# help! format my old tivo hard drive for use with computer



## obmij5 (Jul 24, 2006)

Okay, so my Tivo2 just died and i had to purchase the new DirecTV DVR (which has a shotty interface and is so user-unfriendly it has actually done more to get me outside than the summer weather). But i decided i'd open up my Tivo and get a free external hard drive. I did, and i plugged it in using a power USB converter into my iBook g4, and because of its strange tivo formatting, my mac cannot even register it. So my question is, how do i format this puppy?
here are the hard drive's specs:
Western Digital Enhanced IDE Hard Drive
Parameters: 80 GB
anyway i just want to format it so i can keep stuff on it, that'd be wonderful

any ideas?


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## HTGuy (Apr 15, 2006)

If your Tivo died, it was most likely the hard drive, so I would be carefull here.

Did you try to use the Apple Disk Utility to format it?


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## Gunnyman (Jul 10, 2003)

do you have access to a windows pc?
If so, get a linux cd like mepis or knoppix and run Fdisk on the drive. Or perhaps there's a 3rd party disk utility for OS X that will recognize the drive.


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## obmij5 (Jul 24, 2006)

i've tried apple utility, it wont recognize that its connected or anything.
Gunnyman- i do have access to a PC. Im also an idiot, so can u walk me through your linux idea?


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## Gunnyman (Jul 10, 2003)

if it doesn't even recognize that a drive is plugged in, I'd venture to say it's toasted.


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## obmij5 (Jul 24, 2006)

it was the power source of the unit that was the problem, not the hard drive. The problem with the hard drive is that it is formatted as a tivo drive, i want to format it as a mac drive, i just need to know how to do that...


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## Gunnyman (Jul 10, 2003)

head over to knoppix.org and grab an ISO follow the directions there.
Way too many steps involved to go thru here.


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## obmij5 (Jul 24, 2006)

gotcha, thanks a lot


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