# WinMFS sees no drives



## mikestanley (Apr 20, 2002)

I downloaded and am trying WinMFS Beta Build 9.3f.

I'm running it on a physical Windows 8.1 machine (tried it via USB-SATA on a VM on my Mac and didn't see the drive) and while the drive itself is seen by Windows, WinMFS shows no drives at all for A & B, even when I check Show Mounted Drives.

Following advice in another thread, I made a partition on the 2TB WD20EURX and ensured I could copy data to it. WinMFS still doesn't see it. The drive is connected via internal SATA cable and both the computer and Windows seem to see it and work with it just fine.

I also ran the extended diagnostics off UBCD before I tried any of this - confirmed it has no errors. Also confirmed the Idle Timer is disabled.

I am trying to restore 652m.tbk to this 2TB WD drive, but don't know if I need to do something else to load the image into WinMFS to then place it on the 2TB WD drive.

Am I using an old version of WinMFS? Any other suggestions?


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## mikestanley (Apr 20, 2002)

Forgot to mention I burned an MFSLive CD, disconnected all the drives from the PC but this WD 2TB drive, the DVD drive, and a USB key containing the 652m.bak/tbk images.

When I boot to MFSLive, I know for a fact it sees the USB key because it's the last thing it recognizes, and it identifies the manufacturer, etc. I'm not sure if it sees the WD 2TB drive or not, and I'm not familiar enough with Linux to do much more than poke at it.

I did some searches and tried to mount /dev/hda but that didn't work.


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## mikestanley (Apr 20, 2002)

Sorry - false alarm. I missed the "running as admin" part. I don't live full time in Windows, so I thought, "no problem, I'm an admin."

Once I right-clicked on winmfs.exe and selected "Run as Administrator" - WinMFS was able to see my drive.

I selected the 2TB WD, then did a Restore of 652m.tbk onto it. Told it not to expand. Looked at it in mfsinfo, saw the 1.7TB Apple free partition, and did mfsadd, but screwed up and told it to yes, limit it to 1TB.

So I restored again, and said no at that point. Now I have a nice giant 1.7TB 15th zone/partition and think I'll be good to go to install this in my Tivo HD.

Thanks for all the help, and especially to Unitron for patiently explaining things over and over to born again noobs like me.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

mikestanley said:


> Sorry - false alarm. I missed the "running as admin" part. I don't live full time in Windows, so I thought, "no problem, I'm an admin."
> 
> Once I right-clicked on winmfs.exe and selected "Run as Administrator" - WinMFS was able to see my drive.
> 
> ...


You might find this thread:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=535260

of interest. Please go read it and then post the numbers on the label on your WD20EURX and tell me where you got it and when, and if it was "mail-order", from what geographical location it was shipped and by what shipping company.


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## mikestanley (Apr 20, 2002)

unitron said:


> You might find this thread:
> 
> http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=535260
> 
> of interest. Please go read it and then post the numbers on the label on your WD20EURX and tell me where you got it and when, and if it was "mail-order", from what geographical location it was shipped and by what shipping company.


Not sure which numbers you mean, but here's a slew of them:

MDL: WH20EURX - 64HYZY0
DATE: 10 APR 2015
DCM: HANNHTJMHB
DCX: YN09647XT
R/N: 771945

WWN: 50014EE20BEC2666

It was shipped by Amazon via USPS from Fort Worth, TX.

Does that help?

I hope this one works fine once I put it in my Tivo HD. My issue, at least within WinMFS, seemed to be user error in that I forgot to "run as Admin".

I left out the hour or more I spent swapping cables and booting into Windows 8.1 vs 2012 R2 over and over, all the while just happily double-clicking on winmfs.exe and thinking since I AM an admin, it would run it with admin privileges. Gotta love Windows.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

mikestanley said:


> Not sure which numbers you mean, but here's a slew of them:
> 
> MDL: WH20EURX - 64HYZY0
> DATE: 10 APR 2015
> ...


