Slave hard drive beeps, now Tivo wont boot!

[comandercody]

Everything happens when I go out of town. The wife calls and says "honey, the Tivo is beeping and making wierd sounds". I tell her to unplug the Tivo(pretty confident that the beeping is some toy or other devive under the entertainment center), so she unplugs the Tivo and the beeping stops.

When I get home I trouble shoot, plug the Tivo in, and it beeps. So I un screw the torx screws in the back, open her up, then power up, and one of the two drives(slave) is very loudly clicking and beeping(beep is not exact, but its as close as i can describe). I unplug the power from the slave, reboot and the beep is gone. But, the Tivo is in a constant reboot, even after I removed the "jumper" from the master hard drive(dont know if the jumper matters). The Tivo is a TCD140, my first of 2, and I added the slave drive that just failed myself, prolly 3-4 years ago.

So, question #1, is my info from the clicking beeping hard drive toast?

Question #2, can I replace the master drive without voiding my lifetime sub, and if so, how?

Thanks in advance.

[jjberger2134]

Lifetime is tied to the circuitry on the motherboard, not the hard drive. You can replace the master drive with a new drive without losing the lifetime subscription.

Someone will correct me if I am wrong, but I believe once 2 hard drives are installed in a TiVo they become a "married" pair. If one fails, the other one needs to be reformatted or replaced as well.

Considering the size of new drives these days, many people opt for a single drive setup since it creates less heat than 2 drives and the odds are less that a single drive would fail than a system with 2 drives (each could potentially fail).

[HomeUser]

I think MFSLive was/is working on being able to make an image if the 'B' drive fails from just the 'A' drive.

[gastrof]

I had an external computer hard drive that began beeping.

Phoned the manufacturer, and was told to back everything up immediately. It was dying.

Must be a feature some have, but I've never heard of an internal drive having it.

Interesting.

[Krosis]

The head mechanism can makes sounds that some people might call a "beep". If it's doing that repeatedly than it is probably having trouble seeking to a track. Combine that with "clicking noises" and you have a hard drive in immediate need of replacement :(