Can you keep the hard drives separate on two 360 boxes ?

[stevegooduk]

Hi , weve just upgraded to two 360 boxes. Previously we had a mini box in the living room and a tivo box in the dining room. These boxes were able to store separate programs on their hard drives which worked well for us as a different person watched each box.

Now we have all our saved programs lumped together on both boxes.

Is there any way to go back to completely separate boxes?

[japitts]

The answer depends which 360 boxes you have - masters or minis.

V6 that are converted, retain their hard drives and have become 360-masters. TiVo's can't be converted and you'd have 360-minis in exchange, which don't have hard drives.

There's pictures of the various boxes on this page , also pictures of the master (with hard drive) and mini (without hard drive) below. I suspect from what you've explained, you used to have V6 + TiVo, and now you have 360-master & 360-mini. If so... all your recordings are now on the master, and the mini is wholly reliant on the master-box for recording functions.

[stevegooduk]

Thanks for the reply.

That makes sense.

We had a Tivo in the dining room which has now been replaced by a new mini box.

Would it be possible to carry on using the old Tivo box as a recording unit with its own hard drive in that room or do we have to stick with the new mini box?

[japitts · Accepted solution]

TiVo & V6 boxes run TiVo-software. 360 boxes run Horizon/360 software. You can't mix the two in the same home - you either have a 360-based account, or a TiVo/V6-based account.

Ideally, you'd have upgraded your TiVo to a V6, and then had 2 x HDD-equipped V6. Both of those could have been software-converted to 360 had you so wished.

Now that the TiVo has been swapped for a mini, you have one master-360 with HDD, any & all additional boxes you have are now minis. All the recording is done on the master box, this is a feature of the 360-platform and - unfortunately for yourself - well documented on this forum. And no you can't revert back to TiVo/V6 - a conversion to 360 is a one-way trip.