I have a TiVo Premiere Series4 Model TCD746320. In 2012 the original hard drive failed and I sent it to Weaknees. They replaced the 300 GB drive with a 1 TB drive. I now am perhaps beginning to see some issues with that 1 TB drive, although the machine is functional.

I found the following webpage that gives detailed instructions on how to copy existing shows from a working TiVo over to a new drive and installing that new drive into the TiVo.

http://www.rosswalker.co.uk/tivo_upgrade/

Based on his recommendations on that page, I bought a 2 TB drive to use as a replacement. This is what I bought:
2 TB WD AV-GP SATA III Intellipower 64 MB Cache Bulk/OEM AV Hard Drive WD20EURX

I but then I read a detail on that site that I had missed previously:

"This approach will also NOT work for upgrading a WeakKnees or previously expanded drive. e.g. If you purchased a 1TB WeakKnees drive for your Premiere or previously upgrade your TiVo yourself to an expanded drive you will need to use the original 320GB hard drive to perform the upgrade to your new drive."

I have contacted the owner of the site to ask him about this, but have not received a reply.

My questions:

Does that mean that this approach will not work for my TiVo?

Is there any way to swap out the hard drives without losing all the shows?

What I would like to do is prep the new hard drive for the TiVo, copy all the shows on the existing drive over to the new one, then physically install the new drive in the TiVo.

Any suggestions? I am technically capable, but with a limited budget.

Thanks!