Pretty strange - that model of TiVo doesn't generally lock drives. You may have some other problem there.

Are you sure the jumpers are right?

Had you ever put it in a Series1 TiVo?

Does it still boot in your DSR704?

I've tried various jumper configurations. Master, Slave Cable Select. At this point I've tried so many things i'm somewhat worried that I may have compounded the problem.

The drive has a "Cap Limit" jumper setting, does anyone know it's function?

I have not put this in a series 1 tivo, or any other tivo.

Things I have done:
Tried a slew of unlock programs.

after failing to unlock the drive, locking it with diskutil.exe
this reported it succeeded in locking the drive
reboot same 9mb limit
then tried unlocking the drive
this reported it succeeded in UNlocking the drive
reboot same 9mb limit

tried connecting it to my ubuntu box - only sees 9mb

up until this point the drive would still boot in my DSR704

finally tried connecting it to my xp machine (this is where i start to worry) to try some other unlock utilities no luck here either..

last i tried to boot the drive in my tivo, it would not work.. I was getting pretty frustrated though, and will try one more time tonight with a clear head.

Can anyone explain how drives are locked? Is this a function of the drives electrical hardware? or is it something logical (partition table, boot sector, etc)?


Things I have at my disposal to try and make this work (nor sure if they can be leveraged):
Series 2 standalone tivo - has the same hard drive in it - works fine - this drive is not locked - not in use and i'm willing to pillage it

I'm trying to win another DSR704 so, i may have another unit at my disposal by next week.


Just occurred to me to mention, this project started because after a power outage, my DSR704 would not start back up. I used the powersupply from my standalone Series 2 Tivo, and it came right up.

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.

If you've booted it into XP, your drive has been partially overwritten. So at this point, you probably can't even get an image off of it. I'd recommend just getting a "replace" kit and not spending more time with this.

I hear ya, thanks for your time Michael.

I think i'll try to upgrade the unit i won off of ebay. If that goes well I may try to transfer the OS to the dead unit.

If they're the same model numbers, that should work.