We’re going to be adding an existing drive to the one that is already in your TiVo. In addition to a new hard drive, you’re going to need a special upgrade kit from Weaknees.com. There’s two kits on the page, the Basic and the Complete. Suck it up and get the Complete kit; you’ll need everything in it. And, even better, in it is just about everything you’ll need, including the tools and screws required to get into the TiVo and mount your drives. So here’s a complete list of everything to have before you get started:

• Hard drive
• Weaknees complete upgrade kit
• Spare desktop PC
• Phillips-head screwdriver
• 5/16-in wrench
• MFSTool 2.0 bootable CD

Burn that MFSTool ISO to a CD before proceeding any further. Ready? Good.

Figure 1: The new hard drive and Weaknees Complete Upgrade Kit

Preparing the hard drive

I’m going to make some assumptions during our time together, and here’s one of the first ones: you’re going to want to back up your existing TiVo OS. You do, don’t you? Of course you do. If you don’t back it up and something happens, not only won’t I feel sorry for you but I will actually point and laugh in your face.

Since we now know you want to back up your TiVo OS, you’ll need a hard drive in your PC with a FAT32 parition on it (and with enough free space to store your backup, which in my case was 560 MB). Since most of you probably don’t have FAT32 partions in your PC anymore, the best option is to simply format your new hard drive with FAT32 using whatever method you normally would. Once you have your new hard drive set up with a FAT32 partition, we’re ready to take the TiVo apart.

Next: Diassembling the TiVo