# Roamio OTA Hard Drive Upgrade - Cable Card Not Found



## comandercody33 (Nov 9, 2017)

I just upgraded my Tivo Roamio OTA(that was using a Cable Card with the Stock hard drive) to a 4TB WD Red drive, the upgrade went fine, I now have 640 plus hours of HD recording capability. I used mfsr after letting new drive boot in Tivo, etc. However, now, the cable card is not found. I have powered down, re-seated the card, all to no avail.

Any suggestions from this great community?


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

comandercody33 said:


> I just upgraded my Tivo Roamio OTA(that was using a Cable Card with the Stock hard drive) to a 4TB WD Red drive, the upgrade went fine, I now have 640 plus hours of HD recording capability. I used mfsr after letting new drive boot in Tivo, etc. However, now, the cable card is not found. I have powered down, re-seated the card, all to no avail.
> 
> Any suggestions from this great community?


Hmm. Unless you modified your Roamio OTA you won't be able to use a CableCARD. In any event, unless you used MFSTools 3.2 to copy and expand the drive, you lost your CableCARD pairing and you will have to re-pair it.

Also, if this is a modified Roamio OTA, make sure the CableCARD modification did not jar loose when you opened and closed your Roamio OTA.


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## comandercody33 (Nov 9, 2017)

jmbach said:


> Hmm. Unless you modified your Roamio OTA you won't be able to use a CableCARD. In any event, unless you used MFSTools 3.2 to copy and expand the drive, you lost your CableCARD pairing and you will have to re-pair it.
> 
> Also, if this is a modified Roamio OTA, make sure the CableCARD modification did not jar loose when you opened and closed your Roamio OTA.


Yes, modified my Roamio OTA with a cable card bracket. Its been working fine for months, filled up the stock drive and wanted more storage.

I un-seated and re-seated the cableCARD many times, but it does not recognize that the card is even plugged in at this point, so i cannot re-pair.


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## HerronScott (Jan 1, 2002)

comandercody33 said:


> Yes, modified my Roamio OTA with a cable card bracket. Its been working fine for months, filled up the stock drive and wanted more storage.
> 
> I un-seated and re-seated the cableCARD many times, but it does not recognize that the card is even plugged in at this point, so i cannot re-pair.


And if you put the original drive back in does it work? Would the CableCARD bracket have been disturbed with the drive replacement (only have a Roamio Pro here)? If not, you have to wonder if it's possible that they closed this loophole but only when a new drive is installed/formatted.

Scott


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## comandercody33 (Nov 9, 2017)

HerronScott said:


> And if you put the original drive back in does it work? Would the CableCARD bracket have been disturbed with the drive replacement (only have a Roamio Pro here)? If not, you have to wonder if it's possible that they closed this loophole but only when a new drive is installed/formatted.
> 
> Scott


No, putting the original drive back in does not "see" the cableCARD either.

Did not disturb the cable card bracket during the hard drive swap process.

I guess i will request a cable card replacement first, then replace the bracket.


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

I would take out the bracket and reseat it first.

Unless you have scavenged the CableCARD bracket from a broken basic Roamio unit, all the brackets that I know about are not direct fit and need a little nudging to get all the pins seated correctly. 

Sent from my SM-G950U1 using Tapatalk


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## comandercody33 (Nov 9, 2017)

jmbach said:


> I would take out the bracket and reseat it first.
> 
> Unless you have scavenged the CableCARD bracket from a broken basic Roamio unit, all the brackets that I know about are not direct fit and need a little nudging to get all the pins seated correctly.
> 
> Sent from my SM-G950U1 using Tapatalk


Thank you for the suggestion. The bracket was purchased new, not from an old TiVo. Removing and re-seating both the bracket and the CableCARD did not work.....


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

Where did you get your bracket from? 

No bent pins?


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## comandercody33 (Nov 9, 2017)

jmbach said:


> Where did you get your bracket from?
> 
> No bent pins?


I don't see any bent pins. Again, everything was working until I swapped out the hard drive. Never touched the cableCARD.

I got the bracket off of eBay. There was a link in this forum. I can find it, but I don't have it right now.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## V7Goose (May 28, 2005)

I do not have personal experience with a Roamio, but I know that with a Bolt, when you insert a different drive since the last boot, it wipes the entire drive (and I also believe any cable card information is kept on the drive).

So my question for you is what happens when you re-install the original drive in your Roamio OTA? Are the old recordings still there, or have they been wiped like would happen with a Bolt? If the drive has been wiped, then I'd suggest you need to research exactly what steps you had to take to get things working when you first installed the CC bracket. 

BUT, if that original drive still has all the old recordings, then it strongly suggests to me that you have a bad connection somewhere with the bracket or with the connectors on the main board. The chance that the bracket itself could have spontaneously gone bad is extremely low, but I would not be nearly as surprised if that evil cable card just happened to die during the power cycle you had to do during the drive upgrade.


