# Transfering hard drive and cache card



## silentbob2 (Jul 23, 2006)

At the moment i am paying the monthly subscription and am considering getting a lifetime subscription. I am wondering if I can buy a cheap 40gb tivo with lifetime subscription and then just transfer my hard drive and cahcecard into it.


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## Raisltin Majere (Mar 13, 2004)

yes, just "plug" them both in, nothing more to do


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## silentbob2 (Jul 23, 2006)

will it keep all my seasonpasses?


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## ColinYounger (Aug 9, 2006)

Yes.


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

Yes, it will work, but the software version of the donor and recipeint TiVos need to be the same. 

If one TiVo is on 2.5.5 and the other is 2.5.5a then you could run into problems:-

a) if the donor is 2.5.5a then you will need to call TiVo CS a few days in advance to ask them to upgrade the recipient, otherwise you will get into an endless loop whereby the TiVo tries to 'downgrade' itself every night at 2am but fails because this is not possible. This stops the daily call from working. 

b) if the recipient is 2.5.5a and your donor drive is >120gb then you will lose the LBA48 kernel when the recipient TiVo automatically upgrades the new drive to 2.5.5a.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

silentbob2 said:


> At the moment i am paying the monthly subscription and am considering getting a lifetime subscription. I am wondering if I can buy a cheap 40gb tivo with lifetime subscription and then just transfer my hard drive and cahcecard into it.


What has prompted you to come to this view after all this time though? Or are you only a fairly recent convert to the world of Tivo use?

Fortunately Tivo Inc has remained in business and so long as they do I suspect that they will feel some kind of obligation to maintain a service in the UK until at least 10 years after the last main year of Tivo sales in the UK. This would take them to some point in 2012.

On the other hand I am sure that with the growth of Sky HD and V+ etc that monthly subscriptions have been dwindling quite fast lately, increasing the net cost to Tivo or providing a UK service, and they will also be keeping an eye on any Lifetime machines that stop being used as part of their general business case consideration of whether providing a UK EPG service is still justified.

I suppose if you can get a 40Gb machine with a Lifetime Sub for £120 then Tivo only needs to continue providing service for another 12 months to be in profit.

However y gut feeling would be that barring insolvency at Tivo Inc they will provide UK service for another 3 to 5 years because Tivo has never withdrawn Lifetime service so far on any units they sold with Lifetime and they might want to use the Lifetime Sub trick again in a new market where they want to encourage a rush of early adopters on a special deal e.g. Australia.


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## altitudemultimed (May 6, 2008)

Raisltin Majere said:


> yes, just "plug" them both in, nothing more to do


I have an old TIVO that failed and just got a new one the old 40 gig drive has some shows I need to get off of it........ how do you plug them both in


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## altitudemultimed (May 6, 2008)

altitudemultimed said:


> I have an old TIVO that failed and just got a new one the old 40 gig drive has some shows I need to get off of it........ how do you plug them both in


Can I retrieve the shows off the old hard drive?


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## Raisltin Majere (Mar 13, 2004)

altitudemultimed said:


> I have an old TIVO that failed and just got a new one the old 40 gig drive has some shows I need to get off of it........ how do you plug them both in


I'm no expert, but...

I'm not sure you will be able to do it that way, I think in order to get tivo to "see" both drives you will need to mfsadd one to the other and I guess that would mean your main drive would have no reference to the recordings on the old drive.

Alternatives would be to stick the old drive in the new tivo and remove the recordings (assuming the dead tivo is not caused by the drive) to video/PC

Or you can stick the old drive in your PC and take the recordings off that way. There's a thread about it in "the other place" a google for tivo direct extraction should find that.


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

altitudemultimed said:


> I have an old TIVO that failed and just got a new one the old 40 gig drive has some shows I need to get off of it........ how do you plug them both in


The critical question is: in the old TiVo, was it the motherboard or the drive that failed?

If it was the motherboard, then putting the old drive into the new TiVo should enable you to get the recordings off; if it was the drive then your chances of retrieving the recordings are slim to say the least.


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## afrokiwi (Oct 6, 2001)

Good bit of info there .... i am thinking of doing the same thing (here comes Pete) but never thought of that ... thanks blindlemon



blindlemon said:


> If one TiVo is on 2.5.5 and the other is 2.5.5a then you could run into problems:


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## iankb (Oct 9, 2000)

blindlemon said:


> ... if it was the drive then your chances of retrieving the recordings are slim to say the least.


I can't vouch for its effectiveness (although the author seems plenty able to do so), but Spinrite is supposedly able to recover TiVo drives. Since it costs 89 USD, you would need to have something important to recover.


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