Sorry to hear about your son.

There are other recovery services we can try, but, to be honest, getting back that data is generally all-or-nothing, and the more effective method would be to contact the news outlets and try to purchase DVD copies of their broadcasts.

Thank you for replying. Trying to get copies from the tv stations has proved to be nearly impossible because of the length of time, etc. You said there might be another way to recover the data. Is there anyone you know who could help me with this? Thank you so much

We can try, but for the best chance of success, you should really go to DriveSavers. They cost substantially more, but they can go deeper than we can. And if we try first, we could cause more harm, just in the attempt.

Are you sure that your hard drive is suffering from physical failure. Have your tried any data recovery software to get back your back. In case there is logical failure then Stellar Phoenix Windows [links deleted] will help you in recovering your lost data. It provides recovery of data from formatted hard drive, or data lost due to software malfunction, viruses or even sabotage.
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I would be surprised if any of the data recovery services are able to recover video off of a TiVo drive. They are encrypted with a fairly strong encryption tied to the crypto chip on your tivo. The only way to play them on another tivo is to unsolder the crypto chip from the old tivo motherboard and move it to a new one.

The first step, it would seem to me, is to find out what is wrong with your tivo. Is the harddrive, or something else? Might be the power supply, a fuse, etc, etc. What are the failure symptoms? Does it power on at all? Does it produce any video output?

Thank you so much for replying and trying to help. I really appreciate it since I know absolutely nothing about any of this. My TIVO started acting up by losing power if the machine was moved. There seemed to be a short of some kind in the power cord where it plugged into the back of the TIVO unit - if I moved it, the unit would come back on. This lasted for only a few days and then, when the power cord was moved, sparks appeared inside the TIVO unit near where the power cord plugged into the back. The unit never would come on after that.

When I got my new TIVO I tried using the new power cord plugged into the old TIVO, but got no power whatsoever. That leads me to think that maybe there is something wrong with the power supply unit only, but I don't know who would be able to tell, or who I should call. But if the hard drive is not involved at all, then maybe there is a simply fix to this.

Thank you in advance for any help.

That does sound like a power supply issue. You should be able to find a replacement power supply here:

http://www.weaknees.com/tivops.php

I've had a problem that sounds like that in the past where the power connector on the power supply board became detached from the board. It would sometimes work when I wiggled the power cable, and sometimes not. I also got sparks inside when it had this intermittent connection.

It that's what it is, a new power supply ought to fix it up. In my case, I was able to fix it by resoldering the connector to the power supply board.