# Swapping drives in a Roamio



## eboydog (Mar 24, 2006)

I swapped out a 1gb drive from Roamio Plus with a 3tb drive I had previously in a Roamio basic. Thought it went ok until I realized none of the recordings I had set were recording. By chance I went into the sys info screen and found that the TSN was missing??

When I did the swap it all worked until the last boot (box had to download a software update) but when it came up it told me there was hardware problem and I would need to reboot the Tivo. Do so and until now I thought I was ok until I found it wasn't recording anything.

I'm doing a clear an reset and see if that helps. Has anyone else seen this before?


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## eboydog (Mar 24, 2006)

Ok, the clear and reset fixed it. I thought I should have done that first but since it first appeared to work I didn't worry about it.


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## nooneuknow (Feb 5, 2011)

eboydog said:


> Ok, the clear and reset fixed it. I thought I should have done that first but since it first appeared to work I didn't worry about it.


The way I see it, the next time some new member wanders in, and asks "Can I just put the drive I had in Roamio A into Roamio B, and...?", there's a thread for that, just post a link here. As you have found out, the C&DE rules still apply to Roamio drives formatted by a different TSN, but taken to a level where it's best to just wipe the first 64 blocks of the drive, or use the retailer reset KS method to force the Roamio to deal with that.

Just erasing the first 64 blocks of the drive would have probably avoided the hassle, like telemark is always saying to do. I usually say zero the whole drive, and read the whole thing too, just to know the drive can write/read all sectors without issue (when I can wait 12-14 hours for both tests to finish on 3TB drives). As it turns-out, it works best to do the read test, then the write test. WD WinDLG finds bad and/or suspect sectors on the read pass, then deals with them (recover or reallocate) on the write pass. It's a good idea to use Win7/8 management performance tools to monitor the throughput, access times, and so on, while the passes are running, as there is such a thing as a drive that passes all the tests, has perfect SMART values, but would underperform in a TiVo (I've found two like this, so far). Of course, there are tools out there that can just do mostly all of this (sometimes more) with a few clicks per test...

The thing I should be trying to find out, is if I can take a borderline (slow to read some sectors) drive, DD clone it sector by sector to the same model drive, with a different serial number, and then put the clone into the TiVo, and have everything "just work", retaining cablecad pairing would be a bonus... I guess I'll just have to add that to my To Do List, which is only getting longer...

Anandtech has some good articles on a new slew of drives that just came out, making what I recently bought a bunch of, now "the older ones".


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## telemark (Nov 12, 2013)

Moving between a Base vs a Pro/Plus, I would lean toward forcing a reformat over a C&DE.

I don't know what's the difference or if it matters, but I noticed there is different software between those two groups of models.

If I had to guess, I would assume it's related to the Tivo Stream. If you test the Stream and it's fine, I guess there's not much else that might matter.


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## nooneuknow (Feb 5, 2011)

telemark said:


> Moving between a Base vs a Pro/Plus, I would lean toward forcing a reformat over a C&DE.
> 
> I don't know what's the difference or if it matters, but I noticed there is different software between those two groups of models.
> 
> If I had to guess, I would assume it's related to the Tivo Stream. If you test the Stream and it's fine, I guess there's not much else that might matter.


Yeah, that's a very good point. I must go flog myself for not including that in my post. 

Same *exact* model, different TSN, needs a C&DE at bare minimum [Edit] (best to just wipe first 64 blocks, or use retailer reformat KS function) [/EDIT].

Different models should have first 64 blocks wiped, or (even better) a wiped drive. Then the TiVo "formats" (prepares/partitions) the drive like it was blank.

Quick and "trust the drive" way is wipe the first 64 blocks (or abort the write test after a minute of running, which wipes even more).

My way, after trusting the drives too many times, is 12-14 hours of factory diags, and setting up the computer management performance monitor to draw a graphical representation of how the drive is performing (or not).

Seriously, it sucks to be pulling drives out at 3 and 6 months, to find no bad sectors, but 20-40 MB/s loss of throughput across the drive, complete with extra-slow zones... To make it worse, WD has completely redone their "support portal", and I'm not getting that extra level of support that the Red NAS was sold as having (and still is, but now with NASware 3.0)...

