Problems with the Tivo expanders

[dmeleedy]

I had a Tivo 500 GB expander that worked just fine for about a year.

Then I started having problems with it around last May or so, maybe
a bit earlier. The picture would freeze, and then the tivo would reboot,
so I thought that oh.. my hard drive just must have gone bad.

So I unplugged the expander, and everything worked great for a few
months... all of my problems disappeared.

So just last week I thought that I would buy a new 1TB expander because
all of the fall shows were going to fill up my hard drive.

It worked great for about a week.... now live TV freezes, and when
I'm watching shows it freezes, and then I get the reboot.

Basically it has made my Series 3 unusable.

So my question is, has there been some kind of software change to make
these "Tivo certified" expanders start failing. This has been very very
frustrating.

[eaayoung]

Check the thread on this..., the drive, if it is a My DVR external drive, is probably ok. Evidently it's the case that goes bad. From what I've read, this external drive usually last only around 18 months. Alot of people have disconnected the drive and move the drive to another case and it still works.

Mine has been acting-up for the last week. TIVO freezes then reboots. Sometimes it will reboot 5-6 times per day. I think I had a group of shows that were corrupted.

If you search for the thread on this matter you will find a list of external cases that are known to work with TIVO. Antec MX-1 is a popular one to use.

I haven't decided what I'm going to do. If it really is the external drive, I may just replace the TIVO's internal drive and get rid of the external drive completely.

Good Luck!

[bicker]

... I may just replace the TIVO's internal drive and get rid of the external drive completely.That's what I did. Made my television viewing a lot less stressful.

[milo99]

nothing new.
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=429589

and
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=431689

the failure rate is ridiculously high, but usually not because of the drive.