# can i do an upgrade with my laptop?



## road1will (Jun 20, 2006)

So i want to put a bigger drive in my 80hour series 2 DT, but I only have a laptop. Is there anyway I can format the new drive myself? Or am I stuck buying a plug and play drive?


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## litzdog911 (Oct 18, 2002)

No, you need a desktop PC with IDE interface cables to connect the Tivo hard drives to. MFSTools won't work with typical laptop IDE drive adapters. You don't need much PC horsepower, though, so you can probably pick up a cheap PC for under $100 that would do the job. Or borrow one from somebody (just disconnect their hard drive before starting so you don't damage their data).


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## puffdaddy (Mar 1, 2006)

litzdog911 said:


> No, you need a desktop PC with IDE interface cables to connect the Tivo hard drives to. MFSTools won't work with typical laptop IDE drive adapters.


This is wrong. I use a cheap USB to IDE cable to connect tivo PATA drives to my laptop for use with MFSTools. Granted the laptop runs Linux, but the Knoppix 3.x Tivo boot CDs have SCSI/USB drivers and should work fine. If my memory serves, those rich S3 folks have been doing exactly this (albeit with USB to SATA) to upgrade their drives.


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## matma92ser (Dec 17, 2004)

Will this work on a laptop running Windows XP? I am planing on upgrading from one existing TiVo drive to two new drives.

Can I use a single IDE ribbon to connect all three drives together, and then attach that ribbon to a single USB/IDE adapter?

Will I have to buy three external power supplies for the three hard drives?

Thanks for any insight.

Matt


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## classicsat (Feb 18, 2004)

I believe one USB-IDE adapter supports only one drive. There is an off chance it could support two.

For your job, I'd borrow a full desktop PC system.


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## anonymuse (Nov 27, 2005)

Glad this person asked this question--was just wondering about that the other day since its my laptop that's relatively new and my PC is very old (8+ years). I know that I don't need a lot of power, but getting at the PC tower to get it out and open it up can be a PITA.

Nice to know there is such a thing as a USB to IDE adapter.

Thanks.


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## JustJoe78 (Apr 20, 2007)

I just did a single drive upgrade with my laptop. It can be done... 

You will need:

2 USB-IDE adapters
MFSTools (I downloaded mine from mfslive)
Intimate knowledge of your laptop's boot order

If you follow the directions on mfslive, it will give you the right command to do EXACTLY what you want it to do.

I had issues, mostly because I'm not all that great with linux command line stuff anymore and I forgot about sda and sdb....

My other problem was with my second USB-IDE adapter.. the power cord failed on it and it was too late to trek to Micro Center for another one. Luckily I had a spare 2.5 drive that didn't require a power supply. So I actually did two images.. one to the 2.5 drive from the old TiVo drive and then to the destination drive from the 2.5 drive.... 

Popped the new drive in.... booted right up... but since I didn't copy programs I had to flush out the library....

So now I have a 80-hour TiVo... new drive is a lot louder than the old one...


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## anonymuse (Nov 27, 2005)

Just Joe, is your laptop running windows?


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## JustJoe78 (Apr 20, 2007)

anonymuse said:


> Just Joe, is your laptop running windows?


Yes, it is. That's why you need to be 120% sure to make sure that it boots from CD first while your TiVo drives are attached... or if you can disable your internal HD in BIOS (I can), do that....


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## anonymuse (Nov 27, 2005)

How do these USB/IDE Adapters really differ from an external harddrive enclosures? (I've been looking on them on ebay and some have power supplies, while others do not).


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## lafos (Nov 8, 2004)

For all intents, they don't differ much. Some will have extra adapters for 2.5" drives, and some can handle SATA or PATA.


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## anonymuse (Nov 27, 2005)

Thanks lafos. Just wondering since when I asked about using an external HDD enclosure to do upgrades, I got mixed opinions on whether or not the drive would be accessible via USB under Linux and DOS.


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## lafos (Nov 8, 2004)

If you use a recent kernel, it should recognize the USB. I did a backup/restore on a laptop using a pair of these devices. Not bad unless you want to save recordings. I'd definitely test the complete boot sequence without the Tivo HD attached, just to make sure the computer boots from the CD and not into WinXP. IIRC, I used PTVUpgrade 4.04 boot CD.


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