Having problems with upgraded DTV Tivo

[Barryrod]

I have an RCA DVR-40 I had upgraded using a Weaknees add-a-drive (160g). Everything was great for about a year til today. It started the stuttering. I cleaned out all the recordings I did not want to keep and rebooted. Still stuttered.

I had read somewhere here that a member had replaced his IDE cable and fixed the stuttering so I did that. Now it stays on the Grey Powering up screen for a couple minutes then reboots. I tried to put back the old IDE cable and still the Grey screen and reboot. I checked to make sure all connectors were seated well and they are.

I think a drive may have been the original issue but now I am much worse off than I was. Any suggestings on getting back up.

I have Spinrite and am going to test the drives but other than that, any help is appreciated.

Barry

[Mavrick22]

Do you still have the orignal drive from the tivo to put back in to see if it will boot?

[Barryrod]

Do you still have the orignal drive from the tivo to put back in to see if it will boot?


The original drive is still in it. I just added a 2nd drive to increase capacity.

[Dkerr24]

Sounds like one of the drives went bad. You'll need to figure out which drive went bad, then reimage the Tivo again. I'd highly recommend going back to a single drive as they are easier to fix/diagnose in situations like this. Also less heat, less draw on power supply, less noise, and you cut your chances of drive failure by half.

[Barryrod]

If Spinrite says both drives are good, is it possible to convert back to single large drive setup and save all recorded programming. I am pretty computer literate and feel I could do it myself if possible and a little instruction.

I am running Spinrite on another PC right now testing the drives. I believe I have my original parts from the Tivo from the upgrade

[Barryrod]

Also on Spinrite, should I run a lvl 2 or lvl 4 test. I am running lvl 2 right now and it is stuck at 57% on my original 40gig drive and I hear a periodic clicking from the drive ( every 5 sec or so).

I think I will head out soon and get a new drive just cause and plan to convert. If I have 6.2 software on the Tivo, can I use larger than 137gig. I was hoping to get a single 200 or 250 gig and be done with it.

[Barryrod]

Ran Spinrite and tried to boot back up. Still get grey screen :mad:

Heading to Circuit City to get a new 200-250gig drive :eek:

[Barryrod]

Just saw in the Hinsdale Upgrade How-To that if you have a Series 2 Directv Tivo with a user added B drive, that you can not go back to 1 larger drive (I think that is what it says)

I could be reading it wrong and it could mean if you do it you can't expand recording hours if the single drive is larger than the dual drives. (After reading this 5 or 6 times, I am leaning this way)


From Hinsdale
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"Those with dual drive DirecTiVos, dual drive Series 2 units (with user added B drive), the rare factory combined dual drive standalones (see Step 7 Option #2 for description), or dual drive UK Thompson TiVo will not have enough available partitions remaining in order to combine their existing drives onto a single larger A drive and expand to use any remaining space while still preserving their recordings. For further upgrade possibilities of these units see Upgrade Configuration #2 (will not preserve recordings) or Upgrade Configuration #4 or #5 (preserves recordings)."
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Can anyone tell me which is right. I don't care right now about expanding to the additional hours the bigger drive would give. I just want to get back to a single drive system and see if I can get back up and running.


I have done an image backup and it went great with no errors at all. I am hoping to save all my recordings as well

[nuncles]

Let us know if the new HD works.

[Barryrod]

Let us know if the new HD works.


Will do. I am doing a simple restore to the new drive from the backup image to see if I can at least get the Tivo to boot :up:

[Barryrod]

Well..I am ready to throw the damn thing at the wall :mad:

It does the exact same thing. I can hear the arm in the drive moving accessing data...then it reboots. :mad:

Any suggestions?

[Dan Collins]

Check the ribbon cable that connects the mainboard to the front panel. You may have dislodged that cable when you replaced the IDE cable. Try reseating it, but in some cases this can permanently damage the front panel (it fries a component on the board). If that is the case, you may get it to boot, but it won't respond to the remote.

See this thread: http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=105719

[Klydeman]

I had/have a DTIVO. Similiar situation, dual drive. Worked great for about 15 months. It was stuttering, but worse getting only 20 minute recordings on like an hour show & Reboots.

I did a Clear & Delete Everything and it pretty much went back to normal.

