My Tivo just died...how do I replace hard drive?

[therippa]

Hi all...

After 3.5 years of working great, my series 2 Tivo (TCD130040) just bit the dust. One of the hard drives failed as I was watching a show, it sounds like the bearings are shot. I haven't opened it up yet, so I don't know if it is the original drive or the second drive I added.

Anyway, I was wondering on how I should go about restoring it. If the 120gb second drive still works I would like to use that as my A drive. I may or may not choose to setup a B drive, but that can always be done later.

I have a copy of the TCD130040 series image, but if the bigger drive failed what drive should I buy? I see the limit is 137gb per drive...any recommendations on brand? Also, is there any way I could possibly salvage some data off the drives?

Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

[no-blue-screen]

The first thing you should do is connect both of the drives to your PC (one at a time) and use the mfr utilities to run a full diagnostic on the drives to find out which one is the culprit. Of course you know not to boot into windows with the TiVo drive attached.

If it is the smaller drive, then just run a restore on the 120Gig drive using mfstools and the image you have and use that.

I am not sure about getting data off since you have a two drive setup. You may be able to repair the drive enough to make a backup.

Any PATA hard drive works really. I have used Maxtor, WD, and Hitachi without problems.

Good luck.