Class Action Lawsuit - upgrades causing freeze/reboot

[HowBoutNowLA]

If you have a DVR that has experienced freeze reboot problems due to the v11 upgrade (or experienced this with a previous upgrade), please sound off. If there are enough people I will be interested in pursuing this.

Tivo is constantly producing these junk machines and then putting out junk upgrades that are mandatory and subsequently fry these machines. Then the only solution they give you is to pay a ridiculous amount for them to correct this ineptitude.

Tive can only rememdy this situation - in my eyes - by individually fixing FOR FREE each and every machine regardless of warranty status, and by individually preserving all stored programming on each machine or monetarily replacing or compensating for it.

I am tired of speaking to CS about this because they only lie and change their positions about on this and never give you a real answer, except for the few that have OPENLY ADMITTED that the upgrade is definitely what has caused the problem. If this is the only way to get them to produce a quality product and test and produce quality upgrades BEFORE destroying our machines with them, then I believe this is the avenue that should be taken. I spent over $900 on my S3 when it first came out. I had it for under two years before Tivo's upgrade destroyed it. THEY owe me as far as I'm concerned and I'm ready to contact a lawyer about this. If you have the same issues, please sound off.

[mack1951]

First take a deep breath.
Then realize that it is just TV and really is not life or death important.
Then realize that in a class action the only people that win are the lawyers. They make all the money, the company has to pay for their defense plus the settlement (they do this by raising rates for everyone) and the customers wind up with a coupon for 10% off their next purchase from the company. Everyone losses but the lawyers. Sorry if that sounds cynical but it is the way it is.

[cogx]

Have you checked your HDD with the various Kickstart tests? Specifically, I recommend the KS 54 "extended" and ""overnight test: seek/read, random locations" tests.

[sdistheplacetobe]

My tivo Series 3 has also stopped working. It will reboot and then stay on the main menu and I can see the lights at the top of the now playing list are skipping. Its very slow and then will skip when something is playing. This didnt happen before but just recently started happening. What can I do??

[cogx]

My tivo Series 3 has also stopped working. It will reboot and then stay on the main menu and I can see the lights at the top of the now playing list are skipping. Its very slow and then will skip when something is playing. This didnt happen before but just recently started happening. What can I do??

I bought my S3 the day it was available, but then back in October 2008, it went one day from working perfectly normal to the next day having pauses and delays in accepting commands like rewinding or going through the menus to the next day to where it would completely freeze up and/or spontaneously reboot itself. Turned out the hard drive was failing. If I disconnected the cable and antenna inputs and/or put it into standby, I was able to watch my already recording programs and download the shows with TiVo Desktop.

If one scours this site, it really turns out that nearly every problem people have with the TiVo software freezing is really the hard drive failing. The KS 54 SATA "extended" and "overnight" tests confirmed to me that my hard drive was bad and replacing it did in fact fix the problem for me.

[sdistheplacetobe]

It probably is the hard drive. Is there any cheap way to replace it? This unit cost me $700 and I don't wana pay another $700 to get a new one. Will an external usb drive work?

[ewilts]

It probably is the hard drive. Is there any cheap way to replace it? This unit cost me $700 and I don't wana pay another $700 to get a new one. Will an external usb drive work?
External USB won't work but see the HD upgrade sticky thread for how to replace your hard disk.

If your current one is totally dead, the absolutely easiest solution (not necessarily the cheapest) is to buy a ready-to-go drive from dvrupgrade.com. Pop out your old drive, pop in the one they send you, and you'll be up and running in about 15 minutes. You can get more capacity at the same time - I think a 500GB drive ready to go is about $179. The software is already pre-installed.

[Revolutionary]

Good luck with a class action suit. It'll settle in 5 years with Tivo paying you $45 and the lawyers $3.4 million.

[Revolutionary]

My tivo Series 3 has also stopped working. It will reboot and then stay on the main menu and I can see the lights at the top of the now playing list are skipping. Its very slow and then will skip when something is playing. This didnt happen before but just recently started happening. What can I do??

Your harddrive has failed. If you are out of warranty, Tivo won't fix it for free (and don't go thinking, like the OP, that an OS update has somehow fried the harddrive, because that is laughably naive). There are lots of remedies, like paying Tivo for a replacement drive, or buying one yourself from a place like Weaknees or DVRUpgrade.

[HowBoutNowLA]

Your harddrive has failed. If you are out of warranty, Tivo won't fix it for free (and don't go thinking, like the OP, that an OS update has somehow fried the harddrive, because that is laughably naive). There are lots of remedies, like paying Tivo for a replacement drive, or buying one yourself from a place like Weaknees or DVRUpgrade.

I have tried all the kickstart tests and it passed every one of them - multiple times.

And my unit never once froze or rebooted like this until exactly one day after I got the v11 upgrade. read up on the thousands of other posts on this board and you will see this has happened for everyone else too - all problems begin occurring immediately after the software upgrade. Tivo knows this and has admitted it, so what makes you think this is laughably naive? Besides that, $900 on a unit under 2 years old and the hard drive fails? If you want to excuse Tivo for making and selling lemons at top dollar, be my guest. But no matter how ridiculous, at least a class action and thousands of complaints to the BBB might make them rethink quality control - or could it be that's what's wrong with our economy in general, lazy americans constantly taking shortcuts in production and making garbage products that break down prematurely...

[sdistheplacetobe]

Your harddrive has failed. If you are out of warranty, Tivo won't fix it for free (and don't go thinking, like the OP, that an OS update has somehow fried the harddrive, because that is laughably naive). There are lots of remedies, like paying Tivo for a replacement drive, or buying one yourself from a place like Weaknees or DVRUpgrade.

I agree, it probably has failed. Why shouldn't I think the new software update fried my drive? Especially if it has fried other peoples drives. I don't think that is "laughably naive" at all. This is going to cost me over $200 because tivo couldnt put in a good drive the first time.

[sdistheplacetobe]

How do I know that if I put in a new drive, the new version 11 won't mess it up too?

[Langree]

Tive can only rememdy this situation - in my eyes - by individually fixing FOR FREE each and every machine regardless of warranty status, and by individually preserving all stored programming on each machine or monetarily replacing or compensating for it.

OMG, really?

Those Golden Girls reruns are that important to you?

I love these threads!

[SeanC]

I love these threads!

Yeah, they are good for a laugh.

[sinanju]

How do I know that if I put in a new drive, the new version 11 won't mess it up too?

I believe your question is the result of a cum-hoc (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation) fallacy. Though one event followed the other, it is incorrect to assume one caused the other. My S3 is ticking along nicely and has been for years now... Version 11 caused no ill effects.

[billyjoebob99]

Yeah, they are good for a laugh.

I assumed I'd look back at the top and see that the original post was from yesterday, April 1st.

This is great, but instead of a lawsuit I recommend pitchforks and torches. Let us storm Castle TiVo.

[hummingbird_206]

I understand the frustration felt when a s/w update causes a previously working machine to fail. I have been lucky enough to escape (so far) the failures seen by many others after a s/w update. I really wish TiVo would have an 'opt out' selection so that we didn't have to get updates pushed out to our machines. I'm sure that one of these days my luck will run out and I'll be stuck with an S3 that fails after a s/w update, too. I'll be happy to join in the class then....

[orangeboy]

read up on the thousands of other posts on this board and you will see this has happened for everyone else too - all problems begin occurring immediately after the software upgrade. Tivo knows this and has admitted it, so what makes you think this is laughably naive? Besides that, $900 on a unit under 2 years old and the hard drive fails? If you want to excuse Tivo for making and selling lemons at top dollar, be my guest. But no matter how ridiculous, at least a class action and thousands of complaints to the BBB might make them rethink quality control - or could it be that's what's wrong with our economy in general, lazy americans constantly taking shortcuts in production and making garbage products that break down prematurely...

I post on these forums and it hasn't happened to me. Isn't it conceivable that a software update could write to a bad part of the harddrive reserved for the operating system that hadn't been referenced yet? I doubt that Tivo actually manufactures the harddrives and that they are supplied by someone that does (Western Digital, Seagate, whoever). I think the focus of your anger and/or lawsuit should be against the harddrive supplier, and not Tivo if it proves out that a batch of drives were indeed faulty.

[namechamps]

I agree, it probably has failed. Why shouldn't I think the new software update fried my drive? Especially if it has fried other peoples drives. I don't think that is "laughably naive" at all. This is going to cost me over $200 because tivo couldnt put in a good drive the first time.

So which is it..... software killed it or tivo couldn't put a good drive in the first place?

1) Software updates can't destroy a hard drive.
2) Software updates can't destroy a hard drive.
3) Software updates can't destroy a hard drive.
and most importantly
4) Software updates can't destroy a hard drive.

The truth is ALL hard drives fail. Period. Every single hard drive ever made since the first drive WIIL FAIl. All of them. Every single one. Some may die in a year, some in 2, some in 5, or 10, or 20 years but spin them long enough and they will fail.

BTW: Tivo did put a "good HDD" in the Tivo. It is a drive designed for AV used.

Replacement drive shouldn't cost you anywhere near $200.

[Langree]

read up on the thousands of other posts on this board and you will see this has happened for everyone else too

I missed that part. I've said it before, trying to bolster your argument by making such statements just makes you look silly.

[namechamps]

How do I know that if I put in a new drive, the new version 11 won't mess it up too?

Simple version 11 didn't cause the first drive to fail SO version 11 (or 12, or 20, or 87) won't cause the second version to fail.


Friend of mine broke his leg and when he was at the Doctors they notice very high white blood cell count. Initially DR thought it was an infection from the break, gave him some antibiotics and scheduled a followup in 2 weeks. At the followup he still had high white blood cell count and long story short it was cancer.

Should my friend sue the DR for giving him cancer?
Should he sue the baseball team he was on when he broke his leg since "obviously" the broken leg caused the cancer?

If my friend breaks his leg in the future will he "catch" cancer again? If only there were no broken legs then nobody would suffer from cancer. Right?

[sdistheplacetobe]

Replacement drive shouldn't cost you anywhere near $200.


The cheapest drive on dvrupgrade.com for my unit the TiVo TCD648250B (Series3) is $179. Thats for a 500gb probably Hitachi. Should I upgrade and get the seagate? Which one would probably not fail as quickly? Do you know where to get a cheaper drive?

[TroyB]

I've read that Tivo uses 2 partitions on the hard drive for software, with updates altenating betwen the two. If one of those partitions becomes corrupt then when an update is assigned to that partition you will have problems, then the next update will go to the other partition and everyhting will be fine. This problem goes back and forth until you replace the hard drive.

[TroyB]

The cheapest drive on dvrupgrade.com for my unit the TiVo TCD648250B (Series3) is $179. Thats for a 500gb probably Hitachi. Should I upgrade and get the seagate? Which one would probably not fail as quickly? Do you know where to get a cheaper drive?

I worked for a company that installed networks and such and Seagate drives are extremely cheap made, we had a stack of them about 5 feet high that had failed in customers computers.

[bkdtv]

The cheapest drive on dvrupgrade.com for my unit the TiVo TCD648250B (Series3) is $179. Thats for a 500gb probably Hitachi. Should I upgrade and get the seagate? Which one would probably not fail as quickly? Do you know where to get a cheaper drive?It's much cheaper to do the upgrade yourself...you can get 500GB for $60 or 1TB for $100.

If you can open the TiVo, as you must to install any replacement drive, then you've already done 90% of the work.

You'd order the InstantCake restore CD (http://www.dvrupgrade.com/dvr/stores/1/instantcake.cfm) for the Series3 (TCD648250B) and a drive:

WD5000AVVS @ Buy.com (http://www.buy.com/prod/western-digital-av-gp-wd5000avvs-hard-drive-500gb-serial-ata-300/q/loc/101/206827120.html) (500GB)
WD5000AVVS @ Provantage.com (http://www.provantage.com/western-digital-wd5000avvs~7WND900T.htm) (500GB)

WD10EVCS @ Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-GreenPower-Cache-WD10EVCS/dp/B0015VO9X2/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1238193186&sr=8-1) (1TB)
WD10EVCS @ Buy.com (http://www.buy.com/prod/western-digital-av-gp-wd10evcs-hard-drive-1tb-serial-ata-300-serial/q/loc/101/206827123.html) (1TB)

WD10EVVS @ Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-WD10EVVS-AV-GP-Cache/dp/B001VKY8FG/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1238193186&sr=8-2) (1TB)
WD10EVVS @ Buy.com (http://www.buy.com/prod/western-digital-av-gp-sata-300-external-hard-drive-1tb-7200rpm-serial/q/loc/101/208720180.html) (1TB)

You would then connect the drive to your computer with a USB adapter like this one (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812156014). You'd connect the drive to your computer with this USB adapter and then boot your computer using the InstantCake restore CD (http://www.dvrupgrade.com/dvr/stores/1/instantcake.cfm).

[cogx]

Just to followup to the thought process about bad sectors, because I assume many of us posting on this forum do IT support and bad sectors are a fairly common HDD failure when one support enough (100+) PCs.
My Series3 failure, which resulted in freezes and spotaneous reboots, however, was not due to bad sectors and thus was not brought into the light by a software upgrade.
When I did the quick KS 54 test, it always came back as passed. It wasn't until I did the extended and overnight tests that it would eventually return a failure code. I repeat, don't just rely on the quick SMART diagnostic, that doesn't cut it.
To verify the TiVo extended and overnight SATA tests, when I took the drive out and put it in my PC and ran a SATA diagnostic on it, it failed after 60% checked with a "Error code: 0F00:0232. Timeout waiting for IRQ." and it completely locked up my PC to where I had to unplug it, just as what was happening when that drive was in my S3 causing it to freeze and reboot itself. In other words, this is a different kind of failure than bad sectors, instead at some point the drive would completely stop responding to low level requests by the OS.
The new replacement drive has worked fine, but as was pointed out a few posts ago, ALL hard drives will eventually fail, it is just a matter of when.

[TexasGrillChef]

Less than 10% of TiVo S3/HD/XL users experiance this problem.

Unless it can be proved beyond a reasonable doubt that this issue is caused by willfull fraud, or neglience on TiVo's part, your class action lawsuit will fail.

Which will be hard to when less than 10% of TiVo owners experiance this problem.


TGC

[hillstones]

That is the funniest post I ever read. To the OP, my TiVo just started spontaneously rebooting today. Had nothing to do with the v11 update, because that was downloaded quite awhile ago. My S3 is 2 1/2 years old, and if my hard drive is failing, it is just an unfortunate occurrence. Hard drives do fail, even ones that are installed in computers. You can't sue TiVo over a hard drive. TiVo doesn't make them!

Once I successfully transfer Lost, I will run the overnight tests. If my hard drive is dying, I will replace it with a larger drive from one of the vendors that sells pre-formatted TiVo hard drives.

Update: Transferred Lost. Tried to reboot and enter diagnostics to check drive. Could not even do that. When I went into Settings to reboot, it spontaneously rebooted before I even got there! Followed the steps, but after I entered 54, it would lock up and freeze, every single time. I could hear the hard drive trying to read the same sector over and over again. So I am guessing my hard drive is history. So I ordered a 500GB drive from WeaKnees.com for $169. Good upgrade price and I will have twice as much storage as before.

[ZeoTiVo]

read up on the thousands of other posts on this board and you will see this has happened for everyone else too - all problems begin occurring immediately after the software upgrade. Tivo knows this and has admitted it, so what makes you think this is laughably naive?

umm the thousands of posts comment first off - me thinks you just ranted off a number.

Then the TiVo has "admitted this" junk based on some CSRs that very likely would have agreed that Hitler would make a nice lawn ornament for their house if it got you off the phone call.

but thanks for the opportunity to try out the ignore thread feature here :up:

[brewman]

The update didn't cause the harddrive to fail, it just brought to light the fact that at least a frew sectors were bad (or some other non-catastrophic problem exists) on the drive.

I've had 6 tivos over the years (upgrades and such) and still have 4, and I've had to replace 3 drives after new software loads. I've also had several rants about it in these forum.

The real problem is TiVos upgrade process doesn't have a fail-back procedure and so if the boot partition with the new update has a problem you get the "the upgrade killed my TiVo" complaints.

We'll never know, but I would be willing to bet many of these machines that "died" after an update would operate properly for years to come if the update hadn't occurred.

TiVo has made a business decision that they'd rather field CS calls after an update complianing that it "killed my TiVo" than deal with the headaches of multiple versions of the O/S in production, or having to explain why you'll never receive another update until you "repair" your TiVo that doesn't seem broken to you.

It's a hassle, but spend the money to replace your drive and hope you get another few years out of it, and accept the fact that you'll have to deal with this problem again at some point in the future. Or switch to satellite :)

[Revolutionary]

I agree, it probably has failed. Why shouldn't I think the new software update fried my drive? Especially if it has fried other peoples drives. I don't think that is "laughably naive" at all. This is going to cost me over $200 because tivo couldnt put in a good drive the first time.

...

1) Software updates can't destroy a hard drive.
2) Software updates can't destroy a hard drive.
3) Software updates can't destroy a hard drive.
and most importantly
4) Software updates can't destroy a hard drive.

What he said. Would you say that the latest Windows Update patch "fried my harddrive." It can corrupt an installation (software problem), and it can even destroy a partition if done horribly incorrectly (software problem), but it cannot cause the drive to fail (hardware problem). It's like saying your fear of heights broke your leg.

[RoyK]

...


What he said. Would you say that the latest Windows Update patch "fried my harddrive." It can corrupt an installation (software problem), and it can even destroy a partition if done horribly incorrectly (software problem), but it cannot cause the drive to fail (hardware problem). It's like saying your fear of heights broke your leg.

Matter of semantics, isn't it? For most a corrupted installation or a destroyed partition = a fried hard drive = an unusable box. The geeky few have the know-how to recover from these problems but most don't.

[Revolutionary]

Matter of semantics, isn't it? For most a corrupted installation or a destroyed partition = a fried hard drive = an unusable box. The geeky few have the know-how to recover from these problems but most don't.

No, since the Tivo is capable of recovery from either of those two problems, particularly with the help of tech support.

[MichaelK]

isn't there a kickstart code that redownloads the current software and installs it on the other set of partitions? Wouldn't that temporarily "fix" many of these problems? (untill the next update came along and tried the bad partitions...)

[ciper]

Does VOD count? I am afraid to use my Netflix streaming because multiple times I have had it hang which requires a reboot. This wouldn't be so bad but usually it comes back to a grey screen instead of the startup movie. It often takes an additional reboot to bring it up but my heart always skips a beat when it does.

[visionary]

Count me in for proof it is V11B that caused this. I have an S3, I never had cable or cards, it's Over Air only for its life of 3 years. Never had a problem till jan when I got 11B. It is not connected to Internet and never was, it dials in. None of the extra features has ever been on, kidzone, etc either. Only has 1 internal drive and its 750g and just a year old.

I have found some stuff that helps, when screen freezes hit PAUSE real fast, then hit the 30 sec skip I hope you have on, once or twice. Repeat if it still freezes. There is usually 2 or 3 bad spots together, I think it is the index to where it is gets messed up, because a real breakup of signal from airplanes here does NOT cause it, ever.

This "fix" stops the reboot at least 3 times out of 4 after you do it right. Oh, same thing can happen if you are viewing a show live but delayed say 10 mins, however if you leave it caught up and watch, the reboot never happens but still can be on the recording if played later. Never leave the machine behind, that will stop any reboots during recordings, and do so on both tuners or it still can.

Another thing, POWER DOWN your Tivo at least every 2 weeks if it is freezing, it does it less, and if you never do that, it increases the problem a whole lot after a few weeks. The problem is on the recording, so it will fix only new recordings, fix as in reduce times it happens, after a powerdown. But you don't need to power down more than every 2 weeks. (But maybe if you are using all the features, and it seems to be doing it more you might want to try it weekly.)

