# User replaceable hard drives + RAID 1



## Puppy76 (Oct 7, 2004)

Besides continuing to wish you could shut off the "live TV buffer" (since I don't have any use for it, and years ago had to set up fake manual recordings throughout the day to get it to stop recording...)

-I probably shouldn't post in this forum, since I'm not expecting Tivo to ever actually do this, but I would LOVE if Tivo's hardware had user accessible drives. 

I'd love a setup where you could pull down a flap in the front (or unscrew a cover on the back, or whatever), and have easy access to two drive bays. Stick the drives on slide in rails.

I'd love to be able to slap in two drives, and then have the Tivo incorporate enough logic to pull down the OS from either Tivo's servers, or from a program/file running on a PC on your network, install that, and then go from there.

-I'd also love if if besides supporting two separate user replaceable drives, it supported RAID 1, and with a simple set up. Slap two identical drives in there, and just ask during setup whether to use RAID 1 or not (could ask in language along the lines of "would you like to have one drive be a backup for the other in case of a drive failure, or would you prefer to use the total storage area of both drives...").

One thing that's always bothered me about Tivo is having my shows sitting there with a single, very obvious point of failure. RAID 1 would make me feel SO much more secure about things. It could just notify you in software and on the front of the device if a drive had died, and you could just slap a new one in there and have it cloned. I'd love to be able to do this with a Tivo HD...just slap two 1TB drives in there in a RAID 1 type configuration the Tivo software handles. (Heck, it wouldn't even have to be "real" RAID 1, it could just back up shows one at a time from one drive to the other when it's not busy doing something else.)


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

Puppy76 said:


> Besides continuing to wish you could shut off the "live TV buffer" (since I don't have any use for it, and years ago had to set up fake manual recordings throughout the day to get it to stop recording...)


There's really little need for that. It's true the live buffer "eats up" an hour of recording space, but an hour isn't very much, at all.



Puppy76 said:


> -I probably shouldn't post in this forum, since I'm not expecting Tivo to ever actually do this, but I would LOVE if Tivo's hardware had user accessible drives.
> 
> I'd love a setup where you could pull down a flap in the front (or unscrew a cover on the back, or whatever), and have easy access to two drive bays. Stick the drives on slide in rails.


While not a bad idea, it would increase the cost of the hardware a bit, and I think most people would prefer the lower cost option. I'm just not sure it would be worth it.



Puppy76 said:


> I'd love to be able to slap in two drives, and then have the Tivo incorporate enough logic to pull down the OS from either Tivo's servers, or from a program/file running on a PC on your network, install that, and then go from there.


Now that's an idea. If they put a rudimentary OS in ROM with network settings in non-volatile RAM, it would make recovering from a failed drive a snap. It would also make user upgrades far more palatable to the average user, and I think it could save TiVo a good little bit of change in shipping and repair costs.



Puppy76 said:


> I'd also love if if besides supporting two separate user replaceable drives, it supported RAID 1, and with a simple set up. Slap two identical drives in there, and just ask during setup whether to use RAID 1 or not (could ask in language along the lines of "would you like to have one drive be a backup for the other in case of a drive failure, or would you prefer to use the total storage area of both drives...").


This would be quite possible with the current platform, using an external drive as a backup. I think a lot of people would like this.



Puppy76 said:


> One thing that's always bothered me about Tivo is having my shows sitting there with a single, very obvious point of failure.


I move them off the TiVo onto a video server, but your point is a good one.


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