Downgrading drive, tivo won't boot (stuck at powering up)

[orev]

I have a TCD240080 that I am trying to downgrade to a much more quiet 60G drive. I purchased the 40G version of InstantCake for this unit, and installed and expanded the image to the 60G drive. Everything seems to go fine, but when I boot the Tivo with the new drive, it just sits at the "Welcome, Powering Up" screen. I know you can't downgrade a drive using a bigger image, which is why I purchased the 40G image.

Does anyone know what's going on?

The drive is an older laptop drive from 2002, so might it be too old?

Is there a way to see the tivo boot console or otherwise see a log of what the error is?

[Rick Travis]

You can test the drive with Hard Disk Sentinel http://www.hdsentinel.com/index.php (free download) and the manufacturers diagnostics. First make sure the drive is healthy, then you can tackle other problems. InstantCake is not likely to be the problem. Good Luck :)

[orev]

I have tested the drive with Spinrite and it finds no errors. However, I did notice that Spinrite does not detect a DMA mode and runs in PIO mode on the drive. Could that be a possible cause?

[Rick Travis]

I recommended Hard Disk Sentinel for a reason. It will tell you if any sectors have been recovered and relocated. I recommend the windows version. You will have to purchase the software if you want to run the extended test. Yes running in PIO mode may cause problems, I don't know if the TiVo attempts to use it and what happens if it is not there. Good Luck :)