Proactive hard drive surgery on my S3

[popcult]

TiVo physicians: I need a consultation! The external drive (Seagate DB35 750gb ) connected to my S3 has been making sporadic/disturbing read/write moaning noises during the past 2 weeks and I'm beginning to worry about losing all of my programming. So far there aren't any visible symptoms of hard drive failure (programs play back perfectly fine with none of the stuttering or freezing associated with bad drives). I bought the drive fairly recently (May 2007) so I find it incredible that it might be dying - it was supposed to be a server grade hard drive (I paid a premium for it thinking it would last longer). What should I do in this situation if my main goal is to preserve my programs? My main questions are:

1) Should I even bother trying to plug the external to my PC and see if some kind of disk tools program can fix whatever is ailing it?

2) Should I clone the external drive and transfer the data to a brand new external drive?

3) Seeing that it's probably just a matter of time before the original 250gb internal drive on my 2-year old S3 unit dies also, should I just make arrangements to order one big 1TB drive and transfer everything over to that?

4) Assuming I'm going to be buying another drive, which one should I get? I'm getting pretty sick of shoving new drives into my TiVos. I went through 3 of them with my S1 and now it looks like a drive that's not even two years old is dying on me as well.

[oViTynoT]

Drives, even ones that are in the process of "failing," don't make any sounds related to Read/Writing. The only two sounds that it will make are related to spinning of the platters or stepping the heads back and forth during a seek.

If you're hearing a high-pitched whine that increases in volume then fades (or not) but remains at approximately the same pitch regardless, that's probably a platter spindle bearing that's on its way out.

The steppers should just be clicking, or a VERY brief almost musical note for a long distance seek. If the stepper action starts to fail, you'll have obvious read errors.

1> Either way, you won't be able to "Repair it" using a tool.
2> Probably.
3 & 4> That's up to you.

[popcult]

1> Either way, you won't be able to "Repair it" using a tool.
2> Probably.
3 & 4> That's up to you.

Thanks for the advice. Is there an official procedure for merging my existing internal and external drives' data and cloning it onto a brand-new single 1TB internal drive?

[Thom]

This is how I did it...
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=399179

[ciper]

Why not take your A drive out and view the logs? If its failing you will probably see entries related to it.

Drives, even ones that are in the process of "failing," don't make any sounds related to Read/Writing. The only two sounds that it will make are related

While technically correct the real world impression is different A drive may start to develop "cancer" with large areas of bad spots. The drive will work fine when not using these areas but as soon as it tries to read/write the one bad area it will make a unique sound as it tries over and over to recover.

[jlib]

The external drive (Seagate DB35 750gb ) connected to my S3 has been making sporadic/disturbing read/write moaning noises...Have you isolated the sound to the hard drive itself? More likely it is a fan. Jam something into the fan when you hear the sound to verify if it continues.

[Bodie]

Here's a good place to help with diagnosis: http://datacent.com/hard_drive_sounds.php

[oViTynoT]

Here's a good place to help with diagnosis: http://datacent.com/hard_drive_sounds.php

That has got to be the most useful website I've ever seen. Err, heard.