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## comandercody33 (Nov 9, 2017)

V7Goose said:


> I do not have personal experience with a Roamio, but I know that with a Bolt, when you insert a different drive since the last boot, it wipes the entire drive (and I also believe any cable card information is kept on the drive).
> 
> So my question for you is what happens when you re-install the original drive in your Roamio OTA? Are the old recordings still there, or have they been wiped like would happen with a Bolt? If the drive has been wiped, then I'd suggest you need to research exactly what steps you had to take to get things working when you first installed the CC bracket.
> 
> BUT, if that original drive still has all the old recordings, then it strongly suggests to me that you have a bad connection somewhere with the bracket or with the connectors on the main board. The chance that the bracket itself could have spontaneously gone bad is extremely low, but I would not be nearly as surprised if that evil cable card just happened to die during the power cycle you had to do during the drive upgrade.


Thank you for the response. I did connect the original drive and all recordings were there. We spent last night watching them as we had no live tv.

I have requested a new cableCARD from TWC, we will see if that helps.

Thanks again.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## HerronScott (Jan 1, 2002)

V7Goose said:


> So my question for you is what happens when you re-install the original drive in your Roamio OTA? Are the old recordings still there, or have they been wiped like would happen with a Bolt? If the drive has been wiped, then I'd suggest you need to research exactly what steps you had to take to get things working when you first installed the CC bracket.


That only seems to happen with the Bolt for some unknown reason (yet at least).

Scott


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## HerronScott (Jan 1, 2002)

comandercody33 said:


> Thank you for the response. I did connect the original drive and all recordings were there. We spent last night watching them as we had no live tv.
> 
> I have requested a new cableCARD from TWC, we will see if that helps.


I hope that helps but very strange that it's not detecting the CableCARD since that area was not disturbed directly. Could be as jmbach has indicated and still be related to some kind of pin/connection issue with the bracket. From reading here, I got the impression that all the aftermarket ones had slight pin spacing issues that needed to be "adjusted" although there was one vendor on eBay that had an adapter board to account for this.

Scott


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## comandercody33 (Nov 9, 2017)

HerronScott said:


> I hope that helps but very strange that it's not detecting the CableCARD since that area was not disturbed directly. Could be as jmbach has indicated and still be related to some kind of pin/connection issue with the bracket. From reading here, I got the impression that all the aftermarket ones had slight pin spacing issues that needed to be "adjusted" although there was one vendor on eBay that had an adapter board to account for this.
> 
> Scott


Thank you for the response. This is the bracket I purchased, I only bought one, may get another if the replacement cableCARD does not work.


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## HerronScott (Jan 1, 2002)

comandercody33 said:


> Thank you for the response. This is the bracket I purchased, I only bought one, may get another if the replacement cableCARD does not work.


That looks like the one with the adapter board so you shouldn't have a pin issue. Did you have screws to hold it down?

Scott


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## comandercody33 (Nov 9, 2017)

HerronScott said:


> That looks like the one with the adapter board so you shouldn't have a pin issue. Did you have screws to hold it down?
> 
> Scott


Yes, you can kind of see the screws to the left of my adapter picture. They were snug when I removed them.

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## comandercody33 (Nov 9, 2017)

Update: I ordered a new cableCARD bracket, installed it, and plugged the old cable card in. The TiVo recognized it!!

Called TWC to re-pair, repeated guided setup for cable only, everything went like it should, however, no live video.

TWC tech confirmed status locked, auth received, everything looked good, however, no live video, on any channels.

I do not require a tuning adapter, however the error being received was V53, on all channels.


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

comandercody33 said:


> Update: I ordered a new cableCARD bracket, installed it, and plugged the old cable card in. The TiVo recognized it!!
> 
> Called TWC to re-pair, repeated guided setup for cable only, everything went like it should, however, no live video.
> 
> ...


What is the signal strength on your channels?

Since a new bracket fixed some of your issues, do you see anything different from your original bracket? Do all the pins extend out the same depth from the card? If the pins are not long enough to make good contact, that could cause your original issue and your current issue.


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## comandercody33 (Nov 9, 2017)

jmbach said:


> What is the signal strength on your channels?
> 
> Since a new bracket fixed some of your issues, do you see anything different from your original bracket? Do all the pins extend out the same depth from the card? If the pins are not long enough to make good contact, that could cause your original issue and your current issue.


Signal strength: 90%

I do not see any difference between the old bracket and the new bracket......


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## fcfc2 (Feb 19, 2015)

comandercody33 said:


> Signal strength: 90%
> 
> I do not see any difference between the old bracket and the new bracket......


No idea if this would work or help, but I have use a can of Electrical Contact cleaner (spray) on several troublesome connections to find that what I thought might be a bad port suddenly started to work again. Power off the unit first though before using and spray both connections.


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

comandercody33 said:


> Signal strength: 90%
> 
> I do not see any difference between the old bracket and the new bracket......


Signal strength is good. Does everything look appropriate in the cableCARD pairing screens?

Contact cleaner is a great idea.

Sent from my SM-G950U1 using Tapatalk


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## comandercody33 (Nov 9, 2017)

fcfc2 said:


> No idea if this would work or help, but I have use a can of Electrical Contact cleaner (spray) on several troublesome connections to find that what I thought might be a bad port suddenly started to work again. Power off the unit first though before using and spray both connections.


Thank you. I will try that.

New cable card should be in the mail today.....

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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