# Which external HD can I add to my Bolt, now that WD does no longer...



## GOW

Which external HD can I add to my Bolt, now that WD does no longer makes the DVR expander HD's with eSata. They now only make USB 3 external drives. The few HD DVR Expander drives for sale are all $300 and over for a mere 1TB.

Can I use an internal drive in a case with eSata?


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## Mikeguy

The standard recommendation here is, replace the current internal drive with a larger capacity drive. Relatively easy to do (undo a screw, pop the lid off, unscrew the drive and replace with the new, and reverse--the system will automatically prepare the drive). The drive of choice: a Toshiba 3TB.

Tivo Bolt hard drive replacement video


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## GOW

I understand that I will loose my warranty when i replace the internal HD. That's why i was looking for an external drive.


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## Mikeguy

That issue has been discussed here, good point.

Remember that the warranty is 1-year; some people might wait until that point, to sub in a new drive.

My take-away from the earlier discussion: while TiVo could assert a break of the warranty, it typically has looked the other way. The occasions this has become an issue have tended to be where the user has called the hard drive to TiVo's attention or otherwise has created an issue. People often will hold on to the original hard drive in case warranty service is needed, and put the original back on that occasion.


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## Kimo

On a related note, for those of us who actually DO still own the old WD DVR Expanders (mine are so old that they are the earliest 500G units, but they've worked flawlessly on my Series 3 HD boxes), will these work in the Bolts or not? 
I recognize that no recorded shows will be transferred, and that's OK, but I've seen posts that advise along the full spectrum from *NO *they won't work at all through *YES *they'll work but you need to modify/buy a new SATA cable through *YES*, just plug and play and they'll work.
Does anyone know for sure, before I take down the old systems?
Thanks


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## atmuscarella

Kimo said:


> On a related note, for those of us who actually DO still own the old WD DVR Expanders (mine are so old that they are the earliest 500G units, but they've worked flawlessly on my Series 3 HD boxes), will these work in the Bolts or not?
> I recognize that no recorded shows will be transferred, and that's OK, but I've seen posts that advise along the full spectrum from *NO *they won't work at all through *YES *they'll work but you need to modify/buy a new SATA cable through *YES*, just plug and play and they'll work.
> Does anyone know for sure, before I take down the old systems?
> Thanks


Yes the old WD 500GB/1TB units work with the Bolts and Yes you *may* need to get a different eSATA cable. If your eSATA cable doesn't work (Bolt doesn't see your unit after a reboot) call TiVo and ask for a free updated eSATA cable, so far they have provided the updated cables for free. My 1TB unit moved from my Series 3 worked without issues on my Bolt, but I think I had gotten another cable at some point in the past do to issues with the original cable.


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## Kimo

atmuscarella said:


> Yes the old WD 500GB/1TB units work with the Bolts and Yes you *may* need to get a different eSATA cable. If your eSATA cable doesn't work (Bolt doesn't see your unit after a reboot) call TiVo and ask for a free updated eSATA cable, so far they have provided the updated cables for free. My 1TB unit moved from my Series 3 worked without issues on my Bolt, but I think I had gotten another cable at some point in the past do to issues with the original cable.


Thanks for this info. I now recall seeing a thread where the connector end (at the Bolt side) was trimmed/shaved so that it would fit.
Nevertheless, I am now fully committed to holding my breath until TiVo sends me this updated eSATA cable . . .


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## jkeese01

My Bolt finally saw the WD external hard drive with the same cable I used on the Series 3. Make sure to firmly press the cable into the Bolt (per Weaknees). I rebooted the Bolt a few times and was planning to just leave it on and see what would happen. About 30 minutes later I preformed the add an external drive procedure again. The Bolt rebooted itself, then a message appeared on the screen with the good news.


