# In general, can data from bad TiVo HDs be salvaged?



## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Anyway, we're apparently having an epidemic of failing TiVos in my house.

I'm in the middle of fixing one of our broken S2's, and hour our TiVo Premier is failing. So 3 of our 5 TiVos are broken.

The Premier is the most important, and primary TiVo my wife uses, and she's very worried about it.

Symptoms: it keeps restarting, and alternating between the "almost there" screen, and the TiVo animated video that plays after restarting. I'm guessing, but could be wrong, that this could be due to a bad hard drive.

So I'm considering running HD diagnostics, and if necessary, replace the HD. But if that's it, it has a giant heapload of shows that my wife has recorded on it. Is there a way, using the MFS utilities, to copy all that from the bad HD to a new good HD? Would it (hopefully) copy whatever it could, but skip over the bad sectors? Or would this even work?


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## L David Matheny (Jan 29, 2011)

timckelley said:


> Anyway, we're apparently having an epidemic of failing TiVos in my house.
> 
> I'm in the middle of fixing one of our broken S2's, and hour our TiVo Premier is failing. So 3 of our 5 TiVos are broken.
> 
> ...


The other possibility is that your TiVo's power supply is failing. But in case your hard drive is in the process of failing, you could try cloning it ASAP with Gnu ddrescue as found on the SystemRescueCd (my new favorite rescue CD). You would need a target drive of equal or larger size. Search for threads here that mention ddrescue. And be careful of your ddrescue parameters, since it will happily copy an empty drive over your TiVo drive if you tell it to do so. And you might want to read "How To Clone Your Failing TiVo Drive With ddrescue", which is a sort of TiVo-specific tutorial. I believe you could also use Dvr Backup And Restore Software for Windows (DvrBARS), but I haven't tried it yet.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Thank you for this advice. Magically the TiVo started working later today, so nothing is lost.

Still I suppose it's possible that the hard drive is in the early stages of failure. I suppose I could try backing it up, but that seems pointless, because what if it doesn't bite the dust until a month from now or something? Having a one month-old backup might not be that valuable to my wife. OTOH, maybe it would, given how much stuff she has on it. Chances are that a sizable heapload will still be on it in a month from now, still unwatched.


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## HerronScott (Jan 1, 2002)

How the hard drive and just curious if it updated to the most recent version?

Scott


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

timckelley said:


> Thank you for this advice. Magically the TiVo started working later today, so nothing is lost.
> 
> Still I suppose it's possible that the hard drive is in the early stages of failure. I suppose I could try backing it up, but that seems pointless, because what if it doesn't bite the dust until a month from now or something? Having a one month-old backup might not be that valuable to my wife. OTOH, maybe it would, given how much stuff she has on it. Chances are that a sizable heapload will still be on it in a month from now, still unwatched.


If you happen to already have burned yourself a copy of the MFS Live cd, it has

dd_rescue

which is very similar to

ddrescue

and you could use either to "Xerox" the drive to another of the same size, or perhaps larger.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

That's good... the TiVo resumed it's bad symptoms this morning, so probably I should not wait until it's completely dead. I assume it has a SATA motherboard, but I'll be opening it up soon to have a look before running a diagnostic and possibly ordering another HD. I'd do it this evening, but my wife wants me to delay work until tomorrow evening, because this evening she wants me to recaulk my son's bathroom. We have an ant problem there, and the exterminator sprayed there a couple days ago, and they're recommended recaulking to help control the pests, and my wife considers this higher priority than fixing her TiVo because my son has to use the master shower until after the recaulking.

I wonder if this dd_rescue has a built in help screen to assist me with the syntax. I guess I'll find out. I do have a years old copy of MFS live on CD already, so I'll try that. As I recall, it involves linux commands, which is an OS I don't really know how to use.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

timckelley said:


> That's good... the TiVo resumed it's bad symptoms this morning, so probably I should not wait until it's completely dead. I assume it has a SATA motherboard, but I'll be opening it up soon to have a look before running a diagnostic and possibly ordering another HD. I'd do it this evening, but my wife wants me to delay work until tomorrow evening, because this evening she wants me to recaulk my son's bathroom. We have an ant problem there, and the exterminator sprayed there a couple days ago, and they're recommended recaulking to help control the pests, and my wife considers this higher priority than fixing her TiVo because my son has to use the master shower until after the recaulking.
> 
> I wonder if this dd_rescue has a built in help screen to assist me with the syntax. I guess I'll find out. I do have a years old copy of MFS live on CD already, so I'll try that. As I recall, it involves linux commands, which is an OS I don't really know how to use.


If you're going to use a GigaByte brand PC motherboard to do the work, don't hook any drives to it 'til we've talked about how to avoid getting them messed up because of the tendency of those boards to slap Host Protected Areas on drives without warning. There is a way around that.

As far as I know, that's the only brand that offers that particular danger.

Series 1 and Series 2 TiVos used the older PATA/IDE data connectors for hard drives, but they switched over to SATA beginning with the first Series 3.

