TiVo Community Forum banner

240 Disk in 140 Box?

998 Views 7 Replies 6 Participants Last post by  mick66
I have a lifetimed model 140 Series 2 standalone which is dead. I think it's the drive. I was recently able to dumpster-dive a working (but not activated) model 240 Series 2 standalone (it looks externally almost exactly like my 140).

Can I put the 240's disk into my 140 as-is and have it work? (I know I'll want to then tell the TiVo to delete everything and rerun guided setup.)

Or are the OS partitions incompatible and I'll have to reimage the disk first just like I would if I bought a blank disk?
1 - 8 of 8 Posts
I'd re-image the drive from the 240 for use in the 140.

I see no harm in trying the swap.
There are a few incosistancies in the versions, but they are supposed to be the same since 7.x. You could try though.
Fact: The software is identical after 7.x

I seem to be the only one here with experience in swapping drives between 140 and 240 units and using images for one to create a drive for the other.

I'd re-image the drive from the 240 for use in the 140.
Unless the 240 had been unused for several years before being tossed out, there should be no problem just doing a direct swap of the drives. But it is always possible that the software on the 240 is too old to be compatible with the 140.
mick66 said:
I seem to be the only one here with experience in swapping drives between 140 and 240 units and using images for one to create a drive for the other.
No you're not the only one. 140 and 240 tivos run identical sw these days. If you naturally download a new sw rev on a 240, you'll see the name of the sw has the suffix "140"
Wanted to give people an update...

The switch has apparently worked fine, though there was some weirdness along the way.

What I did:
  • With the drive in the 240, run "Clear and Delete All"
  • Ran Guided Setup.
  • Put the drive in the 140.
  • Fire up the 140.
  • Run "Clear and Delete All" then "Guided Setup" on the 140 (see below for why I did that).

After I fired up the 140, it booted fine. But there was a Message about "Error #51" in Messages, and when I went to "Account and System Information" it showed all zeroes for my TSN, even though it showed the correct (i.e. mine, not the 240s) DVR name, showed Product Lifetime, and had a non-blank service level. I rebooted and did not get another error message. However, the TSN still showed blank and going to Now Playing still showed a "You have a problem and cannot record" message.

For lack of anything better to do at this point, I did "Clear and Delete All" and reran Guided Setup. This seemed to fix things -- Now Playing was normal and my TSN was showing in Account and System Info.
See less See more
That's good to know. I have a couple of 140's without hard drives, and a couple of 240's with bad power supplies. Now I can make them live again without buying more parts.
rlcarr said:
Wanted to give people an update...

The switch has apparently worked fine, though there was some weirdness along the way.

What I did:
  • With the drive in the 240, run "Clear and Delete All"
  • Ran Guided Setup.
  • Put the drive in the 140.
  • Fire up the 140.
  • Run "Clear and Delete All" then "Guided Setup" on the 140 (see below for why I did that).

After I fired up the 140, it booted fine. But there was a Message about "Error #51" in Messages, and when I went to "Account and System Information" it showed all zeroes for my TSN, even though it showed the correct (i.e. mine, not the 240s) DVR name, showed Product Lifetime, and had a non-blank service level. I rebooted and did not get another error message. However, the TSN still showed blank and going to Now Playing still showed a "You have a problem and cannot record" message.

For lack of anything better to do at this point, I did "Clear and Delete All" and reran Guided Setup. This seemed to fix things -- Now Playing was normal and my TSN was showing in Account and System Info.
Doing the C&DE while it was in the 240 was a waste of time. All of the "weirdness" that you experienced is exactly what would be expected, even if the replacement drive were from another 140. And if it were from another 140, you would still have to do a C&DE after installation to marry it to the motherboard.
1 - 8 of 8 Posts
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top