# Need to replace HDR212 drive, but I have only one CD drive



## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Hello, I have had one drive go bad on a dual drive HDR212, and I'm hoping my computer has enough hardware to fix it. Here's the equipment I have at my disposal: I have

* a computer with one CD drive, one hard drive, and enough IDE ports to hold several more hard drives

* a floppy drive from an old computer that's not installed anywhere

* A new 80 GB Western Digital hard drive (came from an old TiVo), that I'd like to use to replace my bad Maxtore 80 GB drive

* A blank HDR212 image stored on a CD

* MFS utilities stored on a CD

* MFS utilities stored on a floppy.

At first, I thought I'd try to install my floppy drive to see if I could use the diskette utilities, but for some reason the IDE connectors are slightly too wide to fit in the diskette drive.

Can I just do this with my CD drive? I don't mind losing my shows, so I could restore my blank image. The problem is, I can't simultaneously have my MFS utility CD and my image CD in the drive at the same time.

How can I issue a restore command and have it work, if only one of the two CDs is in the drive? Is there some way I can get this to work?


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## Da Goon (Oct 22, 2006)

timckelley said:


> The problem is, I can't simultaneously have my MFS utility CD and my image CD in the drive at the same time.


Doesn't matter. Anything pertinant from the boot cd is loaded into RAM when you boot, so just boot the cd, pop in the one with the image, mount that cd and issue the restore command.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Excellent! Thank you for that advice. I'll give this a try.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Darn. When I try to boot the PC to the utility disk, linux loads, and then I get these messages:

Welcome to the rescue disk
Trying to mount the CD-ROM, try 1
Trying to mount the CD-ROM, try 2
Trying to mount the CD-ROM, try 3
Trying to mount the CD-ROM, try 4
Trying to mount the CD-ROM, try 5
No CD-ROM found

Any ideas what's causing this? Obviously, the CD is readable, or linux wouldn't have loaded.


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## Da Goon (Oct 22, 2006)

What cd are you trying to use? If it's not mfslive, go grab it.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

It's an old CD I burned about a year ago off the weaknees website. As I recall, it took me hours of fiddling with burn settings, before I successfully made it a bootable CD. If I have to do this over again, I certainly don't look forward to it. Where's mfslive?

By the way, my utility CD is the same one I used successfully a year ago to backup the image off my series 2, and restore it to a new 250 GB hard drive.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Oh, I found MFSlive in somebody else's sig, so I just burned a CD using my brand new Windows Vista computer. It seems like it worked nicely and quickly, so I'll go give it a try.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Darn, when I try to boot the mfslive CD, I get:

"media test failure, check cable"

I wonder if my burn didn't successfully make it bootable. It's possible my blank CDs are bad. (They're quite old.) Like I said, the last time I made an MFS CD, I had to burn quite a lot of them before I got one that worked. Maybe most in my batch are bad.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Hmmm two mfslive CDs in a row, and I get this same message. Darn. This is my 3rd time to upgrade/maintain a TiVo, and this takes me hours everytime I do it. (6 hours is typical, and that's 6 hours of actively doing things - not waiting for things to run.)

I wonder why I can't use my original utility CD that I used successfully when working on my series 2.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Well, I found my old computer that used to have a floppy. It's motherboard is bad, but I pulled out the special IDE cable for it, and I installed the floppy in my newer computer.

I successfully got the floppy version of the MFS tools to boot.

Now, I type:

mount /dev/hdc /mnt

and I get this message:

hdc is not a valid block device

But I know the computer is sensing the CD drive. (I have the image in the CD drive.)
I tried the same with hdd and hda, thinking maybe I have the letter wrong, but keep getting the same message.

Also oddly, while booting to the diskette, I see messages flashing with # sectors, etc, that seem to imply my primary master and primary slave (where I put my 2 TiVo drives) are hde and hdf. I would have thought them to hda and hdb.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Okay, after rebooting and carefully watching the messages, I see that hdh is the CD, and hde, hdf are the TiVo drives. My mount worked, and my restore is in progress. 

BTW, I realize that by using the floppy version I'm limited to 137 GB, but that's okay because one drive is 80 GB, and the other is 20 GB, so floppy is just fine. I suppose it might be nice to change to a single drive 250 GB system, like my wife has, but to do that, I need to get my hands on a reliable, runnable, Tools CD. Maybe if I buy some new, high quality blank CDs, and do another burn, it would work.


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## markbox (May 3, 2004)

Try booting the MFS Live CD using your Windows Vista 
system to see if it boots correctly. If it does then 
it's not the CD but a problem with the other system 
(CD drive, cable, etc.).


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Good idea. I think I'll try that.