One thing to keep in mind in a Linux-type environment is that something in uppercase letters is probably not the same thing as the same thing in lowercase letters.

Something like

dd_rescue -?

should bring up a help screen of sorts, kind of like DOS files would with

somefile.exe /?

back in the command line days.

In fact, the list of options, which are invoked in the form

dd_rescue -_x_

where _x_ is a letter, will probably show you that you could get that same help screen with

dd_rescue -h

the "h" standing for "help".

As for your MFS Live cd, it should offer 4 choices when it boots and the first choice should work fine. It's the default, so if you make no choice, it'll choose that one and continue booting after 10 or 20 seconds or so.

Eventually you should get a command prompt that looks like this

[mfslive:/]#

but if you have any drives connected by USB you may get that prompt, and then some other stuff related to the USB stuff, and then it finishes and sits, but not at that command prompt.

If so, hitting Enter should get it to finish up and get back to

[mfslive:/]#

Once you're there, entering

fdisk -l

(which will look like

[mfslive:/]# fdisk -l

on the screen)

should show you what drives are connected and which one is called what.

The naming convention is the first PATA/IDE drive, if any, would be

/dev/hda

the next one would be

/devhdb

and so on through the alphabet.

The first SATA drive would be

/dev/sda

but the "s" was originally, in early Linux/Unix days, to differentiate between PATA/IDE and SCSI drives.

Nowadays SCSI, SATA, and USB connected drives are all

/dev/sda

or

/dev/sdb

and so on.

You'll need to know for certain which drive is being called what by that version of Linux that boot cd loads so that you don't write anything to the wrong drives.

If there's a cd or dvd drive, that version of

fdisk

will probably "choke" when it gets to it, and if it's not last on the list of drives connected, you won't see the one(s) that follow(s).

But, there's another little program on that cd/built into the OS the cd loads into the PC's memory.

That program is

pdisk

and is similar to

fdisk

but what it does is tell you about drives which have been formatted, not with the DOS/IBM Master Boot Record scheme that

fdisk

can detect, but with the Apple Partition Map which TiVos use.

So

pdisk -l

can help you find which drives are TiVo drives, which are not TiVo drives, and which are not yet TiVo drives.

Also, you can, instead of adding a global "list" option to fdisk or pdisk, with

-l

you can target either at a particular drive.

For example,

fdisk -l /dev/sdd

if you have 3 hard drives and a cd drive and the cd drive is 3rd (/dev/sdc) on the list and you know it shouldn't stop the list there.

So, once you're sure which disk is which, let's assume for illustration that your Windows hard drive (which you bypassed when you booted from the cd) is /dev/sda, the cd drive shows up as /dev/sdb, the TiVo drive you want to copy is /dev/sdc, and the new blank drive is /dev/sdd.

The general form is

command (options) source target

so you'd do

dd_rescue -v /dev/sdc /dev/sdd

where -v tells it to use verbose mode, which gives info on what it's doing as it's doing it.

There are other options, including some to specify how many bytes to try to copy at once and how many fewer to fall back to if it hits a snag, but the defaults will probably suffice in your case.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

That sounds very informative; I look forward to trying this. Actually it sounds familiar, as it's not the first time I've run some of the utilities (though never have I run dd_rescue), but it's been so long, I forgot how I did it.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

timckelley said:


> That sounds very informative; I look forward to trying this. Actually it sounds familiar, as it's not the first time I've run some of the utilities (though never have I run dd_rescue), but it's been so long, I forgot how I did it.


I had to do some memory refreshing myself before writing that.

If you don't work with the stuff all the time, the details start getting fuzzy.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

I'm finally getting around to doing this, but I'm running into this problem: when I boot to the mfslive CD, i'm prompted to hit enter to load Linux and that works, but then once I get the Linux prompt it's like it doesn't recognize the keyboard; no matter what I type, nothing shows up on the screen.

In addition it's saying no CD ROM found, even though obviously it's able to read the cd ROM since it booted to it.


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## telemark (Nov 12, 2013)

There's about 3 phases to a linux boot, that have completely different hardware drivers.

BIOS, bootloader, and linux kernel.

Differences between the three's version of supported hardware, can lead to scenarios where hardware that was working later disappears.

Just grab a keyboard from another computer and move one. (If ps2, try USB. If USB, try ps2. If AT, get a new computer)


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

timckelley said:


> I'm finally getting around to doing this, but I'm running into this problem: when I boot to the mfslive CD, i'm prompted to hit enter to load Linux and that works, but then once I get the Linux prompt it's like it doesn't recognize the keyboard; no matter what I type, nothing shows up on the screen.
> 
> In addition it's saying no CD ROM found, even though obviously it's able to read the cd ROM since it booted to it.


