Last night, inspired by one of Aaron Williams‘s excellent Full Frontal Nerdity strips, I busted open my year-old ReplayTV and upgraded the hard drive from 40 GB to 200 GB. Everything went well, if not smoothly, especially considering I was using an iBook running Linux programs through Terminal, attached to the guts of a Firewire/USB 2.0 external hard drive enclosure, rather than the standard tower Wintel machine with a couple open hard drive bays. I now have five times the space on the thing, which I’m sure I’m sure my kids will soon fill with multiple episodes of the finest entertainment from PBS Kids and Nick Jr.
Like most great hardware hacks, it voided my warranty (which was already expired anyhow) and ran the risk of turning my cool toy into a large doorstop. There were a few heart-stopping hiccups, but through the glory of the web and a bit of trial-and-error I was able to figure out how to circumnavigate them. It’s comforting to know the two years of the electrical engineering major I started at the University of Michigan didn’t entirely go to waste.
