HR10-250 safe zippering?

[mohavewolfpup]

the room mate I have here wants all his shows backed up before he sends the unit into directv to get a new unit (which the more I read seems like a bad idea and he may just be better off with a new hard disk for it maybe?)

he has problems with the unit randomly powering off then on again, searching for the signal which takes 15 minutes or so, and then he'll wake up to the show recorded 2,3, even 4 times cut up randomly and appearing in the menus as different recordings. Is this the unit? told him to blow the dust out of it, that helped alot, but it still continues.

anyone know what the problem is fully with it? it's a HR10-250 unit. what is the easiest way to fully backup all the data on the drive also? I was looking at the MFS tools out there, can it just copy all the data off a drive and move it to another drive with no fuss? I just want to pop it into a computer, load that program and copy everything off it onto another with no hassles.

[zdude1]

Not sure I understand what you want to do here, as The Zipper has very little to do with what you are asking. But I do love the Zipper :up:
A. Are you trying to replace the drive and keep your recordings that are on it, because you think the drive is causing the problems?
B. Or are you asking if you can save the files to your computer, swap/upgrade to a new DVR, and still have your old saved programs to watch?

If you want to do (B), there's a lot of searching and reading you need to do.
If you want to do (A):
I used WinMFS to do an MFSCopy to a new drive. It's an easy program to work with, can run it in Windows. It takes a looong time, I think mine took about 9 hours, to copy everything over, so here are 2 tips I'd recommend.

1. Pull the drive and first just backup the Tivo system files (not the recorded shows), and do a Restore to the new drive. Then put the new drive in and make sure it boots and records without having the same issues. You won't need to do the Guided Setup, as the new drive will be just like your old one, except the recordings won't be there. They will show up in the NPL, but will error if you try to play them, so just delete them from the List. This is so you dont waste a lot of time doing a full drive copy, only to find out the problem lies in the unit, not the existing drive, and it gives you a small backup file of your Tivo's image; always a good thing to have around. If all is good after a test run with that new drive, then pull it and do the full copy from old to new.

2. This may not save time on the copy process, but I do it anyways. Before pulling the drive, I go thru the NPL and delete everything I don't want to keep. Pare the saved recordings down to what you are trying to save. I think the program actually does a bit-to-bit copy of partitions from old drive to new, so it probably will still be copying blank space from one to the other. I just feel better doing it this way though :)

I did (A), then Zippered it for all the enhanced functionality. It's great. I wish I did it sooner, because I'm already phasing out some HR10's for HR20's.

[wmcbrine]

If the drive was not previously hacked, the programs will all be encrypted, and AFAIK only the HR10-250 itself can decrypt them. I understand there's a way to decrypt existing recordings in place, but I haven't tried it. Most of the hacks focus on disabling encryption going forward.

This sounds like a hardware problem that, for once, isn't the drive.