Kind soul needed to answer Q on replacing hard drive

1590 Views 15 Replies 8 Participants Last post by unitron, Feb 4, 2012

993wah

Discussion Starter · Jan 27, 2012

Hello,

I have a TiVo series 2 TCD24004A with the 40GB drive that just died last month. I know the drive is dead; I work with hard drives a lot. I'd like to replace the drive with one lying around the office.

I do not want to pay > $100 to buy a new, preformatted drive.
I do not want to pay $40 to buy an ISO image that will format a new drive.
I do not want to backup my old drive because it's dead and won't spin up.

What I would like, if it's possible, is to format my own drive using free software or Linux utilities. Is there a simple way I can take my own new hard drive and format it so it can be used in this DVR, without having to spend any money?

If so, I would be grateful if you can point me at the details!

Thanks,

1 - 16 of 16 Posts

replaytv

· #2 · Jan 27, 2012

The new drive is going to have to have the tivo software on it, so you need to load that software on it. It isn't just a matter of formatting the drive.

MikeAndrews

· #3 · Jan 27, 2012

Buy a used TiVo of the same model locally on Craigslist for ~$30 and swap the drive into yours.

Check the wiki. You should be able to find a compatible 80GB or 120GB model.

993wah

Discussion Starter · #4 · Jan 27, 2012

replaytv said:
The new drive is going to have to have the tivo software on it, so you need to load that software on it. It isn't just a matter of formatting the drive.

Thanks for the quick response! I know it needs the TiVo software, I just don't want to have to pay for it; I already paid for this TiVo once before and I've been paying $12 a month for the last 8 years (foolish me, I know).

It seems like the commercial products available are charging you for the convenience of not needing to understand or type commands from a Linux shell. I'm comfortable doing that, and I'm broke, so if there is a way to recycle one my own drives for free, I'd like to do that.

steve614

· #5 · Jan 27, 2012

Read up on MFS Live.
http://www.mfslive.org/winmfs/index.html

WinMFS is free software that will format your hard drive for the Tivo. It can take a back up image and restore it on a new hard drive and works in a Windows environment.

Now for the image that you'll need, scan this thread for posts in the last year.
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=8388388#post8388388

I believe someone has posted a link to the image for your Tivo.
Remember, you need to look for a TCD240 image made with WinMFS.

993wah

Discussion Starter · #6 · Jan 27, 2012

Steve, you are a freeking giant! Thanks and HUGE props to you, I think this is just what I need.

unitron

· #7 · Jan 27, 2012

steve614 said:
Read up on MFS Live.
http://www.mfslive.org/winmfs/index.html

WinMFS is free software that will format your hard drive for the Tivo. It can take a back up image and restore it on a new hard drive and works in a Windows environment.

Now for the image that you'll need, scan this thread for posts in the last year.
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=8388388#post8388388

I believe someone has posted a link to the image for your Tivo.
Remember, you need to look for a TCD240 image made with WinMFS.

993wah said:
Thanks for the quick response! I know it needs the TiVo software, I just don't want to have to pay for it; I already paid for this TiVo once before and I've been paying $12 a month for the last 8 years (foolish me, I know).

It seems like the commercial products available are charging you for the convenience of not needing to understand or type commands from a Linux shell. I'm comfortable doing that, and I'm broke, so if there is a way to recycle one my own drives for free, I'd like to do that.

The same place (mfslive.org) where you can get the WinMFS program is where you can get a zip file of an image for the MFS Live cd v1.4, which is a cd from which you boot your computer and it loads a version of Linux and some TiVo hard drive wrangling tools into memory, bypassing your winders drive altogther.

Backup images made with it usually have the .bak extension

Backup images made with WinMFS should have the .tbk extension

They are not interchangeable.

You have to use WinMFS to restore an image made with WinMFS.

MFS Live can restore images made with it or with its predecessor, MFS Tools.

The various MFS Tools how-to's and FAQ's are still recommended reading, although it takes a while to get a sense of what the various options/switches really do, and if they're necessary, but should be considered out of date, especially for use with MFS Live, which has different command names, for instance restore instead of mfsrestore.

You should take the hard drive out of your 240 and test it hooked to a computer (DO NOT try to look at it with any Windows programs or utilities except for WinMFS, almost everything else will try to put a DOS/Windows style Master Boot Record on it, which will hose the Apple Partition Map which it uses.

While you've got the TiVo opened up, go read the Wikipedia page on "capacitor plague" and then look at the picture in the thread "broken" in the Help Center Forum here for a picture of just how subtle the visual difference between a good and bad capacitor can be, and then carefully examine the capacitors in the TiVo's power supply WITH IT UNPLUGGED.

You could have both hard drive and power supply problems.

Good news, bad caps in power supply, $10 or less for replacement parts.

The 240 and 540 series S2s used Maxtor drives which have a slightly higher LBA number than WD drives (and maybe Seagate and others) of the supposed same number of GBs, so what brand, model number, size, and LBA number are any spare drives you have on hand?

