The only way I am aware of is to try a new or known-working power supply.

Followup

I bought a new WD10EVDS drive and dd copied my old 1TB drive to it. The S3 still resets itself. I noticed that it actually reset while it was neither recording nor playing any shows. I realize it could have been doing some background disk activity but I am really feeling this is not a drive problem.

My next step is copying my internal drive to the old 1TB drive and trying that as the internal. I imagine I could also use the 1TB as a backup and try divorcing the drives if that does not fix the problem I could then restore the backup and still have all my data.

Again I ask: is there some way to figure out if this is a power supply problem?

Series3 Reboot, is power supply next to try?

I have a series3 with an external Hitachi drive. KS 54 and full vendor diagnostics do not find any problems with the drives. I have replaced the eSATA cable and the drive enclosure. I get frequent reboots (perhaps most often when 2 HD shows are recording, but not always).

More details: http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb...d.php?t=451885

Is there something else to try? Is there some way to test for a power supply problem?

I'd rather not try divorcing the drives since they both test 100%.

Mike

You can try to move content using TiVo Desktop to see if it will move. If it works, then after you get the drive installed, you can move it back onto the TiVo. (Requires that you pay $25 to TiVo for the upgraded version of TiVo Desktop.

The $79 service presumes that the drive is working. We do have a more advanced data recovery service here:

TiVo Data Recovery

The backup drives are really and truly backups. Two drives with exactly the same content. Not available for the TCD648250, however.

That is not a backup, it is 2TB of recording.


The TiVo sees these as 1 big drive. If the external fails, you can run with the internal, but you'd likely lose all programming.

Ok, have weaknees purchased Tivo 3 - 750gb hard drive I believe purchased in 2006 or 2007. I have digital cable cards from Comcast for almost two years, in Jan moved to FIOS - about a month after the move started getting intermittent reboots, freezing - clock would stop and not record, now I'm down to rebooting every few minutes - freezing, stuttering, etc.

Sounds like the hard drive - the drive in there is not inaccessible as of yet - but probably will soon be. Its now to bad to attempt to download from tivo desktop to save recorded shows - any way to salvage data? Can I put it in one of those docking stations and see it from my PC and retrieve the video or is 106 hours of HD programming just lost.

Putting in an order for the replacement kit now. Since the drive is going bad I assume that I can't take advantage of the $79 dollar service to have my settings move to a new drive - this one I believe is only a 750 so the 1tb would be bigger

One thing I do notice is that the 1tb drives seem to go bad a lot more often then lower sizes I have 3 nas devices and the higher capacity drive fails a lot more and usually they last only two or so years.....

guess I need to go back to using tivo desktop to duplicating all my shows off to the NAS- this will be the 2nd tivo i've had to replace a drive on

someone needs to design a true backup device that doesn't tie up a pc as a middle man

the "external" backup drives you sell with the HD tivo XL are they backups or just extenders - how do they work - its not clear to me just what purpose they serve..... if they really do serve as backup - can I get this for my Tivo 3?

I see as a replacement you have a 1tb internal and a 1 tb external - once again that's not true backup - just space extension, right?

what happens if one or the other drive fails - which is what will happen sooner or later - if the internal drive fails do you lose the data on both - how will it know about the contents of the 2nd drive assuming the directory information is kept on the first...

wondering which way I should go for my replacement - I keep my tivo's full (two series 3 purchased from weaknees - 1 750gb and 1 1tb) so more space is always better but losing drives every few years and losing all the data on them is not a happy time.

thanks for the reply - will hold off on what to purchase until I get some advice thanks

Interesting.

I'm pretty sure the TiVo would just consider the multistream card to be a singlestream card, in the presence of another card, so I doubt that having two in there was the problem, but I will admit that I've never heard of someone using an S and an M card together.

Thanks for the post!

I purchased a TIVO HD a couple of months ago after upgrading Charter to HD. When the Charter tech came out to install the digital receiver, I asked him about running the signal through the TIVO. He tried to tell me nothing else was needed in the TIVO, it would be good to go.

Of course, the signal received through the TIVO was 480i. After browsing forums, I realized the cablecard was needed.

Charter sent a tech out when asked. He installed a single card and in a few minutes the signal was 1080i. Great, problem solved.

When I tried to bounce over to the other tuner, no luck. More browsing and realized I needed either two single stream cards or a multistream card.

Again, Charter sent out a tech. I told him I wanted a multistream card (less to rent). He told me he did not have any, just a single stream.

There have been four visits - three different techs. None knew each other and had no knowledge of the work done by the other. Two of the techs have recabled (component cables) and switched out digital receivers (on the other TV without the TIVO).