I seem to recall there being some older, like maybe pre-DDR type RAM era, AMD CPU-based motherboards that the version of Linux on the MFS Live cd had problems with.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Well as an update, the video started acting up again like it used to do, where a bunch of lines were showing up, and the computer would lock up. Before, rebooting would fix that, and now, it did at first, but now it's stuck like that no matter how many times I reboot, and that includes with the Windows boot drive attached. I can no longer get this computer to boot.

And even when it did boot, I noticed I can't get it to detect the original CD drive that came with (even though I had hopes it would, since at one time I think I had the wrong IDE connecter on it), though it was at least reading the transplanted CD drive I took out of my other computer.

I'm suspecting hardware problems of a nature that maybe it's time for me to replace the computer. I did look on Craigslist and replied to one of them, but it turns out that one has a SATA motherboard. I'd prefer a computer with an IDE mother board so that it'd be easy to format IDE HDs to for my IDE TiVos.


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## telemark (Nov 12, 2013)

Not recognizing the CD drive is something that might be fixed when using a newer Linux disk.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

That's good, but it won't even boot to Windows now, suggesting something else is also at play. I will admit my Linux disk is very old though, so maybe I should make another one.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Update and a question.

I kind of stopped looking at this because I've been working feverishly to get my taxes done before the April 15th deadline. I've just finished that, and now my wife is leaning harder for me to finish fixing her TiVo.

Magically my old computer started working again. Even though repeated reboots didn't fix things, letting it rest a whole day did, and now it's been running fin the last few days. (I use it to run pyTiVo, which my wife heavily uses.)

Anyway, at this point, I'm afraid to use that computer to fix my TiVo because it seems that every time I fiddle with the innards, it starts malfunctioning. Plus I can't get the MFS live CD to work on that computer or have it recognize devices.

So I thought of buying a cheap used computer that supports IDE drives, as I have an IDE HD ready to configure for the TiVo. But nobody from Craigslist answers my emails. Then I just realized this: My main computer, which is an emachines T3604, and which uses SATA drives, has an IDE DVD drive. That ribbon has two connectors on it, and it looks like the same width as the IDE HD I want to configure.

Could I hook up my DVD and HD on the same ribbon at the same time, and have it work? If so, which should be primary and which slave? To be honest, I don't remember if the CD drive was primary or slave, but I'd guess primary, since it's the only IDE device that was in there. (I say "was", because it's currently in my finicky computer, as I was going to use it to fix the TiVo. If this works, I plan on returning the DVD drive back to its original computer to assist with the TiVo repair.)

So if this works, I guess I could boot to the the MFS CD, then eject it and insert an image CD in it's place, and start doing a transfer of that image onto my IDE hard drive.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Well I hooked up the hard drive and windows seems to detect it because it said some driver was installed. (Hopefully no harm was done by that since I plan on replacing the entire contents of the hard drive with a TiVo image.)

I've then booted to the MFS live CD and in the process it told me "to proceed press the enter key" but pressing enter does nothing.

Could that simply mean the CD is bad and I should burn a new one? I hope that's all it is.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Burning a new disc helped. The keyboard works using the new Mfslive disc. I'm now researching the proper syntax to copy an image onto the new hard drive.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

An IDE/PATA ribbon cable is right at just about 2 inches wide.

If the one in your eMachines that goes to the DVD drive has a blue connector plugged into the motherboard, and on the other end a black connector and near that a gray connector, it's the newer 80 conductor 40 connector type, which is strictly Cable Select when it come to figuring out which is Master and which is Slave, therefore both the DVD drive and any IDE hard drive you connect need to be jumpered CS.

The black plug on the end is the Master, and the gray plug about 6 inches away from it is the Slave.


If you're using WinMFS or the MFS Live cd, it probably doesn't matter whether the DVD drive is Master and the hard drive is Slave or the other way around.

The old Instant Cake cd's, and maybe the old PTV cd were fussy about that, but you probably shouldn't need either of those for anything these days.

If you need to use a cd-r with a TiVo image on it while running the MFS Live cd, you should first copy the image to a partition on the computer's main hard drive (the SATA one it boots Windows from) and then mount that partition while on the command line after booting with the MFS Live cd and point the restore command towards that.

The main hard drive will be referred to as 

/dev/sdX 

(Probably /dev/sda)

and the other hard drive, being non-SATA, will be 

/dev/hdX

with X depending on stuff, like is it the first SATA port or is it the Master or Slave on the IDE cable.

First port or Master would be "a", second port or slave would be "b", etc.

(If you were using a SATA drive with a SATA/IDE adapter connected to the IDE cable, the computer, and therefore the version of Live Linux the MFS Live cd boots into, would still see it as an IDE device and therefore as a /dev/hdX)


Are you sure you wouldn't rather do all this in WinMFS?