The reviews on WD are still in the toilet, and everybody is saying "run all the tests before using!" Newegg is still clearing out the NASware 2.0 drives, so buyer beware of new-old-stock, when shopping. It looks like everything WD, except the Purple Surveillance drives, is getting a refresh, along with the platter density boost to 1.2GB with PMR, and up to 6TB already for sale, but not yet in the search indexes (if you look in the "WD Store" section on Newegg, the new ones are there).

I need some sleep. Later... <grumble>


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## eboydog (Mar 24, 2006)

So far so good, I haven't tested the stream out but I did pull up the sysinfo web page and noticed it did have a odd status msg which I can't recall off the top of my head.

Btw this that Roamio Plus that was.mentioned in a thread a few weeks ago that had a blown power supply after a.lighting storm, so far after replacing the PS it appears good, knock on wood....

Someone asked awhlile back what does a C&R do to the drive, but does it format it? Darn thing took a long time to finish considering it had no recordings on it.

Mentioning that there is a different software loaded depending on the Roamio reminded me of DVR_Dudes eBay auctions as his descriptions of his Roamio 4tb drives describes 3 separate versions that are not compatible with each other as he doesn't offer one version for the three models.

I suspect I may end up pulling the drive and wipe it with zeros then reinstall it just to be safe, I didn't do anything to it not to test anything but more because I was lazy. I never tested it when I installed it the basic and had no issues.

Is the community 4tb imaige ready for Windows os prep yet? I'm tempted to try it but not sure as chances are I'm going sell this plus if it checks out ok so I'm not sure if I want to sell it with a 4tb drive unless.I can pick up a drive cheap enough including not sure if it would be cool to turn it loose to someone who wasn't familer with prepping the drive later should they have problems.


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## telemark (Nov 12, 2013)

> Someone asked awhlile back what does a C&R do to the drive, but does it format it? Darn thing took a long time to finish considering it had no recordings on it.


Ya, don't know what it's doing that could take so long. Do know it's NOT reformatting.



> Mentioning that there is a different software loaded depending on the Roamio reminded me of DVR_Dudes eBay auctions as his descriptions of his Roamio 4tb drives describes 3 separate versions that are not compatible with each other as he doesn't offer one version for the three models.


The differences might be minor but figuring it out is searching for a needle in a haystack, so who knows.



> I suspect I may end up pulling the drive and wipe it with zeros then reinstall it just to be safe, I didn't do anything to it not to test anything but more because I was lazy. I never tested it when I installed it the basic and had no issues.


The factory reset kickstart code has been deciphered and it does basically this.


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## eboydog (Mar 24, 2006)

After the C&R I did last night, the Stream appears ok so. At first it "glitched" as when it found it had a odd name which I think was the name of the Tivo before I assigned it a different name and after a few seconds of streaming the Stream rebooted but after it came back up it had the proper name it was assigned.

I'm going to leave it be for awhile, I'm throwing all I can at keeping it busy recording to see if anything else appears.

Now if Tivo will get off their butts and release Android streaming.....

<Edit>

I may have to do something, the Stream keeps rebooting so something isn't right. It will stream a few minutes and reboot


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## ggieseke (May 30, 2008)

eboydog said:


> After the C&R I did last night, the Stream appears ok so. At first it "glitched" as when it found it had a odd name which I think was the name of the Tivo before I assigned it a different name and after a few seconds of streaming the Stream rebooted but after it came back up it had the proper name it was assigned.
> 
> I'm going to leave it be for awhile, I'm throwing all I can at keeping it busy recording to see if anything else appears.
> 
> ...


If it's acting weird, I'd let it rebuild the drive from scratch before you get too much further down the road. Wiping the first few bytes on the drive should be sufficient.


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## telemark (Nov 12, 2013)

When you're ready to wipe it and if don't want to take it out of the Tivo:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=518961


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## eboydog (Mar 24, 2006)

telemark said:


> When you're ready to wipe it and if don't want to take it out of the Tivo:
> http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=518961


Trying the retailer reset KS now.....


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## eboydog (Mar 24, 2006)

I have seen this mentioned but what is the reason the "data" info in cable card info get's changed when the hard drive is modified?

My simple user logic would suggest that once the cable co pairs the card, it would stay paired but of course that doesn't. 

