# tivo compatible drives 746



## ejonesss (Aug 13, 2007)

i just got a tivo and i suspect it uses a 250 320 gig drive and eventually i would like to upgrade ( probably will wait until warranty expires and/or drive failure oand/or i get more and more shows causing conflicts)


i was wondering what drives would be compatible that DO NOT use and power management like western digital does (i.e they may not spin down at all).

and for the 746 based boxes what is the maximum drive size that it will support i am seeing now there are beginning to be 3 and 4 tb drives?

and is fast enough that there will not be dropped frames or blips while recording or playing shows while using the tivo to go extraction process at the same times.


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## ThAbtO (Apr 6, 2000)

The only thing so far with WD drives that affect Tivos is called Intellipark which parks the heads upon idle.

So far, no one has used drives larger than 2 tb.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

ejonesss said:


> i just got a tivo and i suspect it uses a 250 320 gig drive and eventually i would like to upgrade ( probably will wait until warranty expires and/or drive failure oand/or i get more and more shows causing conflicts)
> 
> i was wondering what drives would be compatible that DO NOT use and power management like western digital does (i.e they may not spin down at all).
> 
> ...


It your TiVo's model number is TCD746320, then it came from the factory with a 320GB drive and if the drive has been replaced it's at least that big.

If the model number is TCD746500 it came with a 500GB drive, but is otherwise the same machine.

If you wait for drive failure to replace it you'll have to find someone else with that model to lend you their drive to copy, because there's currently no way to make truncated backup images the way you can with Series 1, 2, and 3 TiVos.

You don't want to use MFS Live or WinMFS on a Premiere drive, it'll only risk screwing it up.

There's a thead around here about using the jmfs utility to upgrade Premiere drives to bigger ones.

That's currently the only publicly known way to do it.

As for the WD "green" drives, it's not that hard to run wdidle3 to disable Intellipark.


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

ThAbtO said:


> The only thing so far with WD drives that affect Tivos is called Intellipark which parks the heads upon idle.
> 
> So far, no one has used drives larger than 2 tb.


I tried to use a 2.5Tb drive, could not get the TP to boot even if I did not expand the drive.


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## felux (Jan 25, 2003)

The TiVo runs Linux which by default cannot handle disk portions greater than 2Gb. I upgraded 2 premieres this weekend with JMFS using this drive from Amazon. Western Digital AV-GP 2 TB SATA II Intellipower 64 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Internal Hard Drive - WD20EURS. Both are working great. 

As a note intellipark was disabled by default so you probably will not have to deal with it.


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## ejonesss (Aug 13, 2007)

if tivo uses linux then that means the drive is formatted fat 32 or fat 16.

i would say 16 since 32 is 4 gig or it makes a bunch of partitions and spans across multiple partitions.

is there a way to boot an external drive so i can try things without harming the box?

are there any mac users out there who used disk copy or data rescue or stellar phoenix or some forensics copier to clone the drive?


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

ejonesss said:


> if tivo uses linux then that means the drive is formatted fat 32 or fat 16.
> 
> i would say 16 since 32 is 4 gig or it makes a bunch of partitions and spans across multiple partitions.
> 
> ...


The TiVo drive uses a modified version of the old Apple Partition Map, which means anything designed to work with FAT, FAT32, or NTFS will think it's unformatted, because none of them "speak" APM.

A computer running Linux could well have ext2, or ext3 formatted partitions instead of some version of FAT, but that's got nothing to do with TiVos.

Linux runs on lots of different platforms, provided it's compiled to do so.

If you want to "Xerox" a TiVo drive, you have to open up the TiVo and take the drive out.

(be sure the power cord is unplugged before doing this)

You'll need a #10 and possibly a #15 Torx bit.

Since you have a Premiere, you do not want to boot into Windows with the TiVo drive attached to the computer.

If your PC has a GigaByte brand motherboard, say so right now, so that I can tell you what else to watch out for.

You can go to mfslive.org and download the .iso file image for the MFS Live cd v1.4 and burn that as an image to a cd-r and boot the PC from that.

It has a utility called

dd_rescue

which can make a byte for byte copy from the Premiere drive to another drive the same size or larger.

When I say the same size, I mean the LBA number must be identical, not just the "how many GB" number.

There were some Maxtor drives that had larger LBA numbers than WD and Seagate drives which were supposedly the same GB number.

Right now, if you want to replace your Premiere drive with a larger one and use the extra space, you need the jmfs cd v1.04

It uses a similar program,

ddrescue

to "Xerox" over the contents of the Premiere drive, and then, if the target drive is larger, can utilize the extra space by adding a single extra MFS media partition and making the necessary adjustments in the TiVo's Apple Partition Map and the headers of each partition.

