Nick Postagulous
Wednesday, August 25, 2004
RIP ReplayTV Harddrive II
Yes, I managed to watch Big Brother last night, but I'll never see The Amazing Race where the Twins almost got eliminated but it wasn't an elimination round, and that jerk dude that plays the game so well almost got thrown into prison. Alison had been having trouble with the replay during the day. Sometimes it would take around 10 seconds to process a button press.
During Big Brother, sometimes it would shudder and the image would freeze, then it would start back up. At one point, I thought it was crappy editing on the part of the BB5 producers, since the audio kept playing even though the video froze.
I did a reboot and it didn't come back up. And then I did a reboot and it didn't come back up. Then I took it apart and it was burning up. I took the hard drive and put it in the freezer under some peas. I disconnected the fan that I added since I had a 7200 rpm drive in it rather than the 5400 one. That fan's been bugging the heck out of me since it's gotten loud in it's old age.
After cooling, it still wouldn't come up. After sitting overnight, it still wouldn't come up. What does happen, is that "Please Wait A Moment" appears in it's little oval text bubble against the blue background. It stays like that for about 15 seconds, then the hard drive goes "Guhguhguhguhguh" and it reboots itself to do the same thing again.
I have the original replay drive that came with it. I'll put that back in this afternoon. How will we ever live with only 20 hrs available rather than the 140 we were used to. Before I do that, though, I will dismantle the computer upstairs and attach the original replay drive and the dead replay drive to it and run the Linux based diagnostic stuff I have (or I'll redownload if I can't find it). Hopefully, there is something that will do a checkdisk like thing for the dead drive, maybe it can be salvaged. I really don't like putting the original drive in when the death of a drive is so fresh in my memory. It's the lil' holy grail of that unit. Without the datakey it holds, we don't really have that replay account, paid forever, anymore.
Yeah, you heard right Tivo people, lifetime service. Cho Chi Cha! (dink dink)
Today's TC-ism
After selling his dad's old '88 Taurus to a co-worker so that his stepson could have it to drive...
When my dad first got that car, he accidentally ran over and killed a prostitute on Governors Drive. So you may see the ghostly image of a mangled face in the rear view mirror, and feel a strange sensation in your groin area.
