[Kegger]

Hey everyone,

I'm VERY new to TiVo (today makes 5 days) and I'm already looking to replace my hard drive. My plan is to replace the drive with a 160 GB or more drive and keep the old drive as a backup. This was I'm okay on power and cooling and I won't need more brackets. Anything wrong with this plan?

There's a lot of talk about the Maxtor QuickView drive and I was wondering how important that was. I'd like to get a little more bang for my buck without compromising performance or noise. Are other drives (Western Digital, Hitachi, Seagate) ok and what should I look for in them?

I also read that sometime only 137 GB are recognized on the drive, but other people seem to a resolved this issue. What do I need to do to get the full capacity of the drive?

Lastly (for now), if I get a second TiVo with a good drive can I just swap it out with my current drive and reset it?

Thanks for all your help.

Kegger

 

[classicsat]

One drive is the way to go.

People like Seagate, WD, and Samsung. You will want a good warranty likely, and them to honor it, even though it is in a DVR, and something quiet.

You need the LBA48 bootCD from PTVUpgrade or Weaknees.

If the "new" unit is the same model (first the digits in the model/TSN the same), you can.

 

[blindlemon]

Samsung are the quietest; Seagate have a 5 year warranty. If you can get the Samsung HA250JC then you won't do much better.

 

[Kegger]

I though I had to use a SATA-150 drive. Is that not true? If not, does it matter what I use?

Samsung are the quietest; Seagate have a 5 year warranty. If you can get the Samsung HA250JC then you won't do much better.

 

[kschauwe]

You need a Pata (IDE) drive. I like the new WD's which, if you buy a OEM verison, you will get a three year warranty. I have a 320gb WD, which I ordered from zipzoomfly.com. It's quiet and cool running.

 

[Lannister80]

You need a Pata (IDE) drive. I like the new WD's which, if you buy a OEM verison, you will get a three year warranty. I have a 320gb WD, which I ordered from zipzoomfly.com. It's quiet and cool running.

I used two of these (I assume you're talking about the WD3200JB) to set up a dual 320GB Standalone (TCD540080) that reads 733 hr. They are very quiet and very cool running. They've got some nifty new ferro-fluid bearings that are (supposedly) much more durable. You can find the WD3200JB for $125 or so at zipzoomfly.

Oh, and if you're a total n00b, it's worth it to get the $20 InstantCake boot CD from PTVUpgrade (http://www.ptvupgrade.com/products/instantcake/). PM me for more info, but it's not hard. And that way you NEVER have to hook your original drive up to your computer and risk screwing it up; it can come right out of your TiVo and directly into your closet.

 

[sholleran]

The suggestion that total Noobs should use Instant cake may scare some; take heart. Weaknees has an excellent interactive guided setup you can print (or browse on a second machine) that walks you though exactly your scenario upgrade. If you can :
- follow instructions
- move jumpers between slave/master
- plug IDE drives into IDE cable spots for slave/master
- read your computer / motherboard manual and learn which IDE cable is primary, which secondary
then you will get through it fine.

Set aside a couple hours, but the actual backup runs in under a minute. You'll spend most of your time creating a FAT32 hard drive since you MUST write the backup onto a FAT32, unless you already have one you can use. If you don't know if your current drive is FAT32 or NTFS and don't want to learn, do consider Instant Cake. But that's really all the knowledge you need; be careful and follow the cookbook, you'll do fine. And for the slight extra work, you get to keep your original drive or reuse it (in TIVO or elsewhere) and burn the backup.bak to CD . . . no guarantee that TIVO drive in the closet won't die from old age (the grease turns to glue in time, the motor burns out when you start it up).

 

[Kegger]

Thanks for all your replies. I already feel much more comfortable about doing this upgrade. I should note that while I am a noob to TiVo and upgrading one I have upgraded a few hard drives in PCs (I follow directions well).

I looked at tivo.upgrade-instructions(dot)com and printed off the instructions. I think I can handle it. I'm running XP and my hard drive is FAT32, so I can do the backup. One thing I concerned about is the LBA48 support so I can use my full drive. Will the iso image have that? My current TiVo version is 7.1 if that matters.

Is there anything else I need to worry about if I go this route instead of InstantCake? I've read something about not booting into XP with the TiVo drive connected or I'll destroy it. Anything I can do to make sure I avoid that?

Thanks again.

Kegger