# Roamio HD replacement



## 21364guy (Oct 20, 2007)

I am noticing (just once in a while) pixillation when watching recordings on my Roamio. I have a 2TB WD AV drive in there (bought back in 2013). Given the age of the drive I'm thinking a proactive replacement (or at least sparing) would be a good idea. Can someone tell me what 2 or 3TB WD drives are recommended as replacements these days? I really don't need more space, we find we have plenty of space for recordings as we stream quite a few things these days.

And then just to keep things simple, I was planning to use one of those dual bay SATA docks** to duplicate everything. I assume there's no particular issue with that? And if I have to buy a larger drive (e.g. 3TB) I don't really mind if it's treated as a smaller 2TB drive. I'm just looking for something to keep the box operational with a minimum of fuss.

[** my only PC is a small gaming box (mini ITX) where it would be tough to cable everything up to do something more complex]


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## ThAbtO (Apr 6, 2000)

WD20EFRX (2TB, Red), WD30EFRX (3 TB, red).

If you do not mind losing shows, passes, then the simplest method is just to swap out the drives. NO PC required. It would mean like starting anew again. No docks needed either. Roamio can self-prepare drives all by itself, up to 3TB.

The shows and passes can be saved to a PC/large hard drive with KMTTG and it can restore passes as well. For The shows, you would need to have PyTivo and initiate the transfer from the Tivo.

Comparing the WD Green drives VS. WD Red:
Green: uses less power, more noisier, more fuss in drive settings.
Red: uses less power, less heat than green, more quieter, NO drive settings to fuss with.

Also if you want to think about more space, Roamio can use up to 8 TB, it would mean connecting into Roamio, boot up to country screen, disconnect and connect to PC and run a Windows program MSFR. Total Work time: about 30-45 minutes.

If you want to duplicate everything on the drive, use MFSTools 3.3. Requires connecting both drives to PC and the worktime: Up to 2 days depending on how much data.


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## tommage1 (Nov 6, 2008)

21364guy said:


> And then just to keep things simple, I was planning to use one of those dual bay SATA docks** to duplicate everything. I assume there's no particular issue with that? And if I have to buy a larger drive (e.g. 3TB) I don't really mind if it's treated as a smaller 2TB drive. I'm just looking for something to keep the box operational with a minimum of fuss.


WD purple if you like WD. Some of the Reds are now SMR so have to be particular with models numbers. Plus purple has AV firmware, Reds have NAS firmware. Your dock copy should work as long as the destination drive is larger than the original drive. As you say will only use the space of the original drive, rest will be unused. One other consideration, when using a dock it is important that there are no errors on either drive. Docks are "dumb", if there are errors it will just keep trying to clone, can even burn out the dock.

Or as other reply mentioned if you don't mind starting fresh the Roamio will format up to 3TB drive itself. Just make sure the drive is blank to start with. You can keep your old drive as a backup, can swap around drives in a Roamio with no issues. As long as on same OS (TE3 or TE4). Well if on cable would have to re-pair the cable card when swapping. That can be avoided with the clone or copy of the original, it will maintain the cable card setting. OTA no problems with swaps, can have as many drives as you want, again as long as they are on the same OS.


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## JLV03 (Feb 12, 2018)

If you scroll down this page to "Specifications" it lists the different WD Red model numbers and the technology (CMR vs. SMR) each model number uses: 
https://www.westerndigital.com/products/internal-drives/wd-red-hdd


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## 21364guy (Oct 20, 2007)

Thanks for all the tips. I did a kickstart 54 run for about 10 hours overnight and it showed no issues (I cancelled the surface scan this morning as I didn’t want it to be offline for many more hours). So I’m willing to keep running with this drive, but would folks recommend a proactive replacement just based on the drive age of 6.5 years? The current drive is a WD AV-GP (WD20EURS).


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## tommage1 (Nov 6, 2008)

21364guy said:


> Thanks for all the tips. I did a kickstart 54 run for about 10 hours overnight and it showed no issues (I cancelled the surface scan this morning as I didn't want it to be offline for many more hours). So I'm willing to keep running with this drive, but would folks recommend a proactive replacement just based on the drive age of 6.5 years? The current drive is a WD AV-GP (WD20EURS).


As I mentioned if you like WD the purple is the way to go for a Tivo. Even Weaknees uses them. Pretty much ANY CMR decent quality drive will do. In today's world of specialty firmware drives probably best to stick with a current model (especially for 2TB and up), even then current model WD reds 2-6TB are SMR, stick with the purple which is designed for AV use.

