# Many 2TB drives coming soon. When will the tools be updated to support larger drives?



## ciper (Nov 4, 2004)

Example link with short info regarding 2TB drives

Because of multiple interacting limitations current TiVos, except for the THDXL, are not normally able to use drives larger than 1TB. If the partitioning tools were modified slightly to make the correct size of partitions the upper software limit is 2.2GB .

I personally plan to experiment with a 1.5tb A drive in an S2 and THD(not XL) but it will be a kludge to say the least. If a 2TB drive comes out soon with a decent price I'll do that instead.

Can anyone with coding abilities take the challenge to update one of the toolsets? I wouldn't mind to be a tester.


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## ciper (Nov 4, 2004)

On an unrelated note 1tb solid state drives able to run near the maximum transfer rate of SATAII will be available soon http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Puresilicon-936099.html

With the proper cooling modification you could use one of these to create a completely silent TiVo that has a drive that will work for 228 years straight! 
I wonder if reordering seasons passes would still take 45 seconds if I used one of them?


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

ciper said:


> On an unrelated note 1tb solid state drives able to run near the maximum transfer rate of SATAII will be available soon http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Puresilicon-936099.html


I'm not really concerned about when it becomes available. But do let me know when it becomes affordable for the masses.


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## MalcotheMalc (Jan 14, 2009)

Sounds great do you have a release date for this?


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## berkshires (Feb 22, 2007)

I figure the tools will get updated a few days before the 2TB drives reach the price point I am typically willing to pay for a drive. Then I'll have to buy a new PC because its too darn slow to copy a 1TB to a 2TB with what I've got now.


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## kb7sei (Oct 4, 2001)

Hmmmm..... Should drive the price down a little on the 1 and 1.5TB drives. I would like that very much as I'm plotting a new fileserver.


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## pdxsam (Mar 3, 2002)

I'm not sure the tools make a difference in this case until TiVo will use the new partitions for storage. Isn't the issue a hard limit on partitions right now?


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## ciper (Nov 4, 2004)

pdxsam said:


> I'm not sure the tools make a difference in this case until TiVo will use the new partitions for storage. Isn't the issue a hard limit on partitions right now?


Yes there is a hard limit but the tools could be adjusted to stay under this limit and still support larger drives. Enlarging the existing media partitions along with expansion could increase support all the way to the software limit of 2.2tb for a single drive.

Right now you cannot use a 1.5tb drive in any TiVo except for upgrading the THDXL a drive from 1tb to 1.5tb. The tools have a bug where they try to make the biggest partition possible and with drives over 1tb this means partitions that are over 1tb in size which is invalid.


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## pdxsam (Mar 3, 2002)

ahhhh gotcha. Thanks for the clarification.


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## donnoh (Mar 7, 2008)

I remember when DOS had a 640 kb limitation and a 40 mb drive was huge. Tivo will change their core to support the big drives or go away.
If they don't they will be making a huge mistake.
Of course I look at my own employer and see the mentality of a leach in our upper management. Suck the blood while you can because there is no tomorrow.


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## jlb (Dec 13, 2001)

Which happens first.......support for 2tb drives, or a DVR Expander larger than 500gb?


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## ciper (Nov 4, 2004)

jlb said:


> Which happens first.......support for 2tb drives, or a DVR Expander larger than 500gb?


Well one depends on TiVo making changes and the other depends on us fixing a bug in the tools.

I bet on us


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

donnoh said:


> I remember when DOS had a 640 kb limitation


we'll never need more than 640K!


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## OLdDog (Dec 15, 2001)

donnoh said:


> I remember when DOS had a 640 kb limitation and a 40 mb drive was huge. Tivo will change their core to support the big drives or go away.
> If they don't they will be making a huge mistake.
> Of course I look at my own employer and see the mentality of a leach in our upper management. Suck the blood while you can because there is no tomorrow.


Well that sets you a a real youngster.

My first computer had 2K memory and the storage device was an audio cassette player. 
The first upgrade was to 64K and a single sided single density 5 1/4 floppy drive. All the room I would ever need.
Also my first programming position involved punch cards and paper tape.

My first TiVo came with ver. 1.1 of the software. Soon upgraded to the almost perfect ver. 1.3.  TiVo grows as the need presents but sometimes they grow too fast. In the near term support for huge drives is not, and should not be, a priority.

The first priority should be the continuing evolution of directly supported formats and systems.

Of course that does not mean that the geek community will not and should not expand and test the limits of both the software and hardware. That, too, will happen as the need is perceived. The word "need" just changes meanings.


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## lew (Mar 12, 2002)

ciper said:


> Yes there is a hard limit but the tools could be adjusted to stay under this limit and still support larger drives. Enlarging the existing media partitions along with expansion could increase support all the way to the software limit of 2.2tb for a single drive.
> 
> Right now you cannot use a 1.5tb drive in any TiVo except for upgrading the THDXL a drive from 1tb to 1.5tb. The tools have a bug where they try to make the biggest partition possible and with drives over 1tb this means partitions that are over 1tb in size which is invalid.


My understanding is tivo software, including tivoapp, also limits hard drive size. I understand a few people can work around that but most of us need more then just new tools.


