# Samsung SIR-S4080R hard drive



## usnret (Nov 25, 2003)

My son has DirecTV with the SIR-S4080R receiver. A few weeks ago he told me that it stopped working and indicated that it was "corrupt". After a few phone calls to DTV, they sent him a replacement and told him that it was Tivo's fault that his hard drive was "corrupted".
A couple of questions:
1. I checked on Weeknees and a replacement, formatted hard drive is $119. Would it work if we got a similar receiver (say from EBay) and either imaged a new hard drive using that similar receiver hard drive and replaced the one in his "corrupted" receiver with it?? 
2. Could he just take the hard drive out of the similar receiver and put it in his?? 
I assume that if there are any purchases or outstanding bills on the replacement, they would be on the card and not the hard drive??
I understand regular Tivo's, but we have no clue about the DirecTV Tivo receivers, so please don't flame me. Just trying to figure out the best way to fix his Samsung.
Thank you in advance.


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## rbtravis (Aug 9, 2005)

Don't buy used, your buying problems. For $119.00 or less you can pick up a new 500GB drive ( I suggest a Western Digital ) from NewEgg or TigerDirect and buy the Imaging CD from www.DVRupgrade.com. In about 1/2 hour you will be up and running. Good Luck.


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## John T Smith (Jun 17, 2004)

You might also check the upgrade forum

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=24


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## xunil76 (Apr 1, 2005)

usnret said:


> ...they sent him a replacement and told him that it was Tivo's fault that his hard drive was "corrupted"...


jeez....it amazes me the amount of refuse those idiots at D* spew, trying to give Tivo a bad name so they can push their own shoddy DVR upon the masses.....  

just have him buy his own standard IDE hard drive (SATA hard drive will not work), and get Instantcake to set it up to work with the DTivo unit, and he should be back up and running in no time.

just be careful, and **DO NOT** boot into any Windows operating system with the Tivo drive connected to it, once the image has been installed onto it.


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## Trent Bates (Dec 17, 2001)

Not trying to step on anyone's toes here, but I have a question:

I've gotten a hold of a dead SIR-S4080R that appears to have a corrupted HD but the HD tests great with SpinRite. It's no longer subbed with DirecTV.

I see the Instantcake method, but I'm not sure that I want to sink $20 into this unit just to see if it will work or not.

Back in the earlier Series 1 days, I personally helped out a couple of people with a un-activated DSR-6000R v2.0 image so that they could get their units running again.
(Then the TiVo's would upgrade to 2.5 within the first day or two.)
Is there any source for such a thing anymore? I don't intend to be unsupportive to DVRupgrade since I think I remember them to have started with people from here, but I don't even know if this unit will work or not once I get the drive reloaded.
Is there a source for a known good image that I can test with?


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## rbtravis (Aug 9, 2005)

Sorry - you'll have to buy the image from DVRupgrade but don't do that unless you get a new drive. Trying to resurrect a non-working drive is asking for trouble especially with the low cost of new drives. (500GB for 89.99) buy a new drive and an Image from DVRupgrade. 
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=383353


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## CrashHD (Nov 10, 2006)

if you search the image begging thread at ddb, you'll find a link to an image will work for that unit. It won't be the exactly correct image for that unit, but any 6.2 image will run on it, which is good enough for diagnostic purposes.


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## Trent Bates (Dec 17, 2001)

rbtravis said:


> Sorry - you'll have to buy the image from DVRupgrade but don't do that unless you get a new drive.


That is a great deal on hard drives!

While I appreciate your point of view, I'm only interested in finding out if the unit has some corrupted drive data preventing it from booting or if there is a hardware issue. I have plenty of new drives lying around and deal with failed hard drives on a daily basis for clients. I have no reason whatsoever to believe that the existing drive is failing or about to fail.

When you say, "Sorry - you'll have to buy the image from DVRupgrade" are you saying that there is a reason that only DVRupgrade images are usable, or are you saying that no-one has anything that I can use, or are you misunderstanding the concept that I'm not trying to activate this unit since I already have plenty of my own DirecTiVos, I just want to determine if it's good or not before disposing of it or keeping it?

Again, the access card has already been deactivated (and unit replaced with a non-TiVo unit) from what I understand. I just want to see if I can get it to go past the Black DirecTV screen on bootup and maybe show me a "DirecTV Central" or "Now Playing" screen.


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## Trent Bates (Dec 17, 2001)

CrashHD said:


> if you search the image begging thread at ddb, you'll find a link to an image will work for that unit. It won't be the exactly correct image for that unit, but any 6.2 image will run on it, which is good enough for diagnostic purposes.


That sounds good! What problems are experienced if the image doesn't match the unit? I seem to remember that a similar situation might have existed back in the 2.0 to 2.5 days which is probably why the 2.0 images were in demand.


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## rbtravis (Aug 9, 2005)

Stan Simmons has apparently stopped providing images. If you want to get to directv central press the directv button on first non-gray screen


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