# Any DVR Dude 2TB upgrade experimenters?



## donnoh (Mar 7, 2008)

I'm wondering if anyone who has bought DVR Dudes 2 TB upgrade for the Premiere can report on it.
I broke down and bought a Premiere to play with and thought I'd upgrade the hard drive.
His price is pretty reasonable at $200.


----------



## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

donnoh said:


> I'm wondering if anyone who has bought DVR Dudes 2 TB upgrade for the Premiere can report on it.
> I broke down and bought a Premiere to play with and thought I'd upgrade the hard drive.
> His price is pretty reasonable at $200.


He's a top rated seller and has a 30 day exchange. I would have no issue buying one from him/her if I wanted to open my Premieres and also wanted a 2TB drive.. All the info is there. A good positive history and a long 30 day exchange policy. I see nothing to lose.


----------



## KenVa (Aug 31, 2005)

donnoh said:


> I'm wondering if anyone who has bought DVR Dudes 2 TB upgrade for the Premiere can report on it.
> I broke down and bought a Premiere to play with and thought I'd upgrade the hard drive.
> His price is pretty reasonable at $200.


You mean $299 Right?


----------



## Mike-Mike (Mar 2, 2010)

big fan


----------



## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

Have you had any TiVo software updates after putting in the drive ?


----------



## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

KenVa said:


> You mean $299 Right?


No it's $199 on sale this week. $20 off the normal price.


----------



## KenVa (Aug 31, 2005)

aaronwt said:


> No it's $199 on sale this week. $20 off the normal price.


My bad, I went to the wrong site. Thats starting to be a tempting price. Maybe a sign that a DIY solution will be coming soon.


----------



## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

So you have gotten at least one TiVo software update that worked OK on this 2Tb Drive.


----------



## rrr22777 (Jul 31, 2002)

Where is this "dude" on ebay?


----------



## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

Just do a search for 2TB Premiere. It will be at the top of the list.


----------



## philhu (Apr 11, 2001)

lessd said:


> So you have gotten at least one TiVo software update that worked OK on this 2Tb Drive.


Yes, I went from 14.1c to 14.4. No problems.

I got the $219 2tb upgrade, easy to do....No problems.

Are you saying the DVR Dude drive upgrades allow extranls storage without sending the tivo back, like weaknees does?

I can just plug in the external, and voila, it shows?


----------



## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

philhu said:


> Yes, I went from 14.1c to 14.4. No problems.
> 
> I got the $219 2tb upgrade, easy to do....No problems.
> 
> ...


Its good to know that this upgrade survived the software update, but i never said anything about any external drives upgrade, someone else must have said that.


----------



## rocko (Oct 29, 2002)

lessd said:


> Its good to know that this upgrade survived the software update, but i never said anything about any external drives upgrade, someone else must have said that.


That was will2be1

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=7956184#post7956184


----------



## donnoh (Mar 7, 2008)

I went ahead and ordered one of his 2TB drives today. When I first posted this he had 9 available, today he has 3 so a few more people have ordered them.
I'll report back how it goes. At this point I haven't even opened the box, much less get a cable card install scheduled. I think I'll get the box up and running for a couple of days before I install the new drive and if that works ok I'll schedule the cable card install.

I sent him an email asking about the hard drive he uses and he replied back that it's an Hitachi. I have an HD with a 1TB Hitachi drive that been running flawlessly for about a year and a half so I'm ok with it.


----------



## rogmatic (Sep 17, 2009)

I know this is posted somewhere on here, but will the normal Premiere take a 2TB drive, or do you need to have the XL?


----------



## KenVa (Aug 31, 2005)

rogmatic said:


> I know this is posted somewhere on here, but will the normal Premiere take a 2TB drive, or do you need to have the XL?


It seems so as dvrupgrade, weaknees, and dvrdude are all selling one for the normal Premiere.

I just keep hoping someone will figure out how the rest of us can just copy our existing disks to a larger disk.


----------



## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

rogmatic said:


> I know this is posted somewhere on here, but will the normal Premiere take a 2TB drive, or do you need to have the XL?


When weaknees broke the news that they were able to upgrade the drives in the Premieres, they showed a standard Premiere with the 2TB internal with 2TB external capacity:


----------



## richklein (Feb 9, 2001)

Hi,

I was just curious, what happens if the drive either fails in 6 months or a software upgrade makes the unit stop working?

