TiVo Community Forums Archives - Perpetual reboot

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Perpetual reboot - any recovery possible?
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Posted by: Steve in FL

Apparently my old Phillips Series 1 TiVo (upgraded to 20+60 in September 2000) knew it was about to be upgraded to a single 120G drive so it went into perpetual re-boot mode. Shows the initial screen for a bit, changes to the almost done screen then the video flashes and the cycle repeats. It had been suffering from the stuttering/freezing problem for a couple of months hence the planned drive replacement. I know it's a silly question without knowing the condition of the drives (no obvious sounds of mechanical failure) but does anybody know if it's possible to recover the data from the old drives when that hapens? Between work and travel the past few weeks the old drives had quite a few shows recorded.

Thanks.

Steve

Posted by: Robert S

Use PowerMax (Maxtor/Quantum) or other manufacturer diagnostics to identify the failing drive.

Use dd to copy it to the new one.

Hope TiVo can recover.

You might need to trigger a green screen to make TiVo repair itself.

Posted by: Steve in FL

quote:
Originally posted by Robert S

You might need to trigger a green screen to make TiVo repair itself.

How does one manually trigger a green screen?

In the meantime, since I won't have time to do much experimentation with recoving the old system until the Thanksgiving or Christmas holidays, I've gone ahead and setup the new 120G drive as a fresh A drive. Thanks to StanSimmons for the help with that. :) I don't suppose there's any way I can copy the program data from the old disks to the new one at some point in the future after it has data of its own recorded? Assuming I can read anything off the old drives that is.

Steve

Posted by: Robert S

You have to figure out a way to run mfsassert -please on the TiVo, either by using the serial port or modifying the startup scripts. It's also possible that booting the A drive without the B drive will trigger it.

There's no way to copy data between TiVoes, because it's all in the rather obscure MFS partitions.

Posted by: GregT

As Robert S mention you can (I did) trigger a green screen by booting with the B drive disconnected and then booting with both drives attached.

Greg

Posted by: Steve in FL

quote:
Originally posted by GregT
As Robert S mention you can (I did) trigger a green screen by booting with the B drive disconnected and then booting with both drives attached.

Greg,

The data on the B drive was recognized after you reconnected it? And I take it I should let the green screen complete its rebuild before I power down and re-attach the B drive?

Thanks for the advice guys, it'll be a couple of weeks before I can try recovering the old drives but you've given me hope :)

Steve