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## Kimo

jkeese01 said:


> My Bolt finally saw the WD external hard drive with the same cable I used on the Series 3. Make sure to firmly press the cable into the Bolt (per Weaknees). I rebooted the Bolt a few times and was planning to just leave it on and see what would happen. About 30 minutes later I preformed the add an external drive procedure again. The Bolt rebooted itself, then a message appeared on the screen with the good news.


Thanks for this info. Now I see why some earlier threads indicate that the Bolt end of the cable was trimmed a bit - although it is clear that yours worked without trimming. Just don't ever let that drive move even a fraction of an inch


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## Welshdog

I have one of the WD MyDVR drives, but I think there is something wrong with the drive. When connected to my old Series 3 it will cause crashing. Disconnected and unpaired from the WD, the Tivo runs great. I believe the drive was damaged when the Tivo had a failing power supply - now fixed.

Anyone know if I can replace the drive inside the housing? If so what drive can be used?

I'd like to fix this thing to use either on my Bolt or back on the old Series 3. 

Thanks!


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## ggieseke

Welshdog said:


> I have one of the WD MyDVR drives, but I think there is something wrong with the drive. When connected to my old Series 3 it will cause crashing. Disconnected and unpaired from the WD, the Tivo runs great. I believe the drive was damaged when the Tivo had a failing power supply - now fixed.
> 
> Anyone know if I can replace the drive inside the housing? If so what drive can be used?
> 
> I'd like to fix this thing to use either on my Bolt or back on the old Series 3.
> 
> Thanks!


TiVo's "whitelist" for external drives is based on the model number and firmware version of the drive itself. It's extremely unlikely that you could find an exact match.


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## bcnyc

My old Premiere (activated 1/2012) just died (in a puff of acrid smoke, so I don't think there's a possible repair there!)

I'm going to get a Bolt. I have a working 1TB WD SATA DVR Expander, but it's obviously old (5 years, i think). If i open up my old WD external drive and replace the 1TB with a new bare drive, will it work on the Bolt? Or is the drive married to the case.

I'm not looking to open the Bolt until after 1 year warranty expires.


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## Welshdog

bcnyc said:


> My old Premiere (activated 1/2012) just died (in a puff of acrid smoke, so I don't think there's a possible repair there!)
> 
> I'm going to get a Bolt. I have a working 1TB WD SATA DVR Expander, but it's obviously old (5 years, i think). If i open up my old WD external drive and replace the 1TB with a new bare drive, will it work on the Bolt? Or is the drive married to the case.
> 
> I'm not looking to open the Bolt until after 1 year warranty expires.


Pretty sure the drive is part of a set of serial numbers that Tivo put in their acceptable external drive database. Replacing the drive will render it unusable by Tivos (Bolt included) that only accept "approved" external drives. Some of the older Tivos like the series 3 and HD would accept any external drive within certain technical parameters.


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## ggieseke

bcnyc said:


> My old Premiere (activated 1/2012) just died (in a puff of acrid smoke, so I don't think there's a possible repair there!)
> 
> I'm going to get a Bolt. I have a working 1TB WD SATA DVR Expander, but it's obviously old (5 years, i think). If i open up my old WD external drive and replace the 1TB with a new bare drive, will it work on the Bolt? Or is the drive married to the case.
> 
> I'm not looking to open the Bolt until after 1 year warranty expires.


Won't work unless the new drive has a model / firmware that's on the whitelist. None of them have been made for years, so that's extremely unlikely.


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## Welshdog

As I mentioned back in April I have an old WD Extender of questionable functionality. I connected it to my Bolt (after shaving down the eSATA connector using a Microplane kitchen grater) and it is recognized as being connected. Will the Bolt perform any sort of testing of this drive before the pairing process? Since I am unsure of this drive's quality I'm hoping the Bolt will find bad blocks, etc before using it.


