Repair/Clone of GXCEBOTD

[DrLightning]

Please give me some advice on repairing my old Hughes GXCEBOTD...

Many moons ago, I bought two identical Hughes GXCEBOTD DirecTiVo's. I hacked them back then by merely adding a second disk. Recently, they starting clacking and shutting down. A friend repaired one of them for me. He added a single larger disk, and downloaded software from somewhere to get it running. (System info says 3.5d-01-1-031.)

Here's my question. My friend is too busy to return my phone calls. (???) Is it possible for me to simply take the disk from the repaired TiVo, use a linux machine to make an image copy onto another new disk, and then put the image copy into the second TiVo? I would think that would work, unless something in the hardware (machine ID) or something on the specific DirecTV access card is unique and had to be setup by my friend on the first machine and would need to be likewise setup again for the second machine.

Thanks very much.

P.S. Both modems blown out. IRD Serial Numbers 532...
P.P.S. Sorry if this belongs in "upgrade" forum. I see this more as a repair to previously upgraded.... whatever.

[halfempty]

You can use the MFSLive boot cd or WinMFS available at http://www.mfslive.org/ to clone the drive. If the drives on the unit giving you problems are alive enough to be copied, there are instructions on the MFSLive site to copy them to a single drive.

Otherwise you could clone the drive from the other unit, but Tivo/DTivo's marry the drive to the motherboard serial number so you would get a hardware error when it boots up. Normally you would do a Clear and Delete Everything to clear the error, but this would require re-running the initial guided setup which will not complete unless the unit successfully calls in. A problem with blown modems. If the unit is hacked you could enable calling in through the network or run 51killer.tcl which would clear the error without having to run C&DE.