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Premiere XL, with 1 TB external WD eSata drive.
On monday, I was watching one of my recorded shows, when the picture all of a sudden froze for a while, then started stuttering. The Tivo then decided to go into a perpetual cycle of "Starting up", "Almost there" and GSOD.
After a little googling, a few unsuccessful kick start attempts and some research on the WeaKnees tech pages, I came to the conclusion that either the internal or external drive was dead. To determine which, I disconnected the external drive, and restarted the Premiere. This time, it would cycle between "starting up' and a message that the external drive was not found and a reboot after confirming that I wanted to remove it.
At this point, my options were a warranty repair/exchange since the unit is only 1 month old, or get a 2TB internal drive from Weaknees and ditch the external drive. I chose the second option, since I really was not comfortable with the external drive solution, and was planning to upgrade anyway.
The drive from WeaKnees was ordered and overnighted on Wednesday, and arrived here in NJ Thursday evening. It was installed on Friday, and the Premiere came back to life immediately. I lost my recordings of course, but that is not the end of the world.
I decided to get a 2 year extended warranty on the new drive just in case, but hopefully I won't be needing that.
A few words on the kit, it comes with very detailed instructions, and two torx drivers. The drivers are needed to get the cover off, and also to remove the old and install the new drive. The torx drivers are a nice touch, because most people will not have these in their toolbox.
The instructions that came with the kit are very detailed, and spell each step out to the letter. I work in IT and am not a stranger to swapping hard drives, but I can certainly appreciate a well written set of instructions when I see one. I wish all our recovery procedures at work were as detailed as this document.
So to sum it up, thanks to Weaknees for coming to the rescue. Being able to just drop in a preconfigured drive made this repair virtually painless.
This is my second experience with WeaKnees, I recently also had them diagnose and repair my dead Tivo Series 2 (bad power supply) and do a drive upgrade while they had the machine in their shop. That all worked out very well too, and the Series 2 is recording away like nothing ever happened.
Also for the record for those wondering, Lifetime subscription were retained on both units after the drive swaps, as that is tied to a chip on the motherboard, not the hard drive.
And both Tivo Units are running off an UPS now.
On monday, I was watching one of my recorded shows, when the picture all of a sudden froze for a while, then started stuttering. The Tivo then decided to go into a perpetual cycle of "Starting up", "Almost there" and GSOD.
After a little googling, a few unsuccessful kick start attempts and some research on the WeaKnees tech pages, I came to the conclusion that either the internal or external drive was dead. To determine which, I disconnected the external drive, and restarted the Premiere. This time, it would cycle between "starting up' and a message that the external drive was not found and a reboot after confirming that I wanted to remove it.
At this point, my options were a warranty repair/exchange since the unit is only 1 month old, or get a 2TB internal drive from Weaknees and ditch the external drive. I chose the second option, since I really was not comfortable with the external drive solution, and was planning to upgrade anyway.
The drive from WeaKnees was ordered and overnighted on Wednesday, and arrived here in NJ Thursday evening. It was installed on Friday, and the Premiere came back to life immediately. I lost my recordings of course, but that is not the end of the world.
I decided to get a 2 year extended warranty on the new drive just in case, but hopefully I won't be needing that.
A few words on the kit, it comes with very detailed instructions, and two torx drivers. The drivers are needed to get the cover off, and also to remove the old and install the new drive. The torx drivers are a nice touch, because most people will not have these in their toolbox.
The instructions that came with the kit are very detailed, and spell each step out to the letter. I work in IT and am not a stranger to swapping hard drives, but I can certainly appreciate a well written set of instructions when I see one. I wish all our recovery procedures at work were as detailed as this document.
So to sum it up, thanks to Weaknees for coming to the rescue. Being able to just drop in a preconfigured drive made this repair virtually painless.
This is my second experience with WeaKnees, I recently also had them diagnose and repair my dead Tivo Series 2 (bad power supply) and do a drive upgrade while they had the machine in their shop. That all worked out very well too, and the Series 2 is recording away like nothing ever happened.
Also for the record for those wondering, Lifetime subscription were retained on both units after the drive swaps, as that is tied to a chip on the motherboard, not the hard drive.
And both Tivo Units are running off an UPS now.
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