Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler OT:Help! Busted TiVo!

My TiVo's crashed a couple times in the last few days. I had originally thought nothing of it, but now it happened while I was watching, and it made some rather nasty clicking noises, then locked up. I'm thinking the A drive is failing-no real way to be sure, but it is older. Anyway, I just opened the box, and looked at the power supply, which has pale peach goo on bits and pieces of it. I figure it's just glue, but has anyone looked at their TiVo power supply and seen such stuff?

Also, has anyone successfully recovered programs from a dying drive on a TiVo?

Yeah, yeah, I'm an IT expert (theoretically), but it doesn't hurt to whine about my problems!

I openned my DirecTiVo a few times. I don't remember messy glue, but I do remember that the power supply was exposed....no housing at all, but I knew that was normal from the reading I had done.

I don't know about retrieving stuff off of the drive, but I do know you can get replacement drives.

Yeah, I'm going to start trying to recover stuff after I finish my dinner. It's definitley the original HD. I found a site that sells replacement drives with OSes, so I'll do that if I have to. I'm not giving up my lifetime subscription!

With the new drives, you won't give up your subscription. The system's serial number is in the motherboard, the OS picks that up.

I assume this is a standalone and not a D*Tivo?

One option is to see if the drive is still recoverable. Some HD Tivo owners have used SpinRite at Level 4 to revive failing drives. It might help get it operational. Then you can back up the drive. On the Tivo Community forums, there are links to all kinds of tools, like InstantCake, IIRC.

I've used Weakknees for a drive upgrade, they're reliable. So is PTVupgrade, 9th tee is another option. You can also ask one of these vendors for original, pull out drives, drives that they pulled out of units that were eventually upgraded.

In reply to:

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Some HD Tivo owners have used SpinRite at Level 4 to revive failing drives.

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All hail Steve Gibson.

Bren R.

Excellent. Thanks, guys! If I can't get the Tivo image off the drive, I'll probably do Weaknees. They seem to have decent prices and a good website. Hopefully I'll be able to get everything... now that I've got all the other drives lined up. (I was having serious problems with that last night) The bad drive's cooling in the freezer over a bed of dessicant.

Mmm, tasty!

Well, I got the image off the TiVo, which I got to boot after trying 3 times. I'm trying the plain old dd copy now to see if that works. If it doesn't, I think I'll probably throw in the towel and just restore the image. Sigh... 3 seasons of West Wing, down the drain...

Just think of all the free time you'll have now!

I hate you.












Also, my wife wants to know exactly how long you guys survived without your DirecTivo... a couple weeks? a month?