Dying Hacked Hard Drive (maybe)

[jhoweaa]

I have a Series 2 DirecTiVo (Hughes HDVR2) which seems to have developed a hard drive problem. The drive was installed a little over a year ago and was created from both the InstantCake and PTVNet disk images. The symptoms that we are seeing is that sometimes the images will freeze up (on recorded shows, not rain fade) and lately the unit has been rebooting spontaneously (maybe once a week). From what I've read, this might indicate that the drive has bad sectors. Also, the software version for the InstantCake was 6.2, but upgrades from DirecTv have brought it up to 6.3e. This leads me to ask the following questions:

1. Do these symptoms sound like hard drive failure? Is there a simple way to verify the integrity of the disk?

2. If the drive is failing, is there a way for me to copy the current contents (particularly shows and season passes) to a new drive?

3. If I build out a new drive, should I just use my 6.2 InstantCake and PTVNet disks and let the machine upgrade itself?

4. Is there anything else that I'm not considering or thinking about?

Any help on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[Lou Jacob]

I have a Series 2 DirecTiVo (Hughes HDVR2) which seems to have developed a hard drive problem. The drive was installed a little over a year ago and was created from both the InstantCake and PTVNet disk images. The symptoms that we are seeing is that sometimes the images will freeze up (on recorded shows, not rain fade) and lately the unit has been rebooting spontaneously (maybe once a week). From what I've read, this might indicate that the drive has bad sectors. Also, the software version for the InstantCake was 6.2, but upgrades from DirecTv have brought it up to 6.3e. This leads me to ask the following questions:

1. Do these symptoms sound like hard drive failure? Is there a simple way to verify the integrity of the disk?

2. If the drive is failing, is there a way for me to copy the current contents (particularly shows and season passes) to a new drive?

3. If I build out a new drive, should I just use my 6.2 InstantCake and PTVNet disks and let the machine upgrade itself?

4. Is there anything else that I'm not considering or thinking about?

Any help on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

1. From your description, it could be a hard drive failure. But don't make any assumptions. As I say in many other responses, "run diagnostics on your hard drive to be sure" -- you can get them for FREE at the manufacturer's web site

2. Unlikely. There is a program called dd_rescue (free) that some folks have successfully used. We've played with it a little, most of the time it doesn't work if the damage is too extensive to your drive.

3. If you let the system upgrade after doing that, you'll lose the PTVnet changes. As mentioned in a few other threads, you can install PTVnet on a 6.3 system, but you'd need to use the "force" option.

4. Probably lots of things, but it really depends on what you are trying to do. If you are using MRV, for example, you DONT want 6.3, so you shoudl definitely reinstall with 6.2, then install PTVnet and DONT let the system upgrade.

But first thing is first - find out the cause of the problem, and then go from there...