[Mr. Tact]

Ok, for reasons I won't bother going into, I have basically had a 5040 sitting in a closet for a month or two. Previously it had worked flawlessly except for some minor IR blaster issues. Wednesday I took it out and hooked it up. Other than a couple of brain farts by me, everything went fine. It downloaded a new software version, which from reading posts here I know is the 5.0 v110 version. Everything seemed fine.


Upon coming home from work on Thursday, the box was locked up. It took a hard reboot to wake it up but it seemed fine afterward. Today, I came home to find it locked up again. However, now it will not reboot. A power cycle resulted in my getting a replay screen saying simply "Replay TV Please wait.." which flashes every 15 seconds or so but does nothing else.


Is there anything left for me to do, or is this an RMA situation? Of course if it is an RMA situation it will be slightly complicated by my busted seal due to a HD upgrade (although I do have the original drive). Should I try reinstalling the original drive?

 

[Jeff D]

The suggestion at this point, is to wait an see if the next software release fixes the problem. You aren't alone there are others that have said that 110 locks up on them constantly. You should be able to find many complaints here.


The one exception to the waiting for new software (because we never know when any software will be released) is if you are still under warranty and it's about to expire.


Hmmm now I reread your entire post. Take the upgrade drive out and try with the original drive. While the upgrade drive is out hook it up to the PC and try the diagnostic steps in the trouble shooting sticky thread at the top of the replayTV/Showstopper topic listings page. Get the manufacturers tools and check the drive.


If the replay works well with the original drive the problem is pretty easy to figure out. =)

 

[Mr. Tact]

Quote:

Originally posted by Jeff D [If the replay works well with the original drive the problem is pretty easy to figure out. =) [/b]

Yeah, I thought of that after my post. I guess I'll do that and see what happens.

 

[Mr. Tact]

Ok. I installed the original 40 G drive. It booted. I forced a net connect and it download the new software. Everything seemed fine. I powered down and hooked both the original 40 G drive and the 200 G which had been installed to my PC and launch RTV Patch. RTV Patch labels the 40 G as a RTV drive, it labels the 200 G as a "RTV drive NEEDS TO BE PATCHED" --- hmm. Ok. Just to be "safe" I do a system partition copy and a patch. Everything seems to go fine. I reinstall the 200 G drive into the Replay and I get a problem similiar to before-- the "Replay TV please wait " screen, but no flashes this time. Previous to using RTV Patch, I used Maxtor's Powermax utility to test the drive and it passed. This 200 G drive did receive a low level format before it's original RTV Patch.


Any suggestions on where to go from here? I guess I could format the drive again...

 

[acr5]

Just a thought. Did you check if RTV patch actually showed the 200G drive as a RTV drive after you re-patched it.?


Al

 

[Mr. Tact]

Yes, it did.

Quote:

Originally posted by acr5 Just a thought. Did you check if RTV patch actually showed the 200G drive as a RTV drive after you re-patched it.? Al

 

[Jeff D]

Did you try the diagnositc software? This should be step #1.


Are you sure you got the jumpers right when the drive went back to the replayTV?

 

[Mr. Tact]

Quote:

Originally posted by Jeff D Did you try the diagnositc software? This should be step #1. Are you sure you got the jumpers right when the drive went back to the replayTV?

As I understand I did. There was a quick and long disk scan/check in the Maxtor software. I ran the quick one and the long one (took about 1.5 hours) and it passed without errors on both. Do you have a specific tool you'd like me to try?


I have the jumpers on both drives set to cable select. It seemed to work with the 40G drive, is there a reason it should be set to Master?

 

[Mikeyboy]

Mr. Tact, sorry we don't have an answer for you. The best I can suggest is for you to run all the available WD tests and low level format the drive (write zero's). If that doesn't fix or report the error there isn't anything else to suggest.


I personally do not recommend >160 gig drives in any replay due to questionable reliability.

 

[Mr. Tact]

Quote:

Originally posted by Mikeyboy I personally do not recommend >160 gig drives in any replay due to questionable reliability.

Really? Hmm. Never managed to catch wind of that while lurking around here. I figured I was being reasonable since I was pretty sure I'd seen people say they had 250 G drives working in Replays.


Well... I do have a 160 G sitting in the PC. I could reformat the 200 G drive, copy the 160 G onto the 200 G, then reformat the 160 G and patch it to be my Replay drive. I'll probably do that if a format and repatch of the 200 G doesn't work. Thanks for your time.

 

[Jeff D]

"Working in" and working reliably are two different things.


If the drive passes the quick test that's a good sign. The long test might be helpful, but maybe not. It can't really hurt to run it, it may be helpful. Without knowing for sure the drive is fine we are only guessing.


It's recommended to jumper the drive for master. There were issues for some using CS instead of the master setting.

