[dnorth12]

I have had my S3 since Sept 14 of 2006. I added a 750g external sata back in May of 2007. I have never had any of the pixel or sound problems others have described. This has been great machine until now.

Here is what happened.

I have a season pass setup for the local 5pm news on channel 104 Comcast in Seattle. I watch it daily when I get home from work. Last night when I went to play the recording, the image came up but was frozen. Within 5 seconds I got a no sync/signal message on my screen, not sure if that was the S3 or my Hitachi plasma. The S3 went through a reboot and I tried it again. Same thing. I then deleted the recording. I tried a sample of other recordings made prior to yesterday and all started normally.

Then this morning I had the same issue with Mad Men on AMC which was recorded at the same time the other tuner was recording Burn Notice on USA. Burn Notice played no problem.

Mad Men did the same thing as the news show the night before. I had pressed play from the info screen. I waited for the reboot. But this time instead of deleting Mad Men I pressed the play button from the menu and it played fine until 44 minutes into the program when it just froze and rebooted.

There are a number of possiblities, internal hard drive, external e-sata, one of the tuners a longshot maybe.

When I get home tonight, I can troubleshoot by pulling the e-sata and run without it for a few days.

But I would like a little feedback from anyone experiencing the same sort of thing with some other strategies.

Any info would be greatly appreciated.

dnorth12

 

[Dr_Diablo]

I had a simular problem you are experiencing... Short of replacement of the drive in question, had two internal drives... Instead of deleting the suspect problem I would save it not allowing the hard drive to re-write to that sector/sectors...

Once the prices of drives came down further, I finally did replace both drives and the problems were solved...

This was my experience, you may choose a different path...

 

[dnorth12]

Thanks for the response Dr D.

I suspect that it is the internal hd.

I'll try the don't delete trick and hopefully that is the only bad sector, if that is what it is.

In any case I'm screwed if I have to replace either drive as the programs are striped across both drives.

Seen some of the do it yourself hd replacement posts, but I don't have a PC to do the drive info swapping. Might have to do a week knees deal.

 

[sinanju]

Have you tried the MFS repair kickstart?

 

[dnorth12]

sinanju

I have not done so. Was not aware of it as I haven't delved to deeply into this yet.

Is the procedure that you are referring to what was being discussed in the link below?

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-v...82&highlight=MFS+repair+kickstart#post5407582

 

[sinanju]

That would be it.

 

[dnorth12]

I may have to eat my words.

After a couple more recordings failed to play, I divorced the e-sata drive (Apricorn 750)
and have not had any problem since. Although the recordings I had problems with were season passes, and the ones I tested with since the divorce have been via the record button, I still need to do some further testing.

I'm hoping that it is the e-sata drive and not the S3. I can live without e-sata, but I can't live without the S3. Not to mention the difference in repair dollars.

dnorth12