# MFS Reformatter (mfsr)



## ggieseke

*WARNING*

1. This software is provided "as is" with absolutely no warranty of any kind.

2. It is copyrighted and may NOT be used commercially.

3. Opening your TiVo will void the manufacturer's warranty.

4. While every effort has been made to prevent data loss, the ultimate responsibility is yours.

*OVERVIEW:*

This is a Windows program designed to reformat large (4TB - 6TB) Roamio drives. I call it a reformatter because it depends on some variables from the original auto-format process even though it throws most of them out the window. It can run on XPSP3, but I have only tested it on Windows 7 and 8.1 so far.

Edit: Support for Bolts and drives up to 8TB has been added. See post #2 for the latest version.

*THE BASICS:*

Your Roamio must running 20.4.6 or later. Earlier versions go into an endless boot loop trying to format anything over 3TB.

1. Put the drive in your Roamio and power it on. It will take about four minutes to auto-format the drive. When it gets to the first Guided Setup screen, power it off. The resulting drive will only use a fraction of the total capacity, but we will fix that in the next steps.

2. Download mfsr and unzip it to somewhere on your computer.

3. Connect the drive to your computer. USB 2.0 adapters will work, but are much slower than USB 3.0 or a SATA direct connection.

4. Run mfsr with an account that's a member of the Administrators group or right-click it and choose Run as Administrator. Follow the instructions from there to reformat the drive to use its full capacity.

5. Put the drive back in the TiVo and enjoy.

*NOTES:*

If you run this program on an existing drive you will lose all of your settings and recordings.

It aligns the MFS file (application) and inode "zones" correctly for Advanced Format (4K) drives. That should improve performance and reduce wear & tear on the drive. This is something that I don't think has ever been addressed before.

It works on 3TB drives as well. It will not run on 2TB or smaller drives. If there's enough interest in creating smaller drives that are fully AF aligned that can be addressed later.

It only works on Roamios. If there is enough interest in a version for Premieres that can also be addressed in a later version.

*SPECIAL THANKS GO TO...*

jmbach, telemark, nooneuknow, and the original pioneers of MFS like Spike and comer.

*FINAL NOTE:*

It took over 400 hours of development time, a new WD 6TB Red drive, and a new copy of Visual Studio 2013 Pro to get this far. If you save a few hundred dollars by using this program instead of buying a prepared drive, *PLEASE* donate to the cause.



Edit: Roamios running 20.5.6 or later should use version 1.0.0.2 from post #2.


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## ggieseke

Here's version 1.0.0.2. I added support for Bolts and hopefully fixed the bug in post #184.

Early Bolts get a red screen error message when trying to format drives over 3TB. If it has already updated to 20.5.4a it will act like a Roamio running 20.4.6 or later and make it to Guided Setup. Either way, that's the time to hook the drive up to your PC and run mfsr.

Profs to telemark for providing disk images for me to work on and aaronwt for testing it.

2016-02-21: Added version 1.0.0.3. It fixes a bug that ONLY affects Bolt drives over 4TB.

2016-04-29: Version 1.0.0.4 works on 8TB drives.


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## HerronScott

Wow, this is great addition to the community. I don't have a Roamio yet but will certainly plan on using this and donating when I do get one.

Scott


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## nooneuknow

Clarifications known, and request for further clarifications:


Spoiler



IIRC, even though most running still running XP (even if just on a properly isolated from the internet "TiVo wrangling" machine), are likely to have XP SP3, didn't the pre-release run-up say it should (theoretically) work with XP SP2?

I ask, since some might not have a XP SP3 install DVD, as slipstreaming Service Packs (as most knew how to) ended with XP SP2, and no official XP SP3 install CD was ever released by MS. Even the default compatibility settings in Win 7/8.x default to XP SP2.

That minor detail aside, the part about the TiVo being on software version 20.4.6, or later, means this:

You must have had a stock, or other supported size drive, already installed in the Roamio, and have had completed Guided Setup, all the way through to the point of the System Information screen stating a version of 20.4.6 (or later), BEFORE attempting to complete this upgrade process with a 4-6TB drive, or it will not work.

*EDIT/ADD:* An easy way to find the current software version on your Roamio, is to press the info button on your remote, on the very first screen of Guided Setup.

@Greg: Please feel free to integrate any of this into your OP#1, if deemed correct, or to publicly flog me for posting a clarification post as my first public comment.

That aside, thank you for all the hard work, and putting up with me throughout the 400+ hours you slaved over a hot computer, cooking up this beautiful program. I sure hope the community appreciates you releasing it completely free of charge, and pays it forward by contributing to your beer fund (since developers run on beer, with the exception of the alternative fuel ones).


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## HarperVision

Wow, Happy Mod'ers Day! :up:



ggieseke said:


> .......... SPECIAL THANKS GO TO... jmbach, telemark, nooneuknow, and the original pioneers of MFS like Spike and comer........


Great job guys!


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## ggieseke

nooneuknow said:


> IIRC, even though most running still running XP (even if just on a properly isolated from the internet "TiVo wrangling" machine), are likely to have XP SP3, didn't the pre-release run-up say it should (theoretically) work with XP SP2?
> 
> I ask, since most don't have a XP SP3 install DVD, as slipstreaming Service Packs (as most knew how to) ended with XP SP2, and no official XP SP3 install CD was ever released by MS. Even the default compatibility settings in Win 7/8.x default to XP SP2.
> 
> That minor detail aside, the part about the TiVo being on software version 20.4.6, or later, means this:
> 
> You must have had a stock, or other supported size drive, already installed in the Roamio, and have had completed Guided Setup, all the way through to the point of the System Information screen stating a version of 20.4.6 (or later), BEFORE attempting to complete this upgrade process with a 4-6TB drive, or it will not work.
> 
> *EDIT/ADD:* An easy way to find the current software version on your Roamio, is to press the info button on your remote, on the very first screen of Guided Setup.
> 
> @Greg: Please feel free to integrate any of this into your OP#1, if deemed correct, or to publicly flog me for posting a clarification post as my first public comment.
> 
> That aside, thank you for all the hard work, and putting up with me throughout the 400+ hours you slaved over a hot computer, cooking up this beautiful program. I sure hope the community appreciates you releasing it completely free of charge, and pays it forward by contributing to your beer fund (since developers run on beer, with the exception of the alternative fuel ones).


XPSP2 should work, but I don't have anything that old to test it with. Slipstreaming SP3 into all of my XP installations is something that I dealt with back in the late '90s.

The 20.4.6 part comes from the minimum version that won't boot-loop on a drive over 3TB. It may work even on earlier versions, but (once again) I have no way to test it.


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## ggieseke

HarperVision said:


> Wow, Happy Mod'ers Day! :up:
> 
> Great job guys!


Moms, enjoy!


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## HerronScott

ggieseke said:


> XPSP2 should work, but I don't have anything that old to test it with. Slipstreaming SP3 into all of my XP installations is something that I dealt with back in the late '90s.


Wait a second, XP didn't come out until 2001 and sp3 in 2008! 

Scott


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## nooneuknow

ggieseke said:


> It aligns the MFS file (application) and inode "zones" correctly for Advanced Format (4K) drives. That should improve performance and reduce wear & tear on the drive. This is something that I don't think has ever been addressed before.


My super-technical version, for true alignment purists, or those who would like to be:



Spoiler



Aligning the partition boundaries by AF/4K/512e rules alone, was not aligning the data within some partitions. For this data, this meant no benefit from only aligning the boundaries. This gross oversight by TiVo (and possibly any other sources of prepared drives, even if advertised as aligned and/or optimized), meant the drives were still subject to unnecessary Read-Modify-Write operations of whole adjacent physical 4K sectors, when only one operation to one sector should be required. The effect of this can become a chain-reaction, as each unaligned operation overlaps to an adjacent sector.

Due to TiVo partitions being in zones, in a sandwich-like layout, to try and optimally position them for seeking operations, the same excessive operations caused in one zone, also lead to unnecessary seek operations, as the heads move between zones and back again.

The additional alignment and optimization added beyond only boundaries, and to the data within, should (theoretically) increase the lifespan / life expectancy of the AF (Advanced Format) drives that have come to replace the 512-byte native sector drives, which used to be the standard for sector size.

Of course, a drive that comes DOA, suffers "infant mortality", or just has manufacturing defects, is going to fail, no matter what, and all drives eventually fail. But, a drive without defects exceeding mfg quality standards, should (theoretically) hold its operational performance for longer, as well as gain extended longevity.

