Upgrade - Software updates and playback freeze

[jagoviT]

I was just reading that Tivo is releasing version 8.1 for Series 2 DVR's. I am planning on changing out the 40 Gb drive in my 540040 for a 250 Gb this weekend. Does anyone know if it would be wise to wait until after the software update?

Also, the reason I'm actually doing the upgrade is due to some freezing during playback or while watching a show that is being recorded along with times when the video is distorted with blocks on the screen not displaying properly (this is really difficult to explain). I'm guessing this might be the hard drive causing the problem. Has anyone else seen this and found a solution?

Thanks and Happy Thanksgiving,
Jerry

[supasta]

Your problem does indeed sound like a hard drive problem.

It would make no difference if you wait or don't. If you upgrade now you can enjoy more space now and not worry about a failing drive. Your TiVo will then simply update to the latest software. If you wait, you will risk a complete hard drive failure.

Go ahead and do the upgrade, what are you waiting for! :)

[jagoviT]

After posting last night, I went to check the TiVo status, and it happened to be in the midst of a restart - nobody in my house had anything to do with it. After it came back, I watched TV, and the video was as bad as I've ever seen. I went through the menu to do a restart, and the menu commands were delayed and the background animation was pausing. I did a couple of restarts, and after each one, the broadcast would be fine for a couple of minutes, then it would go downhill quick.

This morning, all seems fine. I saw that a show recorded late last night, and I watched it and found that it shows the same video distortion. Now, I'm not sure the hard drive is the problem. Why would everything appear okay for a little while after the restart? Why would it be acting fine now? I know that the drive could be the culprit, but I'm not convinced.

My hold up on doing the upgrade is that my TiVo is still under warranty for a couple more months. I opened a support case a while back when the problem wasn't so bad, and the only option they gave me was a replacement. The issue I have there is that after the cost to ship mine back plus the TiVo "labor charge," it will cost more to get a refurbished unit than it did to buy mine new last December (I had a good rebate). Kinda makes me feel trapped.

If I do the upgrade, and it doesn't solve the problem, I don't know if I can just put the original drive back in and send the box to TiVo for replacement. I know I void the warranty if I replace the drive, and I'm afraid of ending up with a doorstop.

[funtoupgrade]

There is no way they can tell if you stick in a different drive to try and solve the problem then stick the original back in. In fact, I doubt they really care. They make enough on replacements after the 90 free replacement to not worry about it. If it's not a lifetime unit you would probably be better off just picking up a cheap replacement on eBay and transferring your exisiting monthly subscription over to it so you don't have to pay the new higher sub fees.

[jagoviT]

Thanks for the replies. As it turns out, I do have a lifetime sub - that's what kills me about having problems so soon.

I was hoping you'd write that. Guess I'll go ahead with the upgrade. Since you've checked in, I'll see if you might answer one other question. I have a Tivo 540040 Series 2 unit. I'm putting in a Seagate DB35 250 Gb drive to replace the original. Do you have any recommendations about which guide and boot/utilities cd to use for the upgrade? One poster, wscannell, told me that the Weaknees guide is the most recent, so I was going to opt for that one over the Hinsdale guide. I realize they're basically the same, but there is a difference in the copy/expansion command. Hinsdale suggests:
mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hdX | mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi - /dev/hdZ
and in the Weaknees guide, it's given as:
mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hdX | mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -xzpi - /dev/hdZ

wscannell also mentioned that the -r 4 isn't necessary but won't hurt for a 250 Gb drive.

As for cd's, I figured if I went with the Weaknees guide, I'd just use their cd. I don't know if there is any value to using the latest ptvupgrade (now dvrupgrade) cd for a simple upgrade.

Thanks again!

[jagoviT]

Just a quick post to let anyone reading know that my upgrade appears to have gone well. I used the Weaknees cd and instructions. I made a backup of my original drive, and when I did, I received errors indicating that I had some bad sectors. While this was discouraging at the time, it gave me hope that a replacement drive would solve the problems I've been having. I also had hope that since my TiVo appeared to be working with the old drive except for some playback issues, the errors that were coming up in the backup process wouldn't keep the image on the new drive from working in the TiVo.

I did try to copy over all my recordings, but the mfsbackup/mfsrestore process failed - I think due to too many bad sectors. At that point, I put the original drive back in the TiVo, copied all the shows to my computer (painfully slow, but without errors), deleted all the shows on the TiVo, then made another backup. I copied that backup to the new drive using the mfs restore command as opposed to the mfsbackup/mfsrestore command that you would use to save recordings. I did not get any errors placing the image on the new drive. After the image was restored to the new drive, I put it in the TiVo and let it boot up. No errors! I went through and tested some basic functionality and verified my settings, and all seemed well. Then I went ahead and copied back the shows from my computer. For some reason, this process did stop several hours in, and I found that I could no longer ping the TiVo from my computer. The only thing that fixed it was restarting the TiVo. I finshed transferring back shows with no other errors.

So far, that's it. Hopefully, it will stay that way. I figure I'll wait until 8.1 arrives, then I'll make a new backup of my new drive. I suspect that won't have any errors and may come in handy in the future.

[bob61]

There is no way they can tell if you stick in a different drive to try and solve the problem then stick the original back in. In fact, I doubt they really care. I'm not so sure about the first part of your sentence. I had a friend of mine who upgraded their Tivo and then ran into a problem and called Tivo for help (that was his first mistake). The Tivo rep said that he saw that he had upgraded his hard drive and couldn't help him and his warranty was voided. I didn't hear the phone call so don't know how much my friend said or interpreted from the call. However this makes sense if you think about it, with your Tivo calling out each day it transmits data to Tivo. Transmitting the drive size as part of the general stats would be a no brainer.