I am so mad Tivo does not allow us to switch back to the priev load which is till there in the partition, maybe as an option on web site for tech savvy folks, then it would not try to load 11B either, till you changed it on the web. That is a real good idea they could do at almost no cost! Suggest it people!! I mean they have priority lists for us who know Tivo, they might do this....

[greg_burns]

isn't there a kickstart code that redownloads the current software and installs it on the other set of partitions? Wouldn't that temporarily "fix" many of these problems? (untill the next update came along and tried the bad partitions...)

KS 56 used to do that, but no more
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5768025#post5768025

Here is the list of working KS codes
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showpost.php?p=5643823&postcount=2

KS 52 will reinstall current download (to same partition :down:), but will not download it anew. :(

Edit: I may be wrong about the same partition thing...

[hillstones]

isn't there a kickstart code that redownloads the current software and installs it on the other set of partitions? Wouldn't that temporarily "fix" many of these problems? (untill the next update came along and tried the bad partitions...)

In my case, I could not even get TiVo to run the diagnostic. Continued to reboot and freeze after I did the 54 code. I could hear the hard drive trying to read the same sector over and over again. In some cases, a hard drive failure could wipe it out completely, and it had nothing to do with the software update.

[MichaelK]

In my case, I could not even get TiVo to run the diagnostic. Continued to reboot and freeze after I did the 54 code. I could hear the hard drive trying to read the same sector over and over again. In some cases, a hard drive failure could wipe it out completely, and it had nothing to do with the software update.

well if the drive is dead then it's dead.

But maybe you want to try a kickstart 52 to reinstall to the alternate partition. Maye you lucky and the "dead" place is on the current software partition.

Good luck.

But I'd reiterate what the folks said above- I can't imagine any software changes that could harm the hardware in a hard drive. The real world proof is there aren't viruses out there that physically damage your hard drive. If it was possible some a'hole would make a virus that does it.

[lrhorer]

I have tried all the kickstart tests and it passed every one of them - multiple times.
Then it is not terribly likely it is a drive failure, in which case the failure has nothing to do with the upgrade. Failures of the type you mention aren't related directly to the software in any case. They are caused by a drive already having bad sectors, but in one of the inactive partitions. Since the partitions are inactive, they never get accessed. Thus, even though the problem is pre-existing, the symptoms never occur until the software upgrade routine writes the new software to the inactive partitions, deactivates the previously active partiti9ons, and activates the formerly inactive ones containing the new software. All that would happen if Tivo were to "fix" the "problem" as you perceive it, is the unit would have failed sooner. Far from being an issue, TiVo's method of upgrades allows a large fraction of units with failed drives to continue to function possibly for several months before the issue is uncovered by an upgrade. Your uninformed opinions completely notwithstanding, this is the best and most robust means of handling software upgrades ever devised. TiVo didn't invent it: it's been in use in high end, high availability systems such as telecommunications equipment, critical military systems, and banking systems for decades. Please do us all a favor and learn something about a subject before mouthing off about how incompetent the professional developers in the field are, or how a unit is trash because it employs the gold standard for reliability, and should some how do better.

Such problems are easily fixed by any user of average intelligence, by the way, frankly for little more trouble than it took to post your message.

And my unit never once froze or rebooted like this until exactly one day after I got the v11 upgrade. read up on the thousands of other posts on this board and you will see this has happened for everyone else too - all problems begin occurring immediately after the software upgrade.
I'm sure you think you have some sort of point there, but anyone who takes a few minutes to understand the architecture would be hard pressed to see what it is.

Speaking more generally, you bought a device which subsequently aged beyond its warranty and then failed. Fix it, buy a new one, or do without. Don't whine about it, and definitely please don't splatter a bunch of nonsense concerning the issue across the internet. If you want to ask about how to fix the issue, then please do so, and some of us will be happy to answer your questions. If you simply want to vent about how lousy your luck has been, then we understand, and some of us may even sympathize.

Tivo knows this and has admitted it, so what makes you think this is laughably naive?
The fact we have to explain it to you proves the thesis.

Besides that, $900 on a unit under 2 years old and the hard drive fails?
I've had enterprise class drives (specifically manufactured to last longer and costing six times as much as a consumer grade drive) in $15,000 units fail after 2 months. As one individual recently put it, hard drives do three things: They read data, write data, and fail. TiVo uses the same drives in its DVRs that you can buy at Best Buy or Fry's. While any failure is disappointing, 2 years is not an unreasonably short lifespan for a drive. Althouigh the MTBF for most consumer grade drives is typically given as something like 50,000 hours (5.7 years), that is only a statistical mean. Taken as a whole, it means some drives, but not many, will fail in a few minutes, and some will continue to work for 50 years, but again not many. So, assuming your drive is indeed bad, it means you got one of the ones which failed somewhat sooner than expected. Boo. Hoo.

Here (http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Data-Storage/Hard-Disk-MTBF-Flap-or-Farce/) is a moderately informative discussion of failure rates on enterprise class drives (usually costing in the $800 to $2000 range). Note 1% to 2% of them fail within a year.

If you want to excuse Tivo for making and selling lemons at top dollar
Obviously, since you feel qualified to rate the hardware as being below par in reliability, you must have access to the overall failure rate of the machines. Please post that rate, so we can all marvel at how much worse the TiVo failure rate is compared to average hard drive failure rates used in other applications. One failure does not qualify a production series as a lemon, no matter how special you think your experience should be. A two year average lifespan would be somewhat low, but not terribly so, so even your personal experience does not suggest in any way the TiVo is a lemon.

or could it be that's what's wrong with our economy in general, lazy americans constantly taking shortcuts in production and making garbage products that break down prematurely..
No, but idiots who think lawsuits improve anything are a significant problem. If you think TiVo has done such a lousy job of manufacturing, and it would be so easy to manufacture a vastly superior unit at a lower retail cost, then why don't you design one and go into business with it? If TiVo's margins are so terribly out of line with their use of cheap hardware and crummy software, then you should be able to make a mint.

[lrhorer]

I believe your question is the result of a cum-hoc (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation) fallacy. Though one event followed the other, it is incorrect to assume one caused the other. My S3 is ticking along nicely and has been for years now... Version 11 caused no ill effects.
Precisely. All three of mine sailed through the most recent set of upgrades - one of them twice, because it was one of the pre-release machines.

[lrhorer]

I understand the frustration felt when a s/w update causes a previously working machine to fail. I have been lucky enough to escape (so far) the failures seen by many others after a s/w update.
No, you haven't really, any more than I have been lucky not to be struck by lightning in the last few minutes. Those who have had failures are unlucky. The rest of us are simply enjoying the fact the vast majority don't fail. My first S3 had a failure of its Ethernet port, but fortunately just prior to the warranty expiration. The drives have been doing swimmingly, although only 1 of my 5 TiVos has the original drive in it.

I really wish TiVo would have an 'opt out' selection so that we didn't have to get updates pushed out to our machines. I'm sure that one of these days my luck will run out and I'll be stuck with an S3 that fails after a s/w update, too. I'll be happy to join in the class then....
I'm not sure how good an idea that would be. Nonetheless, unless you replace it with something else, have it stolen, or just shut it down, at some point your TiVo will fail. So will your TV... your car... your house... Obsessing over it is IMO really not the bet use of your emotional resources.

[lrhorer]

Count me in for proof it is V11B that caused this.
It proves nothing of the sort. It's very likely it only uncovered a pre-existing condition.

because a real breakup of signal from airplanes here does NOT cause it, ever.
WHAT??? What the hell do airplanes have to do with your TiVo?


Another thing, POWER DOWN your Tivo at least every 2 weeks
I definitely do not recommend this.

I am so mad Tivo does not allow us to switch back to the priev load which is till there in the partition, maybe as an option on web site for tech savvy folks, then it would not try to load 11B either, till you changed it on the web.
What good does delaying the install do? Switching back to the old software is not at all difficult, but unless you hack the TiVo it will only load the new version again as soon as it makes its daily call.

[lrhorer]

How do I know that if I put in a new drive, the new version 11 won't mess it up too?
Do you have plans for lunch tomorrow? How do you know a meteor won't strike your house tonight? Release 11 doesn't destroy anything. Ignoring robotic systems, no software can ever damage a hardware system. If you install a bad drive with release 9 on it, the failure may not show up until it upgrades to release 11, but so what? It just means the symptoms lag the failure by some period of time.

[lrhorer]

Good luck with a class action suit. It'll settle in 5 years with Tivo paying you $45 and the lawyers $3.4 million.
No way would he get $45 from a class action suit. He would be lucky to get $4.50. There's also no way such a suit would win, but even if it did, it wouldn't get $3.4M. Unless they were able to show malicious intent or gross negligence, the most a suit could claim is the actual loss in value of the failed hardware. Assuming an average cost of repair of $170, that would require 20,000 units to have failed, and they would have had to fail in well under 2 years.

[hillstones]

well if the drive is dead then it's dead.

But maybe you want to try a kickstart 52 to reinstall to the alternate partition. Maye you lucky and the "dead" place is on the current software partition.

Good luck.

Thanks for the tip, but now it won't even get to the point where the 4 lights turn off in order to enter a kickstart code. I can hear the drive trying to read the same sector over and over again. My new 500GB drive will be here next week.

[lrhorer]

Matter of semantics, isn't it? For most a corrupted installation or a destroyed partition = a fried hard drive = an unusable box. The geeky few have the know-how to recover from these problems but most don't.
That's a lazy-### excuse. Replacing or upgrading a hard drive is nothing beyond the capabilities of any able bodied individual of low average intelligence or above.

[Langree]

It proves nothing of the sort. It's very likely it only uncovered a pre-existing condition.


WHAT??? What the hell do airplanes have to do with your TiVo?



I definitely do not recommend this.


What good does delaying the install do? Switching back to the old software is not at all difficult, but unless you hack the TiVo it will only load the new version again as soon as it makes its daily call.

You should know, if you haven't experienced Vis on other parts of the forum, his reality is not our own and solely feeds off your response to him.

[RoyK]

That's a lazy-### excuse. Replacing or upgrading a hard drive is nothing beyond the capabilities of any able bodied individual of low average intelligence or above.

You're kidding, right?
If not that's one of the most absurd statements I have read from you.

I'll let my wife and my 83 year old mother-in-law know that their intelligence is below low average.:eek:

[hillstones]

Then it is not terribly likely it is a drive failure, in which case the failure has nothing to do with the upgrade. Failures of the type you mention aren't related directly to the software in any case. They are caused by a drive already having bad sectors, but in one of the inactive partitions. Since the partitions are inactive, they never get accessed. Thus, even though the problem is pre-existing, the symptoms never occur until the software upgrade routine writes the new software to the inactive partitions, deactivates the previously active partiti9ons, and activates the formerly inactive ones containing the new software. All that would happen if Tivo were to "fix" the "problem" as you perceive it, is the unit would have failed sooner. Far from being an issue, TiVo's method of upgrades allows a large fraction of units with failed drives to continue to function possibly for several months before the issue is uncovered by an upgrade. Your uninformed opinions completely notwithstanding, this is the best and most robust means of handling software upgrades ever devised. TiVo didn't invent it: it's been in use in high end, high availability systems such as telecommunications equipment, critical military systems, and banking systems for decades. Please do us all a favor and learn something about a subject before mouthing off about how incompetent the professional developers in the field are, or how a unit is trash because it employs the gold standard for reliability, and should some how do better.

Such problems are easily fixed by any user of average intelligence, by the way, frankly for little more trouble than it took to post your message.


I'm sure you think you have some sort of point there, but anyone who takes a few minutes to understand the architecture would be hard pressed to see what it is.

Speaking more generally, you bought a device which subsequently aged beyond its warranty and then failed. Fix it, buy a new one, or do without. Don't whine about it, and definitely please don't splatter a bunch of nonsense concerning the issue across the internet. If you want to ask about how to fix the issue, then please do so, and some of us will be happy to answer your questions. If you simply want to vent about how lousy your luck has been, then we understand, and some of us may even sympathize.


The fact we have to explain it to you proves the thesis.


I've had enterprise class drives (specifically manufactured to last longer and costing six times as much as a consumer grade drive) in $15,000 units fail after 2 months. As one individual recently put it, hard drives do three things: They read data, write data, and fail. TiVo uses the same drives in its DVRs that you can buy at Best Buy or Fry's. While any failure is disappointing, 2 years is not an unreasonably short lifespan for a drive. Althouigh the MTBF for most consumer grade drives is typically given as something like 50,000 hours (5.7 years), that is only a statistical mean. Taken as a whole, it means some drives, but not many, will fail in a few minutes, and some will continue to work for 50 years, but again not many. So, assuming your drive is indeed bad, it means you got one of the ones which failed somewhat sooner than expected. Boo. Hoo.

Here (http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Data-Storage/Hard-Disk-MTBF-Flap-or-Farce/) is a moderately informative discussion of failure rates on enterprise class drives (usually costing in the $800 to $2000 range). Note 1% to 2% of them fail within a year.


Obviously, since you feel qualified to rate the hardware as being below par in reliability, you must have access to the overall failure rate of the machines. Please post that rate, so we can all marvel at how much worse the TiVo failure rate is compared to average hard drive failure rates used in other applications. One failure does not qualify a production series as a lemon, no matter how special you think your experience should be. A two year average lifespan would be somewhat low, but not terribly so, so even your personal experience does not suggest in any way the TiVo is a lemon.


No, but idiots who think lawsuits improve anything are a significant problem. If you think TiVo has done such a lousy job of manufacturing, and it would be so easy to manufacture a vastly superior unit at a lower retail cost, then why don't you design one and go into business with it? If TiVo's margins are so terribly out of line with their use of cheap hardware and crummy software, then you should be able to make a mint.

Well said! I think it is hilarious that the OP believes that TiVo is to blame when TiVo doesn't make hard drives. I wonder what he did when a floppy disk got a read error? Software updates don't destroy hard drives. I am guessing he is the type that believes his computer is broken when the hard drive crashes. He will go out and buy a new computer because he doesn't understand the concept of replacing the hard drive and reinstalling the OS.

I am bummed that my hard drive just crashed, but I am not crying over spilled milk. I am waiting for the arrival of my new hard drive, which is twice the size of the original drive. So my TiVo will be better than it was before. TiVo had nothing to do with the hard drive crash.

[lrhorer]

You're kidding, right?
If not that's one of the most absurd statements I have read from you.

I'll let my wife and my 83 year old mother-in-law know that their intelligence is below low average.:eek:
Perhaps not, but aside from physical disability the only other excuses are being lazy or timid - mostly lazy. I have a 98 year old aunt who could do it if she weren't blind. Ten years ago, before she went blind, she could have easily done it. My grandmother who died at 102 could have done it until she was bedridden at 100. Note I have taught a few mentally retarded individuals how to replace hard drives and do other simple rote computer repairs, so intelligence level is not an excuse. I am not seeking to disparage anyone in your family, but I have heard the plaintif plea, "I can't, I just can't!!", a thousand times too many in my life, and I grew sick of it decades ago. Standing there and wailing about how one is unable to do something is not an acceptable alternative to sitting down and trying. In nearly every case, the truth is they are too lazy to try. There is almost no such thing as someone who truly cannot, just those who don't want to be bothered to try. Without exaggeration, an ape like Coco the gorilla or Washoe the chimp can readily be taught to replace a hard drive. Anyone who claims to be unable for intellectual reasons to replace a hard drive is literally claiming themselves to be dumber than an ape. I have worked with a number of individuals, unable to feed or clean themselves, who were truly incapable of such a feat. Shy of that, or severe physical disability, anyone can do it. It is easier than baking a loaf of bread or bandaging a minor wound. Anyone who can read and follow directions is more than capable of it. Advanced computer programming, statistical analysis, Quantum Electrodynamics, developmental genetics, and rocket engineering are beyond the capability of most people of average intelligence. Replacing a hard drive isn't.

[RoyK]

Perhaps not, but aside from physical disability the only other excuses are being lazy or timid - mostly lazy. I have a 98 year old aunt who could do it if she weren't blind. Ten years ago, before she went blind, she could have easily done it. My grandmother who died at 102 could have done it until she was bedridden at 100. Note I have taught a few mentally retarded individuals how to replace hard drives and do other simple rote computer repairs, so intelligence level is not an excuse. I am not seeking to disparage anyone in your family, but I have heard the plaintif plea, "I can't, I just can't!!", a thousand times too many in my life, and I grew sick of it decades ago. Standing there and wailing about how one is unable to do something is not an acceptable alternative to sitting down and trying. In nearly every case, the truth is they are too lazy to try. There is almost no such thing as someone who truly cannot, just those who don't want to be bothered to try. Without exaggeration, an ape like Coco the gorilla or Washoe the chimp can readily be taught to replace a hard drive. Anyone who claims to be unable for intellectual reasons to replace a hard drive is literally claiming themselves to be dumber than an ape. I have worked with a number of individuals, unable to feed or clean themselves, who were truly incapable of such a feat. Shy of that, or severe physical disability, anyone can do it. It is easier than baking a loaf of bread or bandaging a minor wound. Anyone who can read and follow directions is more than capable of it. Advanced computer programming, statistical analysis, Quantum Electrodynamics, developmental genetics, and rocket engineering are beyond the capability of most people of average intelligence. Replacing a hard drive isn't.

You have a lot to learn about people.:rolleyes: -- and chimps.

But the issue isn't whether one is/isn't capable of replacing a hard drive but rather whether an upgrade causing a hard drive to crash is or is not acceptable. My position is if the drive is corrupted as a result of the upgrade then that is NOT acceptable.

[lrhorer]

I am bummed that my hard drive just crashed, but I am not crying over spilled milk. I am waiting for the arrival of my new hard drive, which is twice the size of the original drive. So my TiVo will be better than it was before. TiVo had nothing to do with the hard drive crash.
I'm really sorry to hear that, and I mean it sincerely. I really hate such disappointments myself - I can't imagine anyone would ever enjoy them. That is why, especially considering the added benefits, I recommend every TiVo owner upgrade their TiVo internal drive either immediately upon receipt, or if they prefer immediately after the warranty expires. Of course there can be very good reasons a person might decide against such a course of action, such as it not being in the budget, for example, but I still recommend it as the best course. That way when the upgrade drive fails, the user can swap the original back and be up and running again in under 15 minutes. It's a heck of a deal for $60 - $100. What's more, it provides an easy and highly accurate means of trouble shooting a failed or failing TiVo. Swap the drive, and if the problem goes away, it was the drive. If not, you haev an electronics issue and it's time to call TiVo. The time required to replace the drive and be up and running is literally less than what I usually spend on hold with TiVo tech support.

[lrhorer]

You have a lot to learn about people.:rolleyes:
I've learned a lot more about people than I care to have done, but I must admit it has afforded me much. Unfortunately, it also places me in the position of inadvertently becoming like my father, and I would rather die first.

-- and chimps.
Not at all. Both Coco and Washoe had moderately extensive vocabularies, and learned many tasks far more complex than replacing a hard drive. Indeed, although physically incapable of performing the teask due to a lack of necessary dexterity, any dog of average or better intelligence is more than capable of learning tasks of similar complexity. Indeed, any herd dog is capable of sigtnificantly more complex tasks. I expect in the global sense an octopus is not quite capable of a task of this complexity, although perhaps not. They are capable of figuring out how to operate a screw. The whole task, however, may be beyond them. Of course there is the added problem of how to motivate the octopus to even attempt such a task. Their only motivations are love, fear, sex, and hunger.