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## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

ciper said:


> Well one depends on TiVo making changes and the other depends on us fixing a bug in the tools.
> 
> I bet on us


Well, supporting larger drives could be fixed either by us or by TiVo. If they released a patched kernel that didn't that the 1TB partition limitation (like the one you can put on a prom hacked S3) then the existing tool would work perfectly.

Patching the tools (which I agree should be done) is more of a workaround to the unexpected limit to the kernel TiVo is using.


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## Adam1115 (Dec 15, 2003)

donnoh said:


> Tivo will change their core to support the big drives or go away.
> If they don't they will be making a huge mistake.


They will, just as they have always done in the past.

There was a time when TiVo Series 2's were limited to 128 Gigs or something like that....


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## berkshires (Feb 22, 2007)

ciper said:


> Right now you cannot use a 1.5tb drive in any TiVo except for upgrading the THDXL a drive from 1tb to 1.5tb. The tools have a bug where they try to make the biggest partition possible and with drives over 1tb this means partitions that are over 1tb in size which is invalid.


Does that mean it is the difference between the size of old and new drive that is the issue, so upgrade from a 1TB drive in any THD to 2TB would work today?


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

Adam1115 said:


> They will, just as they have always done in the past.
> 
> There was a time when TiVo Series 2's were limited to 128 Gigs or something like that....


yah - that is when all the work to make 2 drives work was really beneficial.


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## wtherrell (Dec 23, 2004)

OLdDog said:


> Well that sets you a a real youngster.
> 
> My first computer had 2K memory and the storage device was an audio cassette player.
> The first upgrade was to 64K and a single sided single density 5 1/4 floppy drive. All the room I would ever need.
> ...


Digital Equipment Corp. model PDP8. You could enter each byte by setting the 8 switches on the front and hitting the "enter" key, or by Paper Tape from a teletype machine. Ah, the good old days.


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

wtherrell said:


> Digital Equipment Corp. model PDP8. You could enter each byte by setting the 8 switches on the front and hitting the "enter" key, or by Paper Tape from a teletype machine. Ah, the good old days.


WOW!! I used to work with the PDP8, I have not heard that name for a long long time.


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## GoAWest (Oct 28, 2003)

I can't see myself doing that (TB HDs) with my two S2 Tivos if I can avoid it. One has a 320G HD (until it died recently, it had a 160G) and the other has a 400G. I record almost all shows at BASIC quality and don't have any high-def or digital sources or use Unbox, and I even have Suggestions turned off.

What I've found is that the machines slow *way* down when they have a lot of shows, even "recently deleted" ones (which are a pain to manually delete). So having an "excessively" large HD, given whatever the Tivo is doing (esp. with its file system), is a negative.

Also, having lost a few TiVo harddrives over the years (self-repaired with a new HD and InstantCake etc.), I don't tend to keep old recordings or assume that I can watch the last N seasons of a show since the drive isn't a "safe" place to hold things indefinitely.


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## acvthree (Jan 17, 2004)

lessd said:


> WOW!! I used to work with the PDP8, I have not heard that name for a long long time.


I worked for DEC for 16 years. Best company I ever worked for.

Al


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## ciper (Nov 4, 2004)

lew said:


> My understanding is tivo software, including tivoapp, also limits hard drive size. I understand a few people can work around that but most of us need more then just new tools.


Some legacy code in the TiVo software is the reason for the 2.2TB / 2TiB limit.



Jonathan_S said:


> Well, supporting larger drives could be fixed either by us or by TiVo. If they released a patched kernel that didn't that the 1TB partition limitation (like the one you can put on a prom hacked S3) then the existing tool would work perfectly.
> 
> Patching the tools (which I agree should be done) is more of a workaround to the unexpected limit to the kernel TiVo is using.


This is correct. A modified kernel already exists for those using a PROM mod.



Adam1115 said:


> There was a time when TiVo Series 2's were limited to 128 Gigs or something like that....


Was the S2 also affected by that? Way back when I stuck with my S1 witch had the non LBA48 kernel. It was annoying to have to upgrade the kernel but not much of an issue since we didn't have a chain of trust.



berkshires said:


> Does that mean it is the difference between the size of old and new drive that is the issue, so upgrade from a 1TB drive in any THD to 2TB would work today?


The problem is a limit of 1tb partitions. A THD XL already has a 1tb drive so upgrading to a 1.5tb drive adds a 500gb partition. There is a small chance that you could upgrade a THDXL with a 2TB drive if the extra partition didn't exceed the size limit. Perhaps if we didn't run out of partition numbers you could do a two step process, from 1tb to 1.5tb then from 1.5tb to 2tb.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

ciper said:


> Right now you cannot use a 1.5tb drive in any TiVo except for upgrading the THDXL a drive from 1tb to 1.5tb. The tools have a bug where they try to make the biggest partition possible and with drives over 1tb this means partitions that are over 1tb in size which is invalid.


skimmed the rest of the thread, didn't see anybody suggest this.

but it sounds like you or someone else knows a lot of details about the problem.

the tools are open source.. Why doesn't someone fix them??

BTW, are you guys saying that none of the limitations are actual 'hard' limits? e.g. something akin to a 4 gig limit?


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## ciper (Nov 4, 2004)

mattack said:


> but it sounds like you or someone else knows a lot of details about the problem.
> 
> the tools are open source.. Why doesn't someone fix them??
> 
> BTW, are you guys saying that none of the limitations are actual 'hard' limits? e.g. something akin to a 4 gig limit?