Thanks,
Rich


----------



## jmill (Feb 22, 2010)

richklein said:


> Hi,
> 
> I was just curious, what happens if the drive either fails in 6 months or a software upgrade makes the unit stop working?
> 
> ...


You would hope that whoever you got the drive from won't tell you "go screw yourself". Otherwise, you would have to exchange the drive with them under warranty.


----------



## richklein (Feb 9, 2001)

So are people not interested in upgrading their premieres or is there just very little chatter about the process?


----------



## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

richklein said:


> So are people not interested in upgrading their premieres or is there just very little chatter about the process?


I might upgrade one. But I really only want a drive with two platters, so 1TB would be all I would use.

I think I might dump my monthly XL box when the contarct ends this Summer and upgrade one of my non XL boxes with a 1TB drive. So the sale of the XL box should pay for lifetime service on my non XL monthly box(which ends a month after teh XL)and the 1TB upgrade.

Of course if do it yourself tools comes out it woud be even cheaper since I have almost two dozen 1TB drives lying around from when I upgraded to 1.5TB and 2TB drives in my WHS.


----------



## reubanks (Feb 19, 2006)

What I'm curious about is why no Premier threads seem to show up in 'Recent Threads' on the main page.


----------



## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

reubanks said:


> What I'm curious about is why no Premier threads seem to show up in 'Recent Threads' on the main page.


the new ,replied to, threads show up for me in bold in the Premiere section of the forum.


----------



## richklein (Feb 9, 2001)

Aaron - I only have two premieres, you have a whole bunch. Do you think if you purchased on of the 1TB drives & used clonezilla, that you would be able to make copies for your other Tivo units?


----------



## reubanks (Feb 19, 2006)

aaronwt said:


> the new ,replied to, threads show up for me in bold in the Premiere section of the forum.


What I mean is, when you go to http://www.tivocommunity.com you see a lot of recent threads, but it doesn't show recent from the Premier board! (This is a new and recent posting on June 15, 2010. Go to the home page and see if it's there... Nope, lots of other threads from Series3, Help, DirecTV, etc. just no Premier.)

But to stay on topic, I plan on upgrading any Tivo Premiere I may end up buying... <grin>

Randy

PS. I love my 61" Samsung LED DLP!


----------



## HellFish (Jan 28, 2007)

aaronwt said:


> I might upgrade one. But I really only want a drive with two platters, so 1TB would be all I would use.


Aaron, why the change of heart regarding 2TB drives? I see in your sig & over at avs that you grabbed one. Does the 2TB drive only have two platters?


----------



## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

HellFish said:


> Aaron, why the change of heart regarding 2TB drives? I see in your sig & over at avs that you grabbed one. Does the 2TB drive only have two platters?


The largest platter available that I'm aware of is 500GB so the 2TB drive would have no less than four platters(although I never did check to see if it was four or five platters). And I was assured that the temperatures would be no issue. And they have not been any issue at all.

The Premiere with the 2TB drive is only 2 degrees higher than my non XL Premieres, and only one degree higher than my Premiere XL boxes.

I have been extremely pleased with the 2TB drive from dvr_dude. And if this copyright restriction does come to pass from FiOS, I will certainly be buying more drives from dvr_dude.


----------



## sakaike (Jan 22, 2002)

I'd like to also post a very positive experience with DVR Dude. I have two 2TB drives installed, one in a Tivo HD, the other in a Premiere. The first install was the HD. The first drive was corrupted. I shipped it back and DVR Dude replaced it same day (although he wouldn't cross-ship). He refunded me my full return shipping costs, and the second time was the charm.

On the Premiere, first time was the charm. Both units run cool and quiet, and I think the price is great. I get the impression (unverified) that this is a guy working out of his house, based on my Googling the return shipping address, and if so, I say more power to the little guys out there.

Oh yeah - His preferred drive is Hitachi, but if he runs out, he uses other brands as well...


----------



## Dvhsskater (Jun 16, 2010)

2 Tb thats nice


----------



## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

My second dvr_dude drive is in and has been working fine now for a couple of days. I picked up a 1TB drive. They were on sale on ebay so I decided to pick it up before the sale ended.


----------



## AbMagFab (Feb 5, 2001)

Getting to 2TB is only half the goal, isn't it? The main point is to DIY in case of drive failure.

Until that's out in the wild, I don't see too many people doing this. Sure, a few dozen might, but if you're comfortable opening up your TiVo, you're also more likely to want a way to handle failures.

Am I alone in this thinking?


