That really sounds like a bad image on the new drive. Have you tried booting the 400 GB drive in the new unit?

No Michael, I haven't tried that yet. I'll do that tonight on my next go-'round after work. If you or anyone has any additional tips or work-arounds, I'd love to hear them as I pretty much have an hour or two after work each day (like most people) and if it fails, then gotta wait 'til tomorrow to try again.

Thank you.

You can always post here as it's happening - we often check the forums at night.

But I'd be willing to be the 400 doesn't boot well. So try that and tell us what you find.

Ugh. Ok, so I tried:

1) detached New 500GB "B" drive and connected Original/Old 400GB "A" drive only. Tivo kept cycling between Powering Up to "Directv Almost There" and back. (No GSOD in this config)

2) detached Old 400gb, reconfigured New 500gb as the "A" drive (including jumper settings etc). Never gets past Powering Up screen ever.

3) dusted off the Old Hughes Tivo box that this whole thing got started over. (it was working fine, just fried audio, that's all). I connected the old 400GB Hd as the single "A" drive. This is the exact same config and equipment that had been working just days before I began this upgrade... It cycles between "Powering Up" to "Directivo Almost there" and then back again.

Any advice? TIA

Arrrghh.

Ok, i'm assuming that i have to restore my HD because of a bad image.

i have tivo image on primary master HD in /dos/tivo.bak

I have blank HD on secondary master

in MFSTOOLS, i entered:
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/dos

then

mfsrestore -r 4 -s 127 -bzpi /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdb

and i get:

"/mnt/dos/tivo.bak: No such file or directory"

what gives?

6 hours later, i think i am on the right track but still don't know yet.

i took a few steps back and backed up my original Tivo drive from 2006. Then flashed it to my 500gb and 400gb, and now I am "Clearing and Deleting" which should take an hour. This is crazy. I must say, I know the online instructions are "correct", but they are incredibly hard to follow.

That sounds right now. Why couldn't you find the file after you had mounted the directory originally?

I have no idea, I even IM'ed a friend of mine who is a programmer and familiar with linux, and he couldn't understand why the file couldn't be found either.

Anyway, it's closer but still no success. I've gone as far as successfully booting the dual drive tivo. It boots fully. Cleared and Deleted everything successfully. But now, the tivo says "The wrong card is in your system"

I am sure that my Directivo card is inserted and seated properly. And it's the exact same card I've always had...

Any thoughts? Thanks.

If you call DirecTV, they should be able to send down a signal to fix that.

Thanks Michael, I will try that and post results.

Works

Ok, good news, but unfortunately I'm in a foul mood at the end of this adventure. All because of Directv customer service. I suddenly remembered why I told my girlfriend six months ago that I refused to ever call Directv ever again. Their automated phone service- what sadist conjured up that! It's like an inner mind torture chamber! Then, when I finally navigated to a human being- she was the most rude person ever. I finally had to snap back at her and remind her to be professional.

Like Michael said, the tivo identifying numbers had to be reset to the new box I got from Weaknees. The DTV lady kept nagging me "Why are you using 3rd party hardware, we provide our own DVRs..." I had to tell her to stop cutting me off and the reason why is because I had 4 of their damn DVRs and they'd all break down within weeks, one didn't even work right out of the box! Then she went on to say "well we provide software updates..." and I told her I was long ago tired of waiting for each new SFW update that never worked. Whenever she could I would hear sighs of impatience. And their phone network is of such poor quality when I'd ask her to repeat what she said, it was like asking someone for the biggest favor.

Okay I'm going way off topic and need to cool down.

Thanks Michael and WK for your help! We'll be enjoying our new (and bigger) tivo!