Modern TiVos, recording 4-6 streams in HD bitrates, work hard drives past what even some enterprise drives are designed to handle in TB/yr (Terabytes per year) workload ratings, which are rapidly becoming the rating standard for modern, high platter data density, hard drives, replacing MTBF & MTTF ratings. The reason why TiVo drives have such extreme workloads (beyond more HD content, and more tuners), is due to there only being one drive to handle all this data, rather than a RAID array, like enterprise class workloads are intended to be distributed across (multiple drives), reducing the workload of each drive in the array.

Now, quit drooling, and get upgrading. If you fail to donate to the cause, I will hunt you down, and bombard you with tech-speak, until you submit your donation (don't forget PayPal takes a cut), or your brain liquefies.

It was an honor, and a pleasure, to work with the other parties (see OP #1) who played such an important role in not just this, but also all those TiVos that are working today, because of DVRBARS, which has been provided and supported for free, but provided at a loss, due to hosting costs and fees. Yet, after over a year of losses, the same author has chosen to provide this to you at no cost, and only hopes to break-even, at best.

While he is too modest to say so, a $2 donation costs more in PayPal fees, than the donation itself. So, please, let's not insult him with more losses.

This might be the last TiVo project I get to be a part of (albeit a very small part), and I sure hope some of those who said 3TB wasn't enough, then 4TB wasn't enough, asking if bigger drives would work, wake up and make some noise!


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## aaronwt

Thanks. If I give it a try I will send a donation. What 4TB, 5TB, or 6TB drives are best to use with this?


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## jmbach

In my order of preferences: WD A/V Green, WD Red or Green, Seagate A/V.


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## nooneuknow

aaronwt said:


> Thanks. If I give it a try I will send a donation. What 4TB, 5TB, or 6TB drives are best to use with this?


Testing was done using the WD Red EFRX line.
Almost literally any drive that should/would work in a TiVo, in the 4-6TB range, should work with the software.
Reliability/longevity for these drive capacities, used in a TiVo: It is too early in these sizes, and technology used, to even guess.

My order of preferences list (starting with best WDs @5400RPM, all technically in the "green" class):

*WD AV Green EURX* - Currently only available up to 4TB - 3yr warranty.
*WD Red EFRX* (is an AV drive, but has TLER, and is meant for use with a proper RAID controller) - 3yr warranty.
*WD Green EZRX* (non-AV) - 2yr warranty. If it had 3yr, would be bumped up one line in list.
*Seagate AV* (5900RPM)
*Other brands*, as long as they are low-RPM "green" power profile 5400-5900RPM

For more details, click spoiler show button.


Spoiler



Any drive used should have the lowest possible cold-start/spin-up/peak power requirements.
Be wary of drives not clear on actual peak power requirements.
WD's "Intellipower" is all about requiring the least amount of power, to get spun-up to 5400 RPM.

*WD Purple PURX* - Nobody involved in the 4-6TB free/community projects recommends these, although they will "work" - 3yr warranty.
These are also AV drives, but have TLER, and *only a 60 TB/yr workload rating*. Exceeding it can kill the drive, void your warranty, and WD can find out if you have. Use at your own risk. Even a 2-tuner TiVo, buffering/recording HD 24x7 can push TB/yr to the limits.

To the best of my knowledge, this reflects a consensus among everybody involved with "mfsr" (although, posts by others others may vary slightly).

*** In the larger sizes, it is best to come to make your own educated decisions, through profile/spec caparisons, and knowing the limits of each TiVo's power supply/adapter, especially when it comes the the Base/OTA Roamio. An upgrade to a higher rated-capacity power "brick", to replace the Base/OTA's "wall-wart", may be required in some cases. I prefer to advise being proactive, but also to use caution, on this matter.


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## aaronwt

Do you need to do anything to the red drives like is needed with the green drives. Where you change some setting to 5 minutes.


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## nooneuknow

aaronwt said:


> Do you need to do anything to the red drives like is needed with the green drives. Where you change some setting to 5 minutes.


- Not in a Roamio. With the OS moved into flash. The boot sequence doesn't have that older TiVo issue.
- If you are OCD, then the Red has (essentially) that same Idle Mode 3, but currently shipping drives on NASware 3.0 have it already set to 5 minutes (but not disabled). 
- Really old stock, still on NASware 2.0, has it set to the shortest time, and has a designated Red utility that runs under any OS, even Windows, to update it to be 5 minutes.
- I haven't even messed with the default short time on my Red NW2.0 ones.
- The wdidle3.exe tool reports it will disable the mode, if you want to go that way. I'd have faith in the newer tool, if you got an old stock Red drive.
- IIRC, past a certain size, no Red drives shipped with the older NW 2.0. I just don't recall what size. It was >3TB for sure.


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## ggieseke

aaronwt said:


> What 4TB, 5TB, or 6TB drives are best to use with this?


I'd use AV Green if possible (and it's not after 4TB).

I used a 4TB Red (EFRX) drive for testing because it was the only 4TB drive handy, and a 6TB Red because it could serve as an emergency backup for the 24TB RAID on my latest PC. YMMV and I could be wrong, but I wouldn't touch a Purple drive with a gun to my head.

After reviewing endless drive specs and reviews (and making my own choices), all I can say is stick to low RPM drives. Your Tivo is going to treat it as a 1.5Mbps drive no matter how fast it really is, and anything beyond that is just more noise, heat, and power consumption.


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## HerronScott

ggieseke said:


> It aligns the MFS file (application) and inode "zones" correctly for Advanced Format (4K) drives. That should improve performance and reduce wear & tear on the drive. This is something that I don't think has ever been addressed before.


Greg,

Any chance you could create a program that would do this alignment for a non-Roamio TiVo drive?

Scott


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## ggieseke

HerronScott said:


> Greg,
> 
> Any chance you could create a program that would do this alignment for a non-Roamio TiVo drive?
> 
> Scott


Any model in particular? Premieres should be fairly easy, but I'm hesitant to go back any further than that.


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## Am_I_Evil

just ordered a 6TB drive...we'll see how this goes lol

*yes i will also be donating


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## BruinGuy

One quick question:

I know how to move all of recorded shows from my existing drive via third party software. However, I don't know how to move my One Pass or Wish List selections. Is there a way? Or do I have to re-enter them by hand?


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## nooneuknow

BruinGuy said:


> One quick question:
> 
> I know how to move all of recorded shows from my existing drive via third party software. However, I don't know how to move my One Pass or Wish List selections. Is there a way? Or do I have to re-enter them by hand?


*If you want basic & simple, via web browser:*
TiVo's online SPM: Season Pass manager - TiVo
TiVo's instructions: How to use the Season Pass manager

*If you want the best swiss army knife to run from your PC, this is it:*
Download here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/kmttg/
Introduction here: http://sourceforge.net/p/kmttg/wiki/Home/
Some find the interface a bit unfriendly/overwhelming. But, it's worth learning how to use, lets you save local backups of all your TiVo Passes, on all your TiVos, and restore them to another.

As long as you take them time to read the introduction/instructions, KMTTG is supported in its own thread, right on TCF, if you have an issue.
New program for 1 step TTG downloads, decryption, encoding - kmttg

If this helps you, please bookmark this post, and pass it along, the next time you see somebody asking similar questions.


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## TivoCom

I just posted in the upgrade forum that Best Buy has the WD 6TB Red drive one sale today for $234.


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## aaronwt

TivoCom said:


> I just posted in the upgrade forum that Best Buy has the WD 6TB Red drive one sale today for $234.


I see they also have the 4TB Reds on sale for $169.


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## ggieseke

TivoCom said:


> I just posted in the upgrade forum that Best Buy has the WD 6TB Red drive one sale today for $234.


That's a really good price. I paid $265 each for the five I bought for my new PC back in December, and $275 for the one I bought to test this program.


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## CoxInPHX

HerronScott said:


> Greg,
> Any chance you could create a program that would do this alignment for a non-Roamio TiVo drive?





ggieseke said:


> Any model in particular? Premieres should be fairly easy, but I'm hesitant to go back any further than that.


Would each model Premiere need a separate tool/program or would just one work to truly 4k align the drive for all models?

Would it work after using the JMSF Live CD to copy-expand-supersize.

Would it really make a difference on HDD life expectancy of a 2TB upgrade on a Premiere?


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## jmbach

CoxInPHX said:


> Would each model Premiere need a separate tool/program or would just one work to truly 4k align the drive for all models?


Only one tool would be needed.