----------



## Tivogre (Jul 12, 2002)

AbMagFab said:


> Getting to 2TB is only half the goal, isn't it? The main point is to DIY in case of drive failure.
> 
> Until that's out in the wild, I don't see too many people doing this. Sure, a few dozen might, but if you're comfortable opening up your TiVo, you're also more likely to want a way to handle failures.
> 
> Am I alone in this thinking?


2tb is perfectly DIY. You just need the image; that is publicly available.


----------



## AbMagFab (Feb 5, 2001)

Tivogre said:


> 2tb is perfectly DIY. You just need the image; that is publicly available.


A 2TB dd image, or a regular mfs image? If the former, that's not very practical. I was under the impression that mfs images/restores were not yet available for the premiere?


----------



## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

AbMagFab said:


> Getting to 2TB is only half the goal, isn't it? The main point is to DIY in case of drive failure.
> 
> Until that's out in the wild, I don't see too many people doing this. Sure, a few dozen might, but if you're comfortable opening up your TiVo, you're also more likely to want a way to handle failures.
> 
> Am I alone in this thinking?


Exactly my thinking. For one thing, I'd like to be able to copy my current data, even if I could live with it being expendable on the new S3. I also want to know that adding an external drive is understood and reproduce-able.

I got burned on my current S3 when I was assured I could expand the OEM drive after I added an external. I added the external 1TB as a Q&D fix. Then I found out that nobody knew how to replace the internal afterwards so I'm looking at losing everything and starting again after collecting copy- flagged content for years.

I'm currently thinking I'll go for DVRdude's drive only because I can't bear not having it maxed, not matter how much space I can make on the network. My original S3 is full to the brim and I keep adding more HD season passes. The only help I have is Comcast compressing HD content to point of unwatchoblity.  I'll have an antenna for OTA *real soon now*.


----------



## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

AbMagFab said:


> A 2TB dd image, or a regular mfs image? If the former, that's not very practical. I was under the impression that mfs images/restores were not yet available for the premiere?


I think you need a replacement kernel to support the using all the space in the greater than 1.1TB drive.


----------



## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

AbMagFab said:


> Getting to 2TB is only half the goal, isn't it? The main point is to DIY in case of drive failure.
> 
> Until that's out in the wild, I don't see too many people doing this. Sure, a few dozen might, but if you're comfortable opening up your TiVo, you're also more likely to want a way to handle failures.
> 
> Am I alone in this thinking?


I am with you, yes if I want to purchase another 2Tb drive to hold my DD image i could, but i don't consider that too practical as compared to WinMFS tools we now have for the Series 1,2,and 3. The upgrade to the Premiere does not do enough new for* me *and has some a few problems (*for me*) that may or may not be fixed in the next year. The only feature I really want is the PIPUI, I can live without that if needed.


----------



## djp (Feb 23, 2003)

AbMagFab said:


> Getting to 2TB is only half the goal, isn't it? The main point is to DIY in case of drive failure.
> 
> Until that's out in the wild, I don't see too many people doing this. Sure, a few dozen might, but if you're comfortable opening up your TiVo, you're also more likely to want a way to handle failures.
> 
> Am I alone in this thinking?


Just bought a Premiere (sending the THD off to college with the daughter--yes she's spoiled ) and I bought a 2TB DVRDude drive at the same time (it works great BTW, and installation was literally a 2 min job if you have Torx drivers). Would I prefer a Instant Cake solution? Absolutely. I created the 1 GB drive in the THD, and I had several DirectTivos and a Series 1 that I hacked to within an inch of their lives.

However, an HD Tivo without at least a 1TB in it is a non-starter (and for the same $200 I'd rather get 2TB rather than the 1TB in an XL), and since I can't dup the existing contents onto a new disk, installing it in the Premiere before I started using it in earnest was the only way to go. And I'm not really worried about it dying. If the disk dies, the contents are lost anyways. If the ability to create drives is in the wild by then (likely), then I'll make the replacement. If not, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. Out of the upteen DVRs and computers I've had in my life, I've had one (maybe two) drives fail. I'll take my chances.


