TiVo Community Forums Archives - newbie upgrade questions...

TiVoCommunity.com
(c)opyright 1995-2005 All rights reserved
indexcheckTC
This area is a static history of posts in the TiVo Community Forum Archive.
This archive history was made for the simple indexing of search sites like Google.

Pages:1

newbie upgrade questions...
(Click here to view the original thread with full colors/images)

Posted by: sledgmb

just got a tivo about 2 weeks ago. love it. got the s2 80-hr tivo tivo. got a couple of questions about upgrading it though.

1) in my unit, how many hard drives are there (out of the box)?
2) in my unit, how many hard drive spaces are in the tivo unit? i.e., how many hard drives can you put in a tivo?
3) can you add a single hard drive without having to replace the primary hard drive?
4) how common is upgrading a tivo?
5) any concerns about software patches coming down the line when you upgrade your tivo?

that's about it...

cheers,
sledgmb

Posted by: Hichhiker

quote:
Originally posted by sledgmb
just got a tivo about 2 weeks ago. love it. got the s2 80-hr tivo tivo. got a couple of questions about upgrading it though.

1) in my unit, how many hard drives are there (out of the box)?

That could depend. Best way to know is to open the sucker up. I am sure someone here knows better. I'd say most likely you have a 1 drive unit.

quote:

2) in my unit, how many hard drive spaces are in the tivo unit? i.e., how many hard drives can you put in a tivo?

MOST tivos come with one drive, some come with 2. There is usually space for 2, although most of the time you need to get a mounting bracket for the second one. Some latest S2's did not come with space for the second drive, so people figured out a way to mount it anyway.

Lastly, I know there was a project to use 4 drives, but there were cooling issues, and such. It is not generally recommended for the faint of heart.

quote:

3) can you add a single hard drive without having to replace the primary hard drive?

if you have a 1 drive unit, yes. It is usually called "marying" or "blessing" Second drive will contain only video data. You still need to remove first hard drive and put both new drives into the PC.

quote:

4) how common is upgrading a tivo?

Here, being that this is a forum dedicated to it, it is VERY COMMON, elsewhere - who knows??

quote:

5) any concerns about software patches coming down the line when you upgrade your tivo?

Being that some tivos come in 2 drive config out of the factory, i doubt it is an issue. As far as I know there have never been a size upgrade problems with TiVo. However, if you hacked the box and added custom software, it will be wiped out with each upgrade. This is not really an option with S2 units now, so i would not worry about it.

quote:

that's about it...

cheers,
sledgmb

Hope this helped

-H

Posted by: weaknees

Your unit has one drive, and it can only hold one drive without extra hardware. There is concern about the power supply in that model being able to handle two drives - we have more info on our site here.

Michael