Thanks, yours is 2 months older than mine, which came via UPS from newegg (though from a non-newegg warehouse), and the only fully matching number seems to be

R/N: 771945

though I have no idea what to what it refers.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

mikestanley said:


> Forgot to mention I burned an MFSLive CD, disconnected all the drives from the PC but this WD 2TB drive, the DVD drive, and a USB key containing the 652m.bak/tbk images.
> 
> When I boot to MFSLive, I know for a fact it sees the USB key because it's the last thing it recognizes, and it identifies the manufacturer, etc. I'm not sure if it sees the WD 2TB drive or not, and I'm not familiar enough with Linux to do much more than poke at it.
> 
> I did some searches and tried to mount /dev/hda but that didn't work.


Once you boot from the MFS Live cd, you enter

fdisk -l

and hit Enter, and it should come back with info on all the hard drives it sees, though sometimes if it gets to a cd drive first it chokes on that because the cd will respond to ATA inquiries, but it won't return the kind of answers a hard drive would that

fdisk

is expecting.

But if

fdisk -l

works like it should it'll tell you if your drive is

/dev/sda

or

/dev/sdb

or whatever, or if it's a PATA/IDE drive instead of SATA

/dev/hda

or whatever, and then you know what name the drive was assigned by the version of Linux on which you're running at that moment.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

Here's a guy using jmfs to try to put a WD20EURX in a Premiere and having "issues".

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=535300


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

mikestanley said:


> Not sure which numbers you mean, but here's a slew of them:
> 
> MDL: WH20EURX - 64HYZY0
> DATE: 10 APR 2015
> ...


I'm going to assume that instead of WH20EURX you meant WD20EURX.

Did you ever get it to work?


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## mikestanley (Apr 20, 2002)

unitron said:


> I'm going to assume that instead of WH20EURX you meant WD20EURX.
> 
> Did you ever get it to work?


Yeah, sorry, just typo'ed it.

And yes, it seems to be working fine. I'd forgotten I'd need to do a clear and delete once I booted up my Tivo with the drive running your image, but once I did that it stopped telling me there was a hardware issue and seems to be fine. 287 hours of HD recording.

I saved at least $100 by going the DIY route, which is a good thing this time of year. 

Thanks!


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## zekeman (Nov 30, 2015)

mikestanley said:


> Yeah, sorry, just typo'ed it.
> 
> And yes, it seems to be working fine. I'd forgotten I'd need to do a clear and delete once I booted up my Tivo with the drive running your image, but once I did that it stopped telling me there was a hardware issue and seems to be fine. 287 hours of HD recording.
> 
> ...


I have 2:

Both are 
model WD20EURXSP
MFG No: WD20EURX

S/N 
1) WCC4M0AC0YYZ
2) WCC4M2FEJL5A

Z


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

zekeman said:


> I have 2:
> 
> Both are
> model WD20EURXSP
> ...


What are the manufacturing dates?


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## peddlerdavid (Jan 12, 2016)

I've been lurking on this site for the past month in preparation to replace the 1.0TB WD hard drive in my Tivo HD that bit the dust. Long story short, I could not get WinMFS to recognize any drives. I'm not at liberty to remove the drives from my laptop so WinMFS was the way for me to go. As you mention, the first step in every one of the many posts on replacing drives says "run as administrator". Well, I am logged in as an administrator on the computer and as an administrator I am running (double clicking) the WinMFS program. In hours and hours of searching and contacting tech support for the drive dock I purchased I haven't found the little nugget you just shared. I too had never heard of right clicking and selecting "run as administrator". That was just not in my (admittedly small) toolbox. Cheers. Thanks for sharing that nugget. Now I'm on my way at last.

While I'm at it, I want to send out a big thanks to the Tivo Community members who have taken the time to share their knowledge and experiences with special mention to Unitron and of course Spike for putting together WinMFS and sharing it with the community.