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## dianebrat

Welshdog said:


> As I mentioned back in April I have an old WD Extender of questionable functionality. I connected it to my Bolt (after shaving down the eSATA connector using a Microplane kitchen grater) and it is recognized as being connected. Will the Bolt perform any sort of testing of this drive before the pairing process? Since I am unsure of this drive's quality I'm hoping the Bolt will find bad blocks, etc before using it.


I'd test it on a PC first with the manufacturer diagnostics before putting it on the Tivo,


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## idksmy

Welshdog said:


> As I mentioned back in April I have an old WD Extender of questionable functionality.


I think this is a really bad idea. As I recall, if the external HD dies, you lose all recordings. The risk to replace the internal drive, IMO, is less than connecting an old WD Extender of questionable functionality.


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## Mikeguy

As to purchasing: you might want to wait until next month, to see if TiVo has another "White sale" as it did last year, starting mid-Nov. It was pretty good.


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## bcnyc

Thanks! 

I've had a tivo for ... at least since the HR10, so it's tough going without. Does anyone know if there were any Bolts in last year's Tivo White Sale? I could find that they had Roamios, but I'm getting a 4K TV soon, so want to go with at least a 1TB Bolt.

These are running $228 on the big A right now, plus service fee, and unless someone thinks Tivo might offer a lifetime deal, i think this price is fair.


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## shwru980r

bcnyc said:


> My old Premiere (activated 1/2012) just died (in a puff of acrid smoke, so I don't think there's a possible repair there!)
> 
> I'm going to get a Bolt. I have a working 1TB WD SATA DVR Expander, but it's obviously old (5 years, i think). If i open up my old WD external drive and replace the 1TB with a new bare drive, will it work on the Bolt? Or is the drive married to the case.
> 
> I'm not looking to open the Bolt until after 1 year warranty expires.


If you have to go to the trouble of opening up the external drive enclosure that is several years old to replace the hard drive, you might as well open up the bolt and replace the hard drive.


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## Mikeguy

bcnyc said:


> Thanks!
> 
> I've had a tivo for ... at least since the HR10, so it's tough going without. Does anyone know if there were any Bolts in last year's Tivo White Sale? I could find that they had Roamios, but I'm getting a 4K TV soon, so want to go with at least a 1TB Bolt.
> 
> These are running $228 on the big A right now, plus service fee, and unless someone thinks Tivo might offer a lifetime deal, i think this price is fair.


I don't have last year's White sale ad in front of me, but found comments here that the Bolt was available, as I had thought, one person noting that the 500 gig Bolt with Lifetime was $509. ROMAIO NEVER ACTIVATED JOKE


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## bcnyc

I went with Bolt from Amazon, now just have to do the long call with Spectrum/TWC to get the tuner box to work with the new Tivo.


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## T-Shee

bcnyc said:


> I went with Bolt from Amazon, now just have to do the long call with Spectrum/TWC to get the tuner box to work with the new Tivo.


If by "tuner box" you mean Tuning Adapter, the old TA should work without a phone call (at least that's what they told me when I was on the phone with Spectrum to get the cable card paired to the Bolt about 10 days ago. )

Spectrum/TWC seem to have gotten their act together regarding cable cards in the last five years. The call took about 5 minutes. Maybe less. I was shocked, also expecting the "long call", but it didn't happen. Hopefully, you will experience the same 5 minutes and done too.


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## Welshdog

dianebrat said:


> I'd test it on a PC first with the manufacturer diagnostics before putting it on the Tivo,


I'd like to do that, but I couldn't find software on the WD website that clearly was for this purpose. Plus I tried plugging the drive into the internal SATA ports on the Dell Precision Workstation 360 - nothing. No errors, no mount, nothing. The drive is powered and spinning. In fact if I plug it into a Tivo it is recognized as being available to add. I really do want to test this thing before I consider putting back on a Tivo.


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## m.s

Welshdog said:


> I'd like to do that, but I couldn't find software on the WD website that clearly was for this purpose. Plus I tried plugging the drive into the internal SATA ports on the Dell Precision Workstation 360 - nothing. No errors, no mount, nothing. The drive is powered and spinning. In fact if I plug it into a Tivo it is recognized as being available to add. I really do want to test this thing before I consider putting back on a Tivo.


