Questions on DVR model switch

[Roland Deschain]

After several years of good service, both virgin and hacked, my RCA DVR40 went tits-up on me. It had been "stuttering" during live broadcasts, and when I called DirecTV for support, the first thing they had me do was pull the power cord...when I plugged her back in, the cooling fan came on, but that was it. The HDD did not spin up at all. :(

Found a dude nearby on Craigslist with a Series2 unit for sale...photos were almost identical to my dead unit, with slight changes in the port locations on the back. This one is a DirecTV DVR R10 unit with an 80GB drive. I did a full reset of the unit (overnight) and it's running normally...for a virgin DVR.

So, here's what I'd like to do, and where I could use some forum input.

Old DVR (dead):
RCA DVR-40, 120GB drive, sliced to 6.2a, hacked manually (superpatch, USB2 backports). Contains all saved recordings, season passes, etc.

New DVR:
DirecTV DVR-R10, 80GB drive, virgin reset, running 6.1 at the moment. Nothing on it.

I have a 250GB drive that I'd like to use in place of the 80 gigger...BUT, I want to take the software level up to 6.3f, AND I'd like to bring over all my Season Pass schedules and saved recordings from the 120GB drive in my dead unit.

As I manually hacked the old unit twice (got hit with the DST upgrade) before, I have a serial cable and a pretty good recollection of the processes...but I've never tried moving saved shows and settings before.

I'm not looking for step-by-step handholding here, just a general sense of the order I should proceed...e.g., do I slice upgrade and hack the 80GB drive first, then copy that data over to the new 250GB drive, then try to import the saved shows/info from the dead unit's drive?

I'd like to do this once, the correct way, rather than fumble along and figure it out by trial & error. Thanks, all!


EDIT:
Just as a sidenote...the first thing I had tried was just plugging the 120GB drive from the dead unit into the R10 and firing it up. It would freeze with a blank grey screen after getting past the "Welcome! Powering up..." screen. Since my wife wanted to watch TV, I just put the 80GB drive back in it and did a full reset. I guess there were enough differences in the hardware that something barfed during the boot sequence.

[jt1134]

Sorry, the R10 is technically a Series 2.5 tivo and requires a prom mod before any hacking can be done. The software is essentially about the same, but the kernel and a few other things are different due to the differing hardware.

[Roland Deschain]

You've gotta be friggin' kidding...are all the R10's like this?


EDIT:
Has anyone here compiled a list of Series2 DirecTivo receivers that are HW compatible? I'd rather punt the R10 unit on Craigslist and pickup another software hackable unit, but I'm not certain which ones are similar to my old RCA DVR-40?

[jt1134]

The R10 is the only dtivo that isn't software hackable. Any other series 2 will be fine.

[crashHD]

If your existing recordings were recorded after the box was hacked (i.e. unencrypted), and the disk is not the reason for the failure, it may be possible to move that drive to the R10, but you would need access to a working Series2 to do it.

I have moved an R10 drive to a Series2 in the past by upgrading via slices from 6.1a to 6.2a. The trick here, is that after the reboot in the upgrade process, the drive must be moved to the other box. I believe, beginning with 6.3e, the Series2's and the R10's are running on the same binaries, but require different kernels.

The problem with this, is you would need access to a working Series2. To do this, you would need to dbload the 6.3f-01-2-521 slices, upgrade to 6.3f-01-2-521, and move the drive from the Series2 to the R10. It should then boot as a freshly updated 6.3f, unhacked (de-hacked in the upgrade process), with the previous recordings and season passes intact.

This is just to say it's possible. I'd recommend getting another Series2, or having your box fixed. There's a company called ccs that is said to do good work for $100. The Series2 units are less sluggish than the R10's, have substantially better usb performance (+30%-50% faster), and don't require hardware hacking.