But the issue isn't whether one is/isn't capable of replacing a hard drive but rather whether an upgrade causing a hard drive to crash is or is not acceptable. My position is if the drive is corrupted as a result of the upgrade then that is NOT acceptable.
Then your position is absurd. There is ALWAYS the risk of software and data corruption with any upgrade. Tivo could spend trillions of dollars on each and every machine, and it still would be at risk. As I already pointed out, the hot-swap partition upgrade is the most robust upgrade method ever developed. I manage systems costing millions of dollars and whose manufacturers charge us six figures each for an upgrade, and they employ the same time tested strategy for upgrades the TiVo does. TiVo could employ enterprise quality drives, as long as you don't mind paying an extra $600 each for an HD TiVo, excluding subscription fees. They could employ mirrored drives, as long as you don't mind the extra $100 or so. Both these strategies would reduce the likelihood a drive failure would kill the TiVo, but they wouldn't reduce the likelihood a software upgrade would kill it. Of course, a software upgrade failure doesn't require the replacement of a hard drive.

[ZeoTiVo]

I think it is the index to where it is gets messed up,

On this Visionary is probably correct about. Especially if your record a lot of high end HD on both tuners at the same time. It seems to overload the system and just screw up some of the indexing.
Rebooting would help to clear out anything that gets orphaned in memory and cause issues as well.

[lrhorer]

So which is it..... software killed it or tivo couldn't put a good drive in the first place?

1) Software updates can't destroy a hard drive.
2) Software updates can't destroy a hard drive.
3) Software updates can't destroy a hard drive.
and most importantly
4) Software updates can't destroy a hard drive.
You left out 10,000 other good reasons. In order of importance they are:

5) Software updates can't destroy a hard drive.
6) Software updates can't destroy a hard drive.
7) Software updates can't destroy a hard drive...


The truth is ALL hard drives fail.
Well, some do get thrown in the trash (or preferably recycled, of course) before they fail. I have about a dozen sitting here in my office that are perfectly functional, but will probably never spin again. It's silly, really, but it just wounds me to throw away anything that is still operational, no matter how obsolete it may be. (Does anyone want to buy an 8G PATA hard drive?)

Some may die in a year, some in 2, some in 5, or 10, or 20 years but spin them long enough and they will fail.
Wup! That sounds like a challenge, to me. :)

OK, contest time. 'Everybody pipe in. Who has the longest running hard drive? I'll start. I have a couple of SCSI drives that have been spinning continuously, 24/7, since 1992. They are giant drives, too. A whole 600MB! :D

[lrhorer]

On this Visionary is probably correct about. Especially if your record a lot of high end HD on both tuners at the same time. It seems to overload the system and just screw up some of the indexing.
Rebooting would help to clear out anything that gets orphaned in memory and cause issues as well.
Note while the video partitions can possibly be corrupted by a haywire process - not likely, but possible - and while /var (where logs, temporary data, the cache, and such are kept) can readily be corrupted, the kernel and all the binary files are kept in read-only partitions, so corrupting them from a user space application is generally speaking not possible. Indeed, the kernel partitions can't even be mounted. On the other issue, however, I almost never record anything except high end HD, and as often as not both tuners are recording at least part of the time. I've never had any corruption issues.

[lrhorer]

You should know, if you haven't experienced Vis on other parts of the forum, his reality is not our own and solely feeds off your response to him.
No, I don't believe I have. That's rather sad, actually.

[RoyK]

Then your position is absurd. There is ALWAYS the risk of software and data corruption with any upgrade. Tivo could spend trillions of dollars on each and every machine, and it still would be at risk. As I already pointed out, the hot-swap partition upgrade is the most robust upgrade method ever developed. I manage systems costing millions of dollars and whose manufacturers charge us six figures each for an upgrade, and they employ the same time tested strategy for upgrades the TiVo does. TiVo could employ enterprise quality drives, as long as you don't mind paying an extra $600 each for an HD TiVo, excluding subscription fees. They could employ mirrored drives, as long as you don't mind the extra $100 or so. Both these strategies would reduce the likelihood a drive failure would kill the TiVo, but they wouldn't reduce the likelihood a software upgrade would kill it. Of course, a software upgrade failure doesn't require the replacement of a hard drive.

Again I repeat - if the upgrade causes the corruption of a hard drive then it is not acceptable. I didn't say a thing about exposing a failure that was already there.

[greg_burns]

Again I repeat - if the upgrade causes the corruption of a hard drive then it is not acceptable. I didn't say a thing about exposing a failure that was already there.

8) Software updates can't destroy a hard drive...

[Joe01880]

Did you ever stop to think that the problems occuring with the S3 is why TiVo quit making it?

Just a thought...

[visionary]

Irhorer, you sure do defend V11B, almost like you had a hand in writing it, hmmm. The obvious problem in your argument is we have had lots of software updates since S3 came out, yet this only begins with V11B. The other is that the picture is not breaking up when it happens, it just freezes and I have backed up to a freeze and there is still no breakup after. A bad disk would SURE break up the picture.

On other hand a real breakup of signal coming in does not ever cause the freeze/reboot. You asked what an airplane fade is, well its when you live right by a big airport and the planes are going almost directly over you at just 800 feet to land. I can see faces at windows and if their reading light is on, and the bolts on the landing gear wheels, so this big moving aluminum device in sky reflects the TV signal, causing it to zero out briefly out of phase as it goes by, that is what an airplane fade is.

Actually they can happen to more regular folks if the station is just over horizon and an unseen plane is near horizon in front of it, its just they don't know its the plane as they can't see a plane. In my case I see and hear it really well, and the breakup as it swooshes overhead each time, but it is only maybe a 1 to 2 second loss. I am right by Norfolk Intl Airport. But, this never causes a reboot. That means the signal is not doing this with some error.

Then there is the fact it gets better after a powerdown if not done in 2 weeks but not better after just a reboot, a disk problem would not care. If the disk were shedding particles, old recordings would get messed up too, but they do not. This is some sort of an indexing software error, it loses track of where that next frame was recorded, but has the frames after that. It never reboots if both tuners are all caught up, a bad disk would not care about that, either. Verdict, it is V11B.

[TolloNodre]

Verdict, it is V11B.

Except that thousands upon thousands have v11B and don't have an issue.

Frankly, I've been away for weeks and didn't even known there was a B version.

Verdict: It's not the software.

[visionary]

Tollo, there are some different chipsets in different models and same models made at different times, that could explain why some do not have the problem, also maybe how this load got sent out with this not noticed too.

To all of you saying its disk, well what about several on forum who said they changed disk and it returned with 11B??? And, have ANY of you disk people had the problem, and replaced disk, gotten 11B, and now have a perfect machine? By the way if anyone did, remember there are different chips in later versions of disk drives and sure are if you buy a different brand, too.

However I think it is in the Tivo coding chips software, if it is it won't matter whose disk you use. But, have any of you fixed this issue that way, since you are SO sure....??

[greg_burns]

To all of you saying its disk, well what about several on forum who said they changed disk and it returned with 11B??? And, have ANY of you disk people had the problem, and replaced disk, gotten 11B, and now have a perfect machine? By the way if anyone did, remember there are different chips in later versions of disk drives and sure are if you buy a different brand, too.

I don't know about 11B in particular, but there have been tons of failing Tivos with lots of previous versions that I've seen fixed with a disk replacement. It is a simple and cheap fix. Why not try it?

Do you have any links to threads where people have tried disk replacement and it failed again immediately after upgrading to 11B? Not that I am doubting, I am just curious to read them.

[hillstones]

Did you ever stop to think that the problems occuring with the S3 is why TiVo quit making it?

Just a thought...

Nope. The S3 is far superior to the TiVo HD model. The TiVo HD is an S3, but low cost. Get info on your TiVo HD and it will be an S3.

The electronics are not failing in the S3. This post is trying to claim a software update crashed a hard drive and that is not possible. Software doesn't kill hard drives. If there happens to be a bad sector on the hard drive, and data is attempted to be written to it, that will cause a problem. The software doesn't create a bad sector.

Hard drives are mechanical, and mechanical things do eventually fail. Especially mechanical devices that are run 24 hours a day, 365 days per year, which is what your TiVo does. The read/write head can damage a disk. Your computer might have some longevity because most people shut them down when they are not in use.

Why the original poster and others continue to blame TiVo is stupid. How about blaming the hard drive manufacturer if you honestly think their drives should last forever. By the way, hard drives have warranties too, and they are not guaranteed to last forever.

[visionary]

Greg, I read them couple of weeks ago and it was in either this forum part or the general Tivo part, but don't know exactly where.

Yes I have my old 32 hour disk and would try it if I can be convinced that is problem. But as long as I can reduce it so much as I do, I know a bad disk does not just get better....and bad sectors would sure make picture break up, so I will have to read a number of successful "I fixed it with a new disk" stories first.

[hillstones]

Verdict, it is V11B.

Except that thousands upon thousands have v11B and don't have an issue.

Frankly, I've been away for weeks and didn't even known there was a B version.

Verdict: It's not the software.

I agree, it is NOT the software. My TiVo HD runs just fine with v11b, and so does my S3. Coincidentally, the hard drive in my S3 just crashed (it is frozen trying to read the same sector over and over again), but that had nothing to do with V11, since that was downloaded months ago.

[hillstones]

Tollo, there are some different chipsets in different models and same models made at different times, that could explain why some do not have the problem, also maybe how this load got sent out with this not noticed too.

To all of you saying its disk, well what about several on forum who said they changed disk and it returned with 11B??? And, have ANY of you disk people had the problem, and replaced disk, gotten 11B, and now have a perfect machine? By the way if anyone did, remember there are different chips in later versions of disk drives and sure are if you buy a different brand, too.

However I think it is in the Tivo coding chips software, if it is it won't matter whose disk you use. But, have any of you fixed this issue that way, since you are SO sure....??

My new hard drive arrives on Monday for my S3 that just crashed last week. I will let you know.

[greg_burns]

Greg, I read them couple of weeks ago and it was in either this forum part or the general Tivo part, but don't know exactly where.

Yes I have my old 32 hour disk and would try it if I can be convinced that is problem. But as long as I can reduce it so much as I do, I know a bad disk does not just get better....and bad sectors would sure make picture break up, so I will have to read a number of successful "I fixed it with a new disk" stories first.

Not v11B specific but this thread is full of people reporting back that disk replacement fixed their Tivo.

Please Help! Tivo Keeps Restarting! (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=372111)

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5864105#post5864105
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=6088114#post6088114
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=6091291#post6091291
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=6982900#post6982900
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=7023752#post7023752

[magnus]

There's not a thing wrong with the S3 Tivo... mine works just fine. Cept my dog ate my remote cause Tivo poorly designed it to look like a bone. :mad:

Did you ever stop to think that the problems occuring with the S3 is why TiVo quit making it?

Just a thought...

[Joe01880]

The S3 is far superior to the TiVo HD

Maybe, but if the S3 is having problems after an upgrade be it software or hardware and the TiViHD isnt how superior can the S3 be?

Understand im just asking. (knocking on wood) My TiVoHD has 11b and works great, it did with 11a too

[greg_burns]

Maybe, but if the S3 is having problems after an upgrade be it software or hardware and the TiViHD isnt how superior can the S3 be?

Understand im just asking. (knockingon wood) My TiVoHD has 11b and works great, it did with 11a too

My S3 has 11b and works great, it did with 11a too ;)

[Joe01880]

There's not a thing wrong with the S3 Tivo... mine works just fine. Cept my dog ate my remote cause Tivo poorly designed it to look like a bone. :mad:

Thats funny, back when i had my DirecTv Tivo my Collie ate the peanut shaped remote to it too, i went out and bought another one and less then a week later he ate that one too, i bought a box to keep the third one in when i was a way.

[lrhorer]

Irhorer
That's Lrhorer, if you please.

you sure do defend V11B, almost like you had a hand in writing it, hmmm. The obvious problem in your argument is we have had lots of software updates since S3 came out, yet this only begins with V11B.
The obvious problem with your argument is it is incorrect. Every version of software has had this "problem" since the S1 was introduced, and will continue to do so. It's going to be more noticeable as time passes, because the drives are getting older.

The other is that the picture is not breaking up when it happens, it just freezes and I have backed up to a freeze and there is still no breakup after. A bad disk would SURE break up the picture.
That is a completely different issue than the other participants are discussing.

On other hand a real breakup of signal coming in does not ever cause the freeze/reboot. You asked what an airplane fade is, well its when you live right by a big airport and the planes are going almost directly over you at just 800 feet to land. I can see faces at windows and if their reading light is on, and the bolts on the landing gear wheels, so this big moving aluminum device in sky reflects the TV signal, causing it to zero out briefly out of phase as it goes by, that is what an airplane fade is.
'And I thought the OP was clueless! Please seek professional medical help. You really do need it. In the mean time, please pull up Google and serach for the term "coaxial RF cable". Start reading, and don't stop until you understand completely why your paragraph above is the most utterly uninformed hogwash.

This is some sort of an indexing software error, it loses track of where that next frame was recorded, but has the frames after that. It never reboots if both tuners are all caught up, a bad disk would not care about that, either. Verdict, it is V11B.
Do you just type words, without bothering to consider their meaning? This is total nonsense. I fear Langree is quite correct.

[hillstones]

Maybe, but if the S3 is having problems after an upgrade be it software or hardware and the TiViHD isnt how superior can the S3 be?

Understand im just asking. (knocking on wood) My TiVoHD has 11b and works great, it did with 11a too

The problems after a software update are purely coincidental. My S3 ran for months with v11 before it started rebooting last Wednesday. My S3 is 2 1/2 years old and my TiVo HD is 1 1/2 years old. The S3's drive has a lot more mileage on it. The S3 is superior in features and build quality. The S3 feels more solid than my TiVo HD, and I love the front display showing the programs being recorded. The S3 included the glow remote, the TiVo HD does not. The S3 is built so well it is THX certified, the TiVo HD is not. (The TiVo HD XL is more like the original S3 with THX certification and the glow remote, but retained the boring front panel of the TiVo HD). My TiVo HD in my bedroom is running great with the latest software, so that proves that the software doesn't crash hard drives. Both TiVo boxes are Series3 models, but the TiVo HD model cut some features to lower the cost.

[lrhorer]

Maybe, but if the S3 is having problems after an upgrade be it software or hardware and the TiViHD isnt how superior can the S3 be?

Understand im just asking. (knocking on wood) My TiVoHD has 11b and works great, it did with 11a too
Well, I'm not quite sure "far superior" is the best comparison of the two. There are a number of hardware features on the S3 which are superior in certain respects to the THD, including network speed, the OLED dispay, a larger native hard drive, and the back-lit remote. How important these features are is a matter of personal opinion. By contrast, the THD supports multistream CableCards (M-cards), has a more flexible hard drive arrangement (the primary drive can be placed external to the TiVo on a THD), and employs a 64 bit filesystem, which means it can more easily be upgraded to support drive systems larger than 2.2 Terabytes. Again, how important these features are is a matter of personal opinion, or perhaps of usage intent. I have three Series III class TiVos, two S3s and a THD. The S3 is definitely the better choice for my theater, as network speeds are extremely important there, and the superior remote is a real plus. The THD is the better choice in the guest room, as the features of the more expensive S3 are not important there. In the living room, it's more of a toss-up. I happen to have an S3 there, but it was the first one I purchased. If I were purchasing a unit today, I would probably go with a THD there.

[lrhorer]

The S3 is built so well it is THX certified, the TiVo HD is not. (The TiVo HD XL is more like the original S3 with THX certification and the glow remote, but retained the boring front panel of the TiVo HD).
A THX certification has nothing to do with how well built the unit is. It has to do with the unit being designed to THX specifications, and bearing the licensing fee from THX. As far as I know, the THD is no different electronically than the XL, so it's audio and video performance is almost surely identical to the other two. It just isn't loaded with the cost of the license. This doesn't mean the THX cetification is worthless, it just means TiVo and THX do not certify the unit to comply with THX specs, even if it in fact does.

[hillstones]

A THX certification has nothing to do with how well built the unit is. It has to do with the unit being designed to THX specifications, and bearing the licensing fee from THX. As far as I know, the THD is no different electronically than the XL, so it's audio and video performance is almost surely identical to the other two. It just isn't loaded with the cost of the license. This doesn't mean the THX cetification is worthless, it just means TiVo and THX do not certify the unit to comply with THX specs, even if it in fact does.

Quite true. My S3 does feel more solid than my TiVo HD. Both of them are much quieter than my old S2.

[RoyK]

8) Software updates can't destroy a hard drive...

Software updates may not mechanically destroy hard drives but they most assuredly can (and in my case has) corrupt them rendering the box useless. The end result is the same - replacing (or for us geeks with the knowledge, software, and inclination to tear into our PCs reimaging) the drive fixes the box.

[brewman]

Hard drives fail. Sometimes slowly over a long period of time. Sometimes catastrophically. But they do fail.

The problem is not that a new software update may uncover a problem with a boot partition. The problem is the update software doesn't revert back to the previous partition/software load. This is a intentional business decision by TiVo. They have determined it's cheaper/better for them to deal with upset consumers than to have to maintain n-versions of software in production.

[greg_burns]

Again I repeat - if the upgrade causes the corruption of a hard drive then it is not acceptable. I didn't say a thing about exposing a failure that was already there.

Software updates may not mechanically destroy hard drives but they most assuredly can (and in my case has) corrupt them rendering the box useless. The end result is the same - replacing (or for us geeks with the knowledge, software, and inclination to tear into our PCs reimaging) the drive fixes the box.

ACK. I was responding more to your statement about "exposing a failure that was already there". If your drive has bad sectors, it is unfair to blame the upgrade on bricking your box. It probably would have upgraded perfectly if the drive had been in working order.

We can argue all day on the value of the upgrades and whether they should be optional. ;)

[greg_burns]

The problems after a software update are purely coincidental.

That's going a little too far, nobody's going swallow that. Sure, they can be coincidental. But obviously, a lot of failures happen immediately after an upgrade. The reason why are still in debate. The alternate partition/bad sector idea. Perhaps a corrupt download (although there are checksums done on the download). Who really knows?

[HerronScott]

I own 2 S3 TiVo's both of which I upgraded to 1TB drives in September 2008. The first had been running fine since January 2007 and the second since February 2008. No problems, lock-ups etc. However, when I went to copy the hard drive on the second one to the new drive, it locked up the PC and on boot the PC reported SMART failures for that drive. I was able to successfully get a truncated backup (system files only), put the drive back in the TiVo and copy off all the shows that I wanted to save, restored the truncated backup to the new drive and finally copy back the shows that I had on that TiVo.

Just wanted to point out an example where there was obviously a problem with the drive (note interestingly the Western Digitial tools would lock up when trying to test the drive when it got to that section as well) which was not impacting the unit's functionality but which very well may have shown up during a software upgrade and that this was on a unit that had only been in use for 7 months.

Scott

[hillstones]

Hard drives fail. Sometimes slowly over a long period of time. Sometimes catastrophically. But they do fail.

The problem is not that a new software update may uncover a problem with a boot partition. The problem is the update software doesn't revert back to the previous partition/software load. This is a intentional business decision by TiVo. They have determined it's cheaper/better for them to deal with upset consumers than to have to maintain n-versions of software in production.

Do you believe what you write? If your computer crashes for the same reason and you can't boot the OS, you can't revert back to a previous partition/software load. Intentional business decision? What a load of BS. Reverting back to a previous software load is not going to fix a failing hard drive, per your admission that hard drives do fail.

[Gunnyman]

That's Lrhorer, if you please.


The obvious problem with your argument is it is incorrect. Every version of software has had this "problem" since the S1 was introduced, and will continue to do so. It's going to be more noticeable as time passes, because the drives are getting older.


