S2 TiVo help with questionable drive

[paulbeard]

I got a series 2 unit with lifetime from someone: turns out it's not working, hangs on the "Almost done " screen. TiVo wants $150 to fix it, but I took the drive out and hooked it up to some other systems and it shows as readable, 13 partitions, some ext2, other in mfs.

My question is, do I just re-image it with InstantCake and see what happens? or is there some other diagnostic I can do?

[supasta]

You can re-image the drive and hope for the best.

Worst come to worst, if that does not work you can use the same InstantCake CD to image a new drive and be up and running that way.

[paulbeard]

true enough. Thanks for the nudge.

[paulbeard]

w00t.

The InstantCake seems to have made the difference. The drive came up, made a lot more noise (in a productive way) and went on to the system update screen.

even if the drive is on its last legs, I can be fairly certain the rest of the box works.

Hooray for InstantCake.

[supasta]

Good to hear. Now make sure you keep that copy of IC around just in case that drive does decide to go bad all together.

On a side note, I would recommend that you image a new drive now to replace the "failing" drive that you have now fixed. It would be a shame to get all the updated software, your SPs and WLs set up, recordings going - and then have the drive crap out on you for good.

[paulbeard]

yeah, I'll need it. I think this drive is past the point where I can save it. It hung on the "system update" screen, and balked at "Almost there' again when I power-cycled it. I think I'll format it and check for bad blocks/sectors before I re-image it once more.

A 160GB drive @ fry's is only $50, so it's not a big deal if this fails.

[paulbeard]

FWIW, my imaging experiments didn't go as well as I hoped, so I am doing a scan of the drive for bad blocks before I try it again. I keep reminding myself it was free: if a lot of people had this much trouble, tivo would be gone by now.

[supasta]

Sounds like you are putting a lot of time into saving a bad drive that simply cannot be saved.
I think it would be in your best to go out and get a new drive. Although I would be interested to see what you scan comes up with :D

Keep us updated!

[joker81]

I've upgraded about 10 tivos with bigger hard drives. Basically if it is an original tivo drive I don't trust it. It is cheaper in my time just to re-image a new drive than to take the time to save the old one. On some of my lucky ebay tivo purchases the WD/maxtor drives inside were still under warranty and I got free replacements. I resold the tivos with bigger drives and kept the re-certified hard drives. :D

[paulbeard]

I hear what you're saying. I just want to be sure where the problem lies, with the drive or something else. The drive is dead now ;-) after a full surface scan, it fails to show up after rebooting in the test system I have it in.

So, off to Fry's we go.

[paulbeard]

well, with a new drive installed, I'm not sure where the problem is. I think the power supply may be tired, and that's not something I can replace that easily (drat these cheap little boxes).

Symptoms:


with a new fresh-baked drive, I get past the "just a few more minutes" screen to the "service update, could take an hour more screen"
then I get two flashing lights on the front (power and record?), both flashing yellow. Not much seems to happen.

I am going to leave it overnight, let it take its time but I know from experience that a power-cycle will kill it and force a re-imaging of the drive. That's not a sustainable situation. So even it works, it won't survive being turned off? Yuck.

[supasta]

Flashing lights on the front would point towards a power supply problem.

They can be found for some models online.

This being a new problem, I wonder if the frequent opening and closing on the unit in your trials the past week had something to do with the problem ;)

[paulbeard]

This being a new problem, I wonder if the frequent opening and closing on the unit in your trials the past week had something to do with the problem

who said anything about it being a new problem? :D

it was doing this as well as stalling at boot time. All signs point to the power supply, I guess, and a possible eBay listing.

[supasta]

who said anything about it being a new problem? :D

it was doing this as well as stalling at boot time. All signs point to the power supply, I guess, and a possible eBay listing.


Ahh...you never mentioned that in your first post ;)

[paulbeard]

So. Power supply arrived today, just installed it. TiVo still fails to get beyond the "few minutes" screen. I re-image the drive, now I get to the "service update" screen but still get the flashing lights on the front.

I'm thinking the $159 TiVo repair is looking like the right move at this point.

[supasta]

Well, have you replaced the drive? It may simply be that the drive is dead.

On a side note, stand for principal here - don't give up on that TiVo now!

[paulbeard]

yeah, the drive has been replaced as has the power supply. That's it for user-serviceable parts, correct?

[supasta]

Other than the possibility of a bad image - you are at the end of the line here.

[paulbeard]

well, now that would be bad news.

As best I can tell, the image would fail to decompress properly: ie, there would be error messages in the "baking" process. I'm not seeing that. I just re-imaged back to the original drive as I can't prove it's bad, just old. Still sitting on the "system upgrade" screen. Should I hear any disk access during this? I'm sure it's wonderful for TiVo engineering to have no status messages displayed (fewer panicky phone calls) but for me, it's lousy.

Ah, well, eBay is my next stop I suppose. Though with baseball season coming up -- the chief reason I wanted this -- am I being hasty?