# Downgrade from two drives to one?



## PDR (Oct 16, 2006)

The original 40GB drive in my Series 2 is dying. I have a nice big second drive from Weaknees, and that drive is big enough for me.

Two questions: can I downgrade from two drives to one, using the second drive as the primary and removing the first? And, can I do this without losing my recordings?

Thanks for your help.


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## matt11 (Aug 13, 2006)

From weaKnees



> When you add a second drive to your TiVo, they become a married pair. In other words, once a second drive is added to your TiVo, the two drives act as one and cannot be separated if one of those drives fails down the road. In the event of a drive failure, the good drive can be re-used, but only if it re-formatted and reconfigured.


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## wscannell (Dec 7, 2003)

And in the process of reformatting the drive, you will not be able to save your recordings.


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## cr33p (Jan 2, 2005)

You should however be able to back up the dual drive set up "including saving your shows" install or remove the old second hdd and restore the back up image to the new pair or single drive set up .


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## wscannell (Dec 7, 2003)

You cannot make a backup image and save shows. The resultant file will be too large for a FAT32 file system. You could do a direct copy from the two drives to a single drive, but the single drive would be limited to 160GB in size. A standard 160GB drive may not be quite large enough though.


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## cr33p (Jan 2, 2005)

wscannell said:


> You cannot make a backup image and save shows. The resultant file will be too large for a FAT32 file system. You could do a direct copy from the two drives to a single drive, but the single drive would be limited to 160GB in size. A standard 160GB drive may not be quite large enough though.


Hmm thats weird I just backed up a DSR 704 this past weekend that had 2 120 gig drives in it with no problems to a fat 32 drive. Are you saying that theres a limit on drive size to a 160 gb? I also have another DSR with a 250 in it .


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## wscannell (Dec 7, 2003)

cr33p said:


> Hmm thats weird I just backed up a DSR 704 this past weekend that had 2 120 gig drives in it with no problems to a fat 32 drive.


You only backed up the OS and settings, not the program data. Backing up the program data would have made a backup file of 200GB or so - much larger than the 4GB limit. Your backup file should have been on the order of 200-300 MB plus or minus.


cr33p said:


> Are you saying that theres a limit on drive size to a 160 gb? I also have another DSR with a 250 in it .


When you want to save programs like the OP and you have two drives totaling 160GB, there is a partition quantity limit that will limit the system to the size of the current system. 40GB original + 120GB secondary drive = 160GB. If you do not save programs, the limit is the size of drive you can buy.


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## cr33p (Jan 2, 2005)

Well I stand corrected then. I was under the impression that I backed up all my shows when I zippered my Dual Drive DSR. Someone in the Zipper thread told me it was possible, I guess I just believed them


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## wscannell (Dec 7, 2003)

If you back up, then restore to the same drive, without changing the swap size, this may have the same effect as saving recordings. It is quite possible that the pointers to the recordings will actually point to recordings that are still on the drive. They are not overwritten by the restore process.


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## TomVo (Sep 3, 2006)

You can get 160GB drives for under $50 and 250GB drives for under $60 now
days. If you want to preserve your recordings, your best bet is to pick up
one new big drive and do an mfs_backup/mfs_restore of your existing two drive
set to it. See upgrade option #6 from the Hinsdale How To for details.

http://www.newreleasesvideo.com/hinsdale-how-to/index9.html

The process involves a disk(s) to disk copy. As others have pointed out, you
can't use your existing B drive from your two drive set as the destination and
preserve the recordings.



PDR said:


> The original 40GB drive in my Series 2 is dying. I have a nice big second drive from Weaknees, and that drive is big enough for me.
> 
> Two questions: can I downgrade from two drives to one, using the second drive as the primary and removing the first? And, can I do this without losing my recordings?
> 
> Thanks for your help.


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## wscannell (Dec 7, 2003)

TomVo said:


> If you want to preserve your recordings, your best bet is to pick up
> one new big drive and do an mfs_backup/mfs_restore of your existing two drive
> set to it.


However, due to the single drive partition limit, the total space available for recording will be the sum of the size of the two original drives.


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## PDR (Oct 16, 2006)

Thanks, everyone. Now I know where to begin. 

I can't say enough about the Community, and how valuable it is, and how generous y'all are with your time.


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## PDR (Oct 16, 2006)

> When you add a second drive to your TiVo, they become a married pair. In other words, once a second drive is added to your TiVo, the two drives act as one and cannot be separated if one of those drives fails down the road. In the event of a drive failure, the good drive can be re-used, but only if it re-formatted and reconfigured.


OK, one more question. Since my primary drive is dead, I can't backup anything, including the Tivo OS. I need to reformat and reconfigure the second drive, but without an OS backup to restore. All the upgrade instructions I have found here assume that I can backup the original Tivo drive.

Are there instructions anywhere for adding a new primary drive to a Tivo, without a backup from which to restore the OS?


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## greg_burns (May 22, 2004)

PDR said:


> Are there instructions anywhere for adding a new primary drive to a Tivo, without a backup from which to restore the OS?


One option is to use instantcake. It has the image on it.
http://www.ptvupgrade.com/products/instantcake/


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