I have an RCA DVR80 DirecTV Tivo unit about 3-1/2 years old that I upgraded last summer with a second drive. Now something seems to be failing; the symptom is the picture disappears to a black screen and the Tivo unit becomes unresponsive. A reboot typically brings it back. This happened for the first time a few days ago, and at first was about 24 hours before recurrence, but it's required three reboots just today. I'm guessing the HD is a likely suspect, and considering that the "B" drive is new I'd guess the "A" drive is the likely one to be bad. Is there an easy way to tell which drive is failing? I'm considering removing the second drive and firing it up again to see if it fails but I don't know if that will affect the "A" drive at all. Plus, if I do that, all it really proves is that the new "B" drive is not the culprit.

So, here are my questions:
-- Is there an easy way to narrow the failure down? Will hooking the drives up to a PC allow me to test them? I suspect I may be able to salvage some of the programs if I do that, but I've never done it before so I'm not certain what I'm getting myself into.
-- If I have to replace the "A" drive, what do I need to do to reload the software?
-- Will replacing the "A" drive mean I will lose programs that are actually stored on the "B" drive?

Thanks for any information.

John Meggers
Ashburn, VA