[drmengler]

Hi there,

I've recently been experiencing freezes and hangs with my Tivo. It has the original 40 gig drive in it, plus the one I've added (120 gig I think).

I'd like to remove the 40 gig drive from the system, but despite the howto's, etc, that I'm aware of, I can't find one that covers removing one hard drive (40 gig master, in my case) and moving the slave over to be the sole drive in the system.

I'm not concerned about losing my recordings or season pass data,etc. I also have a turbonet card in, but I can reinstall the software for that easily enough.

I do have a backup but I can't remember whether it's of my original one-drive tivo, or my dual-drive tivo before I put the turbonet card in.

So, how do I go about removing the 40 gig drive?

Apologies if this is covered elsewhere, but I couldn't find it.

Thanks,

Matthew

 

[sanderton]

If you are not concerned about recordings or season passes then just restore a backup to the 120. If it's from a dual disk setup it may work if you are lucky and got a divorced backup; if not then you'll need to get someone to send you a vanilla backup image. Thar's a thread here to ask for them.

 

[drmengler]

Cheers, I've added a request to the thread you mentioned!

I'm going to run manufacturer's diagnostics on my two hard drives before I do anything - if they both pass with flying colours, I wonder what the cause of the spontaneous freeze/reboot situation could be.

I maybe should have mentioned, it hasn't managed to complete a daily call for a fortnight - I went through it all with Tivo's phone support last night, we established that the Tivo is dialling up OK, but I actually saw it reboot spontaneously after a few minutes spent during the "Connecting" phase twice last night.

Would this indicate some kind of database corruption?

If both drives pass, would you still suggest restoring a backup as the next step to restoring my tivo to full functionality?

Thanks,

Matthew

 

[blindlemon]

If you have network access then you can ensure you get a divorced backup by ruinning my DeleteAll script from this thread.

That way you can keep your settings and SPs etc., along with your network drivers and hacks.

 

[drmengler]

Gotcha.

Providing the 40 gig drive is failing, I shall:

- Run the delete all script
- Follow the hinsdale how-to on backing up a two-drive tivo(making divorced image)
- Restore the new image over the 120 gig drive

And that will keep my turbonet drivers, endpad, etc?

Sounds good!

Thanks.

 

[drmengler]

Did a low-level diagnostic scan on the older of the two hard drives in my tivo last night. Surprisingly, it passed with flying colours. Can't imagine the new drive (18 months) is faulty, but I'll be scanning it tonight to check.

If both drives are AOK, I'm getting graphical corruption, spontaneous reboots, freezes, and also reboots during 'connect' phase of EPG update, but this can't be related to dodgy drives.

In which case, what do my symptoms point to, if anything?
Providing the drives check out, what course of action would you guys recommend?

 

[AMc]

My 18 month old PC drive bit the dust recently and it got significantly less use than Tivo.
If your drives are OK My next course would be a fresh install from a brand new back up (see the request thread). It could be something in the file system I would guess.

 

[blindlemon]

Can't imagine the new drive (18 months) is faulty, but I'll be scanning it tonight to check.

18 months in a TiVo is probably equivalent to around 18 years in the average PC

 

[drmengler]

Hi guys,

Completed full scan of both HD's last night. They both check out absolutely fine, so it doesn't look like a HD failure problem.

Got myself a vanilla backup image. Ran your delete all script, blindlemon. So the plan tonight is to make a divorced backup and then restore the vanilla backup image. I can't see any other option. Got nothing to lose now since I've deleted my recordings anyway

One thing that crossed my mind - do I need to contact Tivo again if I restore a vanilla backup image regarding my (monthly) sub? Or is it just a matter of following through guided setup?

 

[blindlemon]

No need to contact TiVo - just redo GS and all should be fine.

The only problem I can think of is that if your original issue was down to database corruption, then that might have been preserved in the backup. I would therefore suggest you do "Clear & Delete Everything" rather than just GS to try to avoid this possibility.

 

[drmengler]

Do you mean there's a 'clear and delete everything' in the menu system somewhere?

In which case, are you saying "don't bother restoring the vanilla backup, just do clear and delete with the current setup, and redo guided setup"?

Or, "do clear and delete then restore vanilla backup then do gs" - which doesn't seem so likely as restoring the vanilla backup would surely make the clear and delete step redundant.

I think I'm slightly confused!

 

[blindlemon]

Sorry, I missed the fact that you were proposing to restore a 'vanilla' backup - by which I assume you mean one you obtained from the backups thread.

In that case, as you have noticed, there's no point doing a C&DE - but then there was no point in your doing a "DeleteAll" either (unless you just wanted a divorced backup of your system as a keepsake). I'm not sure who's more confused here now...

 

[drmengler]

haha! No, I'm the confused one.

No problems. It's all clear now. I was planning to take a divorced backup, which is why I "deleted all" last night. But, given that I had recently stripped down my season passes, and I can easily reinstall cachecard drivers, endpad, etc... I'll just go for it and restore the vanilla backup this evening.

Probably the best way to determine whether there's a problem with the hardware as well - if I still can't complete daily call after that, there's probably a modem problem.

I'll keep you up to date if you can be bothered to keep reading...

Cheers for the help so far.

 

[drmengler]

Well, looks like I'm sorted.

I'm up and running with the restored vanilla backup, with both my HD in.
A database must have been corrupted somewhere along the line, that's the only reason I can imagine a daily call failed.

Now, back to installing my cachecard, drivers, ftp, endpad, tivoweb...

thanks for the help!