# Upgrade TiVo with drive that was in another TiVo?



## runt (Aug 11, 2006)

Ok,
the HD in my TiVo died not that long ago and I was thinking of upgrading it anyway. My brother had given my dad a TiVo that had been upgraded with a 320GB HD. I took said HD and dropped it in my TiVo (mine is a DT Series 2 his is a ST Series 2). Figured it would need to load a new OS and then it would be good to go. Sadly I was wrong. It never gets past the powering on screen (or whatever the first screen is). Do I need to clone the old HD even though it has issues (locked on the GSOD). Or would I be better off cloning the HD from my working TiVO (I have 2 DT Series 2 TiVos).


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## windracer (Jan 3, 2003)

You can't switch drives between models (the first three digits of the TSN), so the best bet is to either make a backup of the failed drive and restore it to the new drive and see if it works. Otherwise, make a backup of the working S2DT drive (again, presuming the same model number) and use that. Check out WinMFS for making truncated backups and restoring them.


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## runt (Aug 11, 2006)

Well, I will work on that tomorrow. I'm lucky I got the drive in tonight due to a lack of sleep.


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## runt (Aug 11, 2006)

windracer said:


> You can't switch drives between models (the first three digits of the TSN), so the best bet is to either make a backup of the failed drive and restore it to the new drive and see if it works. Otherwise, make a backup of the working S2DT drive (again, presuming the same model number) and use that. Check out WinMFS for making truncated backups and restoring them.


Well, I went to make a backup of the drive that was in my TiVo. WinMFS said it was an invalid drive when I went to. I will be trying the other drive tomorrow night (and praying for the best).


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## weaknees (May 11, 2001)

The TiVo OS is not on the motherboard. Unfortunately, you won't be able to get your TiVo up and running again with out a working version of the TiVo software. There are solutions around (hard drive kits preloaded with the software, for example), or you can search around and find a way to get the software that you need.

Good luck!


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