# 2010: What Drive for a Series 1?



## hdeditor (Jan 7, 2004)

_Background:_ In 2004, I upgraded a Sony SVR-2000 from 30GB to 120GB with a Samsung SpinPoint SP1203N drive. I used MFS Tools to perform the upgrade. The manufacture date of the drive is March 2004. The drive has shown signs of hard drive failure for a couple of months, but the day I was going to take it out for a Spinrite session, a power hit took down my UPS and left the Tivo in a continual GSOD reboot.

I took the drive out and put in on a PC and ran Spinrite, which said the drives SMART system warned the drive was on it's last legs and to copy whatever data the drive had ASAP. During the Spinrite Level 2 "Read Unrecoverable Data" session, the drive seemed to lose its boot sector or partition table and Spinrite said it could no longer work on the drive.

After a couple of reboots, I got Spinrite to recognize the drive again, but the drive comes as a 30GB "empty" drive.

I still have the original Sony 30GB drive in a box with a CD of a file "tivo.bak" which I made when I originally upgraded.

_Question:_ What drive can I get in 2010 which will work in the Series 1?

The only drive I see today on Newegg which uses an IDE interface and is 5400 rpm is a recertified Maxtor MaXLine II HDD-5A320J0-NDW-R, which is 320GB, 5400 RPM, and a 2MB cache.

There are a couple of 7200 RPM Hitachi Deskstar drives (a 320GB and 250GB) on Zipzoomfly.com, and I did find another Samsung SP1203 at esaitech.com, but it comes with only a 90-day warranty. Directron.com has some used Maxtor pulls with 90-day warranties, but I'm lean away from both Maxtor and used.

_Question:_ Can I use a drive which is larger than 120GB? I seem to remember that there is a 137GB Tivo OS limitation on a Series 1 drive.

_Question:_ If I get another 7200 RPM drive, will the power supply accept a Cachecard installed? I seem to remember that you could put a 7200 RPM drive but that was the limit with the Tivo power supply. I have a Cachecard which I haven't installed yet and it seems that now that I have the Tivo taken apart it would be a good idea to install the Cachecard now.

Question: If I use MFS Tools or MFSlive, do I need a computer with 2 IDE interfaces?

In 2004 my PC had 2 IDE interfaces. I've changed motherboards and cases and now have only 1 IDE interface. One of the devices on the PC is an IDE DVD burner. Can I use a PCI card with IDE interfaces to perform the upgrade? Will these tools work with an external USB-to-IDE hard drive adapter?

_Question: _Can you use MFS Tools or MFSlive to back up an image from a pre-made drive from DVRupgrade.com?

It seems that for about $100 more than the cost of parts, I can buy a 250GB drive from DVRupgrade with a Cachecard which has the Cachecard drives already installed on the drive. Can I backup the initial image of this drive for safekeeping? Will I get the same functional utility from a pre-made drive, such as pulling shows from the Tivo drive across the network or using other FTP functions?

_To sum up:_ It's been 6 years since I've worked on a Series 1. In 2010, what are my options for installing a Series 1 Tivo drive?

Thank you for reading this post and I await wisdom!


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## stevel (Aug 23, 2000)

I suggest that you post this in the Upgrades section of the forum. Briefly, you can use WinMFS to upgrade/copy drives connected by a USB-IDE adapter if you don't have two IDE ports. Yes, you can use those tools to back up a DVRupgrade.com drive.

You can use a larger drive, but some care is needed when exceeding 250GB or thereabouts.

A 7200RPM drive will work fine.


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## ronsch (Sep 7, 2001)

hdeditor said:


> _Background:_I still have the original Sony 30GB drive in a box with a CD of a file "tivo.bak" which I made when I originally upgraded.
> 
> _Question:_ What drive can I get in 2010 which will work in the Series 1?


*I use Seagate ST3500830ACE in both Series 1 and Series 2 although they may not be generally available any more. Stay away from WD Caviar Blue.*



hdeditor said:


> _Background:_The only drive I see today on Newegg which uses an IDE interface and is 5400 rpm is a recertified Maxtor MaXLine II HDD-5A320J0-NDW-R, which is 320GB, 5400 RPM, and a 2MB cache.
> 
> There are a couple of 7200 RPM Hitachi Deskstar drives (a 320GB and 250GB) on Zipzoomfly.com, and I did find another Samsung SP1203 at esaitech.com, but it comes with only a 90-day warranty. Directron.com has some used Maxtor pulls with 90-day warranties, but I'm lean away from both Maxtor and used.


*I agree on leaning away from Maxtor.*



hdeditor said:


> _Background:__Question:_ Can I use a drive which is larger than 120GB? I seem to remember that there is a 137GB Tivo OS limitation on a Series 1 drive.


*You are correct. The Series 1 will only use the first 137 GB of a large drive without an LBA48 kernel.*



hdeditor said:


> _Background:__Question:_ If I get another 7200 RPM drive, will the power supply accept a Cachecard installed? I seem to remember that you could put a 7200 RPM drive but that was the limit with the Tivo power supply. I have a Cachecard which I haven't installed yet and it seems that now that I have the Tivo taken apart it would be a good idea to install the Cachecard now.


*If your power supply is "ok", it should be able to handle both. PS do age and lose oomph.*



hdeditor said:


> _Background:_Question: If I use MFS Tools or MFSlive, do I need a computer with 2 IDE interfaces?
> 
> In 2004 my PC had 2 IDE interfaces. I've changed motherboards and cases and now have only 1 IDE interface. One of the devices on the PC is an IDE DVD burner. Can I use a PCI card with IDE interfaces to perform the upgrade? Will these tools work with an external USB-to-IDE hard drive adapter?


*What Stevel said.*



hdeditor said:


> _Background:__Question: _Can you use MFS Tools or MFSlive to back up an image from a pre-made drive from DVRupgrade.com?
> 
> It seems that for about $100 more than the cost of parts, I can buy a 250GB drive from DVRupgrade with a Cachecard which has the Cachecard drives already installed on the drive. Can I backup the initial image of this drive for safekeeping? Will I get the same functional utility from a pre-made drive, such as pulling shows from the Tivo drive across the network or using other FTP functions?


*Yes, you can back up an image from a Dvrupgrade drive. I'm not familiar with what hacks, if any, are preinstalled on the Dvrupgrade drives other than being able to use space beyond 137GB. Lou will have to address that.*



hdeditor said:


> _Background:__To sum up:_ It's been 6 years since I've worked on a Series 1. In 2010, what are my options for installing a Series 1 Tivo drive?


*Pretty much the same as they were in 2009 except the IDE drives are harder to come by. If you can find an appropriate drive your original backup image should still work although it will probably go through an update from TiVo. If you want to implement a large drive, Dvrupgrade would certainly be the easiest.*


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## wmcbrine (Aug 2, 2003)

It might be amusing to use an SSD drive.


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## stevel (Aug 23, 2000)

SSD: No IDE interface, speed wasted, limited write cycles, very expensive. Love it in my desktop and netbook, but not good for DVRs.

I thought the current Series 1 software did away with the 137GB limit.


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## tivoupgrade (Sep 27, 2000)

stevel said:


> I thought the current Series 1 software did away with the 137GB limit.


No, the limit s still very much there.

But there is a modified kernel that supports disks larger than 137GB (LBA48); you can get it from our free MFStools BOOT CD and use the CopyKern utility to install it...

Lou


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