Locked up Hard drive

[redwood]

Is there any way someone could take a locked up hard drive from their Tivo and put those recordings on a new one

[dtreese]

What do you mean by "locked up?" Do you mean that it's no longer working in TiVo?

[redwood]

yeah . My Tivo stays on the welcome powering up screen . Doesnt go any further than that . I just want to know is there any way someone could get those shows off of there . Or am I just S.O.L.

[nym86]

My Tivo also is sitting on the "Powering up" screen... started happening earlier this evening. I unplugged it and then plugged it in again, I then heard a clicking noise for a few seconds while the "Powering up" screen stays on. My thinking is the same, I think the hard drive is gone.

Mine is a Hi-Def Tivo, so it's not going to be too cheap to replace. Does anyone have any ideas on how to salvage this situation?

[redwood]

There is another thread that talks about places to get new stuff for you tivo Its called welcome powering up

[brewman]

What model do you have?

I have two Series 2 Tivos. One received the new software load a couple of days ago and rebooted fine. THe other received the new load and is now in the state you are describing. Stuck on the Power Up screen.

I called TiVo support and was basically told I probably had a bad sector on the drive and am basically SOL as far as they are concerned.

I told them I"m aware that drives have bad sectors, but it's more likely their download process either failed or is faully than the drive happened to lose the sector right after the download completed.

If the engineers who wrote the download process are competent they would have verified the download was written to disc successfully before handing off the restart to the new download. If it's done this way then it's very, very, very unlikely the sector went bad between the validation and the restart.

Not sure where to go from here.

[CuriousMark]

If the engineers who wrote the download process are competent they would have verified the download was written to disc successfully before handing off the restart to the new download. If it's done this way then it's very, very, very unlikely the sector went bad between the validation and the restart.

The TiVo has two software partitions. When a new download arrives it is put into the inactive partition. When it restarts and installs, it installs it to the inactive partition and then reboots to that partition, making it active. If the boot fails it tries to switch back to the previous partition. This way only serious disk errors will leave the drive in a situation where it cannot boot.

Did you do the disk check as I suggested in the other thread yet? If not, why not? It would certainly be more productive than posting in three threads on two different forums.

CuriousMark

[lajohn27]

If the engineers who wrote the download process are competent they would have verified the download was written to disc successfully before handing off the restart to the new download. If it's done this way then it's very, very, very unlikely the sector went bad between the validation and the restart.

Not sure where to go from here.

Unfortunately you have a fundamental lack of knowledge about how TIVO upgrades are applied.

Specifically there are two partitions on the hard drive that both have system files and the TIVO "operating" system and program files on them. Lets call them partition four and seven.

Only one of them is currently in use at any time. Let say for the sake of this example it's four.

When an upgrade occurs. The files are downloaded and saved on partition four.

They are processed and readied for the upgrade. Then, your TIVO either reboots at 4am or you reboot it manually and before you do it shows "PENDING RESTART" in the SYSTEM INFORMATION screen.

During that restart process, the upgraded files are then written from partition four to partition seven. If partition seven is bad... then you see the problem you have in front of you.

Short of examining the partition ahead of the install, the TIVO would have no way to know that partition was bad.

This would double the potential down-time for the upgrade for EVERYBODY and even if it gave you the error message - it would fail to get guide updates from that point on .. so what benefit is the error message?

HOWEVER - I have an idea that *may* get your TIVO up and running again.

Remove the power from your TIVO and wait 15 seconds. Reconnect power and immediately press and hold the pause button the remote. Keep pressing it. What you want to see is .. during the boot.. both lights on the front of the TIVO should light ORANGE. It may take a few tries to get this to happen. If it doesn't work right the first time.. instead of HOLDING the pause button, try pressing it over and over.

When they both light orange immediately stop pressing pause and .. press 5 then 2 and then ENTER on the TIVO remote.

This will force the TIVO to restart again in a few seconds and will force the current updated software to be installed to the OTHER partition, the one you had that *WAS* working before the upgrade. This may get your TIVO up and running at least until the next software upgrade.

It might not too... but it's worth a try.

[Rwood]

This will force the TIVO to restart again in a few seconds and will force the current updated software to be installed to the OTHER partition, the one you had that *WAS* working before the upgrade. This may get your TIVO up and running at least until the next software upgrade.

Is there a trick way to switch back to the old partition and resume running 7.2.1?

[lajohn27]

There might be if you were really good at hacking the TIVO but otherwise no... I'm working with the tools that are available to the average user -> the remote control.

But even if you were able to perform what you suggest, the very next connection to the TIVo service it would download the new software again and try to install it on the bad partition again and lock up - again. So there's little point of using the other partition unless you get the new software installed.

Presuming the other paritition on the drive, or the drive as a whole wasn't basically just 'dead' - then a PAUSE-5-2-ENTER should get it going again at least.

If the drive is in fact toast.. then this whole discussion of the upgrade killed my TIVO is a moot point -- any reboot would have likely killed it.

J

[Rwood]

lajohn27,
Thanks, my problem isn't the disk. 7.2.2 killed my network connection to guide data, but left all other network features working. 7.2.1 was working. I hadn't considered the re-download issue.
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=293533

[lajohn27]

Right.. so your only solution is to either get a new network adapter or to use the phone lines.. Sucks.

[redwood]

Well now lets get back to me . This was my thread now . I have a Hughes Tivo by DTV . The day it went out or at least that was the day I noticed this problem . The power to my house went off then back on at least 4 times with in an hour . Yes before anybody says anything to me about battery back ups I know . After the power came back on the last time I was stuck with welcome powering up . I already stuck the hard drive in another Tivo unit and it did the same thing . Now all that I want to do is get the shows that I recorded that week off . because The Sheild season premiere is stuck on there and I want to see it before the next season starts . So if there is anyway that I can get these shows off of a locked up hard drive someone please help me out . Thank You .

[CuriousMark]

So if there is anyway that I can get these shows off of a locked up hard drive someone please help me out . Thank You .

There is a good article over at extremetech about using a Linux Live CD, such as knoppix to boot your PC into Linux and then use that to test and troubleshoot Linux problems on hard drives or partitions on the same computer. I would think you could attach the dead drive to your PC, boot into knoppix and use the tools they describe to try to recover the drive enough to get stuff off of it. That probably isn't enough though.

You should also go the underground forum here and ask because those folks can point you to tools that will let you pull the recordings off and convert them to something watchable on a PC. The internal TiVo file format is not the same as a .tivo file, so you will need the special hacker tools to do what you want.

Good luck,

CuriousMark