Whining hard drive: Better to keep running, or unplug & plug in to watch?

If the whining is bearing noise then the drive will probably fail soon the next power cycle should be to make a backup/copy. Are you sure it is not coming from the cooling fan(s)?

Option #3: Use TiVoDesktop and backup your recordings to a PC.

Option #4: As you are going to replace the drive anyway if you are comfortable working with the innards of a PC, Get a un-formatted replacement drive the same size or larger then make a sector - sector copy using use dd_rescue or MFSLIVE. See the "Underground Playground" --> "TiVo Upgrade Center" for more info.

 

Since you believe the drive is going to fail, I would replace it now. Why wait til you are in the middle of a must record program for it to fail.

 

HomeUser has, IMO, the right ideas, except for the one for which I'm going to suggest an alternative.

While it's running ('cause you shouldn't count on it starting back up if you shut it down) it should be transferring shows via (the free version of) TiVo Desktop to a hard drive hooked up to the computer running TiVo Desktop.

You can set up a long list of them and it'll do one right after the other, in the order you check the boxes, while you're off earning the price of a new hard drive.

Once you get everything transferred (it's really a copy, but includes the accompanying info that gets lost if you MRV to another TiVo), you should shut it down, wrap a couple of thicknesses of paper towel around it (the drive) and put it in the freezer overnight.

Then hook it up to the computer and do a truncated backup. That's faster than a dd or dd_rescue copy of the drive.

Then set it aside while you test the backup on a known good drive of any size as large as or larger than the original (which was probably a 40 or an 80).

You don't need to expand that drive if it isn't going to be your eventual replacement, you just want to be sure you have a good backup.

When you decide on a replacement drive (might as well get a 1TB and adapter, read the adapter thread), you restore to it from the backup image, test it, and then expand, and that way you don't have the "already used all 3 pairs allowed of MFS partitions, still got unpartitioned drive space left" problem.

Once you get your new spacious drive installed and working, you can point it at that computer running TiVo Desktop, and start copying your shows back over.

 

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Are you sure that it is the hard drive that is making the noise?

A lot of times when a Tivo(or computer) are making noise people assume that it is the hard drive but it is actually a cooling fan which is making the noise.

A simple way to test.......put a pencil in the cooling fan and see if the noise stops. If it does then you know that your problem is the fan -- not the hard drive.

TC