That is a completely different issue than the other participants are discussing.


'And I thought the OP was clueless! Please seek professional medical help. You really do need it. In the mean time, please pull up Google and serach for the term "coaxial RF cable". Start reading, and don't stop until you understand completely why your paragraph above is the most utterly uninformed hogwash.


Do you just type words, without bothering to consider their meaning? This is total nonsense. I fear Langree is quite correct.

Then please please stop playing his game.
VS has moved on to the TiVo hardware section to see if he can play with anyone else. He's worn out his welcome in Happy Hour and no one pays him any attention anymore.

[davezatz]

A request to the moderators: When deleting my comments from a thread, how about also deleting my subscription? Thanks.

[JWThiers]

That's going a little too far, nobody's going swallow that. Sure, they can be coincidental. But obviously, a lot of failures happen immediately after an upgrade. The reason why are still in debate. The alternate partition/bad sector idea. Perhaps a corrupt download (although there are checksums done on the download). Who really knows?

The reason that more problems occur when updating is because you write the new version to a boot partition that hasn't been used since your previous version. Meaning that if the current version is 5 and was upgraded from 4, version 6 writes to the boot partition that 4 was on. And when 6 updates to 7 it writes to the boot partition that 5 was on. If the inactive boot partition has a problem it won't show up until an update and you try to write the new OS to it. As has been said you could make an argument that in the event of a boot partition failure you revert to the previous version (which could be done), but tivo has made a business decision not to do that so they don't have to support multiple versions of the OS. That is the way the system updates, that is fact, and is only still open for debate by those that don't understand it.

[RoyK]

The reason that more problems occur when updating is because you write the new version to a boot partition that hasn't been used since your previous version. Meaning that if the current version is 5 and was upgraded from 4, version 6 writes to the boot partition that 4 was on. And when 6 updates to 7 it writes to the boot partition that 5 was on. If the inactive boot partition has a problem it won't show up until an update and you try to write the new OS to it. As has been said you could make an argument that in the event of a boot partition failure you revert to the previous version (which could be done), but tivo has made a business decision not to do that so they don't have to support multiple versions of the OS. That is the way the system updates, that is fact, and is only still open for debate by those that don't understand it.

And why would the inactive partition which hasn't been used since the previous update develop a problem that it didn't have when it was last active?

[hillstones]

The reason that more problems occur when updating is because you write the new version to a boot partition that hasn't been used since your previous version. Meaning that if the current version is 5 and was upgraded from 4, version 6 writes to the boot partition that 4 was on. And when 6 updates to 7 it writes to the boot partition that 5 was on. If the inactive boot partition has a problem it won't show up until an update and you try to write the new OS to it. As has been said you could make an argument that in the event of a boot partition failure you revert to the previous version (which could be done), but tivo has made a business decision not to do that so they don't have to support multiple versions of the OS. That is the way the system updates, that is fact, and is only still open for debate by those that don't understand it.

And why would the inactive partition which hasn't been used since the previous update develop a problem that it didn't have when it was last active?

Exactly. And where is your proof JW? How do you know this is TiVo's business decision? I am just asking...to find out if you have evidence to prove this is how updates are written and stored on the disk. As Roy said, how would the previous partition suddenly become corrupted when it contained a previous version in use without any problems? Software doesn't create drive failures. Can you explain how my TiVo S3, which had been running for months on v11 without any problems, suddenly attempt to read and write from a bad sector and crash/reboot to a point where it cannot even reload the OS? I can hear the drive head trying to read the same sector over and over again on the "Please Wait" screen. The first crash/reboot/freeze occurred in the middle of the night. It may have been trying to record promotional info that TiVo pushes out when it encountered the bad block. No software updates were pushed out the night of the crash because my TiVo was already up to date.

[visionary]

lrh, it was your comments that did not make sense, what do you mean use co-ax cable? I do, do you not understand what an outdoor antenna is or how it works? I use my S3 entirely for over the air only. That is why things can affect the signal, including close by aircraft, what is hard to understand?

As for why I am over here, because I began getting reboots when V11B was loaded, never had them before. So yes I will remain quite interested in reading about it. I see there is now an 11C thread, so that will mean those of you changing disks might just get fixed, because by time you get the current load it will be the C version. At least I hope it is fixed.

I have learned some things here, I just built an attenuator because I have one channel at 100 strength, now it is 94 and the others 74 to 90, so I will see if that helps too. Maybe the software problem involves not handling errors right from too strong a signal, I will find out. In any case will keep it reduced, so glad people mentioned that can be a reboot cause I don't need. I will watch for 11C too.

[MichaelK]

Did you ever stop to think that the problems occuring with the S3 is why TiVo quit making it?

Just a thought...


probably the reason they told everyone shortly after they built it.

that it costs too much to build and they needed to build a lower cost second generation HD unit in order to come clost to every making money.

BTW- that's what the TiVo HD is. A lower cost to manufacture version.

[visionary]

Yes there was no issue with S3 other than cost too high to sell well with cable DVR's for 5 dollars rent. Besides, all this freeze/reboot stuff is now rampant on the HD Tivo too, so the S3 is not guilty of anything.

By the way, when you get the new V11C when you pause you will see additional stuff on screen, so you will know when you see that. Just push frame advance or clear to get rid of they say. I promise to love it if the reboot issue is fixed, for sure.

Until now I had never a complaint. I don't use cable, cable cards, or my DVR expander, and am not networked so never needed to complain over here till the reboot issue. Hope I never have to again, too. I like Tivo.

[greg_burns]

And why would the inactive partition which hasn't been used since the previous update develop a problem that it didn't have when it was last active?

That partition is still on the same physical platter (probably) as the active partitions. It will be spinning all the time. What causes a drive to develop bad sectors anyways? IDK :confused:

[greg_burns]

The reason that more problems occur when updating is because you write the new version to a boot partition that hasn't been used since your previous version. ...[snip] That is the way the system updates, that is fact, and is only still open for debate by those that don't understand it.

I want to believe! I am aware that is the way the system updates. But what are the odds that all these people's drives are only failing in the other partition? That is ugly question that everyone asks all the time. I mean, odds would say just as many people would have their active partition fail too. There probably are just as many, but those people are not claiming an update borked their Tivo. :)

[JWThiers]

And why would the inactive partition which hasn't been used since the previous update develop a problem that it didn't have when it was last active?

It very possibly could have had a problem the last time it was active. The magnetic media, in a random sector on the inactive partition could have a flaw in it that wont let it be written to properly. the upgrade process tried to write to that sector and couldn't. Just because the last time it was written to doesn't mean that the exact sector in question was used last time, or for that matter that the sector wore enough to make it unwritable but not unreadable during the last time that partition was used. the magnetic layer does wear out eventually. During the period that it was the inactive partition you could have had a head crash on the inactive partition, you would never know it until that partition became active. Your question is saying why do drives fail. take your choice any of the reasons drives fail are a possible culprit.

Just because a hard drive worked today doesn't mean it will work tomorrow. Drives read, Drives write and Drives fail

[JWThiers]

Exactly. And where is your proof JW? How do you know this is TiVo's business decision?

The business decision is obvious because the only version of the OS that they support is the current version. If you call with a problem and you don't have the current version they get you to update to the current version. If the install doesn't work it doesn't revert to the previous install, Technically its possible, all they would have to do is add a start routine that checked for a boot problem and if you encounter one swap to the other partition, but they don't do that.


I am just asking...to find out if you have evidence to prove this is how updates are written and stored on the disk.

Is the way I stated the way they update? and how do I know? You could take my word for it or you could go over to the underground forum and look at the longest thread over there and search in that thread for how they upgrade hacked Dtivo's. Or you could ask over there, Some of the people in the Underground know more about tivo's than I ever will. I know just enough to understand the 10,000 ft overview. No offense but you seem to understand the 50,000 ft overview, The guys in the underground understand the 10 ft or less details. The way that you updated without having to rehack everything, in a nutshell, involved coping your hacks from the active partition to the inactive one and then swapping the partitions. I have personally done it a couple of times. So yes tivo does use 2 boot partitions and switches between them when it updates the software. And BTW if you did the update wrong you could go back to the previous if you needed to. It might involve pulling drive but you could do it.

As Roy said, how would the previous partition suddenly become corrupted when it contained a previous version in use without any problems? Software doesn't create drive failures. Can you explain how my TiVo S3, which had been running for months on v11 without any problems, suddenly attempt to read and write from a bad sector and crash/reboot to a point where it cannot even reload the OS? I can hear the drive head trying to read the same sector over and over again on the "Please Wait" screen. The first crash/reboot/freeze occurred in the middle of the night. It may have been trying to record promotional info that TiVo pushes out when it encountered the bad block. No software updates were pushed out the night of the crash because my TiVo was already up to date.

Thats asking how do hard drives fail. Pick your reason that any drive fails, Tivo isn't immune. Drives read. Drives write. Drives fail.

If the update got corrupted somehow (tried to write to a bad sector) on the new partition it won't work. First off the boot partition is read only so the only time it is written to it is when that partition is updating. It is however read from frequently. So how can you "suddenly" have a bad sector? The act of reading from a hard drive weakens the field of the magnetic layer slightly every time it is read from. If a sector doesn't have the same coverage of the magnetic layer as the rest of that partition that sector could "wear out" faster (the field stored there becomes too weak to read), You could have had a hard head crash. When you update the OS tivo might have tried to write to a bad sector (Just because the partition was active before doesn't mean that sector was used before) there are too many ways a drive can fail to just say that this is why a drive failed. What I do know beyond a shadow of a doubt is that one of the more common times for a tivo to fail is when you update the OS and the most common culprit is a drive failure. Pointing to all the problems people have in a help forum isn't an accurate measure of how good/bad a product is. By definition people who come here are either people that enjoy helping people with there problems and people who have problems. Most people that don't have problems don't post here and say This is great it worked just like they said it would.

[JWThiers]

I want to believe! I am aware that is the way the system updates. But what are the odds that all these people's drives are only failing in the other partition? That is ugly question that everyone asks all the time. I mean, odds would say just as many people would have their active partition fail too. There probably are just as many, but those people are not claiming an update borked their Tivo. :)

In terms of quality assurance have you ever heard the term "Bath Tub Curve"? It describes when in a products life will they fail. You will have a lot of failures early in a products life (Break in period), a few after break in (the useful life of a product), and a lot at the end (it just wore out). Same principle on the software update, the most vulnerable time is right at the beginning. If the update doesn't happen correct it won't work. Once its on it tends to work well unless your drive fails. Drive failure do happen when it isn't updating also, just the most common time is during the update.

[brewman]

Do you believe what you write? If your computer crashes for the same reason and you can't boot the OS, you can't revert back to a previous partition/software load. Intentional business decision? What a load of BS. Reverting back to a previous software load is not going to fix a failing hard drive, per your admission that hard drives do fail.

It is certainly possible to develop a software upload procedure that fails back to the previously working load if the new load fails. Of course, this assumes the harddrive has not experienced a catastrophic failure.

TiVo has chosen not to fail back gracefully. Why? It's certainly technically feasible and really not that diffcult especially considering they're well on their way with multiple boot partitions. I believe it's a business decision. Let's look at the pros and cons:

Pros:
- They don't have to support n-versions of software in production. I believe this is the biggest reason. Huge cost savings in support and rollout costs.
- Removes older versions of hardware from production. I would imagine the masses aren't able to replace the harddrives on their TiVos. They're more likely to buy a replacement unit.
Cons:
- Higher number of phone calls to tech support complaining that the new software killed their TiVo. Of course, this is probably offset by the number of calls they don't get complaining that they are unable to download the latest TiVo updates.

[visionary]

There are certainly people having disks go bad every day too, I never mean to imply there aren't. However regarding my reboot issue, it didn't occur till the new software started recording stuff and then not till I played the recordings. To me that is no partition problem.

I have an even better question. You know how if watching live TV you are still like 4 or 5 seconds behind because you are reading from the disk buffer? Well I never, never have a freeze-reboot then. But if I have backed up any, even just seconds, then I can have it happen. So how does a bad disk do THAT? Also I hear no drive trying to read a sector over and over, it is quiet. But this disk somehow knows to only be bad if I delay the show viewing??

Hackers, isn't there a Unix log someplace that would have the error logged? Maybe that is how to prove your disk error theories, but I never hear about those logs being looked at. So try asking hacker people to read those error logs and see what they say happened!! Wouldn't there also be a bunch of OS marked bad sectors on the drive? Can we go see that table and see how many? See if it grows in a few days? That would help prove your bad disk theory wouldn't it?

[visionary]

Brew, you left out the biggest CON of all, lost future sales!! Please do not forget that one! With this messing up my family viewing, even I now start reading about Echostars new stand alone DVR, bet I am not the only one. That is the elephant in the room you did not mention, lost future sales, also bad word of mouth to other potential buyers as well.

[brewman]

Brew, you left out the biggest CON of all, lost future sales!! Please do not forget that one! With this messing up my family viewing, even I now start reading about Echostars new stand alone DVR, bet I am not the only one. That is the elephant in the room you did not mention, lost future sales, also bad word of mouth to other potential buyers as well.

I considered the loss of future sales, but until there is a legitimate contender out there I don't believe this is a major concern for TiVo. IMHO, there's been lots of pretenders and to date none of them are even close to the usability of TiVo. Don't forget, the name "TiVo" has become synonymous with DVR just as "Kleenex" is synonymous with tissue.

As to negative word-of-mouth we really don't know how many TiVo subscribers are affected on any given software update with their TiVo becoming unusable. I imagine the actual numbers are pretty small relative to their number of subscribers. This is also mitigated by the lack of a suitable competitor for TiVo.

Obviously, this is all my own opinion. I have no insider knowledge or statistical analysis to back up my beliefs.

[visionary]

I can't imagine Tivo does not call cable co DVR's a competitor. Yes they are not as good so far, but you can say the same for why does anyone buy a Chevy Geo when Cadillac or Corvette is available? They both do compete even though everyone knows the Caddy has the best features and even room, and the Corvette better looks, speed, and all that. But if Caddy/Corvette had a major "lemon" year, it would sure affect future sales, too, even with its great features.

[JWThiers]

Hackers, isn't there a Unix log someplace that would have the error logged? Maybe that is how to prove your disk error theories, but I never hear about those logs being looked at. So try asking hacker people to read those error logs and see what they say happened!!

YOU could go to the underground and ask, but to access anything on the drive that tivo doesn't have exposed by the UI, will require pulling the drive and bringing up the log file (if one exists) in question and looking at it. But since you already have the drive out and it is displaying symptoms of a bad drive why not save yourself some time and just get a new drive and go from there.

I once went to a hospital ER and told a nurse I had a broken arm. She asked rather nastily "How do you know its broken if they haven't taken X-rays yet?" I replied "because my arm bends 90 degrees in the middle of my fore arm, OK." The point is sometimes you don't need to dig that deep to find out what is wrong, just look at the symptoms.

Since EVERYBODY doesn't have this issue it isn't the actual software itself. Your symptoms show it is probably a drive issue. The drive is the only part that is easily user replaceable. The other possibility is a hardware problem on a part that is NOT user replaceable. If you don't want to replace the drive, another possibility is to get a copy of Instant Cake and and install it on your current drive. This may or may not fix you issue because you have no control over what sectors get what written to it, you may get lucky and it works that way for a while, or it might not work. If it isn't the drive the only other possibility is a hardware failure of a part that isn't user replaceable, in which case you have a doorstop in the making anyway, and no drive replacement will fix it. So given that the issue isn't the source code that tivo provides (Not everyone has this issue the problem is unique to a subset of users) That means either the problem is either:

A bad software load somehow and the drive isn't bad. Solution is get the software and reinstall it.
The drive is going bad, the solution for that is get a new drive and the software and install it.
Some other part is bad and nothing short of replacing the whole unit will fix it.

Hope this helps.

[JWThiers]

I can't imagine Tivo does not call cable co DVR's a competitor. Yes they are not as good so far, but you can say the same for why does anyone buy a Chevy Geo when Cadillac or Corvette is available? They both do compete even though everyone knows the Caddy has the best features and even room, and the Corvette better looks, speed, and all that. But if Caddy/Corvette had a major "lemon" year, it would sure affect future sales, too, even with its great features.

Even a Caddy manufactures a lemon from time to time. meaning a few just don't ever work right. But everything will eventually break, that doesn't mean that ALL of them or even most of them are lemons. I have been using tivo for years starting with a DirecTv with Tivo and now the Tivo HD. The only problem I have EVER had (not of my own making because I was trying a new hack) were 1 drive failure on one of my DTivos after 3-4 years of use. Does that drive failure mean tivo makes crap? Not in the least. In fact when I upgraded finally to HDTV I dropped DirecTV because I had seen their new DVR (nonTivo) and decided to go back to cable and getting 2 THD's to replace my 2 DTivo's. Going back to cable was something I swore I would never do when I dropped them in the early 90's. If you don't want to replace your drive and decide to go with the cable Co's DVR (which are generally pretty crappy IMO) I'm sure you can find someone here willing to buy your non functioning Tivo for cheap.

[brewman]

I can't imagine Tivo does not call cable co DVR's a competitor. Yes they are not as good so far, but you can say the same for why does anyone buy a Chevy Geo when Cadillac or Corvette is available? They both do compete even though everyone knows the Caddy has the best features and even room, and the Corvette better looks, speed, and all that. But if Caddy/Corvette had a major "lemon" year, it would sure affect future sales, too, even with its great features.

This discussion is really about people that leave TiVo for a competing product for whatever reason. True, the cable company DVRs are, in theory, a competing product, but only in the sense that a Yugo (Geos are too good for this analogy) and a Cadillac are competitors. In reality, the ones I've tried have been so pathetic they really aren't competitve, IMHO.

[JWThiers]

This discussion is really about people that leave TiVo for a competing product for whatever reason. True, the cable company DVRs are, in theory, a competing product, but only in the sense that a Yugo (Geos are too good for this analogy) and a Cadillac are competitors. In reality, the ones I've tried have been so pathetic they really aren't competitve, IMHO.

:up::up::up:

[MichaelK]

You want to know "why do you get reboots all of a sudden on after a new software installs.?" the answer is the second set of partitions is flakey.

I have two S3's. 1 is fine.

the second is a bit flakey. It has one set of partitions that is apparently borderline. Ever other software version i get works fine. And the other half get installed on the bad partition get a bunch more random lock ups and reboots. it's not so bad yet that I get off my rear and redo the internal drive. But it's clearly discernable to me. Now that I bothered to learn of the kickstart code to reinstall to the other partitions I'm likely to do that everytime now and prolong the need to swap the drive. I'm a slacker- laughing.

[visionary]

Mich and others, why do you get the problem on just some? Because different chips were used in making the models at different times and what we may have is a problem with something right at the edge of the design, so only some of them fail. Fix the software to keep the data stream or whatever in better limits.

By the way to update, my reducing the input signal where I had one channel reading 100 to 94 did NOT help the reboot issue. But still glad I read it here and fixed, it would have made trouble eventually.

I am noticing however that it seems the recordings made with both tuners in use are much more likely to be the bad ones....I will watch closely and see if a single recording is ever bad now made with just one tuner. Or even if maybe just those on one tuner.... If this was a disk problem that sure would not happen.

I'm not changing any disk now with 11C coming soon, will see what that does, that will be in new partition too, in case you guys are right. I'd sure like to know what those logs say the failure is, that could solve this real fast. If you change a disk now you will probably get 11C on it and not 11B and never know. I'm going to find out. So far no one on the 11C thread says any reboots and they SURE would notice it!!!

I am not familiar with this underground forum, I know about one called tivo hacks, and there is nothing on it. I know there were Yahoo groups, maybe can find a hacker over there when I have time.

