Series 2 hacked Tivo won't boot - salvage?

[Geezer]

It was working fine but I had a power failure and once power was restored, it will not boot. Is there someplace I can send it for repair and hopefully salvage what was on it? Thanks.

[Gunnyman]

you're looking at a welcome powering up screen I assume.
You can try buying Spinrite (http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm) and appplying it yourself.
Short of that, hard drive repair/data recovery is obnoxiously expensive.

[BTUx9]

Very minor drive errors can stop your tivo from booting properly, so full data recovery is seldom necessary.

There are some things that can be tried, if you have another drive that's as large or larger than the current one. One of the easiest would be go to mfslive.org, and look into making an mfs backup, preserving recordings. This is by no means GUARANTEED to work, but would be the easiest/cleanest solution if it DID.

[classicsat]

Connect a serial terminal to see where it fails first.

If the system is failed, see if a replacement drive works, and if it does, copy the media partitions over from the old drive, or the system partitions from it tothe old drive.

[BTUx9]

Connect a serial terminal to see where it fails first.

If the system is failed, see if a replacement drive works, and if it does, copy the media partitions over from the old drive, or the system partitions from it tothe old drive.you're assuming that his tivo is hacked, he has a serial cable, and he has a computer with a serial port.

And, I'm not positive, but I believe copying the media partitions will only work if the partitions on the new drive are exactly the same size (unlikely, in most cases)

I'd still say mfsbackup is an easier thing to try, first

[Geezer]

you're looking at a welcome powering up screen I assume.
You can try buying Spinrite (http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm) and appplying it yourself.
Short of that, hard drive repair/data recovery is obnoxiously expensive.

No, actually I'm not looking at anything at all - no video output. It's strange. I can hear the hard drive spinning but there's nothing on the screen.

[BTUx9]

hmm... could've lost 1 or all outputs... did you try the alternate? (if you're using composite, try RF, or vice versa)

[classicsat]

If the screen is black, it then is a mainboard or PSU problem.

[HomeUser]

Do you see any lights on the front panel of the TiVo when it boots? If not the power supply or main board may be bad. You can here the drive spinning so you should have some power possibly not enough. If the front lights go through the normal cycle then check that the correct input is selected on the TV and/or other devices that the TiVo may be connected through.