What to do when tivo out of warranty

[Charlie Crackle]

I have 2 tivos 160GIG and one with 1T expander drive

they have now both just come out of warranty.

Both working OK.


Tivos have HDD which one day will fail. With the Tivo series 1 you got a new HDD and reformated and you are away (after loading the backup of your season passes)

With the Series 3 I am worried that when the HDD does die then I have a brick. and have to go out and then buy another FULL unit.

Should I be doing some preventative work while working OK.

1) backup both HDD with WINMFS

or

2) Get two new drives and copy to these... and then put some where safe.


What are the complication with the Tivo that has the 1T expander.. should I be removing it first and rebooting the Tivo before running WinMFS ?

This way when the HDD does DIE I dont have a BRICK.

I assume tivo AUS dont repair TIVOS

Charles

[petestrash]

Just backup the TiVo that does not have the expander, you can then use that image on either TiVo. You will need to run a Clear and Delete if you use it on the one with the expander as the serial numbers will not match the backup image.

I wouldn't bother with backing up the one wth the expander, as you will lose everything regardless of which drive fails first. So you might as well start from a single drive backup.

TiVo Aus does do repairs outside of warranty, and there are also others that have been doing repairs not associated with TiVo.

Peter.

[Darren King]

Use WINMFS to make a backup of the TiVo operating system to a file on your PC. Then burn a CD of the image. The image is only 400-450MB so fits on a CD nicely. Add a copy of WinMFS to the CD too so you have it all in one handy place.

In fact why not make several copies and tape one to the underside of the TiVo so you know where it is. I do that for every TiVo I repair before handing it back. Makes life for the person so much easier in the future if they have a copy on hand so they are not looking for a working image.


there are also others that have been doing repairs not associated with TiVo.

Quite right :) And jobs have been steadily increasing all the time.