CoxInPHX said:


> Would it work after using the JMSF Live CD to copy-expand-supersize.


The tool at this time does not allow you to keep your recordings, so if you run it to get your image truly 4k aligned, you will lose everything. I am not sure it will work on JMFS altered images. It has only been tested on native images. Ggieseke would be best to answer that question.



CoxInPHX said:


> Would it really make a difference on HDD life expectancy of a 2TB upgrade on a Premiere?


The million dollar question. It should based on the theory behind alignment and experiences on computers using 4k aligned drives, but I doubt we will get any TiVo data to confirm or deny the claim.


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## ThAbtO

aaronwt said:


> I see they also have the 4TB Reds on sale for $169.


Amazon has it for $160 and Prime shipping.


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## ggieseke

I just realized that adding Premiere support is a lot harder than I first thought. I got in a Roamio mind-set and forgot the limitations of earlier models. 

On Roamios I grab a few "unknown" variables from the superheader, then scrap everything from the previous drive, start over from scratch, and build a completely empty MFS file system. It takes it from there and puts all the necessary files in place.

Premieres can't do that. I'd have to copy everything from the the existing drive to temporary storage on the computer, then back to the new layout. Let me think about this for a few days...

On the subject of life expectancy it's hard to say. I think that reducing the number of misaligned reads and writes would help performance and reduce wear on the drive, but I don't have any proof to back that up yet. All I can say is that it sure can't hurt.


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## nooneuknow

CoxInPHX said:


> Would it really make a difference on HDD life expectancy of a 2TB upgrade on a Premiere?


It doesn't look like the day of being able to fully optimize alignment on anything before the Roamio is going to be coming soon, if at all. But, I feel I just can't over-stress the things about AF/4K/512e drives, that the platter drive companies don't want us to know about, or are simply making BS claims about the drives being able to auto-align (Seagate claimed this), pulling the wool over our eyes, and hiding/masking what really goes on inside such drives. Smaller drives can actually suffer more, as data fragmentation sets in sooner, and can reach crippling levels faster, if conditions allow it. I had suggested the ability to use the tool to rewrite a factory 3TB layout (and maybe even smaller, stock sizes), in order to be able to hopefully prove the differences, at some point. Fragmented data within aligned partition boundaries can result in misaligned data within them, if the host (TiVo) does not take preventative and corrective actions. There's really no debate that AF drives have a higher workload internally, which logically means they can be expected to fail faster, even if all structure is aligned, fail even faster when not, and work harder as fragmentation sets in. Every little bit helps. If TiVo retooled their OS's file system to write data to the platter drive in 4096-byte blocks, rather than 512-byte, and boundaries were aligned, along with the writes, then the AF-drives would have a lighter internal workload, stand a better fighting chance at a long life, and RMW operations would be the exception, rather than the norm.

In addition to what I posted earlier, here, in post #9:



Spoiler



If you were to take a 2TB drive with 512-byte native physical sectors and use it as a baseline, then make a 2TB drive with AF/4K/512e 4096-byte physical sectors, emulating 512-byte sectors, and not add any more extra cache or processing power than only what it takes to pull off the actual emulation, you'd wind up with a drive that performed so bad, you couldn't sell it. You'd probably have to pay people to dispose of them. A few early models almost met this hypothetical situation.

Before AF came along, TiVo bought their drives with the smallest cache that WD offered to sell to OEMs. Through retail channels, you couldn't even get a drive with so little cache as TiVo was using.

With the advent of AF, suddenly TiVo was using 32MB cache drives in place of what they'd have used 2MB for, and 64MB in place of 4MB. WD even stopped selling OEM drives with less cache than the retail counterparts.

For a platter drive that only spins at 5400 RPM, what on earth is all that cache memory even for? It's there, in combination with extra processing power on the drive PCB, to keep the AF drives from taking drive performance backwards to a decade or two ago. It also masks how much more workload is being placed on everything inside the case, except maybe the spindle motor.

As plenty of people on this forum can attest to, even all that added cache, combined with more processing power, can't keep misaligned data from impacting performance.

AF with 512e (emulation), introduced to platter drives, something that was not there before: Read-Modify-Write (RMW) operations, where rather than being able to just write a 512-byte sector, the drive has to first read the whole 4K sector to be written to, then change the emulated sector data, then write the whole 4K sector back to the drive again. Unless the whole 4K sector is to be written in a single operation, it's RMW for every write.

But wait, there's more: If the data being written is not aligned, it overlaps the next physical 4K sector. Now, two whole 4K sectors must both be Read, Modified in memory, then written, just for what would have been a single write operation on a non AF drive, and could have been a single RMW operation on an aligned AF drive, with aligned data, not just the partition boundaries (and assuming the data inside will be aligned, which is not always the case, as was discovered while this program was being created).

And if you call in the next 30 seconds, we'll double the issues: Seeking operations are some of the most wear-and-tear operations on platter drives. RMW-style writes lead to more seek operations as the drive plays catch-up.

Just because the platter drive companies got better at hiding just how much harder the internal moving parts and electronics must work, even managing to mask the noise it would have created with older drives, doesn't change how hard AF makes drives work, compounded when every write isn't perfectly aligned.

Some might have noticed how AAM (Acoustic Management) is no longer adjustable on modern AF drives (or even listed as a function). This doesn't mean it isn't happening. The drive companies just don't want you to be able to hear what an AF drive would sound like, if they didn't add an extra processor, just to mask the excessive seeking going on, sight-unseen. By utilizing a processor just to manage this, there's no longer a performance gain from freeing up the drive processor from these tasks. Gone are the days of choosing fast and loud, quiet and slow, or anywhere in-between.

Until the days of 4K Native support and compatibility come widely, and everything built around 512-byte sectors, or using 512e as a crutch, is obsolete and gone, this plague isn't going anywhere, unless SSDs evolve to the point of outlasting platter drives, and can be used as drop-in replacements for such demanding applications, where the P/E cycles would be so quickly burned through, right now.

If TiVo wanted to, they could have rewrote their code to make sure the actual data being written was aligned. But, they only got as far as partition boundaries with the Roamio.


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## aaronwt

ThAbtO said:


> Amazon has it for $160 and Prime shipping.


Thanks. If I get one I can get BestBuy to price match Amazon. Since they both charge me tax it would be the same price.

Still not sure I'm going to try this since my 3TB drive is working fine. And I use a 6TB drive in my PC for local storage of .TiVo files.


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## nooneuknow

aaronwt said:


> Still not sure I'm going to try this since my 3TB drive is working fine. And I use a 6TB drive in my PC for local storage of .TiVo files.


After all the time we spent coming up with a name for it, you had better at least try it!  It runs on Windows, and *YOU* get to choose the drive you use. :up:

Just think how cool it will look in your signature line!  You know you want it!


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## HerronScott

ggieseke said:


> Any model in particular? Premieres should be fairly easy, but I'm hesitant to go back any further than that.


Well you can tell from my signature that I'm partial still to the S3's (OLED and HD) but I understand if you wouldn't want to go back that far.

Scott


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## HerronScott

ggieseke said:


> Premieres can't do that. I'd have to copy everything from the the existing drive to temporary storage on the computer, then back to the new layout. Let me think about this for a few days...


Replacement for JMFS/WinMFS that also does alignment with a new drive? 

Scott


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## nooneuknow

@HerronScott: Given your adventures in experimenting with alignment on those, I knew you'd show up, and what you'd hope for. 

Unfortunately, I can't recommend getting your hopes up on that. Even though I no longer own anything older than S5, I've tried my best to find somebody to tackle that segment. I will keep trying, but would say any such endeavor is likely to be born out of a different thread. But, you never know...

Personally, if mfsr was my baby, I'd hope for the enthusiasm you have, coming from those who could use what was just brought to fruition...


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## aaronwt

nooneuknow said:


> After all the time we spent coming up with a name for it, you had better at least try it!  It runs on Windows, and *YOU* get to choose the drive you use. :up:
> 
> Just think how cool it will look in your signature line!  You know you want it!


If I originally had a Roamio Plus and had upgraded the drive, then I would definitely be using this. And yes I want to use it but the timing isn't good right now with a bunch of other things I am dealing with.

Of course I'm home right now still waiting for the washer repair person to show up with the new parts for my washing machine.

I did just make a small $12 donation.


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## ggieseke

aaronwt said:


> I did just make a small $12 donation.


Thanks for being the first, especially since you haven't even used it!


