# Swap Hard Drives



## anadelman (Nov 6, 2019)

My Roamio died a couple of weeks ago. Tivo replaced it with a Bolt. I have a 2nd Roamio in my house. So I have 2 questions. Can I put the hard drive from my 1st Roamio into my 2nd Roamio and be able to watch the previously recorded shows from my 1st Roamio?

Question 2: Can I use my hard drive from my Roamio with my Bolt (run as an external drive since it won't fit) and retain the shows and programming?

Thanks.

Art


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## ggieseke (May 30, 2008)

1. No. The recordings are encrypted to the specific motherboard that they were made on.
2. No. Same reason as above.

In both cases you would have to run Clear & Delete Everything to "marry" the drive to the new motherboard. When putting a Roamio drive into a Bolt I would also recommend using the write zeros test in WD's Data Lifeguard Diagnostics to wipe the drive before the swap. It should reformat the drive automatically but it's best to make sure because there are subtle differences inthe drive layout between those two models.


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## anadelman (Nov 6, 2019)

ggieseke said:


> 1. No. The recordings are encrypted to the specific motherboard that they were made on.
> 2. No. Same reason as above.
> 
> In both cases you would have to run Clear & Delete Everything to "marry" the drive to the new motherboard. When putting a Roamio drive into a Bolt I would also recommend using the write zeros test in WD's Data Lifeguard Diagnostics to wipe the drive before the swap. It should reformat the drive automatically but it's best to make sure because there are subtle differences inthe drive layout between those two models.


Thank you. I figured that to be the case, but wanted to confirm.


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## vurbano (Apr 20, 2004)

You know I have owned the Directv HDTivo, Tivo Premiere units, Tivo Roamio Units and Tivo Bolt+ and now an edge. All of these have had cases that were very well constructed up to the Bolt series. It is literally the biggest piece of CRAP I have ever seen. I can not go into that case without breaking off ANOTHER plastic tab. Absolute JUNK compared to previous cases.


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