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  • Upgrade gone bad?

    I have (had?) an 8 year old series 2 (model 230040) The 40 GB hard drive was making noises, so I figured it was finally time to upgrade. Bought a 500 GB drive & downloaded instructions from Weaknees and Hinsdale. Downloaded mfsTools from Weaknees and burned a boot disk. Unplugged my 2 drives, changed jumpers and connected the old & new Tivo drives. Booted from CD and Linux came up & everything was as I expected. The old drive was hda and showed 40gb, the new drive was hdb and showed 500 gb. Ran the copy command:
    mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hda | mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -xzpi - /dev/hdb

    Backup & restore ran, showing progress. As advertised, it was slow because I was copying all of my recordings. It finally finished and showed over 500 hours available on the new drive. Life is good.

    Installed the new drive in the TiVo with the jumper set to cable select, which was the setting on the old drive. Turned it on, and ... Fan runs, Screen says Welcome. Powering Up. And nothing happens. No drive sounds. No boot. I open the box & change the jumper setting to Master. Also notice that the ribbon cable to the front panel is now disconnected. Oops - I reconnect it. Try booting again with the same result. Switch back to the old drive. Still no boot - Same result. Re-read instructions (RTFM!). Hinsdale says some users have reporting damaging the Tivo by booting with the ribbon cable to the front panel disconnected. Oops - Did I boot with it out? Maybe - not sure. Try new drive again - No joy.

    So - What's the verdict - Did I kill my TiVo? Except for the fact that it won't boot, it seems fine. Actually, it seems like it doesn't see the drive at all, but why not? And why wouldn't it see the old drive? (Yes, I set the jumper back to what it was).

    Let me know what you think! Any help would be great! I'd love an excuse to get a new TiVo, but this one has (had?) lifetime service, so it's hard to let it go.

    Spack

  • #2
    You'd have a hard time killing your TiVo with what you've done.

    Have you checked the other ends of the drive's power and IDE cables? Are they both secure?
    Been here a long time . . .

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    • #3
      It finally finished and showed over 500 hours available on the new drive. Life is good.
      Installed the new drive in the TiVo with the jumper set to cable select, which was the setting on the old drive. Turned it on, and ... Fan runs, Screen says Welcome. Powering Up.
      Which is it? Did the drive boot and show the space, or did it not boot and show welcome, powering up?

      Either way, it sounds like you have an issue with the factory drive, and that might have prevented a good/usable copy.

      The front-panel ribbon cable would not cause you to stick on powering up; that would impact your ability to use the remote control.

      You might want to consider a drive-replacement kit, but that's up to you.

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      • #4
        Yes - The cables are all secure.

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        • #5
          The Backup & Restore in mfsTools showed the 500 hour capacity. It won't power up in the Tivo. But no the original drive won't boot the TiVo either. Something is wrong!

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          • #6
            Sounds like you had a bad factory drive. Or, if you booted the factory into Windows, that could kill it as well.

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            • #7
              I didn't boot the drive into windows, and the factory drive used to work fine. Could the copy command have corrupted the drive? I doubt it. And even if it did, wouldn't the drive be making some noise?

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              • #8
                Just another thought. It doesn't recognize the drive, and it's 8 years old, and it was unplugged for a day. Should I be thinking about the CMOS battery? What happens in a TiVo if the battery dies, and how does it recognize a new drive?

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                • #9
                  That battery is completely useless and is not the cause. The TiVo will automatically recognize a good drive with properly-loaded software. It's not likely that the copy command corrupted the drive.

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