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Hey all, first post on these forums. Have had some bad luck with my poor old TiVo, and I'm wondering how sure I can be that replacing the hard drive will fix it.
I have a DirecTV-supplied Hughes HDVR-2 that's almost five years old. About four months ago I upgraded it with an extra 280-hour hard drive from Weaknees. Installed it without significant problem, been working fine.
My problems started about three weeks ago, when I'd come home from work or turn on the TV in the morning and find that the TiVo had rebooted while I was away and it had hung on the grey "Powering Up" screen or on the DirecTV logo screen, before it got to acquiring satellite data. Usually all it would take would be flipping the switch on the power strip that the TiVo is connected to, and it would boot back up normally. After a half-dozen or so of these incidents over the space of a couple of weeks, I came to these forums and found the posts about the "E" version of the software. Because of a problem with the phone jack in my living room, my TiVo isn't normally connected to the phone line. I manually run a 25-foot cord to the kitchen phone jack every couple of months so it can make its call. So when I saw the posts about the E version of the software, I connected the phone cable to see if the F version was waiting to be downloaded, and sure enough, TiVo DLed the F version, it rebooted, and I assumed everything would be fine.
Within two days of my downloading the F software, the TiVo pretty much died a horrible death. It was Friday night and I was watching some stored programs with a friend. On two separate occasions (watching two different programs) that night, the TiVo got to minute 55 of a 60-minute program and then rebooted itself. In the past, it had had the good grace to wait until I was asleep or at work before rebooting itself -- rebooting during active use was new to me. Eventually the time between reboots became a matter of minutes, as it would barely finish booting itself back up and get to normal TV viewing before rebooting again. Finally it gave me the Green Screen of Death and told me to leave the phone line connected. I connected the phone line at that point and waited. The GSOD warned me that it would take three hours, but TiVo rebooted itself after just a few minutes. I'll assume it did not, in fact, finish reconstructing itself. The last few times before I just completely unhooked TiVo from everything, I could hear an audible grinding noise.
So am I right in thinking this is a hard drive problem? I already know that if I buy a new A drive, the B drive that I recently installed won't be any good. But how can I be sure that a busted A drive is the limit to the problems? Do I need to consider the power source or the motherboard as well? I have reason to suspect that power in my apartment is wonky, given by the number of times the UPS in my computer room screamed its displeasure before it busted a fuse.
By the way, are there updated links for the diagnostics from various hard drive manufacturers that were posted in this thread:
http://www.wkforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9
?
The Maxtor link (my original A drive) is out of date and the Seagate (upgrade B drive) link is a redirect.
I have a DirecTV-supplied Hughes HDVR-2 that's almost five years old. About four months ago I upgraded it with an extra 280-hour hard drive from Weaknees. Installed it without significant problem, been working fine.
My problems started about three weeks ago, when I'd come home from work or turn on the TV in the morning and find that the TiVo had rebooted while I was away and it had hung on the grey "Powering Up" screen or on the DirecTV logo screen, before it got to acquiring satellite data. Usually all it would take would be flipping the switch on the power strip that the TiVo is connected to, and it would boot back up normally. After a half-dozen or so of these incidents over the space of a couple of weeks, I came to these forums and found the posts about the "E" version of the software. Because of a problem with the phone jack in my living room, my TiVo isn't normally connected to the phone line. I manually run a 25-foot cord to the kitchen phone jack every couple of months so it can make its call. So when I saw the posts about the E version of the software, I connected the phone cable to see if the F version was waiting to be downloaded, and sure enough, TiVo DLed the F version, it rebooted, and I assumed everything would be fine.
Within two days of my downloading the F software, the TiVo pretty much died a horrible death. It was Friday night and I was watching some stored programs with a friend. On two separate occasions (watching two different programs) that night, the TiVo got to minute 55 of a 60-minute program and then rebooted itself. In the past, it had had the good grace to wait until I was asleep or at work before rebooting itself -- rebooting during active use was new to me. Eventually the time between reboots became a matter of minutes, as it would barely finish booting itself back up and get to normal TV viewing before rebooting again. Finally it gave me the Green Screen of Death and told me to leave the phone line connected. I connected the phone line at that point and waited. The GSOD warned me that it would take three hours, but TiVo rebooted itself after just a few minutes. I'll assume it did not, in fact, finish reconstructing itself. The last few times before I just completely unhooked TiVo from everything, I could hear an audible grinding noise.
So am I right in thinking this is a hard drive problem? I already know that if I buy a new A drive, the B drive that I recently installed won't be any good. But how can I be sure that a busted A drive is the limit to the problems? Do I need to consider the power source or the motherboard as well? I have reason to suspect that power in my apartment is wonky, given by the number of times the UPS in my computer room screamed its displeasure before it busted a fuse.
By the way, are there updated links for the diagnostics from various hard drive manufacturers that were posted in this thread:
http://www.wkforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9
?
The Maxtor link (my original A drive) is out of date and the Seagate (upgrade B drive) link is a redirect.
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