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## peddlerdavid (Jan 12, 2016)

I ordered a WD20EURS from an Amazon partner. The listing and invoice said WD20EURS, but the drive itself was a WD20EURX and came in a plain cardboard box wrapped only in bubble wrap. I've read some of unitron's comments about the WD20EURX (the reason I ordered the WD20EURS). With my inability to get WinMFS to recognize drives I went ahead and had the Sabrent EC-HDD2 drive dock make a clone of my drive which had stopped working. The resulting WD20EURX works great, but only has ~157 hours of HD recording (corresponding to the 1TB capacity of the WD20EURS that was in the unit when I bought it). I'll open the box back up and run WinMFS on the WD20EURX to Supersize it. When I do I'll share the numbers here.

I initiated a return of the drive with the Amazon seller already. What's the current thinking about these WD20EURX drives? Should I keep it or send it back in for a WD20EURS?


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

peddlerdavid said:


> I ordered a WD20EURS from an Amazon partner. The listing and invoice said WD20EURS, but the drive itself was a WD20EURX and came in a plain cardboard box wrapped only in bubble wrap. I've read some of unitron's comments about the WD20EURX (the reason I ordered the WD20EURS). With my inability to get WinMFS to recognize drives I went ahead and had the Sabrent EC-HDD2 drive dock make a clone of my drive which had stopped working. The resulting WD20EURX works great, but only has ~157 hours of HD recording (corresponding to the 1TB capacity of the WD20EURS that was in the unit when I bought it). I'll open the box back up and run WinMFS on the WD20EURX to Supersize it. When I do I'll share the numbers here.
> 
> I initiated a return of the drive with the Amazon seller already. What's the current thinking about these WD20EURX drives? Should I keep it or send it back in for a WD20EURS?


If you'd actually gotten an EURS it almost certainly would not be new old stock with the full 3 year WD warranty, but something used, refurbished, or taken out of a WD external drive, and therefore with no WD warranty whatsoever.

I wonder where your EURX came from and whether WD would recognize it as being under any sort of warranty.

That said, I'd really like to know the date of manufacture on it.

Also, on which version of Windows are you running WinMFS?

WinMFS should be able to see drives attached via USB adapters, but only if Windows itself can see them.

Supersize has nothing to do with TiVo drive expansion.

It makes more space in the original partitions available by not letting the TiVo take more of that space when it notices that the overall size of the drive has increased.

In the middle of the night TiVos tune to a station running paid programming, specifically something called TeleWorld paid programming, and record 30 minutes of that.

When the TiVo offers to let you view video of a promo for some upcoming show or of a commercial for some product (the stuff you see at the bottom of TiVo Central from time to time), it's video that it first recorded from that paid programming.

If you go into the Now Playing list you won't find it, because it's recorded onto hard drive space that's been set aside strictly for it, and that's not shown to the owner/user as the full 30 minute recording.

Apparently the TiVo Operating System must set aside that space as a percentage of total hard drive space, which means that when you go from a 160GB or 250GB drive to a 2TB drive, it sets aside a lot more space than it really needs.

Supersizing, via some method I don't know enough to understand how it does it, keeps that set aside space limited to what it was on the factory drive, which frees up the space it would have otherwise set aside to be used for recording shows.

But if you copy an original drive to a bigger one, or restore an image (which will wind up taking up the same amount of space in the same number of partitions as the original one) to a drive that's bigger than the original, an examination of the partition map would show that the extra unpartitioned space would be listed as an Apple Free partition (that's right, unpartitioned space is a special kind of partition in the Apple Partition Map way of doing things, where the partition map itself is also a partition).

Expansion, not Supersizing, is what turns that Apple Free partition into a third MFS partition pair (or if you're using WinMFS to copy an expanded drive to an even larger drive, takes that Apple Free partition and incorporates it into the already exisiting third MFS Media partition).

One does expansion by itself as separate process with the

mfsadd

command, whether using WinMFS or the MFS Live cd.

