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Am I an idiot?
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Posted by: sammy

Hello,

I just joined the TiVo world recently and I'm trying to upgrade my Series 2 TiVo. Unfortunately, I can't even get my PC to recognize the original drive.

The unit came with a Western Digital 60 GB drive (one of the Performer series). I bought a 120GB IBM drive (which, by the way, I got for $137 online at McGlen Micro). I took the WD drive out of the TiVo and hooked it up in the PC along with the new drive. No matter what configuration of jumpers and IDE hookups I use, the BIOS hangs when it tries to identify the original WD drive. It has no problem with the new IBM drive.

For a moment, I thought I had damaged the WD drive, but when I put it back into the TiVo it works fine.

Has anyone else had this problem? Am I missing something obvious? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

-Sam

Posted by: Duke

Is your PC relatively new, with the latest verison of the bios? What's the brand of PC, and which operating system?

Duke

Posted by: Fubar411

please don't be running XP or 2000.

Posted by: sammy

Okay, here is my latest experience:

I borrowed a newer PC from a friend and started hooking up the drives. It still didn't work. Whenever the original TiVo drive is on any of the IDE cables it causes the BIOS to freeze almost immediately. I even starting building a large table of all the possible combinations of IDE positions and jumper settings. I was getting ready to perform my own special "upgade" that involves finding a tall building and hurling the TiVo, the PC and drives off of it...

Then I suddenly found a configuration that works! The TiVo drive is hooked up as the primary master IDE device with no slave device, but it's jumpered INCORRECTLY as master with slave present. This plainly incorrect jumper configuration is the only one that allows the machine to boot at all. Adding a primary slave device (for example, the new drive) causes the machine to lock up again.

So, now I can defer going insane until later in the upgrade process. Lesson learned: I'm not an idiot, but the people at Western Digital are.

-Sam

Posted by: stevel

WD drives are notorious for being peculiar about the way they're jumpered, and/or what else is on the same IDE channel.