[JWThiers]

why do you get reboots all of a sudden on after a new software installs. The second set of partitions is flakey.

I have two S3's. 1 is fine.

the second is a bit flakey. It has one set of partitions that is apparently borderline. Ever other software version i get works fine. And the other half get installed on the bad partition get a bunch more random lock ups and reboots. it's not so bad yet that I get off my rear and redo the internal drive. But it's clearly discernable to me. Now that I bothered to learn of the kickstart code to reinstall to the other partitions I'm likely to do that everytime now and prolong the need to swap the drive. I'm a slacker- laughing.

If that was a question, you answered it yourself. One of the boot partitions probably has some bad sectors in it. You have 2 boot partitions, one active the other inactive. If the current active partition is the "good partition", when you get an update it writes to the inactive "bad partition". The acitve partition is made inactive and the inactive partition is made active. Now the "bad partition" is the active partition and you have problems. The next update comes down and is written to the inactive "good partition" and the partitions are swapped again. Now the "good partition" is active and you don't have problems.

[visionary]

JWT, isn't this partition just like a boot sector on a PC, only used when powering up to load the program into memory? If so and it was bad...why would any recordings work? I can see it messing up the program, but all the time. Is this partition used at all during normal operations with the machine running for days?

[MichaelK]

If that was a question, you answered it yourself. One of the boot partitions probably has some bad sectors in it. You have 2 boot partitions, one active the other inactive. If the current active partition is the "good partition", when you get an update it writes to the inactive "bad partition". The acitve partition is made inactive and the inactive partition is made active. Now the "bad partition" is the active partition and you have problems. The next update comes down and is written to the inactive "good partition" and the partitions are swapped again. Now the "good partition" is active and you don't have problems.

sorry- was asking a rhetorical question- need to go edit that...

[MichaelK]

Mich and others, why do you get the problem on just some? Because different chips were used in making the models at different times and what we may have is a problem with something right at the edge of the design, so only some of them fail. ....


while maybe there might have been different batches of chips that came from the vendors- I'm fairly certain that every single tivo with the same model number uses the exact same part numbers.

That's the way it's been for as long as I can remember.

Changing things MIGHT cause the FCC to want to approve again, and almost certainly would trigger cablelabs needing to reapprove. If you dig in the cablelabs approvals- there were 2 versions of the original "series3" models. One never saw the light of day in retail. Presumably tivo changed something hardware wise and I doubt it was a major chip or anything since it was like last minute. So seems some minor chip change caused the need to get approved again by cable.

[JWThiers]

JWT, isn't this partition just like a boot sector on a PC, only used when powering up to load the program into memory? If so and it was bad...why would any recordings work? I can see it messing up the program, but all the time. Is this partition used at all during normal operations with the machine running for days?

No, a boot partition isn't like a boot sector. It contains the the current version of the OS. The ENTIRE OS. The boot sector points to the boot partition (I think). The recordings are on completely separate partitions from the boot partition. Imagine what would happen to windows if say a print driver gets corrupted. Windows runs fine but if you try to use the printer it fails. I am not an expert in all the inner workings of a tivo so I can't say for sure part of the OS is fubar, but it would be random because bad sectors happen randomly, and the OS is written randomly to whatever free sector is under the write head at the moment data is being written. So the severity of an issue like this is entirely random and could be anything from wonky behavior to not booting at all.

Like I said previously the code in theory is good it works for most installs. So you either had a glitch that caused a bad load somehow and the drive is good. or you have a bad drive (bad sectors or some such) or you have other hardware failing. Other hardware could be a power supply issue, a bad motherboard, solder joints that are failing. Collective experience here says that the most common issue is a failing drive. If you get a new drive most people go ahead and up the capacity so there is an added benefit to upgrading the drive even if the drive isn't bad. power issues could also be causing the problem, a bad power supply can cause strange behavior as well but since your issue started with an OS upgrade that would be coincidental and not fit your stated problem, it could be but less likely given the timing. Other issues besides these would most easily be fixed by getting a new tivo.

[boandmichele]

i will actually agree with the OP in the opinion that software can make your hardware suck. haven't any of you used Windows Me? :p

[hillstones]

All great stuff to read. I think everyone can agree that a hard drive can bite the dust from a variety of read/write activities, and it has nothing to do with a specific version of a software update. The original poster is trying to claim that a specific software update crashed his hard drive. Since there are many TiVos running fine with v11, I don't think it contains any bugs that destroy a drive. I think it is safe to say that any software update can crash a drive, either one to the OS, or one to a specific program on your computer. Even updates to programs can get messed up. The difference is that your OS still runs and you can re-install your program and re-apply the update patch. If an OS patch gets corrupted while writing to disk, there is a pretty good chance the computer won't boot. In the case of TiVo, it is not as simple as throwing in a CD and re-installing the OS (like Mac or Windows). As JW said, drives read, drives write, drives fail...and it is a bummer when they do fail.

My new hard drive arrived today for my S3 (from weakness.com). Unfortunately I am at work and unable to install it right now. I will get it installed tonight and let you know what software gets pushed out to it. I would guess that may take a few days. I believe it has version 9.x on it currently.

Once I remove the TiVo drive, I have an external drive case that is IDE. If I get an IDE->SATA converter ($5 on eBay), can I access any of the data on the drive? The other option is to run some diagnostics to see if the drive is even usable. However, if there is a bad block that caused the crash, I am always reluctant to use it for storage if I do reformat it for computer use.

[hillstones]

i will actually agree with the OP in the opinion that software can make your hardware suck. haven't any of you used Windows Me? :p

I heard Microsoft Bob was popular too.

http://toastytech.com/guis/bobboot1.gif

[JWThiers]

All great stuff to read. I think everyone can agree that a hard drive can bite the dust from a variety of read/write activities, and it has nothing to do with a specific version of a software update. The original poster is trying to claim that a specific software update crashed his hard drive. Since there are many TiVos running fine with v11, I don't think it contains any bugs that destroy a drive. I think it is safe to say that any software update can crash a drive, either one to the OS, or one to a specific program on your computer. Even updates to programs can get messed up. The difference is that your OS still runs and you can re-install your program and re-apply the update patch. If an OS patch gets corrupted while writing to disk, there is a pretty good chance the computer won't boot. In the case of TiVo, it is not as simple as throwing in a CD and re-installing the OS (like Mac or Windows). As JW said, drives read, drives write, drives fail...and it is a bummer when they do fail.

My new hard drive arrived today for my S3 (from weakness.com). Unfortunately I am at work and unable to install it right now. I will get it installed tonight and let you know what software gets pushed out to it. I would guess that may take a few days. I believe it has version 9.x on it currently.

Once I remove the TiVo drive, I have an external drive case that is IDE. If I get an IDE->SATA converter ($5 on eBay), can I access any of the data on the drive? The other option is to run some diagnostics to see if the drive is even usable. However, if there is a bad block that caused the crash, I am always reluctant to use it for storage if I do reformat it for computer use.

On the bright side, it only takes a few minutes to swap drives. On my Dtivo I could take a new drive install the hacked OS and swap drives in about 30 minutes tops.

[JWThiers]

i will actually agree with the OP in the opinion that software can make your hardware suck. haven't any of you used Windows Me? :p

But if the software was designed to suck and it does it well does it still suck?
:rolleyes:

[hillstones]

I installed my new drive from weaknees.com into my S3 last night and it works great. No problems at all. The drive shipped with v11b. Now I can record up to 70 hours of HD. Easy fix for a crashed hard drive.

[greg_burns]

In the case of TiVo, it is not as simple as throwing in a CD and re-installing the OS (like Mac or Windows).

But not far from it. Re-installing Windows can actually be a lot more difficult sometimes (for example; a full disk format, installing drivers, etc.) vs hooking up a harddrive and running WinMFS or IC.

[greg_burns]

Hackers, isn't there a Unix log someplace that would have the error logged? Maybe that is how to prove your disk error theories, but I never hear about those logs being looked at. So try asking hacker people to read those error logs and see what they say happened!! Wouldn't there also be a bunch of OS marked bad sectors on the drive? Can we go see that table and see how many? See if it grows in a few days? That would help prove your bad disk theory wouldn't it?

Why don't you pull the drive, hook it to a PC and run Hitachi or Western Digital diagnostic software on it (free downloads). That will tell you if you drive has a physical problem. We can help if you are interested.

[visionary]

Greg, it's so close to getting the 11C load now I want to see how that all comes out first. My computer is old and would not support such a drive, its 2001 Dell P4 8200, or would not have right connectors and last thing I need is computer problems from opening it up on top of Tivo issues.

Besides, I now have a Tivo caused mad girlfriend for a reboot during playing Dancing With Stars, had to play it later as she worked late. But when played caught up and live, the boots never happen (but machine is still reading from the disk as there is a 5 second delay if you compare to a regular TV, this is why I just can't get in the "bad disk" camp yet. The disk wouldn't know difference.)

If I get 11C and still have problem, yes I will swap back to my old 32 hour disk and see I guess, just to be sure, or consider a 1TB upgrade. And if that old software it has now does it, then I know it is some other chip bad in the S3 is doing it.

Hey if I buy a 1TB for an S3, will that disk work in an HD Tivo, should I have to replace the S3? That is important to know!!!

[JWThiers]

You could get a SATA to USB connector and not open your case at all.


Or for only a few dollars more get a new computer. :D Sorry, couldn't resist thats an old machine.

[visionary]

Oh, ok, may consider that. I won't get new computer till XP will not do what I need, as I will never buy Vista. I did upgrade my hard disk so it is new and bigger so this machine may last a while.

Plan on a MAC as next computer, but with economy so bad I can wait. Hoping for those MAC clones to succeed and drive down prices of even the real ones. But no more Microsoft OS for me next time around. If I have to learn a new OS, let it be one that lasts, and Unix has been around longer than DOS and I have experience at work, look forward to it. I hated the false and needless changes in Vista from XP. If I do need to learn something, let it be a MAC.

[greg_burns]

Hey if I buy a 1TB for an S3, will that disk work in an HD Tivo, should I have to replace the S3? That is important to know!!!

Both the S3 and TivoHD use SATA drives. But, the S3 and TivoHD images are different. You can not just swap them. You will have to reimage the 1TB with a TivoHD image.

Furthermore, your recordings will not play even between like Tivos (ex. you were to move an S3 drive to another replacement S3. You have to do a C&DE.)

[lrhorer]

YOU could go to the underground and ask, but to access anything on the drive that tivo doesn't have exposed by the UI, will require pulling the drive and bringing up the log file (if one exists)
It does. All SMART enabled drives have a non-volatile error log of the last 5 errors encountered by the drive timestamped relative to the first spin-up time of the drive. This is a low-level function, so it does not require Linux or hacking the TiVo. The only caveat is some cheap drive controllers mask the SMART functions, so it may not work on every PC. The smartctl command in Linux allows one to inspect the drive, and there are DOS based versions of the inspection routine from most vendors. Some have Windows versions. I don't know off the top of my head, but I suspect the KickStart diags check this log as part of their testing.

But since you already have the drive out and it is displaying symptoms of a bad drive why not save yourself some time and just get a new drive and go from there.
'Good question.

[lrhorer]

Both the S3 and TivoHD use SATA drives. But, the S3 and TivoHD images are different. You can not just swap them. You will have to reimage the 1TB with a TivoHD image.
Also, there are some drives which are known to work in one unit and fail in the other, and some which work as external drives, but not internal in one unit or the other.

[lrhorer]

But everything will eventually break, that doesn't mean that ALL of them or even most of them are lemons.
Here's one they should put in their pipe and smoke: As with most of my TiVos, when I purchased my THD, I more or less immediately tried to upgrade to a 500G drive. The Hitachi drive I used turned out to be incompatible, and it was a weekend, so I drove over to Wal-Mart (the only place open late night Sunday) and picked up a 320G Deagate drive for $80. I installed it without issues and the Tivo happily hummed along for a couple of months. The only problem was for this application the 320G just was not quite big enough. So, a couple of months later I picked up a 500G Western Digital drive and replaced the 320G. I moved the 320G to one of my desktop PCs, where it chugged along for another 8 months or so. Then one day the drive was inaccessible. I shut off the desktop PC and re-seated the cables, and after rebooting, the drive was accessibe, but the data was lost. I reformatted. A week later, it started bsarfing again. I replaced the SATA cable, and for a few days it was stable, but then it puked all over itself again. Finally I replaced it with a 1T drive, and set the 320G aside. Last week, just to double-check, I put the drive in a Linux server and put data on it. Once again, it cause all manner of problems with the files placed on it. Running diags shows the drive to be quite sick.

Now this drive never had release 11 on it, or even Release 9, for that matter. If it had still been in the TiVo when release 11 hit, it would very possibly have started having much the same symptoms about which some of the participants in this thread are complaining. I guess release 11 is responsible for its failure, too, huh?

[visionary]

lrh, you answered your own question, that problem did not start when 11 was loaded, and the drive was bad. Sure they do go bad. If 11C does not fix it, I am indeed swapping my drive.

Thanks all for that info on the S3 drive in an HD. If I do decide to buy I will get one useful on both then so I can move it. Didn't know about the clear and delete thing either. I'd have to work out a deal to re-image it with a dealer since I have no idea how to create all the partitions and stuff.

So now I would wait and use the old 32 hour drive it came with, till I am dam sure it won't reboot any more....if 11C does not fix it. So far I still think it will, that disk is only like 16 months old, a 750 Seagate I read is one of the best for DVR. Never been dropped, has UPS and constant voltage transformer on it, and good ventilation. And still old recordings are fine, if the disk is flaking off all files will be messed up.

[lrhorer]

No, a boot partition isn't like a boot sector. It contains the the current version of the OS. The ENTIRE OS.
Well, no, actually not. In the case of the TiVo, the boot partitions hold copies of the Linux kernel. The active boot partition holds the active kernel and the inactive partition ordinarily holds the previous kernel. If an upgrade is underway, then the inactive boot partition holds the soon-to-be-active kernel. Most of the OS is contained in the active root partition, which is a mountable read-only ext2 Linux partition. Like the boot partitions, there are two of them, and they are not ordinarily writeable by a file system. The boot partitions cannot be mounted, at all, while the root partitions can, but both are read-only under normal operation. The remainder of the OS resides in the 9th partition on the drive, also an ext2 partition, but it is mounted as read-write under /var. There is no duplicate, but the /var partition can be erased or corrupted and will subsequently be rebuilt by the TiVo during a GSOD.

The boot sector points to the boot partition (I think).
It doesn't have to, but in the case of a stock TiVo, it does. In general, the boot sector points to a boot loader of some sort. With a TiVo, the boot loader is compiled into the kernel. The boot sector points to the active boot partition. When an upgrade is performed, the new kernel is written to the inactive boot partition, and the rest of the OS, except for /var, is written to the inactive root partition. The boot sector is then pointed toward the new boot partition, and the TiVo is rebooted.

I am not an expert in all the inner workings of a tivo so I can't say for sure part of the OS is fubar, but it would be random because bad sectors happen randomly, and the OS is written randomly to whatever free sector is under the write head at the moment data is being written.
Actually, no. Most file systems will allocate sectors somewhat randomly, but on the TiVo the kernel does not reside in a file system and is not written by a file system routine. The dd routine is a low level streaming utility which writes to sequential sectors, starting with a specific sector, if used on a raw partition.

[lrhorer]

lrh, it was your comments that did not make sense, what do you mean use co-ax cable? I do, do you not understand what an outdoor antenna is or how it works? I use my S3 entirely for over the air only. That is why things can affect the signal, including close by aircraft, what is hard to understand?
That has nothing to do with the hard drive or any software activity.

I have learned some things here, I just built an attenuator because I have one channel at 100 strength, now it is 94 and the others 74 to 90, so I will see if that helps too.
'Not with a hard drive problem, it won't.

Maybe the software problem involves not handling errors right from too strong a signal, I will find out.
Uh-uh. The software can read the hardware register which contains the AGC bias and the one whihc contains the signal level, but other than that the software doesn't know from signal levels. Distortion caused by high signal levels can cause the hardware and software to be unable to properly decode the incoming signal, but that's also another matter.

[JWThiers]

I knew someone like lrhorer would correct my my errors. Thanks for correcting them. I was just aiming for the ballpark anyway. :up::up::up:

[Chips N Guac]

I got my series 3 TiVo HD first part of March. Once I activated it it started randomly rebooting. I figured it was the hard drive and I didnt call customer service about it as I was considering replacing the hard drive for a larger capacity anyway. A few weeks later a TiVo representative called me and said the noticed I was having the reboot issue and offered a free replacement. I shipped them the unit, they replaced the hard drive and the replacement is working perfectly ever since. :)

[visionary]

Chips, I believe you, a bad disk can do that, yes. Since we know yours was, describe it, please. When you were watching live TV with no delay, did it ever happen then? Did it freeze first? Was the picture broken up or was it clear and just frozen? Could you often pause and skip over it if you did so fast? Did some recordings never have the problem and others had it at same places in the recording? Did any recordings "get worse" and have more bad spots when played again? Did anything on the menus just not work when selected? This would help all to decide if their issue is a bad disk or not. Thanks.

[hillstones]

Chips, I believe you, a bad disk can do that, yes. Since we know yours was, describe it, please. When you were watching live TV with no delay, did it ever happen then? Did it freeze first? Was the picture broken up or was it clear and just frozen? Could you often pause and skip over it if you did so fast? Did some recordings never have the problem and others had it at same places in the recording? Did any recordings "get worse" and have more bad spots when played again? Did anything on the menus just not work when selected? This would help all to decide if their issue is a bad disk or not. Thanks.

Here is what happened with my drive. Woke up and it was all lit up on the front panel. All 4 lights, with the TiVo icon. An hour later, still like that. Realized it was frozen. Unplugged and rebooted. Thought all was well. While not watching any TV, it spontaneously rebooted again, frozen at same spot during start up. Unplugged again and rebooted. Went out that evening and returned home. Thought all was well. However, Survivor only recorded 30 minutes, and broken into two recordings. Indication of another reboot. Did research here and realized drive might be failing. Immediately transferred Lost to the Mac, successful transfer without a reboot. Then attempted to run Kickstart codes. While drilling down in the Settings menu to get to the restart command, it rebooted again. I couldn't even navigate menus. Before this happened, none of the recordings were flawed, playback was fine. No indication of a drive failure, and had been running v11b for months. Listening to the drive during reboot revealed repeated hits on the same sector when it reached the freezing point. So either the read/write head was failing, or it encountered a bad block and wiped out the directory.

New drive installed over a week ago, with 11b, no problems at all. Connected old drive to computer. With the drive exposed in an external case, could hear all sorts of bad sounds. The drive failed to mount, and crashed the software when I tried to reformat it. The software saw it as unformatted and would not let me repartition it or reformat it. Could not run any diagnostics on it either. If the software was corrupted, I would have been able to reformat with no problems. However, the drive failed. So it is off to be recycled.

[DougJohnson]

However, the drive failed. So it is off to be recycled.

