Last time I had a drive go bad it got noisy, had problems powering up, and (I think) resulted in some playback problems. I don't ever recall seeing reboots during playback, but I may be forgetting them. My symptoms now are not the same (which I suppose is no guarantee it isn't a drive problem).

I've seen 6.3e threads on various web forums debating whether the recent problems are due to bad drives or due to 6.3e bugs. Like Cahillj, there seem to be people with relatively new drives having problems, and people reporting multiple machines starting to exhibit these symptoms at the same time (which seems to argue against a hard drive problem).

My drive is less than a year old. It's frustrating that there doesn't seem to be a way to determine whether this is a hard drive problem or a software problem.

Whenever there is a software update, there is an uptick in users reporting problems with their TiVos. This has to do with the way space on a drive is used, and previously inactive parts of drives becoming active after an update.

Given this history, when problems start cropping up after an update, we presume that they are drive related, because historically, they are. In this case, it does appear that there might be issues with 6.3e. We have had more than one customer have the same problems with brand new drives.

Here is the URL
http://www.weaknees.com/misc.php
Quote
Prep a Single Add-On Drive
If you have a drive you'd like to add to your TiVo and you'd like it formatted, we can do it.
end quote

What fooled me is "Add-On". Guess the "A" and "B" should have told me that Add-On actually means "Replace existing drive with user supplied drive"