[timckelley]

My symptoms are extremely frequent pixelation, stuttering of the playback, and once in a while, it refuses to record a show, or entire sections of the show are missing. I assume I'm correct in my thinking that this means my hard drive is failing.

It just so happens I have a spare 80Gig hard drive hanging around in my house that I'm not really using. (It actually was inside a broken computer than I just replaced. I've temporarily installed it as a slave in another working computer, and I intend to get all my important data off it. Once that's done, I have no objection to harvesting it to install into my HDR212)

Do I just follow the Hinsdale instructions of upgrading? Because this isnt' really an upgrade; it's a repair. Is there a better instruction document I should be reading to replace, instead of upgrade my space?

Also, in my case, the previous owner of my HDR212 already did an HD upgrade. It's capacity is currently 194 hours, so I'm guessing this might mean it has two drives in it, instead of the original single drive, so I'm guessing this could complicate my repair if I'm going back to one drive. (I don't mind the space reduction, as I really only intend to use this TiVo for programming conflicts.)

Or is it possible that only one drive is bad? Do the instructions have info in them to help me diagnose if both drives are bad, or if only one is? Because if only one is, maybe I'll keep my extra drive for my computers, and simply remove the bad drive. But if that is the route I go, I assume I'll need to tell the TiVo (somehow) that it only has one drive now.

BTW, I don't care if I lose all my settings and programs on that TiVo. Also, one more bit of info: it's unsubscribed, if that makes any difference to how I go about fixing it.

 

[funtoupgrade]

First, open it up and see exactly what drive or drives are in there. Most drive manufacturers have a drive fitness utility on their web-site which you can use to test each drive in your computer without harming the data on it. Use the results of the tests to determine how to proceed. In the mean time, try to find an good image for your unit here on the forum. Once married, the drives cannot be divorced. From the good image you can restore to one or two disks per Hinsdale.

 

[timckelley]

First, open it up and see exactly what drive or drives are in there. Most drive manufacturers have a drive fitness utility on their web-site which you can use to test each drive in your computer without harming the data on it. Use the results of the tests to determine how to proceed. In the mean time, try to find an good image for your unit here on the forum. Once married, the drives cannot be divorced. From the good image you can restore to one or two disks per Hinsdale.

Well, for one thing I don't mind harming the data on the disks, so if the drive fitness utility harms it, no big deal. (Unless I need to provide the drive image on it for some reason.)

Also, you say once married, you can't divorce the drives. What if one is physically bad and the other still good? Couldn't I reformat the good one, install a new image, and convert my TiVo to a smaller one-drive model? Or maybe even while I'm at it, reformat my spare PC drive, and marry it to get a 2 drive model? Why can't wedded drives be divorced? You'd think once you reformat it, it wouldn't know it's married.

 

[Gunnyman]

exactly
once you wipe it you can go back to a single drive system as long as the MASTER is the one being wiped.

 

[timckelley]

Okay, I just opened it, and see 2 Maxtor 80 G drives in there.

I guess I need to start one at a time installing them into my PC and find some sort of diagnostic test to see which of these drives are bad, and which (if any) are good. If they're both bad, I'm think it'd be cheaper for me to just get a $50 series 2, but if one is good, maybe I can fix this thing for free using the good drive.

It's not obvious me how to dismount the drives though. There connected with strange sort of brackets I've never seen before, and the mounting screws seem to be underneath where I can't reach them. ETA: nevermind... I figured out how to dismount the drives. I need to take the whole mounting bracket off with the drive.

One other note: The fan had quite a bit of dust on it. I blew on it and raised a fairly thick dust cloud.

 

[funtoupgrade]

You're on the right track. Download the Maxtor Drive fitness test from the Maxtor web-site. Either put it on a bootable floppy or bootable CD so you can run it in DOS. The test will quickly tell you whether you have a good drive or not. All you are going to need is a good image and you can then restore to any of your good drives - either one or two.

 

[timckelley]

I ran the fitness utility on one drive and did the quick 90 second test (as opposed to the slower, more thorough test). I let it run for an hours, and it was still running, so I aborted it. I'm not sure why the fitness test isn't working.

Oh, and for some reason the utility says I have 3 drives, but I only have 2.

 

[timckelley]

I'm a stupid idiot. When I disconnected my old slave and went to connect a TiVO HD, I accidentally reconnected the same old slave, which isn't a Maxtor. (That's why my fitness utility wasn't working.)

I've since connected the two Maxtors and tested them both. One is a good hard drive, and the other one has errors. The Maxtor fitness utility gives me the option of attempting to repair the errors. Should I do so? Or once they get errors, are they no longer fit for any consideration to be used in my TiVo?

BTW, it's the master drive that's got errors... the slave is the good one.

Here's another question I've got: I happen to have in my possession an extra hard drive I'm not using: it's a Western Digital (WD200) 20 gig hard drive. Can I use the good Maxtor 80G in conjuction with my WD200 20 gig for a total of 100 gig in my TiVo? Is it okay to mix different brands like that?

 

[timckelley]

Oh, and I have more questions. I was just reading the WeaKnees Interactive Online TiVo Upgrade Instructions, and it talks about making the jumpers on the hard drive matching something, and I can't tell if they're just saying to make sure that the jumpers correspond to how they're installed in my PC. (i.e. I'm leaving my normal PC drive in their as master like it always is... I set both Maxtors to slave to do my fitness testing.)

Or are they saying that if a drive is going to be a master in my TiVo, the jumper must be set to master in my PC when I install the image? I'm confused by the instructions. Also, the instructions talking about a confusing mfs command I'm supposed to type. Is that what installs the image? Or is that something completely different? If it's something completely different, then the WeaKnees Interactive Online TiVo Upgrade Instructions doesn't seem to address the step where I install in image.

Maybe I need a different document to go by when doing this project.