A couple of Hard Drive questions

[patfergie44]

I have successfully baked 2 hard drives, installed them in my Tivo units and everything has worked out great. I do have a couple of questions:

1) I have read many times to do a diagnostics on the hard drive to see if it's alright. I used SeaTools on the two that I pulled and each had bad sectors. The SeaTools software fixed those bad sectors and says the hard drives are now good. Do you think I could re-use these hard drives (re-bake them) and put them in another Tivo? Or, are they no good since they've had bad sectors?

2) I have a Pioneer DVR-57H and I believe the hard drive is failing (pixelating, freezing, etc.) so I'm thinking about running SeaTools on it. If I ran SeaTools and fix the bad sectors (if it has any), do you think I could simply re-install the hard drive (without re-baking) and it would work fine?

Your answers are greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

[Rick Travis]

The answer to both your questions is replace the drives. Seatools found bad sectors and replaced the with spare sectors. The drive has a limited supply of spare sectors. When it runs out, you are out of luck. Seatools does not address the problem of what caused the bad sectors. New drives will give you three to five years of service under the manufacturers warranty. Why risk your TiVo to an old drive already exhibiting problems? :)