Manufacturer diags don't need the drive to mount, they access it at a low level. And TiVo drives don't use the old standard DOS partition tables (MBR), or even the newer GPT ones. They use the Apple Partition Map format, which Windows won't recognize. Even if it did, the format of the partitions themselves isn't something Windows would recognize (ext2 or MFS). So, TiVo drives shouldn't be expected to mount on a Windows PC.


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## Welshdog

m.s said:


> Manufacturer diags don't need the drive to mount, they access it at a low level. And TiVo drives don't use the old standard DOS partition tables (MBR), or even the newer GPT ones. They use the Apple Partition Map format, which Windows won't recognize. Even if it did, the format of the partitions themselves isn't something Windows would recognize (ext2 or MFS). So, TiVo drives shouldn't be expected to mount on a Windows PC.


I figured that, but I thought it would at least recognize that a device was connected and offer to format it. For clarity - I connected to a SATA port on the motherboard with a STAT to ESATA cable. The cable is new so I don't really know if it works. Also unknown is if I need to do something to "activate" the SATA ports. These ports are not being used by the computer - it's configured with a PATA setup. Also has SCSI card and Firewire card neither of which are being used.

I'll keep looking for some software.


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## shwru980r

Welshdog said:


> I figured that, but I thought it would at least recognize that a device was connected and offer to format it. For clarity - I connected to a SATA port on the motherboard with a STAT to ESATA cable. The cable is new so I don't really know if it works. Also unknown is if I need to do something to "activate" the SATA ports. These ports are not being used by the computer - it's configured with a PATA setup. Also has SCSI card and Firewire card neither of which are being used.
> 
> I'll keep looking for some software.


I recently used the Western Digital Data Lifeguard utility to test a drive that did not show up under windows explorer. The drive showed up in the data lifeguard utility.


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## kpeters59

Welshdog said:


> I figured that, but I thought it would at least recognize that a device was connected and offer to format it. For clarity - I connected to a SATA port on the motherboard with a STAT to ESATA cable. The cable is new so I don't really know if it works. Also unknown is if I need to do something to "activate" the SATA ports. These ports are not being used by the computer - it's configured with a PATA setup. Also has SCSI card and Firewire card neither of which are being used.
> 
> I'll keep looking for some software.


 Your _clarity_ needs a little work...(you know you can edit posts, right?)

It's not uncommon for SATA ports to be disabled in the computer BIOS. Also, sometimes Secure Boot won't allow unknown drives to be detected. Otherwise, the Disk should show in Windows Disk Management.

-KP


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## Welshdog

kpeters59 said:


> Your _clarity_ needs a little work...(you know you can edit posts, right?)
> 
> It's not uncommon for SATA ports to be disabled in the computer BIOS. Also, sometimes Secure Boot won't allow unknown drives to be detected. Otherwise, the Disk should show in Windows Disk Management.
> 
> -KP


On further examination the system boots from a drive on the SCSI card. So the SATA ports are probably disabled. Any simple way to enable them?


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## kpeters59

The only way I know of is to access the setting in the System Bios.

You're really running SCSI?

-KP


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## Welshdog

Welshdog said:


> On further examination the system boots from a drive on the SCSI card. So the SATA ports are probably disabled. Any simple way to enable them?


I ran the WD utility and it saw the primary drive but no other drives. I think kpeters is right, the SATA ports are not enabled. I did a bit of research and found no easy way to get them working - most people who tried had nothing but problems. i'll find another way.


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## kpeters59

You activate them from the BIOS. It's easy.

-KP


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## Welshdog

kpeters59 said:


> You activate them from the BIOS. It's easy.
> 
> -KP


That worked. Tests are running. Thanks for the tips.


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