----------



## AbMagFab (Feb 5, 2001)

djp said:


> Just bought a Premiere (sending the THD off to college with the daughter--yes she's spoiled ) and I bought a 2TB DVRDude drive at the same time (it works great BTW, and installation was literally a 2 min job if you have Torx drivers). Would I prefer a Instant Cake solution? Absolutely. I created the 1 GB drive in the THD, and I had several DirectTivos and a Series 1 that I hacked to within an inch of their lives.
> 
> However, an HD Tivo without at least a 1TB in it is a non-starter (and for the same $200 I'd rather get 2TB rather than the 1TB in an XL), and since I can't dup the existing contents onto a new disk, installing it in the Premiere before I started using it in earnest was the only way to go. And I'm not really worried about it dying. If the disk dies, the contents are lost anyways. If the ability to create drives is in the wild by then (likely), then I'll make the replacement. If not, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. Out of the upteen DVRs and computers I've had in my life, I've had one (maybe two) drives fail. I'll take my chances.


I agree, a 1TB Tivo is mostly useless for me, too. But I've had about a 5-10% overall drive failure rate, between my RAID arrays and Tivos. I don't mind that, but relying on a guy on eBay to ensure I have working Tivo's doesn't sit well with me.

I might reconsider if the Premiere was firing on even half of its cylinders, but as it is, it's just not worth it at this point. Hopefully a DIY solution will be available soon though.


----------



## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

Wow! a 5&#37; to 10% failure rate is huge. With well over 100 Western Digital Hard drives used this century, my failure rate is below 2%. And those were drives that had issues right out of the static packaging. They were never put in service. The 100+ WD drives I put in service have been rock solid this century.
And one of those failures was probably my fault when I broke the connector right after opening the bag. But WD still replaced it under warranty.

I've also had no issues with the dozen or so hitachi drives I've used. The drives I got from dvr_dude were also Hitachi so hopefully the live up to the other Hitachi drives I've used.


----------



## AbMagFab (Feb 5, 2001)

aaronwt said:


> Wow! a 5% to 10% failure rate is huge. With well over 100 Western Digital Hard drives used this century, my failure rate is below 2%. And those were drives that had issues right out of the static packaging. They were never put in service. The 100+ WD drives I put in service have been rock solid this century.
> And one of those failures was probably my fault when I broke the connector right after opening the bag. But WD still replaced it under warranty.
> 
> I've also had no issues with the dozen or so hitachi drives I've used. The drives I got from dvr_dude were also Hitachi so hopefully the live up to the other Hitachi drives I've used.


I've had probably 100+ drives in the last 10 years as well. Easily 1 out of 20 are DOA (full surface scan on every new drive). And then ~1 out of 20 fail along the way.

5% = 5 out of 100 drives. If you're seriously saying you've had 1-2 drive failures/DOAs in the last 10 years, consider yourself very lucky.


----------



## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

yes, 2&#37;


----------



## HellFish (Jan 28, 2007)

djp said:


> Just bought a Premiere (sending the THD off to college with the daughter--yes she's spoiled ) and I bought a 2TB DVRDude drive at the same time (it works great BTW, and installation was literally a 2 min job if you have Torx drivers). Would I prefer a Instant Cake solution? Absolutely. I created the 1 GB drive in the THD, and I had several DirectTivos and a Series 1 that I hacked to within an inch of their lives.
> 
> However, an HD Tivo without at least a 1TB in it is a non-starter (and for the same $200 I'd rather get 2TB rather than the 1TB in an XL), and since I can't dup the existing contents onto a new disk, installing it in the Premiere before I started using it in earnest was the only way to go.


I am in the same situation as djp. We just received the Tivo earlier this week, and a 2TB drive is on the way. I'll be installing the new drive before we have the cable card installed.

*edit:* since the new drive is only $210 for 2TB, I don't have much of a problem purchasing it, instead of waiting for a DIY method. I got a really good deal on the TiVo (thanks to my employer), so my total spent on the Premiere + 2TB is still less than the street price for the Premiere.


----------



## jespenshade (Jul 26, 2009)

If I buy a 2TB drive for 1 of my Premieres (320GB), could I DD the DVR Dude drive to copy the contents onto another blank 2TB drive for use in another Premiere I own?


----------



## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

jespenshade said:


> If I buy a 2TB drive for 1 of my Premieres (320GB), could I DD the DVR Dude drive to copy the contents onto another blank 2TB drive for use in another Premiere I own?


Yes you could, but your screwing DVR Dude. Hay you could start selling them on E-Bay if you wanted.
If you purchased a great DVD movie and asked, on this Forum, if you could copy it so your kids (in their own home) could have the movie also, someone on this Forum could say yes, but that doesn't make it moral.
I am not telling you that I would (or would not) not copy the drive myself if I had two TP TiVos, I just would not post my intentions on any public Forum.


