Is this a joke?

We decided to upgrade the hard drive on our Tivo Series3, since the stock 250G drive only holds about 30 hours of HD video.  I studied the various Tivo upgrade boards and selected a hard drive that had been recommended by some, the WD 1.5TB "EADS" Green drive.  The upgrade process is simple: crack the tivo, extract the drive, move the data from the old drive to the new, "expand" the new drive (updating the partition table so it uses the extra space), and replace the drive.

Attempt 1: 1.5TB drive, using trusty Unix tools -- put the drives into a Unix box, copy data with dd, then do the expansion with 'mfstools'.  This is the approach I've used several times in the past, with good results.  Put the new drive in, turn it on, and it gets stuck forever in the "Wecome, powering up" screen.  Back to Google. 

 Turns out that the S3 can't see a partition bigger than 1TB, and mfstools expands the partition to the whole rest of the drive, yielding a too-big partition.  Turns out mfstools doesn't support limiting the size of the partition, but the Windows version (winmfs) does, so I'll use that instead.  (Its good to have lots of spare computers around when attempting any sort of upgrade.)

Attempt 2: 1.5TB drive, using winmfs.  Put the drives in the windows box, run winmfs to copy the data, and let winmfs expand the partition.  It asks me "should I limit the partition to 1TB", I say yes, good.  Put the drives back -- same problem.  More Googling.

So I discover that "some versions of the drive I was using (WD15EADS) are 'not compatible' with Tivo Series3."  Its been years since I've heard about incompatible (system, disk) pairs, and this is a standard SATA drive, but OK, I guess I bought the wrong drive.   RMA time.  Sorry, NewEgg.  The Tivo Upgrade FAQ (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=370784) is telling me I should favor the WD EVVS drives instead, so I buy a 1TB drive (WD10EVVS) from Amazon. 

Attempt 3: 1TB drive, winmfs.  I repeat the process, copying the 250G drive to the new 1TB drive, and put the drive back in the Tivo.  (At this point I've learned to try it before I fasten all the screws.)  Same deal -- stuck on the "Welcome, Powering Up" screen.  More Googling.

I found this update, which was added after I'd bought my drive:

The WD10EVVS was removed from the list on October 10, because there is a new
batch of that drive, manufactured on September 20, that is not compatible
with the TiVo.   These incompatible drives are labeled as follows:

MDL: WD10EVVS - 63M5B0
Product of Thailand
DATE: 20 SEP 2009
DCM: [b]HAxxxxxxxx
R/N: 701640
LBA: 1953525168

I looked at my drive, and sure enough, I had one. 

Is this an elaborate joke? 

Next up: RMA redux, ordered a WD 10EVDS drive.  Stay tuned.

 

Update: installed the WD10EVDS, worked fine.  Fourth time's the charm!