# Bolt+ Hard Drive Cloning Question



## Buckeye3d (Dec 9, 2004)

If you took the 3TB WD Blue hard drive out of the Bolt+ and cloned it to a new 3TB Toshiba MQ03ABB300 hard drive using a cloning device like this...

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00N1KXE9K/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Would it make it a plug and play replacement? Would you have to re-pair your cable card? Would all the recordings still work?


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## kpeters59 (Jun 19, 2007)

It should.

It's been reported to work that way.

--KP


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## Buckeye3d (Dec 9, 2004)

Thought I should post an update. Offline cloning took about 6 hours. Booted normally. All recordings are still there. Cable card is still paired.


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## Buckeye3d (Dec 9, 2004)

Forgot to add that the Toshiba drive runs about 3 degrees cooler.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

Buckeye3d said:


> Forgot to add that the Toshiba drive runs about 3 degrees cooler.


The WD drive uses .4W in standby, 4.1W in Read.
The Toshiba uses .7W in standby, 1.7W in Read.

That's some nice power saving.


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## mstrbill (Jul 3, 2017)

any guesses on whether a 2.5" to 3.5" clone would work? The 4TB WD drive in the Bolt currently is showing signs of failing(seems to be a developing problem). So I thought maybe the best recovery might be to move to a 3.5" external red WD drive.


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## ggieseke (May 30, 2008)

mstrbill said:


> any guesses on whether a 2.5" to 3.5" clone would work? The 4TB WD drive in the Bolt currently is showing signs of failing(seems to be a developing problem). So I thought maybe the best recovery might be to move to a 3.5" external red WD drive.


It will work as long as the 3.5" drive has at least as many sectors as the 2.5" drive.


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## pgoelz (May 1, 2005)

Brings up a couple questions.... anyone? 

1. If I clone the drive from my Bolt that is running TE3 and then then switch the Bolt to TE4, will the cloned TE3 drive work if I put it in the Bolt that was switched to TE4? In other words, would that be a safe way to revert from TE4 back to TE3 without losing recordings? Still not sure we can live with TE4 but would be useful to try it for a while. 

2. If for whatever reason (failed clone, etc.) the Bolt does not recognize a cloned drive and tries to format it, will the original still be recognized? Or does the Bolt attempt to format ANY drive that is not identical to the last drive it "saw"? 

3. If no one knows the answers, I have a spare Roamio that I can experiment on.... can I assume it behaves identically to the Bolt? 

Paul


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## kpeters59 (Jun 19, 2007)

No.

-KP


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## tivodude007 (Sep 23, 2015)

I would like to know if I can use the cloning dock to dupe a 500GB TiVo drive to a run of the mill SSD with 2TBs. I have seen commented that you can increase up to 3TB and other comments seem to indicate that you can only upgrade to 1TB. Weaknees provides a 1TB upgrade purple HDD, but I did not see a larger drive for the regular Bolt 500Gb unit. It would seem that the SSD would not have the issue of CMR vs SMR because it isn't recording magnetically. So that only leaves a matter of whether a larger size would confuse the TiVo, Or that TRIM could possibly be a consideration. Do some SSDs have a trim capability built in so that is not a problem?


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## shwru980r (Jun 22, 2008)

tivodude007 said:


> I would like to know if I can use the cloning dock to dupe a 500GB TiVo drive to a run of the mill SSD with 2TBs. I have seen commented that you can increase up to 3TB and other comments seem to indicate that you can only upgrade to 1TB. Weaknees provides a 1TB upgrade purple HDD, but I did not see a larger drive for the regular Bolt 500Gb unit. It would seem that the SSD would not have the issue of CMR vs SMR because it isn't recording magnetically. So that only leaves a matter of whether a larger size would confuse the TiVo, Or that TRIM could possibly be a consideration. Do some SSDs have a trim capability built in so that is not a problem?


I think you'd be stuck with 500GB on the 2TB drive when you cloned it. Not sure if you can extend the partition to use the full 2TB. Not sure if the Bolt would recognize the cloned drive as the original drive. If the Bolt thinks you put in a new drive, it would format your 2TB drive to the full 2TB and you would lose all of your recordings and if you then tried to install the 500GB drive again, it would think that was a new drive and format it. The operating system is stored on built in flash storage on a Bolt and will never reside on the SSD. There is no benefit to installing an SSD on a bolt and an SSD will probably have a shorter life span than spinning disk.


