| I finally got around to attempting an upgrade of the 80GB hard drive in the hdr230. I used a Seagate ST3200822A 200GB Ultra ATA100 7200rpm 8MB Hard Drive. I was searching for a very quite drive, since the original 80GB drive is a Seagate and it has a special sound-deadening treatment attached to ciruit board side of the drive (which is apparently OEM only, since I couldn't find a drive with similar acoustic treatment) . I first tried the MFS tools (see Tivo upgrades on the Web) Linux boot CD, using the dd (drive copy) command. This worked, and in fact saved all my recorded content, but when I installed it in the hdr230, it still came up with only 8 hours of recording time. So I reinstalled the new drive in my computer and deleted all the drive partitions (I had already copied off the recordings to a seperate TiVo drive - a tedious process). Then I reinstalled the new 200GB drive, started up the hdr230 and went to Troubleshooting screen and selected "Delete all programs and initialize disk." This time, when I checked the available recording time, it was 14 hours and 30 minutes. Success! One thing to note, however. I went from 80GB to 200GB and only gained 6.5 hours. This would seem to indicate that the hdr230 software only recogizes around 145GB maximum, so you might want to save a little cash and use a 160GB drive. PS I have a couple of photos, one of the interior and one of the hard drive with acoustic treatment, that I could e-mail. PPS Also, something interesting - the hdr230 works fine as an HDTV tuner (including all the on-screen menus) with no hard disk installed, you just can't record anything (obviously)! | |
