# Replacing hard drive



## Ziggy86 (Jun 23, 2004)

I have a Premiere Elite Tivo which has a 2GB hard drive. I am not comfortable making my own replacement drive following the steps I have seen online here.

Since my hard drive is fine now is it possible to use a program to CLONE my current drive to keep as a backup or would that not work?


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## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

Making a backup and making a replacement drive amounts to the same thing. I haven't kept up with the backup and restore processes for any models later than the S3 and HD, but I believe there are sticky threads containing the process.

My advice is to definitely take a shot at creating a backup of your current drive. You won't screw it up since it's only reading the data from the drive.

I believe this is the thread you need:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=455968

Someone please point the OP to the correct instructions if this is not what he needs. Good luck!:up:


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## Ziggy86 (Jun 23, 2004)

I want to have a backup drive in case mine stops working. I have looked on weaknees and they charge a lot for a replacement 2TB drive.


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## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

That's always a sound plan. I've always made it a practice of creating a backup image of every new Tivo I purchase. I may hold off until the 90-day warranty expires before cracking open the case, but usually I do it right after confirming the Tivo is fully functional. Voiding the warranty has never bothered me since it's pretty much a joke anyway. I've never had a Tivo die under warranty and the ones that did were a result of a failed drive. It's always been a simple task to restore the backup to a spare drive and get the Tivo back up and running in less than an hour.

I personally think the replacement drives offered by Weaknees and other vendors are outrageously overpriced when the process of creating and restoring a backup image is not at all difficult. Some people are just overwhelmed at the thought of using a few simple Linux commands to save themselves $50-100 or more. The tools for backing up and restoring a Tivo drive are easier to use than ever before.


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## ThAbtO (Apr 6, 2000)

I believe JMFS is the only compatible solution for backup/restore, though WinMFS can be used to supersize a new drive afterwards.


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

ThAbtO said:


> I believe JMFS is the only compatible solution for backup/restore, though WinMFS can be used to supersize a new drive afterwards.


JMFS is the software to supersize a Series 4 drive, WinMFS will not work.


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## Ziggy86 (Jun 23, 2004)

I do not want to supersize a drive I want to make exact copy of current drive 2TB


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## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

I haven't used JMFS, but I suspect it will perform a backup and restore to the same size drive without supersizing it.


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## Ziggy86 (Jun 23, 2004)

I looked on Weaknees and they want 299 for a replacement 2TB drive, that is crazy. Are there other sites that are more reasonable with pricing? The drives themselves are about $100


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

Ziggy86 said:


> I have a Premiere Elite Tivo which has a 2GB hard drive. I am not comfortable making my own replacement drive following the steps I have seen online here.
> 
> Since my hard drive is fine now is it possible to use a program to CLONE my current drive to keep as a backup or would that not work?


Here's a little info about "Xerox"-ing to another drive of equal or greater LBA number, but in your case I'd recommend getting the exact same model drive as the Elite came with, including seeing if there's anything on the sticker on top about "advanced format" (sector size 4096 bytes instead of the traditional 512), and if it's not an AF drive, insist any replacement you get with the same model number also not be an AF drive (apparently you can't count on manufacturers not to change that without changing the model number, the SOBs).

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=8833529#post8833529

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=8837186#post8837186


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