Moving content from a 3000 unit to a 5040?

You can't just copy the files over..

1. The mpeg streams aren't compatible.
3. The Replay won't know they are there. Guide entires are only made when a show is recorded or revceived via IVS.

You can always set up your 5000 series RTV to manually record the output from the 3000... but that should a method of last resort.

1. Use ExtractRTV to copy the video mpegs off the 3000 series hard disk to your computer.
2. Convert the 3000 series mpegs to 5000 compatible mpegs (not sure if RTVToolKit will do this...I think TMPGEnc will...)
3. Stream the shows to your 5000 series from the PC via WiRNS or DVArchive.

Cheers!
-Doug

p.s. - You can always just run them out to DVD once you get them off the 3000 series RTV and possible watch them in your DVD player...

You can only extract files from an RTV hard drive, you can't place them on it, so you'll have to extract the 3K shows to a PC hard drive. If you use extract_rtv5 on your 3K hard drive, it can also get the show information as well in a format you can use for DVArchive or IVS. You might be able to use RTVToolKit to create 5K files and then you could put then on DVArchive or IVS them to your 5K. At a minimum, after you've extracted the shows from your 3K, you should be able to view them on your PC.

Even if you could extract from the 3000 and place on the 5000, and the files were compatible, the 5000's OS will have no idea they are there.. Entries are only made in the RTV Guide when a show is recorded or received via IVS.

Cheers!
-Doug

Yes, but they do that by mirroring the drive, not by copying files to the new drive.

And that is not even recommended, because there could be corrupt data on the old drive that will wreck havoc on the new drive... With the video partition, that's not that big a problem.. With the OS (System) partition, that becomes a problem.

Cheers!
-Doug

Not recommended for replacing failing drives. However, the OP asked about upgrading drives, where it IS recommended, as long as the upgrade drive is larger (which might be assumed by "upgrade").

Are you using Extract GUI, RTVExplorer, extract_rtv, or extract_rtv5? I would recommend you use extract_rtv5. Yes, the -e option takes a file name after it. But, extract_rtv5 has some extract all options and I think will skip problem files. If you run the command with no options, it will give you a help screen. And, you can use the -dx option to get show description information.

If you're using Extract GUI, then it has some instructions on what to do to make it work with extract_rtv5.exe. I think maybe all you have to do is rename extract_rrtv5.exe as extract_rtv.exe. If you're using RTVExplorer GUI, then I think it has some configuration problem that you have to be sure that it is configured for extract_rtv5.exe.

Well, since you said you were having problems when you tried to manually extract programs by name, I assume the same thing is happening when you use the GUI. The GUI is a very simple GUI front end for extract_rtv. It gets its content from using the -dv option, and it extracts the programs by using the -e option. It's as simple as that, so if the -e option isn't working for you manually, then it's probably not going to work for Extract GUI, either.