assuming there were bad sectors that were not "turned" off. Now I do wish I had been more patient and did the surface scan before upgrading. Just a thought.

Posted by: bettingr

Thank all of you for your input. Following all my experimentations, here is the situation: after restoring my ORIGINAL hard drive from the first mfsbackup (via "mfsrestore -bpzi") I did, the TiVo now doesn't display any video when on Live TV and the audio cuts in and out. I appear also to have lost all my recordings, because playing one ends immediately and reports that:

"The Tivo DVR was not able to record this program because there was no video signal on the channel. You may have been trying to record on a channel that you don't receive."

Does anyone have any advice as how to proceed? Should I just start over from a new TiVo image (and could tell me where to find one :))? Is there a chance that the original hard drive is bad and the stuttering problem would still be there? Thanks again.

Posted by: Robert S

Recordings will only survive restoring a backup to the original drive if it's a Series 1 as the partition order is different. Now that that drive has been repartitioned by MFS Tools, this trick would work in future (not that that helps much).

I don't see why Live TV wouldn't work - that would suggest you've made a mistake with the a/v cables. Does this affect both STB and RF channels?

I wouldn't expect stuttering to carry over to a new drive - normally replacing the hardware is all that's required.

Posted by: bettingr

After reading Hinsdale more closely, I think I've finally figured out what happened: I left GoBack running while I was doing all my TiVo upgrading. Presumably and evidently now, my backup image is corrupted. :(

Looks like I need to get access to the mysterious cache of TiVo images...

Keith

Posted by: Robert S

GoBack is known to be hazardous to files called .bak.

tivo.mfs would be a safer name for your backups.

Posted by: bettingr

Good advice. So, if I did that, I *wouldn't* have to turn GoBack off?

Posted by: Robert S

GoBack runs under Windows, not Linux, so the problem must be occurring when Windows is running. If you ever allow GoBack to run, it'll damage the TiVo backup if it's called something.bak.

So, conversely, I would think that files called something.mfs would be safe whether GB was running or not.

Posted by: bettingr

I think this little saga is reaching its end: I must have blown up my TiVo. With a virgin image from this group, a new restore behaves the same. :( I used just the one drive (Hitachi), and didn't turn GoBack off, but the image file was named .bkz, so I presumed I was OK.

Can my Series 2 be fixed? Could I send it to TiVo, or did I lose that option when I attacked it with my screwdriver? Or is it time to shop for a new one? (Can I transfer my lifetime service to a new unit?)

A very disappointing end to what seemed to be a pretty straightforward operation... :(:(

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