[Nicholas Alan Wojtysiak]

Everyday I get brief periods of pixilation, color distortion, and audio cut outs.
It pretty much always happens when a program returns from a commercial break


Is this a sign of harddrive failure? I've tried diagnosing the internet and cable connections and neither had an effect. Furthermore, when streaming Amazon Prime last night, I had a good amount of audio stutter that eventually went away after 5-10 minutes.

 

[tommage1]

Could be, how old is the Bolt? May be able to pull the drive, hookup to Windows computer and run Crystal disk info to check hours and any errors. DO NOT let Windows format the drive though, it will say it is unformatted, it's not, it's formatted for Tivo/Linux. If you let Windows format it you will lose everything on the drive, ie all your recordings and settings.

 

[Nicholas Alan Wojtysiak]

Just under 4 years

 

[tommage1]

Just under 4 years

For a 2.5" drive that is quite a bit. I'd suggest testing the drive as I mentioned. Since 4 years probably time for a replacement regardless. What to get depends on if you need to keep recordings/settings. If starting fresh pretty easy, though you NEED a CMR (not SMR) drive. What size drive is in there now?

 

[Nicholas Alan Wojtysiak]

1000 GB.

I did purchase a Toshiba MQ03ABB200 2TB 5400 RPM 16MB Cache Sata 6.0 Gb/s 2.5" Harddrive in July after looking through the forums here. I believe this is a simple plug and play from what I gathered? Tivo automatically formats the harddrive after install.
Is that accurate?

 

[tommage1]

1000 GB.

I did purchase a Toshiba MQ03ABB200 2TB 5400 RPM 16MB Cache Sata 6.0 Gb/s 2.5" Harddrive in July after looking through the forums here. I believe this is a simple plug and play from what I gathered? Tivo automatically formats the harddrive after install.
Is that accurate?

Yep, should be as long as starting fresh. Once you do it though, DO NOT put the old drive back in again. And do not do the new one if you want to keep anything off the old one. Would have to copy and expand using MFST. Swapping drives around in Bolts causes loss of data on all drives really, once up and running should never swap after that.