The various softwares which let you work with Series 1, 2, and 3 TiVo hard drives should not be used with Series 4 TiVo drives (the Premiere was the first of the Series 4s), as TiVo changed the file system and partitions somewhat, and that older software doesn't understand the changes.

The MFS Live cd falls into that category, but the

dd_rescue

program (or utility) on it doesn't work with software, it just copies 1s and 0s.

So, you can make a "Xerox" of your drive onto another drive just to have a safety copy, or you can replace the drive with another one and put the original on a shelf for emergencies.


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## felux (Jan 25, 2003)

ejonesss said:


> if tivo uses linux then that means the drive is formatted fat 32 or fat 16.
> 
> i would say 16 since 32 is 4 gig or it makes a bunch of partitions and spans across multiple partitions.
> 
> ...


The file system is not FAT of any kind. While Linux can read FAT its not a native filesystem. It's called MFS(Media File System) and based on Linux, not the old Macintosh File System. This is from the Wikipedia page on TiVo MFS - "The file system itself is implemented entirely in the Linux userspace"

I made my copies on a MacPro which has internal drive bays. You can boot from the JMFS CD by holding down the "C" key when powering on. Not sure what Mac model you have but I have heard success with people using USB to SATA external docks to make the copy. Keep in mind that it will be slow since USB runs at 1/6 the speed. My copy took about 2 hours with the orginal 320Gb drive.

I will suggest that you prep your system prior to the upgrade. Take a backup just to be safe. Also, pull the connector off or remove your main drive as a precaution. I pulled my system drives out.

Good luck if you decide to go for it!


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

felux said:


> The file system is not FAT of any kind. While Linux can read FAT its not a native filesystem. It's called MFS(Media File System) and based on Linux, not the old Macintosh File System. This is from the Wikipedia page on TiVo MFS - "The file system itself is implemented entirely in the Linux userspace"
> 
> I made my copies on a MacPro which has internal drive bays. You can boot from the JMFS CD by holding down the "C" key when powering on. Not sure what Mac model you have but I have heard success with people using USB to SATA external docks to make the copy. Keep in mind that it will be slow since USB runs at 1/6 the speed. My copy took about 2 hours with the orginal 320Gb drive.
> 
> ...


One does not take a backup of a Premiere or other Series 4, unless you mean using

dd

or

ddrescue

or

dd_rescue

to copy the entire drive byte for byte to another drive.

Although someone's working on a virtual hard drive compression scheme, but I don't think it's been perfected yet.

The tools that work with S1s, S2s, and S3s don't understand the changes made to the drive layout in the S4s, and can't do anything with an S4 drive except possibly screw it up.


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## felux (Jan 25, 2003)

unitron said:


> One does not take a backup of a Premiere or other Series 4, unless you mean using
> 
> dd
> 
> ...


You are correct. ejonesss was mentioning using his Mac to perform the upgrade. I was talking about him backing up his data on the Mac before he goes around messing with connecting drives. You can never know what will happen.

Yes, you need to do a bit copy on the drive. JMFS tools supports the Premiere 4 by placing wrappers around using the dd_* programs. As I mentioned above I upgraded 2 boxes this past weekend with it. Using dd or dd_rescue directly without in depth knowledge of Unix disks is just not a good idea and could possible ruin the original drive if you are not careful. JMFS is easy to use and detects the original Tivo Premiere drive and the new one you are copying to. It will not allow you to write back to the original. But to each their own I guess.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

felux said:


> You are correct. ejonesss was mentioning using his Mac to perform the upgrade. I was talking about him backing up his data on the Mac before he goes around messing with connecting drives. You can never know what will happen.
> 
> Yes, you need to do a bit copy on the drive. JMFS tools supports the Premiere 4 by placing wrappers around using the dd_* programs. As I mentioned above I upgraded 2 boxes this past weekend with it. Using dd or dd_rescue directly without in depth knowledge of Unix disks is just not a good idea and could possible ruin the original drive if you are not careful. JMFS is easy to use and detects the original Tivo Premiere drive and the new one you are copying to. It will not allow you to write back to the original. But to each their own I guess.


My OOOOPSIE! 

I shall remember your user name and keep it in my mental "knows whereof he (or she) speaks" file from here on.


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## ejonesss (Aug 13, 2007)

also i am wondering do i even need to clone the drive if i am willing to lose everything?

is the tivo drive contain software and operating system or does a new drive get automatically formatted and re loaded with the operating system and software?

when i do decide to upgrade the drive i will do it at a time when there is no shows to watch and none due to record for a few days so i have nothing to lose.


or does anyone know where i can get a virgin 746 image for cloning?

a virgin image where someone made an iso image of the drive before booting the box for the first time.

if you are unable to post any links due to forum rules you can either pm or give me some google keywords or does tivo supply replacement drives?


