upgrading drive help

RobbyBoy · 01-31-2009, 06:04 PM

Hi all
Been a few years since i did this but looking to put a 500Gb w\d drive in place of the existing drive keeping nothing.
Now the problem running vista 64 with only sata drives no ide ports on the m\b, so any help please?
Thanks
Robert

pauljs · 01-31-2009, 06:13 PM

Vista is no problem as it's all done with a Linux Boot disk, you will however either need to buy an Eide drive and use an adapter in your PC, not sure if this will work

Or buy an SATA drive and use an adapter in TiVo , someone else will tell you which ones work

Or buy a pre configured drive, make sure you get the right version ie: 2.5.5 or 2.5.5a

blindlemon · 01-31-2009, 06:27 PM

Easier and cheaper to buy a SATA drive these days. For the WD 500gb Green Power drives these SATA converters seem to work OK in the TiVo.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/PATA-IDE-To-SA...em280302378651

and these look the same but have cheaper shipping, although I can't recommend them as I've not tried them.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/PATA-IDE-To-Se...em220351723660

smatson · 02-01-2009, 12:11 PM

Can i use hooch with this converters?

RobbyBoy · 02-01-2009, 03:19 PM

Thanks for the help, i was going to go down the pre-configured drive route till i noticed that they are around £50-£60 extra for running a small program on them than buying a drive and diy on it
Robert

pauljs · 02-01-2009, 05:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RobbyBoy

Thanks for the help, i was going to go down the pre-configured drive route till i noticed that they are around £50-£60 extra for running a small program on them than buying a drive and diy on it
Robert

I think it's a reasonable mark up to allow people who don't have the kit or technical knowledge to do it themselves

DanielB · 02-01-2009, 08:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by smatson

Can i use hooch with this converters?

Once you use a converter of this type the drive to will act just like a PATA drive so there 'should' be no reason why not. I would assume that it would appear /hd(a|b|c|d) depending on if it was on the PATA equiv of:

Primary Master /hda
Primary Slave /dev/hdb
Secondary Master /dev/hdc
Secondary Slave /dev/hdd

But to be sure you could post directly to the hooch forum:

http://www.swanstep.f2s.com/forum$2311/simpleforum.cgi?fid=05

RobbyBoy · 02-02-2009, 07:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pauljs

I think it's a reasonable mark up to allow people who don't have the kit or technical knowledge to do it themselves

Sorry didn't mean it to sound the way it did i just meant that even though i can do this myself if it was only around £20 or so extra then i would probably have bought a pre configured one to save the hassle bought considering that you can get a 500Gb for under £50 and the pre configured drives are round about £99
Thanks
Robert

DanielB · 02-02-2009, 11:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RobbyBoy

Sorry didn't mean it to sound the way it did i just meant that even though i can do this myself if it was only around £20 or so extra then i would probably have bought a pre configured one to save the hassle bought considering that you can get a 500Gb for under £50 and the pre configured drives are round about £99
Thanks
Robert

I think Hooch is a good investment, and it was only about £15 from memory. Buying pre-built hard disks are always a premium due to the limited number of vendors offering them.

blindlemon · 02-03-2009, 03:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by smatson

Can i use hooch with this converters?

Yes, and I even sell the converters on my website now too

blindlemon · 02-03-2009, 03:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RobbyBoy

Sorry didn't mean it to sound the way it did i just meant that even though i can do this myself if it was only around £20 or so extra then i would probably have bought a pre configured one to save the hassle bought considering that you can get a 500Gb for under £50 and the pre configured drives are round about £99
Thanks
Robert

All preconfigured drives are fully plug & play and come with an additional warranty which guarantees that if they stop working they will be replaced with another plug & play drive - that's priceless to many people who aren't technically minded, but it does cost extra to offer as it has to cover the cost of replacing and posting drives that fail under warranty.

Additionally, volumes of TiVo drive sales in the UK are vanishingly small, so there's no way suppliers are going to be able to operate on very tight margins like suppliers of bare drives such as eBuyer and Dabs can.

If you want to configure your own drive you can use Hooch which only adds £20 to the cost or you can go the long and more involved fully DIY route with help from many people (including myself) here on the forums. Nobody is forcing anybody to buy a preconfigured drive or pretending they are a cost efficient alternative to DIY if you have the skills and time to DIY. The choice is entirely up to you. Good luck!

BrianHughes · 02-03-2009, 08:36 AM

Or if you just can't be ar*ed to do it. I did my first upgrade myself years ago so I knew what to do & I have several old PCs lying around so I could easily have done it myself.

I reckoned that it was worth it to pay our optically challenged citrus friend at tivoheaven to supply the drive already set up the way I wanted and the upgrade took all of 5 mins. Worth every penny.

Thanks blindlemon

Brian