# Upgraded TiVo failing hard drive question



## mumpower (Jul 24, 2003)

Recently, I took my 540040 and turned it into a 717 hour unit by adding a pair of 320GB hard drives. Unfortunately, one of them is obviously starting to fail. I can hear the clicking the sound on occasion in addition to the occasional freezing of the picture. I have a couple of questions:

1) What is the easiest way to determine which drive is failing?

2) Is there a process by which I can replace one of two married drives with another hard drive of the same size?

3) Am I going to lose all of my stored data? We've got a ton of TiVos, so I can easily transfer files if need be. I just need to know whether the process is requisite before getting started.

Any help you may offer would be appreciated.


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## HomeUser (Jan 12, 2003)

Run the manufacture diagnostics on the drives or just determine which drive is clicking by listening to it.

You can do a binary copy of just one drive of a two drive pair with the Linux command dd or cp.

WARNING: be sure you understand the command getting it wrong *WILL destroy all the data* on the source drive.


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## mumpower (Jul 24, 2003)

First of all, thanks for the information and warning. I have determined which drive is failing. If I understand you correctly, all I need to do is hook both this hard drive and the replacement one to a computer. Then, I boot up, execute the linux copy instruction and my TiVo will see the new hard drive as being the old, failing one. Is that correct? Can anyone tell me the exact line of code to enter?


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## ronsch (Sep 7, 2001)

mumpower said:


> First of all, thanks for the information and warning. I have determined which drive is failing. If I understand you correctly, all I need to do is hook both this hard drive and the replacement one to a computer. Then, I boot up, execute the linux copy instruction and my TiVo will see the new hard drive as being the old, failing one. Is that correct? Can anyone tell me the exact line of code to enter?


That is correct. Do some research first by searching this forum and the TiVo Underground for dd_rescue. It comes on the standard Knoppix distribution and is available elsewhere.


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