Help: 2nd hard drive wouldn't work, and now 1st fails during startup

I had a happily running Tivo, but it was too full of things I'd quite like to keep. I wanted to add a 2nd hard drive to give a bit more room. I have a Philips Tivo from US.

I used the image CD to add the 2nd drive to the configuration. Back on the Tivo no matter what I did it wouldn't boot with the 2nd hard drive in place. My 1st hard drive had worked as Master, but I couldn't get the Tivo to boot with both in place - with any combinations of master, slave etc for either. Any ideas on what's going wrong?

Then I gave up and wanted to return to my single hard drive setup for the time being. Only problem: now part way during startup it reboots. During boot it looks normal, shows the cachecard splash screen, then briefly blank screen with the normal Tivo bar at the top, then a completely pink-purple screen for a second or so and restart.

I'm wondering whether the image now expects a 2nd hard drive and restarts when it's missing.
Can I alter settings from the image CD to restore it to a single drive setup without losing data & settings?

I'd really like to keep the contents on that hard drive. If I do have to reimage is there any way to recover the contents of the original drive? I can image onto the new drive, then can I access the old drive in any way?

Many thanks for any and all help.

Once you add a second drive, it always expects that drive to be there and will not boot without it.

I've never tried divorcing a 2nd drive myself, but from what I have read in the past on the forums @ Dealdatabase it seems to be mainly unsucessful. I'd suggest doing a search there to see if a better way has been found.

It may be best for us to try and get the 2nd drive working for you.

One common thing is not setting the jumpers for master and slave on the drives. TiVo does not use cable select.

If it's not that, then post more details here about both drives and what occurs when both are installed.

Peter

US Philips PTV300
Cachecard from 9th Tee with 512MB RAM

Inital drive: Seagate 250GB 7200.8 set as master
Second drive: Seagate 250GB 7200.9 set as slave

Behaviour:
Standard startup screen with "Your Recorder is starting up. Please wait a moment...". It doesn't change from this screen (have left it more than 30 mins). No audible evidence that either drive is in use.

Unfortunately the 7200.9 seagates >200 Gb are known to be an issue when used in dual drive TiVo's.

It appears that the current 7200.9 generation of hard drives will not work in dual drive TiVo's. They work fine as single drives, but do not seem to work when used as either the primary or secondary in a dual drive TiVo. Previous generations of Seagate drives work fine.

We have noted this @
What_type_of_Harddisk_HDD_should

So, getting your 7200.9 to work appears to be a dead end also :mad:

My only suggestion is to maybe try and add a different drive to the TiVo, even just a small one using the installer.

***I do not know if this will work, as you have already added the seagate.***

Maybe one of the software guru's might suggest something else.

Peter.

Thanks very much Peter.

Since the problem was so fundamental I suspected incompatability - but no way to prove it. I had read all the website info when getting things going and sometime after, but certainly didn't go for a fresh look this time.

So thanks for your help, and I'll go hunting for a 7200.8 or earlier drive.

Andrew.

I understand that there is a problem with the Seagate 7200.9 drives in a S1 tivo but a thread in the UK suggests this is only an issue if you trying to use two 7200.9 drives.

Has anyone got a 7200.9 working with a second smaller and older drive?

Got a cheap 300gb seagate and want to put in with existing 120gb IBM drive if I can.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by andrewmc

I understand that there is a problem with the Seagate 7200.9 drives in a S1 tivo but a thread in the UK suggests this is only an issue if you trying to use two 7200.9 drives.

Has anyone got a 7200.9 working with a second smaller and older drive?

---

The problem occurs if you use a 7200.9 drive with ANY other type of drive. From reports so far no-one has been able to use a 7200.9 drive in any configuration in a dual drive TiVo.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by andrewmc

Got a cheap 300gb seagate and want to put in with existing 120gb IBM drive if I can.

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I wouldn't try it...

Better off copying the existing drive to the 300gb and using the 120gb elsewhere.

Peter.

Have there been any reports of success/failure with the new Seagate 7200.10 drives? (These are the new perpendicular storage / super high density magnetic surface drives).

I've only seen the 750GB version released here in NZ thus far but the smaller models should be appearing soon. If they're more popular in Aussie or tried/tested on forums elsewhere in the world with an S1, does anyone care to report?

If the issue has gone away with the 7200.10 series, I'd be inclined to wait for the higher capacity drives.

I'm not aware of anyone who has tried a 7200.10 in a dual drive TiVo yet...

Peter.