# How do I get an old TIVO drive rdy for a PC?



## ETD66SS (Sep 9, 2005)

I have a 300GB drive I no longer use in my TIVO and want to now use in a PC. When I put it in a PC it shows up as a 28GB drive.

WinXP setup cannot see the TIVO partition, and I used the MaxBlast Fill Zero utility thinking this would write zero's to the entire drive and remove the TIVO partition. That didn't work.

Do I have to put this HD in a Linux box and clear the partition? Can I use the TIVO upgrade CD to accomplish this?

I did search for this topic, was unsuccessful in finding an answer.


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## classicsat (Feb 18, 2004)

Check to see the compatibility jumper isn't set.


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## Mike500 (Jun 29, 2004)

You need to get into the CMOS setup for the PC before you use MaxBlast.

When you power up the PC, there is a message telling you how to get into Setup.

Go into the setup and autodetect the drives. Save the data and reboot.

Startup Windows and run MaxBalst. Go to add new drive.

If yur PC is OLD, it might not recognize any drive over 137GB.


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## ETD66SS (Sep 9, 2005)

Mike500 said:


> You need to get into the CMOS setup for the PC before you use MaxBlast.
> 
> When you power up the PC, there is a message telling you how to get into Setup.
> 
> ...


I've already done all that. The drive is a Maxtor 6L300R0. The MB is only 3 years old. The BIOS detects the drive as a 300 GB drive.

It's the linux partition on the drive from the TIVO that widows can't see, so I can't delete the non-Dos partition...

The MaxBlast CD has no low level format utility that I can see, that's why I tried the Fill Zero utility... That didn't work.

The BIOS sees it as a 300 GB drive, windows only sees it as a 28GB drive...

I just need to know what linux utility I need to use to wipe out the partition that I created with the PTV Upgrade CD when I made this drive a TIVO A drive...

EDIT: I found a Maxtor PowerMax boot CD with a low level format utility, I'll tray that.

If that doesn't work, I guess I boot up with a Linux CD and try to use the linux version of Fdisk and delete the partition that way?


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## BiloxiGeek (Nov 18, 2001)

I would think that a linux fdisk would be able to clear the partition table just fine. If not you can always try to use the dd command to wipe out the first thousand or so sectors on the drive. That should take care of any boot parameters and the partition table. Just be careful not to wipe your computer's regular hard drive.


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