Advice on using original drive as additional storage

[Fargelsnot]

Have an HR10-250 here. Made a backup of the WD250 that came with it. I shelved this drive, restored image to Maxtor 300 and added some hacks. Everything working great. Would it be safe/wise to go ahead and add the 250 back in as additional storage now that I know I have a working backup? Also, assuming I didn't have a working backup, I bought a copy of instantcake for the HR10-250. Would I be able to get back to "virgin" status by either restoring my working image back to the 250 or using instantcake? I just want to make sure if I go ahead and add the original drive as additional storage I can get back to square 1 if I need to. (Also heard a rumor that an update would be coming within a few weeks nullifying the hacks, so maybe it'd be a good idea to wait a little longer because of that?)

Thanks for the help!

[hayreass]

A lot of people have different opinions on this one.
Asking this question is bound to get you hearing them all.

Mine is that once I KNOW that I have a good backup, and I mean KNOW it, I don't feel a need to keep the original HD.

But I've never had a TiVo under warranty, I think if mine was under warranty, I'd keep the original HD.

[AhoyMatey]

My opinion (and opinions are like *ssholes - everybody has one) is that it's a bad idea. If one drive goes, everything goes. Like having a system with striped harddrives only - it's just a matter of time before one of the drives goes boom.

Of course, until "boom" happens, you're doing better than ok. Afterwards though...

[rfc]

Of course, until "boom" happens, you're doing better than ok. Afterwards though...

I should probably own stock in Maxtor. I have the original hard drives from all my Tivos plus back up copies on more hard drives. My wife once asked: "What's in all those red boxes in your workshop?" Upon answering, she then asked: "Why do you need so many?"

One rationale might be that if you ever wanted to sell the unit, and you happened to save the original box and all packing materials (another one of my habits), you can pop the original drive back in, and sell it as "like new" on ebay, lol.

Finally, be advised that nothing will ever fail on you if you decide to archive the thing and buy a new drive, so you'll never be really challenged to recover from a failure unless you throw caution to the wind and use the drive for more storage!

[Fargelsnot]

Thanks for the responses! You all made some good points. I think the 300 will give me more than enough storage for a while. If in the future I do feel I need to add that second drive, it's not too hard to find them fairly inexpensive with some rebate specials and what not.

It wasn't too difficult shelving the 9 G hard drive from my xbox, but setting this 250 on the shelf is a little more difficult! lol

[captain_video]

The main reason so many recommend shelving the original drive is because a) it's a known good, working image, and b) you'll always have a spare drive available in case your hacked drive goes bad. As long as you've made a backup of the original and have tested it to make sure it works, I see no reason not to put the original drive back into service in your HDTivo. Just make sure you archive the image and keep it in a safe place.