Possible Hard Drive Problem

Archived from groups: alt.video.ptv.tivo (More info?)

I had posted in another thread about the self rebooting and hanging at the
"welcome..powering up" screen as follows:

"My Directivo is starting to give me the "Welcome. Powering Up" message as
of
late, it did it again this morning. No clicking sounds but I have to unplug
it to get it to boot back up. Anyone seen this before? I have this on a HDTV
and it isn't used but ever few days at least in terms of moving around in
the menu. Some things are setup to record. It may be a problem with the
service data download which was 2:49 am last night. The software version is
3.1.1e-01-2-351. It is a SDDRV40"

I can reboot after power cycling and it works for a while and then has the
same problem. It has done it agin without a service data download.

From what I can read on the upgrade sites and forums, most people say it is
almost certainly the hard drive (as did the second level DTV support guy).
It is one month out of warranty.

I pulled the HD and it was one of those short Maxtor drives. I maintain the
computers at work and I have seen five of those Maxtor drives fail within
5-6 months of installation. The replacements from Maxtor also failed. I will
no longer buy Maxtor drives.

Also in my googling I saw some info that said HD can be a problem in a TIVO
even if the drive passes the manufactures' test software. I can't remember
where I saw that. On the weaknees site I read that you can run the test
software to determine if the HD is the problem. I have run the Maxtor
software on the drive and it passes both the quick and the advanced tests.

I was wondering if anyone had any words of wisdom on testing a TIVO HD to
determine if it is defective. I don't really want to buy instantcake and a
new HD if it isn't going to solve the problem.

Thanks

RG