# hdd cradle?



## heyitsbailey (Sep 18, 2012)

I have a Tivo premiere with the regular hard drive 320 gb. i recently bought a 2 tb western digital 3.5 inch hard internal hard drive i read somewhere is compatible with this tivo. unfortunately my pc can only find the 320 gb and not the 2tb.

now onto my question.. i saw a dock today that carrys 2 internal hard drives, and has the feature to clone one drive onto other drive.. would i be able to dock both hard drives and just click clone onto the 2tb so all files and everything will be imported to that drive? making the 2tb hard drive usable and i would just have to place it into tivo?


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

heyitsbailey said:


> I have a Tivo premiere with the regular hard drive 320 gb. i recently bought a 2 tb western digital 3.5 inch hard internal hard drive i read somewhere is compatible with this tivo. unfortunately my pc can only find the 320 gb and not the 2tb.


How were you trying to look at the drives? How were the drives hooked up to PC? Does the 320 still work in the TiVo?



heyitsbailey said:


> now onto my question.. i saw a dock today that carrys 2 internal hard drives, and has the feature to clone one drive onto other drive.. would i be able to dock both hard drives and just click clone onto the 2tb so all files and everything will be imported to that drive? making the 2tb hard drive usable and i would just have to place it into tivo?


Might work. Of course, the TiVo would only use 320GB of the 2TB.

See this thread for expansion instructions.


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## heyitsbailey (Sep 18, 2012)

> How were you trying to look at the drives? How were the drives hooked up to PC? Does the 320 still work in the TiVo?


I'm not sure what you mean by look at the drives. I hooked up one hard drive up to a usb adapter, the other i took out the 2.5 inch hard drive from my laptop and hooked the 3.5 inch hard drive to my laptop. Yes the 320gb still works in the tivo, however ihave not got the 2tb to work with the tivo.

Right now, my laptop is the only computer i can use. I might have to order another usb adapter but i don't know how good that would do.


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## dwit (May 5, 2004)

At least one dual drive dock(the thermaltake, I believe) is known* not to work*(in dual drive configuration) in cloning Tivo drives using the winmfs program.

It will work when holding a single drive. Of course this means you will need the have a second drive attached to the computer by other means.

Maybe things have changed and or maybe other dual drive cradles/docks work with other cloning programs?


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## heyitsbailey (Sep 18, 2012)

well if only one drive at a yime is how it works, it kinda beats the purpose of me getting one. id might as well get a sata to usb adapter since there cheaper. but will 2 usb adapters work together at one time on configuration?


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## dwit (May 5, 2004)

heyitsbailey said:


> well if only one drive at a yime is how it works, it kinda beats the purpose of me getting one. id might as well get a sata to usb adapter since there cheaper. but will 2 usb adapters work together at one time on configuration?


Yes, lots of reports of success doing that.

Of course, that is no guarantee everyone will be successful in their particular situation(hardware, experience, etc.).


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

heyitsbailey said:


> I have a Tivo premiere with the regular hard drive 320 gb. i recently bought a 2 tb western digital 3.5 inch hard internal hard drive i read somewhere is compatible with this tivo. unfortunately my pc can only find the 320 gb and not the 2tb.
> 
> now onto my question.. i saw a dock today that carrys 2 internal hard drives, and has the feature to clone one drive onto other drive.. would i be able to dock both hard drives and just click clone onto the 2tb so all files and everything will be imported to that drive? making the 2tb hard drive usable and i would just have to place it into tivo?


This isn't about getting Windows to see the drives, it's about getting the computer to see the drives without ever booting into Windows.

Let's see if we can avoid you having to spend any more money.

Unhook the USB adapter from the laptop.

Disconnect the laptop's hard drive from the laptop.

Connect the 320 in it's place, turn on the computer and hit whatever button/key is necessary to make it go into the BIOS screen instead of trying to boot.

While in there, make sure it's set to try to boot from cd before trying to boot from hard drive.

See if it detects the 320.

Turn it off, unhook the 320 and hook the 2TB in its place, turn it back on and go into setup again and see if it detects the 2TB.

If the 2TB is not detected, leave the laptop's drive unhooked and try the 2TB with the USB adapter and see if it's seen that way.

And then with the laptop's drive still not connected, try the 320 with the USB adapter and see if it's seen.

What we eventually want to do is use comer's jmfs cd v1.04 to copy the 320 to the 2TB and then expand by adding a single MFS media partition.

But if your laptop can't see the 2TB when it's the only hard drive connected, I'm not sure a second USB adapter is going to solve anything.


