new instantcake'd drive won't boot (long story)

[jayhawk]

I apologize in advance for the following long chronology, but I'm stuck!

Bought an "as is" Toshiba RS-TX20 on ebay to fix up for my brother. (I have my own RS-TX20 and love it, especially the free Tivo Basic.) As I expected, it failed to boot, never getting past "Welcome, Powering Up".

I had previously replaced the original drive in my own TX20 as it was acting up. Used MFSlive to clone that old 120Gb drive onto a new Excelstor 250GB drive from Frys ($50). That process had worked perfectly and that new drive is now running great in my own system.

So, I'll just do the same for the my brother's "new" broken system, right? Bought another new Excelstor 250GB drive from Frys), again used MFSlive with the original (failing) drive from the first TX20, all looked good, but the "as is" ebay TX20 again failed to boot, never getting past the "Welcome, Powering up" screen.

OK, so probably using the old, failing drive to image the new drive was the problem. Bought InstantCake for the Toshiba TX series to try again. (I had previously used Instantcake successfully for a failed Toshiba SD-H400 that now resides in our bedroom). Used InstantCake for the TX20 and all appeared to go well, installing 760Mb of something on the new 250 Gb drive. But same problem - no boot.

Now I'm getting frustrated.....

Could it be a bad 250Gb drive? Installed it in my Windows XP system, it worked perfectly. copied files to it, etc - no problems. So it looks like the drive is OK.

Hmmm, could it be the brother's TX20? Installed the old failing 120Gb drive in the brothers system. IT BOOTS! Gets to the menus and everything. So, its not the TX20 itself.

Maybe the InstantCake didn't really like the new 250 drive, so I ran it against the old failing 120Gb drive, intalling a new InstantCake image on the old drive. Worked! The TX20 booted again from the old 120Gb drive! - although now to a new system which wants to go through Guided Setup. Which seems to show that InstantCake did install new code on the old drive.

Ran InstantCake again to the new 250Gb drive, hoping maybe something didn't complete properly the first time. All messages during "baking" looked OK. Installed the 250Gb drive in the brothers system - same result. Still sticks on Welcome, Powering Up. (exact same thing that happens when no drive at all is attached)

Could this particular TX20 just not like the ExcelStor drive? (even though it works in my other TX20). OK, took the good, working 250Gb drive from my own TX20, installed it in brothers TX20, guess what, it boots just fine!

OK, maybe the InstantCake download and/or my burn onto a CD had errors. (no messages about that, but who knows, burning CDs can still be a little tricky). So I downloaded Instantcake again to a laptop I have, burned the CD on the laptop with a different burning program (first was Nero8, this was a program called Imgburn). Same net result - with the new 250Gb drive, the TX20 sticks on Welcome Powering Up. Apparently the TX20 still sees nothing on that 250Gb drive.

So,

1. the TX20 sees drives OK, even the same make/model I'm trying to use, and boots fine with known working TX20 drives.

2. The new drive is OK, as it works perfectly in a Windows XP system plus I ran the mfg's diagnostics on it and it passed perfectly. (I've double checked all jumper settings and the use of correct primary and secondary IDE cables to drives.)

3. InstantCake looks OK, as I used it successfully on the old 120Gb drive and I've tried two different downloads of InstantCake, burned on two different computers with different burning software on the new 250Gb drive.

What could the problem be? Any suggestions?

Thanks! --Bob

[Lou Jacob]

I apologize in advance for the following long chronology, but I'm stuck!

Bought an "as is" Toshiba RS-TX20 on ebay to fix up for my brother. (I have my own RS-TX20 and love it, especially the free Tivo Basic.) As I expected, it failed to boot, never getting past "Welcome, Powering Up".

I had previously replaced the original drive in my own TX20 as it was acting up. Used MFSlive to clone that old 120Gb drive onto a new Excelstor 250GB drive from Frys ($50). That process had worked perfectly and that new drive is now running great in my own system.

So, I'll just do the same for the my brother's "new" broken system, right? Bought another new Excelstor 250GB drive from Frys), again used MFSlive with the original (failing) drive from the first TX20, all looked good, but the "as is" ebay TX20 again failed to boot, never getting past the "Welcome, Powering up" screen.

OK, so probably using the old, failing drive to image the new drive was the problem. Bought InstantCake for the Toshiba TX series to try again. (I had previously used Instantcake successfully for a failed Toshiba SD-H400 that now resides in our bedroom). Used InstantCake for the TX20 and all appeared to go well, installing 760Mb of something on the new 250 Gb drive. But same problem - no boot.

Now I'm getting frustrated.....

Could it be a bad 250Gb drive? Installed it in my Windows XP system, it worked perfectly. copied files to it, etc - no problems. So it looks like the drive is OK.

Hmmm, could it be the brother's TX20? Installed the old failing 120Gb drive in the brothers system. IT BOOTS! Gets to the menus and everything. So, its not the TX20 itself.

