Bolt Vox 3TB V117 and 5+ hours "starting up"

I probably have a hard drive failure (208 days into a 180-day Weaknees drive warranty) However I hate to lose some of stuff on drive -18% full) and weird stuff going on if it could be anything else. Have had TIVOs since early 2000s went from a Romeo Plus to Bold on 6/25/2019 and worked great until 2 days ago.

TIVO will replace for free but only with their stock 1TB drive vs 3TB unit I got from Weaknees who I am in email correspondence on. Tivo had support on holiday sounded Asians but helpful and approved an exchange if I wanted it.

It started out with only a few programs into about 22 min of playing would freeze. Then after 2-3 minutes would advance like 2 secs and freeze again. Most other programs were fine and no issue with Live TV. Sometimes I would get a V117 error code (relates to no tuner available from my research) which made no sense even when not recording anything. Sometimes rebooting seemed to cure and at this point, reboot was normal until...

Monday 1/28 starting about 3AM it would reboot by itself and take 5-6 hours on the "starting up" screen. Sometimes I wound interrupt after about 30 minutes to try something else. But I could only get the Menu back if I let startup run 5-6 hours! Then I would have a small amount of time to see menus and look around. The menu came up normally but when select a recorded program would take about 30 seconds and now on all programs get V117 error "try again later".

I have done many "pull the plug" reboots. Unplugged everything, rebooted modem and router (but am on MOCA) Tried with cox tuner on and off and even plugged power cord into wall vs via APS unit! Each reboot takes 5-6 hours on "starting up".

From looking at systems menu etc cable cards at 97%-98% strength, ODT is at 65 (relates to temperature but I haven't found what is normal). However, the last two times I noted it went into update mode which made sense. It seemed much slower than usual but watched it to "preparing" fine, then did something about Date Update and whatever is next is when it rebooted. I have no idea if this was a cause or just happened to reboot about the same time when doing an update.

I also did cable card testing as by email Weaknees wasn't convinced it was the hard drive but maybe the cable card. It appears the only "testing" is if you move up and down the channels it shows you what and who each channel is. I assume since it showed all channels on the blue screen that means it tested fine.

I realize its a long shot that is it not the drive and I lost the recordings. I often offload to PC via IP address non-protected stuff. But I can not connect via IP when it is now at least up to see the Menu screens before it reboots itself.

I have watched some videos on replacing HD but it's not that easy and I am not mechanically inclined. Confused on the attempt to clone and replace that some more techy folks here have discussed!

I am torn between sending it back to Weaknees for their diagnostics in the slim chance it is not the HD. But if it is not sure its worth it to upgrade to 3TB again since not in warranty via them vs. free exchange which has been approved by TIVO but for their stock 1TB drive. I have no other way to get TV so am anxious to have a solution in the shortest amount of time - since I love my TIVO when it is working! I have it record lots of stuff and almost never watch live or stream anything.

I need to offload what I can and want to save sooner. I lost a lot of stuff last year when my Romeo HD failed but it lasted about 5 years or more. I expected the Bolt to last more than seven months!