TiVo Community Forums Archives - Successful DTivo upgrade

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Successful DTivo upgrade - now have Sony SA for sale!
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Posted by: kgidley

I was able to successfully upgrade my Hughes DTivo over the weekend - I now have 146 hours capacity! And a stand alone unit for sale!

My upgrade was somewhat complicated - I had previously upgraded an Sony SVR-2000 by replacing the 30GB drive with a Maxtor 80GB drive to get 88 hours basic quality and I wanted to re-use that Maxtor 80GB drive in the DTivo. I also wanted to save the 40GB drive out of the Hughes as backup (in addition to MFS backup, belt & suspenders!), AND I wanted to keep all the current recordings on the DTivo after the upgrade. I decided to get another 80GB drive and re-use the one out of the SA Tivo and put the original 30GB drive back into the SA Tivo.

I first backed up the DTivo using the MFStool, tested the backup to a new 80GB drive - all worked fine. I then did a 'dd' copy of the 40GB drive to the new 80GB drive and tested that in the DTivo - also worked fine and preserved the recordings. I then took the 80GB out of the SA Tivo and hooked it up, along with my new 80GB drive so that I could run the DTivoMad program to: a) use all 80GB on the 'a' drive, and b) marry the other 80GB drive. Of course, minor problems ensued at this point - the drive from the SA Tivo needed to be 'qunlocked'. I had had problems previously with qunlock because of a corrupt download, and it took me awhile to find the right version, but I did get it to work and was able to finish the upgrade without further problems. Put the two drives into the DTivo and viola! 'up to 146 hours'! Excellent.

I restored the 30GB drive to the Sony SA Tivo and it works fine, although I no longer have a use for it (my cable service will be cut off soon). This unit is less than 6 months old, I have all the original cables, packaging, etc. AND it has the LIFETIME service. I have a backup on CD (version 2.0.1), the boot CD, and a bracket from 9th Tee for holding another hard drive I'll include with the unit. The unit right now has 2.0.1 on the old drive, but I may plug it in and have it upgrade to 2.5.1 and use it as a backup until I sell it. Please PM me if you're interested in buying this unit.

Thanks,

Posted by: kgidley

Just wanted to add that having the upgraded space has made watching the Olympics GREAT!. Lots of space to hold things for days until you get a chance to skim them... ;)