Dead... again...

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Hey guys, I know I've posted about this before, but I'm hoping for new info. Occasionally (every few months or so), my upgraded S2 (original, 60 GB version), now updated with 2 120 GB drives starts rebooting over and over and over again. The only way I've found to get it back is to power it off for about 24 hours or so, then enter pause 57 and pause 58 until it magically finishes booting. It always gets past the Welcome...starting up screen, but reboots after a little while on the Just a few minutes more screen.

I did replace the power supply with one from weaknees about a year ago, so I'm pretty sure it's not that. It's also behind a UPS, and I know the fan's working. I don't hear any funny noises from the drives.

Any ideas? I'm getting kinda tired of this, but I don't have the cash to drop on a new box, and I also like my lifetime sub a whole lot.

 

I would love to put the drives back to a single large drive, but when I tried that, and looked on these forums, I found out that because I had already increased the primary size once (from 60 to 120) I was out of luck. I'm not sure if that's all together, or just with keeping the programs. I'd like to do that--there's this Indycar race I'd love to watch.

I did not increase the size of the swap, as far as I remember. Cooling is stock; it does get quite warm in there, but I don't think I've seen internal temps much in excess of 50 deg C.

There's no issue with running manufacturer diagnostics on either A or B drive? They're different brands (Maxtor and Western Digital, I think).

I must say, it's something of a relief to hear that it might be a drive issue.

 

Yeah, if I can scare up a large ATA/100 drive, I may just try that, in case it is a software/hard drive problem. Bye bye, recordings! If I can get the thing up, I'll probably start transferring recordings. Unfortunately, I have about 4 seasons of West Wing I haven't watched on there. That's what Netflix is for, innit?

That would probably solve my cooling issues (if that's what's going on). I think I have a few backups of the OS on CD somewhere.

Here's a question: If I have backups of the 120+120, can I put the OS on a 160 GB just for testing, or will that fail because of the smaller/different drive size?

 

Yeah, I got the thing up (kinda) by using the pause-58, but it was really jerky, and didn't want to play at all. When I rebooted it, it was back to the same old story. I'm going to try checking the hard drives today at work (PC at home isn't exactly stable...)

 

OK, definitely a bad hard drive. It's an older Maxtor, so I'm not sure I can find the same one again. Can I replace it with a different brand? (especially since the Western Digital was older than that...)

Actually, it looks like it died a heat death. It's the farthest from the fan. Can I replace it with a laptop drive?

 

The trick will be getting one with exactly the right size. The Maxtor that's bad is actually 122 GB, which will make finding a replacement difficult.

 

I'd love to use a 120 GB laptop drive, but I have the feeling the copy will show up as too small, thanks to Maxtor's non-standard size (despite saying 120 GB on the drive itself.) I'm guessing I'll have to use a 160 GB 3.5" drive. Any tips on cooling? This drive is on the left side of the TiVo (from the front), so it's a long way from the fan, but right over the vents. Since this is a TCD140060, there's only an internal fan.

 

I don't know that I really want that kind of a challenge... I just got a 160 GB drive. I know that switching to a bigger drive would work, but I want to keep my recordings on the TiVo.

 

going to give it a shot with dd_rhelp. I've done it before, but this time I'll document it to share around here. Requires a USB drive and Knoppix CD. Hopefully nothing else, since I don't remember what I did...