Defective HD?

[Doomster]

I bought a Hughes HDVR2 used off of EBay. The disk was bad and I bought a 250GB HD and baked InstantCake 6.2 on it.

This Tivo has been a source of problems for me. I have three other Hughes DirecTivos (HDVR-2 or SD-DVR40) and I don't seem to have the same problems that this one has.

The problem is that when the power is disconnected to the DTV, it doesn't come back up - at all. I've had two blackouts in the last 2 months (hey I live in California :down: ) and when the power came back up, this DTV would show the grey "Welcome. Powering up", then flicker and show the same message for about 4 retries, then show the "blue screen of death." It freezes in this stage and never recovers. Well, I just had another power outtage today and when the power was restored and this Tivo tried to come back up, it froze in the blue screen of death again.

The last time this happened, I "rebaked" the HD and started all over again (clear and reset everything). The HD is a Maxtor DiamondMax 10 I bought new. I suspect that I just have a faulty HD. The other possibility is that I didn't set the jumper correctly in the back of the HD. Would that make a difference? I set the jumper to CS (Cable Select) when I installed the HD. Should I have changed it to something else?

If the disk is faulty - say that it has a corrupt segment of the HD, should I reformat it under Windows using FDISK, then rebake the InstantCake on it? Or should I just get another HD as a replacement? I don't see the same problem on my other Tivos and they all have 250GB HDs too.

Any advice or insight appreciated.

[NoCleverUsername]

Download Maxtor's PowerMax diagnostic utility to test the drive. They have it as a bootable floppy or bootable CD .iso image. Link is here (http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Maxtor/menuitem.8db0c3d6932ced37294198b091346068/?channelpath=%2Fen_us%2FSupport%2FSoftware+Downloads%2FView+ By+Category%2FDesktop+Storage%2FDiamondMax+Family).

If the drive really is bad and it's still under warranty, they'll probably replace it.

I wouldn't bother with FDISK and reformatting.

You might also look into getting a UPS for your DVRs, if you don't already have one. They're supposed to protect better than a surge supressor when the power goes out and comes back on again.

[Doomster]

The HD was formatted for Linux use. I'm wondering if that will work for PowerMax.

I could get UPS for the DTV but I have four of them. I'd have to get 3 (2 are in the same room) and UPS aren't cheap - I already have one for my PC.

I'll try to run diagnostics on the disk.

Doomster

[NoCleverUsername]

PowerMax doesn't care about the format of the drive. It's looking at a lower level than that.