You can use a SATA drive in that 240 with the right adapter.

Here's the adapter thread

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=416883

Short version, you need one with a Marvell or JMicron chipset. (For an S1, it has to be the more expensive Marvell based adapters, but S2's can use either. Avoid any other chipset brand, like SunPlus SataLink and the other one I can't remember right now)

If you have a drive with an LBA number at least as large as 160086528 (the 80GB Maxtor in my TCD24008A), you can use your choice of either image linked in this post.

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=8707432#post8707432

but download both versions to keep them alive on the sendspace server longer.

There might be a 240040 or 24004A image of someone else's somewhere in that thread as well, but remember it probably came of off a 40GB Maxtor, which means it wants to go onto a drive with an LBA of at least 80293248.

You should burn yourself a copy of the MFS Live cd even if you don't have a TiVo.

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lillevig

· #8 · Jan 28, 2012

993wah said:
Hello,

I have a TiVo series 2 TCD24004A with the 40GB drive that just died last month. I know the drive is dead; I work with hard drives a lot. I'd like to replace the drive with one lying around the office.

I do not want to pay > $100 to buy a new, preformatted drive.
I do not want to pay $40 to buy an ISO image that will format a new drive.
I do not want to backup my old drive because it's dead and won't spin up.

What I would like, if it's possible, is to format my own drive using free software or Linux utilities. Is there a simple way I can take my own new hard drive and format it so it can be used in this DVR, without having to spend any money?

If so, I would be grateful if you can point me at the details!

Thanks,

I will PM you with an image from a 24004a (40GB WD drive). It is in WinMFS format and should work for your box.

993wah

Discussion Starter · #9 · Jan 29, 2012

Don't have enough posts to PM you this response, but wanted to make sure you got it:

Downloading it now - thank you, thank you, thank you! I was looking for a kind soul and you definitely fit the description!

Good karma coming your way I'm sure!

Thanks again!

993wah

Discussion Starter · #10 · Jan 29, 2012

Great info, this helps a ton - I'll have no troubles getting this thing revived now.

Thanks!

993wah

Discussion Starter · #11 · Jan 31, 2012

unitron said:
The 240 and 540 series S2s used Maxtor drives which have a slightly higher LBA number than WD drives (and maybe Seagate and others) of the supposed same number of GBs, so what brand, model number, size, and LBA number are any spare drives you have on hand?

[...]

If you have a drive with an LBA number at least as large as 160086528 (the 80GB Maxtor in my TCD24008A), you can use your choice of either image linked in this post.

Hmmmm. Okay, so that could be a problem then. The two spares I pulled are both 40GB, 1 WD and 1 Seagate. They have the same LBA as one another, but that is less than the factory Maxtor.

The WD & Seagate drives have an LBA of 78165360.

So does that mean that I need an image from a drive with a <= LBA as my drives, or that I need to use the software to set up one of these drives from scratch?

Thanks,
--
-bp

unitron

· #12 · Jan 31, 2012

993wah said:
Hmmmm. Okay, so that could be a problem then. The two spares I pulled are both 40GB, 1 WD and 1 Seagate. They have the same LBA as one another, but that is less than the factory Maxtor.

The WD & Seagate drives have an LBA of 78165360.

So does that mean that I need an image from a drive with a <= LBA as my drives, or that I need to use the software to set up one of these drives from scratch?

Thanks,
--
-bp

The 40GB Maxtors seem to have an LBA of 80293248, and an image from a 40GB S2 TiVo is going to want to restore to something at least that big, so your WD and Seagate aren't going it to cut it, unfortunately.

Do you have any spare SATA drives?

Spl7

· #13 · Feb 2, 2012

unitron said:
The 40GB Maxtors seem to have an LBA of 80293248, and an image from a 40GB S2 TiVo is going to want to restore to something at least that big, so your WD and Seagate aren't going it to cut it, unfortunately.

Do you have any spare SATA drives?

I believe the S2 was IDE. I think weaknees offers a converter if you need one.

unitron

· #14 · Feb 2, 2012

Spl7 said:
I believe the S2 was IDE. I think weaknees offers a converter if you need one.

As it happens, there's an entire thread devoted to which adapter to use with which SATA drive in which S1 or S2.

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=416883

nt40lanman

· #15 · Feb 2, 2012

I guess I got lucky. I do computer work and have spare stuff laying around. I picked a random 80gb drive and used winmfs to copy my current drive to it and it just worked!! I didn't know anything about LBA problems.

unitron

· #16 · Feb 4, 2012

nt40lanman said:
I guess I got lucky. I do computer work and have spare stuff laying around. I picked a random 80gb drive and used winmfs to copy my current drive to it and it just worked!! I didn't know anything about LBA problems.

What model TiVo?

1 - 16 of 16 Posts

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