Swapping hard drives

[catocony]

I couldn't find the exact thread on this, though I remember reading it - my DSR704 tuner issue is actually starting to really annoy me, and it's actually gotten much worse over the last two weeks. Which probably means it's on its very last legs. In lieu of just using a single tuner, I see two options. 1, sending it into CCS or one of the other crews and having them put in a new motherboard. 2, getting a DSR704 off of E-bay or from Weaknees and swapping my drive in.

My questions:

1) My existing hard drive, it's about 8 months old, so it has good life left in it. If I were to get another unit, and just swapped out the drives, is there any issue with this? Would I have to re-image the drive or anything if I swap the drive to an identical model?

2) Is it worth the money to swap out the motherboard on a 5-year old DSR704? The power supply is probably going to keel over before long as well, so would it be best to just get a refurb unit from Weaknees that has a new board/power supply in it? I can imagine that getting a used unit on E-Bay could very well be Russian Roulette as to condition of components under the hood.

Basically, I have a nice new hard drive in my old DSR704, and now the tuner 2 on it is on it's deathbed. What's the best practice here to get another year or two out of it (or a replacement box) while keeping my current hard drive intact (I have 100 hours of indie movies on it that I don't want to lose).

[John T Smith]

>100 hours of indie movies on it that I don't want to lose

Sorry... the data on the hard drive is encrypted as it is created, and will only play back with the same motherboard, since that is where the encryption chip is located

When you swap drives, even into the same model, you must do a Clear & Delete Everything to marry the drive and the encryption chip

[catocony]

That's what I thought. IF I were to do it, just to cut down on the cost, should I clear and delete on the old unit first, or just do it when I put the drive in the "new" unit? I assume the partition with the Tivo software isn't encrypted so it should boot fine, correct?

What about the rest? Should I pay the $100 for a new motherboard or just pay say the $189 that Weaknees sells refurb units for? Actually, that's a third question - on a refurb from Weaknees and the other guys, is the board/power supply new?

[catocony]

Crap, I guess that means if they swap the motherboard because of the bad tuner, I have to Clear and Delete the hard drive as well, correct? And you can't just swap out a tuner, it's the board itself, right?

[halfempty]

I believe CCS Corp. does a component level refurb, not a motherboard swap. Email them to confirm, but your old hard drive should still work since they don't change the crypto chip. If you do decide to go that route ask them if you can ship it without the drive to prevent damage.

[rbtravis]

CCS url
http://www.ccscorporation.net/dss.htm

[John T Smith]

>clear and delete on the old unit first, or just do it when I put the drive in the "new" unit?

New... part of the CDE operation is to marry the drive and the motherboard, so it would do no good at all to CDE in the old unit then move the drive to the new one