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## nooneuknow

aaronwt said:


> If I originally had a Roamio Plus and had upgraded the drive, then I would definitely be using this. And yes I want to use it but the timing isn't good right now with a bunch of other things I am dealing with.
> 
> Of course I'm home right now still waiting for the washer repair person to show up with the new parts for my washing machine.
> 
> I did just make a small $12 donation.


I know exactly what you mean, and know first-hand what that's like.

Thank You. If the community had more members like you, I'd wager the better the odds of developers continuing to improve upon such tools, and feel more inclined to begin, or continue with, whatever can possibly come next.

Without members like you, we all risk seeing the developers write off their time, hardware purchases, and other costs, and vanishing into the ether, or making whatever comes next, into paid-upfront releases, which can't be promoted from within the community, due to the law of the land.

Keeping it "in the community" allows for community collaboration, bringing together the right people, to bring it all together, test, and support. Thanks, again. :up: :up: :up:


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## aaronwt

Newegg has a Shell Shocker deal today between 10:00AM - 12:59PM PDT for a 5TB WD Red drive for $180.

This will work fine with a 5TB drive right? If I do end up using the program, I figure the 5TB drive will be the best deal for me. Since the cost per TB is less than what Amazon was selling the 6TB Red for. Plus I won't be paying taxes with Newegg like Amazon or BestBuy.


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## jmbach

I had tested the program with 4TB and 6TB drives but is designed to work with drives from 3TB to 6TB.


----------



## nooneuknow

aaronwt said:


> Newegg has a Shell Shocker deal today between 10:00AM - 12:59PM PDT for a 5TB WD Red drive for $180.
> 
> This will work fine with a 5TB drive right? If I do end up using the program, I figure the 5TB drive will be the best deal for me. Since the cost per TB is less than what Amazon was selling the 6TB Red for. Plus I won't be paying taxes with Newegg like Amazon or BestBuy.


Yes, as jmbach said, 4, 5, or 6TB all should work fine (while even 3TB should work, too).

I had posted about this deal early this AM, but took it down, because I've created a paradox over my bad experience with the way TLER drives handle errors, under certain "perfect storms of circumstances", and another member had pointed that out in another thread...

But, in the year that has passed since that experience, the same WD30EFRX drive (once write and read tested several times), has not skipped a beat, and neither have the other two, in my other two base Roamios. I suspect a borderline wall-wart might have kicked that all off. I used 2.5A power bricks from Cisco TAs in place of the wall-warts, which I then used to run the TAs. No problems in the year since then. I've seen no other reports of anybody on TCF having the same issues. But, I've been advocating upgrading from the 2A wall-wart, too. (I realize you aren't upgrading a Base or OTA model, so no wall-wart to worry about).

Something just won't let me go 5TB, when I know 6TB will work. So, feel free to buy the 5TB I probably won't pull the trigger on. I'm sure it will work just fine, just so long as you aren't going to wind up wanting that extra 1TB you left on the table.


----------



## jmbach

If there is enough interest and support for the developer of the program, it is possible that he might be encouraged to create a version that would work on one with recordings so that you will not lose them.


----------



## aaronwt

Well I couldn't pass up the $36 per TB price of the Newegg 5TB Red sale. So I guess I will be trying out the program sometime. 

I re-read the first post and saw that I could use a USB 3.0 connection to configure the drive. After reading that and with the price of the drive I figured I might as well go for it. Even though I probably shouldn't. I just need to find a big gap of time when I don't have any important recording scheduled and I also have the free time. Then I will pop open my Roamio Pro.

I guess I also need to make sure I back up my One Passes with KMTTG and make sure all the recordings that can be transferred are on my PC. I guess I will lose access to my HBO and Cinemax recordings that are stuck on the TiVo since they are restricted on FiOS.

EDIT: And just so I'm crystal clear about the Red Drives in the TiVo. I do not need to do anything special to them to have them work properly right? Or do I need to use the program I used on my WD green drives to increase the TLER(?) from 7 seconds to 5 minutes? Or am I disabling it? I can't remember. I've only used the program five times. With the five 2TB, EZRX drives I use in one of my unRAID setups.

EDIT:  duH!!! I reread the thread and nooneuknow had already answered this saying that NASware 3.0 was set to 5 minutes.


----------



## nooneuknow

@aaronwt: The 7 second TLER is not adjustable, or disableable, that's a RAID function, that can only be set by a RAID controller.

The Idle Mode 3 timer will be factory set to 5 minutes (300 seconds). I'd leave that alone, as that is essentially the same as disabling it.

I'd just suggest running it through the factory tests, first. It's not like you have to sit there and watch it while it completes tests. Newegg may have cool packaging for drives, but sometimes it's like as if they mishandle them between bulk pack and the air pillow packs they squeeze them inside of (sometimes I think it's too tight of a squeeze).


----------



## nooneuknow

jmbach said:


> If there is enough interest and support for the developer of the program, it is possible that he might be encouraged to create a version that would work on one with recordings so that you will not lose them.


Hell, I might send him one of the 5TB drives I just snagged, if he can find a way for me to copy my 85% full 3TB drive to a 5TB drive, and expand the available space.


----------



## scoombs

nooneuknow said:


> Hell, I might send him one of the 5TB drives I just snagged, if he can find a way for me to copy my 85% full 3TB drive to a 5TB drive, and expand the available space.


I would also be interested in supporting development of this scenario. And just for clarification...the max internal size is 6TB, or just largest tested to date?


----------



## jmbach

At this time, because of TiVo's limitations concerning handling of partition sizes, it is 6TB.


----------



## aaronwt

4TB Reds are on sale today and tomorrow at Newegg for $140 with promo code.

If this deal were available yesterday, I would have picked up the 4TB red instead of the 5TB one.


----------



## deaddeeds

Just did it. Works like a charm. Quick and easy too. Made a donation for your efforts.


----------



## ggieseke

deaddeeds said:


> Just did it. Works like a charm. Quick and easy too. Made a donation for your efforts.


THANKS!!!!!

Let me know how it behaves after a few weeks of real-world use if you get the chance.


----------



## aaronwt

deaddeeds said:


> Just did it. Works like a charm. Quick and easy too. Made a donation for your efforts.


So you used the 6TB EZRX? I had thought about using the one I have in a PC for storage of my TiVo shows. But all the talk of it only being rated for so many TB per year scared me off.


----------



## ggieseke

I think the TB per year rating issue is mostly about the Purples. I wouldn't hesitate to put a standard EZRX Green in a TiVo, and Intellipark doesn't seem to be an issue with Roamios.

I wish WD would release a 6TB AV rated drive and put us all out of this misery when it comes to recommending drives.


----------



## Am_I_Evil

aaronwt said:


> So you used the 6TB EZRX? I had thought about using the one I have in a PC for storage of my TiVo shows. But all the talk of it only being rated for so many TB per year scared me off.


this is what i'm receiving on Monday; so hopefully no issues....


----------



## aaronwt

Holy S***!! That was quick. It only took around 60 seconds for the program to do it's work in windows! Is that correct?

The whole process for me, from initially unplugging the TiVo to plugging it back in with expanded 5TB drive took under 20 minutes. I'm waiting now for the 10 to 20 minutes for it to download the channel/guide data for FiOS. Once that is done then I can check to see if it's actually showing the space available for the 5TB drive. Once I get there and it looks OK, I'll send another donation. This time I'll send $23.

Now I have upgrade fever. So I ordered a 1TB Red to go into my Roamio Basic. Although I guess I can't use this program with it.

Hopefully I have no issues with the 5TB Red drive. It went from the anti-static bag directly into the TiVo. I never even tested it. And I even forgot to get a pic of the serial number for registration.

EDIT: Donation sent!


----------



## ThAbtO

By my estimate:

4 TB would yield 600 HD hours
5 TB yields 750 HD Hours
6 TB yields 900 HD hours

This is based on 1TB/150 HD and 2 TB/300 HD hours.


----------



## ggieseke

Thanks again!

On USB 3.0 or eSATA, roughly one minute is about what I got too. It takes at least 3.5 minutes for the first pass in the TiVo and about the same for the second pass after running mfsr, so I didn't feel too bad. After that the first call home for guide data can take a long time, but that's normal even with the factory drive.

The early versions took about 8-10 minutes to run until I got smart and optimized the disk I/O subroutine.

Let me know how it goes. I've done 4 & 6 TB drives in real-world tests and a virtual 3TB drive, but never a 5. If everything worked correctly it should show about 800 hours of capacity in the System Information screen.