Most of the information regarding the different limits is floating around in the three most common TiVo forums, TCF DDB and MFSLive but it often doesn't get condensed into one thread.

WinMFS isn't open source but mfstools are and could be fixed. Unfortunately my programming knowledge is too limited to help.

Someone please verify the following info -

I'm not sure I follow the difference between hard and soft limits. TiVo's with os version earlier than 6 had a 2 ^ 28th power times 512 byte blocks which comes to 137GB. This was total disk space no matter how the drive was partitioned. 
The next limit is in the partition table. It has a maximum of 16 partitions per drive
Then the MFS can only have 12 partitions, the TiVo comes with 4 already and they are added in pairs so usually you can only upgrade a maximum of 4 times. 4times * 2partitions = 8 + 4stock = 12 total
After that is the upgraded kernel limit of 1TB partitions. There are hacks for this but it requires hardware/software modifications to work.
Then there is legacy 32 bit code in the TiVo OS which prevents total space over 2TB (2.2TiB)
Then comes the apple partition limit of 2TB per partition.

I may have missed a couple


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## TexasGrillChef (Sep 15, 2006)

kb7sei said:


> Hmmmm..... Should drive the price down a little on the 1 and 1.5TB drives. I would like that very much as I'm plotting a new fileserver.


How far down do you need them to go?

I just picked up 4 more 1.5tb drives for another NAS I got for christmas. I only paid $119 each for the 1.5tb drives. The 1TB drives were $79!

TGC


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

OLdDog said:


> Well that sets you a a real youngster.


Indeed, it does.



OLdDog said:


> My first computer had 2K memory and the storage device was an audio cassette player.


I saved my pennies and waited for a 16 bit computer with 32K of memory to come out. Of course, it's only storage option at the time was also a cassette recorder.



OLdDog said:


> The first upgrade was to 64K and a single sided single density 5 1/4 floppy drive. All the room I would ever need.


Sixty-four K wasn't an option, yet, so my first upgrade was the floppy. I was ecstatic to replace that with a double-sided drive.



OLdDog said:


> Also my first programming position involved punch cards and paper tape.


Mine involved front panel toggle switches. I was thrilled when we stole a tape reader from the folks over at the Cyclotron. I could hardly believe it when we got a dot matrix terminal with a built-in cassette tape.



OLdDog said:


> TiVo grows as the need presents but sometimes they grow too fast. In the near term support for huge drives is not, and should not be, a priority.


Ordinarily, I might be inclined to disagree with this point of view, but since I have an external video server with a RAID array, I can't quite get up the steam. I still can't believe I have 8 TB of storage... for a lot less money than the first pair of hard drives I ever purchased: 12 Megabytes each for $8000 (in 1979 dollars, no less).


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## berkshires (Feb 22, 2007)

ciper said:


> The problem is a limit of 1tb partitions. A THD XL already has a 1tb drive so upgrading to a 1.5tb drive adds a 500gb partition. There is a small chance that you could upgrade a THDXL with a 2TB drive if the extra partition didn't exceed the size limit. Perhaps if we didn't run out of partition numbers you could do a two step process, from 1tb to 1.5tb then from 1.5tb to 2tb.


That's the essence of what I am asking...if you already have upgraded a regular THD to 1TB, you can then do a subsequent upgrade to 2TB?

Also in relation to the number of partitions, I thought winMFS expands the previous partition(s) created on prior expansion(s) to get around some problem with expanding THDs multiple times; but am I confused about that?


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

TexasGrillChef said:


> How far down do you need them to go?


Free would be nice. 



TexasGrillChef said:


> I just picked up 4 more 1.5tb drives for another NAS I got for christmas. I only paid $119 each for the 1.5tb drives. The 1TB drives were $79!


It's amazing, all right. I've got two more slots on the array left, and I'm not really hurting for space just yet, so I think I'll pick up another 1T drive in a few months, and then get a 2T when the price comes down a bit. Hopefully that will last me until the end of the year, and I can go ahead and plunk down the cash for eleven 2T drives. I won't be able to use the 2T fully until I get the other drives, but it saves me a double upgrade. I just hope they come down below $180, or it's going to be difficult to afford them, especially since I am also goingto haev to upgrade the backup server. It would be even better if I can hold off on the next drive until the 2T drives come out and drop a bit in price, but I'm not sure my existing space will last that long.


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## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

berkshires said:


> in relation to the number of partitions, I thought winMFS expands the previous partition(s) created on prior expansion(s) to get around some problem with expanding THDs multiple times; but am I confused about that?


WinMFS does appear to just resize the media partition rather than create new partions. From my [post=6741771]post[/post] back in early October, here the last couple partitions from a 1tb image (copied but not expanded onto a 1.5tb drive using WinMFS) and that same drive after WinMFS expanded it.


```
15: MFS MFS Media by Winmfs     1640939520 @ 312583856  (782.5G)
16: Apple_Free Extra             976751678 @ 1953523376 (465.8G)
```


```
15: MFS MFS Expanded by Winmfs  2617671680 @ 312583856  (  1.2T)
16: N/A
```


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

TexasGrillChef said:


> I just picked up 4 more 1.5tb drives for another NAS I got for christmas. I only paid $119 each for the 1.5tb drives. The 1TB drives were $79!


tangent question -- where did you get them that cheap? The Seagate 1TB Barracuda is $116 at Amazon now, the WD is $105 (I don't remember if that's the one that will or won't work with TivoHD.. if not, I think the one that was is $10 more).


