300GB TiVO Upgrade woes maybe?

[mackiedoo2]

I own a TCD54140 model Tivo Series 2 unit and recently after a vacation, I came back and to my surprise, my TiVO unit was stuck on the Welcome screen. Recycling a few times later led me to the conclusion that the drive had gone to the great hard drive haven in the sky so after some digging around and some mis-adventures, I finally got a new TCD540140 TiVO image laid down on a brand spanking new Maxtor 300GB IDE drive. Everything was going jim dandy until I noticed that during the setup of the new TivO drive (i.e. laying inputting the new configs and such) the pciture was jerking slightly. I went to Live TV and lo and behold it was jerking there too!!!

That's never a good sign but bear in mind that this was supposedly a brand new drive!!!!!

I guess that I must have done something bad to a TiVO or a Maxtor hard drive in a prior life to have add this bad luck. Before I return the drive to the retail store, I'm wondering if anyone has had experience with this type of "picture jerk" phenomenon. Does this really indicate a defective drive or is potentially an issue with the TiVO hardware itself?

Fortunately I have a smaller drive lying around my apartment that I can try out to prove the last point but it's gonna suck because I really wanted that extra recording room. It's also a pain because I may have to schlep back to the store to get credit towards a new drive.

[funtoupgrade]

I would bet on the TiVo hardware. Is your TiVo connected to a Universal Power Supply of at least 350 watts? If not, it should be so that any power spikes or short power interruptions do not affect the operation of the unit. Supposedly they are quite susceptible to damage during such occurances.

Trying your third little drive should confirm the problem. All 3 are not going to be bad.

[mackiedoo2]

My TCD540140 is not connected to a 350 Watt UPS but then neither is my 2nd TiVO.

I'm going to go ahead and try my 3rd drive to see what happens. I also plan on trying the 300GB drive in another TCD540140 that belongs to a relative of mine. If it's jerky there too then it's back to J&R World Manhattan for that piece of you-know-what.

Interestingly I still own a 6 or 7 year Maxtor drive that still works!!! They just don't make stuff like they used to eh?

[kschauwe]

Some people have reported jerking problems with some Maxtors. Is yours a Diamond Max 10?

[DishDoctorStu]

I just put in a Maxtor DiamondMax-10 ($99 Fry's) in my TCD540080 as the only drive. Used InstantCake for the partitioning/formating and did the complete reset & clear to avoid any glitches. Did find redoing the complete out of box setup a frustration. That night it got upgraded by TiVo to 7.2.1 over the internet, so far so good, but knock on wood.
I also would suspect the TiVo's hardware more than your new harddrive; but could you have a bad image? Have you repeated the complete reset and clear, and done another initial download over the modem?
You might also want to check the internal temperature, think 31 degrees C is typical on the TiVo's System Status Display.
A third harddrive will solve the mystery; and save you the hassle of trying to explain to your friend in the future that you did not cause any real or imagined problems with his TiVo by testing your harddrive in it.

[mackiedoo2]

Thanks to those folks who posted replies to this thread. In the ned, the 3rd drive I tried did prove that there was something defective with the 300GB Maxtor drive. Interestingly enough, the 3rd drive was also a Maxtor. I went back to the store and got store credit for my purchase. I then went and obtained a 320GB Western Digitial which cost me slightly more but they were out of my first choice i.e. a 300GB Seagate drive. the 300GB drive was a DiamondMax but I do not remember if it was a Diamond Max 10.

What I definitely plan on doing is to back up the information on my latest drive using the mfstools software to create a TivO image that I can save on another hard drive or something. I don't necessarily want to go through the guided setup and re-config stuff again.

This is not the first time that I've encountered jerkiness with Maxtor drives. My brother also had one that failed completely a couple years back as well. And a colleagure of mine at work said that he won't buy Maxtor drives any longer after experiencing unexpected head crashes. I have had older Maxtor drives that are still going strong after 4 or 5 years so maybe they simply don't make them like they use to or TiVO use just puts these drives through the wringer?

Bottom line is that this recent TiVO hard drive failure of mine has put me through the wringer and cost me some programming that I may never be able to get back.