[Dan Collins]

You probably have a bad area on your drive. By doing a C&DE you stopped using that part of the drive. When your recordings grow to that area again, the problem will likely return. In the OP's case, he can't get the TiVo to boot, so he can't do a C&DE.

[Barryrod]

Check the ribbon cable that connects the mainboard to the front panel. You may have dislodged that cable when you replaced the IDE cable. Try reseating it, but in some cases this can permanently damage the front panel (it fries a component on the board). If that is the case, you may get it to boot, but it won't respond to the remote.

See this thread: http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=105719


Yeah..I checked that. I even removed the whole front panel to ensure that the ribbon cable did not become dislodged from the front. I have always been very careful about that ribbon cable whenever I have been inside the unit. If it had been that ribbon cable, as you said, it should boot up but no remote.


I am doing a Lvl 4 (deep) scan on drive A right now. Maybe there are errors on the boot sector that I copied to the image. :confused:

[Barryrod]

I am downloading the Instantcake for my Tivo I just bought. I will install it to the new drive to see if I can get the tivo to boot. If no-go I will look for another dvr40

[Barryrod]

Well...Instantcake worked on the new drive so I now KNOW for sure I have a drive problem. I still want to try to get my recordings back so I will let the Lvl 4 scan continue. It is at 57% and doing repairs right now on some bad sectors. I am praying it will work enough to get a good image and transfer over recordings.

[Barryrod]

Well...Spinrite says it fully recovered the data from a defective sector and it is now at 63.5%...I am keeping my fingers crossed that this works. I have the entire season 5 up til now on those drives...and My wife and I are still working on season 3 :eek: ...We bought Season 4 and don't want to have to buy 5 when it comes out on DVD. I would rather burn them myself :up:

[Barryrod]

Well.....After Spinrite completed I put the drive in the tivo and same thing...So I used dd_rescue and copied the drive to another, slightly larger drive (60gig). I tried to boot with the new drive and same welcome screen. I figured I can play with this one a bit with out loosing data. I ran MakeTiVoBootable ( the second way) and now it gets to the "Almost there....just a few more minutes" screen.....further than before but not quite there. I will try the other MakeTiVoBootable command next and see if it works.

edit.....

Nothing I do gets me past the Almost there screen..... Please give me some suggestions. I am dying here :confused:

[Barryrod]

Forgot to mention...the "Almost There..." screen is grey, not the blue Dtv screen; and it's not minutes; it says "a few more seconds please" sits like that about 20 secs and then reboots.



:confused: Any Ideas???

[Barryrod]

Well... I did a full Lvl 4 scan on drive B and tried it and the 60 gig drive A in my Tivo again and now I get the GSOD. I was pretty excited...until it got past 4 hours and nothing. At least it is not re-booting on it's own, but won't go past GSOD. How long should I let it go before I try something else?

[Dan Collins]

I'd let it run overnight (12 hours at least) before giving up on it.

[Barryrod]

Cool.... will do...Does it need to be connected to the dish or just a phone line?

[Barryrod]

Well...to sum it all up...My Tivo is up now with all recorded programs intact. I will explain what all I did to get it up.

I have a DVR40 with an added 160gig drive from Weaknees. It started stuttering and I tried a few things to fix it. The Tivo ended up crashed in the Welcome screen and would simply reboot.

My original A drive had 1 bad sector repaired by Spinrite, but still won't boot. My B drive had no bad sectors per Spinrite.

Obviously my primary boot info was on that sector. I ran dd_rescue to copy the 40gig A drive to a spare 60gig I had. Still got the Welcome screen only. I then ran MakeTiVoBootable on that drive and was able to get to the grey "Almost there..." screen, but it would reboot after a few seconds. I was able to get into GSOD by trying to boot only my A drive and then booting with both drives. I let that go all night with no success,

I figured that if my primary boot partition had been corrupted and only had 1 bad sector, my secondary boot partition was probably good. I did the kickstart 52 which reloaded the 6.2 software that was on the secondary boot partition. Well...it worked. Yipee

I then took my 2 drives and did a full mfsbackup | mfsrestore to a brand new single 250gig drive and installed it in the Tivo and as Emeril says...BAMM!!! It's all good.

I really want to thank everybody on here for the wealth of info that allowed me to get this thing back up. You all rock.

After this enjoyable and enlightening experience, I will probably get another Directv Tivo (maybe same one I have off eBay) and then Play-Play-Play. There are so many cool things that can be done to these things.