InstantCake Questions

[BRANDONEASTRIDGE67762]

I have two Samsung Sir-4040r's with WD400 factory drives. Looking two expand them bought a kit off Ebay, Weaknees bracket with a Maxtor 160Gb HD. Tried to use Weaknees, Hinsdale and finally IC, none worked with a bad Maxtor HD. So I took Weaknees advice and purchased two Seagate DB35 160 Gb HD. Again following instructions under all three methods to a "T", nothing works. Do I need to format these new drives before they will work? I also would like express my hatred for the DirecTv Plus R15-100/300/500 POS, five separate units in 18 months! Any help would be appreciated.

thank you
Brandon Eastridge

Again DirecTv sucks for having News Corps DVR manufacturer making such a steaming pile of circuits in the place of the very reliable TiVo manufacturers. By the way my lines are run perfectly and the power to that unit is clean and stable. I hate the R15's!!!!!!!!

[Rick Travis]

I have two Samsung Sir-4040r's with WD400 factory drives. Looking two expand them bought a kit off Ebay, Weaknees bracket with a Maxtor 160Gb HD. Tried to use Weaknees, Hinsdale and finally IC, none worked with a bad Maxtor HD. So I took Weaknees advice and purchased two Seagate DB35 160 Gb HD. Again following instructions under all three methods to a "T", nothing works. Do I need to format these new drives before they will work? I also would like express my hatred for the DirecTv Plus R15-100/300/500 POS, five separate units in 18 months! Any help would be appreciated.

thank you
Brandon Eastridge

Again DirecTv sucks for having News Corps DVR manufacturer making such a steaming pile of circuits in the place of the very reliable TiVo manufacturers. By the way my lines are run perfectly and the power to that unit is clean and stable. I hate the R15's!!!!!!!!
Don't expand, replace the fortys, use instantcake to image the drives, you will be up and running in less then 1/2 hour.

[Lou Jacob]

Do I need to format these new drives before they will work?

Definitely not. It would be a good idea to run diagnostics on any drive that you are planning on using in your TiVo, just to rule out a bad drive as the potential culprit.

When using InstantCake, you do not need to format or partition a drive, you just need to ensure its connected properly and that the software runs as expected. If you are having a reproducible problem with the software, then it may be that your PC is the culprit - if you have another, it might be worth trying that, instead.

[BRANDONEASTRIDGE67762]

Drive tested fine with Seatools. CdRom set as primarily slave (jumper and cable). New drive set as secondary master(cable and jumper). CdRom is 1st boot device. IC cd was burned using Nero 8. "PXE-E53: no boot filename received" is the message I get. I am not a programmer. I play with resin and marble matrix all day and am quite skilled with hand and power tools. This is pretty frustrating, do you have any advice?

[Lou Jacob]

Drive tested fine with Seatools. CdRom set as primarily slave (jumper and cable). New drive set as secondary master(cable and jumper). CdRom is 1st boot device. IC cd was burned using Nero 8. "PXE-E53: no boot filename received" is the message I get. I am not a programmer. I play with resin and marble matrix all day and am quite skilled with hand and power tools. This is pretty frustrating, do you have any advice?

Brandon,

With the details you've provided, it sounds like you are not burning your CD correctly. Or perhaps its an issue with your PC.

As for your frustration...

...please understand that although you do not have to be a programmer to use InstantCake, it is a DIY tool that is intended for people who consider themselves to be technical when it comes to their PC's -- perhaps you would have been better to purchase a pre-configured kit?

We do offer s full credit of your software purchase towards the purchase of one (this is something we mention during the checkout process).

But if you want to press onward, I'd try to be more patient, and look into the proper use of Nero for burning your ISO, and possibly use another PC to rule out any other potential issues associated with booting the InstantCake CD...

[BRANDONEASTRIDGE67762]

Disabled my LAN and the error went away. She won't recognize the boot cd. I don't have a SATA supported motherboard and I'm pretty sure I saw "SATA" somewhere in the IC software. Am I imagining this? Thank you for your patience.

[BRANDONEASTRIDGE67762]

I took the drives and my boot cd along with the zipped image of IC on a flash drive to my pc guru. Within three minutes he figured out my problem! When burned IC to a cd something went wrong and not all the files copied. My advice to anyone using this wonderful program is to wait for a hard copy to be sent to you. It may save you some frustration. I now have two samsung sirs-4040r's with 175hr recording capacity each and I will soon tell Directv to pickup their P.O.S. R15-500 and send it back to the south of the border sweatshop it was manufactured in! Thank you Instant Cake!!!