TiVo Community Forums Archives - Confirm Powermax is safe

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Confirm Powermax is safe
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Posted by: bmgoodman

OK, I think I already know the answer, but I thought I would ask before I try anything:

Can I safely run PowerMax on my 100 GB Maxtor drive that's currently in my Tivo? I have one recorded movie that gets to the same spot each time and makes the drive click and Tivo reboot. I thought I should let PowerMax run and replace any bad blocks that it finds, but I'm not sure if PowerMax needs to "understand" the file system Tivo uses. Is this safe?

Comments?

Thanks

Posted by: Robert S

PowerMax's tests are perfectly safe (obviously low level format wipes the drive). It may offer to 'repair' a bad block, but I don't know if that will help your TiVo.

You'd probably copy anything you want to keep to tape and send the drive back to Maxtor.

Posted by: bmgoodman

Thanks, Robert. I may just do that. So far, I've been living with this problem since I first installed the drive in August 2001. Basically, I've just avoided the one movie that is causing the problem and I've seen no other issues at all. I guess now that the fall TV season is upon us, I may decide to wait until next summer. By then, I should be able to put in a MUCH bigger HD for very little money.

Thanks again

Posted by: Robert S

OK, then. Fill the TiVo right up and then delete the movie. Schedule a row of short recordings to fill the time the movie used to occupy. Find out which one of the short recordings contains the bad block and mark is SUID and delete the rest.

Although bad blocks on an IDE drive are a much worse sign than they might appear, if the problem isn't getting worse, then it isn't getting worse. If you can sequester the bad block in a short recording you should be fine.

Bear in mind, though that even one bad block makes it impossible to copy the drive with recordings, so if you're making recordings you want to keep, this is not a good drive to do that on.

Posted by: bmgoodman

I guess I didn't realize that one bad block would keep me from copying the drive. Is that true whether the block is being used or not? If it is true regardless, wouldn't PowerMax allow me to replace the bad block and POSSIBLY relocate any data it contained?

Perhaps I'm stuck with this drive until next summer when I can switch the drive and abandon all the recordings.

Thank you for taking the time to respond. You have helped me considerably.

Posted by: Robert S

The drive should have remapped the bad block automatically (hence the dire implications of one bad block - the drive's swap out blocks have all been used up). I don't know how PM's 'repair' of bad blocks works, or if dd/MFS Tools takes any notice of it.

You can try doing dd or a -Tao mfsbackup to /dev/null to see if the whole disk can be traversed.

Posted by: OasisRed

I had the same experience. Only a problem once in a while. I waited until this weekend to get around to making a back that preserved my recordings. Ended up losing everything and had to restore a 6 month old backup.

My recommendation: Make a compressed backup now and try to transfer the data to another drive and send the broken one back before you really feel the pain.