Got it installed with a little trouble. Both tuners worked at HD, so I was happy.

The next day, the rebooting started. More browsing. I called TIVO support and followed his suggestions of switching cards. Through trial and error, I ended up with one card installed and both tuners running at HD. Turns out the second card the tech brought is, in fact, a mulltistream card. He either did not know or care.

It has been a week and no reboots. Everything is running as it should be. I am assuming that have a single stream card and a multistream card together was causing the reboots.

Moral of the story. Charter technicians know very little about TIVO and less about the cablecards. Charter tech support over the phone is of little use. Not really their fault, they just have had very little experience. Problems with Charter and TIVO can be solved but it will take perseverance and luck.

You'd have to have a single-drive replacement reprogrammed to work as a second drive in another (Series2) TiVo.

A test to see if it is the hard drive causing the reboots

I have been having the spontaneous reboot problem as well. After having read all of the above messages, I tried the following things to see what behaviour resulted:

1. Set both cable cards to HD channels, causing them to buffer the HD signal, then play back a previously record HD show. Result: reboot within 30 seconds. In fact, the only way I could stop it from continuously rebooting after that is to unplug the coaxial cable. This causes buffering to either stop or at least slow significantly, and then upon rebooting back to the tivo menu, I was able to set at least one of the cards to an SD channel and plug the coax back in.

2. Set both cable cards to HD channels, then play back a previously recorded SD show. Result: reboot after 5 minutes or so.

3. Set both cable cards to SD, and play back the same previously recorded HD show that I used in trial #1. Result: no reboot. It was a 2.5 hour movie, and I could watch the whole thing with no problems.

4. Set one cable card to SD, one to HD, and play back an HD show. Result: rebooted after 10-15 minutes or so.

5. Set one cable card to SD, one to HD, then watch the [buffered] live HD show. Result: no reboot.

6. Pick two HD shows that air at the same time, and record them both, but don't watch the TV. (I turned it off.) Result: rebooted about half way in, and I only got pieces of each show.

I tried a number of the above steps multiple times, with similar results each time, with reboots at random lengths of time. But still, the reboot time for scenario #1 was always much shorter than for scenario #2 for example.

So, it seems for me that the reboot time is very much related to how much the hard disk is being used at the time. As in, more data being read and written to disk = quicker time until a reboot.

Based on this, I am guessing it is my drive that is bad, despite all the kickstart tests saying that absolutely nothing is wrong. I'm going to try a single new drive to replace the old one. But, if that does work and if I have to get a new tivo, then hopefully I can use that new drive as a 2nd drive in the new tivo? (Would that work, or does the 2nd drive have a different file structure on it than a primary drive?)

As long as you see the note in Step 3, that's really the only trick.

Thanks, Jeff. Despite repeated attempts, I just can't get the machine (a TCD652160 running 11.0d-01-2-652) into kickstart mode. Is there a trick to getting this particular model or OS to kick start?

Have you tried running the Kickstart 54 drive test?

See:

TiVo Kickstart Codes

I'm having an intermittent booting problem on our refurbished S3 HD unit (single Comcast CableCARD). Some nights it happens four times, then we're ok for a day or so, then maybe once or twice, and soon back to several times per evening--so persistent, but with no clear pattern. Happens when watching both live TV & recorded shows. Accessing Netflix or Amazon also often triggers it. No pixellation or other distortions to speak of.

Thanks for any thoughts about what we're dealing with here. Does this pattern fit anyone else's experience or one of the standard likely causes?

It's rarely the WiFi, but it's easy to check. It'll work fine for a few days without a connection.

No - paying $149 for a Series3 does not guarantee the return of a working unit. We do offer that service for many models, but at this point, not for the HD models.

For reference, that's here:

http://www.weaknees.com/tff-repair.php

For the TiVoHD and TiVo Series3, there are just some problems we still can't fix. I don't think yours is one of them, but we can guarantee a repair, nevertheless.

I understand that trouble-shooting can be difficult, that is why I opted for replacing the drive, which is the solution "99% of the time." Of the remaining 1%, how often is it the WiFi connection? How long will the TiVo function without updates from the WiFi connection, as I no longer have a phone line?

I can pay 99 dollars to replace the power supply. If I pay 149 dollars and ship the unit to you, does that guarantee me a working unit regardless of WiFi and cablecard issues? Can you transfer my lifetime subscription to a new unit which will be free of all these bugs and issues?

Thanks for your time and attention in answering, my goal is to have TiVo work for me again and not vice versa. Whatever is fastest and foolproof is my priority.