# Help with upgrading a failing Tivo Premiere drive



## chrisw01 (Mar 3, 2013)

I'm new to this forum but a long-time Tivo owner dating back to the very first Tivo. I'm hoping someone more knowledgeable that me can give me some advice...

I have a Tivo Premiere (320GB) with a failing drive (the Tivo started freezing up during playback of recorded videos then skipping ahead). I ran the SMART test and the drive failed. Other than that, it's not had any problems (no rebooting, etc.)

So I bought a WD20EURS 2TB drive to replace it (if it makes a difference, the drive was manufacturered in Thailand in Dec. 2012) and downloaded the Premiere JMFS bootable CD. I plugged both drives into my PC, booted fine from the JMFS CD and started the copy process. Initially it was humming along, but it really bogged down after about 8 hours (maybe earlier). It's been running now for close to 40 hours; most of that time seems to have been spent on "trimming failed blocks" and "splitting failed blocks".

As it stands, it says:
rescued: 320061MB, err size: 11187kB, current rate: 0 B/s
ipos: 148627MB, errors: 1124, average rate: 2260 kB/s
ops: 148627MB, time from last successful read: 2m
splitting failed blocks

It seems to be reducing the err size (originally it was up at about 14000kb), but very slowly--that err size was 12677kB 6 hours ago, so it has dropped by about 1490 kb in in that time. At this rate it'll take another 48 hours to reach zero (in theory, though the average rate is slowing as well). I fear that it's asympotically approaching zero errors and will never actually get there and will take forever trying.

So my questions are:

- Should I interrupt the process now and try expanding/supersizing the new 2TB disk with the data that has been copied over or should I let it continue doing what it's doing? I suppose I have nothing to lose if the new drive doesn't work, but I'd also hate to have it not work and then have to start the process over again from scratch.

- Is there a better way to approach rescuing the failed drive and upgrading to the larger 2TB drive?

At this point, it's not life or death if I can't save the shows that were recorded on the old drive. Though it would be nice if I could save my settings/season passes, etc. it's also not the end of the world if I lose those. From my research, it sounds like there's no way just to make an image/copy the Tivo OS/files and leave behind the recorded shows, so I'm a little at a loss for what to do.

If it makes a difference, I don't have a spare 320GB drive handy for cloning the current drive, but I do have access to a 500GB drive if that helps for an alternate rescue/upgrade process.

Thanks in advance for helping maintain family harmony (my wife and daughter are already up in arms for having to go 40 hours without Tivo!).

Thanks,
Chris


----------



## lillevig (Dec 7, 2010)

chrisw01 said:


> I'm new to this forum but a long-time Tivo owner dating back to the very first Tivo. I'm hoping someone more knowledgeable that me can give me some advice...
> 
> I have a Tivo Premiere (320GB) with a failing drive (the Tivo started freezing up during playback of recorded videos then skipping ahead). I ran the SMART test and the drive failed. Other than that, it's not had any problems (no rebooting, etc.)
> 
> ...


Terminate the process in any case. 40 hours is way too long and it isn't going to complete. You can try the drive but don't expect it to work. Your best bet may be to find a used Premeire on Craigslist or eBay (I got a spare for $51) and use the drive in it to copy to the new drive.


----------