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## berkshires (Feb 22, 2007)

Jonathan_S said:


> WinMFS does appear to just resize the media partition rather than create new partions. From my [post=6741771]post[/post] back in early October, here the last couple partitions from a 1tb image (copied but not expanded onto a 1.5tb drive using WinMFS) and that same drive after WinMFS expanded it.
> 
> 
> ```
> ...


What was the consequence of the 1.2TB partion which resulted after expansion?


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## ciper (Nov 4, 2004)

berkshires said:


> That's the essence of what I am asking...if you already have upgraded a regular THD to 1TB, you can then do a subsequent upgrade to 2TB?


No. That doesn't work because it just adjusts the previously added partition.



> Also in relation to the number of partitions, I thought winMFS expands the previous partition(s) created on prior expansion(s) to get around some problem with expanding THDs multiple times; but am I confused about that?


Yes that's what it does.



berkshires said:


> What was the consequence of the 1.2TB partion which resulted after expansion?


Unless you use a hacked kernel the system cannot access the entire partition and could have all sorts of crazy issues when the drive starts filling up.


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## berkshires (Feb 22, 2007)

ciper said:


> Yes there is a hard limit but the tools could be adjusted to stay under this limit and still support larger drives. Enlarging the existing media partitions along with expansion could increase support all the way to the software limit of 2.2tb for a single drive.
> 
> Right now you cannot use a 1.5tb drive in any TiVo except for upgrading the THDXL a drive from 1tb to 1.5tb. The tools have a bug where they try to make the biggest partition possible and with drives over 1tb this means partitions that are over 1tb in size which is invalid.


So you are proposing the tools expand the original TiVo partition to up to 1TB to accomodate larger drives when the winMFS partition reaches 1TB?


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## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

berkshires said:


> What was the consequence of the 1.2TB partion which resulted after expansion?


Failure to record, frequent reboots.
Basically the TiVo didn't work.

It would boot fine. And in fact would happily play back anything that was on the disk before the copy + upgrade

But it couldn't manage to record new material with any reliability. Maybe 1 show in 10 would manage to record completely and in a way that could be played back.


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## Adam1115 (Dec 15, 2003)

I don't get the issue. The TiVo clearly allows a single terrabyte drive (TiVo HD XL) with a single 1 TB partition.

Why can't a 2 TB drive be addressed as two 1 TB partitions?


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## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

Adam1115 said:


> I don't get the issue. The TiVo clearly allows a single terrabyte drive (TiVo HD XL) with a single 1 TB partition.
> 
> Why can't a 2 TB drive be addressed as two 1 TB partitions?


I think it could be. (Well, not exactly 2 partitions, since the TiVo software, etc takes up the first 14 partitions before you get to the first Media partition used for user recordings).

But (with my strictly limited knowledge) I'm unaware of any reason you couldn't have partition 15 set to 1 TB and partition 16 set to everything that's left over. It's just that the WinMFS tool doesn't currently support creating that configuration. And since it's closes source and therefore I haven't looked at how it works I've got no clue how easy or difficult the necessary changes might be. (Actually even if it _was_ open source the answer is probably: beyond my quite rusty programming skills)

Mind you, that plan hits the wall if you move on to 3 TB drives since you can only have 16 partitions. So once partition 15 & 16 are maxed out at ~1.1 TB you're stuck without a kernel modification (which either has to come from TiVo or requires a prom mod).


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## Adam1115 (Dec 15, 2003)

Jonathan_S said:


> I think it could be. (Well, not exactly 2 partitions, since the TiVo software, etc takes up the first 14 partitions before you get to the first Media partition used for user recordings).
> 
> But (with my strictly limited knowledge) I'm unaware of any reason you couldn't have partition 15 set to 1 TB and partition 16 set to everything that's left over. It's just that the WinMFS tool doesn't currently support creating that configuration. And since it's closes source and therefore I haven't looked at how it works I've got no clue how easy or difficult the necessary changes might be. (Actually even if it _was_ open source the answer is probably: beyond my quite rusty programming skills)
> 
> Mind you, that plan hits the wall if you move on to 3 TB drives since you can only have 16 partitions. So once partition 15 & 16 are maxed out at ~1.1 TB you're stuck without a kernel modification (which either has to come from TiVo or requires a prom mod).


It's been a long time since I've dealt with this, but can't you manually create them with MFSTools?

I realize the limitation but I think a single 2 TB drive would appeal to a lot of people.


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## ciper (Nov 4, 2004)

Here is what I think the stock TiVo HD drive looks like


> Partition Maps
> #: type name length base ( size )
> 1 Apple_partition_map Apple [email protected] ( 31.5K)
> 2 Image Bootstrap 1 [email protected] ( 512.0 )
> ...





example 1tb drive said:


> 14 MFS MFS App by Winmfs [email protected] ( 1.0M)
> 15 MFS MFS Media by Winmfs [email protected] ( 781.8G)





Adam1115 said:


> I don't get the issue. The TiVo clearly allows a single terrabyte drive (TiVo HD XL) with a single 1 TB partition.