I recommend that one does expansion that way, by the way, since doing it as part of the copy or restore process sometimes fails and leaves you having to start all over again.

I'd be curious to know if WinMFS can see that EURX now that it's actually a TiVo drive.

Since you ordered an EURS and they sent something else, you do have grounds to return for a refund if you should choose to do so.

If that plain cardboard box had the WDEURX model number printed on the outside of it as well as the serial number of that drive, then it should be a "straight from Western Digital" and you could try registering it by serial number with WD on their website to see if they acknowledge it as being covered by the 3 year warranty.


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## peddlerdavid (Jan 12, 2016)

Unitron, thanks so much for your thorough response.

Here is the information on my WD20EURX drive I just installed in my HD:

S/N WCC4M72FJJ6E
MDL: WD20EURX-57T0FY0
Date: 11 Dec 2014
DCM: DHNNHTJCAB
DCX: FH06879WJ
R/N: 771945

Purchased on Amazon from:
Finity India
5737 Kanan Rd #543
Agoura Hills, CA 91301

Received in a plain brown box with bubble wrap and invoice inside - no mfg box. Based on your recommendation I just went to the WD website to register the product and it tells me the serial number is invalid. What's up with that? I purchased the drive as a new product.

When I saw the drive was not the model I ordered I immediately initiated a return, but decided to try it out. Since this isn't a new product I'm leaning toward returning. The price on NewEgg is only ~$15 more than what I paid.


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## peddlerdavid (Jan 12, 2016)

Like I said the drive is working in the Tivo. My system information and recordings have all been copied. I attempted to expand the drive by doing an MFS add. I noted that the partitions were reconfigured (with 1 partition over 1 TB). However the hours of HD video only increased from 157 to 198. I was expecting closer to 300 hrs. Any idea why the full 2TB may not be available?

*Baseline partitions:*
Partition Maps
#: type name length base ( size )
1 Apple_partition_map Apple [email protected] ( 31.5K)
2 Image Bootstrap 1 [email protected] ( 4.0K)
3 Image Kernel 1 [email protected] ( 4.0M)
4 Ext2 Root 1 [email protected] ( 256.0M)
5 Image Bootstrap 2 [email protected] ( 4.0K)
6 Image Kernel 2 [email protected] ( 4.0M)
7 Ext2 Root 2 [email protected] ( 256.0M)
8 Swap Linux swap [email protected] ( 300.0M)
9 Ext2 /var [email protected] ( 256.0M)
10 MFS MFS application region [email protected] ( 288.0M)
11 MFS MFS media region [email protected] ( 65.6G)
12 MFS Second MFS application region [email protected] ( 288.0M)
13 MFS Second MFS media region [email protected] ( 82.0G)
14 MFS New MFS Application [email protected] ( 2.0M)
15 MFS New MFS Media [email protected] ( 782.3G)
16 Apple_Free Extra [email protected]( 12.7M)

Total SA SD Hours: 1040	Total DTV SD Hours: 908 0 % Free
Software: 11.0m-01-2-652	Tivo Model: TCD652160

*Partitions after turning Supersize On:*

Partition Maps
#: type name length base ( size )
1 Apple_partition_map Apple [email protected] ( 31.5K)
2 Image Bootstrap 1 [email protected] ( 4.0K)
3 Image Kernel 1 [email protected] ( 4.0M)
4 Ext2 Root 1 [email protected] ( 256.0M)
5 Image Bootstrap 2 [email protected] ( 4.0K)
6 Image Kernel 2 [email protected] ( 4.0M)
7 Ext2 Root 2 [email protected] ( 256.0M)
8 Swap Linux swap [email protected] ( 300.0M)
9 Ext2 /var [email protected] ( 256.0M)
10 MFS MFS application region [email protected] ( 288.0M)
11 MFS MFS media region [email protected] ( 65.6G)
12 MFS Second MFS application region [email protected] ( 288.0M)
13 MFS Second MFS media region [email protected] ( 82.0G)
14 MFS New MFS Application [email protected] ( 2.0M)
15 MFS MFS Expanded by Winmfs [email protected] (1024.0G)

