Hi David,
I guess I'm your answer man today!!! When replacing the hard drive, make sure you set your master/slave jumper to match the drive you're removing. Then install the new drive blank with nothing on it...When you power on the Central after re-assembling, insert the CD that came with the unit and choose the option to reload or re-install the software. I forget what they call it, but you can't miss it. It will take care of installing the software on the hard drive and making it bootable.

fyi, you can install a 120 GB drive with no problems, but anything larger than that won't work. I've been doing some experimenting on a larger drive, but nothing concrete to report yet.

You also may want to consider running a longer hard drive ribbon cable outside of the Rio Central cabinet and connecting it to a removable hard drive enclosure. This lets me swap drives easily for backup, and I did have my main 120 GB drive fail a few months back. All my work ripping CDs and fiddling with titles would have been lost without a backup hard drive.

If you shop on Pricewatch.com. you'll be able to find a Maxtor 120GB 5400 rpm drive from JustDeals.com for about $72 or something. I use these slower speed drives in other devices like ReplayTV boxes to keep the heat down. And the faster response of the 7200 rpm drives isn't really needed...Or maybe you already have a drive in hand, so please write back and let us know how your upgrade goes....

Randy