BTW, the restore finished last night, and I reinstalled the drives into the TiVo, and plugged her back into my TV, and all seems dandy now (finally)  I did guided setup this morning, and it says it needs 4-8 hours to do a bunch of indexing, so when I get home from work, hopefully it'll be ready for use. I did check system information, and it does seem to be recognizing my full drive space.

When I tell people I can fix my own TiVo they generally seem surprised and impressed, but really, I'm pretty novice at this compared to you folks here in the Upgrade Forum.

Anyway, if I ever want more than 137GB, I'll need the CD to work, so I'll take your advice. I personally have a hunch that my CD's are old and full of errors, and that I need to buy some new CDs. Maybe I could try to borrow a blank CD from somebody else and try it, to help rule out/in the hypothesis that my CD stack is all bad.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

New question: I was using my repaired TiVo for a few days quite nicely, and the the power supply failed. I ordered off for a new power supply from 9thTee, which is scheduled to arrive at my house tommorrow. Somebody in another forum suggested that maybe the fact that I have two hard drives is overtaxing the power supply, and if I put in a new power supply, maybe I'll just blow that one too.

Originally I had an 80GB Maxtor and a 20GB Seagate. The Maxtor is the one that went bad, and I replaced it with another 80GB, but I confess I don't know the brandname. However, it's the exact same drive that I used to use in my 2003 S2 TiVo branded TiVo. Does this sound like an HDR212 would have trouble handling a series 2 TiVo drive? If it helps, when I get home this evening I'll post the exact brand of drive I have in there (as I still have the case open.)

I'm just wondering if it sounds reasonable that this series 2 drive would draw more power than a Maxtor. I guess I could sacrifice my 20 G drive and convert my HDR212 (S1) into a single drive TiVo, and just use the 80G, if that would help. Probably 80GB is enough for me anyway. Or maybe I could just buy a single new, bigger drive, as long is it doesn't overwhelm the power supply of my S1.

I just want to be careful and not blow my new power supply if I can help it.


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## rbtravis (Aug 9, 2005)

timckelley said:


> New question: I was using my repaired TiVo for a few days quite nicely, and the the power supply failed. I ordered off for a new power supply from 9thTee, which is scheduled to arrive at my house tommorrow. Somebody in another forum suggested that maybe the fact that I have two hard drives is overtaxing the power supply, and if I put in a new power supply, maybe I'll just blow that one too.
> 
> Originally I had an 80GB Maxtor and a 20GB Seagate. The Maxtor is the one that went bad, and I replaced it with another 80GB, but I confess I don't know the brandname. However, it's the exact same drive that I used to use in my 2003 S2 TiVo branded TiVo. Does this sound like an HDR212 would have trouble handling a series 2 TiVo drive? If it helps, when I get home this evening I'll post the exact brand of drive I have in there (as I still have the case open.)
> 
> ...


 What you need is:
http://www.dvrupgrade.com/dvr/stores/1/accessory_nomodel.cfm?SID=1&Product_ID=375
You attach this in between the power supply and the second hard drive. Hard drives use the most power during spin-up. This delays the second drives spinup almost 5 Seconds. This is usually enough of a delay to not stress the power supply. As you can see it comes from www.DVRupgrade.com. Weaknees also has a similar product but it has a list of machines it will and wont work with. DVRupgrades has no such list and uses less power on Spin-up. Good Luck.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

The funny thing is, I didn't think S1's need this kind of device, but maybe they do.


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## tivoupgrade (Sep 27, 2000)

timckelley said:


> The funny thing is, I didn't think S1's need this kind of device, but maybe they do.


Here's the rub... no TiVo really *needs* this. We created the device because there was some FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) created many moons ago about whether it was safe to put two drives into some of the Series2 units which were really not designed to handle two drives (series1 units were ALL designed to handle two drives). In the end, we had customers who wanted these devices and although we tried to convince folks it was safe to add drives without having such a device, we finally caved and developed this product...

If you are worried about blowing your power supply, don't be. The worst thing that can happen is that your power supply will "fold" and the unit simply won't power up with two drives in it, if it is overpowered.

I would not worry about "overtaxing" your power supply long term, either. The greatest amount of power is needed during startup, but once running, it won't matter whether you are using a SmartStart or not.

So... if it gives you more comfort to use something like the SmartStart, it certainly won't hurt, and it may help, especially if your power supply is older and perhaps can't handle the start up power required by two drives in your unit. But since you have a new supply, I think you are fine.

BTW, this SmartStart is really quite different than anything else out there - it is a solid state device which ramps the voltages on both the 5V and 12V lines, in addition to staggering the spinup of the primary drive after the secondary drive starts. There are no moving parts or mechanical relays, so it is really designed to do things in the most elegant way possible.