I can probably hook you up with the needed image.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

I'm having trouble getting the mount command to work, but I was trying to mount the CD rom for the image. Now that I see your idea to put the image on my SATA drive, maybe that will work. I think I do have the kind of connectors you describe, but I actually jumpered the IDE drive as a slave. I guess I should change to cable select like you said. As for winmfs, I could never get that to work, but that was on my other computer. Maybe I should give winmfs a try on this computer. I guess I'll try that now and see what happens.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

timckelley said:


> I'm having trouble getting the mount command to work, but I was trying the mount the CD rom for the image. Now that I see your idea to put the image on my SATA drive, maybe that will work.
> 
> I think I do have the kind of connectors you describe, but I actually jumpered the IDE drive as a slave. I guess I should change to cable select like you said.
> 
> As for winmfs, I could never get that to work, but that was on my other computer. Maybe I should give winmfs a try on this computer. I guess I'll try that now and see what happens.


Sometimes if a drive is jumpered Slave and you have it connected to the gray plug it'll work okay, or if you have it jumpered Master and connected to the black plug, but when you have something connected to both I'd play it safe and jumper both drives for Cable Select and let the cable sort it out.

(well, actually the controller on the motherboard notes which of those 40 connectors isn't connected to what on which drive and does the sorting according to that)

You can copy an entire drive with the MFS Live cd rather than restoring from a truncated image with a command string that uses

backup

and pipes the output of it to the input of the

restore

command, but WinMFS has

mfscopy

which will copy all of the TiVo's current drive (including recordings and all settings) to another of equal or greater size, and then you can use it to expand if there's extra space (but always do expansion as a separate step on its own, regardless of the instructions, whether you use WinMFS or the MFS Live cd, and whether you're copying a drive or restoring from a truncated image)

EDIT: Of course we still haven't established whether your S2 has a hard drive problem or a power supply problem, have we?


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

In WinMFS, when I try to select a drive, I see no drives at all. Well, I did change the jumper to cable select, so maybe I should put it back to slave like I had it. Still, you'd think it'd at least show my my windows SATA drive.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Well the old hard drive had bad sectors when I ran the diagnostics; that's why I'm assuming it's a hard drive problem.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

timckelley said:


> In WinMFS, when I try to select a drive, I see no drives at all. Well, I did change the jumper to cable select, so maybe I should put it back to slave like I had it. Still, you'd think it'd at least show my my windows SATA drive.


WinMFS does not show mounted drives unless you tell it to.

In the context of being booted into Windows, a mounted drive will be one with a traditional DOS/IBM-PC/ Master Boot Record, which blank drives don't have and which TiVo drives with Apple Partition Maps instead of MBRs don't have.

And I think spike set it up so that WinMFS cannot "see" at all, ever (for purposes of writing an image to or copying a TiVo drive to) the drive that has the Windows installation that the PC is booted to on it.

He did that for safety, although it can still see it to find a backup file or to write a backup file to.

If you're trying to write a backup file image to a drive that was previously used for PC stuff and probably still has an MBR on it, you need to click on

Select Drive

and then check the

"Show Mounted Drives" box.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Even checking on the show mounted drives box doesn't show any of my drives. But the mfslive CD is definitely detecting my drive so maybe I should use that software instead of WinMFS. You mentioned the idea of storing the TiVo image on a hard drive partition. I think my windows drive just has one big partition on it, but I'll check and see. Should I store it on the root (as opposed to a folder)? I don't know if the mfslive Linux commands can refer to folders inside a partition or or not.

Edit: apparently my windows drive has two partitions after all:

Vista ( C: ) 103.29 GB NTFS
Recover ( D: ) 8.50 GB NTFS


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## telemark (Nov 12, 2013)

Getting to a stable environment with any tools and the needed HDDs may be your first goal.

Some of us, me included, prefer one tool over another. So once there you might get different directions depending who's around answering at that point.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

timckelley said:


> Even checking on the show mounted drives box doesn't show any of my drives. But the mfslive CD is definitely detecting my drive so maybe I should use that software instead of WinMFS. You mentioned the idea of storing the TiVo image on a hard drive partition. I think my windows drive just has one big partition on it, but I'll check and see. Should I store it on the root (as opposed to a folder)? I don't know if the mfslive Linux commands can refer to folders inside a partition or or not.
> 
> Edit: apparently my windows drive has two partitions after all:
> 
> ...


Don't write anything to the recover partition!!!!!

You need to be running WinMFS with admin privileges for it to see drives, I just remembered, maybe that's the problem.

Find wherever you have

winmfs.exe

and right-click on it, and that should give you a "Run as..." option that'll let you select a user account with admin privileges.

But if you're going to do it with the MFS Live cd....

You can "drill down" to directories and subdirectories once you've mounted the C: drive, but it'd be easier to just copy the image file to the root of C:

Something you should do to insure not writing to the Recover partition, the D: drive, which Linux "should" see as /dev/sda2 but sometimes stuff happens, is to open Notepad while booted into Windows, type in

This is the C: drive

and then save it as

C:\ThisIsC.txt

so that when you go

mount -t ntfs /dev/sda1 /dos

you can then do

ls -l /dos

and if that file is there you'll know you mounted the right partition and if it isn't you need to immediately

umount /dos

which is not unmount but umount (which is the command to unmount, but they don't use the n in un)

I've seen at least one Windows XP machine (several years ago) where booting with a floppy with a "drive-looking-at" program revealed that what the Windows installation considered the C: drive was what I would later learn would be called /dev/sda2 by Linux, and that the hidden recovery partition was what Linux would call /dev/sda1, so if your eMachine was done that way you want to unmount the wrong partition before anything happens to it.