Now, I don't know how much Tivo cares other than they won't help you and they seem to then have a leg to stand on in regards to the warranty being voided.

[Royce]

jagoviT, I had basically the same exact problem on my Series2 540040 TiVo.

My shows started pixulating after about 5 minutes of watching live TV, at which point the TiVo would completely freeze. I can reboot it & browse the menus as normal, but after about 5 min of watching it will freeze again.

I purchased a new WD80GB HDD to try to install inplace of my flaky original TiVo HDD.

When I try the mfsbackup procedure (mfsbackup -f 9999 -6so /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdc) I receive an error about somthing being READ ONLY. Whatever. So I skipped the backup step & moved on to a dd complete copy from the original HDD (hdc) to the new HDD (hdb).

After about 1 hour of running the dd if=/dev/hdc of=/dev/hdb bs=1024k command I received another error message, but did get the correct blocks IN & block OUT verification. The Hinsdale guide said to run 'dd conv=noerror,sync if=/dev/hdc of=/dev/hdb bs=1024k' in the event of any errors, so I did.

This is where I stand now. I play on pulling the new 80GB HDD out tonight & trying it in the TiVo.

My question is, if the 2nd dd command also produced an error is there any chance the new HDD will work in my TiVo? If not then is there any way to create a HDD restore without using the original HDD (assuming something has gone bad that prevents me from creating the copy)?

Also, I have another Series2 TiVo (black box instead of silver) that is functioning, can I run the copy using that HDD & place the new HDD in my faulty TiVo? Will that cause hardware/driver issues? The reason I ask is because the broken TiVo will NOT play converted MPEG2 files, but my working TiVo does, so I assume there is a hardware/driver difference in the 2 units.

ANY help or advise is greatly appreciated.

Cheers, Royce

[jagoviT]

bob61,

I thought about Tivo using the information that might be collected to see that I had done an upgrade as well. I was worried because if you void the warranty, that also technically voids your contract if you have a lifetime subscription. The only thing that made me decide to go ahead was all the posts from people who had already performed upgrades with lifetime subs. I'm keeping my original Tivo hard drive in a safe place just in case. But, if I have a problem in the future, I doubt I would go to them - I was pretty mad that it would cost more to get a refurbed unit than it did to buy mine brand new. In fact, I only have another month of warranty protection anyway. It would be interesting to know if they track upgrades or not.

[jagoviT]

Royce,

Unfortunately, I can't comment about the dd command. I knew that was an option to get to if the mfsbackup and mfsrestore process didn't work properly. However, since everything seems to be okay, I never ran the dd command. Given that you are having the identical symptoms that I was, I would highly recommend using the Weaknees procedure. It's supposedly kept up-to-date better, and it's the procedure I followed exactly (other than having to copy my recordings to my computer to get them saved and back on to my new drive). Either way you end up going, I know that the -6so parameter in the mfsbackup command deals with compression of the backup, and I've read that -1so will sometimes help with errors you might get.

As for using the HDD from your working Tivo, Weaknees also has a procedure that addresses that. However, it does say that the first three letters of the 15 digit TiVo Service Number must be the same between the two Tivos. I'm not sure what the differences might be between your two Tivos, but I would think that if the software versions are the same, and the first three letters of the Tivo Service number match, then it's worth a try. I'm certainly no expert on that topic, and would suggest you find other resources to verify or contradict that!

Outside of those suggestions, you can find images here and there on the web (and even in this forum, I believe), which you can use if you can't get a good backup.

Gook luck!

[Royce]

Royce,

Unfortunately, I can't comment about the dd command. I knew that was an option to get to if the mfsbackup and mfsrestore process didn't work properly. However, since everything seems to be okay, I never ran the dd command. Given that you are having the identical symptoms that I was, I would highly recommend using the Weaknees procedure. It's supposedly kept up-to-date better, and it's the procedure I followed exactly (other than having to copy my recordings to my computer to get them saved and back on to my new drive). Either way you end up going, I know that the -6so parameter in the mfsbackup command deals with compression of the backup, and I've read that -1so will sometimes help with errors you might get.

As for using the HDD from your working Tivo, Weaknees also has a procedure that addresses that. However, it does say that the first three letters of the 15 digit TiVo Service Number must be the same between the two Tivos. I'm not sure what the differences might be between your two Tivos, but I would think that if the software versions are the same, and the first three letters of the Tivo Service number match, then it's worth a try. I'm certainly no expert on that topic, and would suggest you find other resources to verify or contradict that!

Outside of those suggestions, you can find images here and there on the web (and even in this forum, I believe), which you can use if you can't get a good backup.

Gook luck!


Thanks a lot man, I went ahead & purchased the correct version of InstantCake & loaded it up on my HDD. That was the best $19.99 I have ever spent (excluding the $20 hand job from the cuban stripper on spring break '98 :) )

After plugging in the HDD to the correct IDE port & runnig my burnt ISO I was up & running with a 80GB working HDD within 10 minutes! Success is mine. So much easier than the entire MFSTools process, IC literally does it all for you in a matter of minutes. I'm actually considering adding a 160+GB HDD to my other TiVo now. This couldn't have been a better experience.

Thanks again for your input.

Cheers, Royce