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## felux (Jan 25, 2003)

ejonesss said:


> also i am wondering do i even need to clone the drive if i am willing to lose everything?
> 
> is the tivo drive contain software and operating system or does a new drive get automatically formatted and re loaded with the operating system and software?
> 
> ...


1. You need to use it as a source. A Physical disk is the only way right now.

2. It contains both the OS and storage for content. When you clone a drive you are actually doing a multi-step process. First, copying over the OS then extending the partitions that are used for storage.

3. It only takes a few hours, but not a bad idea in case something goes wrong.

4. The old Tivos series 3 and before used a different layout for the disk. This allowed for compressing the image small enough to create a portable ISO. While you can theoretically image a Premiere drive it will retain its orginal size around 320Gb. You could but one from Weaknees or better yet Ebay. If you go the Ebay route and get a used box just do a "Clear and delete" everything prior to taking the drive out for the copy. This will make it virgin. As a bonus you will have another Tivo. I can also offer to make you a copy if you would like to send it to me. Feel free to PM me on this.

5. No, Tivo will not give you a replacement drive but will be happy to sell you an XL


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

felux said:


> 1. You need to use it as a source. A Physical disk is the only way right now.
> 
> 2. It contains both the OS and storage for content. When you clone a drive you are actually doing a multi-step process. First, copying over the OS then extending the partitions that are used for storage.
> 
> ...


When one "clones" a TiVo Premiere drive, what one is really doing is "Xeroxing" it, making a byte for byte copy with a utility that has no idea what the software on the drive is or what file format it uses or anything "higher level" than 1s and 0s.

To do this you can use

dd

or

ddrescue

or

dd_rescue

The jmfs cd uses

ddrescue

for the copying portion of what it does.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

ejonesss said:


> also i am wondering do i even need to clone the drive if i am willing to lose everything?
> 
> is the tivo drive contain software and operating system or does a new drive get automatically formatted and re loaded with the operating system and software?
> 
> ...


Generally a .iso file is an image of a bootable cd intended to be burned to a cd-r as an image in order to produce a bootable cd (as opposed to just a cd with those files on it but not in the right place for it to be bootable)

An .iso of a 320GB TiVo Premiere drive would be 320GB in size.

If there's currently nothing wrong with the drive in your Premiere, go ahead and set it up the way you want it--put in your zip code, tell it which cable company you're using, if any, get your cable card(s) paired, set the default record quality, put in season passes, and all of that kind of stuff, and then copy it to another drive at least as large as a back-up, or get a 2TB and copy to that and expand (using the jmfs cd) and enjoy the extra space with the original drive with all your settings sitting on a shelf in case of emergency.


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## ejonesss (Aug 13, 2007)

i was wondering if you install a new drive without copying the data from the old drive can the box format the new drive and download the software from tivo via the connect to tivo menu?

that would be the easiest since i am not sure if the drive can be cloned on a mac using a drive imager like data rescue or disk utility.


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## ejonesss (Aug 13, 2007)

there is not an edit button and so i have to add an extra reply maybe you mods can merge the 2 posts.



something like xbox 360 does if you connect a drive to an xbox 360 that the drive has been removed from you will get an option to do an update.

the update formats the drive and downloads the os/firmware from microsoft.

so i was wondering can tivo be made to do the same.


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## IWLSR5 (Apr 2, 2013)

ejonesss said:


> i was wondering if you install a new drive without copying the data from the old drive can the box format the new drive and download the software from tivo via the connect to tivo menu?
> 
> that would be the easiest since i am not sure if the drive can be cloned on a mac using a drive imager like data rescue or disk utility.


Xbox's operating system is stored on a chip on it's mother board instead of on the hard drive. That allows you to plug any hard drive you want on it. I should clarify that some xboxes do not have the 4gb storage built into their motherboards and those models will save operating system media files to the hard drive, but the majority of it's operating system is on an EEPROM chip.

TiVo's operating system is stored on it's hard drive. If you plug a empty hard drive into your TiVo it will basically be a glorified paperweight. It must have a operating system on the hard drive to function. The jmfs cd will run on a Mac. I've personally done it and it's a very easy process.


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## ejonesss (Aug 13, 2007)

i have the wd my book essential 2 tb usb 3.0 external drive that uses a wd 20ears drive

mdl is wd20ears-00mvwb0

it is a green drive so can you tell by the mdl number if it work.

also can the cloning be done over usb?

i would like to connect the tivo and new drive to a usb/sata enclosure to do the cloning.

also can i be able to install an ftp server or some means to connect to the tivo box other than ttg software?

by default is the intelipark technology set with a long enough timeout that it will not be a problem?


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