Round One! FIGHT!

So I went to Best Buy last night with great haste to purchase a new, large hard drive. I found a Maxtor 120 GB which, after rebates, etc. will cost me about 50 bucks. I can live with that.

I promptly came home and gutted my old computer so that I could install both my TiVo hard drive and my newly acquired 120 gigger and let the fun begin. Following instructions I found on the Interweb, I created a boot disk for some Linux utility and went to work. The first time I created the boot disk, I made the mistake of trying to view its contents within Windows. It didn't like that. My second boot disk, however, worked famously.

I started the copying process, and was greeted by many MANY cryptic error messages. I'm now Linux haxxor, but I do know that words like "uncorrectable" and "sector fault" are bad when you're talking about a hard drive. I decided to press on anyway.

The copy got to about 40% and started throwing up more strange error messages. Then it failed. Crap.

I decided to try again. This time, the copy got to about 40%, had a bunch of error messages, then continued on. It actually got to 100%!! Huzzah! I've won!! Or have I...

So I put my new drive into my old, busted TiVo and start her up. Everything seems peachy. It went through the process of trying to download information from the satellite (doot doot doot doot doot....). Waiting for any of my receivers to download information from the satellite is akin to watching paint dry, only slightly less exciting. It takes forever and freezes many times along the way. Last night was no exception -- the process halted at 60% for a good 20 minutes. Clearly, this will not do. So, I forced it to phone home. That seemed to take forever as well, trying to download new software or some nonsense. Then, in the middle of the call, it decides it's going to get info from the satellite again. Ok. Whatever. I left it that way for a good 2 hours. 61%. I'm losing.

I rebooted the machine and waited. 61%. I got fed up and went to bed. Came down this morning, a full 8 hours later, and....AND....64%. 3% in 8 hours. Something is wrong. There's a disaster in his life.

Fortunately, I now have a feasible backup plan. I figure the problem is that I tried to copy a bad hard drive onto a good one. That's why I had all those sector faults. Assuming that didn't do any harm to the new drive (and if it did, I'll just return it and get a new one) all I need is a GOOD drive, right? Well, fortunately, Michelle's friend Stacy has a TiVo with just the drive I need. So that's what I'll be trying this afternoon, hopefully with more success than last night.

I get you next time, TiVo!!! NEXT TIME!!!!!!