----------



## aaronwt

Yes. It shows 800 HD hours on the sys info screen with the 5TB drive.

EDIT: I could have sworn it showed 800 hours earlier. It's showing 798 now.

It did a few reboots because of cable card issues so hopefully that didn't affect anything. The FiOS people screwed my cable card up and now I don't get any channels in except locals. No idea what the idiots are doing. Instead of pairing my card so I could receive Cinemax, they de-activated it.


----------



## deaddeeds

aaronwt said:


> Yes. It shows 800 HD hours on the sys info screen with the 5TB drive.
> 
> EDIT: I could have sworn it showed 800 hours earlier. It's showing 798 now.
> 
> It did a few reboots because of cable card issues so hopefully that didn't affect anything. The FiOS people screwed my cable card up and now I don't get any channels in except locals. No idea what the idiots are doing. Instead of pairing my card so I could receive Cinemax, they de-activated it.


FIOS peeps had to remove cablecard from account and add it back on manually. All works now.


----------



## nooneuknow

ggieseke said:


> I think the TB per year rating issue is mostly about the Purples. I wouldn't hesitate to put a standard EZRX Green in a TiVo, and Intellipark doesn't seem to be an issue with Roamios.
> 
> I wish WD would release a 6TB AV rated drive and put us all out of this misery when it comes to recommending drives.


Correct, agreed, agreed, and agreed.


Spoiler



If any of my posts on these matters are unclear, or somehow prone to confusing people. I'd like to know how to better explain (or perhaps in a few cases, explain less).

Due to the changing scope of what size drives are available, and supported, things have gone a bit wonky with my past recommendations for both "best choices", and "will work, but not recommended choices".

*Past 4TB*, if sticking with WD, there's only two decent choices (at this moment):
WD Red EFRX w/3yr warranty
WD Green EZRX w/2yr warranty

If I throw the warranty out the window, I'd switch the order I list the two.

Another drive that will "work" is the WD Purple PURX w/3yr warranty. But, with a clearly stated/documented 60TB/yr workload rating, amongst other things, and WD's warranty clear on exceeding that workload (easy on a TiVo) being a warranty-voiding usage, I only mention it because it will "work". IMO, these drives only belong in the exact applications they are marketed (by WD, not resellers) for, and within the parameters of all the fine print. I'd run a plain "Green" over a "Purple" any day, for TiVo, and most other uses.


Like you, I'm really not liking having the WD AV Green missing from the top of the list (for above 4TB). It's always been the best choice (once the price premium got minimal), and drive most present in all TiVos out there. TiVo chose to use it, and only seemed to use Seagate's AV drive when supply was an issue.


----------



## nooneuknow

aaronwt said:


> Yes. It shows 800 HD hours on the sys info screen with the 5TB drive.
> 
> EDIT: I could have sworn it showed 800 hours earlier. It's showing 798 now.


It is typical, and normal, for a freshly installed drive to show a few more hours right away, then drop down a few, once indexing of the full guide data has completed. It's that reserved space for Teleworld paid programming, that can only be reserved, once the guide data has indexed. That's what also can cause the available capacity to exceed the total capacity, at first glance.

It's all perfectly normal, and can be replicated on other TiVos, if you look at System Information at just the right times.

I hope your cablecard issues are resolved soon. That's always the PITA we all risk, when we do anything that can/will lose the pairing (and that includes any drive change/upgrade, at all).


----------



## aaronwt

Man.. what a bunch of idiots at FiOS. I'm still out and they can't access the card in my account. Now I need to try and exchange the card tomorrow at the local FiOS store. Of course one person tries to say that the card is damaged. Which of course it isn't. There system is so screwed up. It's 2015 and I thought they were way past having issues this bad with cable cards. What a PITA. Now I've got to try and push for compensation from them. WHich will be another PITA to deal with because they can never compensate you for your lost time or lost recordings.

At least on the bright side I'm able to transfer content from my other TiVos and from the PC. Although now I'll need to purchase my missed recordings tonight. Hopefully they can activate the new card at the store. It's been several years since I've been this pissed at FiOS.


----------



## HarperVision

aaronwt said:


> Man.. what a bunch of idiots at FiOS. I'm still out and they can't access the card in my account. Now I need to try and exchange the card tomorrow at the local FiOS store. Of course one person tries to say that the card is damaged. Which of course it isn't. There system is so screwed up. It's 2015 and I thought they were way past having issues this bad with cable cards. What a PITA. Now I've got to try and push for compensation from them. WHich will be another PITA to deal with because they can never compensate you for your lost time or lost recordings. At least on the bright side I'm able to transfer content from my other TiVos and from the PC. Although now I'll need to purchase my missed recordings tonight. Hopefully they can activate the new card at the store. It's been several years since I've been this pissed at FiOS.


Comcast isn't much better. I just spent an hour and a half on the phone with a so called "XFinity Internet Expert" who didn't even know what a public WAN IP address was and insisted that residential gateways don't have one, while I was clearly logged into my parent's looking at the setup menus using the, you guessed it, WAN IP! He kept referring to the 10.0.0.1 and 192.168.1.1 addresses and how my router gives the only IPs that I can access. He couldn't comprehend the concept of WAN and LAN, and he was the high up tech person they sent me to!!! Simply amazing.


----------



## ggieseke

aaronwt said:


> Yes. It shows 800 HD hours on the sys info screen with the 5TB drive.
> 
> EDIT: I could have sworn it showed 800 hours earlier. It's showing 798 now.


Sounds about right. A 4TB shows 637 hours and a 6TB shows 959 hours. I rounded those numbers in my head to 640 & 960 and split the difference.


----------



## garyschmidt78

I had to ignore the Windows 7 prompt to Format the USB3 drive and then I had to unplug and re-plug in the USB port for it to be recognized by the MFS Format utility. Once I did this, it worked like a charm. I sent in my donation! Thank you. Great work...


----------



## ggieseke

garyschmidt78 said:


> I had to ignore the Windows 7 prompt to Format the USB3 drive and then I had to unplug and re-plug in the USB port for it to be recognized by the MFS Format utility. Once I did this, it worked like a charm. I sent in my donation! Thank you. Great work...


Thanks. Do you think I should add a "Rescan Drives" option to the menu, or is it good enough as is?


----------



## aaronwt

In windows 8.1 mine just showed up. I turned on the usb 3.0 enclosure, ran the program, and it saw the drive.


----------



## ThAbtO

ggieseke said:


> Thanks. Do you think I should add a "Rescan Drives" option to the menu, or is it good enough as is?


Shouldn't there be a 'Show All Connected drives', with type, select and confirm to continue dialog?


----------



## aaronwt

When I ran the program without a tivo drive installed, it said it didn't see any tivo drives. It only works with tivo drives so I don't see what reason there would be to show non tivo drive info.

With the tivo drive it gave some info about it.


----------



## ggieseke

aaronwt said:


> When I ran the program without a tivo drive installed, it said it didn't see any tivo drives. It only works with tivo drives so I don't see what reason there would be to show non tivo drive info.
> 
> With the tivo drive it gave some info about it.


I layer safety protocols on top of safety protocols, because I REALLY don't want to wipe someone's PC. DvrBARS has an option to show system drives but it still won't touch them. I didn't think the extra programming was worth the effort in this case, so it does what aaronwt described. Only Roamio drives will even be listed.


----------



## aaronwt

Hopefully I'll have my 5TB Red drive close to being full sometime next week so I can make sure there are no issues. I'm currently in the process of transferring 1.5TB of shows to it. And I've scheduled dozens of movies and TV shows to be recorded over the next few days.
I figure worst case I should be able to have it at capacity by next weekend.


----------



## gespears

I donated but haven't had a chance to use the program yet. It wasn't much but hopefully it will buy you a couple cold root beers. As I stated earlier, thanks for all your hard work on our behalf. We really appreciate it.

Now I have to pick up a 6 TB drive and figure out how to watch all the programs on my almost full 3 TB drive. Work has been so busy I haven't had a chance to watch much TV so things are really backed up. If you just don't have anything better to do (or even if you do ;-> ) a way to copy the shows saved on the old drive would be great.


----------



## TivoRocks193

It the source posted anywhere? It would be good to merge these changes into winmfs as well as review the code for community. I'm not fond of running .exe off the Internet without the source.


----------



## nooneuknow

TivoRocks193 said:


> It the source posted anywhere? It would be good to merge these changes into winmfs as well as review the code for community. I'm not fond of running .exe off the Internet without the source.


