Series 3 lock-up problems

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Hmmm...anything is possible. Did you try any of the recommended resolutions?

 

Nah, have been stuck at work since the forum discovery. Will definitely report back, though.

I will likely replace the drive regardless (my confidence in the Seagate was never great for a variety of reasons) but tonight I'll be actively trying to reproduce the lockup and see if I can prove/disprove the interference theory.

God, no wonder my husband thinks I'm nuts.

 

There's a fine line between insanity and genius. I always error on the genius side.

 

with tivo verified 500g attached to tivo hd (original drive). freezes fails to boot beyond first power up screen, can't use any off the kickstarts. swapped esata cords no help.. when I reluctantly divorced external drive I was able to boot to normal ops , ran ks54 all testing separately followed with smart which ran for hours till I just unplugged it.. no errors ever showed up on internal drive.. reattached external same problem as before. so $195 500g external drive dies after 17 months. WD web site seems to have diagnostics tool only for windows (I'm mac) any ideas? on trouble shooting this or is it just a paper weight now.? at least I had moved most of the stuff to my mac with another wd drive external. but not really sure how to move it back.(diff thread ) Ironically I had just ordered a 1tb for my series 3 price only$129 so I didn't want to go the antec/ build your own ext drive route. Does it make any diff orientation of unit.. mine have always been set up like book

 

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Sorry to hear about your eSATA drive failing...if it helps, you're not alone. It's possible the actual hard drive inside your WD My DVR Expander is still good and can be saved. Check my post answering a similar question:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=7486621#post7486621

BTW, orientation doesn't have any effect on eSATA drives. Ventilation does however have an effect on hard drive life. Good ventilation is a must for TiVo eSATA drives w/o built-in fans since they run 24/7.

 

thanks for links mine just sat upright and not enclosed. don't really have any was of checking drive with my mac yet although I may just try esata to usb stick it in mac and see what shows up (although if it is enclosure still won't work) haven't seen the mx-1 for under $50-70

 

(Naturally I have been 100% unable to cause my TiVo to freeze/replicate the problem ever since clicking the Submit button on a replacement drive order. I have the new drive now, too, and am stubbornly waiting to see if I can get another lockup. I *have* had minor remote dropouts again, so I'm still wondering about that interference issue.)

 

Hmmm...sounds a bit more like a SATA cable issue? Although it may be a case of bad sectors on the hard drive platter(s) and TiVo just hasn't tried to write data to those areas again. Hard to say.

Hope it all works out in any case.

 

Not sure how to test things w/Mac. I keep a PC I built for these kinds of things, but there must be a way with a Mac though. Let us know if you have any success and how you did it.

I've seen MX-1's come down to about $25 now and then, but you're right, nothing like that right now. $51 from Amazon w/free shipping seems to be the best deal at the moment. (Easiest return policy at least.)

 

After 3 years of nearly flawless operation, my Tivo Series 3 has hung and rebooted several times in the last few weeks. My Tivo has an after market, weeknees, 750G hard drive. From everything I've read, this is almost always due to HD failure and, with the 1T drives under $100, I was thinking about just changing it out. The problem is that the hang and reboot occurred while watching streaming netflix tonight. Does that even involve the hard drive?

Al

 

Sorry to hear things aren't working so well with your Series3. Everything involves the hard drive. That's why downloaded material doesn't start immediately and why you can pause and rewind it once it does. While you're watching Netflix (high data throughput, especially if it's HD), TiVo is also still busy recording two cable card streams (also high data I/O if it's HD) plus handling periodic updates, etc. If it's going to start showing signs of problems, that's when it will happen.

You could try running TiVo's built-in diagnostic programs called Kickstarts to see if anything can be resolved:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5643823#post5643823

Otherwise, everything you need to know about a DIY upgrade can be found on the Drive Expansion and Drive Upgrade FAQ.

 

So every week or so, my S3 starts slowing down, becoming less responsive to the remote, hanging and finally crashes. During the reboot, I get the GSoD. This has been going on for a few months now. Wife is getting less and less impressed.

Normally I would just upgrade/replace the internal drive, but we have a WD MyDVR (500MB) expander... so how do I figure out which drive is the culprit? Once I figure out what drive is causing the problem, what's the best way to replace it while saving our shows?

Thanks!

 

See my post here:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=7529055#post7529055

It refers to the same problem someone is having with their TiVo HD but would apply to a Series3 as well.

 

Well, I got the "Tivo has detected a serious problem" screen. I suppose in three hours I'll have the results.

Al

 

The GSOD indicates that TiVo needed to run mfs assert to correct some data corruption and possibly isolate some bad sectors on a hard drive. If it takes a long time...three hours would be a very long time, it means that there are probably some serious problems which TiVo may or may not be able to resolve. When the program is finished TiVo will reboot.

If it starts acting up again it's time to try some of the other solutions mentioned in my earlier post. But ideally things will be good again!

Best of luck and let us know how it goes.

 

Thanks for the info... sounds though like I'm going to loose most/all my shows though no matter what drive is bad? There's no way to copy the old drive data to a new one and have it married to the other drive?

 

Unless you're familiar with Unix/Linux and willing to work with some complicated coding (more at the MFSlive.org forum) about the only option for saving non-copy protected recordings (created after connecting the eSATA drive) is to transfer them via TiVo Desktop (or another thrid-party program) to your computer.

Again per my other post, if it turns out to be that your WD My DVR Expander is bad (KS54 diagnostic) it may be that the enclosure is the problem, not the hard drive itself. If that's the case you can try removing the hard drive from the enclosure and placing it in a new one.

Best of luck!

 

Considering I've been know to hack the Linux kernel on a few occasions, I might just be up to it. I'll check out the mfslive forums. Thanks!

 

It didn't take very long at all. Maybe 10-15 minutes. So far, so good.

Al

 

That's a very good sign Al.