Came home, Dtivo "Welcome powering up "

[Mikell808]

Its been a long time since I have needed to do any playing around with my Dtivo, I am glad this site is still around.

Came home and it appears the Hard drive may have failed, I don't hear any clicking noises like I am used to with a HD mechanical failure. I would like to try some utilities to see if there is anything that might be fixable, or maybe some surface damage. I do have the old drive in storage and when insterted the Dtivo did operate properly. Any suggestions on a utiltiy program would be greatly appreciated.

[Narf54321]

If the drive won't even boot up, you've lost your shows. That sucks. But otherwise, we still use MFSTOOLS (2.0) to backup/restore to a new HDD. Usually I'd just recommend the venerable Hinsdale How To (http://www.newreleasesvideo.com/hinsdale-how-to/) for getting a working (new) drive, then worry about doing any hacks later.

[spike2k5]

Its been a long time since I have needed to do any playing around with my Dtivo, I am glad this site is still around.

Came home and it appears the Hard drive may have failed, I don't hear any clicking noises like I am used to with a HD mechanical failure. I would like to try some utilities to see if there is anything that might be fixable, or maybe some surface damage. I do have the old drive in storage and when insterted the Dtivo did operate properly. Any suggestions on a utiltiy program would be greatly appreciated.

Is your hard drive bigger than 137GB? I heard dtv is updating series 1 w/ 3.5 software.

[Mikell808]

Is your hard drive bigger than 137GB? I heard dtv is updating series 1 w/ 3.5 software.


Nope, just an 80 gig. I know with FAT or NTFS formatting there are tools that I can use to check for surface damage and 80% of the time the to drives will wake up at least once as long as there is not a mechanical failure. I am hoping that might be the case here. What program can I use the do a surface scan. I am planning on getting another 80 gig and try to do a copy of the old drive, hoping I can get it to wake up at least once.

[Mikell808]

Yesterday I stuck in the old 40 gig that I had saved just in case a situation like this occured, it took some time since it had been over a year since it was last used, but it did eventually work. That was my test to see if it was the 80 gig drive or a problem with the Tivo unit. Now today I put the 40 gig back in and it is stuck on powering up. I am at a loss as to what to do next.

[Narf54321]

Could be a loose cable connection at the motherboard, or something equally silly. Maybe the PSU isn't providing enough power to the HDD, I dunno yet. A low level drive scan utility (usually from the manufacturer) should be able to check out the raw sectors without regard to the partitions and formatting.

The next step is probably to find those stickies messages where they describe building the serial console cable and capturing the output as your unit boots up.

[captain_video]

The lack of any clicking noises is definitely a good sign. The first thing I would suggest is that you pull the drive and run the manufacturer's diagnostic on it. You can download the diagnostic specific to your make of drive from the manufacturer's website. Run any non-destructive tests available and see what the results are. Even if the drive fails there may still be hope.

I had a DTivo that wouldn't boot a while back and the drives failed the diagnostics. I ran a program called SprinRite and it found several defective sectors on the drive and was able to recover enough data to allow the drive to boot in the DTivo. I got the GSOD right after bootup but eventually the DTivo fixed itself and worked fine a short while afterwards. I copied the contents of the drive to a new one and now all is well with the DTivo. I didn't lose one single recording that I'm aware of (there were over 100 hours of programs on the drive).

I only swapped out the drives to be on the safe side. I ran the maintenance portion of SpinRite on the drive and it fully repaired all bad sectors on the drive to where it now passes the manufacturer's diagnostics with flying colors. The bottom line is that if you can get the drive to be recognized by your PC's BIOS then you stand a good chance of recovering the data with SpinRite and rejuvenating the drive.

[Mikell808]

Where can I get copy of this Sprinrite software.

[PortlandPaw]

Google........

[Narf54321]

SpinRite (http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm).

From older versions I've had the chance to use, if anything can fix a dubious drive it is going to be SpinRite. The basic problem I have with SpinRite is the same I've always had: It's too expensive for basic home users. At $90, you can often get a whole new drive (with new warranty) for cheaper than this software for 'saving' old crumbling drives.

Unless you have a bunch of drives to test, it just doesn't seem cost-effective for most folks.

[eastwind]

SpinRite (http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm).

From older versions I've had the chance to use, if anything can fix a dubious drive it is going to be SpinRite. The basic problem I have with SpinRite is the same I've always had: It's too expensive for basic home users. At $90, you can often get a whole new drive (with new warranty) for cheaper than this software for 'saving' old crumbling drives.

Unless you have a bunch of drives to test, it just doesn't seem cost-effective for most folks.
Must not belong to the "Hard Drive of the Month" club. :) :) :)

ew

[webdev511]

SpinRite (http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm).
Unless you have a bunch of drives to test, it just doesn't seem cost-effective for most folks.

Sure, for $90 you can buy a new drive, but how much is the information on a fixable drive worth? Is it replaceable?

So yes, $90 is expensive, if you don't care about the content.

[Narf54321]

Sure, for $90 you can buy a new drive, but how much is the information on a fixable drive worth? Is it replaceable?

So yes, $90 is expensive, if you don't care about the content.

Since, we're talking about Tivos here, then I can certainly say $90 is way too much. I mean, my last few Tivo's didn't even cost as much as $90, complete with remote. A new hard drive, re-image from your original (you did keep the original up safely on a shelf, right?) and you're back to recording shows and skipping commercials.

Now, if Tivo crashes and takes with it the wife's unwatched disaster-drama of the week (among other shows), then $90 might be worth trying it.

[Mikell808]

Since, we're talking about Tivos here, then I can certainly say $90 is way too much. I mean, my last few Tivo's didn't even cost as much as $90, complete with remote. A new hard drive, re-image from your original (you did keep the original up safely on a shelf, right?) and you're back to recording shows and skipping commercials.

Now, if Tivo crashes and takes with it the wife's unwatched disaster-drama of the week (among other shows), then $90 might be worth trying it.


I hate the idea of spending $90 on software when there is so much out there that is free. But you are correct that it isn't the value of the drive or the tivo its the value of the recordings that can not be replaced. At this point I have to figure out how to take my non hacked drive that has failed and play it on another DSR6000. If there is a way to do this, and I am sure there must be a way, then I will probably give in and spend the $90