Tivo drive won't boot in my PC????

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mike - 25 Aug 2007 09:17 GMT

I bought a Tivo with 40GB hard drive and want to use it in a PC.
It's a Western Digital WD400LB-55DNA0

I can fdisk/format it. I can read/write it. It just won't boot.
BIOS gets to the point "verifying DMI pool data" and hangs.
Tried Ranish Partition manager with the same result.
Tried another computer. Tried manually setting normal/lba/large
in the bios, but didn't try reformattting with every combination yet.
Yes, I set it as active/bootable.

Is there something about a TIVO drive that makes it unsuitable
as a normal PC drive? Can it be fixed?

Thanks, mike

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Rod Speed - 25 Aug 2007 21:09 GMT

> I bought a Tivo with 40GB hard drive and want to use it in a PC. It's a Western Digital
> WD400LB-55DNA0

> I can fdisk/format it. I can read/write it. It just won't boot.
> BIOS gets to the point "verifying DMI pool data" and hangs.
> Tried Ranish Partition manager with the same result.
> Tried another computer. Tried manually setting normal/lba/large
> in the bios, but didn't try reformattting with every combination yet.
> Yes, I set it as active/bootable.

> Is there something about a TIVO drive that makes it unsuitable as a normal PC drive?

Its likely just the boot block thats producing that.

> Can it be fixed?

Try wiping the first physical sector on the drive, filling it with zeros, that should fix it.

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mike - 26 Aug 2007 04:37 GMT

>> I bought a Tivo with 40GB hard drive and want to use it in a PC. It's a Western Digital
>> WD400LB-55DNA0
[quoted text clipped - 13 lines]
>
> Try wiping the first physical sector on the drive, filling it with zeros, that should fix it.

That fixed it. Was right there in front of me in Ranish Partition
Manager. Went temporarily, I hope, brain dead.
Thanks, mike

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