# Premiere large drive with external



## oagermann (Nov 26, 2014)

Question for anyone with knowledge of this. Since the premiere can surpass the 2T threshold is it at all possible to take an existing smaller drive of 500g that has recorded shows on it that are spanned across an external WD 1T drive, copy the internal drive over to a 2T or better yet a 4T and still function? Will the tivo accept this size drive and still accept the external with the recordings still intact though would in essence create either a 3T or 5T setup or would a 1T internal still be the max allowable with this external to remain intact? There are reasons for me to not want to lose the external right now for my situation even though going directly from a 500 to a 4T and losing recordings would be another option that I'd like to avoid at this point. Just looking for advice on feasibility and options available.


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

To confirm, you are restricted from moving these to a PC?


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## oagermann (Nov 26, 2014)

I believe i understand your question jr but pm sent for clarity.


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

You can take a currently paired internal and external drive expand the internal drive still keeping the external drive paired. But if you are wanting to keep all the recordings, it is possible to combine both external and internal drive onto one larger drive and expand it.


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## oagermann (Nov 26, 2014)

I didn't know that was actually a viable option (combining internal with external onto new single larger and preserving recordings) with the premiere series. I've only remembered reading about that possibility on the s3's with live?


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

It can be done on all TiVos, just unable to expand Roamios at this time.


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## oagermann (Nov 26, 2014)

Thought that I would update to my original post here. With the help of a very knowledgable forum member it was definitely possible to both combine an existing external and small internal (500g) drives with recordings spanned across them onto one larger (3T)internal drive on my premiere 746500 while preserving the recordings. The process required some knowledge of a 3rd party hard drive partitioning program which I had zero exposure to but with the members patience I was able to work through it all. Also the intensity of the steps require a good knowledge of the entire tivo structure and there was a few times that steps had to be adjusted on the fly so I in no way would be able to also walk someone through what we did just simply due to my minimal experience in this process but again the purpose was to at least let others know that the process is entirely possible to do. I ended up with a double capacity unit and 98% saved recordings (note that the missing 2% which amounted to only 8 recordings may have been skewed by my mis-entering a figure incorrectly or just a casualty of the process. I'm leaning towards my mistake as the reason however either way for me it was a miniscule price to pay for the rewards gained. Thank you again for all of the contributors to thus forum who's tools and help make things like this possible for those such as myself with such minimal knowledge.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

oagermann said:


> Thought that I would update to my original post here. With the help of a very knowledgable forum member it was definitely possible to both combine an existing external and small internal (500g) drives with recordings spanned across them onto one larger (3T)internal drive on my premiere 746500 while preserving the recordings. The process required some knowledge of a 3rd party hard drive partitioning program which I had zero exposure to but with the members patience I was able to work through it all. Also the intensity of the steps require a good knowledge of the entire tivo structure and there was a few times that steps had to be adjusted on the fly so I in no way would be able to also walk someone through what we did just simply due to my minimal experience in this process but again the purpose was to at least let others know that the process is entirely possible to do. I ended up with a double capacity unit and 98% saved recordings (note that the missing 2% which amounted to only 8 recordings may have been skewed by my mis-entering a figure incorrectly or just a casualty of the process. I'm leaning towards my mistake as the reason however either way for me it was a miniscule price to pay for the rewards gained. Thank you again for all of the contributors to thus forum who's tools and help make things like this possible for those such as myself with such minimal knowledge.


As long as this thread has been brought back from the comatose, if not dead---

In a case like this it's a very good idea to "Xerox" the internal drive to another one and do all experimenting on the copy.

Glad to hear it worked out for you.


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