When you do

mount -t ntfs /dev/sda1 /dos

you're telling the version of Live Linux which booted the PC and installed itself into RAM to mount the first partition on the drive attached to the first SATA controller to the the virtual directory /dos, which is one of several it created in RAM when it installed itself.

It did not actually create a directory on the hard drive anywhere, it just uses /dos as a mount point for, in this case, the C: drive, so that any file in the root of C: would be seen by it as /dos/filename.ext, and a file in the Windows directory would be seen as /dos/Windows/filename.ext, and so forth.

The MFS Live instructions would tell you to, after mounting the C: drive to /dos, do something like this:

restore -s 128 -xzpi /dos/filename /dev/hdc

only in your case the target drive, being on the only IDE cable and controller, would be /dev/hda or /dev/hdb, depending on whether it was Master or Slave, and you should also omit

-xz

and just go with

-pi

because z doesn't really do anything useful that I can tell, and x, which is the "expand" command, can go wrong if you try to make it part of the restore process (which is also true when you do it with WinMFS instead).

I don't know why, but if you do the expansion later as a separate process with

mfsadd

it doesn't seem to have that problem.

In your case that would be

mfsadd /dev/hda

or

mfsadd /dev/hdb

depending, but first, after the restore completes, you should do

mfsinfo /dev/hdX

where X is a or b, to make sure everything looks okay, and then do the expansion.

With WinMFS, when it finishes the restore it'll tell you you have extra room on the drive (if you used a drive bigger than the original) and ask if you want to expand.

You should tell it NO.

Then you still use

mfsinfo

and then

mfsadd

but you click on them instead of typing them, and you'll already have told it which is the target drive.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Thank you; I've been getting invalid argument errors doing the mount command, following the advice at http://www.mfslive.org/softwareguide.htm#series2restore

"To mount a USB external drive, USB thumb stick or SATA drive, plug-in the device first and run the following command:

mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /dos"

But I see your syntax says NTFS instead of vfat, so maybe that's my problem.

But first I thought I'd try your advice to run WinMFS as an administrator. You're right; I now see the drive. I selected it, and for the last several minutes it's been thinking but not moving forward to whatever the next screen is supposed to be. I'll keep 
waiting and see if it eventually unlocks up.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

I could never get WinMFS to work but I did get the mount command to work in mfslive using your useful tips. The restore command worked too - I got the message 

restore done! partition table on drive A is revalidated!

However, when I then typed in 

Mfsinfo /dev/hdb,

I got the message 

mfsinfo: volume header corrupt

That doesn't look good to me. Does anybody have ideas what the next thing I should try at this point would be?

There was a time, by the way, when windows detected this new HD and automatically installed drivers somewhere. Could this have goofed something up?

I've not yet done the expand command.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

timckelley said:


> I could never get WinMFS to work but I did get the mount command to work in mfslive using your useful tips. The restore command worked too - I got the message
> 
> restore done! partition table on drive A is revalidated!
> 
> ...


Go ahead and try that drive in the TiVo to see if you get as far as the change in the lights about 60 seconds after plugging in the power, and if it does quickly do whichever version of the KickStart routine is recommended for your model

http://www.weaknees.com/tivo-kickstart-codes.php

and run KS 58, and see if that straightens it out.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

unitron said:


> Go ahead and try that drive in the TiVo to see if you get as far as the change in the lights about 60 seconds after plugging in the power, and if it does quickly do whichever version of the KickStart routine is recommended for your model
> 
> http://www.weaknees.com/tivo-kickstart-codes.php
> 
> and run KS 58, and see if that straightens it out.


Thank you for that tip; I'm going to try to do this this evening after my son goes to sleep. After I do this code, should I then turn off power to the TiVo, and put the drive back in my PC and do the MFSinfo command to see if the corrupted message is gone, and if so, proceed with the expand?


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Well darn, your kickstart link says the left light should be green at first, and eventually turn yellow, and then if I hold down pause the right light should then turn yellow.

Well, the left light is immediately yellow the instant I turn it on, and the right light is orange. The TV screen says "Welcome. Powering up". It's been that way for several minutes now with no change to the screen or the light colors.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

I'm now starting to doubt whether I installed the correct image. I've got so many TiVos, I'm getting confused which image goes with which. Still I'm not sure if that would explain the corrupt message.

I actually have a TCD140060, and my HD is 250GB.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

timckelley said:


> Well darn, your kickstart link says the left light should be green at first, and eventually turn yellow, and then if I hold down pause the right light should then turn yellow.
> 
> Well, the left light is immediately yellow the instant I turn it on, and the right light is orange. The TV screen says "Welcome. Powering up". It's been that way for several minutes now with no change to the screen or the light colors.


