Your Tivo uses two different partitions for software and switches between them each time a new version is downloaded. It sounds like your hard drive has problems in one of these partitions. You might want to put the drive back in your PC and run either your hard drive manufactures software or SpinRite to lock out any bad portions of your disk.

You also may be able to get your Tivo activated, by calling Tivo, having them check your accout to see that it should be active, and asking them to send an activate signal to your Tivo by satellite. This would allow your Tivo to start making recordings, but probably will not allow you to get into Messages and Settings without problems.

I had to do this on mine, since even though mine was active when I first upgraded it, it lost the activation later and I had selecting the option to prevent it from connecting by phone during the upgrade.

Of cource, like most D* problems, you may to need to play CSR roulette before you find one who knows how to send the signal.

I don't have any association with InstantCake, PTVNet, or Tivo.

I just own a HR10-250 and have successfully upgraded to a two hard-drive system, using InstantCake and PTVNet.

This was originally done when the HR10-250 was running 3.1.5f and it has since been upgraded to 6.3c and then 6.3d using the Slicer.

I also did work with Linux for about 10 years and still have it installed on one of my older computers. If nothing else this means that I am still somewhat familiar with Linux commands and can always boot the old system and use the man command to find the available option for a given command and a brief description of what each of the options does.