Nope - you can't play shows recorded on the old TiVo on the new one by moving the hard drive. They're serialized to that dead motherboard.

original HD with the shows

OK..I followed the Interactive Tivo Upgrade instructions and it couldn't have been easier. Kudos and thanks to whoever constructed that. I have a R10 and it had the 80 gig original drive. I went down to Fry's(I LOVE FRYS but anyway) and bought a 500Gig for 100 bucks. It ran through backup and restore command in less than 5 minutes. I did the Clear and Delete everything, that took about two hours. NO problems! GOOD TO GO. Tivo now reports 439 hours. Pretty cool.

Now for the questions.

1. In the instructions it mentions I can not use the IDE cable after removing it. Can anyone shed some light on that? I kept it in there and everything seems to work fine.

2. Am I able to plug the orginal hard drive back in the R10 and watch the shows so I can record them to DVD?

thanks in advance

James

1a) I don't understand which instruction you're referring to as far as not using an IDE cable. Basically, you need an IDE cable to connect your motherboard to your hard drive. So if your drive is booted up and showing increased capacity, you're done.

2a) Unfortunately, shows stored on a hard drive MUST be played back from within the original TiVo that recorded them.

here it is

i have copy and pasted the text from the upgrade instructions about the not using the IDE cable....

"Disconnect the existing drive bay.

With the cover off and looking to the front-right of the TiVo, you will be able to see (A) one hard drive, (B) a gray IDE ribbon cable that runs from the greenish motherboard to the hard drive, and (C) a multi-colored (red, black, yellow) drive power cable that runs from the power supply to the hard drive.

Remove the power cable and gray IDE ribbon cable from the hard drive. Also, remove the ribbon cable from the motherboard. You may not re-use this cable, but you should keep it either way. WARNING:"

That instruction might be referring to a dual-drive install in a single drive TiVo in which case you're removing the single position IDE cable to be replaced with a double position cable. In any event, if your TiVo is up and running, I'm sure you're fine.