Really any reason to keep original drive after upgrade?

[bobross]

I successfully expanded my stock S3 Tivo to 1TB. Do I really need to keep the 250GB stock drive for any reason? It there anything inherently "special" about it? I would love to plop that sucker in my PC. Worst case scenario if the 1TB drive fails I could just buy another right?

[WhiskeyTango]

If your upgraded drive fails, it would be nice to just pop the original back in without waiting to purchase a new drive. Other than that, you really don't need it.

[bobross]

If your upgraded drive fails, it would be nice to just pop the original back in without waiting to purchase a new drive. Other than that, you really don't need it.

Cool I figured as much, thanks for the reply.

cheers,
BR

[jjberger2134]

the original also has an image on it, making it easier to recover from a failure down the road. If the image on the newly expanded drive is unrecoverable (after a failure) then you will need to search around for an image or purchase one.

Many people just recommend putting the original drive in the closet and forgetting about it - an insurance policy if the expansion drive fails.

[shady]

Where are you going to get your TiVo image from if your 1TB fails and you don't have the original anymore?

Are you talking about buying a pre-imaged TiVo drive? If so, I believe you'll have to get your cablecards setup again. Just to avoid that hassle, I'd keep the original

[bobross]

Where are you going to get your TiVo image from if your 1TB fails and you don't have the original anymore?

Are you talking about buying a pre-imaged TiVo drive? If so, I believe you'll have to get your cablecards setup again. Just to avoid that hassle, I'd keep the original

the original also has an image on it, making it easier to recover from a failure down the road. If the image on the newly expanded drive is unrecoverable (after a failure) then you will need to search around for an image or purchase one.

Many people just recommend putting the original drive in the closet and forgetting about it - an insurance policy if the expansion drive fails.

I did a backup of the original drive and burned it to CD for storage using MSFTools. Final size was like 200MB

[ZeoTiVo]

I did a backup of the original drive and burned it to CD for storage using MSFTools. Final size was like 200MB


That will do it. Now you can put that drive in a PC and format away.


Of note - down the road when you have 70 season passes - you might want to do a abckup of the settings from the 1TB drive to have on hand just in case - plus you get a newer image as well.

[George Cifranci]

I successfully expanded my stock S3 Tivo to 1TB. Do I really need to keep the 250GB stock drive for any reason? It there anything inherently "special" about it? I would love to plop that sucker in my PC. Worst case scenario if the 1TB drive fails I could just buy another right?

I kept mine as an emergency backup. It is still a virgin 250GB Tivo S3 drive (never booted with it as I replaced it with a 750GB Seagate DB35 before I even turned the S3 on for the first time).

[mr.unnatural]

I did a backup of the original drive and burned it to CD for storage using MSFTools. Final size was like 200MB

That's really all you need. Keeping the original drive as an emergency backup is nice, but with today's drive prices you can get a replacement dirt cheap. The only advantage to keeping the original is that you can get the Tivo up and running immediately after you discover the drive failure. If you're that anal about having the Tivo working then it probably makes more sense to buy a spare upgrade drive than keeping the original intact. Still, by the time the drive does fail, a replacement drive of the same capacity will have dropped considerably in price so it all boils down to personal preference and how quickly you need to get the Tivo back in service.

[Goober96]

That will do it. Now you can put that drive in a PC and format away.


Of note - down the road when you have 70 season passes - you might want to do a abckup of the settings from the 1TB drive to have on hand just in case - plus you get a newer image as well.

Is there a way to back up the Tivo drive through the Ethernet connection or does it require placing the drive in a PC?

[MickeS]

Where are you going to get your TiVo image from if your 1TB fails and you don't have the original anymore?

I got mine from dvrupgrade.com :) (InstantCake)

[rainwater]

I got mine from dvrupgrade.com :) (InstantCake)

There was not a InstantCake image for TiVo HDs until very recently. Thankfully, they have finally released the software to work on these boxes.