# What disk utility program to use to check/repair a defective disk?



## Doomster (Nov 6, 2003)

I have several Series 2 DirecTivo receivers, either SD-DVR40s or HDVR2s.

They use PATA disks and the disks last about 3-5 yrs before somethings goes bad.

Just recently, one of the disks in my receiver went bad. I have Spinrite v6.0 and I put the defective disk in a PC and booted up Spinrite v6.0.

I ran Spinrite at Level 2 and there were no defects found.

However, Spinrite v6.0 only tests up to about 130GB of disk space. The defective disk is a WD 320GB disk.

What do you guys use to test/repair Tivo disks for a Linux system?

I'm looking for a SW tool that's like Spinrite - it needs to be booted up off a disk or USB stick, and can test an EXT2 formatted disk, but can handle disk sizes greater than 130GB.

Can you give me a recommendation?


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## HomeUser (Jan 12, 2003)

???, No problem other then it taking a long time. I've used Spinrite 6.1 to recover a 750GB drive from of a Series3 and stress test the replacement drive that I copied it to.
I think LBA32 support started in Spinrite 4 if not before.


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## Doomster (Nov 6, 2003)

HomeUser said:


> ???, No problem other then it taking a long time. I've used Spinrite 6.1 to recover a 750GB drive from of a Series3 and stress test the replacement drive that I copied it to.
> I think LBA32 support started in Spinrite 4 if not before.


Homeuser, I ran Spinrite v6.0 with Level 2 diagnostics and I watched the Graphic Status Display, I see that under "remaining megabytes", it shows 137,000+. That translates to about 134GB. Since the disk is 320GB, I should see 300,000+ under "remaining megabytes", shouldn't I?


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## HomeUser (Jan 12, 2003)

In the "Select Drives and Partitions" page highlight the entire drive example "Drive 0 Primary / Master" the right panel will show the Entire Drive's geometry.


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## HomeUser (Jan 12, 2003)

FYI:
Here are some screenshots of Spinrite6 running with a 320GB Series2 TiVo Drive




















Have you viewed the drive with MFSTools -> MfsInfo? Does it see the full 320G

To answer you're question about software tools I have used DFSee and Older versions of Acronis to edit and binary copy drives neither programs are free. I don't know of any tools that work like SpinRite to recover data from bad sectors at least ones that are priced for consumers.

If SpinRite did not find any errors in the first 320G the boot and TiVo software section is OK. if needed use DDRescue to copy the drive to a new drive.


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## HerronScott (Jan 1, 2002)

Doomster said:


> Homeuser, I ran Spinrite v6.0 with Level 2 diagnostics and I watched the Graphic Status Display, I see that under "remaining megabytes", it shows 137,000+. That translates to about 134GB. Since the disk is 320GB, I should see 300,000+ under "remaining megabytes", shouldn't I?


Sounds like a very old PC or operating system that doesn't support drives larger than 137GB.

From one of the many old postings on this issue:

"You need two things to support a drive that large:

1. A motherboard with a BIOS and controller that supports 48-bit LBA
(or alternatively, an add-in controller card that does).

2. At least SP1 of Windows XP."

And an article from Seagate on it.

http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/tp/137gb.pdf

Scott


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## Doomster (Nov 6, 2003)

HomeUser said:


> FYI:
> Here are some screenshots of Spinrite6 running with a 320GB Series2 TiVo Drive
> View attachment 30483
> View attachment 30484
> ...


HomeUser, I put the disk as Primary Master, with the disk jumper set to Master/No Slave. Spinrite 6.0 only sees 130GB.

Then I set the disk as Primary Master again, but set the disk jumper to Cable Select. Again, Spinrite 6.0 only sees 130GB.

Then I moved the disk to Secondary Master, with the disk jumper set to Cable Select. Again, Spinrite 6.0 only sees 130GB.

The cable/disk jumper shouldn't change the disk geometry, should it?


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## Doomster (Nov 6, 2003)

HerronScott said:


> Sounds like a very old PC or operating system that doesn't support drives larger than 137GB.
> 
> From one of the many old postings on this issue:
> 
> ...


Scott, 
I might be using an old PC. I am not using the PCs I use for "normal" things (like email, or posting questions here at this forum).

I picked up an old PC with no hard drives and a functioning CD player. I use this old PC to burn HDs for the Tivos using InstantCake and for running diagnostics on any Tivo HDs.

Funny thing is that I used the same PC to burn the HD using InstantCake. And InstantCake set recognized it as 320GB.

So I'll check the BIOS for this.

The requirement to use WinXP SP1 should not apply since Spinrite is using FreeDos to run its software.


