# Tivo Bolt Disk replacement



## shamilian (Mar 27, 2003)

I have a noisy disk in my bolt which is in my bedroom.

Does anyone know if I replace the disk with a similar size and copy (via linux dd) the entire disk.

Will I lose my recordings ?

Does Tivo use the UUID on the disk or the actual disk serial number to ID the disk ?


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## fcfc2 (Feb 19, 2015)

shamilian said:


> I have a noisy disk in my bolt which is in my bedroom.
> 
> Does anyone know if I replace the disk with a similar size and copy (via linux dd) the entire disk.
> 
> ...


Are you sure it is the HD which is generating the excess noise? There are several threads on this and in most cases it is found to be the fan which is causing the noise. 
Regarding cloning a replacement disk, this should work and you would not need to repair the cable card etc, and you should not lose any recordings unless they are on a bad segment of the old hd.


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## V7Goose (May 28, 2005)

If I were you, I would be very concerned about loosing ALL recordings. While I do not personally know if there have ever been any successful clones of a Bolt HDD, I DO know that under normal circumstances, if you boot a Bolt with any HDD OTHER than the one that was in there when it last shut down, the Bolt automatically wipes the entire drive - this is part of what makes the upgrade of a Bolt HDD so easy.

Maybe an exact clone of the last drive will be accepted and not trigger the wipe - I do not know. BUT, if it is not, then you will not even be able to re-install the original drive without having that drive wiped clean too.


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

shamilian said:


> I have a noisy disk in my bolt which is in my bedroom.
> 
> Does anyone know if I replace the disk with a similar size and copy (via linux dd) the entire disk.
> 
> ...


There has not been enough TCF members posting to know for sure. Of the few that I am aware of, this is what I know (or think I know). If when the original drive is removed and a new drive is formatted by the Bolt, the original Bolt drive recordings are lost when it is placed back into the the Bolt. I am not sure if the CableCARD pairings, One Passes, or other settings are lost.

I think cloning the drive to the exact same size drive will work. Cloning to a larger drive may work.

I have a patched version of MFSTools 3.2 that now correctly creates the proper APM for the Bolt (the publicly released version creates a malformed APM that the Bolt promptly reformats) but I do not know if copying with that version creates a working copy of the source drive that the Bolt will boot off and not reformat or lose recordings.


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## BobbyM5 (Jun 8, 2018)

jmbach said:


> There has not been enough TCF members posting to know for sure. Of the few that I am aware of, this is what I know (or think I know). If when the original drive is removed and a new drive is formatted by the Bolt, the original Bolt drive recordings are lost when it is placed back into the the Bolt. I am not sure if the CableCARD pairings, One Passes, or other settings are lost.
> 
> I think cloning the drive to the exact same size drive will work. Cloning to a larger drive may work.
> 
> I have a patched version of MFSTools 3.2 that now correctly creates the proper APM for the Bolt (the publicly released version creates a malformed APM that the Bolt promptly reformats) but I do not know if copying with that version creates a working copy of the source drive that the Bolt will boot off and not reformat or lose recordings.


Will you share your patched version of MFSTools 3.2?


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

BobbyM5 said:


> Will you share your patched version of MFSTools 3.2?


Sent


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## JonMikelV (Dec 7, 2007)

I just cloned a 500GB Bolt drive to a new 2TB Seagate Barracuda25 (ST2000LMB15) drive using the "clone" button on an Inland branded dual-drive docking station (similar to this one Micro Center - Computers and Electronics).

The clone took about 90 minutes and when I put the newly cloned drive drive into the Bolt it booted right up with all the shows & One Passes still on it. So I can confirm a clone (at least the way I did it) works fine for me. I suspect using dd will give you similarly good results.

Of course it's still only 500MB worth of storage...


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## Hercules67 (Dec 8, 2007)

JonMikelV said:


> Of course it's still only 500MB worth of storage...


What do you mean by this? The 2TB drive is only recognized as 500GB?

I *am confused*.


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

Hercules67 said:


> What do you mean by this? The 2TB drive is only recognized as 500GB?
> 
> I *am confused*.


This is because he did a clone of the image. As such the image is 500GB sitting on a 2TB drive.


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## Hercules67 (Dec 8, 2007)

jmbach said:


> This is because he did a clone of the image. As such the image is 500GB sitting on a 2TB drive.


So a clone (into a larger drive) WILL NOT give you more space. Correct?


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

Hercules67 said:


> So a clone (into a larger drive) WILL NOT give you more space. Correct?


Yes. The image has to be expanded. You can use the latest iteration of MFSTools (which is version 3.3) to copy and expand an image at the same time.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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## Mike999 (Mar 26, 2019)

I have a Tivo Bolt with 1TB drive and lifetime subscription. If I understand correctly, I think my lifetime subscription ends if my hard drive goes out.
I'm thinking if I can replace the drive with a clone before my old one quits, my lifetime subscription would continue with the new drive. Does this sound correct?

So if I replace my 1TB drive with a 3TB clone, would I do it in this order?:
1) Remove old 1TB drive from Tivo.
2) Use a disk duplicator to clone to a new 3TB drive.
3) Use some sort of software to expand it to 3TB. Or will Tivo recognize the 3TB of space on my clone and maybe I won't have to expand anything? 
4) Install clone in Tivo and I'm done.

Does this sound right? Am I missing anything?


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

Mike999 said:


> I have a Tivo Bolt with 1TB drive and lifetime subscription. If I understand correctly, I think my lifetime subscription ends if my hard drive goes out.
> I'm thinking if I can replace the drive with a clone before my old one quits, my lifetime subscription would continue with the new drive. Does this sound correct?
> 
> So if I replace my 1TB drive with a 3TB clone, would I do it in this order?:
> ...


The lifetime is with the Bolt and not the drive.

You can use MFSTools 3.3 (found in the 3.2 thread) to copy and expand the drive in one command. The post that you can download the iso has instructions.


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## akkman (Mar 28, 2019)

jmbach said:


> The lifetime is with the Bolt and not the drive.
> 
> You can use MFSTools 3.3 (found in the 3.2 thread) to copy and expand the drive in one command. The post that you can download the iso has instructions.


I understand that MFSTools 3.3 will do both of these in one action but Could a person clone the drive to a larger new hard drive and then use MSFTools 3.3 to increase the capacity on the cloned drive that is larger than the source drive?

Thank you,

Brad


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

akkman said:


> I understand that MFSTools 3.3 will do both of these in one action but Could a person clone the drive to a larger new hard drive and then use MSFTools 3.3 to increase the capacity on the cloned drive that is larger than the source drive?
> 
> Thank you,
> 
> Brad


The answer is mostly yes. There are some situations that the answer is no. Can you expound on the scenario you are thinking of. What series TiVo, has it already been expanded once. How was expanded if it was. What size are you coming from and going to? Is it a native TiVo drive or a 3rd party drive (Weaknees)


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