You might check with the drive manufacturer's web site to see if they'll exchange it under warranty. I've had good luck with that in the past.
-- Doug

[HowBoutNowLA]

Why does everyone immediately assume that this freeze reboot indicates a crashed hard drive? You (who assume this) seem to be hand picking symptoms and ignoring others. For one, virtually everyone that has had this freeze/reboot issue had it start to occur IMMEDIATELY following the upgrade - not two weeks later, not a month later, but on the VERY FIRST recording they made following the upgrade. Common sense will tell you there is something much more in play here - signal strength, cable cards, the chip version, all of the other reasons people here are giving. I refuse to believe that so many hard drives under a few years old fail beyond use magically at the same exact instant as an upgrade. As far as the software versions writing to alternate partitions one of which might be bad: I also tried to use the kickstart code to do an "emergency reinstall" (to the other partition? who knows if it did) and it did NOT fix the issue. So what are you all assuming? That my hard drive has so many bad sectors on it that I should throw it out? ALL of my old recordings from before the upgrade are FINE and don't freeze at all - common sense will tell you this has something to do with the way the software is WRITING to the drive, the previous version of the software did NOT have this issue (on my machine at least) and I think that has to do with a problem in the version of the software that happens to be incompatible with something in the hardware. All the IT geniuses on here are claiming that hard drives almost always fail eventually, some fail in two days, some in ten years, and it's a fact of life - well I have never had that experience...does that just make me lucky until now? Or does it mean that a ridiculously high rate of hard drives in Tivos fail - specifically - IMMEDIATELY after a software upgrade? I say B.S. I also think the techs over at Tivo probably know exactly what is causing these glitches, and no matter how frustrating it is to any of us that are experiencing these problems, they will refuse to give that information out (because of legal issues, lost sales, lost repair revenue, etc.) and would rather see us trial and error ourselves to death, which no matter what you want to excuse it as, I say it's BAD business.

[Langree]

But it hasn't happened to all of us who got the upgrade. So it can't be a hardware compatability issue, or you'd have a MUCH higher failure rate. So your common sense is broken.

Or you just don't know what you're talking about.

[visionary]

Just to clarify, I am in agreement with all of you that software did not ever physically damage any Tivo hard disk. when I talked about 11B issues, I mean software that if changed the same disk will be fine. If the disk actually is bad, Tivo did not do it in any way, agree totally.

lrh and Hill both have a lot of good OS abilities, so please go read the logs in the OS and see what errors come up then, when it freezes and we might solve the whole matter. If it can be so documented, I will change my disk and not wait for 11C, but not just on someones hunch, Unix has plenty of logs, what do they say guys?????????

Yes, How, good post above, so to the disk people I ask why do those kick start tests not ever find a bad disk then? I mean that is really relevant.....

[DougJohnson]

Why does everyone immediately assume that this freeze reboot indicates a crashed hard drive? You (who assume this) seem to be hand picking symptoms and ignoring others. For one, virtually everyone that has had this freeze/reboot issue had it start to occur IMMEDIATELY following the upgrade - not two weeks later, not a month later, but on the VERY FIRST recording they made following the upgrade.

The hard drive on my S3 failed all by itself. No upgrade required. The symptoms were exactly as you described. Freezing, random reboots, failures to reboot. A replacement hard drive has been stable for over a year, including several version upgrades.

A very reasonable mechanism has been proposed for why hard drive failures are more likely to become apparent just after a version upgrade. While you might have something else going on, it's not the way I would bet.

-- Doug

[greg_burns]

Why does everyone immediately assume that this freeze reboot indicates a crashed hard drive?

Because in almost every case, replacing the hard drive fixes the problem.

If you believe your drive is fine, then just reimage it with InstantCake (which puts on a fresh image). If that doesn't work, then its time to change the drive.

Hard drives die. Was just at a friends tonight to look at their computer. I had redone it just a few weeks ago (to clean up all the spyware), when she claimed it wouldn't start (invalid boot disk message). Well it started just fine for me when I got a chance to look at it. :confused: At the time I imaged the new clean install to another drive to be safe and ran diagnostics on it; tested perfectly(?) with Hitachi software. Figured she had forgotten to take out a floppy, or perhaps had a thumb drive in during boot. (both will cause that kind of error).

Three weeks later, she is calling me with same issue again. This time the drive wouldn't even spin up for me either. Ordered her a new drive tonight for $50. For the time being she is running on the backup drive I had made. Computer is working perfectly again.

I have a stack on dead drives outside my office at least 25 high. I really should take some pictures. I must have a couple hundred drives lying around in the office. :P They die! Some sooner than others. Believe what you want.

[JWThiers]

Why does everyone immediately assume that this freeze reboot indicates a crashed hard drive? You (who assume this) seem to be hand picking symptoms and ignoring others. For one, virtually everyone that has had this freeze/reboot issue had it start to occur IMMEDIATELY following the upgrade - not two weeks later, not a month later, but on the VERY FIRST recording they made following the upgrade. Common sense will tell you there is something much more in play here - signal strength, cable cards, the chip version, all of the other reasons people here are giving. I refuse to believe that so many hard drives under a few years old fail beyond use magically at the same exact instant as an upgrade. As far as the software versions writing to alternate partitions one of which might be bad: I also tried to use the kickstart code to do an "emergency reinstall" (to the other partition? who knows if it did) and it did NOT fix the issue. So what are you all assuming? That my hard drive has so many bad sectors on it that I should throw it out? ALL of my old recordings from before the upgrade are FINE and don't freeze at all - common sense will tell you this has something to do with the way the software is WRITING to the drive, the previous version of the software did NOT have this issue (on my machine at least) and I think that has to do with a problem in the version of the software that happens to be incompatible with something in the hardware. All the IT geniuses on here are claiming that hard drives almost always fail eventually, some fail in two days, some in ten years, and it's a fact of life - well I have never had that experience...does that just make me lucky until now? Or does it mean that a ridiculously high rate of hard drives in Tivos fail - specifically - IMMEDIATELY after a software upgrade? I say B.S. I also think the techs over at Tivo probably know exactly what is causing these glitches, and no matter how frustrating it is to any of us that are experiencing these problems, they will refuse to give that information out (because of legal issues, lost sales, lost repair revenue, etc.) and would rather see us trial and error ourselves to death, which no matter what you want to excuse it as, I say it's BAD business.

Thats probably because the symptoms described match that of a failing drive in a tivo.

Look at it this way, if something is wrong (thats an obvious yes in your case) it is either a software issue or a hardware issue. pretty obvious I know. If it were a real flaw in the program a lot more people would have identical problems, so it could be a bad download. the solution is to get something like Instant cake or beg a copy from someone and reimage the drive. That's about all you can do easily for a non technical type person. While this may be possible I doubt it because of checksums and other error checking of the download, but hey it could happen I suppose. The other possibility is a hardware problem. If it is hardware the only system essential components (Things that are absolutlutly needed, drive,power supply, cpu, video processor, ethernet port, modem port, not lights and such) that can be easily replaced are the hard drive and power supply and I am not sure about the power supply (I haven't tried to obtain and replace a power supply, but it should be easy if you can get one). Everything else is soldered down.

So your options for fixing things are Get InstantCake and reimage the current drive. If that doesn't work, replace the drive (you will need IC to do this also). If that doesn't work, replace the power supply (if possible). I am fairly certain that that takes care of everything that could possibly affect a tivo in the way you describe, if none of that works, you have a dead tivo that can't be easily fixed. It doesn't make sense to go further down a troubleshooting path because you won't be able to fix it anyway, so its time for a new DVR at this point.

People have told you that the most common problem with actual hardware failres is with a hard drive but you refuse to believe that. The only other possibilities that are user fixable are a bad download/install or a failing power supply. take your pick.

[HowBoutNowLA]

Also, other symptoms: the kickstart tests report back no errors at all. Freeze ups never occur while watching live TV (unless it'a happened when I wasn't watching and don't know about it!) or on any programs recorded before the v11 upgrade. Freeze ups only occur on HD programming (so far). Signal strength on the cable cards is at 90. I have a "good" esata cable, but I was thinking maybe I should grab a new cable just to try it in case the cable went bad(??)

With the drive and the recordings - I'm just in an unfortunate position to upgrade or change the drive. I have a Series 3 (original drive) and a Seagate 750 external that I married way back using Kickstart 62. Now that the kickstart method is unavailable and unsupported, and as far as I know Winmfs isn't able yet to support upgrading the internal while preserving the external expansion and keeping recordings (he said he may do that soon), and apparently if I upgrade the internal then I can no longer use the Seagate as "plug and play"...so you see, it gets more and more frustrating. I have 100 hours of HD stuff I want to preserve (it's a huge video collection, concert footage, educational stuff - took two years to collect!). If I just was keeping every episode of Lost for sentimental reasons, I'd erase and not worry about it - but that's not the case.

Is it also possible that since this was an unsupported external using the original Kickstart method, that Tivo could care less and maybe the new version of the software did actually render it (the configuration) useless? Now THAT wouldn't surprise me at all...And if I did send the unit to them and had them replace the internal drive, would I not be able to add the Seagate again and I'd have to go further in the hole by buying their Western Digital unit?? Also, if I'm going to replace the internal drive, why in the world would I have them stick another measly 250GB drive in there?

What I want to do (regardless of the freeze reboot problem...but that has made the situation more urgent), is to replace the internal with a 1TB, remarry the external Seagate 750, and have 1.75TB of storage (and no freeze ups!)

Finally...with all the info above, could anyone tell me if the absolutely only way to keep this programming would be to back it all up to my pc using Tivo desktop and tivo-to-go, then when I get all these new drives set up and working I supposedly can transfer all that programming back to the Tivo? (I realize it would take forever, but if it's the only option). Also, with what it looks like it would all cost to replace/upgrade/etc. wouldn't it just be cheaper to buy a whole new Tivo HD XL unit and another external drive???

[JWThiers]

That's new information, an external drive. Add onto the list failing external drive. Not being judgmental about your configuration (I used a hacked DirecTV with tivo for 2 years), IF you particular configuration doesn't work anymore because of software incompatibilities, that isn't tivo's problem. When tivo finally turned on the external expansion officially the made it known that the ONLY supported configuration is with the MyDVR drive and NO OTHERS. S3 owners who had figured how to unofficially turn on this feature were allowed to keep using their unsupported drives with the knowledge that a future upgrade might render their system unstable. it was your own risk, so In response to the heading of this thread NO This isn't a class action lawsuit.

I can't help with the backup issue (you already have checked where I would check for info), however, additional troubleshooting steps are replace the esata cable and if that doesn't work to unmarry the external drive and see if the problem goes away. That will isolate which drive might be failing.

[greg_burns]

Finally...with all the info above, could anyone tell me if the absolutely only way to keep this programming would be to back it all up to my pc using Tivo desktop and tivo-to-go, then when I get all these new drives set up and working I supposedly can transfer all that programming back to the Tivo? (I realize it would take forever, but if it's the only option).

I feel for ya.

You need to determine if your external or your internal is causing the problems. The best way to do that is divorcing the external and running w/o it for awhile.

As far as keeping your recordings. I can't think of any other option other than offloading to a PC (or a second Tivo). :(

Also, with what it looks like it would all cost to replace/upgrade/etc. wouldn't it just be cheaper to buy a whole new Tivo HD XL unit and another external drive???

No way. At least not if you DIY.

[HowBoutNowLA]

When tivo finally turned on the external expansion officially the made it known that the ONLY supported configuration is with the MyDVR drive and NO OTHERS. S3 owners who had figured how to unofficially turn on this feature were allowed to keep using their unsupported drives with the knowledge that a future upgrade might render their system unstable.

I didn't know anything about that - that a future upgrade might render the system unstable. Now I realize I will have to divorce the drive just to see if the external is actually the problem, so regardless, I need to backup anything I don't want to lose to pc and take it from there. Although I have read posts with both outcomes, divorcing the external either fixed or didn't fix the problem, so I guess it's a crap shoot.

So then, to be sure - I still can't really get much more capacity and feel secure that the system will be stable...ie: only a direct 250GB internal replacement from Tivo support themselves and a 1TB "supported" myDVR expander - and trying ANY other configuration using a larger internal and using Winmfs to add more external storage would again be taking my chances that there could be a problem again with a future upgrade that "might" render the system unstable...oye. (because I definitely don't want to go through this again).

And if that's the case, can we get back to the original question that the software upgrade could very likely have rendered the configuration unstable?? Although they are not technically at fault because it was not "Tivo authorized", the upgrade could very likely be what caused this to start happening? And wouldn't it be good for sales of their OWN dvr expanders if they could push out software upgrades that will gradually crash the unauthorized expansions that are already in place? Either way you look at it, I am annoyed because I was one of the people that spent the ridiculous amount of $900 on the Series 3 when it first came out, and then spent more on the external drive because for my original $900 I only had a whole 30 hours of HD!

It feels like if I'd paid $700 for the first original iphone, then they came out with a much better and MUCH cheaper more stable model, and their software upgrades to the newer cheaper model turned my original EXPENSIVE iphone into a potato. Not fair! At least Apple offered rebates and refunds to those first customers that felt they'd gotten ripped off!

[greg_burns]

So then, to be sure - I still can't really get much more capacity and feel secure that the system will be stable...ie: only a direct 250GB internal replacement from Tivo support themselves and a 1TB "supported" myDVR expander - and trying ANY other configuration using a larger internal and using Winmfs to add more external storage would again be taking my chances that there could be a problem again with a future upgrade that "might" render the system unstable...oye. (because I definitely don't want to go through this again).

This sounds like a bunch of FUD to me. Even had you gone with the supported external drive you would be in the same boat if the drive failed. If you had a TivoHD instead of an S3, you could purchase a RAID solution. http://www.wkblog.com/tivo/2009/03/video-on-tivoblog-weaknees-external-tivo-backup-drive/. Which would save you from drive failure, but not corruption. It really is a crap shoot. If shows are that important to you, you need to offload to a PC as a backup. There is no other guarantee. :o

There is a precedent for the software update being incompatible with a drive in the past. Anyone remember that fiasco with the FAP? link (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=401149) But as I recall, as the problem was recognized, Tivo went out of their way to deal with it. (The problem was not with the software, but certain drives were showing a very high failure rate, so Tivo banned them for our own good.)

[billyjoebob99]

So then, to be sure - I still can't really get much more capacity and feel secure that the system will be stable...ie: only a direct 250GB internal replacement from Tivo support themselves and a 1TB "supported" myDVR expander - and trying ANY other configuration using a larger internal and using Winmfs to add more external storage would again be taking my chances that there could be a problem again with a future upgrade that "might" render the system unstable...oye. (because I definitely don't want to go through this again).

I have the same config as you: stock S3 with a 750 Seagate external. The new update caused no problems at all. Ten months ago however I had all of your symptoms. I transferred what was important with TiVo desktop, divorced the drive and all was well. Sent the drive back to Seagate and they replaced it under warranty. I was out some time and $5.00 in shipping costs.

I don't know what it's like hooking up an unsupported external with the new update but the warranty replacement from Seagate was hooked back up and has been fine ever since.

[JWThiers]

This sounds like a bunch of FUD to me. Even had you gone with the supported external drive you would be in the same boat if the drive failed. If you had a TivoHD instead of an S3, you could purchase a RAID solution. http://www.wkblog.com/tivo/2009/03/video-on-tivoblog-weaknees-external-tivo-backup-drive/. Which would save you from drive failure, but not corruption. It really is a crap shoot. If shows are that important to you, you need to offload to a PC as a backup. There is no other guarantee. :o

There is a precedent for the software update being incompatible with a drive in the past. Anyone remember that fiasco with the FAP? link (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=401149) But as I recall, as the problem was recognized, Tivo went out of their way to deal with the problem. (The problem was not with the software, but certain drives where showing a very high failure rate, so Tivo banned them for our own good.)

I agree, it is mostly FUD on tivo's part. As you point out even with the official upgrade, if the drive fails you lose the data. I wish they would allow third party or even home built expansion, and then have a list of recommended drives and then an exclude list for drives that show a high failure rate. Of course as with any external expansion the data isn't guaranteed, and Tivo only says a specific one will work with tivo all others use at your own risk. But that was talked about extensively when the expansion came out. BUT Tivo decided ONLY their expansion would work and S3 owners use third party stuff at their own risk. That is why I don't agree with the OP when at first he said Class Action Lawsuit.

Having said that I still think he is having a drive failure and the solution is to replace the internal drive with a larger single drive. Since the S3 is probably out of warranty anyway just replace the internal drive with a 1.5 - 2 TB drive and be done with it. Short of that figure out which drive is failing and replace that drive.

[visionary]

I wish someone would answer both him and me that if the disk is bad why the kickstart tests do not find any errors? I mean that is Tivo's own test for the drive.....

And to How, if I had a hundred hours to preserve by all means save it off and I'd buy a 1TB internal and not use the MyDVR thing any more, there are lots of known issues there. The disk folks are right about one thing, with your 2 disks running one WILL fail if not already, eventually.

My symptoms are just like yours, How, live TV is fine, can anyone document that live TV does not write/read from disk? I mean there is a 4 second delay, looks like it has to be. If so, why no freezes then? I mean I am open to changing my mind if someone can explain these facts and why kickstart tests are fine?

[CrispyCritter]

I wish someone would answer both him and me that if the disk is bad why the kickstart tests do not find any errors? I mean that is Tivo's own test for the drive.....
Because the tests are far from reliable? If they say you have a disk problem, then you do. But published figures indicate 20-30% of disks with severe enough problems to be taken out of service, still pass all diagnostics fine.

Folks at Google wrote a great paper on disk failures (http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.html). I strongly recommend anyone interested in this problem read it. Over 56% of failed disks passed the 4 major SMART tests with no errors at all.

[HowBoutNowLA]

Having said that I still think he is having a drive failure and the solution is to replace the internal drive with a larger single drive. Since the S3 is probably out of warranty anyway just replace the internal drive with a 1.5 - 2 TB drive and be done with it. Short of that figure out which drive is failing and replace that drive.

I would LOVE to have just an internal drive with that kind of capacity. I thought from everything else I read that you couldn't put anything larger than a 1TB drive in to replace it. Did I miss something? Because if anyone could recommend a 2TB internal drive that I could put in there, I'm totally down for that. It is good to know however that I can save these older recordings that are just fine by using Tivo desktop and then bouncing them back to the new drive.

Also (visionary), your point earlier about how these old recordings are NOT being affected or corrupted in any way? Last night I actually let a bunch of shows and movies play through start to finish to be sure, and they had NO issues at all - not a single freeze - only stuff recorded after the v11 upgrade was bad. If a drive was dying, wouldn't all those old programs eventually start to get corrupted in the same way or show some kind of symptoms? Why is this only a "write" issue with new shows being written by v11? And I NEVER get a freeze up on live TV either.

Also, now that billyjoebob has mentioned that the problem turned out to be the Seagate in his situation, that could possibly explain why the kickstart tests aren't finding any problems on my setup, because I get "not supported" for those tests on the external. BUT even if the Seagate is still under warranty and I could get a new one, the Series 3 now won't support expanding it through "plug and play" so it seems like another big hassle to hook up a new one all over again. If I divorce that Seagate, couldn't I just reformat it and use it as an external back up through my pc? What if just has some bad sectors that the Tivo configuration either isn't handling well or that a reformat might take care of? Or maybe it's not happy with running 24/7 for two years (there were warnings about that two years ago) and if I just used it as an external backup through my pc it would be fine? UGH...

By the way, I know this is probably inconsequential at this point, but I haven't gotten 11c yet...should I even think by some miracle that will cure the problems?

[greg_burns]

I would LOVE to have just an internal drive with that kind of capacity. I thought from everything else I read that you couldn't put anything larger than a 1TB drive in to replace it. Did I miss something? Because if anyone could recommend a 2TB internal drive that I could put in there, I'm totally down for that.

From the Drive Expansion and Drive Upgrade FAQ (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=370784)

What is the largest drive I can buy?

Credit to spike -- the author of WinMFS -- for clarifying this subject.

With latest version of WinMFS, the maximum capacity allowed for the internal TiVo drive is 1.1 TB (1.0 TiB) plus the capacity of the original drive. Older tools cannot support drives larger than 1.1 TB.

