Possible to "hack" WD My DVR expander with bigger drive?

[shaun3000]

Forgive me if this has been covered, before. I tried several search strings and didn't find anything.

I know the only way to upgrade your Tivo without voiding the warranty is to use the Western Digital My DVR expander. Has anyone ever tried to install a bigger hard drive in the WD expander? What allows the expander unit to talk to the Tivo but not other drives? Is it a piece of hardware on the expander unit or something encoded to the disk, itself?

[richsadams]

Welcome to the forum! A visit to the Drive Expansion and Drive Upgrade FAQ (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5616160#post5616160) sticky thread is in order. It has everything you need to know about upgrading your TiVo including recommended hard drives and Section V covers internal upgrades. The process is very simple if you're comfortable connecting a hard drive to a computer.

That said the answer to your first question is a qualified "yes", many folks have installed much larger eSATA as well as internal hard drives.

TiVo recognizes an eSATA drive by the model number. For TiVo HD's, the only plug and play option is to use the 500GB WD My DVR Expander. For a stock TiVo Series 3 most eSATA hard drives will work. The WD My DVR Expander can be used with other DVR's or a computer. The TiVo recognizes the drive inside the WD My DVR Expander, not the other way around, so there's nothing to prevent it from working as a normal expansion drive.

Be sure to read the sticky post for more information, qualifications and recommendations before buying anything. Then...happy upgrading!

[shaun3000]

I think you misunderstood my question. In order to keep the warranty intact and add a hard drive larger than 500 GB, could I buy a WD My DVD, take out the 500 GB drive and put in, say, a 1 TB drive and use it without voiding the Tivo warranty? What makes the WD DVR drive work with Tivo but not other eSATA drives? Is it a chip in the unit or something on the drive?

[lessd]

I think you misunderstood my question. In order to keep the warranty intact and add a hard drive larger than 500 GB, could I buy a WD My DVD, take out the 500 GB drive and put in, say, a 1 TB drive and use it without voiding the Tivo warranty? What makes the WD DVR drive work with Tivo but not other eSATA drives? Is it a chip in the unit or something on the drive?

For the Series 3 original this should work but it will not work for a standard TiVo-HD or TiVo-HDXL, I don't know the "why" it will not work or if it is possible to hack the my-book (without opening the TiVo) to use a larger drive, if it was possible to hack I would guess someone would have shared that information.

[richsadams]

I think you misunderstood my question. In order to keep the warranty intact and add a hard drive larger than 500 GB, could I buy a WD My DVD, take out the 500 GB drive and put in, say, a 1 TB drive and use it without voiding the Tivo warranty? What makes the WD DVR drive work with Tivo but not other eSATA drives? Is it a chip in the unit or something on the drive?I understood and answered your basic question and answered all of your other questions plus gave you some additional information. If you take the time to read the sticky thread on the subject (link in my first post or below my signature), you'll find all of the information you need.

That said, what you can do depends on what model TiVo you have, a TiVo Series3, a TiVo HD or a TiVo HDXL. The bottom line is that there's no need to buy and try to modify a WD My DVR Expander, it would cost more than any of the options you have and be a waste of time.

To quickly clarify, the TiVo HD and HDXL will only accept the "approved" 500GB WD My DVR Expander via plug and play, period. As I stated, TiVo recognizes the drive by the model number of the actual drive inside the enclosure. It is part of the TiVo HD's software program. If you were to open the Expander's enclosure and install another hard drive of any size it would not be recognized/accepted and would not work. It would also void the Expander's one-year warranty.

The rule of thumb is that if you want more than 660GB's of storage for the TiVo HD (OEM drive plus the Expander) you would be better off replacing the internal drive with a 1TB drive (using a program called winMFS - see the sticky thread) and if still more is needed you could marry an eSATA drive (up to 1TB) to it at the same time for a total of up to 2TB's. Of course if you open TiVo to do that before it is one year old, you would void the warranty and it sounds like that's not what you'd like to do which is understandable. Many, many of us here have upgraded our TiVo's that way both before and after the warranty expired, but it's your call certainly.

With regard to TiVo Series3's, the software is slightly different due to a very understanding TiVo Company "grandfathering in" the ability to use something other than the "approved" eSATA drive. As I and lessd mentioned, you can connect most eSATA drives (up to 1TB) via plug and play. This Fantom 1TB drive (http://www.buy.com/prod/fantom-greendrive-1tb-usb-2-0-and-esata-external-hard-drive-2-year/q/loc/101/208503758.html) is being used successfully by several TCF members for example. Or you could build your own. There are a couple of eSATA drives that are not compatible however (again, read the sticky for all the info).

The TiVo warranty is unaffected by whatever eSATA drive that you attach to it. Either they work or they don't. With regard to support, TiVo will only offer technical support for TiVo's using the WD My DVR Expander should you have a problem. However there are plenty of folks here that will lend a hand should you need it. If you still have questions after you read the first post on the Drive Expansion and Drive Upgrade FAQ (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5616160#post5616160) sticky thread, I'd recommending asking on that thread.

[shaun3000]

I understood all of that but thanks for clarifying. Maybe it will help someone else. :)

And OK, so it's the actual drive inside that's hard-coded for the TiVo. That's exactly what I wanted to know!

One last question, but it's not entirely on topic. Is the TiVo warranty just one-year? For some reason I thought it was under warranty as long as you were paying for service from TiVo. I could have dreamt that as it sounds too good to be true.

Thanks, again, for the replies! :)

[lew]

The tivo warranty is 90 days parts and labor and one year parts. Recently tivo has been refusing out of warranty service if the customer upgraded the hard drive. Tivo knows, from the logs that we U/L, if you replaced your hard drive.

[richsadams]

One last question, but it's not entirely on topic. Is the TiVo warranty just one-year? For some reason I thought it was under warranty as long as you were paying for service from TiVo. If only that were true. As lew mentioned and as I said in my post, "Of course if you open TiVo to do that before it is one year old, you would void the warranty and it sounds like that's not what you'd like to do which is understandable."

Glad to help and happy upgrading!

[shaun3000]

Thanks for the replies guys!