I have a Series 2 TCD230040 AT&T TiVo. I upgraded the hard drives with 2 Weaknees 160GB Maxtor DiamondMax QuickView drives in October 2004. With the software update in 4/2007 I had repeated lock ups and had to use the 52 code to get the thing running. After a couple of weeks and dozens of restarts the problem went away. Now with the new software upgrade 9/2007 the problem returned and wouldn't go away. Finally it locked up with an 'external storage not present' error. I figured one or both hard drives were gone. Disappointed they would last only 3 years. After ok'ing the restart, everything was erased and had about 150hrs max record time, consistent with only one 160GB drive working.

Pulled both drives today and ran the Seagate diagnostics from a boot CD. The Master drive checked out ok on the long sector read test. The Slave drive had 5 bad sectors (out of 32,000,000!). The program was able to repair the bad sectors. Both drives gave an overheat warning of 253 degrees!!!! I can't imagine it ever getting that hot without melting the plastic bracket or something. Both fans work and the drives are slightly warm to touch but definitely not hot.

After the diagnostics I put the drives back in and TiVo started fine, but still only 150hrs max recording (43 hrs at Best quality). So I unplugged the slave drive and started it up, and sure enough no change in the time. Tried plugging the slave in by itself but stuck on power up screen.

Is there any way to get the 2nd drive working? Does it need to be reformatted or something? I did not think that a successful repair of 5 sectors would render the thing incapable of working with TiVo, unless the repair erases the data and they were critical programming sectors.

What do you think of the temp warning? I can't believe it ever got that hot. After leaving it on overnight the case is not even warm, and both fans work without being plugged up with dust or covered up by anything.