Until the author replies, I only know enough to say it this way:
- No.
- Not going to happen.
- I'm not fond of that, either. But, this author is an established member of the community, and has released other software, for free, for the community, and has been around to support it. The executable file is completely stand-alone, not an installer. It doesn't change anything, or add anything, to the end-user's computer. When you are done using, or scrutinizing, you can delete the executable file, and all traces will be gone, like it was never even there (Windows event log messages, aside).

You have choices:
- Pay the big bucks for the for-profit solutions that have always been around, and not have to run any software.
- Gather together a group of collaborators, and build open-source solutions (or try to patch the heck out of what's out there, as open-source), to achieve the same results.
- Just don't upgrade past 3TB (or 4TB, in the case of telemark's linux-based community solution).
- Scan for malware, use change monitoring/blocking software, enjoy the results of the community solution, and hopefully give something back, to help the author work towards recouping costs, so that whatever the next potential community project may be, might get going forward.


----------



## TivoRocks193

Release for free would have included the source. Is there some reason you're so afraid of open source development? It leads to better software for all.


----------



## telemark

I am a fan of opensource, but I'd suggest those who need source code access to pour their efforts into JMFS which needs an update for Roamio and is already GPL licensed.

To imply an author is not contributing enough by choosing a different license than your preferred one, comes off as ungrateful to what was already thankless.

Out of all the ethical questions regarding software around here, the biggest violation imho is Tivo's handling and lackadaisical releases of Linux/busybox which is GPL code. They basically invented new avoidance techniques that set the stage for the rest of the hardware industry. 

If you go shame TivoCorp for making money off of other software developers work without the proper permission/compensation to those authors, I'd be thanking you. If demanding or complaining to any independent devs around here, I'd call over the line. "Thank you" or "here's a beer", is the preferred response. And just doing nothing conveniently falls in the middle.

Ideology aside, JMFS needs some attention. I've added the most lines to it in the last year but I'm moving on to other projects. To me this is a micro-experiment on how well OSS can thrive in certain situations, but so far it's been looking like it relies on convincing others to contribute rather than those who want contributing themselves.


----------



## TivoRocks193

Wow, never knew this place was so anti-open source. I'm not saying the author didn't do a good job, nor that people shouldn't donate to him. But to respond with such long-winded comments for such a simple suggestion...

Either way, it would be good if people were working together to improve his solution. Why not build on his solution to support transferring content from the original TiVo drive? Or add support for Premiere? Without sharing of information, every developer has to start from scratch and nothing gets improved.

In a community so dependent on each other for support, I figured sharing, revising, and improving of source code would come second nature. You can't be a free and open community, while at the same time complaining anytime someone suggests opening the source for the tools we all use.

Glad the author made the .exe, hope he releases the source so that others can make it even better!


----------



## TivoRocks193

I just don't see the point in releasing a piece of software for free, asking for donations, and not turning over the source for the community to make it even better. I would definitely donate to someone who made it an open source project, rather than hoarding it to themselves.

Either way, nooneukmow, you're not the author, so I don't see why your spending pages of text responding for him. He's a big boy, he doesn't need you defending him.


----------



## unitron

TivoRocks193 said:


> I just don't see the point in releasing a piece of software for free, asking for donations, and not turning over the source for the community to make it even better. I would definitely donate to someone who made it an open source project, rather than hoarding it to themselves.
> 
> Either way, nooneukmow, you're not the author, so I don't see why your spending pages of text responding for him. He's a big boy, he doesn't need you defending him.


nooneuknow can spend his time defending ggieseke while ggieseke spends his time developing programs from which the TiVo "hotrodding" community benefits, or ggieseke can spend his time defending himself and not get any coding done.

I know which division of labor I prefer.


----------



## ggieseke

I'm always happy to help other devs, answer questions about what I think I know about MFS, etc. The source code is copyrighted and I have no plans to release it.


----------



## jmbach

Not to continue this off topic discussion, but does somebody have the source code for WinMFS? Please point me toward it.


----------



## TivoRocks193

The source code is copyrighted? That's rich coming from someone who probably broke a dozen reverse engineering laws hacking TiVo's data structure. You guys are like a bunch of patrons on the Titantic fighting over the tip, while hurtling toward an ice burg.

TiVo is on a serious decline, with the CableCard mandate nearly defeated. The home brew community is nothing what it used to be.. Who remembers when you could custom install apps on a TiVo? I get that the author doesn't want to share, but the fact that you all rush to defend and support his inability to share... well, let's just say I hope you all enjoy using TiVo when there's only 3 people left on the planet using it.

I don't think anyone should give the author a dollar unless he makes the project open and extensible for everyone to share and build on.

And with that, I think it's safe to say I'm done with this forum. It's a sad state when a dwindling community of members doesn't want to help each other as much as possible. It's even worse when they are actively encouraged not to help.


----------



## fcfc2

TivoRocks193 said:


> The source code is copyrighted? That's rich coming from someone who probably broke a dozen reverse engineering laws hacking TiVo's data structure. You guys are like a bunch of patrons on the Titantic fighting over the tip, while hurtling toward an ice burg.
> 
> TiVo is on a serious decline, with the CableCard mandate nearly defeated. The home brew community is nothing what it used to be.. Who remembers when you could custom install apps on a TiVo? I get that the author doesn't want to share, but the fact that you all rush to defend and support his inability to share... well, let's just say I hope you all enjoy using TiVo when there's only 3 people left on the planet using it.
> 
> I don't think anyone should give the author a dollar unless he makes the project open and extensible for everyone to share and build on.
> 
> And with that, I think it's safe to say I'm done with this forum. It's a sad state when a twindling community of members doesn't want to help each other as much as possible. It's even worse when they are actively encouraged not to help.


Hi,
I guess everybody is entitled to their opinion, so here is mine. You seem to be suffering from an "excessive sense of entitlement" as well as an "extreme lack of appreciation." Not a pretty combination. 
I like many others am grateful to the developer of "his" software and appreciate both the time and expense he put into it. I also note that he has provided this useful software to everyone for "free". Not sure how you were brought up, but from my perspective he deserves a gracious "thank you."


----------



## jmbach

FWIW, spike never released WinMFS source (which was alluded to in an earlier post) but still provided WinMFS for free. So certainly the same comments apply to spike as well as ggieseke and I don't hear anybody commenting this loudly on spike not releasing WinMFS source. 

All this to say that certainly ggieseke is not the first nor will he be the last to release free software without source code.

If you have an issue with it, then do not use the software. If you use the software, then support the developer with a donation.


----------



## L David Matheny

TivoRocks193 said:


> The source code is copyrighted? That's rich coming from someone who probably broke a dozen reverse engineering laws hacking TiVo's data structure. You guys are like a bunch of patrons on the Titantic fighting over the tip, while hurtling toward an ice burg.
> 
> TiVo is on a serious decline, with the CableCard mandate nearly defeated. The home brew community is nothing what it used to be.. Who remembers when you could custom install apps on a TiVo? I get that the author doesn't want to share, but the fact that you all rush to defend and support his inability to share... well, let's just say I hope you all enjoy using TiVo when there's only 3 people left on the planet using it.
> 
> I don't think anyone should give the author a dollar unless he makes the project open and extensible for everyone to share and build on.
> 
> And with that, I think it's safe to say I'm done with this forum. It's a sad state when a dwindling community of members doesn't want to help each other as much as possible. It's even worse when they are actively encouraged not to help.


TiVo vs Titanic comparisons are definitely a topic for a different thread, but brief detours into open-source vs copyrighted software are not wildly off-topic here.

Open-source code is nice when a project is so large in scope or duration that no one person can complete it and there is a talented community willing to do collaborative development. But a civilized society also respects private property rights, and there are benefits to private development, which can result in a cleaner product due to a single vision and an author's pride in his work. Reverse engineering is a gray area, especially when applied to data layout as opposed to code, since data layouts are usually arbitrary.

I will probably contribute after I get around to actually using the product. If you don't want to contribute, then don't. What would you do with the source code if you had it? Have you contributed extensively to other open-source projects? I can see myself doing that in my younger years, but I've also worked as a programmer where I expected to be paid. And even working for free I might feel that I have the right to take sole credit for my work and retain creative control. Would that offend you?

I agree with fcfc2 that you seem to have an inflated sense of entitlement, but I guess there's a lot of that going around these days. I'm old enough to understand the saying "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth" which means don't look for faults in something that is being given to you.