----------



## matguy (Jul 20, 2004)

lessd said:


> Yes you could, but your screwing DVR Dude. Hay you could start selling them on E-Bay if you wanted.
> If you purchased a great DVD movie and asked, on this Forum, if you could copy it so your kids (in their own home) could have the movie also, someone on this Forum could say yes, but that doesn't make it moral.
> I am not telling you that I would (or would not) not copy the drive myself if I had two TP TiVos, I just would not post my intentions on any public Forum.


I don't know if there's anything on the drive that's copyrightable by DVR Dude, and if there even could be, I don't think he has, so the DVD copying simile doesn't quite apply, in my opinion at least. For the most part, I assume that DVR Dude may actually be selling data copyrighted by TiVo already, so I think the morality question is aready out the window at that point.


----------



## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

The thought of copying my dvr-dude drives never really crossed my mind. The prices are good and the product works very well. I just need to decide if I'm going to get a third drive. If I do I'll wait until they go on sale again.

So far I have been extremely pleased with my first two drives from dvr_dude.


----------



## accdealer (Jul 9, 2010)

so, theoretically you could use norton ghost or some other imaging or cloning software to clone dvr dude's hard drive and then just put it on other hd's in the future.


----------



## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

accdealer said:


> so, theoretically you could use norton ghost or some other imaging or cloning software to clone dvr dude's hard drive and then just put it on other hd's in the future.


NOT ghost only dd copy in Lunix


----------



## accdealer (Jul 9, 2010)

so it couldn't be done in windows, it would have to be done using the linux platform?

is it because dd copy is a more thorough sector by sector duplicator?
is there no such windows application?

how about for instance, a standalone drive duplicator?

so what would happen if you dd copied a stock 500gb tivo hd to a larger say 2tb hd? would it simply turn the 2tb drive into only a usable 500gb drive?


----------



## mumpower (Jul 24, 2003)

I was surfing a few threads today, because I've had an HD XL I bought in January fail. I was curious to see what current opinions are on the Premiere units and I happened on this thread. What I want to say is this. I understand the concern in buying from an eBay seller. It bears noting that DVR Dude has 100&#37; positive feedback, though. There is a reason someone with this many sales has maintained that impressive a track record.

We made a purchase the last week of February. The drive had been installed and positive feedback given by March 1. I've used Weaknees quite a bit over the years, but I always felt that they were price-gouging me. I like the Weaknees people and would say only the most glowing of words about their services. I simply find them overpriced. DVR Dude undercut them by a lot and actually had a more streamlined method for installation. 

To a larger point, the nice thing about eBay transaction with people with reputations like this is that the consumer has more options than usual. If Weaknees messes up a transaction with me (they once sent me the wrong-sized fan and didn't believe me at first when I pointed out the minor mistake), all I can do is email and complain. With a person with 100% feedback on eBay, they want to protect that reputation since it's key to their business. They will do everything they can to satisfy the customer in order to guarantee that no negative feedback is left. There is more of an onus on DVR Dude yet he has maintained that streak of satisfying customers. I am deeply impressed by that.


----------



## jmill (Feb 22, 2010)

I very much agree that Weakness / DVRUpgrade (same company now) are way overpriced. 

For example, 1TB WD drive costs $59 on Amazon, yet Weakness charges you $199 for it. Information on how to prepare drives is right here in FAQ. I don't know any rational person who will pay that amount for 1TB drive.

I purchased several drives from DVR Dude and was very pleased with the service. I'd definitely would purchase from him again instead of guys at Weakness/DVRUpgrade.


----------



## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

jmill said:


> I very much agree that Weakness / DVRUpgrade (same company now) are way overpriced.
> 
> For example, 1TB WD drive costs $59 on Amazon, yet Weakness charges you $199 for it. Information on how to prepare drives is right here in FAQ. I don't know any rational person who will pay that amount for 1TB drive.
> 
> I purchased several drives from DVR Dude and was very pleased with the service. I'd definitely would purchase from him again instead of guys at Weakness/DVRUpgrade.


You forgot to send your gratitude to Weaknees (a TiVo Community Forum sponsor) for allowing you the ability to post your opinion on this forum.


----------



## jmill (Feb 22, 2010)

orangeboy said:


> You forgot to send your gratitude to Weaknees (a TiVo Community Forum sponsor) for allowing you the ability to post your opinion on this forum.


