# 4 lights flashing on Roamio OTA after installing 2TB drive



## BadMouth (Mar 1, 2016)

Swapped in a 2TB drive (WD20EURS). Powered back up.
Video says "Welcome!, Starting Up....", but all four lights on the front are flashing. First the green light will be on and the drive sounds like it's trying to start spinning, but can't get going. Then all four lights start flashing.

Ross Walker's guide says "Power on and wait approximately 30 mins for the TiVo Roamio to work its magic. If you have a UK Virgin Media Tivo then you need to hold TV+Down+Record during boot. Note, if you find that after 30 seconds all 4 lights on the front of the Tivo are flashing this likely means you are using the wrong power supply"
I'm using the correct power supply and tried another one from a spare OTA.

What exactly should I be seeing for a half hour while the Tivo "works it's magic"?
Do the flashing lights mean it isn't going to work no matter how long I leave it?

EDIT: dropped old drive back in the Roamio OTA and happily it was back to normal. Tried the new 2TB drive in the spare (inactive) OTA and got the same results. Guess I'll try it in a PC next. Maybe I got a DOA drive.


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## thyname (Dec 27, 2010)

BadMouth said:


> Swapped in a 2TB drive (WD20EURS). Powered back up.
> Video says "Welcome!, Starting Up....", but all four lights on the front are flashing. First the green light will be on and the drive sounds like it's trying to start spinning, but can't get going. Then all four lights start flashing.
> 
> Ross Walker's guide says "Power on and wait approximately 30 mins for the TiVo Roamio to work its magic. If you have a UK Virgin Media Tivo then you need to hold TV+Down+Record during boot. Note, if you find that after 30 seconds all 4 lights on the front of the Tivo are flashing this likely means you are using the wrong power supply"
> ...


I see you guys swapping drives on Roamio. Is this easy to do? I am tech savvy but by no means able to open up computers. Never done such things before


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## BadMouth (Mar 1, 2016)

thyname said:


> I see you guys swapping drives on Roamio. Is this easy to do? I am tech savvy but by no means able to open up computers. Never done such things before


Took me 5 minutes to swap in the new drive.
There are only 2 screws holding the top of the case on.
There are multiple tutorials on youtube.

Tips I didn't see mentioned elsewhere:

lift the top from the center of the back, flexing it so the sides come inward slightly. This gives the tabs that hold the top to the sides enough clearance to slip apart easier.

When putting the top back on, slide the plastic tab at the bottom of the front underneath the metal tab on the base, then fold the top back over like it is hinged at the front.

As for my problem, I seemed to have got a DOA drive. Didn't work in my OTA, didn't work in my other OTA, PC hangs with it connected, it won't spin up in an external enclosure. It sounds like it's trying and fails to spin up regardless of what it is connected to. It was from a 3rd party seller on amazon, so shipping took longer than I wanted. Now I'll have to wait for it to ship back. This was the one friggin' day I could work on it when no recordings were scheduled.

So to answer my own question, the four lights flashing means that the swap did not go correctly.


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## thyname (Dec 27, 2010)

Thanks. I may start doing some research.

Those WeaKnees upgrade kits are so expensive....


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## ThAbtO (Apr 6, 2000)

BadMouth said:


> Swapped in a 2TB drive (WD20EURS). Powered back up.
> Video says "Welcome!, Starting Up....", but all four lights on the front are flashing. First the green light will be on and the drive sounds like it's trying to start spinning, but can't get going. Then all four lights start flashing.
> 
> Ross Walker's guide says "Power on and wait approximately 30 mins for the TiVo Roamio to work its magic. If you have a UK Virgin Media Tivo then you need to hold TV+Down+Record during boot. Note, if you find that after 30 seconds all 4 lights on the front of the Tivo are flashing this likely means you are using the wrong power supply"
> ...


What you may be seeing is not a bad drive. There has been issues with WD20EURX and it has been found that a software feature PUIS (Power Up In Standby) was enabled, although it should only be enabled through the jumpers.

If you can hook the drive up to a PC and boot up with the Ultimate Boot CD, run HDAT (forget what options to tag on,) and disable PUIS.


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## ggieseke (May 30, 2008)

My money's on "dead drive" since it's a WD20EURS. WD quit making them long before the PUIS issues on some EURX drives cropped up.


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## BadMouth (Mar 1, 2016)

Thanks for the tip. I found enough time this morning to mess around with it.
PUIS was not enabled. 
The Western Digital quick test comes back with "test complete with read element failure", so I'm calling it DOA. (At least for someone with my skillset.)

Not excited to hear that this model drive has issues since I have another one on the way. 

I thought the WD30EURS was the preferred hard drive for Tivo upgrades.
The price for it was more than I wanted to spend though, so I got the 2TB for less than half as much ($65). 

What is the current recommended model?


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## eric102 (Oct 31, 2012)

BadMouth said:


> Thanks for the tip. I found enough time this morning to mess around with it.
> PUIS was not enabled.
> The Western Digital quick test comes back with "test complete with read element failure", so I'm calling it DOA. (At least for someone with my skillset.)
> 
> ...


I've been running the 3TB red NAS drive in my Roamio basic for several years now with no issues. Around a $100 on sale at that time.


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## ThAbtO (Apr 6, 2000)

I have a WD 4TB Red in the Roamio Basic for a year now and no issues.