----------



## telemark

OT: OSS discussion


Spoiler



I've met Richard Stallman and Eric Raymond, so I'm at least well versed in the philosophy. My view is there are situations ideal for open source yet still a place for closed source, but the ultimate choice is the authors.

Removing the right of the author to choose which, is restricting their rights which is a property right, at least in a country with copyright. In a country without copyrights, maybe Iran, I would have differing opinions. So yes, I'll defend his right to choose, as much as I'll defend your right for the government not to take your house. Inflexible positions is what gives the OSS community a reputation for being zealots, with RMS being the main instigator.

Some context, the OSS "community" effort had ample opportunity to make something first, but missed it. It had a year to offer 4TB support, no dice. I made that, with ggieseke+jmbach's very helpful advice. Then people wanted Windows and 6TB support. And the OSS people had another year to offer that, still nothing. Windows coding is not in my skill set, and ggieseke so graciously stepped up again. When choosing between binary support with no source, or just no support, most prefer the some support.



What you called, encouragement to be unhelpful, if you knew, I don't think you would have said it.
ggieseke, jmbach, nooneuknow, unitron, me are each among the most frequent contributors to the upgrade forums of late.

There's no sane reason for any of them to contribute the way they do. I'd figure users being difficult, is what probably gets more people to quit than anything. None of us want to see more users with less contributors, so it's not surprising any of them will be defensive if they feel it's happening to another.


----------



## ggieseke

TivoRocks193 said:


> The source code is copyrighted? That's rich coming from someone who probably broke a dozen reverse engineering laws hacking TiVo's data structure.


That's inaccurate and just plain rude. No non-existent laws were broken and I haven't even violated the spirit of the TiVo Terms of Service. Tanstafl.


----------



## Blakeintosh

TivoRocks193 said:


> TiVo is on a serious decline, with the CableCard mandate nearly defeated. The home brew community is nothing what it used to be.. Who remembers when you could custom install apps on a TiVo? I get that the author doesn't want to share, but the fact that you all rush to defend and support his inability to share... well, let's just say I hope you all enjoy using TiVo when there's only 3 people left on the planet using it.


TivoRocks193, given your view of the state of affairs in the TiVo universe, it might be time to make a request to the Admins to change your username to something more appropriate.

To the group that worked on this project, excellent work. I will hold off until a 6 TB version of the AV-GP drive comes out. Although, I do have a 4 TB AV-GP drive in my Roamio Basic. Maybe I will reformat that one to try it out.


----------



## Am_I_Evil

just donated...6TB is going through the setup process now 

edit: see pic


----------



## aaronwt

Man, this 5TB drive is taking forever to fill up. I should pass the 3TB threshold tonight.


----------



## nooneuknow

Blakeintosh said:


> I will hold off until a 6 TB version of the AV-GP drive comes out.


I have some concerns that larger AV-GP (now known as AV Green/Green AV) drives might never come. WD sure took their time getting a 4TB one out there. In fact, long enough that WK pretty much had no choice but to go with another line, when they were ready to offer 4TB (and chose poorly, if you don't mind my opinion).


Spoiler



If you were WD, you'd be looking at the market for how much money could be made, if the line was updated again, with larger sizes.

Unless TiVo has plans to release a larger single-drive TiVo, no demand there. That's a small market as is. Now, break that down into the small number of people looking to upgrade their TiVos. It doesn't add much to the market pool. Might some MSO plan on offering a single-drive leased DVR with a capacity that large? I doubt it. But, you never know what the future will bring.

WD's approach might simply be to cap the AV Green right at the 4TB it sits at, and tell the DVR market to use RAID for larger capacities, since drive product lines made for AV & RAID/NAS, in true 24x7 usage scenarios, exist already. It takes the existence of a large and profitable market, for a drive mfg to "retool", for lack of a better word. They won't just retool, and hope the market catches up, unless their market research tells them they'd be fools not to be ready.


I just don't want you to wait, perhaps misreading between lines, assuming AV-Green will actually make it to sizes >4TB. At the same time, I'd hate to be wrong, and have anybody feel I declared 4TB is where the AV Green will stay. But, other drive mfg also seem in no big hurry to get larger equivalents out there, either. Just some food for thought...


----------



## ggieseke

Am_I_Evil said:


> just donated...6TB is going through the setup process now
> 
> edit: see pic


Thanks!


----------



## fcfc2

Hi,
I used the software on a Hitachi 4TB Desktop Coolspin 0S03359, last night and seems to have worked its magic very well. Thanks for your excellent work.
PS. Donation happily made :up:


----------



## aaronwt

I've hit 75% of space in use with the 5TB Red. Everything seems great so far.


----------



## HerronScott

telemark said:


> OT: OSS discussion
> ggieseke, jmbach, nooneuknow, unitron, me are each among the most frequent contributors to the upgrade forums of late.
> 
> There's no sane reason for any of them to contribute the way they do. I'd figure users being difficult, is what probably gets more people to quit than anything. None of us want to see more users with less contributors, so it's not surprising any of them will be defensive if they feel it's happening to another.


I am extremely grateful for all the help and contributions each of the users listed above has provided to me and others with problems as well as the tools to help "improve" our TiVo's.

I have donated for the tools that I have used and strongly encourage everyone that benefits to do so as well (and will do so when I do eventually get a Roamio for this tool as well).

I really hope that one person does not discourage any of you guys from continuing with your efforts here.

Scott


----------



## jrtroo

Heck, I donated $10 just to know this will be available when I finally move on from my upgraded 2TB Premieres. Awesome stuff.


----------



## biff0

I can't get this to work on Win7 as Admin - installed Visual 2013 Redisti too. Any help would be great. Thanks


----------



## jmbach

Can you give more detail on how it is not working?
Does the program start? Is it detecting your drive? Are you getting an error? Etc.


----------



## ggieseke

What jmbach said...

The Visual Studio redistributable is baked into to the exe, so it should be completely stand-alone.


----------



## aaronwt

hmmm..I can't seem to get the My SHows list past 95% full. ON the Sys info screen the lowest I've been able to get HD hours available was 46. 
I guess the TiVo is deleting the stuff in anticipation of future recordings. Because I start another recording and some disappear. And they aren't in the recently deleted folder. So I guess it's just making room for all the future recordings I scheduled. 

Most of the content on my Pro right now was transferred from a PC. Not recorded since the new drive was added. So maybe that is affecting what I am seeing. IN normal use I've been up to 99% with the 3TB drive. But I have so many manual recordings scheduled for the next few days in addition to the One pass recordings. Normally 99% of the scheduled recordings would be from One Passes.


----------



## ggieseke

If it got that far and the recordings it has are watchable, I'd lean towards the theory that something in the scheduler or the free space meter is wonky. All I'm doing with mfsr is presenting it with a completely empty MFS file system. The OS takes it from there.

They've had some weird glitches with transferred programs vs the free space meter before, and I don't think anyone can say with any certainty how & when it will decide to delete recordings. The many and varied threads on the use of KUID are proof of that.


----------



## aaronwt

I'm sure it's fine. It's got to be all the PC transfers. I transferred a bunch of 50GB to 100GB recordings multiple times so I could quickly fill up the drive. The recordings are fine and I haven't seen any other issues. SO I'll leave it alone for now. Eventually it should get full on it's own once I delete the PC transfers. 

I'll probably go into some of the One Passes to have it keep everything to fill up quicker since I record a bunch of news programs daily. Right now I have around 475 shows scheduled to record over the next eleven days. I guess I'll also change the power savings mode so it will also record suggestions.


----------



## aaronwt

I finally got the 5TB drive higher and went up to 97% full. I ended up changing the content to KUID. But it was working properly. I guess it just keeps the space open for all scheduled recordings over the next 12 days or so. As I got toward the end of changing items to KUID it would show that it would not be able to record new shows because there was not enough space. It seemed to go by lowest priority and then from the latest date to the newest. Now that I've deleted most of the large files I had transferred I'm only around 35% full right now.

So thanks again everyone for producing this program.


----------



## Johnland

Count me as one who felt a donation for this software is well worth it! So $20 from me was just sent.


----------



## ggieseke

Johnland said:


> Count me as one who felt a donation for this software is well worth it! So $20 from me was just sent.


Thank you!!