Fortunately for me with Mediacom whom I have, getting the card re-paired isn't a problem as the online forum support actually know what they are doing and I can request card pairing 24/7


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## eboydog (Mar 24, 2006)

Retailer reset seems to have fixed my Stream rebooting but I'm seeing my play back stop and ask if I want to delete now or continue recording if I start watching "live" and it stops and asks if I want to keep or delete existing recordings before they have been watched. I believe my latest issue is common Stream bug as I don't use Stream much and I think I have seen others complaining about this.


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## nooneuknow (Feb 5, 2011)

telemark said:


> When you're ready to wipe it and if don't want to take it out of the Tivo:
> http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=518961


Just to try to be clear on this: Is anybody sure that does a true full wipe? If it doesn't take 5-6 hours on a 3TB drive, it can't be a full wipe, with either zeroes, or randomized data.

I'd expect it to simply force re-"formatting" the drive, creating a new sector zero, along with file system structures and whatever else a TiVo would do with a never-written drive. TiVo's "formatting" time on a 3TB drive, is far too fast to be a full wipe, or a repartitioning with a full verify pass.

I've always wondered what, exactly, a C&DE does at the sector level. Since using a C&DE doesn't reduce image/backup sizes after using it, and doesn't improve compression, if archiving/compressing the image/backup, it would seem that it's not writing zeroes. I'd guess it writes random data, to insure nothing on the drive, related the the TSN/account/recordings/content, is recoverable (there's privacy/security issues, otherwise). It can't even be doing so to the whole drive, or it would take at least 5-6 hours on a 3TB drive. I'd guess it only randomizes sectors known to have data on them.

I've done my best to be non-argumentative, and state what are observations, and guessing, on my part. I just want to be as clear as I can be on these things, without needlessly doing work others have already done, to see what is what.


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## telemark (Nov 12, 2013)

Not a full wipe.

It wipes the first 64 blocks with zeros, which is the Block 0 and APM.

That forces building a new APM, building new ext filesystems and MFS and databases.
Yes, it treats it like a blank drive, even though it's not a blank drive.

This used to bother at first cause the next APM will have the same offsets, so if there's ever a bug in one of the filesystems, it could revive stale data. But I stopped worrying about that case, considering a developer at Tivo does their wipes that way, they should have seen obvious problems early on.

Dunno what C&DE is doing but considering it's time, it might be doing Garbage Collection or auditing some databases. Still doesn't make perfect sense.


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## nooneuknow (Feb 5, 2011)

eboydog said:


> I have seen this mentioned but what is the reason the "data" info in cable card info get's changed when the hard drive is modified?
> 
> My simple user logic would suggest that once the cable co pairs the card, it would stay paired but of course that doesn't.
> 
> Fortunately for me with Mediacom whom I have, getting the card re-paired isn't a problem as the online forum support actually know what they are doing and I can request card pairing 24/7


I believe TiVo tries to prevent people from just filling drives, then installing another, and repeating, to make an archive out of drives (to just swap in and out). I believe cablecard tries to make sure it remains in use with only the hardware it was paired to, and authorized to operate with.

I had asked around, and was told "Data ID" is only present on Motorola cards, and not Cisco/SA ones (I think an equivalent is there, but is not identifiable as such, or is a hidden value).

Part of this is the cablecard having some data about the pairing stored on the drive, and part is each newly "formatted" by Roamio drive getting a unique signature value/hash assigned to it.

Some of this I'm sure of, some it seems has just been accepted as true, but not truly verified.


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

nooneuknow said:


> I believe TiVo tries to prevent people from just filling drives, then installing another, and repeating, to make an archive out of drives (to just swap in and out). I believe cablecard tries to make sure it remains in use with only the hardware it was paired to, and authorized to operate with.
> 
> I had asked around, and was told "Data ID" is only present on Motorola cards, and not Cisco/SA ones (I think an equivalent is there, but is not identifiable as such, or is a hidden value).
> 
> ...


I did by accident find that upgrading a Roamio drive did not require the cable card to be re-authorized, this only happened one time, never tried it again. This was my first Roamio Plus and I wanted to make sure all was working before upgrading the drive, so I activated the CC on the original drive and after about a month of no problems I upgraded the drive and found the CC still paired.

For me it was a Moto card by Comcast Hartford CT


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## telemark (Nov 12, 2013)

lessd said:


> I did by accident find that upgrading a Roamio drive did not require the cable card to be re-authorized...


