Hard Drive Problems -- Evaluating My Options

[scottk]

My Tivo Premiere (with lifetime subscription) is just under two years old and showing several of the usual symptoms of hard drive failure: freezing, pixellation, delays in responding to the remote, etc. And, when I run the Kickstart-54 SMART test, the Short, Conveyance, and Extended tests all show "Fail". Given that I am comfortable replacing hard drives and other components, I believe my options are as follows, in descending order of cost:

1. Accept Tivo's offer to exchange my Tivo for another unit (refurbished casing, supposedly all new parts inside), for $149; or

2. Order a hard drive upgrade/repair kit here ($140 for same standard size, which is sufficient for this Tivo); or

3. Buy a brand new Tivo here ($99), and don't activate the new unit but move its hard drive to my existing unit.

Between options 1 and 2, is there enough value in having all new parts (not just a new hard drive) to justify a few extra bucks, and can I really believe Tivo that only the case is refurbished and the inside parts are all new? And, is there any reason not to save $40-$50 or more and go with option 3?

Any advice appreciated, including anything I'm missing in thinking or asking about these options. Thanks.

[WK-Michael]

As far as what's inside #1, I really don't know.

#3 isn't a bad idea, actually. You'll need to do a "clear and delete everything" once you've moved the drive, to wipe out the hardware error. Of course, there's no warranty on the drive that way.

[RichSNJ]

What did you do?

Hi Scott, I'm curious as to what option you chose?

I ask because when I purchased my Premiere and had to choose a service option, I was very interested in the lifetime option but read the fine print and it seemed to say that in the event your tivo dies outside of 1 year, *even* if it is replaced witht the same model, that your lifetime subscription would not transfer to the new unit.

This sounded terrible and I even called Tivo and they confirmed this, which is why I don't have the lifetime option.

If you did decide to swap it out, did you get your subscription ported over?

[WK-Michael]

If TiVo does the swap, they'll generally let you move your lifetime over for a fee.

[mayeri]

my tivo premiere is just over 4 years old and started exhibiting some pixellation, freezing and pausing issues ( though the problems were most notable when using kmttg ). A kickstart 54 - SMART test returned "FAIL 7" on Short, Conveyance & Extended tests for the original internal drive ; the external 1TB Mybook AV passed the tests. I currently have over 180 programs on it, 69 of them "copy protected". What are my best options for preserving the most recordings?

[WK-Michael]

If you can copy those shows of to your computer over your network, that's the best way. Beyond that, if you have a TiVo Stream you could try to salvage shows that way.

Then, you need a new large internal drive. Find your exact model here:

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