Maybe the InstantCake didn't really like the new 250 drive, so I ran it against the old failing 120Gb drive, intalling a new InstantCake image on the old drive. Worked! The TX20 booted again from the old 120Gb drive! - although now to a new system which wants to go through Guided Setup. Which seems to show that InstantCake did install new code on the old drive.

Ran InstantCake again to the new 250Gb drive, hoping maybe something didn't complete properly the first time. All messages during "baking" looked OK. Installed the 250Gb drive in the brothers system - same result. Still sticks on Welcome, Powering Up. (exact same thing that happens when no drive at all is attached)

Could this particular TX20 just not like the ExcelStor drive? (even though it works in my other TX20). OK, took the good, working 250Gb drive from my own TX20, installed it in brothers TX20, guess what, it boots just fine!

OK, maybe the InstantCake download and/or my burn onto a CD had errors. (no messages about that, but who knows, burning CDs can still be a little tricky). So I downloaded Instantcake again to a laptop I have, burned the CD on the laptop with a different burning program (first was Nero8, this was a program called Imgburn). Same net result - with the new 250Gb drive, the TX20 sticks on Welcome Powering Up. Apparently the TX20 still sees nothing on that 250Gb drive.

So,

1. the TX20 sees drives OK, even the same make/model I'm trying to use, and boots fine with known working TX20 drives.

2. The new drive is OK, as it works perfectly in a Windows XP system plus I ran the mfg's diagnostics on it and it passed perfectly. (I've double checked all jumper settings and the use of correct primary and secondary IDE cables to drives.)

3. InstantCake looks OK, as I used it successfully on the old 120Gb drive and I've tried two different downloads of InstantCake, burned on two different computers with different burning software on the new 250Gb drive.

What could the problem be? Any suggestions?

Thanks! --Bob

Sounds like either a problem with that particular drive in your TiVo; or a problem with your TiVo. You should run diagnostics on your drive to rule out the problem of any defects.

Beyond that, you might want to go with a drive known to work (for instance, we sell the Seagate DB35 drives which work just fine) in your TiVo.

[jayhawk]

Well, I did run diagnostics on the drive and it passed with flying colors. (And of course, the drive worked perfectly when I tried it on my Windows XP system.)

And I did use a drive known to work, the one from my other Toshiba RS-TX20, which was the same make and model drive as the new drive. It worked perfectly.

Could there be some kind of boot partion/boot sector that is not getting installed?

Any tool to examine a "baked" drive to see what is actually there (before putting it into the Tivo)?

Thanks --Bob

[jayhawk]

after multiple attempts to load the Tivo code on the new drive via Instantcake, MFSlive, and WINmfs, I gave up and returned the drive to Frys for a replacement of the same make and model. Loaded the replacement drive with Instantcake, and it booted immediately.

Still don't know what was wrong with the first drive, it seemed to work perfectly for every other application - worked fine in a Windows machine, passed all the read/write and surface scan tests from the manufacturers tools, etc. WINmfs even showed all the right partitions on the drive after copying the image from another good drive or using Instantcake.

Somehow I think the boot partition/sector was bad, and none of the mfstools or reloads of Instantcake would fix it.

--jayhawk

[derek]

I have a surprisingly similar situation to this thread (http://www.dvrupgrade.com/forums/showthread.php?t=671) posted a couple of weeks ago by Jayhawk. HR10-250 starts freezing and a few weeks later I get a critical error screen and it won't boot anymore. I figure it must be the drive. Buy WD4000AAJB 400GB drive and install Instantcake 6.4a and it hangs on "Welcome, Powering Up". Baffled. Everything went smoothly it just won't boot. So I try and download/install 6.3f on the same drive, thinking my unit might not have liked the newest software. "Welcome, Powering Up" hung again!

Am I missing something important here? Is it possible that another piece of hardware in the HR10-250 is causing this? Or should I just do what worked for Jayhawk and return the drive and get a new one?

[Lou Jacob]

I have a surprisingly similar situation to this thread (http://www.dvrupgrade.com/forums/showthread.php?t=671) posted a couple of weeks ago by Jayhawk. HR10-250 starts freezing and a few weeks later I get a critical error screen and it won't boot anymore. I figure it must be the drive. Buy WD4000AAJB 400GB drive and install Instantcake 6.4a and it hangs on "Welcome, Powering Up". Baffled. Everything went smoothly it just won't boot. So I try and download/install 6.3f on the same drive, thinking my unit might not have liked the newest software. "Welcome, Powering Up" hung again!

Am I missing something important here? Is it possible that another piece of hardware in the HR10-250 is causing this? Or should I just do what worked for Jayhawk and return the drive and get a new one?

There are too many variables here to give you a definite answer. You made an educated guess that it was a bad drive, but now that you are still having a problem, you should go back and run the manufacturer's diagnostics on the drive you just replaced (and run them on your new drive, as well). If the drives aren't bad, then it'll be a little easier to narrow down the problem. And if the drives are bad, you'll know what the problem is!