# TiVo HD HDD Upgrade Help Needed!



## TargetYou (Apr 7, 2015)

Hello everyone.

I have a TiVo HD with the original HDD that is starting to go bad. I also have it paired to the compatible WD 1tb external drive that appears to be OK. 

I am looking at upgrading the internal drive to the 2tb WD20EURX. I understand that the HD can only read 2.2tb max, so I will have to use only the new internal going forward and not the external.

My question is how do I go about doing this once the drives comes in? I've been searching for a couple of hours and I cannot find an example like mine. I would like to copy both drives onto the new drive and retain all of my shows, settings, etc. 

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!


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## telemark (Nov 12, 2013)

Are you able to post the APM/partition map of the two existing drives?

pdisk, tdisk, jmfs, pmdmp are some utils that do this.


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## TargetYou (Apr 7, 2015)

telemark said:


> Are you able to post the APM/partition map of the two existing drives?
> 
> pdisk, tdisk, jmfs, pmdump are some utils that do this.


I would consider myself pretty computer savvy, but this is new territory for me. I'm not exactly sure how to go about posting the APM/partition maps.

I would love to find a guide on doing this with any of those programs so that I can see what I am getting into.

It seems that my TiVo sees the internal and external drives as one, so I'm pretty sure this can be done, just not sure how.


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## ThAbtO (Apr 6, 2000)

It would be best to download the shows to a PC or another Tivo. then, remove/divorce the external. Let it boot up without the external. How do you know its the internal that is failing and not the external. Chances are its the external failing. How long has it been connected? I had an external connected for about 3 yrs before it started to fail.

Using WinMFS, to backup, it can get everything. If the passes did not recover, it can be retrieved from tivo.com.


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## TargetYou (Apr 7, 2015)

It could very well be the external drive. It has been used and plugged in for about a year and a half. I just assumed it would be the internal because it is original to the TiVo HD. Either way, I still have the same goal of moving both drives to a new internal 2tb drive.

So do I essentially plug all 3 drives into a PC via SATA cables and use the WinMFS program to backup and move everything to the new drive?


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## ThAbtO (Apr 6, 2000)

WinMFS does not "merge" Tivo drives into one, and it would be very difficult to do that. Simply boot up the Tivo without the external to divorce them. You will lost recordings so if you can, download to a PC or another Tivo beforehand.


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## telemark (Nov 12, 2013)

You can merge two drives into one if the new one is large enough to fit both old ones.

The partition maps is one convincing way to tell you that.

You can boot the two old drives on a PC, with a Tivo-aware CD, or any linux live CD + download one of the utilities separately.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

A 2TB drive is big enough to hold everything on an original internal 250GB (TCD648250B), 160GB (TCD652160), or 1TB (TCD658000), plus the 1TB external, provided that WinMFS knows how to juggle all the partitions and pieces.

Since I've avoided externals, I've never been forced to run that particular experiment.

Next time I have to go look at something on spike's now dormant pages, I'll see if he says one way or the other.


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

It is possible to combine the two drives onto one large internal drive as long as the the size of the two drives is smaller than the one large drive. There is not a direct guide but can be done manually with a few tools. One is to get JMFS 1.05 and the other is iBored. (which are the tools I use to accomplish this)


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

jmbach said:


> It is possible to combine the two drives onto one large internal drive as long as the the size of the two drives is smaller than the one large drive. There is not a direct guide but can be done manually with a few tools. One is to get JMFS 1.05 and the other is iBored. (which are the tools I use to accomplish this)


Was that basically making the MFS pair on the external into the 3rd MFS pair on the bigger internal?


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

HDs are easier to do this on when using JMFS. You can do it on a 648 but after it is accomplished, no tools will like the drive anymore. 

Essentially what happens is that you copy the old internal to the new internal and then copy the external to the internal starting at the end of the original image. Them modify the APM manually to coalesce partitions so that you have no more than 14 partitions. Then expand it one last time to get the remaining space as recording space.


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