Your dock clone not a bad idea, assuming no errors on the current drive. Will clone all recordings and settings and will be starting with a zero hour drive. Keep the original as a backup.


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## ThAbtO (Apr 6, 2000)

If you were to clone the 2TB to another 2TB, there is a chance the image contents may not fit because there were fewer sectors on the new drive than the old.


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## 21364guy (Oct 20, 2007)

My dual drive USB dock is due to arrive tomorrow. Also I realized I have several (2 or 3) 3TB Seagate NAS drives (ST3000VN000, 5900RPM) on hand from a home server I upgraded a year ago. The drives are a couple of years newer than the WD in the TiVo. So my thought was to:

do some housekeeping on the TiVo (cleanup of season passes and deleting unneeded recordings)
use kmttg and/or pyTiVo to back some things up
use the dock to clone the WD drive to one Seagate drive, giving me a complete 2TB dupe
use MFS tools to expand and do a smart copy to another Seagate drive
If all goes well I end up with 3TB of capacity and everything I care about restored, including cablecard pairing. Worst case I should have a 2TB clone. Does this all seem reasonable? Any issues with using that model of NAS drive in a TiVo Roamio?

I haven't used MFS tools or WinMFS in quite some time (used them on prior Series 2 / 3 boxes). Are both tools still reasonable to use these days? If I need to use Linux / MFS tools can I make a bootable USB thumb drive as my win10 box doesn't have an optical drive?

Thanks all for the great guidance


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## ThAbtO (Apr 6, 2000)

21364guy said:


> I haven't used MFS tools or WinMFS in quite some time (used them on prior Series 2 / 3 boxes).


WinMFS does not work on anything newer than Series 3.

Premiere is Series 4
Roamio is Series 5
Bolt is Series 6
Edge is Series 7



21364guy said:


> MFS tools can I make a bootable USB thumb drive


See Post 131 of the MFSTools 3.2 thread.


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## Yudoka (Feb 12, 2015)

I did an upgrade this weekend for similar reasons. I went from a 3TB to 6TB Seagate IronWolf due to it being CMR as recommended. I used a cloning bay to first duplicate the drive to save all our stuff, and then used MFSTools 3.32 (or whatever the most recent version is numbered) to expend it to full capacity. The cloning took about 6 hours and the expansion about 30 minutes with the back and forth verification that the MFSTools guide recommends. Overall, still a pretty easy process.


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## 21364guy (Oct 20, 2007)

Yudoka said:


> I did an upgrade this weekend for similar reasons. I went from a 3TB to 6TB Seagate IronWolf due to it being CMR as recommended. I used a cloning bay to first duplicate the drive to save all our stuff, and then used MFSTools 3.32 (or whatever the most recent version is numbered) to expend it to full capacity. The cloning took about 6 hours and the expansion about 30 minutes with the back and forth verification that the MFSTools guide recommends. Overall, still a pretty easy process.


This is also a great tip, thanks!


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## tommage1 (Nov 6, 2008)

21364guy said:


> do some housekeeping on the TiVo (cleanup of season passes and deleting unneeded recordings)
> use kmttg and/or pyTiVo to back some things up
> use the dock to clone the WD drive to one Seagate drive, giving me a complete 2TB dupe
> use MFS tools to expand and do a smart copy to another Seagate drive
> If all goes well I end up with 3TB of capacity and everything I care about restored, including cablecard pairing. Worst case I should have a 2TB clone. Does this all seem reasonable? Any issues with using that model of NAS drive in a TiVo Roamio?


Your Seagate NAS drives should be fine. Cleaning up your current 2TB is a good idea in advance. Recordings you don't need AND all items in your "recently deleted" folder. Any Tivo that has been used for a good amount of time is always running full. Even if it shows only xx capacity used the rest is in the recently deleted folder, that does not show up in capacity used/available %. Only way drive is not running full is if you manually delete shows in the recently deleted folder.

Since you are going to go with used drives might be a good idea to check them for errors/bad/moved sectors first. Smart tests etc, also check the amount of hours on the drives. I do a good amount of drive swaps with my Roamios. I keep a notebook for when I put in a new drive or swap around, dates and amount of hours on the drives. Can also put a piece of masking tape on the drives, date it was pulled or added, amount of hours etc (don't cover any holes if there are any). There are 8760 hours in a year I believe.