 

[Mr. Tact]

Actually, looking at RTV Patch again, I am concerned. It shows my two PC drives (160G & 200G) as well as the 200G Replay replacement drive as 136 G. Windows explorer properly sees the two PC drives as 160G & 200G (this is W2K). I thought if Win2k saw the drives properly that RTV Patch would also. Am I wrong about that?

 

[Mikeyboy]

I failed to mention I don't like WD. That may well be unfounded as I never ever buy them and came to that conclusion solely from reading post here. Besides, they are noisy which disqualifies them for use in PVR's in my book.


All that said the same > 160 questionable reliability applies to all the other drive manufacturers as well.

 

[Mr. Tact]

Quote:

Originally posted by Mikeyboy I failed to mention I don't like WD. That may well be unfounded as I never ever buy them and came to that conclusion solely from reading post here. Besides, they are noisy which disqualifies them for use in PVR's in my book. All that said the same > 160 questionable reliability applies to all the other drive manufacturers as well.

Well, at least I got that part right. All the drives are Maxtors.


What about the size shown by RTV patch, was I mistaken about that?


Upon launching RTV Patch I get these error messages:


RTVPatch version 2.4, built on Jan 19 2003, 12:54:57

\\\\.\\PhysicalDrive0 (Maxtor 6Y160P0) : Using binary search drive size detection

\\\\.\\PhysicalDrive0 (Maxtor 6Y160P0) : There appears to be a seek overflow problem on this drive, interesting!

\\\\.\\PhysicalDrive0 (Maxtor 6Y160P0) : Detected size = 267386880 sectors

\\\\.\\PhysicalDrive1 (Maxtor 6Y200P0) : Using binary search drive size detection

\\\\.\\PhysicalDrive1 (Maxtor 6Y200P0) : There appears to be a seek overflow problem on this drive, interesting!

\\\\.\\PhysicalDrive1 (Maxtor 6Y200P0) : Detected size = 267386880 sectors

\\\\.\\PhysicalDrive2 (Maxtor 6Y200P0) : Using binary search drive size detection

\\\\.\\PhysicalDrive2 (Maxtor 6Y200P0) : There appears to be a seek overflow problem on this drive, interesting!

\\\\.\\PhysicalDrive2 (Maxtor 6Y200P0) : Detected size = 267386880 sectors

\\\\.\\PhysicalDrive3 (Maxtor 2F040L0) : Detected size = 80293248 sectors

 

[Mikeyboy]

That question is best answered by flipflop. The older RTVPatch versions could not read big drive sizes even when windows could. Try both 2.1.3Beta and 2.4 http://sourceforge.net/project/showf...group_id=17245

 

[Mr. Tact]

That is version 2.4 (which it says in the log if you take look). The 2.1.3 beta also sees all three drives as 136G and gets exactly the same errors in the log.

 

[Judge]

Quote:

Originally posted by Mikeyboy I failed to mention I don't like WD. That may well be unfounded as I never ever buy them and came to that conclusion solely from reading post here. Besides, they are noisy which disqualifies them for use in PVR's in my book. All that said the same > 160 questionable reliability applies to all the other drive manufacturers as well.

I have a 160GB and 200GB Maxtor drives (72000 RPM, 8MB Cache, and Fluid Dynamic Bearings) in my two 5000's and I don't have any issues whatsoever. I do share your opionion of WD drives. In 8 years or so, I have had more failures with WD drives than with Maxtor drives.


I also had a friend who just purchased a 200GB WD drive for his DVArchive Server and he had to RMA it after a week because it was running so hot you could not even touch the case!

 

[Judge]

Quote:

Originally posted by Mr. Tact That is version 2.4 (which it says in the log if you take look). The 2.1.3 beta also sees all three drives as 136G and gets exactly the same errors in the log.

Just a thought......


Are your drives showing up in the motherboard BIOS recognized at their proper capcities during boot-up?


If you have a 160 and 200 GB drives and they are sowing up as 136GB, it might be your IDE controller in the PC using RTV Patch. Your motherboard BIOS may need to be updated or you may need to install a newer PCI IDE card in order for the drives ot be recognized as their correct capacity. Many of the new 160+ drives even come with a new IDE controller to make sure they can be recognized properly.


Believe it or not, Windows 2000 and Windows XP can see high capacity drives at their proper capacity even if the motherboard BIOS can't. I have come across this a few times with some older PC motherboards; although the primary (boot) drive was usually

 

[plyons10]

Hmmm.. do you have the ATA card (usually Promise) that came with either drive? You might want to install it and try connecting through there.

 

[Mr. Tact]

Quote:

Originally posted by Judge I have a 160GB and 200GB Maxtor drives (72000 RPM, 8MB Cache, and Fluid Dynamic Bearings) in my two 5000's and I don't have any issues whatsoever.

Well, that's exactly what I have -- want to send me a copy of your system image?