1000 GB Tivo bites the dust.....

[Robdalec]

My Tivo (TCD540040) which I upgraded with two 500GB drives has now stopped working. It hangs at the first powering up screen and kickstart will not run either. Both drives are spinning.

If these drives were in a Windows PC, being a Windows person I would run scandisk on them to find out what the problem is with them - if any. Since I only know enough about Linux to be dangerous I'm not sure what my next move should be. I have no problem putting these drives back in the PC and booting into Lunux using the PTV upgrade CD, but after that I'd be lost.

My best (uneducated) guess is that the "A" drive has gone bad. I have the original Tivo drive and have no problem going through the upgrade process again, but don't want to go through this before I know if the "A", "B", or both drives are bad.

Or since I've already lost my hundreds of hours of recordings, should I just install them in my PC, boot Windows, and run scandisk on them to locate where the problem is?

First though, I'm going to install the original drive in the Tivo to be sure it isn't a Tivo problem, which I doubt it is.

So what should I do after that?

[HomeUser]

Unplug the XP drive and put the TiVo drive(s) in the PC, boot and run the drive manufactures CD/Floppy diagnostic.

With two large drives in the TiVo there could be a problem with an overloaded Power Supply.

[SJAndrew]

I have (2) 320GB drive in my TiVo.

I ran a separate power supply cord in from a shorted (always on) PC power supply as I feared the exact same thing. The power supplies on the newer 54XX systems are supposed to be especially weak.

Basically, my TiVo PSU powers my TiVo motherboard and the separate PSU powers my drives. It's worked very well.

[Robdalec]

So you are suggesting that this may be a power supply problem even though both drives are spinning? If that's the case I have another identical Tivo that I can try the drives in without too much trouble.

I didn't think the manufacturer's CD's were usually bootable, but guess I'll check and see.....

[HomeUser]

The power supply is just a thought.
NOT the MaxBlast CD that may of came with the drive. Usually you need to download the diagnostic CD/Floppy from the manufacture's web site.

[wotan6]

Or, my favorite is SpinRite , arguably the gold standard in hard drive repair, now in version 6.0 . You'll have to do a google search for it, since the forum won't let me put a URL here yet.

$89 and worth every penny. It will work on ANY drive, from ANY operating system, including NTFS, Linux, and Tivo. It will allow you to create a bootable diskette, CD, or even USB version of itself, which will boot up into freeDOS and thoroughly analyze and repair any hard drive. If sectors can be restored, they will be, otherwise they will be flagged as unusable so that the drive can continue to be used normally. Not one bit of usable data will be lost. It's record of safety is impeccable.

The download is so fast ( less than 5 seconds ) that you'll think something went wrong. It didn't. Steve Gibson writes most of his code in assembly language (yep!), so his programs are incredibly tiny and efficient.

( I have no financial relationship to Steve Gibson, just a longtime satisfied user for more than 15 years )

[HomeUser]

Or, my favorite is SpinRite , arguably the gold standard in hard drive repair, now in version 6.0 . You'll have to do a google search for it, since the forum won't let me put a URL here yet.
Yep, SpinRite (http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm) is what I use. I test ALL my hard drives with SpinRite before installing them in the TiVo or PC.