Lou


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

So do you think that the fact that my power supply failed right in the middle of a show I was watching doesn't have anything to do with having two drives? It sounds like it was just a malfunctioning power supply, and that the drives aren't playing a role into why it malfunctioned in the first place, especially considering that it wasn't during startup that it failed. The TiVo had been on for a few days before it failed.

So assuming my logic is correct, that it had nothing to do with 1 vs 2 drives that caused the failure, then the presence of 2 drives shouldn't pose a danger to my new power supply.

Plus, like you said, if I understand you correctly, if the 2 drives really are to much, it'll just fail to start up, but not damage the new power supply, in which case I can either get this staggering startup device, or I could just convert my TiVo to a one-drive TiVo.

So it sounds like my best course of action right now, is to first stick in the new power supply and try it out. If it doesn't work, then I'll next try one of the other solutions without worrying that I just 'blew' my new power supply.


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## tivoupgrade (Sep 27, 2000)

timckelley said:


> So do you think that the fact that my power supply failed right in the middle of a show I was watching doesn't have anything to do with having two drives? It sounds like it was just a malfunctioning power supply, and that the drives aren't playing a role into why it malfunctioned in the first place, especially considering that it wasn't during startup that it failed. The TiVo had been on for a few days before it failed.
> 
> So assuming my logic is correct, that it had nothing to do with 1 vs 2 drives that caused the failure, then the presence of 2 drives shouldn't pose a danger to my new power supply.
> 
> ...


I wish I could give you a definitive/guaranteed answer, but my opinion is that the problem had nothing to do with having two drives and that the chances of what happened are probably the same whether you had one or two drives.

And what you are saying is correct, if the two drives were too much (although they never should have been, especially for the Series1 power supply which is designed for the use of two drives) then the unit should never have powered on, at all. Take a look at this diagram made with a digital oscilloscope to see the difference in power requirements during start up vs run rate. I wish I had a graph to show you a single drive in operation, but my guess is that a single drive requires more power during startup than two drives do during normal operation.

Now, everything I said should be taken with a grain of salt; what I don't know is anything about your specific drives or anything else that could be going on with your TiVo that could have affected things, so do be careful there.

But with all that said, I think you are taking the right approach, and that there is probably no reason to be overly concerned with running two drives in your unit without introducing any other variables...


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Oh no!  I just replaced the power supply, and it didn't help anything. 

To recap, here's what happened. I replaced an 80GB Maxtor with an 80GB Seagate, and the second drive, which is a 20GB Seagate, I just left in there. So 2 drives before, 2 drives after. (The 80GB Seagate used to be in a series 2 TiVo that I upgraded some ago, but I had hung onto the drive.)

I was using my TiVo fine for about 3 days, and right in the middle of a show I was watching the power just died abruptly, like a switch was turned off our something.

I opened up the case and watched and listened closely as I plugged in the power cord. I noticed that the fan wasn't spinning, and neither were the hard drives. But I can hear a very faint clicking sound coming from the power supply area. The clicking is about about 3 clicks per second. I unplugged the cord, and the clicking stopped.

In another thread, somebody advised me that I have a bad power supply, and that I should buy a new one. I did so, and it arrived today. I installed it, and turned it on, and I got the exact same clicking sound, and the fan and drives won't spin.

Out of curiousity, I unplugged the power connecter from the slave drive (which is the 20 GB drive), just to see if my issue was too much power demand coming from two drives. So now, with only one drive connected to the power supply I tried plugging it in. I still get the same faint clicking sound, with no spinning. So it looks like the problem doesn't have anything to do with 2 drives vs 1 drive. And I guess the problem isn't the power supply, because I just replaced it.

Does anybody here have an idea what's going on here? Does the faint clicking give a hint as to what's happening? It's an HDR212 series one with lifetime subscribed to it, so I'd like to preserve my lifetime subscription.


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## rbtravis (Aug 9, 2005)

I think it is time to get it fixed. I have heard good things about:
http://www.ccscorporation.net/
Or send it back to TiVo for repair and ask them to preserve your season pass.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Out of curiosity, I called TiVo, and they said normally if a unit is too expensive to repair, which he a feeling mine is, they offer an out-of-warranty replacement for $149, and they would transfer the lifetime onto it. Also, if I heard him correctly, I think I'd automatically get a series 2 instead of a series 1, which would be totally excellent if I could get my lifetime moved to a series 2.

But.... my model is an HDR212, which is made by Phillips, not TiVo, so they can't help me. He said I could call Philips, and he's sure they have a similar deal where, if it's too expensive to repair, they can just give me a new TiVo, and TiVo Corp will still transfer my lifetime onto it. However, he said he has a feeling, but he's not sure so he asked me not to quote him, that the replacement TiVo would still be a series 1. But he's not sure if that's true. Do any of you know what Philipps' policy is regarding this?

I have their toll free number, but they're not open until Monday, so I will have to endure another weekend without my TiVo.


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