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Posted by: Tania

Hey guys, I want to attempt to add a new hard drive, and I'm wondering If I have to have these brackets I hear people speaking of or is there a way to do it without? Or is it possible to take out the stock hard drive and just use the same brackets for the new drive and maybe order brackets for a future 2nd drive later? Is the best way to do this upgrade to remove the stock drive and put in a bigger one rather than keeping the stock and adding a b drive? Thanks for any and all advice!

Posted by: Robert S

Replacing the original drive is a good idea. If you do that, then you can use the mounting hardware for the original drive for the new one (hard drives have standarise mounting points).

For a second drive, it varies. The Series 1 and original Series 2 TiVoes don't necessarily need a bracket. The current Series 2's don't have room for a second drive, so the brackets on sale for those models replace the original bracket, repositioning the A drive to make room for a B drive.

Posted by: Tania

Thanks for the help Robert! I just got 2 of these units Hughes HNS Model SD - DVR40. Is this one of the newer ones that need the bracket to reposition the A drive? Also, if i plan to put in a B drive, is it better to do it at the same time as the new A drive? or is it easy enough to add the additional drive in the future? Thanks so much for the help. :)

Posted by: Robert S

That's right. If you look at an original TiVo, you'll see how much bigger the original case was - the first TiVoes were designed to ship with two drives.

If you prepare the drives yourself, then it's very easy to add a B drive later, you just use mfsadd.

If you want to buy your drives prepared for the TiVo, then you have to buy them as a pair - you can not use a 'add' B drive if you've already upgraded your A drive.

And, of course, you won't need the bracket until you go to a two-drive configuration. You might find that 120Gb is enough space.

Posted by: Tania

Thanks alot for the info! I just came from Office Depot and saw that they have a Maxtor 120 gb for 59.00 after rebates, looks like a great deal. Do you think Maxtor is the brand to go with? and with 120 gig instead of the stock 35 hour drive, how many more hours can I hope to have with a DTV Hughes unit?

Posted by: Robert S

Yeah, Maxtor is fine. The Series 1 TiVoes lock those drives, which can be painful, but that's not a factor for a Series 2 unit like yours. If you get a 160Gb drive then the TiVo will only see the first 137Gb of it.

120Gb is about 107 Hours on a DTiVo. That's a very vague and rather optimistic estimate as DTiVoes just record the raw MPEG-2 stream sent by the DTV satellite. Most DTV channels are now using a higher data rate, so you'll actually get less than that on the disk and the precise amount depends on which channels you record.

It will be a little more than 4 times what you've currently got, though.

Posted by: Tania

Thanks Robert! What is your current set up? You are very knowledgable and I'm curious on what you are running as far as hard drive manufacturer and size. I just noticed a Seagate for about the same price as the maxtor and from what I understand Seagate's are superior, is that correct? Also, do you recommend going with the larger than 137 gig drive and hacking the kernel? And if you do, would it be better to have one huge drive or 2 say 160 gig drives? Sorry for so many questions, I really appreciate all your help.

Posted by: Robert S

I have two TiVoes. The one with the lifetime sub has 120Gb Maxtor D540X drive, the unsubbed on has two 40Gb Quantum lct15 drives (I gave it the A drive from the other machine), but that one is only used for resolving clashes, so I think I could cope if that one had a drive problem.

Stories about brands of drive being 'better' than others are just hearsay - people get very upset when drives die and tend to want revenge on its manufacturer! When there really /is/ a problem with a line of hard drives, the whole Net will be talking about it (remember the DeskStar debacle?).

Replacing the kernel on a Series 2 TiVo is a major deal - if you can figure out how to do it, you don't need my advice :)