Model Number Maximum Usable Drive Size*
Tivo HD TCD652160 1.26 TB (1260 GB)
Tivo HD XL TCD658000 2.10 TB (2100 GB)
TiVo Series3 TCD648250B 1.35 TB (1350 GB)

* Drives with capacities larger than 1.1 TB are only supported when the latest version
of WinMFS is used. If you are using tools or a method other than those described below,
then your drive must be 1.1 TB or smaller.

If you were to replace the built-in TiVo drive with a 2.0 TB drive, the full 2.0 TB would be usable on a TivoHD XL, but only 1.26 TB would be usable on the TivoHD.

Most with the TivoHD and TiVo Series3 opt to buy 1.0 TB drives, which provide a capacity of 157 HD hours.

[greg_burns]

Also (visionary), your point earlier about how these old recordings are NOT being affected or corrupted in any way? Last night I actually let a bunch of shows and movies play through start to finish to be sure, and they had NO issues at all - not a single freeze - only stuff recorded after the v11 upgrade was bad. If a drive was dying, wouldn't all those old programs eventually start to get corrupted in the same way or show some kind of symptoms? Why is this only a "write" issue with new shows being written by v11? And I NEVER get a freeze up on live TV either.

Can't say for sure, but perhaps the drive where the old recordings are is OK. Nothing says it has to "go bad", just because other portitions are having issues. The new recordings keep using and reusing the "bad" portions of the drive. All just a wag, but plausible.

IDK, but live TV is obivously written to disk at some point. But is it pausible it is streamed straight from memory to the display first? Who knows? <shrug>

[greg_burns]

...the Series 3 now won't support expanding it through "plug and play" so it seems like another big hassle to hook up a new one all over again.

Why do you say that? They got rid of the KS hack to add an unsupported external to original S3, but they changed it so you can do it from the menu now. This assumes you are running the original 250GB internal drive. Unless, I am misrembering this...

[list=1]
Can I use any eSATA drive I want?

That depends...

If you have a TiVo Series3 and did not upgrade the built-in hard drive, then most eSATA drives up to 1.1 TB (1.0 TiB) in size can be enabled using the new External Storage menu. If that describes your situation, see FAQ #7.

If you have a TiVoHD or already upgraded the built-in drive on your Series3, then the new External Storage menu will not work with unsupported drives. You would need to use the unsupported method described in FAQ #10 below to add a drive up to 1.26TB in size.

[kjmcdonald]

Because the tests are far from reliable? If they say you have a disk problem, then you do. But published figures indicate 20-30% of disks with severe enough problems to be taken out of service, still pass all diagnostics fine.

Folks at Google wrote a great paper on disk failures (http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.html). I strongly recommend anyone interested in this problem read it. Over 56% of failed disks passed the 4 major SMART tests with no errors at all.

While it is true that the tests may pass on a drive that is failing, it is more likely that the drive is fine.

I've read 90% of this thread, and while agree with most of it:

1) Software can't kill (quickly) Hardware
2) The update isn't killing disk drives.
3) Most of the reboot problems are probably HD that are failing.
4) All Hard drives fail the question is when.

I'm surprised however that no-one has pointed out that while a failing harddrive can cause the reboot, it is not the *only* thing that can cause it. Also while software can't cause a hard drive to fail, Software *CAN* reasily cause freezes and reboots even when the harddrive is fine.

Heck when the drive is failing to respond, it is the *software* that decides to give up, and it is the *software* that reboots the machine, so it's not impossible for some other condition to trigger a bug that makes the software reboot for some reason other than a failing HD.

That said, most of the reboots are probably are failing HD.

I don't think they all are though. In my case, it didn't appear to be v11b (well, that depends on when that was released - could have been the same time) that triggered my reboots, but the installation of the Cisco/SA Tuning Adapter(TA) by Charter. The TA also caused MRV to act wacky when S2's try to see the NPL on my S3's - Every one originally thought the TA couldn't be doing that but it's been proven now. If both the TA and v11b were installed at about the same time, then I suppose the reboots could be from either (or some combination of both,) but my money is on the TA being involved.

The main reason I don't think it's my HD, is because I have 2 S3's, and they're both freezing and rebooting, and they both started doing it shortly after the TA's were installed (and/or they DL'd v11b) - While HD's do fail, the odds on both of them failing the same way at the same time are pretty small.

So for those of you who are seeing freezes and reboots, but are *not* finding any problems with the HD, do you also have TA's installed?

-Kyle

[JWThiers]

An interaction with the TA is possible, I have not had any major problems with either of mine. Had some rebooting issues on the TA at first but that cleared up within a week and haven't had a problem since.

[visionary]

No tuning adapter here, nothing but a stock machine with a Weaknees 750g disk change. No network, no expansion drives, not using any features like kidzone. As for the comment about old recordings, its not that I am re-using maybe a bad spot on disk because I have 75 programs still in the delete folder, all the way back to when this began so none of the bad space has even been re-used. Yet all recordings before 11B are wonderful, after about half are bad.

I am keeping records now of what tuner is in use on some recordings and so far it seems tuner 0 has the bad recordings and none from tuner 1, but sample size is only about 8 recordings so far. I will see if this is a trend. The channel does not matter, but the tuner might....you all may want to check the diag screen during a recording and just write down what is on what, then later see if tuner 0 has more or all bad recordings.

Oh, to answer a good point the disk people said, why does replacing the disk always seem to fix it? Well, that is a really good point BUT are you SURE the 11B on that new disk is EXACTLY the same as the 11B you had, every byte? Maybe a patch was applied or a goof fixed, that could really be the answer, your new disk has the software fixed maybe???? Or, maybe it is a problem with the un-zipping and unpacking of the software on the disk, so it does not recur that often.

Also, guys PLEASE look at the error logs in the machine and see what they say, we could all settle this so much easier.....


UPDATE:Hey, if I am reading that other thread correctly, the 1TB My DVRExpander got supported in software....but the guy saying so is still on 11B, per his screen shot picture, that would be PROOF they do make software fixes without a new version number, and that can now explain why some of you have no trouble, and that a new disk with newer 11B fixes everything!! It's not the same 11B!!!

[JWThiers]

UPDATE:Hey, if I am reading that other thread correctly, the 1TB My DVRExpander got supported in software....but the guy saying so is still on 11B, per his screen shot picture, that would be PROOF they do make software fixes without a new version number, and that can now explain why some of you have no trouble, and that a new disk with newer 11B fixes everything!! It's not the same 11B!!!

Couldn't say for sure but a guess could be that the the only part that changed is a list for the model and firmware number for the 1TB drives. That could be kept in a separate subroutine and was dl'd as part of a hot fix it would only need to add literally 1 line of code.

[CrispyCritter]

Couldn't say for sure but a guess could be that the the only part that changed is a list for the model and firmware number for the 1TB drives. That could be kept in a separate subroutine and was dl'd as part of a hot fix it would only need to add literally 1 line of code.
There's no way it's even one line of code. All the kernel software is separate, and as far as I know is still mounted on a read-only partition (the one that alternates with a new download of software). They never change anything without the full reboot cycle of a software update, which didn't happen here (it's way too dangerous - done wrong and it will turn all existing TiVos into bricks!) All this sort of info is kept in database files which are modified all the time - for instance the IR database for the TiVo remote codes, which you can track changes to in the "System Information" screen.

All the 11.0b software is identical.

[visionary]

It could also well be that the version number reflects NEW FEATURES activated or available, and not bug fixes. And, who is to say that the fix to 11B might just be one line of code, reducing a level or lowering a clock speed between chips? It may not need a software re-write at all. they may have gotten too close to a devices speed limits and some chips could not handle it, like I proposed earlier. In any case, we now see a Tivo with modified software and the same version number proven. That sure could mean some got the fix and the version number just refers to features added, search in this case.

Also, as you point out, maybe the fix is not to the main program, but to some of the other parts too, just like the 1TB fix was.....

[JWThiers]

There's no way it's even one line of code. All the kernel software is separate, and as far as I know is still mounted on a read-only partition (the one that alternates with a new download of software). They never change anything without the full reboot cycle of a software update, which didn't happen here (it's way too dangerous - done wrong and it will turn all existing TiVos into bricks!) All this sort of info is kept in database files which are modified all the time - for instance the IR database for the TiVo remote codes, which you can track changes to in the "System Information" screen.

All the 11.0b software is identical.

That's where I meant, it is only 1 line there in a database file somewhere (i.e. 1 line of code).

[CrispyCritter]

That's where I meant, it is only 1 line there in a database file somewhere (i.e. 1 line of code).No. It is not one line of code. It is something exactly on the same level as the program data the TiVo downloads every day. Those are not "lines of code"; they are data for the software.

TiVo has not changed 11.0b at all. Everybody with 11.0b has identical software.

[JWThiers]

No. It is not one line of code. It is something exactly on the same level as the program data the TiVo downloads every day. Those are not "lines of code"; they are data for the software.

TiVo has not changed 11.0b at all. Everybody with 11.0b has identical software.

1 line of data, 1 line of code, Most people don't care about the difference. Yes I know the difference you are talking about the "Code is Program Code" its executable. In a more generic sense the code can also include the data.

[HowBoutNowLA]

this was interesting...trying it now...

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=7214953#post7214953

[visionary]

How, I think that refers to a bug involving analog tuners that just disappear to a grey screen, I never had it but also never use analog TV, all mine is HD over air so I would not see it. His fix wont work for us since once frozen you cant change anything and it reboots soon. I have found you can skip over with the 30 sec skip if you do it real fast when it freezes, sometimes using the pause first helps, then hit the 30 sec skip. Works in half or more of the freezes, but not all of them.....

With this messing up my GIRLS dancing show, that Tivo box is getting between me and a set of blonde DD cups and that means action, since 11C may not be out for all yet I think I will restore my old 32 hour original disk with V9 on it, get one call for guide data and unplug it from dialing a week or so, hoping by then if it updates I get 11C. I know several calls are usually needed so I may be able to keep V9 quite a while, plus the fact 11B may have a patch. Anyway got to do it for my woman. The old disk is all set, just would need new season passes for newer shows but it is all set up. That will eliminate any other box problem too if it works and it should, disk was only a year old when replaced.

[greg_burns]

While you have the drive out download the Hitachi Fitness Tool CD image here (http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm)

Burn it to a CD using www.imgburn.com software.

Unplug you windows harddrive, and plug in your Tivo drive using that sata cable. (if your pc has sata)

Boot your PC to that CD and test the drive. :)

[HowBoutNowLA]

I have found you can skip over with the 30 sec skip if you do it real fast when it freezes, sometimes using the pause first helps, then hit the 30 sec skip. Works in half or more of the freezes, but not all of them.....

Yeah, that same thing works for me about half the time, but it's a pain and huge battery drain to sit there pressing triple arrows until it catches and skips forward.

since 11C may not be out for all yet I think I will restore my old 32 hour original disk with V9 on it, get one call for guide data and unplug it from dialing a week or so, hoping by then if it updates I get 11C.

Well, I got 11c today! Did the first test recording (HD) just now and there was a freeze up after 30 min. so it doesn't look promising at all. Although, it was sitting there frozen for a bit before I caught it, and the triple skip still got me past it, so at least no hardcore long reboot this time. UGH, though!

I'll keep recording a ton of stuff over the next few days and see what kind of frequency I'm getting these bogus recordings...but over the last month or so, I think maybe only 1 out of 10 recordings are without a glitch and they're usually short programs, 30 or 60 min. Looks like I have to do the hard drive, which sux because I will need to backup like 750GB through Tivo desktop first - IF it even let's me do that!

[visionary]

Well, How, I find I am in the same boat, I got 11C last night as well too, so far 2 recordings are made and they were good, remember any old ones made before will not be fixed and it does not fix real picture interruptions of course either.

I had a reboot on an old recording we watched and expected that. The key thing is does it still reboot on new stuff made on 11C? I set up some test recordings to have both tuners on together so will let everyone know in a few days, want to be sure I have right answer. Glad anyway 11C is finally here! If I do have to change drive at least I won't have that dam 11B to worry about on the next drive. We will see.......

[billyjoebob99]

I'll keep recording a ton of stuff over the next few days and see what kind of frequency I'm getting these bogus recordings...but over the last month or so, I think maybe only 1 out of 10 recordings are without a glitch and they're usually short programs, 30 or 60 min. Looks like I have to do the hard drive, which sux because I will need to backup like 750GB through Tivo desktop first - IF it even let's me do that!

As to moving things off the drives with TiVo desktop it helps if you unplug the the RF connector. With that off the unit stops all recording. That lowers overhead, helps stop freezes and allows for faster transfers. At least it did for me when I went thru this. It also helps if you only try moving things recorded before the problems began. With my unit anything that the TiVo was freezing on also had issues transfering.

[kiranna]

I am ON BOARD with any class action lawsuit. For those of you who say "relax it's just TV" I say--I agree. However, if I pay $799 for a product (in any category, not just entertainment) that works fantastically for 1 year and then dies and the company is unable to fix the problem, I will likely be upset. Indeed, it is much worse in this case:
- I have logged at least 40-50 calls to the TIVO support over the course of 13 months. Each time I call, even with the same Case #, I have to narrate the problem all over again
- Each time it is diagnosed differently
- Each time I am always the one who has to call back
- I have personally tested multiple boxes, all of which have the same problem
- I have logged close to 200 hours of my precious time dealing with Tivo support, testing suggested fixes, calling the cable company to have perfectly good cable lines replaced and tested (and that was not free), replacing and testing new Cable cards, etc.
- After 13 months of struggles with Tivo, the company consistently denies that it is a systemic problem with their product
- Only after I complained to a survey-taker about Tivo did I get assigned to ACS (advanced customer support). I was promised that I would be taken care of. But my simple request to be given a Tivo HD XL as a replacement has caused them to go into conniptions and go silent for a month.
- I am done with this company. I am going to try the MOXI box and in the meantime I would be happy to document my pain to a team of bloodsucking lawyers just to give Tivo a lesson. I hold out no hope of recompense for my time or other expenses.
- I used to hold Tivo up as a model for how companies should build products and treat their customers. They have sunk to the level of greedy, double-speaking corporations whose only focus is squeezing every last penny out of every transaction.

[Langree]

What problem are you having? Out of curiosity since you left any real detail out of your post.

[BobCamp1]

Guys,

Based on my previous experience, this screams either a new memory leak or bad timing causing read/write access problems.

But if you want to test your hard drive, use Hitachi's disk fitness test tool, select the exerciser option. and let it run for a couple of weeks. Either the drive will totally die or it won't. All other disk tests won't tell you if the drive is dying.

In theory, a new hard drive should eventually start showing the same symptoms. But it could take a while.

[HowBoutNowLA]

BobCamp1 - can you elaborate? I wouldn't even consider replacing the drive if I can expect the same thing to happen on a yearly basis! I'm out of warranty and Tivo said they would "cut me a deal" on a replacement, but to me anything over negative $20 for shipping is more than I should be paying them for selling me a lemon!!

If I replace the drive I'll probably go through weakness of someone else, because I really think (feel free to insert "paranoid" b.s. comment here) that Tivo knows EXACTLY what the issue is and won't fix it or admit it for legal reasons, or for the fact that they have a steady supplemental income by intentionally frying selected hard drives out of warranty that have unsupported external drives attached (because they know all this information there) and getting customers to purchase replacements that they don't and never did need. I agree with most everyone here about getting the double talk runaround by CS every time I call. Either they are obnoxious or they are really nice when they tell you the fix is to send it back to them to get a new drive....in my case for $150 plus shipping. AFTER I PAID $800 FOR THE OVERPRICED AND FLAWED VERSION OF THIS SERIES 3 UNIT LESS THAN TWO YEARS AGO! They owe me, period, end of story, warranty or not...they should ship me a brand new unit, no charges, no advanced credit freeze, and when I get that I will put this piece of garbage back in that box and slap the pre-paid postage label on it that they will send with the brand new unit. I mean, COME ON, have they ever even heard of consumer Affairs and the BBB? Best Buy went through this crap numerous times too and even had Congress on their butts. If you create and/or sell extremely high priced junk that has a 15% failure rate, you should have to answer for it, end of story!

[JWThiers]

If I replace the drive I'll probably go through weakness of someone else

If you want to really save money get a copy of InstantCake here for the S3 (http://www.dvrupgrade.com/dvr/stores/1/instantcake_display.cfm) and use whatever size drive is the max your unit can handle see the sticky for that information (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5616160#post5616160). That will save you a ton of money from either Tivo Weaknees, DVR Upgrade. It requires no special knowledge to install on the new drive. You can install whatever drive suits your needs or budget. All you have to do is prep the new drive by installing the software which is on a bootable CD, then install the new drive in your tivo. Thats about a dozen torx screws, a power cable, a data cable and about 30 minutes. Plus if/when your drive fails again or you want to upgrade the drive you have the software all ready to go.

because I really think (feel free to insert "paranoid" b.s. comment here) that Tivo knows EXACTLY what the issue is and won't fix it or admit it for legal reasons, or for the fact that they have a steady supplemental income by intentionally frying selected hard drives out of warranty that have unsupported external drives attached (because they know all this information there) and getting customers to purchase replacements that they don't and never did need. I agree with most everyone here about getting the double talk runaround by CS every time I call. Either they are obnoxious or they are really nice when they tell you the fix is to send it back to them to get a new drive....in my case for $150 plus shipping. AFTER I PAID $800 FOR THE OVERPRICED AND FLAWED VERSION OF THIS SERIES 3 UNIT LESS THAN TWO YEARS AGO! They owe me, period, end of story, warranty or not...they should ship me a brand new unit, no charges, no advanced credit freeze, and when I get that I will put this piece of garbage back in that box and slap the pre-paid postage label on it that they will send with the brand new unit. I mean, COME ON, have they ever even heard of consumer Affairs and the BBB? Best Buy went through this crap numerous times too and even had Congress on their butts. If you create and/or sell extremely high priced junk that has a 15% failure rate, you should have to answer for it, end of story!

You got it right when you said paranoid. I agree the S3 was overpriced that is why a lot of people (myself included) wouldn't buy it, its only TV after all. But I don't think it was flawed, that implies something inherently wrong with the design and that isn't the case. It was a real stretch for me to buy a THD for exactly the same reason. I can't make a judgment about Tivo Customer Support because I have only called the once when I first got my THD and it was a question about Cable Card Installation which is IMO the only poor part of the S3/THD line up, , but that is more of a cable company issue not Tivo. And they were very courteous and professional that 1 time.Tivo works fine once it is set up properly. Where exactly did you get the 15% failure rate? I understand that 87.9% of statistics are made up. If you decide to throw the garbage S3 out let me know I'll pay for shipping to my home. I'd hate to see an S3 dirtying up the environment in a land fill.

[BobCamp1]

I agree, InstantCake is the way to go. You don't have to buy the biggest hard drive out there, if you want to save a little money. Plus, when the hard drive corruption gradually works it's way through, you'll have to reformat the hard drive again.

Or maybe not. Who knows. I had a product where a very similar thing was happening, and it turned out that the PPP driver (of all things) was causing the issue. This was discovered after going down the "faulty storage device" path only to realize several months later that the PPP driver caused an disruption in the processor. This disruption occasionally caused the main device to write first, figure out where to write second, and figure out what to write last. That's slightly backwards.

Because these types of bugs take months to figure out, I don't expect it to ever get fixed by Tivo. Some of my customers never saw the bug and some ran into it all the time.

Incidentally, several people woke up to their Tivo stuck on "almost there...." when 11c was rolled out. The odds of so many people having corrupt sectors in the same spot is astronomical. But I guess they all must have had faulty hard drives....:rolleyes:

[Viscott]

Series 3 with 500GB WD DVR Extender. 2 TWC Cable Cards.

