Can I do this with Windows XP?

[Canoman]

My Pioneer 810H died. I want to check the hard drive that was in it for errors, if I can. I was told that it's probably either the hard drive that failed or the power supply.

So what I've done is installed my Tivo drive in a USB enclosure. I can see the drive as unallocated space in "Computer Management/Disk Management." Will I have to create a new partition on it in order to check the drive for errors? Can I even test it in XP?

Thanks in advance.

[SeanC]

Well one thing is for sure, your drive is unbootable in your tivo now. Also you can't use it to try and copy the OS to a new drive either. You'd have to get and run MakeTivoBootable (or something like that).

The only test/fixer program I know people have had success with is SpinRite. As far as I know you can't use a USB enclosure with it though. So you'd need a desktop computer to hook the 810H drive into and a SpinRite bootdisk. Lots of people have reported SpinRite fixing their Tivo drives. But as I said even if you fix yours you're now going to have to fix the fact that you booted into XP with the drive attached.

[Canoman]

Ok, thanks... I've got a couple of desktops that I can use for stuff like this, but I thought this might work out better. Evidently not.

I downloaded MakeTivoBootable here (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=117404) .

I don't know if it matters, but I booted to WinXP before turning on the USB enclosure, so I didn't really "boot into XP with the drive attached." I booted into XP and then attached the drive.

[HomeUser]

If DOS can see the device SpinRite will work with the USB drive. You probably will want it connected in the PC. running from the USB can be really slow and I am not sure about the MFSTools distributions support for USB devices.

DO NOT BOOT or RUN XP with the TIVO drive connected either USB or IDE. XP will write a signature to the drive preventing it form booting.

[HomeUser]

Ok, thanks... I've got a couple of desktops that I can use for stuff like this, but I thought this might work out better. Evidently not.

I downloaded MakeTivoBootable here (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=117404) .

I don't know if it matters, but I booted to WinXP before turning on the USB enclosure, so I didn't really "boot into XP with the drive attached." I booted into XP and then attached the drive.

Any time XP accesses a drive XP looks for its signature, if it does not a valid signature it XP creates and writes one.

[SJAndrew]

HomeUser is right on.

The thing to do would be to determine the make of the HDD (Maxtor, Western Digital - whatever). Then, go to their site and download a bootable utility disk (they pretty much all have them). Or, you can download the "ultimate boot CD" which has tons of HDD utilities.

Then, open your computer and physically connect this hard drive to your IDE chain, boot to the CDROM you burned containing the bootable HDD software, and run the tests on that drive.

There may be a hack to allow you to use USB in lieu of IDE, but I think that by the time you can figure it out (assuming there even is one), you could have performed the test I describe above multiple times.

[lessd]

Any time XP accesses a drive XP looks for its signature, if it does not a valid signature it XP creates and writes one.

An UN-partition drive will not have anything written on it from windows XP. A TiVo drive looks like a new UN-partition drive to XP so unless you let XP partition the drive it will not show up in XP and still boot in the TiVo. There is no reason to boot up a TiVo drive in XP because you can't test or see anything unless you partition the drive then you will have lost the TiVo software. If you just make a mistake and boot to XP you will not destroy your TiVo drive. (XP may say it found a new drive and ask you to partition it DON"T) I have made this mistake many times and never destroyed a TiVo drive.