That sounds like it's not seeing the hard drive at all.

Which could be because the power supply is starting to go, and can't supply enough current to spin up the drive.

See my answer to your next post.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

timckelley said:


> I'm now starting to doubt whether I installed the correct image. I've got so many TiVos, I'm getting confused which image goes with which. Still I'm not sure if that would explain the corrupt message.
> 
> I actually have a TCD140060, and my HD is 250GB.


Somehow we seem to have segued from your Premiere and its problems to your S2s problems without any actual announcement that we were doing so.

Just for the record, Series 1 and 2 TiVos used the older PATA/IDE hard drives (although with the right drive and the right adapter they can use a SATA drive)

Ever since the first Series 3 they've been strictly SATA.

(It may be possible with the right adapter to use a PATA drive in an S3 or higher, but I don't think anybody's ever bothered to try since the SATA drives are so much better a GB/$ deal these days)

Series 2s and Series 3s are more prone than one would otherwise expect to power supply problems, which means one should keep that in mind when diagnosing their problems. It they have a problem it's not certain that the power supply is to blame, but the chances are greater than they otherwise would be compared to consumer electronic gear in general.

And if the power supply is going bad, it can cause all sorts of strange symptoms without being so far gone that the TiVo doesn't even respond at all when plugged in.

Series 1s, Series 4s, and Series 5s should be about as reliable as the consumer electronics average where the power supplies are concerned.

The 140's are among the S2s that can have power supply problems and unfortunately I've got the proof sitting right here waiting for me to do some capacitor replacing.

The good news is that the capacitors won't be but about $10 or less, the bad news is that the 140 supply is probably the most difficult to remove from the chassis. In addition to some screws, there are slots in the power supply circuit board and pieces of metal that are part of the chassis stick up through those slots and then the tops of those pieces of metal are twisted a little bit to "lock down" the circuit board, which means having to carefully untwist them back to straight to get the board out, hoping not to break anything off in the process.

The way the 140 mounts hard drives seems also to have been designed by a sadist.

I've lost track, are you trying to re-image the drive that was in the 140 or put an image on another drive to see if that works in the 140 so as to establish whether the drive that was in there was or wasn't the problem?

Here's a 140 image that works with WinMFS, just in case.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/49887720/140_gset.tbk

although a TCD240xxx image is also supposed to work in the TCD1450xxx.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

When I ran drive diagnostics on the 140, it said there were bad sectors, which why I assumed that was the problem (as opposed to the power supply). So I bought a new 250 GB HD. I made sure it had an IDE, and not a SATA connector, since that's what the 140 motherboard expects.

I used an old image from when I repaired what I think is the same TiVo years ago, but I'm not 100% sure it's the right image.

Thank you for your WinMFS image, but I can't get WinMFS to run; it always blows up (and it does so before I get to the point of supplying any image file.). Before when I wasn't running as an admin, it simply wouldn't detect the drive. As admin, it detects it, but when I select it, the app crashes.

So I infer then you're suggesting this could be both a HD and power supply problem? Is there an easy test to confirm this?

I once repaired a power supply on a different S2 (I think with your help) by buying a cheap TiVo from Craigslist and transplanting the power supply over.

Edit: I just looked at the power supply and my admittedly novice eyes aren't see any bulging cylinder endcaps. I took several photos which I can post here, but at the moment, my old XP computer isn't detecting my iPhone camera. (My regular Vista computer is turned off at the moment.)

When I got to work this morning, I'll use the work computer upload the photos to photobucket so I can post them, in case you or anybody sees anything I don't.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

If it helps, here are the photos I took:


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Hmmm.. I just checked, and while the TiVo boots, I can definitely hear the HD spinning, and I can feel it too, when I hold it in my hand. Wouldn't this mean the power supply is working? Yet the left light is yellow from the instant I turn it on (never green).

My wife did suggest an idea of a course of action I can take at this point. I have 2 broken S2's at the moment. Maybe I should stop working on this one, and try fixing the other using this same HD. If anything other than the HD is what's at fault, chances are I won't run into the same problem if I switch TiVos. I'm not quite sure if I have an image for the other TiVo or not; I'll go check the model number of it.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

timckelley said:


> Hmmm.. I just checked, and while the TiVo boots, I can definitely hear the HD spinning, and I can feel it too, when I hold it in my hand. Wouldn't this mean the power supply is working? Yet the left light is yellow from the instant I turn it on (never green).
> 
> My wife did suggest an idea of a course of action I can take at this point. I have 2 broken S2's at the moment. Maybe I should stop working on this one, and try fixing the other using this same HD. If anything other than the HD is what's at fault, chances are I won't run into the same problem if I switch TiVos. I'm not quite sure if I have an image for the other TiVo or not; I'll go check the model number of it.


Post the model number of the other S2.

