Mostly people post negatives or problems on forums like this, but I just wanted to say that I have had an incredibly positive experience replacing a bad hard drive in my Phillips DSR708, a Directv Tivo.

The drive went bad on me just before the first NFL games started on Sunday, 9/13. Of course it did. This would never happen when it didn't matter what was coming up next on tv. I called Weaknees on Monday and was assured that replacing the drive was easy. I have been inside computers before so decided to give it a try. The drive arrived on Thursday and I installed it Friday morning using the enclosed instructons. This one came with an adaptor because the connectors on the new drive were different from those on the original.

After putting it back together and plugging everything in, I was thrilled out of my mind to see on the screen "Powering up." I did have to call Directv to get my local channels back, but other than that, no problems. And I have 4 times the capacity of the original drive.

What I wish I had known ahead of time: An occasional blocky picture on some channels which weren't happening on tvs hooked to other receivers was an early warning which I would have heeded had I known this was a symptom of hard drive failure, and I could have recorded to dvd the programs I wanted to keep. Will keep this in mind for the future, as I have two other Directv tivos and don't want to lose them.

So I would encourage anyone who loves their Tivos to go ahead and replace their drives. It is not difficult.