What is actually happening and displaying on the top box during start up?
The question is has the harddrive already failed?
If it has there is not much you can do other than get a preprogrammed replacement. Be weary of flea bay harddrives as the replacement harddrive must match your current top box bios, SB, SG, and VS chip set in the bottom MPU exactly.
Backing up a Reel Touch harddrive must be done with a non-windows based program. You can use an old DOS based program to successfully "clone" a working
harddrive. This operation becomes tricky especially with bios 1 type machines. Again warning do not attempt to review the files on the harddrive with a USB adapter connected to ANY windows based computer (this includes XP and earlier). The windows system adds files to the harddrive rendering it useless when returned to the machine.
If you're interested in a replacement harddrive PM me I will need the following information top box bios type, bottom MPU type(500 series or 1270), SG, SB, and VS chip numbers.
We can get your machine working again.
Rich