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## heyitsbailey (Sep 18, 2012)

alright. well when i take out 2.5 inch hdd out of laptop, and put in 320 gb 3.5 inch via the sata cable in laptop, computer wont recognize it. so im guessing even though the cables fit, the laptop will only recognize 2.5 inch drives. i then booted into linux with 320 gb connected to tbe usb adapter and my computer found it. so i am guessing i would need a 2nd adapter. when the 320 gb was connected into the laptop, it didnt spin or anything, but it does spin and make noise via usb adapter.

in other words, my laptop itself only recognized the 2.5 inch drive, but only recognized the 320 gb 3.5 inch drive through the usb adapter. so 2 adapters should work


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

heyitsbailey said:


> alright. well when i take out 2.5 inch hdd out of laptop, and put in 320 gb 3.5 inch via the sata cable in laptop, computer wont recognize it. so im guessing even though the cables fit, the laptop will only recognize 2.5 inch drives. i then booted into linux with 320 gb connected to tbe usb adapter and my computer found it. so i am guessing i would need a 2nd adapter. when the 320 gb was connected into the laptop, it didnt spin or anything, but it does spin and make noise via usb adapter.


Go to mfslive.org and download the image for the MFS Live cd v1.4 and burn yourself a copy as an image.

Boot the computer with that cd with the Windows 2.5 incher disconnected and the other two drives connected somehow.

When it settles down to the command prompt, type

fdisk -l

(that's a lowercase L, for "list", I think)

and see what it calls which drive, if it can see either one.

Then type

pdisk -l

and it should show an Apple Partition Map on any TiVo drives.

CTRL+PageUp should let you scroll back up to see stuff that disappeared from view.

Typing

reboot

at the command prompt does what you'd expect, and typing

poweroff

shuts down the computer.

Try that with various combinations of the 2 3.5 inch drives connected to the laptop or to the USB adapter, one drive at a time, both at a time, swap where they're connected, etc.

Also either

fdisk -l

or

pdisk -l

will see the cd drive, but will get confused by it not being a hard drive, but that won't mess anything up.

If you find a combination where both drives are showing, then you'll know which is

/dev/sd"x"

where "x" is an "a" or a "b" or "c" or so on, so you'll know which drive is which.

Then you can boot with the jmfs cd, and it should see both drives.

I don't know how the laptop would be able to tell what width the drive was, unless there's a physical switch that gets held down when the 2.5 is properly installed, but I can't see what they'd want to spend money doing that for.

Are you sure the drive got power as well as a data connection?


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## heyitsbailey (Sep 18, 2012)

i dont think the drive got any power. i made sure botb the side connecting into hard drive and the part in the computer were securely connected, and it was.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

heyitsbailey said:


> i dont think the drive got any power. i made sure botb the side connecting into hard drive and the part in the computer were securely connected, and it was.


SATA drives have two connectors, one is wider and that's the power and the other is less wide and that's the data cable connector.

I don't know if your laptop has a place where you slide in the drive and there's a combination plug fixed in place to receive it, or if it has a combo cable with both plugs on the end, like newer TiVo's do, or if it uses a separate data cable and separate power cable.

But it has to get power somehow, or it won't announce itself when that data cable is polled.


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## heyitsbailey (Sep 18, 2012)

ill retry, but its the same as the tivo where its the wide onenext to the not so wide one. its one piece.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

heyitsbailey said:


> ill retry, but its the same as the tivo where its the wide onenext to the not so wide one. its one piece.


Alternate theory, the laptop can't provide enough current to spin up the 3.5 inch drive.

However, we need to see if the laptop can see the 2TB via the USB adapater.

What's the brand and model number of the USB adapter?

Perhaps it can't see drives over a certain size?


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## heyitsbailey (Sep 18, 2012)

I have figured out that my 2TB hard drive is faulty ( starts to smoke whenever a SATA Cable is connected, i had to get a replacement adapter because at first i thought it was the adapter, but still smokes).

So western digital is sending me out a replacement and hopefully that one works for me. so the current drive is shot.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

heyitsbailey said:


> I have figured out that my 2TB hard drive is faulty ( starts to smoke whenever a SATA Cable is connected, i had to get a replacement adapter because at first i thought it was the adapter, but still smokes).
> 
> So western digital is sending me out a replacement and hopefully that one works for me. so the current drive is shot.


Yeah, it's never a good sign when the magic smoke starts to escape.

Was that from hooking up the SATA date cable or the SATA power cable?


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## heyitsbailey (Sep 18, 2012)

it was from the power side of the usb adapter, i connected my 320gb tivo hdd to it after and it ran fine, so its a drive issue. i just gotta prevent this from happening again when WD replaces my hdd


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

heyitsbailey said:


> it was from the power side of the usb adapter, i connected my 320gb tivo hdd to it after and it ran fine, so its a drive issue. i just gotta prevent this from happening again when WD replaces my hdd


Take a look at the power connector on the drive and at the power connector part of the USB thingie, and make sure the little lines of copper are nice and straight and not loose from the surface underneath in any way.

Either something on the drive itself was drawing too much current and overheating, or somehow in the connectors one of the hot lines was touching ground or ground was touching one of the hot lines.


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