Hard drive upgrade for DVR?

I'm trying to decide if it would be better to upgrade the hard drive
in our DVR or get a recordable DVD player. I know there are Tivo's
that record to DVD out there, but the price is just too high right
now.

Can anyone share their experiences with upgrading a DVR hard drive?
The cost and ease of it?

In article ,
(Rhonda) wrote:

I'm trying to decide if it would be better to upgrade the hard drive
in our DVR or get a recordable DVD player. I know there are Tivo's
that record to DVD out there, but the price is just too high right
now.

Can anyone share their experiences with upgrading a DVR hard drive?
The cost and ease of it?

I've done it all with my two DirecTivos. One now has 215 hours,
and the 2nd has 194 hours.

1. Replaced original drive with larger one from Tvrevo.com

2. Added 2nd drive to 2nd DirecTiVo from weaknees.com

3. Added 2nd Drive to 1st TiVo with instructions from
http://tivo.upgrade-instructions.com/, and bracket
from Weaknees.com

4. Replaced drive in 2nd TiVo after original factory drive failed,
using CD from ptvupgrade.com


It's trivial with a kit from any of the company that sell drives
preformatted and configured. You just need to be able to use a screw
driver. It's also quite doable (and a lot cheaper) to do it all yourself
if you're comfortable opening up a PC and shuffling hard drives.

I'm trying to decide if it would be better to upgrade the hard drive
in our DVR or get a recordable DVD player. I know there are Tivo's
that record to DVD out there, but the price is just too high right
now.

That and using the Tivo to setup the stuff to write is almost as tedious as
using a VCR. Sure, you get the programs recorded the first time easier but
dumping them to disc requires picking the programs, putting in the disc and
waiting for it to finish recording.

Can anyone share their experiences with upgrading a DVR hard drive?
The cost and ease of it?

It's a breeze. Download a CD image ISO and burn it to disc. Open the Tivo,
yank the drive, open your PC and disconnect it's current hard drive, put the
Tivo drive in a PC along with the 2nd drive, boot a CD on the PC, twiddle
some bits, put the drives back into the Tivo and you're done.

It does require opening both the Tivo and a PC so it's not entirely
'trivial' but it's not rocket science either. I recommend getting a bracket
*and* fan kit from someone like weaknees. An added drive adds heat to the
inside of the Tivo. Heat is the enemy of drives. That and the weaknees
fans are, combined, quieter than the single Tivo fan.

When we jumped from a DVR39 with around 35 hours to an added 120gb we got
more than enough free space to never be worried about managing it.

-Bill Kearney

One warning for those of you who intend to upgrade your TiVo. If drive
translation cannot be handily disabled on the system you are using to
upgrade the TiVo, it can really munge your TiVo. Be certain to get a good
backup of at least the OS and software, if not the content. I tried using a
Compaq to upgrade the TiVo, and had a Devil of a time with it. It acted
like it was working, but after marrrying the two drives, the new setup was
toast. Thank heavens I had another machine and I had backed up the software
on my TiVo before strarting. I did lose all the content, but by using my
backups, I was able to recover the original partiton on a clone system and
then remarry the drives.

"wkearney99" wrote in message
...
I'm trying to decide if it would be better to upgrade the hard drive
in our DVR or get a recordable DVD player. I know there are Tivo's
that record to DVD out there, but the price is just too high right
now.

That and using the Tivo to setup the stuff to write is almost as tedious
as
using a VCR. Sure, you get the programs recorded the first time easier
but
dumping them to disc requires picking the programs, putting in the disc
and
waiting for it to finish recording.

Can anyone share their experiences with upgrading a DVR hard drive?
The cost and ease of it?

It's a breeze. Download a CD image ISO and burn it to disc. Open the
Tivo,
yank the drive, open your PC and disconnect it's current hard drive, put
the
Tivo drive in a PC along with the 2nd drive, boot a CD on the PC, twiddle
some bits, put the drives back into the Tivo and you're done.

It does require opening both the Tivo and a PC so it's not entirely
'trivial' but it's not rocket science either. I recommend getting a
bracket
*and* fan kit from someone like weaknees. An added drive adds heat to the
inside of the Tivo. Heat is the enemy of drives. That and the weaknees
fans are, combined, quieter than the single Tivo fan.

When we jumped from a DVR39 with around 35 hours to an added 120gb we got
more than enough free space to never be worried about managing it.

-Bill Kearney

"Leslie A Rhorer" wrote in message
...
One warning for those of you who intend to upgrade your TiVo. If drive
translation cannot be handily disabled on the system you are using to
upgrade the TiVo, it can really munge your TiVo. Be certain to get a good
backup of at least the OS and software, if not the content. I tried using
a Compaq to upgrade the TiVo, and had a Devil of a time with it. It acted
like it was working, but after marrrying the two drives, the new setup was
toast. Thank heavens I had another machine and I had backed up the
software on my TiVo before strarting. I did lose all the content, but by
using my backups, I was able to recover the original partiton on a clone
system and then remarry the drives.

Are you sure it was the machine? My "test bench" PC is an old Compaq
DeskProEX 450mhz piece of crap and that's what I've done all my TiVo work
for myself and friends on.

It could have just been a typo or fluke. Linux works through pretty all
BIOS issues that arise during TiVo modding.

"Seth" wrote in message
...
"Leslie A Rhorer" wrote in message
...
One warning for those of you who intend to upgrade your TiVo. If
drive translation cannot be handily disabled on the system you are using
to upgrade the TiVo, it can really munge your TiVo. Be certain to get a
good backup of at least the OS and software, if not the content. I tried
using a Compaq to upgrade the TiVo, and had a Devil of a time with it.
It acted like it was working, but after marrrying the two drives, the new
setup was toast. Thank heavens I had another machine and I had backed up
the software on my TiVo before strarting. I did lose all the content,
but by using my backups, I was able to recover the original partiton on a
clone system and then remarry the drives.

Are you sure it was the machine? My "test bench" PC is an old Compaq
DeskProEX 450mhz piece of crap and that's what I've done all my TiVo work
for myself and friends on.

It could have just been a typo or fluke. Linux works through pretty all
BIOS issues that arise during TiVo modding.

I'm absolutely certain. Hacking the existing drive for telnet, ftp, and
TiVoWeb worked fine, but the second drive could only have its drive
translation disabled directly from the BIOS, which precluded booting from
CD-ROM with translation disabled. The bottom line is the drive pair could
be married and then easily read or written while the drives were sitting in
the Compaq, but once moved to the TiVo, the partitions were completely
unreadable. If moved back to the Compaq, they read and wrote just fine.
When I wiped the drives and started over in the clone, everything worked
fine, including marrying the drives. Starting with unmarried drives and
marrying them in the Compaq once again caused them to be unreadable in the
TiVo. I've had similar problems with these Copmpaq Deskpros before, as
well, although they are probably quite a bit older than your Ex 450.
Starting with a raw partition, these Compaqs automatically enable sector
translation, which is often incompatible with other machines, even other
Compaqs.