Grrrrrrrr. . .

[meschen]

Power went out last night (probably due to PG&E work that is on-going near my home, but they won't own up to it). My Tivo came back up last night when power was restored, and was working normally. Now I'm at work, and my wife just called and said the Tivo is stuck (I think at the Welcome screen).

I think I'm ging to be ill . . . and I can't leave work for another 2+ hours.

[Tracy RainH2o]

Have her unplug it, wait a few minutes and plug it back in. It's worth a shot. It's a little computer after all. Good luck.

[ttodd1]

Might also be a good time to get an UPS for it.

[meschen]

Well, I left work early and confirmed the worst. My baby is very sick. No I have to see if it can be saved.

Have her unplug it, wait a few minutes and plug it back in. It's worth a shot. It's a little computer after all. Good luck.

Yeah, thats the first thing I suggested when she called. No go.

Might also be a good time to get an UPS for it.

I never considered a UPS. I had a surge protector attached to the thing. If I'm right that the outage cause the problem, it clearly didn't do its job. One thing I'm wondering about, for a minute or two during the outage, the power came on, but was lower than normal levels (all the lights were very dim. I wonder if this was the problem, or a spike that passed through the surge protector.

[blindlemon]

Power outages and hard drives don't mix.

It's not normally the power going off that's the problem, but the fact that it comes back on in fits and starts, sometimes for just a second or two, a few times in a row.

I have therefore installed a UPS inline with an RCD device (on the TiVo side) that trips when power is removed. So, if the entire sequence of power outages is short enough to be covered by the UPS battery, the TiVos stay up, but if the initial outage is long and the battery runs out, then the RCD trips and has to be manually reset when power has been restored and appears to be stable and the UPS battery has had time to (at least partially) recharge.

This prevents the situation that *could* occur with just a UPS, where the battery had been exhausted and power was restored and failed again, briefly, a few times before the UPS battery had recharged enough to keep the TiVos up.

[meschen]

Well, its dead Jim.

I would like to blame PG&E, but it it wouldn't do me a bit of good. It now occured to me that this is my second apparant HD failure on this unit, so its possible the fault lies elswhere. The first HD lasted just 5 months, and showed signs of trouble before dying. This one lasted just under two years, but it didn't show any signs of dying before today. Well I guess I have to move on.

Here's my question: assuming the HD is the problem, is there any hope of pulling the saved showes off of the unit? There are about 20 or 25 hours of programs I would really like to get back.