I had a forum member try to copy the "Now Playing List" from one hard drive to another and when I installed the hard drive and try to access the "Now Playing List", I get an error message #51 stating there is a hardware problem and the solution is to restart the HR10-250. I've tried this without success. The guy that did the copy suggested I do a Clear and Delete which I haven't tried and defeats the purpose of doing a copy in the first place. The copied hard drive is using 3.1 software. Anyone have any suggestions before I do a C&D?

AFAIK none of HDDs in cable or satellite STBs use one of the common PC formats so you can't just copy them with a program normally used for copying PC HDDs.

I would imagine the recordings are encrypted with the harddrive serial number/some kind of unique ID to prevent the kind of piracy you just described, that is duplicating to another HDD and keeping it as archive.