Adding a drive to DirecTivo

[datapusher]

I am trying to upgrade a hughes SD-DVR40 DirecTivo for a family member. I ended up just buying a twin breeze kit over at weekness. I will provide my own hard drive.

But I am having some issues with the vagueness of the directions.

I want to keep the original hard drive and just add a second hard drive to the box. However these directions seem to be written under the premis that the original hard drive is being replaced.

Do I really need to backup the original drive? Shouldn't the original drive stay intact and unmollested?

Is there a limit to the size you can have available on these systems?

Thanks

[wscannell]

Try using these directions that you can customize to your situation: http://tivo.upgrade-instructions.com/index.php

1) One of the reasons for the backup is that when you add a second drive, you are "marrying" the two drives. From then on, both drives must be present for the TiVo to boot.

2) If you are careful and understand what you are doing, you can go without the backup. In the worst case, you can recover with INstantcake from ptvupgrade.com.

3) There is no real limit to drive size. If you go over 1 GB, the number of hours displays as zero, but the system still works.

3) If the system still has the original drive, I would recommend one large drive rather than a two drive system. If one drive fails, the whole TiVo fails. In addition there is more heat and more power supply load with two drives. The original drive really does not add much when you go to a 300 GB or higher drive.

4) If you are going to go over 274GB expansion, you need to make sure that -r 4 is used in the mfsadd or mfsrestore command.

[classicsat]

I'd not add the drive, but replace. It is not worth the risk running two drives when one of them are realtively small, with all the big drives about.

[datapusher]

Well I already had purchased the upgrade twin breeze kit from Weeknees. Was that a waste?

Your saying that just junk the old drive and replace it with a bigger drive instead of running two?

What is the max size I can run?

Just feel stupid buying the kit from weeknees if i am not gonna use it.

[supasta]

The risk or HDD failure is compounded when running dual drives. It is also a complete pain to fix when one of the drives fail.

IMHO - Replace the single drive with another larger single drive.
The max size for4 a single drive setup is 750GB (This is simply due to the fact that 750GB is the largest that is available for purchase ;) )
You can always return/sell/ebay the drive kit from WeaKnees.

[datapusher]

Ok so I guess I could apply that twinbreeze upgrade kit I bought from weeknees to my own personal r10. I think it's got like 70 hours to it stock so i could ass a 160 or 200gb seagate to the mix. Giving me one big tivo with 2 drives.

Now on to the original hughes 40 hour one I am upgrading. I can throw any PATA/IDE 100 or 130 hard drive in there that I can find right? I think i'll just throw this one in there:
http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?&ref=cj&pfp=cj&product_code=304907

So I just follow the upgrade instructions and pretty much just put the new drive where the old one was? Are there any considerations like increased fan size etc? The upgrade instructions just say i need a torq wrench which i have already

[goony]

I can throw any PATA/IDE 100 or 130 hard drive in there that I can find right?Yep. If looking for a traditional store to buy one, try using http://www.salescircular.com to see who has a drive on sale this week. Drive size in GB times 0.875 will give you rough recording capacity - e.g. 300GB gives 262 hours.

Also, no need to get a high-speed (10k RPM) or sizzling transfer rate - DVRs don't need that; in fact 5400 RPM drives (if you can find them) do quite nicely and run a bit cooler.

FYI: See my note on tpip (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=4661559&&#post4661559).

[datapusher]

5400 drives are nice and all for a cooler running drive, but hard to find and pricey for the small size you get.

I think a 140 hour (160GB) 7200 will do them fine seing that they just got a dvr for the bedroom and I am upgrading the 30 hour one.

That works out fine since I will just use the weekness kit for adding a drive to my r10.

Now what about fans? Do I need to upgrade the fan for the 30 hour one I am replacing the drive with?