Thank you Weakness for sticking your advertisements everywhere 

We all understand that ads costs money. It is too bad customers have to pay for them.


----------



## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

jmill said:


> I very much agree that Weakness / DVRUpgrade (same company now) ..............


When did that happen??


----------



## jmill (Feb 22, 2010)

Weaknees / DVRUpgrade / TiVopedia.com / Hinsdale (Newreleasevideo) / FixMyTivo.com and probably a bunch of others is all the same company


----------



## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

I see that DVR Dude is offering 2TB WD Green drives for S3s now for $219.

His FAQ says if you have CableCARD(s) activated they won't work after the drive swap so you'd have to call and get the cards reauthed. That makes ense if you can't copy the data. 

That kills the drives for me because I AM NOT going to deal with the idjits at Comcast. I'd be better off spending that time copy my existing data one byte at a time from the keyboard.

Until there are instructions for copying the OEM drive partitions (and I can do and grok shell commands) or it becomes known how to copy/clone 2TB otherwise, I'm out.

I'll go back my plan of using a 1.5TB drive and MFS utilities.


----------



## mumpower (Jul 24, 2003)

FWIW, when I swapped in my new drive from DVR Dude, I never had to interact with the cable company. In other words, it's not guaranteed that you will have that sort of aggravation although planning for Murphy's Law is never a bad thing.


----------



## donnoh (Mar 7, 2008)

Even though I had my cable cards installed after I installed the 2TB DVRDude drive in my Premiere and can't speak for that, the 2TB image that I put on one of my HD's didn't require a call to Charter to get all of the channels, it was plug and play.
Re-entering season passes was a pain though, it seems like such an easy thing to back up and for the life of me I can't understand why Tivo doesn't allow you to do this. Just copying them using Tivo Desktop wouldn't cost them anything.


----------



## DaveWhittle (Jul 25, 2002)

donnoh said:


> Just copying them using Tivo Desktop wouldn't cost them anything.


I guess getting the SPs back from the PC to the TiVo would be the difficult thing.

But if TiVo added this functionality to TiVo Desktop, it would be great. Heck, make it a part of TiVo Desktop Plus and make that service a little more enticing. But then I guess Mac users would be SOL.


----------



## rocko (Oct 29, 2002)

DaveWhittle said:


> I guess getting the SPs back from the PC to the TiVo would be the difficult thing.
> 
> But if TiVo added this functionality to TiVo Desktop, it would be great. Heck, make it a part of TiVo Desktop Plus and make that service a little more enticing. But then I guess Mac users would be SOL.


Jeez - I can spell XML - why not them?


----------



## accdealer (Jul 9, 2010)

Tivogre said:


> 2tb is perfectly DIY. You just need the image; that is publicly available.


really? i've been searching for weeks and can't find it. any help would be appreciated.


----------



## lew (Mar 12, 2002)

Tivogre said:


> 2tb is perfectly DIY. You just need the image; that is publicly available.


The image for the TivoHD is available. I don't think the image for the Premier is available. AFAIK tools such as winMFS still don't work with Premier software.


----------



## accdealer (Jul 9, 2010)

lew said:


> The image for the TivoHD is available. I don't think the image for the Premier is available. AFAIK tools such as winMFS still don't work with Premier software.


thats what i have, a tivo hd. i have been searching and asking high and low and have yet to find one. can you help?


----------



## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

accdealer said:


> thats what i have, a tivo hd. i have been searching and asking high and low and have yet to find one. can you help?


http://www.dvrupgrade.com/dvr/stores/1/instantcake.cfm


----------



## accdealer (Jul 9, 2010)

orangeboy said:


> http://www.dvrupgrade.com/dvr/stores/1/instantcake.cfm


from what i have read, instantcake only supports up to 1tb on the tivo hd. can i really do 2tb for my tivohd with this software?


----------



## donnoh (Mar 7, 2008)

I just ordered another 2TB drive from DVR Dude. The first one I ordered has worked great for the past 4 months including two upgrades to the operating system.
Even though I think I could have done the Comer upgrade, I'm getting old and lazy and I think DVR_Dude deserves my money.


----------



## steve614 (May 1, 2006)

donnoh said:


> Even though I think I could have done the Comer upgrade, I'm getting old and lazy and I think DVR_Dude deserves my money.


