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

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.

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!

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

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.

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

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?

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

Well, copying the internal drive to the original external drive does not fix the problem, so I guess I am ready to order a power supply.

Rebooting constantly now it's stopped

I have a Tivo Series 3 HD. The unit is 8 months old and Last Wednesday at 9pm EST it started spontaneously rebooting. After several calls to both comcast and tivo, (I was told to put an attenuator on the line - this did not work, I was told to unplug my network adaptor, this did not work). Tivo is now sending me a refurbished box (they say they do not make the series 3 HD box anymore). My Tivo was rebooting ever 3-5 minutes for about 3 days. Now it's acting fine. Not sure what was/is wrong with it. Should I keep the refurbed box or wait it out with my original one? Any help would be appreciated. This whole thing has been very frustrating and I really do not want to go to comcast's dvr box.

I'd swap it out. On the chance that you've got a bad hard drive, you might as well take the refurb that's been tested.

well I tried the refurb. Did not work. After 2 hours on the phone with Tivo tech support and customer service, it's going back. Hopefully my original keeps running. if not comcast wins.

Then maybe too much attenuation on the cable line? Fluctuating power?

We had a few days of rolling brown outs right before the original tivo starting acting up. So far so good on my original tivo. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

TiVO HD in an infinite reboot loop

Read thru this topic and damned if I can figure this out. I have a TiVO HD (with an augmented Hard Drive) from WK and two S cards with Cablevision. No problems until this morning. Now it's in an infinite reboot loop. Sometimes when it hangs it says it is installing an update, or it's installing an update but can't contact the server.

I'm connected via WiFi and the connection has always been good (already checked the WiFi adapter and it's OK, however when it's connected to the TiVO I can only successfully ping it occassionally, and I suspect that's only during the time it has finished a reboot).

Have tried the 51, 52, and 56 kickstarts and get no change in behavior at all. It often actually gets thru the reboot, I see the TiVO animation, sometimes even get a minute of TV (or a black/grey cablecard Screen of Death). But then it always promptly starts the reboot again.

We have had no blackouts but the circuit breaker for the room has tripped several times in the last week--heat wave here and the room has a large AC in it that I believe is the culprit. No outage for at least a day or so prior to the problem beginning, however.

So what's the verdict, is my Hard Drive toast or the power supply? What are my alternatives? Should I try KS 54? What about KS 57? (I've heard the latter can cause more problems than it causes, so I'm reluctant).

I'd hate it to be the Hard Drive but I'm capable of doing the replacement if needed. Not so sure about a power supply, never tried that one.