# New 1tb drive not formatting



## David B Gregory (Feb 26, 2018)

I put in a new 1tb drive to replace 500gb Bolt goes to Starting up and hangs 
Anyway to force format via remote commands?


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## shwru980r (Jun 22, 2008)

David B Gregory said:


> I put in a new 1tb drive to replace 500gb Bolt goes to Starting up and hangs
> Anyway to force format via remote commands?


What model drive is it? Hook the drive up to a PC and download the manufacturers diagnostic utility. You might have a bad drive. If the drive is good, then you should find a utility to write zeros to the drive. That might resolve the issue.


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## David B Gregory (Feb 26, 2018)

Should the drive be formatted to ntfs before installing


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## ej42137 (Feb 16, 2014)

David B Gregory said:


> Should the drive be formatted to ntfs before installing


Not necessary, but that would be an alternative to writing zeros to the first few megabytes. You want to do two things:

Verify that the disk is good.
Make sure that it is not formatted as a TiVo drive..
When a Roamio or Bolt boots and sees that the drive is not already formatted as its TiVo drive, it assumes it's a new drive an formats it as a TiVo drive. That's why you need to zero out at least the beginning so that it is definitely not a TiVo formatted drive. You can accomplish the same thing by formatting it as NTFS, exFAT, HFS, EXT4 or anything else not TiVo; if your TiVo doesn't recognize it, it will wipe it out and make it TiVo.

It would be good to run a disk utility to verify the quality of new disk, but lots of people skip that step with a new disk, because it will take a long time. Of course, you need to solve the issue of the disk locking as well.


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## David B Gregory (Feb 26, 2018)

Any thoughts on how long it will format for? Will the screen show something different than Starting up? I put the disk in my PC, formatted as a simple vol NTFS. Put back in Tivo, got all 3 leds to flash when powering up now sitting same place with green power led on over 30 minutes


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## dianebrat (Jul 6, 2002)

David B Gregory said:


> Any thoughts on how long it will format for? Will the screen show something different than Starting up? I put the disk in my PC, formatted as a simple vol NTFS. Put back in Tivo, got all 3 leds to flash when powering up now sitting same place with green power led on over 30 minutes


It should just reformat the NTFS partition, but there may be other partitions on it, potentially ones that it can't delete.
I strongly recommend verifying with Windows Disk Manager that there are NO, as in NONE, NADA, ZERO, ZIP, partitions on the drive before you place it in the Tivo.


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## shwru980r (Jun 22, 2008)

David B Gregory said:


> Any thoughts on how long it will format for? Will the screen show something different than Starting up? I put the disk in my PC, formatted as a simple vol NTFS. Put back in Tivo, got all 3 leds to flash when powering up now sitting same place with green power led on over 30 minutes


Write zeros to the drive with the manufacturers utility application. You never stated the model of the drive you are using.


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## shwru980r (Jun 22, 2008)

ej42137 said:


> Not necessary, but that would be an alternative to writing zeros to the first few megabytes. You want to do two things:
> 
> Verify that the disk is good.
> Make sure that it is not formatted as a TiVo drive..
> ...


I thought I read that the Bolt was supposed to reformat any drive that was used to replace the previously installed drive, regardless of the format of the replacement drive.


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## ej42137 (Feb 16, 2014)

shwru980r said:


> I thought I read that the Bolt was supposed to reformat any drive that was used to replace the previously installed drive, regardless of the format of the replacement drive.


A Bolt probably will. I would format it just to be sure, but you might be more risk tolerant than I.


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## dianebrat (Jul 6, 2002)

ej42137 said:


> A Bolt probably will. I would format it just to be sure, but you might be more risk tolerant than I.


Roamios and Bolts don't care about unformatted drives, you can just plug a 3TB or lower drive in and go if it's blank, there is no risk.
That being said, drives with partitions that are not able to be deleted or in any other way confuse the Tivo can be an issue.


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## ej42137 (Feb 16, 2014)

dianebrat said:


> Roamios and Bolts don't care about unformatted drives, you can just plug a 3TB or lower drive in and go if it's blank, there is no risk.
> That being said, drives with partitions that are not able to be deleted or in any other way confuse the Tivo can be an issue.


The "it" I was referring to was a drive with TiVo formatting, the unformatted case had already been discussed.

There is probably no risk with a TiVo formatted drive, Bolts are reputed to be apt to reformat even Bolt formatted drives in some cases. But not knowing exactly what criteria a Bolt uses to determine its drive is good, I would be cautious about the matter.


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## multiple (Aug 26, 2007)

David B Gregory said:


> I put in a new 1tb drive to replace 500gb Bolt goes to Starting up and hangs
> Anyway to force format via remote commands?


Please see my thread on this topic and add your drive to the list if the situation is the same:
List of drives that don't boot under TE4 21.x on Bolt


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## David B Gregory (Feb 26, 2018)

I purchased the Toshiba 3TB drive recommended, it would not format either. I let it run for 8 hours, linux should have partitioned and formatted in seconds. I blanked the drive and put it in as target using the 500GB as source in a disk duplicator. When it was done I put it in Tivo Bolt and it hung on startup. Tivo must be doing something to block changing drives.


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