Over the last 2 weeks my S3 started freezing and crashing. It would record the first 15 minutes of 2 HD shows and then take a dump. In the last week the S3 would randomly restart and fail to complete that startup process. I kept on getting "External Storage Not Connected" screens and shows recording 15 minutes and then producing the "External Storage Not Connected" error screen again and again. I fiddled with the eSata cable and was constantly stuck in a loop with this problem.

Time for a divorce, well not a pleasant one as they all tend to be (so I hear). And replace the TiVo hard drive with a 1TB drive.

I tried to use TiVo desktop to pull my shows off the Extender but got zero results with the TiVo rebooting and giving me the same error: "External Storage Not Connected".

Well I concluded that something is wrong with my 1 year and 4 month old extender. And did 11c cause the situation? Dunno, but it seems pretty suspect that my S3 that has never been a problem became a nightmare.

Divorced the extender lost 60 shows and now the S3 appears to be A: Back to Normal and B: Faster.

Ordered a Western Digital AV-GP WD10EVCS from Buy.com and going to swap out the original drive with a new one tomorrow.

It's too bad that such a reliable machine turned into such a mess. It seems that the DVR Extenders just can't handle being on 24/7 without better cooling. Not a good solution for adding extra storage.

Or was it 11.xxx updates? Hrmmmmmmmmmmmmm? :mad:

--Jon

[JWThiers]

Series 3 with 500GB WD DVR Extender. 2 TWC Cable Cards.

Over the last 2 weeks my S3 started freezing and crashing. It would record the first 15 minutes of 2 HD shows and then take a dump. In the last week the S3 would randomly restart and fail to complete that startup process. I kept on getting "External Storage Not Connected" screens and shows recording 15 minutes and then producing the "External Storage Not Connected" error screen again and again. I fiddled with the eSata cable and was constantly stuck in a loop with this problem.

Time for a divorce, well not a pleasant one as they all tend to be (so I hear). And replace the TiVo hard drive with a 1TB drive.

I tried to use TiVo desktop to pull my shows off the Extender but got zero results with the TiVo rebooting and giving me the same error: "External Storage Not Connected".

Well I concluded that something is wrong with my 1 year and 4 month old extender. And did 11c cause the situation? Dunno, but it seems pretty suspect that my S3 that has never been a problem became a nightmare.

Divorced the extender lost 60 shows and now the S3 appears to be A: Back to Normal and B: Faster.

Ordered a Western Digital AV-GP WD10EVCS from Buy.com and going to swap out the original drive with a new one tomorrow.

It's too bad that such a reliable machine turned into such a mess. It seems that the DVR Extenders just can't handle being on 24/7 without better cooling. Not a good solution for adding extra storage.

Or was it 11.xxx updates? Hrmmmmmmmmmmmmm? :mad:

--Jon

Check here (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=7181363#post7181363).

[lrhorer]

Incidentally, several people woke up to their Tivo stuck on "almost there...." when 11c was rolled out. The odds of so many people having corrupt sectors in the same spot is astronomical. But I guess they all must have had faulty hard drives....:rolleyes:
This in no way requires a fault in any particular spot. The "Almost there..." splash is put up immediately after the kernel is loaded and the TiVo begins its start-up process. Any process which causes tivoapp to freeze will prevent the TiVo from completing its start-up. As long as the problem does not cause a kernel panic, the unit is frozen. The Tivo spawns more than 6000 threads while booting, and a failure in any one of a large majority of them can cause tivoapp to freeze, producing precisely the symptoms you describe. It would be very interesting to see the kernel messages and the syslog from those locked TiVos.

[visionary]

Well, I promised everyone the results---now on 11C I found the problem did continue, then a day later it got even worse, for first time I had live TV caught up fail, freeze and reboot. I had many more fails on tuner 0 than on 1, but then I finally got some bad ones on 1 as well. Then when returning to a show that had booted, I got a grey screen twice, never had one of those before.

Then I noticed I had only one weeks guide data despite successful calls. At that point I agreed that this disk HAS to be bad and is getting worse rapidly. No funny noises, reboots still fine and old programs remain fine. I got out my original 35 hour disk from 18 months ago and replaced the Seagate 750g with it. It came up with software 9.1 and said guide data over 30 days old, you must dial in. So there was no using it till I did, no way to record but you could see live TV and buffer.

So I called in, it immediately downloaded 110C and NO guide data. It booted and came up on 11 and said dial in again, so I did, and got guide data for 2 weeks that had to index about 2-3 hours. Then I added newer season passes and had a list I had made. Then waited for first one up Dancing with the Stars.

My girlfriend had informed me there would be NO boob access if this infernal machine messed up the dancing show again......so I just did get it in before the show. So now I am on 11C and have all the stuff in to-do and....... it worked perfectly. Boob access has been restored.

We watched several more shows, Heroes, Medium, and the half hour ones in there too, and so far all is perfect. I plan to use this disk a few months since it is summer low use season, and buy a replacement disk for the fall season, but not a Seagate, when a product fails early like that I never buy again from them. Anyway, that was my result.

The symptoms at the end did act like a bad disk, but at start sure did not. Most strange is why live TV did not fail, it is still reading from disk, but it did fail at the end. Had it done so all along I would have agreed.

Had any of these people on here ever read the log on the machine that would have told us too I presume. Someone needs to provide a step by step on how to read the log on a Tivo.

[visionary]

Bobcamp, I bet the problem is the unpacking of new software, if it fails to unzip right or whatever, you have a dead machine. This is what I suspect causes failures at a software upgrade time far more than actual bad disks. That is also why I waited to see if 11C would help, knew it was going to be in a new place on the disk.

[reubanks]

Well that was interesting...

I received 11c on my stock HDXL a couple of days ago and it seems to work without any problems. I was reading this thread and decided to go check the HD (with attached 512Gb MyDVR Expander) to see if it was there yet. It was at 11b, but also was waiting for a restart. I restarted the machine and went back to the thread.

After a while I started to wonder about the silence coming from the other room. I walked in to see a black TV screen and the Tivo HD with a blinking green power light. I power cycled the HD and it came up normally and shows 11c.

I guess I'll be monitoring it for a while to see how it goes.

[JWThiers]

Bobcamp, I bet the problem is the unpacking of new software, if it fails to unzip right or whatever, you have a dead machine. This is what I suspect causes failures at a software upgrade time far more than actual bad disks.

And what do you suppose causes the bad unpacking of the software?

[Viscott]

Series 3 with 500GB WD DVR Extender. 2 TWC Cable Cards.

Over the last 2 weeks my S3 started freezing and crashing. It would record the first 15 minutes of 2 HD shows and then take a dump. In the last week the S3 would randomly restart and fail to complete that startup process. I kept on getting "External Storage Not Connected" screens and shows recording 15 minutes and then producing the "External Storage Not Connected" error screen again and again. I fiddled with the eSata cable and was constantly stuck in a loop with this problem.

Time for a divorce, well not a pleasant one as they all tend to be (so I hear). And replace the TiVo hard drive with a 1TB drive.

I tried to use TiVo desktop to pull my shows off the Extender but got zero results with the TiVo rebooting and giving me the same error: "External Storage Not Connected".

Well I concluded that something is wrong with my 1 year and 4 month old extender. And did 11c cause the situation? Dunno, but it seems pretty suspect that my S3 that has never been a problem became a nightmare.

Divorced the extender lost 60 shows and now the S3 appears to be A: Back to Normal and B: Faster.

Ordered a Western Digital AV-GP WD10EVCS from Buy.com and going to swap out the original drive with a new one tomorrow.

It's too bad that such a reliable machine turned into such a mess. It seems that the DVR Extenders just can't handle being on 24/7 without better cooling. Not a good solution for adding extra storage.

Or was it 11.xxx updates? Hrmmmmmmmmmmmmm? :mad:

--Jon

Replaced my TiVo drive on Tuesday with a Western Digital AV-GP WD10EVCS and divorced the eSATA drive.

Followed upgrade FAQ instructions and all went perfectly!

V. Internal Drive Upgrades
Option b. TiVo Internal Upgrade Instructions: Preserves Settings and Recordings

Perfection! S3 has been running all week without ANY problems! :)

[Teeps]

Since ver 11c upgrade I've had a reboot event every day. There have been several GSOD events too.

Upon advice I ran the short diag on both internal and external drives (ks54) and they both pass...

So, yesterday afternoon I was watching recorded speed tv motorcycle racing. When I selected motoGP from the now playing menu the display went black and stayed that way for a while. Then a message saying the program could not be played because it was not recorded, due to no signal, appeared. I have seen this message before. I knew TiVo was going to reboot itself...
So, I pulled the plug on TiVo, waited 30 seconds then reconnected the power. After a few minutes TiVo was back on line (no gsod) and it played fine the rest of the evening... Oh yea, motoGP program was playable too.

I would be nice if TiVo could back rev my S3. If that fixes the problem... well there you go. If not then I would believe a hard failure is eminent.

[Gavroche]

By the way... the same thing happened to me with my original series 3 box. (Paid $800 for it) It worked for a period of time, then started with the pausing and freezing and rebooting, etc.

It was out of warranty by then, but Tivo graciously replaced it for me with a "refurbished" unit. (Can't complain about the Customer Service really... the guy I dealt with was awesome.)

Then, after another few months, the replacement unit they sent me had exactly the same problem! At that point I didn't want to get another "refurbished" replacement from Tivo. I replaced the hard drive in it myself (with exactly the same model hard drive, even) and it has been working fine ever since.

I've said it before on these forums and I'll say it again... it is my belief that Tivo initially got a big ol batch of messed-up hard drives and sold many Series 3 units with these drives in them.

It sucks that I had to pay a few hundred dollars for the replacement drive, but I suppose in the long run it was worth it to avoid the hassle and finally have a working unit.

The point of all this is that I believed for months, due to threads in these forums, that the problems were caused by software updates. They were not.

[aaronwt]

At least now you can get a 1TB drive for under $100.

[lb90802]

Our Tivo Series3 just started acting up (the day after receiving the 11c upgrade). It would pixellate and on SD channels and lock up totally without fail on HD Channels. It then started rebooting every few minutes.

I ran multiple kickstarts, 57, 58 and 52 (software reinstall). The 52 seemed to helped a little but the issue was still there.

I pulled the HDD (WD2500BS) out and ran the Western Digital Diagnostics Tool on it.

The SMART test - passed.
The SHORT test- passed.
The EXTENDED test- Failed indicating I had some bad sectors. It asked me if I wanted to repair them and I said yes.

I am in the process of re-running the extended test now.

In the mean time, I installed a WD Caviar Black Series 1TB Drive prepped with WinMFS (Truncated) and the Tivo fired up perfectly. No lockups, No Reboots.

For whatever reason, the day of the 11c update, the original HDD developed bad sectors and started causing problems.

I'll let everyone know if the Western Digital Diagnostic tool solves the problem when I swap drives again.

Hope this helps someone!

Mike

[greg_burns]

I pulled the HDD (WD2500BS) out and ran the Western Digital Diagnostics Tool on it.

Good for you! :up:

For whatever reason, the day of the 11c update, the original HDD developed bad sectors and started causing problems.

The reason has been stated ad nauseam. Just nobody cares to believe it. Here it is again: The unused partition probably already had bad sectors, after the update it switched to start using it.

May be a good time to repeat this as well...
1) Software updates can't destroy a hard drive.
2) Software updates can't destroy a hard drive.
3) Software updates can't destroy a hard drive.
and most importantly
4) Software updates can't destroy a hard drive.

[lb90802]

Just an update..

After installing our WD1001FALS, S3 is running like new!

I agree the update didnt kill the HDD.

In my case (and I bet in many other cases), the HDD is/was failing silently. External diagnostic tools indicated the data write rate has dropped to between 1.2-1.5MB per second with NO SMART Errors.

Even after running the exended DLGDiag tool and fixing sectors. The drive is still running way too slow.. almost like it is running in some failsafe mode.

I put it back in the Tivo Series3 and all the symptoms came back.. so it looks like the HD is the culprit in my case.

Cheers and thanks for everone's help!

Good for you! :up:



The reason has been stated ad nauseam. Just nobody cares to believe it. Here it is again: The unused partition probably already had bad sectors, after the update it switched to start using it.

May be a good time to repeat this as well...

[HowBoutNowLA]

I would really like to do the instant cake thing and get a cheaper 1TB drive and supersize it with winmfs, etc., then just use an internal on the Tvio without an expander - but my problem is my only computer is a laptop pc and although I'm good enough with the simple stuff and I've replaced drives and other internal stuff before, it seems like trying to do this process yourself using a laptop is one big pain and could possibly cause me other issues with my pc.

Is there a relatively safe and easy way to do this on a pc running xp and just going through the usb ports? Or do I have to open up the laptop, disconnect the drive, etc. Is it just not a recommendation to do this on a laptop with the original drive still connected?

[greg_burns]

I would really like to do the instant cake thing and get a cheaper 1TB drive and supersize it with winmfs, etc., then just use an internal on the Tvio without an expander - but my problem is my only computer is a laptop pc and although I'm good enough with the simple stuff and I've replaced drives and other internal stuff before, it seems like trying to do this process yourself using a laptop is one big pain and could possibly cause me other issues with my pc.

Is there a relatively safe and easy way to do this on a pc running xp and just going through the usb ports? Or do I have to open up the laptop, disconnect the drive, etc. Is it just not a recommendation to do this on a laptop with the original drive still connected?

First there are two DIY methods. InstantCake or WinMFS.

InstantCake you loose all your settings, WinMFS you don't. I suppose you could use both. IC first, then WinMFS to supsersize. If that's what you meant.

If you are going the InstantCake route anyways* and don't have access to a PC with Sata ports you may be better off just purchasing a preimaged drive from the site sponor (DVRUpgrade) or Weeknees. You'll pay through the nose for that convenience. Buying a preimaged drive you will loose all your setting, but so will using InstantCake.

*The only reason to use IC (in my mind) is your original drive is so badly damaged as to be not able to pull the image off it using WinMFS.

WinMFS will keep your settings and should be doable using only a single USB to Sata adapter. Connect the original drive up, back it up to a backup file on your Windows C:\ drive. Then connect the new one up and restore the backup file to it. At least, that's how I think it should would work.

Now, if you original drive is so far gone that the image isn't salvagable then I am not sure what you would do with a laptop. IC doens't run under windows, so I don't think you could use the USB to Sata adapter at all. It would be awful hacky to unplug the internal laptop drive and somehow connect the new Tivo drive.

[HowBoutNowLA]

Thanks for the info. I'm not really concerned about settings (for season passes and wishlists because I don't have many), except I guess this means all the cable card info and everything too?

What I have is the original internal plus and external seagate 750. I will have to go ahead and transfer (to save) all of my uncorrupted recordings using Tivo desktop. Then I guess I need to divorce the external and use WinMFS to format and supersize a new 1TB internal drive - (and so this can be done with a regular usb to sata cable?). Then put it in the Tivo and transfer my backed up recordings from Tivo desktop back to the unit.

One last thing - for some reason I see that when I unplug (power down) everything, then unhook and rehook up the esata cable, when I go to reboot I get the "external not connected" error message. I have to plug and unpug the drive again and reboot again. So...is it even possible that this whole nonsense of the freeze reboot can be attributed to an esata cable that's wearing? Again, no problem playing older recordings at all (ones that were made even after the external was added). It's just a write problem with newer recordings made after v11. I guess I can go to Fry's and get a new cable and give it a shot. I would be amazed if that solves it. But yes, this is the correct cable that's on there now - not a "knife hacked" cable. It fits snugly, etc.

[greg_burns]

Thanks for the info. I'm not really concerned about settings (for season passes and wishlists because I don't have many), except I guess this means all the cable card info and everything too?

What I have is the original internal plus and external seagate 750. I will have to go ahead and transfer (to save) all of my uncorrupted recordings using Tivo desktop. Then I guess I need to divorce the external and use WinMFS to format and supersize a new 1TB internal drive - (and so this can be done with a regular usb to sata cable?). Then put it in the Tivo and transfer my backed up recordings from Tivo desktop back to the unit.

One last thing - for some reason I see that when I unplug (power down) everything, then unhook and rehook up the esata cable, when I go to reboot I get the "external not connected" error message. I have to plug and unpug the drive again and reboot again. So...is it even possible that this whole nonsense of the freeze reboot can be attributed to an esata cable that's wearing? Again, no problem playing older recordings at all (ones that were made even after the external was added). It's just a write problem with newer recordings made after v11. I guess I can go to Fry's and get a new cable and give it a shot. I would be amazed if that solves it. But yes, this is the correct cable that's on there now - not a "knife hacked" cable. It fits snugly, etc.

Yes, you'll loose cable card settings.

The first post in the ugprade thread (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=370784)recommends an eSata cable (SIIG CB-SA0311-S1) and links to where you can get it. Definately give that a shot first.

It also has a link to a USB to eSata adapter. I have never done and upgrade like that using a laptop, but I believe the thread talks about doing it just that way.

[tivoupgrade]

Yes, you'll loose cable card settings.


Actually, in some situations, you won't lose your cableCARD settings. We've had several customers tell us that once they've installed a new kit, things came right up without them even having to call their cable company. In other cases, a quick phone call to the cable company resulted in them resetting something on their end and things then worked. And yet in other cases, a tech was required to come out, but from what we've been told, that is rare.

Lou

[lb90802]

Actually, in some situations, you won't lose your cableCARD settings. We've had several customers tell us that once they've installed a new kit, things came right up without them even having to call their cable company. In other cases, a quick phone call to the cable company resulted in them resetting something on their end and things then worked. And yet in other cases, a tech was required to come out, but from what we've been told, that is rare.

Lou

I upgraded by using WinMFS to make a "backup" of our Tivo HDD which, though functional, had slowed to 1.5MB/s write speed. We've got cable cards and everything came right up w/ no problems.

[greg_burns]

I upgraded by using WinMFS to make a "backup" of our Tivo HDD which, though functional, had slowed to 1.5MB/s write speed. We've got cable cards and everything came right up w/ no problems.

WinMFS backs up the cable card settings.

Lou was just making the point (I believe) that buying a preformatted drive does not necessarily always require a truck roll if using cable cards. The reason being, not all cards are paired to the box. I believe if your cable company is pairing the cards, though, then a truck would be necessary if you drop in a preformatted drive. No? Maybe there is different "levels" of pairing. :confused:

[joey3002]

What drive do you guys recommend for the upgrade? I am looking at a 1tb drive but any preferances?

thanks

[greg_burns]

What drive do you guys recommend for the upgrade? I am looking at a 1tb drive but any preferances?

thanks

Western Digital AV-GP WD10EVCS (http://www.buy.com/prod/western-digital-av-gp-wd10evcs-hard-drive-1tb-serial-ata-300-serial/q/loc/101/206827123.html)

See IV #28 in FAQ
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=370784

[joey3002]

I actually bought this last night:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136351

Western Digital Caviar Green WD15EADS 1.5TB 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive - OEM

[greg_burns]

I actually bought this last night:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136351

Western Digital Caviar Green WD15EADS 1.5TB 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive - OEM

Probably a fine choice as well. As you probably know, you will not be able to use the full 1.5TB. But probably worth the extra anyways. Would be nice to see the newer 1.5TB drives included in the FAQ. ;)

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=7211574#post7211574

[pusher]

I can't even remember the last time I posted, but I wanted to comment on the same situation most here have felt. Right after the upgrade (and I mean right after) my S3 was stuttering and pixelizing. I put up with it for 6 weeks until the S3 would continually reboot. It wouldn't stay up for more than 5 minutes before rebooting and freezing during the startup process. I swapped the internal drive for a WD10EVCS. Now everything is perfect again. I thank everyone who maintains this site as well as everyone who participates. Thank you.