40 wire or 80 wire IDE Cable

[matma92ser]

On my series 2 TiVo branded unit, I upgraded my single 80GB drive to two 160GB drives. The original IDE cable is 80 wire, and the new dual drive cable is 40 wire.

Everything worked fine for many months, and then one day the TiVo got stuck in an endless loop trying to reboot. It would only get as far as "almost there" before it would start over at "welcome powering up."

I put the original 80GB hard drive back in the system, using the 40 wire dual drive cable, but it didn't work. It would not even get to the "almost there" screen; it was stuck on "welcome. powering up." I tried connecting the drive in different positions on the cable, but there was no change.

I tried two other 40 wire cables and those didn't work. Then I tried the original 80 wire IDE cable with the original 80GB hard drive. Works perfectly now.

Is this a known issue or just some kind of weird fluke? Did TiVo's upgraded software somehow mess up compatibility with the older 40 wire cables?

I am going to the store later to buy an 80 wire dual drive cable, to see if I can get my expanded storage space back. Does it matter which end of the cable is attached to the TiVo, versus attached to the drive, or can I reverse positions?

Thanks for any insight.

[supasta]

I doubt the problem is related to the cable. The problem sounds like a failed drive.

[ciper]

Sounds like you had the same problem that many people had with regards to insufficient swap size. Read the " Fixes for MFSTools 2.0 swap problems" thread. Specifically read the first page then look at my post here

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5352921&&#post5352921

[HomeUser]

Just a thought, check the jumper on the drive probably set to CS or Slave. The old 40 wire probably msy not support CS

[matma92ser]

Thanks for the tips. The drives are set to master and slave. Does their position on the cable matter?

I don't think the drives are bad. I had a friend test them on his Linux system and he says the drives are fine.

I think it must have something to do with the cables, or else why would my original drive work fine with the 80 wire cable but not the 40 wire?

I will take a closer look at the MSFTools post. Thanks for the tip.

[supasta]

The drives are set to master and slave. Does their position on the cable matter?
Yes! Master=end connector, Slave=middle connector.

[HomeUser]

Some of the third party supplied dual drive cables are connected reversed with the blue mother board connector going to one of the drives making the position of the drives jumper mandatory. I was refering to why the original would work with the old 80 wire cable and not the 40 wire most of th

My thoughts for the dual 160G drives not working FWIW

- First would be a bad block on one of the drives run the drive manufacture bootable diagnostics to determine which drive. Possibly fix with SpinRite or dd_rescue.

- Problem with the spare boot partition and software update.

- Swap partition 0 or not large enough see the link Fixes for MFSTools 2.0 swap problems (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-v...1&&#post5352921) ciper refered to.

Or mount the var partition and look at the log files.

[Worf]

The reason you want the 80 wire cable is because every other wire is a ground wire - it boosts signal integrity, which is increasingly important. In fact, even if your system can't use the extra speed that the drive provides, switching to a provided 80 wire cable is still essential. (In fact, sometimes the 80 wire cables are much better than even SATA - the SATA cables being unshielded and prone to interference and cause all sorts of havoc. This has settled down lately - usually the early SATA drives and motherboards tend to have the issues, while modern ones are more resilient).

Now, it probably worked for a while on the 40 wire cable, but eventually data to the hard drive would get corrupted, slowly corrupting MFS enough to render your TiVo unbootable.

The good news is that 80 wire dual drive cables are fairly cheap (around $5-10), so picking up one wouldn't be much of a burden. In fact, I'm surprised that you can still get 40 wire cables - the 80 wires one has been around a long time (perhaps they still come with the odd CD-ROM drive, but most provide 80 wire ones as well).

The bad news may be that your dual drives are hooped - you'll need to restore a backup to get them working again, but this time, use the 80 wire cables...