I believe Nero had a similar approach to his problems

Paul — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 05:57:42 +0000

Our basement flooded Saturday in the torrential rain, ruining the 2 month old carpeting among other things. No insurance coverage on this event. We’re on a hill…I thought of floods in terms of rising water so I figured we were safe. I didn’t think about water rushing downhill.

We’re remodeling our unused dining room into a home office. To save money I’m installing the floor.

The hard drive in our Series 3 TiVo failed. The first clue? Hearing the japanese audio channel for “The Perils of Penelope Pitstop” coming from one speaker. The nail in the coffin was the frequent rebooting when watching a show or using the menu.

My oldest son is bridging to Boy Scouts this Friday and I have yet to finish painting his career arrow, which will be presented to him then.

This same son got in a fight today at school and has been suspended for two days.

My stepdaughter was in a car accident today.

I still haven’t taken the written test for my private pilot’s certificate.

Which one of these pressing issues do you think I tackled first?

Fixing the TiVo, of course. It makes perfect sense because I rarely watch TV.

(I actually dealt with my son first…besides receiving lectures from both parents and a chore list from mom, he owes me oral reports on the 2 volumes of “Shakespeare Can Be Fun!” I checked out from the library on the way home from work.)

When I found out TiVo wanted $149 to replace the hard drive I thought, “hey, now I have an excuse to buy one of the new ones coming out next month!”. I came to my senses and realized I could upgrade our Series 3 with a new, 4x larger hard drive for less than the repair cost and certainly less than the cost of a new TiVo.

And heck, it would probably take me 30 minutes, max. How hard could it be, right?

I ordered a 1 TB drive from Amazon.com. Fancy. $90. Western Digital 1 TB Hard Drive WD10EVDS With WD drives you should see item 29 in this post. There’s a link to a bootable CD there with a utility program (wdidle3) used to tweak the settings on the WD “green” drives so they don’t cause problems with the TiVo.

I downloaded this free software in the hopes of not having to pay any more to restore my TiVo. WinMFS This post explains opening your TiVo and using the software beautifully.

I watched this video to see how to take out the hard drive. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca5EUGZsqvU You will need Torx 10 and Torx 15 bits, though. It looks like he uses the T10 on the screws holding the drive to the bracket but those are T15 screws.

I bought this software because my disk was bad in the wrong places so the free software did not work. $40. InstantCake Read each screen carefully, so you won’t have to start over like I did.

It took longer than 30 minutes, probably about 3 hours total. Here are some pictures. This is one of those “archival” or “documentary” posts, not meant for entertainment. Next post will amuse you.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

TiVo puts me on the spot

Paul — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:53:09 +0000

Because my opinion matters (unlike my vote in general elections) I receive surveys from TiVo occasionally. The most recent one had some tough choices.

: What, no questions about which children or body parts I’d give up?

My bride would absolutely throw me over for TiVo…in fact, she already has since I’ve been here. “Yeah, it’s great you called from Qatar, Paul, but I’ve got a bunch of shows to catch up on so I’m going to go now.”

I didn’t think to take the screen shot until after I’d filled in my answers so honey, you can see you’re safe.

For now. Who knows what features the next version of TiVo will have?

Hyper Dad - Life, unfiltered » tivo

I believe Nero had a similar approach to his problems

TiVo puts me on the spot