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## Worf (Sep 15, 2000)

Windows XP is the last OS that can make a DOS boot disk. Perhaps its version of DOS supports LBA48?


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## HomeUser (Jan 12, 2003)

Doomster said:


> HomeUser, I put the disk as Primary Master, with the disk jumper set to Master/No Slave. Spinrite 6.0 only sees 130GB.
> 
> Then I set the disk as Primary Master again, but set the disk jumper to Cable Select. Again, Spinrite 6.0 only sees 130GB.
> 
> ...


Correct the drive select jumper does not have anything to do with the size of the drive.
If the ribbon cable going to the drive has a Blue connector (plugs into controller) set the jumper to Cable Select (CS). For WD if the drive is the only drive on the cable the drive select jumper is removed.

Some drives will have a jumper that limits the size for compatibility with older OS's. What is the model number of drive?



Doomster said:


> Funny thing is that I used the same PC to burn the HD using InstantCake. And InstantCake set recognized it as 320GB.


 If instant cake recognized the full drive then SpinRite should what does IC show.


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## HomeUser (Jan 12, 2003)

FYI: My screenshot of InstantCake command *mfstool info* on the 320GB Series2 drive.


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## HerronScott (Jan 1, 2002)

Doomster said:


> Scott,
> I might be using an old PC. I am not using the PCs I use for "normal" things (like email, or posting questions here at this forum).
> 
> I picked up an old PC with no hard drives and a functioning CD player. I use this old PC to burn HDs for the Tivos using InstantCake and for running diagnostics on any Tivo HDs.
> ...


That is interesting regarding InstantCake. So did the BIOS show it as a 320GB hard drive?

Does FreeDos have a diskpart command or some equivalent?

Scott


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## Doomster (Nov 6, 2003)

HerronScott said:


> That is interesting regarding InstantCake. So did the BIOS show it as a 320GB hard drive?
> 
> Does FreeDos have a diskpart command or some equivalent?
> 
> Scott


Scott, I double checked. I connected the HD to the PC, then put the PC into the BIO setting. The BIOS shows the disk as 130GB.

Now I am not sure I used this PC to bake the HD in Instantcake. It could be that the disk is set at 130GB by Instantcake even though it is really 320GB. I used it and recorded some shows but I can't measure the disk size.


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## Doomster (Nov 6, 2003)

HomeUser said:


> FYI: My screenshot of InstantCake command *mfstool info* on the 320GB Series2 drive.
> View attachment 30505


HomeUser, I have msftool so I'll try using it on the HD.


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## HerronScott (Jan 1, 2002)

Doomster said:


> Scott, I double checked. I connected the HD to the PC, then put the PC into the BIO setting. The BIOS shows the disk as 130GB.
> 
> Now I am not sure I used this PC to bake the HD in Instantcake. It could be that the disk is set at 130GB by Instantcake even though it is really 320GB. I used it and recorded some shows but I can't measure the disk size.


If the BIOS is only showing 130GB then that's your problem unless there's a BIOS option (or update for the motherboard) to support LBA.

Scott


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## Doomster (Nov 6, 2003)

HerronScott said:


> If the BIOS is only showing 130GB then that's your problem unless there's a BIOS option (or update for the motherboard) to support LBA.
> 
> Scott


I tried another PC (has newer CPU, still has PATA).

I ran Spinrite v6.0 on the whole disk. Spinrite Level 2 Diagnostics says that every sector is OK.

But I'm still having problems with the disk when I put it back into my Tivo and restart it.

I'll post the problem on the Series 2 sub-forum.


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## sfhub (Jan 6, 2007)

Doomster said:


> Scott, I double checked. I connected the HD to the PC, then put the PC into the BIO setting. The BIOS shows the disk as 130GB.
> 
> Now I am not sure I used this PC to bake the HD in Instantcake. It could be that the disk is set at 130GB by Instantcake even though it is really 320GB. I used it and recorded some shows but I can't measure the disk size.


If the program you are running is going through BIOS to access the disks, then you need BIOS to support > 137GB.

If the program uses direct access to the interface, then it doesn't strictly need BIOS support.

For example, if you BIOS doesn't support > 137GB, you can install the boot partition for windows in first 137GB (less than 137GB in size), but then access the rest of the disk as a separate partition once windows boots because windows can bypass BIOS and access the controller directly, except for its boot paritition.

Similarly you might have been able to create TiVo drives larger than 137GB despite the BIOS limitation if the OS or app you were running could access the controller directly, after initial boot, for example if you booted from CDROM into linux and ran some tools taking advantage of linux's direct access to the IDE controller.


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