TiVo Community Forums Archives - Upgrade a 2-Drive 30-hour Unit to 117 hours for $170!

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Upgrade a 2-Drive 30-hour Unit to 117 hours for $170!
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Posted by: SwassBac

I purchased a 2-Drive, 30 hour Tivo in December 1999. After reading through the various threads on upgrading I came up with the following options:

a) Buy a single drive unit, copy the image to my dual drive unit and then upgrade both units. This would leave me with an extra upgraded unit to keep or sell to a friend.

b) "Borrow" a friend's image to upgrade my unit. Unfortunately, I don't have any that want to violate their warranty and I think this is treading on the copyright "no man's land".

c) "Start over" by selling my existing unit and buy a new one.

I went with option C because:
- it was the cheapest option
- did not require me to upgrade two machines
- did not require me to copy an image from one machine to another
- I got a new Tivo in the process (mine was already a year old and had pretty heavy use).

The steps I went through were:

1) Sell existing 2-drive 30-hour unit on ebay (I sold mine on 11/1/00 for $291 - see http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAP...item=478966544)

2) Buy 14-hour unit. I bought mine at Wal-Mart for $249 and after the $100 rebate I was at $149. I wasn't able to find a Circuit City to price match and the Sears here no longer had the 14-hours in their computers so I wasn't able to get one for $99 :-(

3) At this point I am $140 ahead of the game! (Note: I was looking at buying a lifetime subscription either way since I only bought a 1 year subscription in 1999 when I purchased my 30 hour unit since I didn't know how the Tivo/Replay thing was going to shake out. If you have an existing lifetime subscription, just add to the sale price on ebay)

4) Buy an 80 GB Maxtor drive (I bought mine on e-bay for $245 - see http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAP...&ed=972649326). Order Torx wrench and mounting bracket from 9th Tee (http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=478192630&ed=972649326) for $27. I would have bought the drive from 9th Tee as well, but I didn't want to wait a couple weeks - the seller on e-bay was able to ship immediately.

5) Backup existing "virgin" 14 GB drive to CD-Rs (mine took 5, cost $2.50 - as opposed to what it would have been if I backed up my heavily used 2-drive unit). I then restored my backup to the 80GB Maxtor (and set the runideturbo=false flag) and dialed into Tivo to ensure that my backup was good.

6) Prepare Maxtor drive as described in this excellent thread (http://www.avsforum.com/ubbtivo/Forum6/HTML/001461.html). Only thing i did different was amset /fast to get some of the acoustic management properties and I did not do the 2nd write test. Couldn't wait another couple of hours - I know I might regret it later.

7) I now I have a 117 hour Tivo! Bottom Line (with all sales tax, shipping, etc.): Old HDR312 2-Drive Tivo + $170.77 = New HDR112 upgraded to 121 hour storage capacity.

Thanks to everyone on this forum for their posts, great threads, and FAQs. I spent countless hours on this site before starting the process and couldn't haven't even got close without this forum.

Dan

Posted by: SanTiVo Claus

Ok, slightly off topic, but...

You got your drive from this guy already?? And your auction ended on 10/31?

I ordered the same drive from him almost two weeks ago and still nothing - same story for the other 9 people who bought from the same auction I did. He has tons of bad feedback for being a slow shipper - which was fine for me since I wasn't going to have time to do this for awhile, but I'm just shocked you received your drive in 3 days!

Posted by: SwassBac

I had one person e-mail me asking if I had got the drive. I think the reason I got it so quick is:

1) I PayPal'ed payment immediately after the auction
2) I called them several times. First, I called and asked to upgrade to 2nd day air shipping - which I decided against after they told me how much more it would be. Then I called for a tracking number. As soon as I got off the phone they e-mailed me a tracking number. That number was wrong and I e-mailed back and they gave me the right number.
3) I was lucky!

Good luck...

Dan

Posted by: mbm

Man, a 10 month old 312 goes for $291 on ebay without service?

P.T. was certainly right and ebay is the proof. http://www.avsforum.com/ubbtivo/wink.gif

------------------
Cheers, Mike

Posted by: SwassBac

The difference you talk about it does not exist between my HDR312 and other HDR312's only with the HDR31201 or HDR31202. This was not a consideration to me because the vast majority of Tivo buyers have no interest in hacking their unit. I did not advertise the unit as "hackable" or "eligible for the rebate" and clearly stated it was a used Tivo with a year subscription that expired on 1/01.

I put the item up for auction with a reserve of $200. I consider this more than fair since if I buy one today at Sears for $299 after rebate I have to wait for the rebate and I don't get any free service. I gave away 2 months free service to play with the unit and determine what subscription to buy. If I had this option when I bought it I was have saved $100 by immediately purchasing a lifetime service which I could have added to the price on e-bay.

If bidders get "caught up" in the bidding and drive an auction price up, why should I feel bad? Anyone who has spent a decent amount of time on ebay or other auction sites know that many times used items get sold for above retail prices because of the competitive ("I am not going to lose this auction") environment of the process.

Bottom line, I don't feel the least bit ashamed of selling a unit for $500 less than I paid (I paid $794 in 12/99 for the unit).

Dan

P.S. I find it pretty funny that people raise an issue with me legally selling a unit while it doesn't seem many people on this site have an ethical problem with the borderline illegal activity of screwing retailers such as Circuit City. I have seen posts about coercing stores into price matching a product which is not even available at a competing store. I have seen posts about faking receipts, getting price matches against discontinued items, returning Tivos after breaking the warranty seal, etc. IMO, these are the posts that should be targeted by those on the moral high ground.