# Upgrade Roamio OTA External Drive



## fred jones (Jan 6, 2018)

Hi All,
I got a Roamio OTA for XMAS and quickly filled up the 1TB drive. So I upgraded the internal drive to 6TB using the instructions and software in post #1 and #2 of thread MFS Reformatter (mfsr) in the Tivo Upgrade Center forum. (I don't know how to post a link).

I have seen posts that say you can also add a large hard drive to the ESATA port by "marrying" the internal drive to the external. I have tried searching for some instructions on how to do this and at this point I am overwhelmed. Some of the threads have many hundreds of posts and searching seems to only get me bits and pieces (and elusive clues such as marrying drives) on the process of adding a large (6TB) drive.

I am not worried about the decrease in reliablity (MTTF) as I am mostly recording old shows and stuff that will be back on again.

Is there a thread or portion of a thread that gives a step-by-step procedure to adding a large external drive? Similar to the MFS Reformatter thread mentioned above.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
New To TIVO Guy


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## ThAbtO (Apr 6, 2000)

There may have been some old thread on marrying the internal and external drives, but they do not work any longer for Roamio and newer models.

It would be better to get some NAS(network drive) for long term storage and download the (unprotected) shows and store them there rather than on the Tivo itself. I do that myself, and use PyTivo as the server on a PC when I wish to view them. It also gives alot of flexibility, as in being able to view on the phone, tablets, etc. With it on the Tivo itself, its limited to being viewed there or streamed to another Tivo/Mini.


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## fred jones (Jan 6, 2018)

ThAbtO said:


> There may have been some old thread on marrying the internal and external drives, but they do not work any longer for Roamio and newer models.
> 
> It would be better to get some NAS(network drive) for long term storage and download the (unprotected) shows and store them there rather than on the Tivo itself. I do that myself, and use PyTivo as the server on a PC when I wish to view them. It also gives alot of flexibility, as in being able to view on the phone, tablets, etc. With it on the Tivo itself, its limited to being viewed there or streamed to another Tivo/Mini.


Thanks for the info, I will do some googling on PyTivo. I built an HTPC in the past using Windows Media Server and lots of storage. I just got tired of the maintenance and decided that the Tivo did everything I wanted and much slicker... *But it has limited storage!* Another drawback of an HTPC is that it had to be close (HDMI Cable Length Limit) to my TV. My new computer is windows 10 which does not have Windows Media Server and I cannot find anything else even coming close to the TIVO experience.

I really wish that the TIVO box could access a NAS. I was wondering if I could trick it into seeing a multi-TB NAS or RAID setup as being a single drive connected to the external port.

What I did find on adding external drives was this post below but it involves booting to Linux and using some low-level commands to make the internal and external hard drive appear as one partition. I think that is what they meant by marrying the drives. But you are saying this doesn't work on the new Roamio OTAs?

This thread shows an actual linux cmd in MFSTOOLS to create an external drive given an internal drive that is functional. (Not sure what this will look like when posted!  Does this seem legit?

Use any external esata drive with bolt esata port

Use any external esata drive with bolt esata port

However, I am leery of running these types of low level commands in Linux! There is no UNDO!

Any advice is appreciated.


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## ThAbtO (Apr 6, 2000)

Its also not recommended to use a dual drive Tivo system because of the way Tivo stores the shows (partially on the internal and external at the same time.)

You can use PyTivo (or PyTivo Desktop), KMTTG (download shows only, and extra features).

The .TiVo files are basically MPEG2 video with a Tivo encryption later. KMTTG has the included program to remove that layer. This way if your Media Access Key ever changes, then the Tivo can still access the video.

For Windows user, VideoReDo is a good editing program to remove content such as commercials.

Removing commercials saves me about 300-500MB/hr per show in my experience.


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## fred jones (Jan 6, 2018)

ThAbtO said:


> There may have been some old thread on marrying the internal and external drives, but they do not work any longer for Roamio and newer models.
> 
> It would be better to get some NAS(network drive) for long term storage and download the (unprotected) shows and store them there rather than on the Tivo itself. I do that myself, and use PyTivo as the server on a PC when I wish to view them. It also gives alot of flexibility, as in being able to view on the phone, tablets, etc. With it on the Tivo itself, its limited to being viewed there or streamed to another Tivo/Mini.


I have more question. It was my understanding that pyTivo could "push" a downloaded Tivo file back up to the Tivo box but that was an offline process and that you could not watch the show on the Tivo box until the upload was finished.

Are you saying that I can use PyTivo as a server on the PC but watch them from the Tivo box? That would be exactly what I want - I bought the Tivo because of its great remote control.


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## ThAbtO (Apr 6, 2000)

fred jones said:


> I have more question. It was my understanding that pyTivo could "push" a downloaded Tivo file back up to the Tivo box but that was an offline process and that you could not watch the show on the Tivo box until the upload was finished.
> 
> Are you saying that I can use PyTivo as a server on the PC but watch them from the Tivo box? That would be exactly what I want - I bought the Tivo because of its great remote control.


The defining of "Pull" and "Push" are all relative, but is basically the same function, which is transferring/copying the video from 1 device to another. Push is just initiaition of the transfer from the computer side (though its broken now.) Pull is starting the transfer on the device (Tivo, in this case) in which the video is stored in a PC or another Tivo.

PyTivo is a server to allow these transfers from the computer. You do not need any software (or computer) if you transfer shows/video from another Tivo. PyTivo can copy shows from the Tivos as well. This is the same for the now unsupported Tivo Desktop.


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

ThAbtO said:


> There may have been some old thread on marrying the internal and external drives, but they do not work any longer for Roamio and newer models.


Using MFSTools 3.2 you can marry an external and an internal drive up to and including the Bolt series.

Not that it is ideal to do that. But it is possible.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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