[jseelna]

I started mine 4 hours ago... still on the screen saying it is deleting everything and that it will take an hour...

 

[lostman72]

If I recall it can take about 2 hours. Being a 250G hard drive it might take as long as 3 hours? I never done it on the HD unit. I know on a stand alone unit it's about 2 hours total.

 

[Mark Lopez]

It can easily take all night. I have done it a few times and have never had it only take 2 or 3 hours.

 

[Ed Campbell]

Tech support told me 3-4 hours min. Incidentally, after all that, mine just started dying, again. Calling for a replacement in the morning.

 

[memory1]

When my first HR10-250 failed the clear and delete was still running after 24 hours !

It never finished, I called support and they agreed to send a replacement

No problems seen again

 

[jseelna]

Did It ever finish -- Mine has been running about 10 hrs.

 

[gquiring]

I did a clear & delete on a working drive with no errors in 1 hour. Running it on my flaky WD250 took about 6 hours. I later ran the WD diagnostics on that drive and found many bad sectors.

 

[Scott Corbett]

Mine ran for about 48 hours. Didn't fix the problem.

 

[jseelna]

I let mine run for 18 hrs.
Then I unplugged and re-started....It went right back to Clearing and Deleting Everything...This will take an hour.

Let it run for 12 more..

Called Directv to get a replacement....after being on the phone for an hour and talking to multiple people, finally got them to agree to a replacement.

Supposedly will have a replacement no later than Friday...
I asked for a Fed-EX Tracking Number and the guy gave me an 8 digit number.....I seem to remember tracking numbers being longer and including letters....probably just wanted to get me off the phone.

 

[hearth]

Originally posted by jseelna
I let mine run for 18 hrs.
Then I unplugged and re-started....It went right back to Clearing and Deleting Everything...This will take an hour.

Let it run for 12 more..

Called Directv to get a replacement....after being on the phone for an hour and talking to multiple people, finally got them to agree to a replacement.

My story is almost exactly the same. Initially, it ran for about 18 hours. I unplugged and replugged, and let it run for about 18 more hours. Since I had called DirecTV for a replacement, I did not ever think (or care) that it would ever finish.

However, last night, it did indeed finish. I was able to go back into the system and watch my old programs, as well as record new shows. I am expecting that the machine will eventually have problems again, as most others have reported that the problems come back eventually, but for now, until I get my replacement, I can still enjoy HDTV....

Don

 

[davsherm]

I ran a clear and delete two weeks ago, and it took 18+ hours. Once it was done, I was barely able to complete guided set up, but was able to watch my recordings before I got the unit replaced.

 

[ozone]

when my unit began failing recently, the clear & delete was running for over 4 days while I waited for my replacement unit to arrive. It never finished, so I just unplugged it and sent it packing back to D*.

 

[jayron]

I'm 48 hrs into a "clear and delete everything" on an 11 month old HDVR2.

Wonder what the longest anyone has run a continuous "clear and delete everything" that resulted in a successful rebuild.

 

[Ensoniq]

What exactly is "Clear And Delete" supposed to do?

Some are talking about it as if it's some sort of repair tool. My understanding that was it was designed to simply remove all of your programming, and reset the TiVo unit to factory defaults.

Why on earth should it take 4 hours for that? Can someone please clarify?

 

[Mark Lopez]

Originally posted by Ensoniq
What exactly is "Clear And Delete" supposed to do?

Some are talking about it as if it's some sort of repair tool. My understanding that was it was designed to simply remove all of your programming, and reset the TiVo unit to factory defaults.

Why on earth should it take 4 hours for that? Can someone please clarify?

I believe the Clear and Delete Everything also does sort of a 'scan disk' to check the drive for errors. That's why it takes so long (and why you shouldn't reboot it while it's running since I think it has to start all over).

 

[jseelna]

Well as of this morning when I left for work... The Clear and Delete everything is still running. I had originally started it early Sunday afternoon and let it run ofr 18 hours and then unplugged and re-started.

As of this morning it had since been "Clearing and Deleting Everything" for 48 hours and still no dice.

I had called Monday to get a replacement and I just verified that it arrived at my Rental office an hour ago... Pretty good service on getting the replacement out. Although I have been on the phone several times for status and the first response is always that they are not able to ship replacements at this time....

 

[bigrig]

So...I've entered into the Clear & Delete Everything Zone. This will take "an hour", my ass!!

Wonder what the longest anyone has run a continuous "clear and delete everything" that resulted in a successful rebuild.

Me too. This morning it was still going into hour 39.

Here's my story:
I was getting reboots and lockups. This is with the stock 250GB + Seagate 160GB.
I took the drives out and checked them with Spinrite. Stock had zero errors. The Seagate didn't need to recover any sectors, but it had 66 million some ECC errors. I assumed (?) this was the bad drive and the cause of my problems.

So I replaced it with a WD 250GB, and put the Tivo back together. It was better, but it still would sometimes spontaneously reboot.

So I tried the C&DE in hopes of killing whatever gremlin is inside my Tivo.

Does going into the 40th hour mean something is wrong with my hard drives? Maybe the stock drive has a problem Spinrite didn't detect?

Thanks for any suggestions,

Matt

 

[DeWitt]

I have heard as long as 72 hours. I stopped mine after 24 hours. I assumed the drive was bad, but since it was snowing and I didn't want to go out for a new drive I downloaded the instant cake utulity from PTVUpgrade. (Was willing to risk $20)

After using the utility to put a new image on the drive, the required C&D took less than an hour. That was months ago and all is still well. It was like getting a new machine.

 

[rcwalters]

I have heard as long as 72 hours. I stopped mine after 24 hours. I assumed the drive was bad, but since it was snowing and I didn't want to go out for a new drive I downloaded the instant cake utulity from PTVUpgrade. (Was willing to risk $20)

After using the utility to put a new image on the drive, the required C&D took less than an hour. That was months ago and all is still well. It was like getting a new machine.

The InstantCake page on ptvupgrade doesn't mention the HDTivo? So is it the same one they use for standard-def Series2 tivos?

 

[DeWitt]

Click on Series 2 Direct tv units. On the next page there is a whole list. including:

InstantCake for Series2 HDTV DirecTiVo Units (3.1.5f)