Thats not how the drive is configured. A stock THD drive has 13 partitions from the factory. The problem is when a single partition exceeds 1tb. When upgrading a THD to a 1tb drive you are adding an ~800gb partition (plus a small app partition) to the 13 that are already there



berkshires said:


> So you are proposing the tools expand the original TiVo partition to up to 1TB to accomodate larger drives when the winMFS partition reaches 1TB?


Thats would be great!



Jonathan_S said:


> I think it could be. (Well, not exactly 2 partitions, since the TiVo software, etc takes up the first 14 partitions before you get to the first Media partition used for user recordings).
> 
> But (with my strictly limited knowledge) I'm unaware of any reason you couldn't have partition 15 set to 1 TB and partition 16 set to everything that's left over. It's just that the WinMFS tool doesn't currently support creating that configuration. And since it's closes source and therefore I haven't looked at how it works I've got no clue how easy or difficult the necessary changes might be. (Actually even if it _was_ open source the answer is probably: beyond my quite rusty programming skills)
> 
> Mind you, that plan hits the wall if you move on to 3 TB drives since you can only have 16 partitions. So once partition 15 & 16 are maxed out at ~1.1 TB you're stuck without a kernel modification (which either has to come from TiVo or requires a prom mod).


Remember each additional "expansion" consists of two partitions. Since the TiVo uses 13 from the factory you can only add one enlarged space to the drive without modifying the original partitions.

In a perfect world the tool would let you specify your own layout. An automatic function should modify partition 13 upto 1tb, then partition 11 would take the remaining space with a ceiling placed at 2TB (2.2TiB) until the TiVo OS loses it's remaining legacy code.

Edit: *I have an idea!* Now if we were really brave we could get FOUR more partitions on the drive. When migrating to the new drive expand var to 400mb. Set partition eight (original swap) to 1mb. Create a swap file inside of var then use partition nine as an MFS app partition paired with partition 16. 
This would allow us to create a 2tb A drive without a hacked kernel and without touching the factory MFS partitions. I know the TiVo can function using a swap file because my S1 had a 700mb swap file and a 700mb swap partition and meminfo showed 1.4gb of usable swap. You can even adjust the priority of each item with the right swapon arguments.


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## Adam1115 (Dec 15, 2003)

ciper said:


> Remember each additional "expansion" consists of two partitions. Since the TiVo uses 13 from the factory you can only add one enlarged space to the drive without modifying the original partitions.


Yes, I know, what I want to do is EXPAND partition 13 to 1 TB, THEN make a partition 14. Or create a NEW partition 13 with 1 TB.

Why is that not possible...? Won't MFS Tools allow you to manually resize the partitions?


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## ciper (Nov 4, 2004)

Adam1115 said:


> Won't MFS Tools allow you to manually resize the partitions?


I wish it did and it is possible. 
The "-s" option of mfstool backup supposedly shrinks upgraded drives and the mfstool restore has "-s" for custom swap size and "-v" for custom var size so the ability to manipulate the partitions is partially implemented.

MFStools are open source so we only need to motivate someone to help. 
WinMFS is controlled by Spike. I wonder if enough of us bugged him he would add the ability? He knows the disk layout better than almost anyone so he would be most able to do it properly.


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## ciper (Nov 4, 2004)

I wanted to quote this


> WinMFS Beta 9.3d, includes code to limit a new partition to 1TB. (1024 GB) I was doing some testing and I guess I forgot to take it out.
> It's good for now but if Tivo Inc fixes their kernel code, then we have a problem.
> 
> If you look at your partition 15 size it's 1024 GB.
> So your total size is 1024 GB + 160GB and it's about 1.2 TB


Meaning 1.5TB drives are usable on a THD *if and only if you use WinMFS 9.3d*. You only get 1.2TB of space but thats better than crashes right?


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## bkdtv (Jan 9, 2003)

I just want to clarify...

These limits apply to both internal and external drive upgrades? Previously, spike had posted screenshots of a 2.5TB TivoHD using an external RAID.


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## ciper (Nov 4, 2004)

The total overall space limit of 2.2TB still applies. The 1TB partition limit is also in effect. From http://mfslive.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=257&start=60#p4857


spike said:


> Tivo software 11 is the same way.
> No support for a partition greater than 1 TiB
> 
> Also, I've ran some more test and 2.2 TB is the maximum disk space TivoHD can handle.
> ...


From http://mfslive.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=257&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=45#p4822


jamie said:


> In addition, the tivo application code (tivoapp) appears to use signed 32bit integers for sector numbers and sizes in a number of places. It's hard to be certain how many places, because we don't have source. One example: the DiskConfiguration MFS object (the thing that "supersize" modifies) uses signed 32 bit integers to represent the sizes of the "User" and "TivoClip" allocations and total MFS size. I believe these limits will cause problems when the total MFS size exceeds 2TiB.


With a hacked kernel (found at the other site) you can go beyond the 1TB limit per partition and the system works fine but the legacy code still gets you when over 2TiB.


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## Dmon4u (Jul 15, 2000)

I do find it amazing that other DVRs can handle 1.5 Tb DVR Expanders:

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/090122/20090122005362.html?.v=1

"Available in 500GB, 750GB, 1TB, and now 1.5 TB capacities, and sporting a dual eSATA / USB 2.0 interface, the DVR Xpander is compatible with a wide variety of DVRs including the Scientific Atlanta® 8300 series DVR (via eSATA connection), provided by many cable companies; and the DISH Network® ViP Series HD DVRs (via USB 2.0 connection)."