Total SA SD Hours: 1311	Total DTV SD Hours: 1144 22 % Free
Software: 11.0m-01-2-652	Tivo Model: TCD652160

*
Partitions after running MFSadd:*
Partition Maps
#: type name length base ( size )
1 Apple_partition_map Apple [email protected] ( 31.5K)
2 Image Bootstrap 1 [email protected] ( 4.0K)
3 Image Kernel 1 [email protected] ( 4.0M)
4 Ext2 Root 1 [email protected] ( 256.0M)
5 Image Bootstrap 2 [email protected] ( 4.0K)
6 Image Kernel 2 [email protected] ( 4.0M)
7  Ext2 Root 2 [email protected] ( 256.0M)
8 Swap Linux swap [email protected] ( 300.0M)
9 Ext2 /var [email protected] ( 256.0M)
10 MFS MFS application region [email protected] ( 288.0M)
11 MFS MFS media region [email protected] ( 65.6G)
12 MFS Second MFS application region [email protected] ( 288.0M)
13 MFS Second MFS media region [email protected] ( 82.0G)
14 MFS New MFS Application [email protected] ( 2.0M)
15 MFS MFS Expanded by Winmfs [email protected] (1024.0G)

Total SA SD Hours: 1311	Total DTV SD Hours: 1144 22 % Free


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## peddlerdavid (Jan 12, 2016)

I'm running Windows 7


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

When you expanded the image, how did you answer the question to limit expansion to 1TB? You might want to try it against and read the question carefully. You do not want to limit the expansion to 1TB. 


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

peddlerdavid said:


> Like I said the drive is working in the Tivo. My system information and recordings have all been copied. I attempted to expand the drive by doing an MFS add. I noted that the partitions were reconfigured (with 1 partition over 1 TB). However the hours of HD video only increased from 157 to 198. I was expecting closer to 300 hrs. Any idea why the full 2TB may not be available?
> 
> *Baseline partitions:*
> Partition Maps
> ...


Did someone else prepare that 1TB drive for you?

It's got some differences from what I get copying a 652's 160GB drive to a 1TB and expanding--like 4K sectors instead of 512 Byte sectors.

But I think the explanation for the missing space is that when the 1TB was copied to the 2TB, when the expansion was done, you inadvertently limited the partition created to 1TB, which got you

15 MFS MFS Expanded by Winmfs [email protected] (1024.0G)

1024 decimal equals 1000 binary, or maybe it's the other way around, but anyway that's a 1TB partition.

BUT, it incorporates the original

15 MFS New MFS Media [email protected] ( 782.3G)

which means that you only added

1024.0
-782.3
______
241.7

to what you had with the 1TB drive.

Why it's not showing a 16th partition, designated Apple Free, of around 750GB I don't know, but that's what you should have still un-expanded-into.

Hope you haven't recorded anything you can't stand to lose onto that 2TB yet, 'cause the cure will wipe it out if you have to do what I think you'll have to do.

Hook the 1TB and the 2TB back to the PC and launch WinMFS again.

Go to select drive, and select the 2TB drive.

Click on View, then click on

mfsinfo

See if this time it shows a big Apple Free partition on the end of the drive.

Either way, back out of that, and then click on Tools,

mfsadd

If you're lucky it'll let you expand the expansion of the original expansion, and this time pay close attention to how you answer the question about a partition larger than 1TB (1000GB).

If it won't let you expand anymore, you're going to have to start over.

Click on File, Select Drive

and select the 1TB drive.

Click on Tools, and then on

mfscopy

and select the 2TB as the target drive.

Put a check mark in the Custom Linux Swap Size box, and plug in 1000 for the value, just for cheap insurance--it's equal to about 15 minutes of video.