Maybe we should start the practice of specifying the brand of CC or CableCo, in case there was different results based on that.

Idk, I haven't looked into it before.


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## eboydog (Mar 24, 2006)

lessd said:


> I did by accident find that upgrading a Roamio drive did not require the cable card to be re-authorized, this only happened one time, never tried it again. This was my first Roamio Pro and I wanted to make sure all was working before upgrading the drive, so I activated the CC on the original drive and after about a month of no problems I upgraded the drive and found the CC still paired.


It depends on the cable provider and your cable channel lineup. Mine for example includes just about all channel packages in addition to a couple movie channel packs, I can swap cable cards into any TiVo and still receive all my major channels without having the card paired but the movie channels won't work unless I have the card 're-paired. If it wasn't for my movie channels, I wouldn't have to worry about pairing after changing drives.

Now for me, this only changed in Jan 2014 as prior to that even movie premium channels would work once the card was initially paired, in that same month my cable provider started setting the copy once restrictions for movie channels so in not totally understanding the types of card pairing processes, up to this last Jan, I had no card issues either but prior, I could copy anything I wanted off the TiVo too! Of course all this happened the same time my cable co started offering their custom TiVo service and needed to cripple the retail TiVo to make theirs look better.


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## nooneuknow (Feb 5, 2011)

lessd said:


> I did by accident find that upgrading a Roamio drive did not require the cable card to be re-authorized, this only happened one time, never tried it again. This was my first Roamio Plus and I wanted to make sure all was working before upgrading the drive, so I activated the CC on the original drive and after about a month of no problems I upgraded the drive and found the CC still paired.
> 
> For me it was a Moto card by Comcast Hartford CT


Some words, just as data-points, not meant to be argumentative:

IIRC, for every post I have brought the many different ways I could find myself having to re-pair the cablecard, or advising others they will likely need to, there's a post from you saying that the opposite. IIRC, your cable network doesn't require pairing and authorization for anything except premium channels. IIRC, this pairing ping-pong match between us has dated to before the Roamio.

Pairing has two parts to it, pairing and authorization. Sometimes a card will pair, but not get the auth.

I have found (in my set of variables), that I can do a C&DE and not lose my pairing/auth, which has only happened with my Roamios. I've also had Cox unpair the card in their system, leave it that way, and not lose the pairing on my end. I had to try hours worth of things to get it unpaired on my end.

Some variables at play here are your cable provider, regional market of said provider, brand of card, and now Roamio or not Roamio.

How long ago have you done this, and have you rechecked the status of the card very recently? All cards have a MSO-set period of time they will stay paired/auth, until that period passes without detecting a renewal packet. Timeout/expiration can be due to something like having the coax-in disconnected, the card removed and shelved (then reinserted), or a number of other scenarios.

I would like to come up with ways of talking cablecard pairing/auth, that don't require two or more people always posting the opposite of experiences. I'm not saying you are wrong or mistaken.

I'm with Cox, using all Cisco/SA equipment, in the southern Nevada market (which is nearly identical to the Cox Phoenix, AZ market).


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

nooneuknow said:


> How long ago have you done this, and have you rechecked the status of the card very recently? All cards have a MSO-set period of time they will stay paired/auth, until that period passes without detecting a renewal packet. Timeout/expiration can be due to something like having the coax-in disconnected, the card removed and shelved (then reinserted), or a number of other scenarios.
> 
> I would like to come up with ways of talking cablecard pairing/auth, that don't require two or more people always posting the opposite of experiences. I'm not saying you are wrong or mistaken.
> 
> I'm with Cox, using all Cisco/SA equipment, in the southern Nevada market (which is nearly identical to the Cox Phoenix, AZ market).


I did my Roamio upgrade about September 2013 when I did not have to re-pair the cable card (the VAL had the* V* not the* ?* the card was a Moto). My systems Cable cards have a time out of about 45 days, after 45 days of no connection to the Comcast head end all you can get is the network basic stations, takes a phone call to Comcast or let the TiVo run for about 4 or 5 days and all the stations come back, if the card is not paired (VAL=?) you will not get the premium stations like HBO, but I will get the extended basic stations like CNN. This is only one person experience on one Comcast system in Hartford CT, YMMV. One of my TiVos is in a guest room unplugged until I have guest coming over, I then plug it in about a week in advance so all the stations are received when my guest arrive.


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