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## lew (Mar 12, 2002)

I don't find it amazing. I understand tivo is still using some "legacy" code from earlier tivo units.

WD was the first company to offer an external drive, designed for DVR use. That drive was certified by tivo and is supported. We now have Seagate and Apricorn offering external drives designed for DVRs (I'm not sure which drives Apricorn is using). It's a shame tivo hasn't certified a competing vendor. Choice is generally good for the consumer.



Dmon4u said:


> I do find it amazing that other DVRs can handle 1.5 Tb DVR Expanders:
> 
> http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/090122/20090122005362.html?.v=1
> 
> "Available in 500GB, 750GB, 1TB, and now 1.5 TB capacities, and sporting a dual eSATA / USB 2.0 interface, the DVR Xpander is compatible with a wide variety of DVRs including the Scientific Atlanta® 8300 series DVR (via eSATA connection), provided by many cable companies; and the DISH Network® ViP Series HD DVRs (via USB 2.0 connection)."


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## darrenellis (Feb 21, 2008)

I had the Apricorn 1.5 TB DVR expander in my shopping cart and was about to enter my CC# when I decided to check this forum first. Guess I won't be making that purchase.

Has anyone had any experience using the Apricorn 1 TB expander? I saw a post somewhere about someone using the 750GB expander with a Tivo s3 and it worked fine.


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## ciper (Nov 4, 2004)

darrenellis said:


> I had the Apricorn 1.5 TB DVR expander in my shopping cart and was about to enter my CC# when I decided to check this forum first. Guess I won't be making that purchase.


Why would you? It's ugly for one and it's intended for Scientific Atlanta boxes. To the TiVo it should be no different than any other ESATA drive.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

ciper said:


> Why would you? It's ugly for one and it's intended for Scientific Atlanta boxes. To the TiVo it should be no different than any other ESATA drive.


AFAIK there's no reason that the 1.5TB Apricorn DVR Xpander wouldn't work via P&P with a stock TiVo Series3. (Other than it being a bit fugly  ) It's still under the limit or am I missing something?


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## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

I'm all for upgrading a stock Tivo to a larger drive but there has to be a point where you have to set a limit to how many shows you need to keep on the drive. The general rule of thumb is that if you have a lot of storage on your Tivo, you will have a tendency to max it out. This means that you either have to start watching the shows you have backlogged or you have to find a way to archive them. The one huge caveat is that when the drive fails, all of those shows will be lost forever unless you have other means to recover them. If you're one of the lucky ones you can detect an impending failure and head it off by cloning the drive and preserve all of your shows. Otherwise, it's just an exercise in futility. Your Tivo drive is destined to fail at some point and it will always do so at the most inopportune moment.

The ideal situation would be if we had some way to recover data in the event of a drive failure without the need for some expensive data recovery program or other convoluted method. If we could do that, then having large drives and storing huge numbers of recordings would be perfectly viable. I have an unRAID server that I use in conjunction with my HTPC that contains a parity drive. If a drive fails I can simply replace it and recover the data using the parity information. If a Tivo drive fails, you're simply SOL.

That being said, I like to use a little common sense when archiving lots of shows. I determine if the data I'm keeping is something I really want to watch or save for the long term. If there's something I want to keep I'll offload it and store it on more permanent media, like recordable DVDs. Otherwise, I try and watch it within a reasonable amount of time after it's aired and then delete it to make room for new recordings. If I know I won't have tiome to get to all of my recordings, that's when I have the need for additional storage so that they'll keep until such time as I can view them later. Just keeping shows on a Tivo drive because you have the space is really a bad idea for the long term. Filling up a 2TB drive is just asking for trouble along with a lot of frustration and heartache.

This just reflects my own personal viewing habits and years of experience owning Tivos. I've lost very few shows do to drive failures, mainly because I've managed to purge most of them before a failure occurred. Everyone has their own viewing preferences and life schedules so my philosophy may not necessarily work for you. If you feel you need a 2TB Tivo then knock yourself out. Just know that if you go that route you could be heading for disaster down the road. Sorry if I sound like the doomsayer but I thought it might help bring some perspective to the topic at hand. May your Tivo drives live forever.


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## ciper (Nov 4, 2004)

mr.unnatural : How is archiving the show on my computer any safer than archiving the show directly on the TiVo? There is a strong possibility they are using the exact same hard drive with the same uptime.

My 700gb S1 served as my archive for years,,, no need for a computer!

BTW Most movies recorded from cable are over 10gb and its not uncommon for a movie to approach 20GB (recently bugsy was 22gb). If I record 10 such movies thats already 200gb of drive space, or 10% of the 2tb unit. Add nightly shows like Conan or the news which average 8gb and you can see how space quickly gets used. Shoot even episodes of Star Trek Enterprise and Smallville on my TiVo right now are *7.71gb EACH.*

Another advantage are suggestions. With plenty of free disk space the TiVo is free to do its best on finding shows I may like. I literally have 500gb of suggestions right now...

I think you must be recording only SD analog material or something.

Edit: Pictures are worth a thousand words


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## berkshires (Feb 22, 2007)

ciper said:


> mr.unnatural : How is archiving the show on my computer any safer than archiving the show directly on the TiVo? There is a strong possibility they are using the exact same hard drive with the same uptime.


