Hard drive problems

[donchanger]

My upgraded SA S2 (540 series, upgraded to 160GB using Hinsdale about 6 months ago) would not get past the "Powering up..." phase despite several retries (with long cooling-off delays in-between).

I still have the original (and working fine) 40GB drive, but I really would like to keep the unwatched recordings on the 160GB drive.

I suspected a drive issue and after poking around a bit, came across the dd_rescue methods and gave them a whirl. Pretty easy to get things going, copying went great until it hit an error around the 39GB mark, then slowed to a crawl. Even after it got past the errors (total of 800KB), it continued on at a snail's pace. Hit more errors at the 135GB mark, and am now waiting for it to finish (24+ hours so far). Even though dd_rescue may not actually solve my problems, seems very worthwhile to have in the toolkit (I used the Knoppix download).

My questions:

When the copying is done, if the new disk does the same thing as the old, have I lost the recordings forever? Is there no linux way to extract the recording data for either PC-based conversion or to stuff back into a new Tivo-based drive? Seems a shame to lose 100+ GB of recordings due to maybe 2MB of bad data.

Also, why does dd_rescue never speed back up once it finds it has gotten past an error-filled point?

Does it seem like there have been an awful lot of fried-disk posts lately? I work with dozens of computers running 24x7 (but with obvious disk spin-downs) and we almost never see disk problems. My 160GB disk was a Seagate but my new one will be Maxtor. Any brands better for what I assume must be a very difficult Tivo environment?

[funtoupgrade]

In a TiVo the hard drive is writing to the drive 24/7 with no spin downs so the strain on them is much more difficult. Seagates have a 5 year warranty so if the drive fails the downloadable Seagate drive fitness test then they will replace it unless it is really old. Maxtors which you buy at retail have a one year warranty only, and seem to be prone to failure more than some others according to many on this forum. The most likely scenario is that your software became corrupt and reimaging the hard drive from the original will fix it. Again suggest testing the drive with Seagate's utility before spending any more time fooling with it.

[donchanger]

funtoupgrade,

Thanks for the quick info. Maxtor was on sale but I can use another Seagate I have instead -- I had just hoped Maxtor was a good choice since that's what Tivo shipped. I'll just keep the Maxtor for my external HDD enclosure.

Now, if I could just figure out how to backup my recordings off the Tivo at a speed faster than grass grows (ie. the typical ~300K/sec), maybe I wouldn't care if Tivo fried the drive....

[Dkerr24]

Does it seem like there have been an awful lot of fried-disk posts lately? I work with dozens of computers running 24x7 (but with obvious disk spin-downs) and we almost never see disk problems. My 160GB disk was a Seagate but my new one will be Maxtor. Any brands better for what I assume must be a very difficult Tivo environment?

Not really. Only people with problems are going to post here. You won't see many "hey my Tivo completed another day of use without a glitch" :)

Ok, count me in for another day of smooth operation.