# Easiest Tivo HD upgrade?



## pdxpa (Mar 2, 2012)

I'm looking to upgrade my Tivo HD from a 160gb HD to a 500 or 1000gb. 

1) All the posts I've found on best drives to use are a few years old, any advice on what drive works best?

2) I want to just replace my old drive and I don't need to copy my old drive, I'm willing to start out fresh. Which method is best? I've read I can just replace the drive and it will format correctly and other posts seem to have elaborate instructions but not sure if they are really needed. Thoughts?

Thanks,
PDXPA


----------



## ThAbtO (Apr 6, 2000)

The easiest way is to hook up the Tivo drive to the computer and if you use windows, use WinMFS. You would need to copy the drive, make backups, restore to the new drive. The Tivo will not format or install the drive on its own.

Using WinMFS, you can make a truncated backup copy which is the Tivo software and not recordings.

MFSlive.org has the programs to copy. With exception to WinMFS, the other programs will require you to make a CD to boot from and use linux commands.


----------



## steve614 (May 1, 2006)

If you're going to go to the trouble of doing an upgrade for a TivoHD, I would suggest using JMFS with a 2TB drive.
So simple, even *I* could do it!


----------



## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

pdxpa said:


> I'm looking to upgrade my Tivo HD from a 160gb HD to a 500 or 1000gb.
> 
> 1) All the posts I've found on best drives to use are a few years old, any advice on what drive works best?
> 
> ...


Some HD owners have reported problems using recent model Seagates.

I tried a 2TB Seagate in an HD and had trouble but that might have been because I didn't do the upgrade completely correctly, so I can't state for an absolute fact that the drive was at fault.

I have a WD20EADS in there now and it's working fine. Others have reported success with the WD20EARS. I suspect the WD20EACS would also work just fine.

All should have Intellipark disabled with the wdidle3 utility first, however.

If you only want to go with a 1TB drive, then perhaps the WD10EACS, EADS, or EARS.

If you go with a 1TB, you can use WinMFS to copy and expand and set the swap partition size at 1000MB, and it will not leave any unused space at the end of the drive to become an Apple Free partition.

This will "future-proof" you to a degree. When drive prices come down you can use jmfs to copy that 1TB to a 2TB and add a 16th MFS media partition.


----------