That heat sink with the "fingers" that bends over at 90 degrees has 3 caps under it, C12, C14, and C18, and if yours is like mine, C12 and C14 have bulges on the top.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

I checked, and all 3 of those caps look totally smooth and flat to me. Do you by chance know if there could be a different cause for the left light to be yellow instead of green?

By the way, I just tested that other S2, which I hadn't turned on for quite awhile. It magically works now. So I figure I'll put it in the kitchen (which is where my wife wants and requests it to be), and let it run for awhile and see if it malfunctions again. If I remember clearly, I think the old symptoms were that it would freeze just like my TiVoHD currently is doing.

If it resumes doing that, then I guess I'll open it up. inspect the caps and do a HD diagnostic to check for possible bad sectors and proceed from there depending on what I find. So at least we've got another S2 in service (once I hook it up to the kitchen - I also need to go outside and activate the kitchen coax outlet to have antenna service to my attic antenna, but that should be simple to do). But meanwhile I wish I could figure out what's wrong with this other S2. Normally I might just give up and replace it, but it does have lifetime service on it, so it seems worth fixing, if it's possible to do so.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

timckelley said:


> I checked, and all 3 of those caps look totally smooth and flat to me. Do you by chance know if there could be a different cause for the left light to be yellow instead of green?
> 
> By the way, I just tested that other S2, which I hadn't turned on for quite awhile. It magically works now. So I figure I'll put it in the kitchen (which is where my wife wants and requests it to be), and let it run for awhile and see if it malfunctions again. If I remember clearly, I think the old symptoms were that it would freeze just like my TiVoHD currently is doing.
> 
> If it resumes doing that, then I guess I'll open it up. inspect the caps and do a HD diagnostic to check for possible bad sectors and proceed from there depending on what I find. So at least we've got another S2 in service (once I hook it up to the kitchen - I also need to go outside and activate the kitchen coax outlet to have antenna service to my attic antenna, but that should be simple to do). But meanwhile I wish I could figure out what's wrong with this other S2. Normally I might just give up and replace it, but it does have lifetime service on it, so it seems worth fixing, if it's possible to do so.


What is the model number of that other S2 which is no doubt just setting you up so that it can stab you in the back later.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

It is TCD540040


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

timckelley said:


> It is TCD540040


I think I'll be able to help you out with a power supply for that model if the current one starts giving trouble, so get in touch if it does.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Here we are, several days later, and that second S2 remains working, except for one thing: I noticed that when I hooked it up, I couldn't get live TV to work, because my Venturer digital tuner (which I'm using to tune to my attic antenna signal) is not working.

I actually have two of these tuners, and one of them is being used by another of our S2's. After troubleshooting I've figured out that there's nothing wrong with the tuner - it's the pwoer adapter that's not working. I do see where the prior owner of it (I bought it used from ebay) had taped up the wires at one point with electrical tape, so I guess it went bad. I don't see anything wrong under the electrical tape, so maybe I should buy another power adapter if I can find one somewhere.

But a thought just occurs to me to try one last thing before buying another one; maybe I should cut the wire and trim off the part where he did his repairs and splice it together again fresh. Maybe I can get the power adapter working again.

The weird thing is that it does provide power to the unit, but the unit won't tune into to anything nor present its main menu unless I use my other good power adapter with it.

Anyway, the really good news is that with minor work, this S2 should be put back in service. This still leaves my other S2 that still doesn't work, where the light won't turn green. I guess I'm at a loss for ideas on how to get that one fixed. Unless I maybe as a test, I try transplanting one of my other S2 power supplies into it (assuming they're compatible) just to see if that does anything (even though the caps all look smooth to me).

ETA: Maybe this now working S2 was never broken... maybe I misinterpreted a failing power adapter (to the Venturer digital tuner) as a failing TiVo, and maybe the TiVo was always fine. Hmmm... for me to make that mistake I would have had to neglect trying to play a show from Now Playing. Only live TV should have been frozen, not recorded shows. I'm not sure if I would have made that mistake or not.


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## telemark (Nov 12, 2013)

What are the numbers written on the bad power adapter?
Edit: And are they the same as those written on the good power adapter?


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Well I tried to repair it, and it still doesn't work. Maybe it's not the wiring that's faulty but the actual power brick itself.



telemark said:


> What are the numbers written on the bad power adapter?
> Edit: And are they the same as those written on the good power adapter?


The bad adapter says:

MODEL: PPI - 0930 - UL
INPUT: AC 120V - 60Hz
OUTPUT: DC 9V 300 mA
Polarity: inside of the barrel is positive

The manual says that it's 9v with 120v 60 hz input, but the manual doesn't tell the amperage or the polarity.

The good one is plugged in right now, and it's recording a show and I'm sure my wife will be upset if I unplug it, but I'll look for an opening tonight to unplug it and see if the numbers match. I vaguely recall looking at it before, and it might not even have the numbers on it, sadly.

Actually, I have another way to get the numbers... there's an ad for the power adapter for sale on ebay, and I've just now posted a question to the seller asking for the specs on it, so hopefully I'll get some info there.