I am somewhat like you. I had the tools and knowledge to upgrade my TivoHD, but I opted to buy a pre-formatted drive instead.
Partly because I feared I would screw up the original drive, but mostly laziness.
However, following this thread is interesting and if I ever get a Premiere, I know I'll have an option to do the upgrade myself if I choose to do so.


----------



## christoman (Feb 22, 2003)

Also thinking it isn't worth the time to do it myself (too lazy). DVRDude is selling the WD AV drives for $30 more than the regular WD green drives. Opinion on whether it is worth the extra for the AV drive?


----------



## donnoh (Mar 7, 2008)

I didn't think it was. There has been a debate about AV drives on this forum for as long as I've been a member. I've never had a drive long enough to wear it out so I don't know. I've bought several drives to use as an upgrade and none has failed.

Hitachis, WD's and Seagates have all done well for me. If they would ever stop making drives that recorded more and more space i could answer your question.


----------



## gespears (Aug 10, 2007)

christoman said:


> Also thinking it isn't worth the time to do it myself (too lazy). DVRDude is selling the WD AV drives for $30 more than the regular WD green drives. Opinion on whether it is worth the extra for the AV drive?


My standard WD green 1TB and black 750 GB in my THD lasted for three years without any problems. So I don't think I have any issues using the standard WD green drives. At least I better not. I installed one of DVR Dudes drives in my TP about 3 weeks ago and have had absolutely no issues to date (where's some wood to knock on). It has updated software and done everything I've asked. It had one reboot about the second day it was installed but has stayed up since with daily use. I don't believe that had anything to do with the drive, just TP's flakey software.

If I had some kind of specs that WD uses better or different hardware in the AV drives, then I might look more seriously at them. I tend to believe it's all marketing hype with a couple of firmware changes. Anybody at WD care to chime in and let us know?


----------



## kwadguy (Aug 20, 2006)

lessd said:


> Yes you could, but your screwing DVR Dude. Hay you could start selling them on E-Bay if you wanted.
> If you purchased a great DVD movie and asked, on this Forum, if you could copy it so your kids (in their own home) could have the movie also, someone on this Forum could say yes, but that doesn't make it moral.
> I am not telling you that I would (or would not) not copy the drive myself if I had two TP TiVos, I just would not post my intentions on any public Forum.


Unless DVRDude is actually Tivo, then he's selling copyrighted material that doesn't belong to him with what are probably a couple of trivial tweaks.

Kind of like saying that if I take all the Beatles' music and put it on a DVD with a nice interface, I now have some sort of copyright on that package.

It don't work that way.

DVDDude is charging about $120-140 for the privilege of imaging Tivo's copyrighted software onto a hard drive and then making a few tweaks. (You can get 2Tb drives on sale for as little as $80 these days). Whether you want to pay him that much repeatedly for multiple machines or whether you'd rather dd multiple copies yourself depends on whether you think doing it yourself is worth the savings.

But there sure as heck ain't no morality issues here. In fact, if anything, selling Tivo software on a hard drive is the most questionable thing...


----------



## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

kwadguy said:


> Unless DVRDude is actually Tivo, then he's selling copyrighted material that doesn't belong to him with what are probably a couple of trivial tweaks.
> 
> Kind of like saying that if I take all the Beatles' music and put it on a DVD with a nice interface, I now have some sort of copyright on that package.
> 
> ...


I don't know the law but all TiVo owners have paid for the TiVo software when they purchased the hardware and the drive being sold can't be used on anything but a TiVo and you must remove the original TiVo drive with the original TiVo software, you are still using the TiVo software in only one system. I can upgrade my Windows boot drive by coping the windows software onto the bigger drive and put that into my computer and not be in any TOS violation with MS. (if i don't try to put the old drive into another computer). So I don't think that it is so clear that what DVRDude is doing is questionable.


----------



## steve614 (May 1, 2006)

If TiVo felt that distribution of their software was violating their copyrights, there would be no 3rd party software vendors, and we wouldn't be able to upgrade our DVRs. They could lock it down and call it proprietary and sue anyone for "illegally" copying it.

Luckily, TiVo is not doing that, but they could if they wanted to.


----------



## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

lessd said:


> I don't know the law but all TiVo owners have paid for the TiVo software when they purchased the hardware and the drive being sold can't be used on anything but a TiVo and you must remove the original TiVo drive with the original TiVo software, you are still using the TiVo software in only one system... So I don't think that it is so clear that what DVRDude is doing is questionable.





steve614 said:


> If TiVo felt that distribution of their software was violating their copyrights, there would be no 3rd party software vendors, and we wouldn't be able to upgrade our DVRs. They could lock it down and call it proprietary and sue anyone for "illegally" copying it.
> 
> Luckily, TiVo is not doing that, but they could if they wanted to.