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## ggieseke (May 30, 2008)

The EURS line changed to EURX, which is now being merged into the Blue line. Apparently the new Bolt Plus is using a Blue WD30NPRZ, but that's a 2.5" drive.

I'd see how the replacement drive works. If it's a dud go with a Red and be done with it.


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## BadMouth (Mar 1, 2016)

Received the new drive today. I was pleased that it was the newer WD20EURX even though a WD20EURS was pictured.

Installed it in the Tivo and got the same results. 
Hooked it up to a PC and it's not even detected most of the time.
I did get it to show up during bootup once, but haven't been able to get it to show up in the device manager in Windows or HDAT2 (or a couple other programs on the ultimate boot CD).

Just to make sure I wasn't doing something wrong with the Tivo, I dropped a known working 2TB green drive (not AV) in it. Everything went perfectly and the Tivo prompted me to repeat the initial setup. I switched back to the original 500GB drive for now.

This is driving me nuts. I feel like it has to be me. Like there is something I don't know about preparing a drive for use. Is this model really so bad that I would get 2 DOA drives from two different revisions?


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## ggieseke (May 30, 2008)

You mentioned an external enclosure in your second post. Is that how you're connecting it to the PC?

It sounds like PUIS is enabled on the WD20EURX. That has been seen before with that exact drive. I'm not sure about HDAT2, but wdidle3 has to have a direct SATA connection. Try hooking it up to the PC directly and see if HDAT2 sees the drive.


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## BadMouth (Mar 1, 2016)

ggieseke said:


> You mentioned an external enclosure in your second post. Is that how you're connecting it to the PC?
> 
> It sounds like PUIS is enabled on the WD20EURX. That has been seen before with that exact drive. I'm not sure about HDAT2, but wdidle3 has to have a direct SATA connection. Try hooking it up to the PC directly and see if HDAT2 sees the drive.


No, I have it connected directly to the motherboard (well via a cable).
Trying it in the external enclosure was more of a "well I've tried everything else" moment.

HDAT2 saw the first drive (WD20EURS) fine, but PUIS wasn't enabled on it and the western digital software came back with READ ELEMENT FAILURE.

With the 2nd drive (WD20EURX), it shows up in the BIOS with a size of 0 and I can switch between ACHI and IDE, but when I run HDAT2, it ends with "Error reading of the IDENTIFY DEVICE data Error code 11: Selected device is hung - reset"

I tried using the argument ( /W) when running HDAT2 thinking maybe I could get PUIS turned off that way and move forward, but it made no difference.

I'll mess with it one more evening, then I'm sending it back.
The WD site says there is no warranty on the serial number because it was OEM. It supposed to be new, but when it does spin up, it doesn't sound like a new drive. I'll give wdidle3 a try.


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## ThAbtO (Apr 6, 2000)

What does the BIOS say on the drive?


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## BadMouth (Mar 1, 2016)

ThAbtO said:


> What does the BIOS say on the drive?


When booting, it sits at:

```
Auto-Detecting SATAII_1..
```
for a while, then eventually says:

```
Auto-Detecting SATAII_1..AHCI Hard Disk
SATAII_1 WDC WD20EURX-57T0FY0

AHCI Port0 Device Error
Press F1 to Continue
```
In the bios (AMIBIOS (C) 2006 American Megatrends, Inc. 960GC-GS FX BIOS P1.40) 
under Advanced>Storage Configuration

```
Onboard SATA Controller - enabled
SATA Operation Mode - AHCI (I've tried IDE, but the drive doesn't show up at all in BIOS or HDAT2)
SATA IDE Combined Mode - Enabled

SATAII_1 - Hard Disk
```
then after clicking on the disk


```
Device - Hard Disk
Vendor - WDC WD20EURX-57T0FY0
Size - 0MB
SATA Speed - 1.5Gbps
NCQ - Not Supported

Hot Plug Support - Enabled (was originally disabled when I started messing with it)
SATAII_1 - Auto
S.M.A.R.T. - Disabled (have also tried enabled)
```
One other thing of note, there is a sticker on the outside of the padded envelope the drive was received in that has RAID in the description. I've never messed with RAID, but I'd assumed the drive should show up regardless of how it was originally set up.


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## ThAbtO (Apr 6, 2000)

I think its AHCI causing the issues, plus it should be in SATA not IDE in the bios.


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## BadMouth (Mar 1, 2016)

ThAbtO said:


> I think its AHCI causing the issues, plus it should be in SATA not IDE in the bios.


my choices are AHCI, IDE, or RAID

I messed around with it again this morning with it set to IDE, which is what I believe it should be set to after reading up on AHCI.

Same results, only originally there was a line where HDAT2 reset it from AHCI to IDE/Legacy mode. Now it doesn't do that and goes straight to the errors/device is hung.

I've sank enough time into it. Sending it back for a refund.

EDIT: Drive will be on it's way back to Amazon today. Ordered a 3TB Red, not from a third party vendor.

DOUBLE EDIT: Don't want to bump the thread, but the 3TB Red drive worked without any issues. (haven't recorded anything yet, but it installed fine anyway)

TRIPLE EDIT: The WD Red was louder than the original drive. Not loud, but still loud enough to bug me when the house is otherwise quiet. After all this trouble, I went back to the stock 500GB drive, lol.


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