I suppose I could buy it, but by the time you add in shipping, for the money I could probably buy a whole new digital adapter with power adapter included. (which I suppose is an option for me, if all else fails.)


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Update: I got a look at the good adapter, and it's not the same. 

Actually all parameters are identical except the amperage. It's 1.0 A, not 300 mA like the bad one is. So maybe the bad one is underpowered, but then how did it ever work? Unless I've lost track and have the wrong power adapter, but I don't think I've lost track - I'm pretty sure this is the adapter I was given by the ebay guy that sold me the tuner.

So it sounds like I need to buy a new adapter. I suppose any adapter will work as long as all the following are true:

input = 120 volts 60 Hz
output = 9 volts, 1 A
polarity is positive on the inside of the barrel (though if the polarity were off, I could easily reverse the polarity by cutting and resplicing the wires)
The diameter of the barrel matches the input port on the tuner.

That last property is one I don't know. The diameter doesn't seem to be imprinted on the plug. Maybe it'd be simpler to just buy one from ebay specifically marketed as going with this model.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Wow, in just a few seconds of searching I found an adapter on ebay for only $3.19 + $0.79 shipping, that's matches the voltage and amperage. The pictures shows the output is barrel shaped, like it needs to be, but if only I knew the exact diameter of the barrel.


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## telemark (Nov 12, 2013)

What's the model number of the tuner adapter?

9V, 1A should be easy to find. Diameter can sometimes be tricky.
Calipers might help if you have to measure.

If you're close though, I would try the
Computer Works
8965 Research Boulevard
Austin, Texas 78758
512-637-7501

Fry's and Radio Shack has these too but prob not as cheap.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

That address sounds pretty close. In fact I work on that same street.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Well good deal. They are 6.6 miles, or 8 minutes from my office. I think this Monday, I'll drive over there on my lunch hour and bring my tuner with me. They apparently have bins of adapters, around $5 - $6 each (very digestible price tag), separated by voltage.

He said I could try plugging one in to see if it works. Actually I could do a complete test on his premises. I have a very small hand held television I can bring with me, that accepts RCA inputs. Plus I could bring the digital tuner, and a set top antenna I have with me. I could plug it all together, and test the tuner right there in his place of business and see if I can pick up the stations. I just need to borrow my wife's harmony remote, because it's the only remote in the house that's programmed to operate our venturer digital tuners.

To get her by, I just reprogrammed the S2 TiVo remote that's she's not using to have a remote address matching her TiVo Premier (the one that she uses the harmony remote on), so while I'm at work on Monday, she can still use that remote in lieu of the harmony to access her main TiVo. (The Premier is her primary TiVo.)

Thank you for that nice tip of the place that's so close to me that sells cheap adapters. :up:


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## telemark (Nov 12, 2013)

If you're into old hardware, they used to maintain a hardware museum on site.

Disclaimer: don't blame me if you walk out with more hardware than you originally went in for.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Actually my visit was unsuccessful. They have lots of power adapters, but I couldn't find any that were 9 volts, 1 amp. All sorts of other combinations though, especially ones with lower amperage.

It occurs to me that if if I can't get the barrel diameter or the polarity right, it'd be enough just to get the voltage and the amperage right, because then I could take the power adapter I have now that's not working, and snip off it's barrel, and splice it onto a 9V, 1 amp adapter. Because the barrel on it fits fine, and polarity is just controlled by which wire I splice on to which side. Now the trick is knowing which wire is positive, and which is negative; I'm not completely sure I'd know which is which. I guess I could use trial and error, but I don't know if there's a risk of damage, if the polarity is wrong.


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## telemark (Nov 12, 2013)

Do you own a voltmeter? What's the make/model of the TV tuner?


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

It's a Venturer STB7766G1, but I don't have a voltmeter. I do own a device that detects if current if flowing through a wire, but I suspect that won't help.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Actually, I did a quick search on ebay (craigslist was fruitless), and there are lots of these for less than $2 from China and Hong Kong, which would take a long time to ship, but I found a U.S.A ad for $3.95, free shipping, that they estimate I could have within 8 days were I to order it.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/AC-100V-240...122?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1c50d2e28a

It has a pin, and not a barrel, but like I say, I could splice on my old barrel, so it seems like this could work.


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## telemark (Nov 12, 2013)

Hold on, I should have a spare. I have to run an inventory though.

That box is the same as a RCA and Winegard model btw.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Wow, thank you for looking into that.


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## telemark (Nov 12, 2013)

I didn't find one I could part with, but I measured the one I had by comparison.

I think it's a barrel: 5.5mm OD / 2.5mm ID
9V 1A.

There should be a number to choose from on eBay, and a few on Amazon. Worst case with that you can change the tip like you last planned.


Alternatively if you want to wait until Wed, I can see if my local store has it. It would be like $6+$2shipping+local tax.


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## telemark (Nov 12, 2013)

Ok, I found one. I'll test it and PM you.


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