Is this the end?

[janezy]

I think my D*Tivo may be near the end of it's life. It's a 3-yr old Phillips DSR7000 which I upgraded to 157 hours. When I am watching or even fast forwarding through a program, it appears to pause briefly -- at least a few times every minute, sometimes more. When I'm in the menu screens, even the smoke in the background pauses and deleting things out of the To Do list and other basic functions seem to take a very long time.

So, my basic questions are is it dying and, if so, is it salvagable or do I have to get a new unit?

I was able to follow instructions well enough to add a second hard drive to the current unit, but I'm not a computer genius by any stretch.

I'd appreciate any advice you can give.

[untouchable]

First I would check the temp that the unit is running at...you can find this information in the "System Information" screen...if anything at all, as a last resort, I would try reformatting the hard drive...

[rminsk]

Sound like the hard drive could be dying. If the temp is not to high just replace the hard drive like you did when you upgraded to 157 hours.

[janezy]

Temp says 37C (Normal). Are there instructions out there somewhere for the beginner on how to reformat a drive?

If it were my regular computer, I'd be defragging it regularly and I almost feel like that's what it needs, but I wouldn't know how to do that either (or if it's even possible for a D*Tivo).

[wscannell]

What you are probably seeing is the beginning of sectors starting to fail on the hard drive. This causes retries on the writes. These retries cause the response to the remote and other things to slow down. If you made a backup when you upgraded, you could re-upgrade from the backup. You might be able to save the programs on the drive if you copied it to a new hard drive using dd_rescue (see the upgrade forum).

[OLdDog]

Do not worry about fragmentation. Because of the operating system (Linux) and the large block size that is used fragmentation is not a big problem for TiVos.

The methods that can be used to replace the drives are many from the purely "Do it yourself" methods that require booting your computer into a Linux system and entering the proper commands as outlined in the stickies in the upgrade forum to a more automated system called "Instant Cake" available from http://www.ptvupgrade.com/ to buying a drive with the software already installed from http://www.ptvupgrade.com/ or http://www.weaknees.com/ or there are several other sources.

[untouchable]

You just use the menus on the Tivo to reformat..

DirecTV central > Messages and Setup > Restart or Reset System > Clear and Delete Everything

Press the thumbs down 3 times, then the enter button (right below the number 9)

I would do this as a last resort...you will lose everything...Wish Lists, Season Passes, Recordings, Suggestion Settings (which most people don't care about), and all of your recordings...it takes about 3-4 hours to complete...depending on how full the hard drive is.

[rminsk]

Do not worry about fragmentation. Because of the operating system (Linux) and the large block size that is used fragmentation is not a big problem for TiVos.It is not because it is Linux that fragmentation is not an issue, it is because of the file system design itself...

[rminsk]

You just use the menus on the Tivo to reformat..

DirecTV central > Messages and Setup > Restart or Reset System > Clear and Delete Everything

Press the thumbs down 3 times, then the enter button (right below the number 9)

I would do this as a last resort...you will lose everything...Wish Lists, Season Passes, Recordings, Suggestion Settings (which most people don't care about), and all of your recordings...it takes about 3-4 hours to complete...depending on how full the hard drive is.That does not reformat the drive. It just clears all the databases and deletes all the recordings. To format the drive you would have to remove it from the TiVo...

[untouchable]

That does not reformat the drive. It just clears all the databases and deletes all the recordings. To format the drive you would have to remove it from the TiVo...


I realize that...it's similar to reformatting the drive on a PC though...I know what I meant. I'm sorry that I was not politically correct. :p