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## tommage1 (Nov 6, 2008)

Oh, the clone of the current drive to one of the 3TB Seagates should be fine, you will just have 2TB usable. The MSFTools copy, that would be done strictly with MFSTools, no clone in dock first. That will not work in this scenario far as I know. You will just do an MFS copy with MFSTools (read the thread for correct parameters). And the more you get cleaned up on the 2TB first the less time the MSFSTools copy will take. Definitely get rid of everything in the recently deleted folder first. In fact delete unwanted recordings first (as they will go into recently deleted), then permanently delete all the recently deleted shows.


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

JLV03 said:


> If you scroll down this page to "Specifications" it lists the different WD Red model numbers and the technology (CMR vs. SMR) each model number uses:
> https://www.westerndigital.com/products/internal-drives/wd-red-hdd


Well finally some transparency from WD.


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## tommage1 (Nov 6, 2008)

jmbach said:


> Well finally some transparency from WD.


They had no choice. In the past it was company policy NOT to tell people if a drive was CMR or SMR, even if you called. People found out they were using SMR in the current model 2-6TB Reds. And were upset to say the least. Damage control and excuses why SMR is "ok" for some NAS applications. But that is info that needs to be available pre purchase. Now it is, for current model WD drives at least.


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## 21364guy (Oct 20, 2007)

Just to post a final status here... I used MFSTools to copy everything on my WD drive (was a 3TB drive contrary to what I said above) to 2 of the 3TB Seagate drives I had on hand. That all worked great... after I had done some cleanup, there was just under 1TB of recordings to copy. Then I swapped in one of the Seagate drives and the tivo is running perfectly. I’m keeping the other Seagate and WD as spares. Each copy took about 7.5 hours using a pair of USB 3 docks.

Thanks again for the good advice


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## tommage1 (Nov 6, 2008)

21364guy said:


> Just to post a final status here... I used MFSTools to copy everything on my WD drive (was a 3TB drive contrary to what I said above) to 2 of the 3TB Seagate drives I had on hand. That all worked great... after I had done some cleanup, there was just under 1TB of recordings to copy. Then I swapped in one of the Seagate drives and the tivo is running perfectly. I'm keeping the other Seagate and WD as spares. Each copy took about 7.5 hours using a pair of USB 3 docks.
> 
> Thanks again for the good advice


Good show. Not a bad idea to clone to a new drive every few years (3-5?), just to be safe. My advice would be to keep the original as a backup, not a spare.


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## 21364guy (Oct 20, 2007)

I did run into a snag here. Apparently my guide data has run out after doing this upgrade, even though the device is on the network (e.g. netflix works, TiVo mini connects fine to it, etc). It's on ethernet and all the network diagnostics pass.The unit has lifetime service.

The error message gives the code M59. When I force a connection everything seems to work, it spends time on "loading" then just comes back with "failure." Can anyone suggest steps other than just formatting it? Might repeat guided setup clear this up for instance?


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## 21364guy (Oct 20, 2007)

I just tried kickstart 58 and that may have resolved it...


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## austinsho (Oct 21, 2001)

As one who's been reading this (and catching back up after being away from TiVo for YEARS), can I assume one of the WD Purple drives that would work is the WD30PURZ? That was the only purple drive that I saw at 3TB.


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## ThAbtO (Apr 6, 2000)

austinsho said:


> As one who's been reading this (and catching back up after being away from TiVo for YEARS), can I assume one of the WD Purple drives that would work is the WD30PURZ? That was the only purple drive that I saw at 3TB.


A few have said it worked for them. You could also use WD30EFRX WD Red. Be aware there are issues with the Red WD30EFAX.


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## austinsho (Oct 21, 2001)

Thanks. For some reason, I have been under the impression that *all* the purple drives worked?

As monumental a task as it would be (especially to keep updated) a master list of good drives would sure be welcome!


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## ThAbtO (Apr 6, 2000)

austinsho said:


> Thanks. For some reason, I have been under the impression that *all* the purple drives worked?


I think there is only one line of purple drives, but there are several lines of Red drives. some are 7200+ RPM, which would not work because of the small power supply, and the heat they make.


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## bantar (Apr 27, 2004)

Allowing Roamio to self-prepare the drives, what is the process to get it to load the TE3 SW version vs the TE4?


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## ThAbtO (Apr 6, 2000)

bantar said:


> Allowing Roamio to self-prepare the drives, what is the process to get it to load the TE3 SW version vs the TE4?


Its what is already on the Roamio since its on its internal flash.


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