My love-hate relationship with my TiVo

TiVo is one of the greatest time management tools ever!  You can tell TiVo to record different shows based on your preferences.  You can pause whatever you’re watching, live or pre-recorded, to resolve any interruption that may spring up.  The latest TiVo series also records in HiDef.  You can view YouTube videos as well as instant downloads from NetFlix.  I love my TiVo HD.

That wasn’t always the case.  A few months ago my TiVo was not my friend.  I would be watching one of my videos and for no apparent reason the TiVo would hang.  Then after what seemed like an eternity, it rebooted.  Over the next couple of weeks it got progressively worse.  I went to the TiVo Community to see if they had any suggestions.  They said it was the hard drive getting ready to go.

Finally, it happened; my TiVo crashed.  I had to repair it.  I decided to do the TiVo hard drive upgrade.  This was not a trivial task.  I had to go on a shopping spree.

  • Hard drive; The TiVo HD uses SATA.  I ended up purchasing a 1GB drive from the recommended list.
  • PCI SATA controller; my system didn’t have any SATA drive until then.  Of course my local computer store didn’t have one, so I had to take a trip to Frys.
  • TiVo hard drive formatter software; Instant Cake from www.dvrupgrade.com

Once the new drive was properly prepared the operation was relatively painless;  Open case, replace drive, close case.  After a day, the system software updated to the latest version and my TiVo was operating as good as new.

The worst part of this whole experience was that I had to retrain my TiVo.

Life is good again and my TiVo is my friend 😉

Till next time, have a great day!

About Wes Johnson

Wes Johnson is a software engineer with extensive experience developing desktop applications. He has also developed firmware for consumer electronics and OEM boards. His experties is C and C++ programming.
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