Know that inactive eSATA drive on your TiVo Series3? Well, it’s not so inactive after all… By following a few simple steps (attach external drive, reboot, hit pause then 62) you can easily expand your storage using a backdoor (“kickstart”). So far the upgrade has been successful on stock Series3 units running 8.1.1 and eSATA drives up to 750GB. I’m going shopping and should be able to tell you later in the day how this method fares on TiVo software version 8.3.
FYI I’ve heard from two separate sources that an eSATA drive can also be activated on Series3 units with upgraded internal drives by mucking around in the Linux file system. Neither source disclosed the details (I didn’t press), but I assume some polished steps will make their way out eventually.
Thanks to Ben (pictures) and Ryan (text) in getting the eSATA news up onto Engadget in a timely fashion since I don’t work Friday nights. ;)