DO NOT check the "No Optimized Partition Layout" checkbox, because you DO want the optimized partition layout.

Click "Start"

Eventually it will finish.

When it does and tells you you have more space and asks if you want to expand, tell it NO.

Then go back to File, Select Drive, and select the 2TB drive.

Then click on View,

mfsinfo

and see if you don't have abou 1.7TB of Apple Free partition.

If everything looks okay, go to Tools,

mfsadd

and when it talks about the partition being larger than 1TB, tell it to go ahead and make it over 1TB.

Check with

mfsinfo

again.

If it looks okay (15 partitions, a really big one on the end), then go ahead and hit Supersize.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

peddlerdavid said:


> I'm running Windows 7


That drive was built long enough ago, apparently, that it was before they started sending them out with Power Up In Standby enabled by default, which I didn't know they were doing.

(actually I didn't even really know what it was, though I'd seen it mentioned on the older jumper diagrams, where you had to actually physically jumper a couple of pins to enable it)

See my discussion with sixpackd and others in this thread

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=535837

If you think you could handle using one of the utilities he mentions to disable it, then you should consider returning that "not under warranty" 2TB drive and buying a WD20EURX directly from Amazon or newegg and know that you have one with the 3 year Western Digital warranty.


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## peddlerdavid (Jan 12, 2016)

I can't believe I made the mistake of not selecting "no" after reading so many people not that it was not intuitive.

I went back to WDadd and selected "no". My drive expanded to 2TB/318 hrs HD. 

I would like to have had a drive with a full 3yr WD warranty, but this drive of questionable origin made 12/2014 is working so I'm going to stop spending time on it this. If this drive fails early I'll address it at that time.

I had actually ordered a WD20EURX direct from Amazon last night, but cancelled my order when I was able to expand this drive.

Unitron, I can't thank you enough for all of the knowledge and advice you have shared with this community.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

peddlerdavid said:


> ...
> 
> Unitron, I can't thank you enough for all of the knowledge and advice you have shared with this community.


No point in both of us having to learn the hard way.


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## sanjonny (Nov 2, 2008)

unitron said:


> That drive was built long enough ago, apparently, that it was before they started sending them out with Power Up In Standby enabled by default, which I didn't know they were doing.
> 
> (actually I didn't even really know what it was, though I'd seen it mentioned on the older jumper diagrams, where you had to actually physically jumper a couple of pins to enable it)
> 
> ...


Sorry, hopping into an old thread, BUT, can you now expand the drive to 2TB on a tivoHD? Or are the directions unitron gave only for premiere or newer? I am behind in the latest and trying to update a HD with a failing drive..


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

sanjonny said:


> Sorry, hopping into an old thread, BUT, can you now expand the drive to 2TB on a tivoHD? Or are the directions unitron gave only for premiere or newer? I am behind in the latest and trying to update a HD with a failing drive..


2TB has been achievable on the Series 3 units (648, 652, and 658) since version 11.0h of the TiVo software.

At least you can do it with WinMFS.

I've never had the spare hardware to play with to try to do it with the MFS Live cd.

The latest version is 11.0m for all 3, except where it's been updated to 'n' for the 652 and 658 in Comcast markets going to MP4 (or MPEG4 or whatever).

None of my personal experience in "embigging" drives has been with a Premiere or newer yet (as of April 20, 2016), just Series 1s, 2s, and 3s.


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## sanjonny (Nov 2, 2008)

Unitron, just wanted to thank you. I posted a write up of all my experiences and now have a functioning 2TB drive thanks to your thread!

Lots of links to your stuff and cut and paste!

If you see anything wrong, please let me know so I can fix it and hopefully save some user the hours I spent doing research!

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=540015&highlight=


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

sanjonny said:


> Unitron, just wanted to thank you. I posted a write up of all my experiences and now have a functioning 2TB drive thanks to your thread!
> 
> Lots of links to your stuff and cut and paste!
> 
> ...


Congrats!


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