Moving Drives from dying TiVo to new TiVo

[lordxar]

Hey All,
My TiVo that I purchased 6+ years ago has a bad satellite input. The signal is constantly breaking up so I decided to buy a new Hughes shell and move my drives to it. Unfortunately that didn't work. Whenever I attempt to access recordings I get a hardware error. I called DirectTV and they said formatting my drives would fix the problem. I don't want to format the drives as I have many recordings I don't want to lose. Apparently the TiVo is linked to the drives and only formatting can break that link.

What are my options? Can I move my recording's onto another drive and slap that one into the new TiVo? Is there a way I can get my new Tivo to accept my old drives?
I thought about doing this and was wondering if it will work
1) Make a basic backup (without recording) of my A+B drive to a new C drive using the utility CD.
2) Place C drive in new Tivo and reformat (linking C drive to new TiVo).
3) Move recording from A+B onto C (using utility CD) and hope the link from drive C to the new TiVo is not broken when the recordings are moved.

The only other option I can see is running 2 TiVos (one to watch my old recordings on and one to records new stuff) and then when I have finished watching all my old recordings, ditching the shell and drives.

HELP PLEASE!

Thanks
Ray

[litzdog911]

http://tivo.upgrade-instructions.com/

Follow these step-by-step instructions for your brand/model DirecTV/Tivo, using the free MFSTools that you can download from the link provided. Select the option to preserve your existing recordings.

More help can be found in the "Tivo Upgrade Center Forum".

[verve]

http://tivo.upgrade-instructions.com/

Follow these step-by-step instructions for your brand/model DirecTV/Tivo, using the free MFSTools that you can download from the link provided. Select the option to preserve your existing recordings.

More help can be found in the "Tivo Upgrade Center Forum".

the hitch with this that I see is moving the recordings from one tivo to another. The tivo upgrade instructions for this situation from the link above still tells you to clear and delete everything once you have the drives in the new unit, defeating the purpose of spending the time to copy the recordings, and making him no better off than he is now.

This thread should probably move to the upgrade forum.

[cramer]

The MPEG data is scrambled on disk based on the unit serial number ("tivo service number"). Unless both units were hacked to turn the scrambling off, a simple drive swap is not possible. (without losing the recordings, all the setting can be maintained.)

(Well, it is. But only by a "repair" center... by moving the serial number. The replacement must be an identical model, however. It's actually trivial to do if you have commandline access -- which I will not post here. :cool:)

The old unit will still be able to play back what it's recorded, even when unsubscribed. So, clone it onto the new disk, put the new disk in the new receiver (they are the exact same model, right?), delete all the recordings (manually, "clear and delete everything" kills everything.) And you should be good to go.

[litzdog911]

the hitch with this that I see is moving the recordings from one tivo to another. The tivo upgrade instructions for this situation from the link above still tells you to clear and delete everything once you have the drives in the new unit, defeating the purpose of spending the time to copy the recordings, and making him no better off than he is now.

This thread should probably move to the upgrade forum.


Good point. There's no way to preserve the old Tivo's recordings onto a hard drive that gets installed into a different Tivo.

Best option, then, is to keep both Tivo's active until you've finished watching those old shows.

[lordxar]

Thanks a lot everyone. I figured I would end up just using two different TiVos. Thanks for the help.

[Rhughes]

Good point. There's no way to preserve the old Tivo's recordings onto a hard drive that gets installed into a different Tivo.

Best option, then, is to keep both Tivo's active until you've finished watching those old shows.That's not really necessary. When we went to two Series 2 DirecTivos, and retired a T-60, we just kept watching the shows recorded on the T-60 until the drive was empty. It wasn't active or even attached to an antenna.