Tivo Froze while watching HD recording then rebooted

[mrwes]

We were watching an HD recording of "CASTLE" pilot.

Everything was going great, then about 7 to 8 minutes into it, everything froze. No response from remote, no video out. After a little while (3 or 4 minutes) I cycled power.

Several minutes later when I got control again, we started watching the same recording of "CASTLE". I fast forwarded past the part that we experience a problem and everything seemed okay again until around 15 minutes into the recording, then everything stopped again. No video, no response. This time it rebooted on its own.

Several minutes later when I got control again, we started watching again & skipped passed the part that gave us trouble. We were finally able to watch the remainder of the show.

I've owned this TivoHD since Dec. 2007, it has the external 500G DVR drive.

Has anybody else experienced that same problem?

[wdavew]

I have also had problems with my HD rebooting on its own, whether watching something, or looking at schedules, settings, etc. It has even happened when recording.
Another thread suggested that all cables must be securely attached, and even slightly loose could cause the problem. I periodically check my cables now, and the interuptions are less now.

[nyjklein]

Spontaneous boots while watching recordings are the initial symptoms of a failing disk. Replace it now while you can still copy most of your saved recordings off of it.

Jeff

[mrwes]

As far as I know it's not the cable. The problem just started like a month ago. The reboot issue is starting to occur more frequently.

Is it my internal drive or my external drive? It would be great to know what kind of fault it was. Is there a utility like a disk analyzer that we can run on our Tivos that would analyze the disk for bad blocks & then hide them? That would be awesome ;-)

BTW: It happened while watching a recorded video of "24" and while watching a recorded video of "Lost." If I'm lucky, after reboot completes, I can skip the erring area & resume my show.

PS: Is there any way to get the welcome page to give a little more status on how far it is into the startup process. Staring at a non animated screen with no information that says "Just a few more minutes" doesn't give me warm fuzzies.

[pestick]

I've just started having the same problem it started early March today March 20th it just seems to keep booting and rebooting Did they send a new software update recently

Looking for help Do

[mrwes]

okay, so it's happening even more frequently now, it's becoming a daily occurance. I'm coming to the realization that maybe there might be something to this hard disk thing. I'm getting really nervous.

Any ideas on the what to do next?

best directions for hard disk replacement
best source for replacement hard disk
any other advice concerning hard disk replacement


Thanks,
Wes

[RustySTL]

I was having similar problems with my HD TiVo. It would freeze up or the screen would go black. It seemed to do it when I was watch live HD, or if it was recording HD channels.

It just so happened to start after the latest software update. I called TiVo and they said it was my hard drive failing and suggesting running the SMART test on the drive (I also have a DVR Expander). Everything came back fine, no errors.

My last ditch effort was to disconnect my DVR Expander and leave it that way. All my problems went away. I let it go a few days and decided to try hooking it back up...same issues again.

There have been several people that this has happened to since the update.

If you have a DVR expander, try disconnecting it and restart your TiVo and see if the issue goes away. Just remember that you will lose all of your recordings.

I'm not replacing any drives until the next update comes along because I think it did something with the DVR expanders.