Another factor is that TiVo has been accused of thumbing nose at the full requirements of the GPL license for Linux, which requires providing the source code for derived works to customers. TiVo has released some code which gave some insights that spawned some of the hacks - the hacks that spawned new TiVo features like "Tivocasts," HME, MRV and TiVo2Go. We can guess that suing for stealing GPL-derived code is a trip into a boggy field that isn't too inviting.


----------



## donnoh (Mar 7, 2008)

kwadguy said:


> Unless DVRDude is actually Tivo, then he's selling copyrighted material that doesn't belong to him with what are probably a couple of trivial tweaks.
> 
> Kind of like saying that if I take all the Beatles' music and put it on a DVD with a nice interface, I now have some sort of copyright on that package.
> 
> ...


DVRDude sells a hard drive that can only be used on a device that you bought. If the managers at Tivo had half a brain they would do the same, but they made their device user unfriendly by having an open power supply.

He's an entrepreneur, he didn't steal anything, he made the Premiere useful. Even Microsoft doesn't prevent you from putting a larger hard drive in a PC.


----------



## jmill (Feb 22, 2010)

steve614 said:


> If TiVo felt that distribution of their software was violating their copyrights, there would be no 3rd party software vendors, and we wouldn't be able to upgrade our DVRs. They could lock it down and call it proprietary and sue anyone for "illegally" copying it.
> 
> Luckily, TiVo is not doing that, but they could if they wanted to.


They can't since they distributed their software under GPLv2.

Ever heard of "tivozation"? If you haven't, enjoy this information:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization


----------



## lamotte (Oct 11, 2004)

planning to purchase the updated drive from the DVR Dude as soon as my next pension check posts on the 19th of this month. as far i am concerned his price is fair and i dont have the know how to do this on my own so i am planning to go for it.


----------



## kwadguy (Aug 20, 2006)

The key point here is not whether DVRDude is gonna get busted by Tivo, but rather whether it would be legal to take a DVRDude hard drive and duplicate it (using dd under Linux) to create additional upgrade drives for yourself, or to even use as a master to sell your own upgrade drives on eBay.

And the answer to that is: Yes, your copies are as legal as the one DVRDude sent you. You can make your own duplicates, for personal use, or to resell on eBay.

To be honest, given how generous the profit margin is on a $200 drive that can be purchased on sale for $80, I am surprised there aren't already a bunch of competitors seeded off one of his drives.


----------



## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

kwadguy said:


> The key point here is not whether DVRDude is gonna get busted by Tivo, but rather whether it would be legal to take a DVRDude hard drive and duplicate it (using dd under Linux) to create additional upgrade drives for yourself, or to even use as a master to sell your own upgrade drives on eBay.
> 
> And the answer to that is: Yes, your copies are as legal as the one DVRDude sent you. You can make your own duplicates, for personal use, or to resell on eBay.
> 
> To be honest, given how generous the profit margin is on a $200 drive that can be purchased on sale for $80, I am surprised there aren't already a bunch of competitors seeded off one of his drives.


I thought there was one or two on Ebay that he mentioned in the auctions. 
Personally I would never copy the drives purchased from him to sell and I would not consider copying either of the two drives I have unless I had issues with one them and they were past the one year warranty he provides since I would have no chioce but to replace it.


----------



## kwadguy (Aug 20, 2006)

aaronwt said:


> I thought there was one or two on Ebay that he mentioned in the auctions.
> Personally I would never copy the drives purchased from him to sell and I would not consider copying either of the two drives I have unless I had issues with one them and they were past the one year warranty he provides since I would have no chioce but to replace it.


Not selling to compete with him I can understand.

But not copying for your own use? To each his/her own, but to me $120 is $120. Plus I can buy and copy a drive a lot faster than a drive will get delivered to me...


----------



## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

kwadguy said:


> Not selling to compete with him I can understand.
> 
> But not copying for your own use? To each his/her own, but to me $120 is $120. Plus I can buy and copy a drive a lot faster than a drive will get delivered to me...


Even in the past I only copied the existing drive to a larger capacity drive, or I used an Image I bought to use in a specific model TiVo. I don't recall copying a drive from a TiVo and then putting that drive in a different TiVo.


----------

