# Formatting Drives and Starting from Scratch.



## mikesweeney (Jan 15, 2003)

My TiVo is having some issues which I believe may be related to either a hard disk failure, or just a glitch. I currently have a 60hr Series 2 with an extra 120GB thrown in, it ran fine for 2 years.

Now, can I format both drives and start from scratch if I still have my original TiVo backup saved from when I upgraded it 2 years ago?


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## weaknees (May 11, 2001)

Sure - but you should test the drives fully first. Likely one is causing problems.


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## mikesweeney (Jan 15, 2003)

possibly, but I have no reasons to think it actually is. it seems more likely that data is corrupt. but I'll keep on the watch for a bad drive.


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## maharg18 (Dec 4, 2002)

What makes you think it's not a hard drive going bad?


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## mikesweeney (Jan 15, 2003)

just my intuition. it was seemingly running fine 2 months ago when it was being used. it hasn't really been run since then. in fact it was running fine up until it was doing the "preparing" for the guided setup. but it really could be a bad drive, it would not surprise me in the least. 

but something in my head is telling me it's just some really corrupt data. I'm going to format them to begin with, so I really have nothing to lose.


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## mikesweeney (Jan 15, 2003)

turns out I was right. It's been 5 months without an issue.


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## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

Formatting the drive is not required. This is done automatically upon restoring a Tivo image using MFSTools.

If you suspect the drive may be defective you should test it using the drive manufacturer's diagnostic tools (available for download from their website). Many people have had success recovering data from a bad drive and restoring it to working condition using SpinRite.


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## Dkerr24 (Oct 29, 2004)

mikesweeney said:


> turns out I was right. It's been 5 months without an issue.


It's also possible you have a bad sector and have just been lucky that the O/S hasn't tried writing data to that sector.

I don't blame you... it's only TV programs, so no big deal if the drive goes belly up.


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