From gatomon:

pretty easy on a mac...

to upgrade your replaytv to a larger drive. I've done it many times without failure.

First, you need:
(1) a new, large drive
(2) some method to connect it to your mac (I use a firewire enclosure)
(3) a copy of the ReplayTV software, RTV_FILE.rtv, on the hard drive of the mac (for a 50xx replaytv, download RTV_5K_FactoryReset_140.rtv to your drive).  [Images are available here:   Which image do you use?]

To prepare the drive for the replaytv, do the following steps:
Step 1 *** check for disks:
In terminal execute the command:
> diskutil list
This will show you what drives are connected to the computer. From the output you can see what drives are the apple computer drives and which drive is the drive you want to prepare. The drive will be known as "/dev/diskN" where N is an integer. For example, if the output of diskutil list looks like:

/dev/disk0
#: type name size identifier
0: Apple_partition_scheme *55.9 GB disk0
1: Apple_partition_map 31.5 KB disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Kiki HD 55.8 GB disk0s3

/dev/disk1
#: type name size identifier
0: *186.3 GB disk1

then the computer's disk is disk0 and the new disk is disk1.

Step 2 *** write image to disk:
If you are using RTV_5K_FactoryReset_140.rtv, cd to the directory where this file is located, then in terminal type:

> dd if=RTV_5K_FactoryReset_140.rtv of=/dev/diskN bs=1024 count=517121

which produces an output like:

517121+0 records in
517121+0 records out
529531904 bytes transferred in 286.508004 secs (1848227 bytes/sec)

Notes:
1. the "N" in /dev/diskN is from step 1.
2. This took almost 5 minutes to complete. You can watch the activity light on the drive to see that things are happening.
3. If you are in the correct directory, you can "see" the .rtv file with the ls -l command:
> ls -l

-rw-r--r-- 1 name admin 529531904 Dec 28 2004 RTV_5K_FactoryReset_140.rtv

This confirms you are in the right directory and also tells you the size, in this case 529531904 bytes. Note that 517121*1024 = 529531904.

4. For a different file, RTV_FILE.rtv, of size M, choose a blocksize BS (about 1024) number and a CNT number so that M = BS*CNT (EXACTLY). Then run:

> dd if=RTV_FILE.rtv of=/dev/diskN bs=BS count=CNT

in the example, M = 529531904, BS = 1024 and CNT = 517121.

Step 3 *** Run RTVPatch:
I install it in /usr/local/bin/RTVPatch
When I run:
> RTVPatch
I get:
*****
***** RTVPatch version 2.5.1, built on Feb 26 2005, 12:52:25
*****

/dev/diskN : Using binary search drive size detection
/dev/diskN (Drive N) : Detected size = 390721968 sectors

The system contains the following disks:

N /dev/diskN, Drive N, 200GB, ReplayTV Disk (4xxx or 5xxx), NEEDS TO BE PATCHED

Commands:
i Show disks INFO
s Set SOURCE disk (currently not set)
t Set TARGET disk (currently not set)
m MIRROR the first partition (system)
2 MIRROR the second partition (shows)
3 MIRROR the third partition (photo)
p PATCH target disk (currently not set)
a ADD a second drive
f FORCE a disk's size
l LENGTH of the photo partition (currently default)

x EXIT

Enter Command:

Run these commands in this order
> s
> t
> p
> x

Notes:
1. For s pick N (for device /dev/diskN)
2. For t pick N (for device /dev/diskN)
3. For p answer "n" to the question:
** Do you want to try to preserve the shows on the MPEG partition?
** Answer 'yes' here ONLY IF you copied the whole MPEG partition!!!
** The safe answer is 'no'
(y/n)?

Step 4 *** eject source:
diskutil eject diskN

Turn off the power, the disk is ready to be installed in the replaytv

_________________________________________________________________________________

And from miscrms:

I was a little intimidated by the descriptions, but had no problem upgrading from a 40GB to 160GB disk using an emac on 10.3.9 with two firewire enclosures.

If you have the ability to hook up both drives, the procedure seems to be simpler even than the one above (which is never the less very handy and nicely written).

Here is what I ended up doing:
1. Download the 2.5.1 version of the rtvpatch for osx here
2. unzip and run RTVPatch in Terminal (cp to /usr/bin or just run from wherever you put it using "./RTVPatch". Run "chmod a+x RTVPatch" if you get a permission denied error and ls -al RTVPatch is missing the "x"s on the permission list.
3. use "i" command to find the disk# of your old and new disks (for me 2 and 1)
4. use s and t to set source and target (for me s, 2, t, 1)
5. use "m" to copy the system partition
6. use "p" to patch
7. "x" to exit
8. "diskutil disk1 eject" and same for disk2 to make it safe to turn them off

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