• Re-imaging with RTVPatch:

RTVPatch for Windows, runs only on Windows 2000, Windows XP or Windows Server 2003.  If you're running any other version of Windows, you'll need to use the Linux boot disk method with RTVPatch.

The RTVPatch* program is a valuable tool to either upgrade to a new or larger drive, or to upgrade to a dual drive ReplayTV.  The program, RTVPatch, as well as documentation on use of the program is available at the RTVPatch site on SourceForge.  Version 2.5.3 of RTVPatch, (March 2005), is available here, and the older version, 2.4 is also available here.  No formatting or drive preparation under DOS or Windows is necessary as RTVPatch takes care of prepping the drive for the ReplayTV OS.  Some people recommend low level formatting a drive prior to using RTVPatch, but this is not absolutely necessary.  If you are upgrading a 20XX/30XX or ShowStopper series ReplayTV, RTVPatch will use the large cluster option.  This results in better use of the limited memory in those ReplayTV models.  Later models have more memory, so the large cluster option is not required.

With today's large drives, there might be a slight drive performance gain by forcing 1 MB clusters in RTVPatch rather than using the default 256 KB cluster size.  The gain, if any, would be observed when a drive contains many recorded shows.  To force RTVPatch to use 1 MB clusters, start RTVPatch with the command line:  "RTVPatch 0 1048576" (without the quotes).  (There is no definitive evidence that forcing 1 MB clusters will result in better performance of a ReplayTV, however using 1 MB clusters should not cause any problems.)  Click here for a thread that discusses the issue of 256 KB versus 1 MB clusters.

(*Although I was involved in some of the early testing of RTVPatch, many thanks to FlipFlop, et al - all those involved in actually writing and/or debugging the program.  Space is provided here for easy access to RTVPatch.)

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