As Best Buy is wont to do, new inventory sometimes ends up on shelves and available for purchase before a manufacturer may have intended. As such, several have been tinkering with TiVo Bolt for a few days now. And, the good news is, internal hard drive replacements are a go.
While Bolt may only be offered with only a 2.5″ 500GB or 1TB WD drive, we can go larger and there’s enough clearance in the enclosure for models taller than 9.5mm. Having said that, I still worry about power consumption and heat dissipation given the new form factor … and would probably recommend this 2TB Samsung ($94) — it’s a proven product at a reasonable price point that will provide sufficient DVR storage for many.
TiVo Bolt disassembly does require a little work … from a Torx 10 driver. Even though you can view the drive simply by removing the side panel, getting to the drive’s mounting bracket means the entire top has to come off. From the TiVo Community:
It’s not so bad to open once you know where all the screws are. Two under the cable card cover, one above the HDMI port. Then the lid on the short end of the curve above the hard drive just pops off and there are 3 more screws under there. Then the main cover lifts right up.
Drives up to 3TB auto-format as they do with the Roamio line – no additional prep required. And, if you get a little crazy, replace and extend that internal SATA cable to communicate with an external drive… of more easily acquired larger drives, without heat or power consumption concerns (and never mind that new slot you’ll need to cut into the enclosure).
(Thanks for the info and photos jcthorne!)