Think your tivo hard drive is dead? Here's how to find out...

[WK-Michael]

Yup - I'd say that's almost definitely a bad drive. Find your model here:

http://www.weaknees.com/tivo-upgrade.php

[Jewal]

Hello,

My series 2 Tivo is stuck on the grey powering up screen.

I tried unplugging the input and then the power as the tivo tech suggested... but when I replugged in the power there was no improvement.

I'm thinking my harddrive is pretty much dead...

Do I need to get a replacement Harddrive since I can't interface with the tivo?

I was hoping there was a chance to recover my programming and get an add on... but that is probably wishful thinking...

What do you think?

[WK-Jeff]

Sounds like you need a new drive, and that data recovery is unlikely. Sorry.

[Jewal]

Yeah, That is pretty much what I thought.

Thank you for responding!

[Hermamma]

Just wanted to stop in and say thank you. This thread helped my 65 year old mother diagnose the problem with her TiVo.

She ordered a new drive, it arrived quicker than we thought, so she replaced it on her own following the great instructions. No problems at all and she is back watching TiVo which she much prefers to "that crazy TV with all the channels and ads!"

[Cernenus]

I have an Directv-TIVO RCA 40 gb, purchased from Weaknees with installed 214 hour capacity (dual drives I think)

System has started to randomly hang, sometimes while 'off' other times in middle of viewing. With a few exceptions where more than 1 try was needed, just doing a power plug out--in reboot got it working again

Surmised it must be a bad drive, order single 500G replacement from Weaknees and it arrived today.

Trying to do a kickstart54 to get an idea which drive is bad, after holding pause during reboot I eventualy get both front LED's turning yellow, after 54 code entered left led goes green, right stays yellow, but nothing seems to happen, I still have the Welcome. Powering up logo

The real question is, is there a chance to save the old programming on the existing drive(s) and transfer to the new drive?? If so, does that mean I need all three plus a cdrom hooked to the computer at once? (which would be difficult since my new system has sata connectors galore, but only a single IDE (ATA) connector.

[WK-Michael]

The new 500 GB drive came with a SATA adapter, so that gives you two ATA ports in your PC essentially. If the unit doesn't boot, you'll have a hard time copying data, but you can try. More info is here:

http://tivo.upgrade-instructions.com

The problem, of course, is that if you aren't successful, then you've overwritten the OS on the destination drive, and then IT won't boot . . .

[Cernenus]

Well I'm not sure I want to risk trashing the existing drive..

Then again I might just be able to plug it into the PC and make a backup of the entire drive to the homeserver.. That would give me a fallback if the process fails. Provided it's in a format that can be read by windows OS, if not that idea might be a no-go

guess I need to go read up on making the required bootable CD's the PC is running windows7 and all the drives are NTFS

So I take it the drives are like some kind of stripe set? I can't just replace the primary drive with the new one and leave the old second drive in system?

[WK-Michael]

Not only would it not be readable in a Windows OS, the boot CD really can't access a network.

[Cernenus]

well if windows would not be able to read the disk format, then yeah obviously backing up the homeserver is a bust..

In any event, that's a moot point. Since I now could not get the tivo past the powering up screen, I decided that at least one or maybe both of the installed drives must have failed completely. So I gave up on the idea of retaining any programming and went straight to installing the new replacement drive

However I'm stuck at the same point, the system won't go past the initial powering up screen. I cant even get it into kickstart mode

I've reseated all the cables twice. What I'm seeing is that when I power on I get a green LED on the back of the IDE/Sata adaptor, a little bit later I get a steady red LED also. and nothing else happens.

What now? it should have just booted up from the new drive right?