I'd say the advantage is the ease/ability to backup up that PC drive or use a RAID device for storage - such as the RAID 5 I use connected by USB to a PC. And in addition to the safety factor, not storing hundreds of different shows/movies on the TiVo makes navagation a little easier. *

Enterprise sure does take alot of space  ... and for those of us in heavy Copy Flag land (TWC) big drives sure help in the TiVo - as does having more than one TiVo.

* On the subject of navagating large numbers of items (incl. NPL & Netflix Queue) TiVo needs some keyboardless approach to long lists. One idea could be alphabetical by standard telephone letter equivalents (ie. 666=O); or in a date sorted or unsorted list, the number keys could be page equivalents or even % of total list (ie. 6 = 60% down the list)


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## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

ciper said:


> mr.unnatural : How is archiving the show on my computer any safer than archiving the show directly on the TiVo? There is a strong possibility they are using the exact same hard drive with the same uptime.
> 
> My 700gb S1 served as my archive for years,,, no need for a computer!
> 
> ...


I easily record 30-40 hours of HD programming each week between my HTPC and my two S3 Tivos. I probably watch about 3-5 hours of actual programming each day (that's about 5-6 1-hour shows sans commercials). I don't use Tivo Suggestions because I already have too much crap to watch in the time I have. I do my best to try and keep up with the shows I record but there are only so many hours in the day and I have other things to do than sit in front of the boob tube all the time. However, with the volume of programming I record, it's inevitable that it gets backlogged after a while.

The trick is to know how much you can record and watch in the time you have available without exceeding the capacity of the Tivo drive(s). I generally like to keep the drives at or above 50% of their available capacity in case I have to go out of town on business. This allows enough reserve capacity to record all my shows in my absence without the need to delete existing recordings to make room for new shows. When my shows go into mid-season reruns I can generally get caught up before the new episodes begin airing again. When the regular season ends and the summer reruns begin I can catch up with the remaining episodes. This allows me to dedicate my viewing time for more movies during the summer months.

I never suggested that you archive to your computer but rather some other media like DVDs or a server that has data recovery capabilities (i.e., parity drive or some other recovery method). However, if your PC works for you then go for it. The main point I was trying to make is that the more space you have to record on the Tivo the more likely you'll be to fill it up and the less likely you'll have time to view everything before the drive craps out. With Tivos, it's not a question of if it will die but rather when it will occur. Using an enormous drive for recorded programs just tempts fate, IMHO. I don't expect everyone to agree with my point of view as everyone has their own recording and viewing habits that are unique to the individual.

The drive issue doesn't even take into account the possibility of software corruption (i.e., unrecoverable GSOD) that can destroy your recordings just as easily as a bad drive.

I regularly record movies from FIOS in HD using my hacked S3 Tivo. I offload them to my main PC and author them to HD-DVD so I can play them back in my standalone HD-DVD player. If they're movies I'm only interested in watching once I'll burn them to DVD-RW discs and reuse the discs when I'm through watching them. If I want to keep them for my library, I'll use DVD-Rs and create labels for the discs and DVD cases.

I hope everyone realizes I'm just playing Devil's advocate here. Having a Tivo with large capacity is a wonderful thing, as long as it doesn't up and die on you. There's nothing more disconcerting than having a drive full of recorded shows go belly up and leave you wondering what happened during the last six episodes of "24".


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

> There's nothing more disconcerting than having a drive full of recorded shows go belly up and leave you wondering what happened during the last six episodes of "24".


I am a year or 2 behind watching a number of shows and may never catch up 

But this does make one wonder if there is a market for TiVo to sell RAID protected NAS devices that one could off load shows for longer term storage too. It wouldn't be hard for TiVo to make the transfers between the NAS device and your TiVo directly without the need for a computer.

One also has to wonder if it isn't time for Tivo to store/run their operating system on fixed/solid state memory and only use the hard drive for video storage.

Thanks,


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## dochawk (Aug 1, 2002)

wtherrell said:


> Digital Equipment Corp. model PDP8. You could enter each byte by setting the 8 switches on the front and hitting the "enter" key, or by Paper Tape from a teletype machine.


Eight switches? So how did you set the other four bits???

hawk, who wire-wrapped his first computer


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## berkshires (Feb 22, 2007)

atmuscarella said:


> One also has to wonder if it isn't time for Tivo to store/run their operating system on fixed/solid state memory and only use the hard drive for video storage.


One also has to wonder with VOD services like Netflix growing in the future whether these ultra large capacities will be as important.


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## wtherrell (Dec 23, 2004)

dochawk said:


> Eight switches? So how did you set the other four bits???
> 
> hawk, who wire-wrapped his first computer


Coin slot, two quarters.

Seriously, tho. I can't quite remember. I remember 8-bit bytes and Octal. Seems there was something else. Been a looonnng time. I tried to use my K&E slide rule the other day and couldn't quite remember how to do Logarithms on it, either. Don't think I'll bother. Hard enough just keeping Windows up and running.


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## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

atmuscarella said:


> I am a year or 2 behind watching a number of shows and may never catch up
> 
> But this does make one wonder if there is a market for TiVo to sell RAID protected NAS devices that one could off load shows for longer term storage too. It wouldn't be hard for TiVo to make the transfers between the NAS device and your TiVo directly without the need for a computer.
> 
> ...


