# Tivo with cachecard - error on powering up



## Maars (Jan 5, 2004)

My Tivo (with cachecard & 200GB disc) crashed halfway through recording the F1 on Sunday. I powered it down, then up and it froze on the SiliconDust cachecard screen with the message "Warning, possible hard disc failure - refer to log". No matter how long I leave it it never recovers from this state.

It was working perfectly before then. Is there anything I can do to check the disc and/or salvage the recorded programs? I don't mind pulling the disc out and plugging it into my PC, or can I use the network connector to tap into the Tivo even in this state?

Help!


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

Remove the ram from the cachecard and see if it boots up fully without the ram installed.


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## Maars (Jan 5, 2004)

Will do...thanks for the tip!


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## Maars (Jan 5, 2004)

mikerr said:


> Remove the ram from the cachecard and see if it boots up fully without the ram installed.


So I took the RAM out, it booted with a cachecard error message, then went to the 'almost there' screen...and hung. Oh dear. Dead disc?

If that's the case, is there any way to retrieve the data using a PC?


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## Ian_m (Jan 9, 2001)

When my drive A died, I ran Seagate Seatools on it and it found and repaired some duff sectors.

When placed back in TiVo it green screened of death'ed. I connected modem lead and left. After about an hour or two it rebooted and got right through to TiVo central.

At that point I "copied" off the interesting programmes (to play on my Popcorn Hour). TiVo lasted for a day, whilst waiting for replacement disk to arrive, before hangining again and not rebooting.

Running Seatools again and further disk errors....at that point replacement disk plugged in and been working ever since.


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## Maars (Jan 5, 2004)

Sounds good. So forgive my ignorance here, but how do i get seatools and then run it on the tivo disc?


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## iankb (Oct 9, 2000)

If one were really desperate to retrieve recordings from a failing TiVo drive, and you had a bit of spare cash, you could always try SpinRite, which purports to work with TiVo drives.

Its theory is that, if the heads have become misaligned over the tracks, then by following a varying cycle of jumps between tracks, then the deceleration will cause it to overshoot, bounce, whatever, and that it might actually hit the data track sometimes. A bit of an expensive option since it might just be snake-oil, and your particular drive failure might not fit this approach. Even if it worked, it would be very slow.

I've never heard of any TiVo owner who've actually tried it (or even heard of it).


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## Ian_m (Jan 9, 2001)

Maars said:


> Sounds good. So forgive my ignorance here, but how do i get seatools and then run it on the tivo disc?


Here, I used Seatools for DOS booting from CD.
http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=SeaTools&vgnextoid=720bd20cacdec010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

Boot from CD and select long test. Actually it errored on short test first, then recommended a long test.

Allowing it to fix the errors got my TiVo booting to allow me to get the programmes off.


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## Milhouse (Sep 15, 2001)

Maars said:


> Sounds good. So forgive my ignorance here, but how do i get seatools and then run it on the tivo disc?


I should point out Seagate SeaTools is only for Seagate hard drives. Most hard disk manufacturers have similar hard drives diagnostic tools available for download from their websites.


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## Maars (Jan 5, 2004)

HELP!

So I've taken the Tivo HD out, bought a USB-IDE adaptor and plugged the drive into my XP laptop. In Disk Management I can see the disc, but it says "Disk 1 unknown, 186.31GB, Not initialized".

How do I get my PC to see it so I can run some form of disc repair on it?

BTW, I installed SeaTools and it crashed with a Fatal Error on startup. Nice! What free alternative disc repair software can I use?


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## Automan (Oct 29, 2000)

Booting a Tivo drive with a windows based PC is not good as the disk has a different operating system and windows may try and write windows file system data to it.

The disk test tools are used from a boot cd which boots rather than it running from windows.

Which make of disc was it in your Tivo, I guess it was a Seagate?


Automan.


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## Maars (Jan 5, 2004)

So, I got Seatoolsl to work, and it found 40 bad sectors and repaired them - nice! Put the disc back in Tivo, it booted up and then ... Green Screen of Death!!

Question is, where to go from here? Can I recover programs via TyTools/TivoWeb? If so, what might the default IP setting be (it's years since I used it and can't find the IP details anywhere).


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## iankb (Oct 9, 2000)

Maars said:


> ... Green Screen of Death ...


Did you let it run through the end? The whole point of the GSOD is that it is trying to fix errors in the file system.


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## Maars (Jan 5, 2004)

Good news! Tivo recovered after a few hours of the GSOD and now seems to be running ok. 

However, when I finally managed to telnet in it has deleted my /var/hack/ folder and thus wiped tytools and tivoweb. I've reinstalled tytools and archived my shows onto my pc.


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## Automan (Oct 29, 2000)

Time for a new hard drive I suspect...

I have never had much luck with Seagate drives in recent years and now never buy that brand...

Automan.


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## Maars (Jan 5, 2004)

Indeed. What other manufacturer would you recommend over Seagate?
*crosses fingers as I have two Seagate drives in my PC!*


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## Automan (Oct 29, 2000)

Western Digital would be my 1st choice IMHO

Automan.


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## iankb (Oct 9, 2000)

Automan said:


> Western Digital would be my 1st choice ...


I use Western Digital nowadays.

I use the 'Black' drives for performance, and the 5400rpm 'Green' drives for quiet and cool media servers.


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## Maars (Jan 5, 2004)

Thanks for the hd recommendations. Time for a new one I think.

When I telnet'd in to my restored setup I noticed that some of my bash commands were missing e.g. ls. Those, and the missing /hack dir. When I bought the upgrade disc it came with extra commands, tytools, tivoweb, mode0+lj fix. Where could I find guides to re-installing these?


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## velocitysurfer1 (Sep 6, 2006)

Maars said:


> When I bought the upgrade disc it came with extra commands, tytools, tivoweb, mode0+lj fix. Where could I find guides to re-installing these?


Search this forum


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## Automan (Oct 29, 2000)

Also when selecting a drive make sure you pick a drive that TiVo works with. IDE interface drives are becoming rare. Some fit SATA ones with converters but again pick converters and a drive known work in TiVo.

Automan.


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