mr_fusion_512
02-08-2006, 01:03 PM
I had some time this week to pull out some old Series 240 Tivo's (old Series II's in gray) to work on them... They've been on my todo list for about 8 months now *lol*
Anyway, I'm sure the title may be a bit confusing so this is what happened. I found 4 units and 10 drives (paired in two's). There was actually a 5th Tivo, but that was lent out about 6 months ago and I know they didn't use it and it probably got boxed up when they last moved (so it may be lost forever).
I found a drive pair that fit each tivo by trial and error as I would get a "hardware error" if it wasn't the right set. Then I was left with a stray set that didn't work on any of them. It also turns out that the A drive in that set was VERY temperamental and would lock up on post sometimes (in my PC) just stalling the system as it tried to read, etc. Anyways, I got lucky and on a successful boot, I DD'd it to another drive (with about 4-5 glaring errors probably from bad sectors) and now it boots up in the 240's fine but generates a "hardware error" in each of them.
So here's my conclusion... it either belongs in the "lost tivo" or one of 4 Series 540's that are actively running that I'd rather not take apart also... OR...
The alternative is that I may have backed up this set before it got really bad and since then something has corrupted it so that it doesn't recognize it's original motherboard. I toss this out there because one of the drive sets is a pair of 200 GB's but it's only using 160x2 so it could be that set. I've also had instances in other repairs/upgrades where drives got corrupt just enough so that it thought it wasn't in the original system board that it was paired to (in those cases I sacrificed the data and cleared and reset all)
So... I'd like to find a way to read the the partitions, particularly the one with the recordings or an index of the shows on them (there 16 partitions on A and 4 on B) and if they even look "generally" the same as one of the other drive pairings that are working correctly, I can wipe those two drives without worrying about losing these old recordings. If they appear to be a unique set, then I'll have to wait until I (a) have time to try them (ie. shut down and take apart) in each of the (4) 540's (the silver Series II's) or (b) get REALLY lucky and find the "lost Tivo"
I have the latest boot CD's and even tried Knoppix 4.0 which I got from a friend which is a graphical bootable Linux CD but neither of them allowed me to mount the drive with just a standard "mount source destination" command.
I'd appreciate any help, thanks!
-Jason
mr_fusion@hotmail.com
Anyway, I'm sure the title may be a bit confusing so this is what happened. I found 4 units and 10 drives (paired in two's). There was actually a 5th Tivo, but that was lent out about 6 months ago and I know they didn't use it and it probably got boxed up when they last moved (so it may be lost forever).
I found a drive pair that fit each tivo by trial and error as I would get a "hardware error" if it wasn't the right set. Then I was left with a stray set that didn't work on any of them. It also turns out that the A drive in that set was VERY temperamental and would lock up on post sometimes (in my PC) just stalling the system as it tried to read, etc. Anyways, I got lucky and on a successful boot, I DD'd it to another drive (with about 4-5 glaring errors probably from bad sectors) and now it boots up in the 240's fine but generates a "hardware error" in each of them.
So here's my conclusion... it either belongs in the "lost tivo" or one of 4 Series 540's that are actively running that I'd rather not take apart also... OR...
The alternative is that I may have backed up this set before it got really bad and since then something has corrupted it so that it doesn't recognize it's original motherboard. I toss this out there because one of the drive sets is a pair of 200 GB's but it's only using 160x2 so it could be that set. I've also had instances in other repairs/upgrades where drives got corrupt just enough so that it thought it wasn't in the original system board that it was paired to (in those cases I sacrificed the data and cleared and reset all)
So... I'd like to find a way to read the the partitions, particularly the one with the recordings or an index of the shows on them (there 16 partitions on A and 4 on B) and if they even look "generally" the same as one of the other drive pairings that are working correctly, I can wipe those two drives without worrying about losing these old recordings. If they appear to be a unique set, then I'll have to wait until I (a) have time to try them (ie. shut down and take apart) in each of the (4) 540's (the silver Series II's) or (b) get REALLY lucky and find the "lost Tivo"
I have the latest boot CD's and even tried Knoppix 4.0 which I got from a friend which is a graphical bootable Linux CD but neither of them allowed me to mount the drive with just a standard "mount source destination" command.
I'd appreciate any help, thanks!
-Jason
mr_fusion@hotmail.com