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series 3 dead - whats the best option?

4K views 35 replies 14 participants last post by  Ramma2 
#1 ·
My Series 3, which I have had for a little over 3 years, has died and is stuck on the welcome screen. I've tried pulling plugs, all sorts of things, but no good so chances are, the hard drive has failed. (kickstart programs won't run either)

The bad part - this tivo has lifetime service on it.

TIVO support says that they will "exchange" this one for a new (aka refurb) series 3 for $350 and allow me to transfer the lifetime service.

However, is that the best option?

If it's the hard drive, then what are my other options? Can I pull it and try to recover the data? (we had about 25 recordings on it)

Is there a way to get a new HD to drop in and get it going again?

I'd much appreciate the advice of some of the tivo gurus.

Thanks
 
#2 ·
Going through the drive upgrade thread, it sounds like you can transfer your shows, settings, etc off the old drive. I've got the tech and tools to do that but of course that rides on the fact that the old drive is still in some sort of recoverable state.

Whats the best way to tell if it will be possible to recover the shows?
 
#3 ·
Going through the drive upgrade thread, it sounds like you can transfer your shows, settings, etc off the old drive. I've got the tech and tools to do that but of course that rides on the fact that the old drive is still in some sort of recoverable state.

Whats the best way to tell if it will be possible to recover the shows?
yes - the prior advice was off base on not being able to transfer shows.

The simplest way to tell if you can is to simply follow the instructions and do it. if it works then whatever was bad on the old drive did not come along in the copy.

If the copy does not work than worse case you would buy an image for the new drive from one of the forum sponsors or where ever and then use that to put a working image on the drive and overwrite the failed attempt to copy the shows.

NOTE: - this is why I tend to upgrade the drives in my TiVo DVRs fairly soon as then I have the original drive as a backup for a few days and for the image if the need ever arises.
 
#4 ·
Going through the drive upgrade thread, it sounds like you can transfer your shows, settings, etc off the old drive. I've got the tech and tools to do that but of course that rides on the fact that the old drive is still in some sort of recoverable state.

Whats the best way to tell if it will be possible to recover the shows?
try to transfer it.

You could run some manufacturer diagnostics on the drive too. But either way you need to pull it and stick it in a pc. So if you plan on making up your own drive anyway then might as well just try and see what that gets you.

if it's not making the 'click of death' you might get lucky. some folks have gotten lucky sticking shot drives in the freezer right before they try to transfer off of them.

good luck!
 
#5 ·
The "click of death"??

I can't say that I've heard any clicks that would fall into that category.

I'll report back whatever ends up working, or not working.

If I end up just getting a new drive and not being able to copy, how does that new drive get imaged with the correct software to run the TiVo?
 
#6 ·
If you cannot get the copy to work, then you'll have to acquire a hard drive with a version of the TiVo software already on it suitable for your hardware. From there, TiVo will note any inconsistency between the version you have and the latest version of the software, and provide you an upgrade through its normal operations.
 
#15 ·
yeah should all work now.. Ironically, I was thinking about doing the upgrade a few weeks ago when everything was working fine but decided against it due to the "if its not broke dont fix it" logic.

In this case, if it's not broke, I should have fixed it anyway.

Fortunately most of the TV season is over now anyway so the lost shows are not a big deal.

Hopefully the cablecard pairing doesn't bite me in the ass and require a visit from comcrap.
 
#16 ·
Hopefully the cablecard pairing doesn't bite me in the ass and require a visit from comcrap.
That's another good reason to try winMFS to copy your failing drive to a new drive. It will move the pairings.

Try it. There's no downside. If it doesn't work, download InstantCake and build a new drive. You will need to get the cable company to redo the pairings.

-- Doug
 
#18 ·
yeah should all work now.. Ironically, I was thinking about doing the upgrade a few weeks ago when everything was working fine but decided against it due to the "if its not broke dont fix it" logic.
You might want to try SpinRite on the drive. Of course you would have to buy spinrite. But, if your old shows are important to you then it might be worth it. Then again. google and bittorrent can help you replace those shows.

BOb
 
#20 ·
I had a similar problem with a drive, it turned out to be a Western Digital (WD). I pulled it, connected to a PC and ran some WD diagnostics/repair program and it found some issues and fixed them. The drive has been back in service over 2 yrs.

Worth a shot, SpinRite probably has more tools, but the free stuff for WD worked for me.

Travis
 
#23 ·
i was using the windows version. the bootable .iso image managed to locate the drive but gave an ERROR 209, which means : SMART Self Test failed to start when executed. The drive has not responded to the SMART test request. The drive has failed and must be replaced.

That's always nice to see.
 
#24 ·
I had a similar problem with a drive, it turned out to be a Western Digital (WD). I pulled it, connected to a PC and ran some WD diagnostics/repair program and it found some issues and fixed them. The drive has been back in service over 2 yrs.

Worth a shot, SpinRite probably has more tools, but the free stuff for WD worked for me.

Travis
spinrite is much more complex. Overkill in many cases but rather neat in others.

It will read every single bit on the drive, then write the opposite bit, read it, and write and check the correct bit again. If it finds any faulty bits it marks the sector out of service and allocates one of the spare sectors.

if it can't read a particular bit, it tries like 100 times moving the heads in at all different angles to try and figure out what the bit is supposed to read- then it see's what it comes up with the most and makes a guess- and recreates the data on one of the spare sectors again. It's really cool when you have real data you want to restore. Depends on how important the shows on the tivo are- but generally for a tivo I'd just get instant cake and start over. (even when it works it can literally take DAYS to do all the analyzing on a bad drive.)

But if it's your laptop or desktop that someone forgot to backup then I reach for spinrite.

in the OP's case not sure if spinrite would even see the drive though- seems like it might be something beyond the physical disks being bad.
 
#25 ·
Installed a new 1TB drive this morning. Just about completed the guided setup. Sure, shows are gone but they are just TV shows. Most of them I can get from Amazon on Demand or through my xbox.

Not sure if I will have to get the cablecards reactivated. We'll see.
 
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