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## tivodude007 (Sep 23, 2015)

I have a recently purchased (past year) Bolt Vox with 500GB hard drive. I have purchased a cloning usb drop in ext USB dual drive to get a perfect clone. I now read that the cloning won't work because MFSTools or some other program fixes a sabotage/formatting by the Bolt which looks to see if the drive is the same drive that last booted. The message in the thread indicated a perfect result so I jumped on the Inateck Cloning USB drop in and a 2TB SSD which I thought would solve the issue with CMR/SMR. The SSD tried to boot with the HDD led flickering a few times, then it stopped flickering. The TV screen says Starting Up. It has yet to complete the boot process. I read after installing the SSD into the Bolt, that it will trash all my recordings because I inserted the new drive into it. I guess the old/original drive will not work now? I am in the process of buying a 1TB 2.5 WD Red (CMR) HDD so my incompatibilities will go away. The WD site did not show any 2TB 2.5 HDDs that were CMR so I bought the 1TB. There is lots of confusion in the newbies myself included, on what works and what doesn't. I bought the 1TB to avoid the CMR and potential to not work due to size above 1TB. Does the Cloning Process work at all for the Bolt? One message indicated that you have to use MFSTools 3.3 and it will expand the drive. I suspect shwru980r is correct on the 500GB. I can't copy a sector not on drive A. The problem at the moment is that I tried a 1TB SSD and that did not work either. It has been "starting up" for an hour or two. Where can I get the latest MFSTools 3.3? According to some of the messages (moderators??) you have to do the work with MFSTools to upsize and not loose anything.


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## shwru980r (Jun 22, 2008)

tivodude007 said:


> I have a recently purchased (past year) Bolt Vox with 500GB hard drive. I have purchased a cloning usb drop in ext USB dual drive to get a perfect clone. I now read that the cloning won't work because MFSTools or some other program fixes a sabotage/formatting by the Bolt which looks to see if the drive is the same drive that last booted. The message in the thread indicated a perfect result so I jumped on the Inateck Cloning USB drop in and a 2TB SSD which I thought would solve the issue with CMR/SMR. The SSD tried to boot with the HDD led flickering a few times, then it stopped flickering. The TV screen says Starting Up. It has yet to complete the boot process. I read after installing the SSD into the Bolt, that it will trash all my recordings because I inserted the new drive into it. I guess the old/original drive will not work now? I am in the process of buying a 1TB 2.5 WD Red (CMR) HDD so my incompatibilities will go away. The WD site did not show any 2TB 2.5 HDDs that were CMR so I bought the 1TB. There is lots of confusion in the newbies myself included, on what works and what doesn't. I bought the 1TB to avoid the CMR and potential to not work due to size above 1TB. Does the Cloning Process work at all for the Bolt? One message indicated that you have to use MFSTools 3.3 and it will expand the drive. I suspect shwru980r is correct on the 500GB. I can't copy a sector not on drive A. The problem at the moment is that I tried a 1TB SSD and that did not work either. It has been "starting up" for an hour or two. Where can I get the latest MFSTools 3.3? According to some of the messages (moderators??) you have to do the work with MFSTools to upsize and not loose anything.


I think the first step is to install the original 500GB drive and see if your shows are still available. An SSD is likely to fail as quickly as an SMR drive. You can find 2.5" 2TB CMR drives. I would save the SSDs for a computer.

I've been running this drive in my Bolt Vox since February of 2019.

2TB WD20NPVX


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## tivodude007 (Sep 23, 2015)

Buckeye3d said:


> If you took the 3TB WD Blue hard drive out of the Bolt+ and cloned it to a new 3TB Toshiba MQ03ABB300 hard drive using a cloning device like this...
> 
> https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00N1KXE9K/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
> 
> Would it make it a plug and play replacement? Would you have to re-pair your cable card? Would all the recordings still work?


I read a post which you can find mentioned in one of my recent posts about a member using the cloning Inateck USB Docking Station you mentioned. I tried to clone my Tivo WD 500GB hdd to a 1TB SSD and it did not work. The drive said starting up for a couple hours or longer. I may try to clone a the original to a 1tb HDD and see if that works. I will report on it along with a MFSTools 3.2 cloning form the original to a 1TB WD Red.


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## tivodude007 (Sep 23, 2015)

shwru980r said:


> I think the first step is to install the original 500GB drive and see if your shows are still available. An SSD is likely to fail as quickly as an SMR drive. You can find 2.5" 2TB CMR drives. I would save the SSDs for a computer.
> 
> I've been running this drive in my Bolt Vox since February of 2019.
> 
> 2TB WD20NPVX


It would appear that a 2TB works. I have seen different comments saying Yes it works and No it failed. Maybe they messed up or used the wrong drive. Is you SMR or CMR?


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## shwru980r (Jun 22, 2008)

tivodude007 said:


> It would appear that a 2TB works. I have seen different comments saying Yes it works and No it failed. Maybe they messed up or used the wrong drive. Is you SMR or CMR?


It's not SMR and was listed as a drive to use in the forum that wasn't SMR. It was a used drive pulled from a disk array so it was relatively cheap. I think it cost $64. Still working.


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