Solid state storage required to hold the Tivo OS is still too expensive to use as an option. A couple of 2GB DIMMs would probably work fine but would add about $75-100 to the overall cost of the Tivo. Perhaps just adding the DIMM slots to the design and giving the user the option of adding the DIMMs would be an attractive alternative similar to the cachecards used with the S1 Tivos. The only downside is that the cost of a larger hard drive vs. the DIMMs wouldn't really make it cost affective. The whole idea behind the cachecard was to offload the OS so that it would make the Tivo UI work faster. The latest Tivo software doesn't bog down like the older versions so a cachecard-type storage for the OS isn't really needed.

S3 Tivos and Tivo HDs record their programs as mpeg2 transport streams. As such, they can be easily played back using any number of codecs on a PC. Using Tivo To Go you can extract the shows to your PC and run them through VideoReDo to remove the .tivo wrapper and convert them to a format that's PC friendly. Having done that, it's just a matter of storing them on a server or NAS that's accessible on your home network.

I have a HTPC that uses Snapstream's BeyondTV PVR app. I can easily transfer Tivo recordings to the HTPC and they will be recognized by BTV such that they will play back like any other recording made on the HTPC. I also have an unRAID server with about 7TB of storage for archiving and streaming rips of DVDs, HD-DVDs, and Blu-Ray discs. I could just as easily use it to store Tivo recordings once they've been extracted and converted to .ts files. The output of the HTPC feeds my 60" Sony HDTV and the picture is fantastic.


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## ciper (Nov 4, 2004)

*All these years we were wrong about the TiVo only supporting 16 partitions!*
Jaimee and I were messing around and figured out that essentially all TiVo's to date can support upto 64 partitions. 
Please click here for more info http://is.gd/jgfD (deal db link)

We should be able to theoretically use a 2TB A drive without the need of kernel with the 1tb partition bugg fixed (darn you TiVo!). We could instead add two pairs of MFS partitions so the drive would look sorta like -



> 1 Apple_partition_map Apple [email protected] ( 31.5K)
> 2 Image Bootstrap 1 [email protected] ( 512.0 )
> 3 Image Kernel 1 [email protected] ( 4.0M)
> 4 Ext2 Root 1 [email protected] ( 256.0M)
> ...


Here is my proof. This is a Series 1 with an image from 2002. It has an LBA48 kernel (killed initrd, version 1 swap support). The only modifications to the file system of this drive are the cachecard drivers and a copy of LS. I didn't even create a hack directory or edit the rc.sysinit


> bash-2.02# mke2fs /dev/hda17
> mke2fs 1.06, 7-Oct-96 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09
> stat: No such file or directory
> bash-2.02# /var/ls -l /dev/hda16
> ...


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## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

ciper said:


> *All these years we were wrong about the TiVo only supporting 16 partitions!*
> Jaimee and I were messing around and figured out that essentially all TiVo's to date can support upto 64 partitions.


Interesting. Hopefully this work eventually leads to nice automated tools (like winmfs) that support > 1 TB disks.


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## Adam1115 (Dec 15, 2003)

ciper said:


> *All these years we were wrong about the TiVo only supporting 16 partitions!*
> Jaimee and I were messing around and figured out that essentially all TiVo's to date can support upto 64 partitions.


Nice!

Although I think this is really the only time we've ever NEEDED more than 16 partitions....


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## DaveDFW (Jan 25, 2005)

This would be great if we could eventually consolidate internal and external drives onto one internal 2tb. 

I've always thought that having two drives doubled my chance of drive failure. 

TTYL
David


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## berkshires (Feb 22, 2007)

Are you sure this works specifically with the THD? I thought with that one Spike found he could not add addtl. partitions and had to resize the 1 MFS partition with each expand.


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## ciper (Nov 4, 2004)

I have found some additional helpful information -
*You *do not* have to add partitions in pairs. Meaning you could add three MFS regions to a stock A drive.
*The APM should be able to function with larger than 512 byte sectors. Meaning drive support over 2TB at the system level
*The extra partitions would be inaccessible after a software update since /dev/hda17 and greater have not been included by TiVo



berkshires said:


> Are you sure this works specifically with the THD? I thought with that one Spike found he could not add addtl. partitions and had to resize the 1 MFS partition with each expand.


In the link I posted was jaimee's results of putting *63* partitions on an S3. The modification to the kernel was unrelated to partition support.


jaimee said:


> I only tested this on 11.0, with a custom kernel built from the 9.4.1 sources


The reason spike said you couldn't add more partitions was because he wanted to preserve compatibility. He was still adding partitions in pairs because the ancient MFSTools wouldn't understand single partition expansions and that partitions over 17 is only currently an option on prom modded units.

With a completely stock TiVo HD and an updated tool it is completely possible to have a 2.2tb A drive.



DaveDFW said:


> This would be great if we could eventually consolidate internal and external drives onto one internal 2tb.
> 
> I've always thought that having two drives doubled my chance of drive failure.


It is already physically possible to use a single 2TB internal drive. The issue is with the tools. We could have stock partitions 1-13, a 1tb partition 14 and an 800gb partition 15 which is still under the 16 partition "limit"


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## ciper (Nov 4, 2004)

If you are interested in this subject please read this thread http://mfslive.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=257 
The more interesting stuff starts around page 5 IIRC.


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