# Upgraded Series 1 drive crash -- any old-timers still here?



## carpeperdiem (Aug 20, 2005)

Greetings!

This is my first post here, but I have been a forum member since 2005!

I have a series 1 Philips HDR212 (lifetime!) that I upgraded about 6 years ago to dual 120gb drives (bought drive bracket from 9th Tee)

Before I did the upgrade, I cloned the original 20gb drive and I probably used BlessTiVo, and Mfs Tools 1.x -- whatever was current at the time... I still have the factory original 20gb drive that has been on the shelf.

This TiVo has worked just fine (and since we have not gone HD with our TV, no need to trash this box just yet...) -- until a few days ago -- and TiVo is now STUCK on "Welcome, Powering Up" screen.

And I suspect based on reading many reports, that the hard drive(s) have failed.

OK -- I still have the factory orignal 20gb drive that I cloned before upgrading to the dual 120gb drives -- and I know I can simply toss the dual 120gb drives, and start over (assuming my 20gb drive that has been on the shelf for 6 years spins up). -- but I think I will lose all saved content, yes?

My questions:

1. Are there any disk utilities that may help me?
2. Any chance of recovering the content?
3. Any chance of recovering my season passes and all my wishlists?
4. If I'm gonna put a new large drive (or 2) in (I have a bunch of PATA 250g drives sitting around) any reason not to simply re-clone and use copykern, etc ?

The fact that I have had this thing for 10 years without paying any monthly fees is somewhat satisfying... not all that excited about buying a new lifetime subscription simply because a hard drive crashed.

If I can keep this series 1 working for another year, that will make my daughter happy.

Thanks in advance for any guidance or tips...

Jeremy


----------



## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

carpeperdiem said:


> Greetings!
> 
> This is my first post here, but I have been a forum member since 2005!
> 
> ...


Using your original 20Gb drive and WinMFS tool (free at http://www.mfslive.org/ ) you can clone and expand to any drive larger than 20Gb and not larger than 1Tb.
You can't save anything you had before as to season pass or programs if your current drive(s) are now bad, if a trick for saving that stuff does exist I don't know about it.


----------



## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

If you have season passes, wishlists, or any other settings on the original drive they will be ported over to the replacement. Chances are your original drive does not have any of these as current as what's on your existing drives so you're pretty much SOL.


----------



## ronsch (Sep 7, 2001)

carpeperdiem said:


> My questions:


1. Are there any disk utilities that may help me?

The diagnostics for the manufacturer of the bad drive(s) might be a place to start. If you have Spinrite that might be another. Odds are only one of the two drives went bad.

2. Any chance of recovering the content?

If the aforementioned utilities don't show a complete failure and the "bad" disk will still spin up you can try using dd_rescue (search the forums for it).

3. Any chance of recovering my season passes and all my wishlists?

See #2.

4. If I'm gonna put a new large drive (or 2) in (I have a bunch of PATA 250g drives sitting around) any reason not to simply re-clone and use copykern, etc ?

Go for it but I would recommend using only a single replacement drive. I have used copykern for my S1 DirecTiVo(500GB) for some time and when one of the drives in my Lifetime S1 HDR312 goes I will probably do the same thing.


----------



## daranman (Aug 5, 2004)

My HDR212 just started its hard drive whine of death, but I already archived all the content on it and transferred the lifetime to my Tivo HD. I upgraded it with a 80g hard drive almost immediately after getting it back in 2001, but it didn't quite make the 10 yr point... not bad for a hard drive, and the overall cost of the subscription. I was only using it as a tuner/time buffer for my old bedroom TV for my internal RF network...I guess its only a door stop now unless I can clone the current drive. I guess that's possible, but the desktop that I can use to do it with is also old and clunky, and is basically unused. Time for retirement.

(Wow... my first post also!)


----------



## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

carpeperdiem said:


> The fact that I have had this thing for 10 years without paying any monthly fees is somewhat satisfying... not all that excited about buying a new lifetime subscription simply because a hard drive crashed.


I agree, though I'm amazed you didn't take advantage of the lifetime upgrade offers.. Actually, you might be able to still get an offer nowadays.. log into tivo.com and see what offers there are for your Tivo.


----------



## xtgold (May 21, 2006)

There is a program called hdd regen that fixes hardrives track by track and doesn't care how they were formatted.
I will try it on my 30gig tivo drive later.
I know it takes a long time,I never tried it on a 120gig but I bet it would take at least 1 day.


----------



## xtgold (May 21, 2006)

v1.5.1 off the net as an .iso you burn to cd and boot from.
It will repair a hardrive track by track regardless of the format or if it's even formatted.
No speed demon,figure around 6gig per hour on a good drive.
As long as the drive isn't ground to a pulp,it should help.


----------



## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

carpeperdiem said:


> ...
> 
> I have a series 1 Philips HDR212 (lifetime!)...
> 
> ...


Have you tried the Kickstart codes yet?

I'm pretty sure that's your only chance of saving the content.

If you get it working again with kickstart, go ahead and use the MFS Live CD to do a backup -Tao | restore to copy everything over to one or, if necessary, two of those 250s because those 120s aren't going to get any better.

Copykern probably wasn't necessary with those 120s (although it would have been for anything larger), but if you did it when you transferred to them from the original 20 you won't need to do it again if you can revive them long enough copy everything to the 250(s).

If you're going to be doing long intensive stuff, like copying entire drives, take the drives to be used, wrap them in a couple of thicknesses of paper towel, and put them in the freezer overnight until you're ready to plug them in a start.

Test those 250s before you use them with the corresponding manufacturer's diagnostic utilities.

Lifetime goes with the motherboard, not the hard drive.


----------



## xtgold (May 21, 2006)

I think the series 1 had a 137gig drive size limit,so the tivo wouldn't recognize drives beyond that size.


> The original Series 1 models have ATA and TiVo kernel confinements that limit using at most 137GB (128GiB) of any drives installed. Larger drives will function but you are currently limited to a maximum of 2 drives x 137GB (128GiB) or 274GB (256GiB) of addressable space in Series 1 models.


----------



## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

xtgold said:


> I think the series 1 had a 137gig drive size limit,so the tivo wouldn't recognize drives beyond that size.


Just as many computers and operating system verisons did. It was a result of being designed to use LBA28.

Copykern patches the Series 1 kernel to LBAmaybenot48butmorethan28 that let's S1s use drives up to about 1.2TB.


----------



## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

If the hard drive is clicking or making other noises, none of the recovery programs are going to be able to save the drive. Noises generally mean the drive is failing either physically (bad bearings, etc.) or electrically (bad controller card, etc.). Recovery programs, such as SpinRite, and probably HDD Regenerator as well, will only work to repair bad clusters on the drive by constantly reading and writing to the same spot on the disc to restore sectors that are no longer readable.


----------



## xtgold (May 21, 2006)

The drive may also develop other problems.I have a 45gig maxtor that the 1st 60megs is bad and the drive went read-only.
I can't fdisk or low level format no matter what I throw at it.


----------

