TiVo HD stuttering. HD issue?

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I have a TiVo HD that is a couple of years old. Earlier this year I replaced the hard drive with a "HITACHI Deskstar 7K1000.C HDS721010CLA332 (0F10383) 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive". This was after the unit failed due to the external WD expander going south. The replacement went well and it worked fine for months.

Lately I have stuttering and UI issues. I will get stuttering that seems to be recorded and 'live' stuttering.

When I say recorded, I mean that I will see/hear the stuttering any time I go to that spot in the show. I can use the TiVo controls to exit the show normally etc. and can move beyond the stutter to a part of the show that is back to normal.

'Live' stuttering seem different. It still could be the recording (I don't watch TV live at all) but the stuttering also affects the UI. I can't stop the show, or if I hit the TiVo button, the show continues with the menu overlaid on top of it. Some times the TiVo will catch up to the remote commands and finally exit. Sometimes it just seems to be stuck stuttering and unresponsive (sometimes with the remote 'bing' sound sometimes not) until I reboot it. Then it might work OK through that show OR more likely I will get stuck again.

Does this sound like a hard drive failure? If so should I be concerned that this is the second hard drive related failure in less than a year? (Though the expander issue could easily be explained by saying the WD expanders seem to fail after a couple of years no matter what.) If I move the recordings to a new hard drive, do I risk moving the problem over to the new OS copy? (I know the show that have recording issues will still have them but I will retain a lot of shows that don't have issues and season passes etc.)

I am trying to decide it I should just scrap it to bad hard drive luck and replace it (then try to get a warranty replacement on the drive). If I should consider the TiVo itself a failure (and figure out what I should do in that situation - it has lifetime on it and is a refurb from a unit that got lightning damaged I.E. lifetime transferred by TiVo to this unit as a repair.) Or if there is something else to do.

Thanks,

Tom