----------



## Cybernut

Wow!! Had been away from the community for a few months, but am glad I returned just days after this software's release.

ggieseke and everyone else, my immense thanks. I don't have a Roamio so cannot benefit from it but I am certainly interested to see this work for Premieres. I would gladly donate despite not owning a Roamio but because I am currently unemployed, I will save it for a later date. And though I had been an eager early tester for jmbach's Premiere upgrade process for 3 & 4TB drives, I unfortunately can't indulge on a 6TB drive for my Premieres right now (even if ggieseke added Premiere support). Hopefully, my job situation will change soon and I'll be more than happy to contribute then.

Until then, I can only offer my words of thanks to ggieseke for this. So, thank you.


----------



## ggieseke

Good luck on the job search, and welcome back.


----------



## unitron

telemark said:


> OT: OSS discussion
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> I've met Richard Stallman and Eric Raymond, so I'm at least well versed in the philosophy. My view is there are situations ideal for open source yet still a place for closed source, but the ultimate choice is the authors.
> 
> Removing the right of the author to choose which, is restricting their rights which is a property right, at least in a country with copyright. In a country without copyrights, maybe Iran, I would have differing opinions. So yes, I'll defend his right to choose, as much as I'll defend your right for the government not to take your house. Inflexible positions is what gives the OSS community a reputation for being zealots, with RMS being the main instigator.
> 
> Some context, the OSS "community" effort had ample opportunity to make something first, but missed it. It had a year to offer 4TB support, no dice. I made that, with ggieseke+jmbach's very helpful advice. Then people wanted Windows and 6TB support. And the OSS people had another year to offer that, still nothing. Windows coding is not in my skill set, and ggieseke so graciously stepped up again. When choosing between binary support with no source, or just no support, most prefer the some support.
> 
> 
> 
> What you called, encouragement to be unhelpful, if you knew, I don't think you would have said it.
> ggieseke, jmbach, nooneuknow, unitron, me are each among the most frequent contributors to the upgrade forums of late.
> 
> There's no sane reason for any of them to contribute the way they do. I'd figure users being difficult, is what probably gets more people to quit than anything. None of us want to see more users with less contributors, so it's not surprising any of them will be defensive if they feel it's happening to another.


You are correct. If I were sane, I wouldn't be here.


----------



## PapaArt

As a data point, I just formatted a 3TB drive (WD30EURX) for my Roamio Basic. I got the drive a few days before you released MFSR, darn it. I had to test the drive since it came via USPS and the box was not sealed! Fortunately, the drive passed all test.

It took around 30-35 minutes to format which is longer than others. Because it ran so long with no indication of progress, you have to watch the enclosure for activity otherwise one might be tempted to stop the program.

I will put it in service once the new update is released.

GREAT WORK! Donation sent.

PapaArt


----------



## lessd

PapaArt said:


> As a data point, I just formatted a 3TB drive (WD30EURX) for my Roamio Basic. I got the drive a few days before you released MFSR, darn it. I had to test the drive since it came via USPS and the box was not sealed! Fortunately, the drive passed all test.
> 
> It took around 30-35 minutes to format which is longer than others. Because it ran so long with no indication of progress, you have to watch the enclosure for activity otherwise one might be tempted to stop the program.
> 
> I will put it in service once the new update is released.
> 
> GREAT WORK! Donation sent.
> 
> PapaArt


I though this program would only work a 4Tb to 6Tb drives, so your 3Tb drive could not have been used with MFS, or am I incorrect ?


----------



## aaronwt

The first post said that it should work on 3TB drives but had not been tested.


----------



## ggieseke

PapaArt said:


> As a data point, I just formatted a 3TB drive (WD30EURX) for my Roamio Basic. I got the drive a few days before you released MFSR, darn it. I had to test the drive since it came via USPS and the box was not sealed! Fortunately, the drive passed all test.
> 
> It took around 30-35 minutes to format which is longer than others. Because it ran so long with no indication of progress, you have to watch the enclosure for activity otherwise one might be tempted to stop the program.
> 
> I will put it in service once the new update is released.
> 
> GREAT WORK! Donation sent.
> 
> PapaArt


Thanks for the donation!!

Are you saying that it took over 30 minutes to run? If so, I need to look at the code again.


----------



## telemark

ggieseke said:


> Are you saying that it took over 30 minutes to run? If so, I need to look at the code again.


I'm going to uninformed guess this was some USB connection that ended up running in low speed mode.


----------



## PapaArt

ggieseke said:


> Thanks for the donation!!
> 
> Are you saying that it took over 30 minutes to run? If so, I need to look at the code again.


Yes, it took around 30 minutes. I didn't time it so the time is approximate. It sounded like others were done in seconds (under a minute) and not minutes.

I used my laptop with an eSATA cardbus adapter (rated to 150 Gbps) to an eSATA BlacX (rated to 3Gbps). It was probably running near USB rates but it was the time it took to complete. If you just add some progress mechanism so that shows the program is busy that would be fine otherwise users might think the program was hung. The title bar showed "Not Responding" message while it was busy.

I can repeat the work if it helps you.

Still good work!

PapaArt


----------



## PapaArt

aaronwt said:


> The first post said that it should work on 3TB drives but had not been tested.


This could be test of 3TB drives, right.


----------



## telemark

PapaArt said:


> my laptop with an eSATA cardbus adapter (rated to 150 Gbps) to an eSATA BlacX (rated to 3Gbps).


Could you benchmark this, with some utility program? CardBus is probably the bottleneck, instead of eSATA.


----------



## ggieseke

At USB 3.0 or SATA speeds it usually takes about one minute, which is why I didn't bother with a progress meter. It only writes a few hundred megabytes.

I have several older BlacX docks, but I used my Vantec for testing. I'll try one on a USB 2.0 only computer and post the results.

3TB drives will work, and I need to edit that first post accordingly. Most people don't care since a Roamio will handle 3TB drives without my help.

Thanks again for trying it.


----------



## PapaArt

ggieseke said:


> At USB 3.0 or SATA speeds it usually takes about one minute, which is why I didn't bother with a progress meter. It only writes a few hundred megabytes.
> 
> I have several older BlacX docks, but I used my Vantec for testing. I'll try one on a USB 2.0 only computer and post the results.
> 
> 3TB drives will work, and I need to edit that first post accordingly. Most people don't care since a Roamio will handle 3TB drives without my help.
> 
> Thanks again for trying it.


I re-did the format and it took 24 minutes. I am not concerned with the time but what the user may do while it is formating. If you stay with the program the spinner still spins. That is the only indication the program is still working. Changing to another window and then back to the program is where you lose the spinner and any indication the program is still running.

PapaArt


----------



## HarperVision

What is the advantage of doing this on a 3TB drive if the Roamio will do any drive up to that size automatically anyway?


----------



## PapaArt

Just to test. It had not been done yet, no other reason.


----------



## HarperVision

nooneuknow said:


> ........ @HarperVision: Read post #1, specifically the part about alignment and optimization, for your answer.


Sweet, thanks! Been awhile since I read the first post. Makes sense. :up:


----------



## telemark

A cheap progress indicator could be Total Bytes Written so far.


----------



## aaronwt

nooneuknow said:


> Question on USB to SATA adapters and drive docks (and other interfaces that might involve a bridge chip):
> 
> If one can handle (is sold as supporting) a 3TB drive, is it fairly safe to assume it might do all the way up to 6TB?
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> I paid some good money for two different model StarTech docks, and one only will do 2TB, while the other only does 3TB if I repeatedly power cycle/connect it (not a power supply issue). Sure, this was a couple years ago, and the fine print says "tested up to 2TB and 5400 RPM". But, it's kind of strange to see the lack of issues people are having with docks/adapters here, when I can't use any of mine for larger than 2TB (or "just barely" use with 3TB).
> 
> 
> It seems pretty common for docks and adapters to be sold as supporting what they were tested with, before they printed the boxes they put them in, and for them to support larger/later drives. I don't like counting on what seems common, though.


I have a monoprice USB 3.0 to sata dock that says it only supports 2TB drives. I bought it in 2013 but have used a 6TB drive in it plus the 5TB Red drive I used with mfsr. As well as numerous 4TB and 3TB drives.

http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=103&cp_id=10315&cs_id=1031502&p_id=8078&seq=1&format=2


----------



## dogbert44

I was thrilled to see this thread. I went out and bought a WD Red 6TB EFRX. We followed the instructions did the Tivo setup until the zip code setup, and am trying to run the program on a USB 2.0 SATA connector on a Windows 7 box. We used the Run as Administrator option.

The error occurs after the Terms and Conditions screen OK with a dialog box
Line 726, Error 0x00000005 (5). CreateFile.

Any suggestions?


----------



## telemark

dogbert44 said:


> am trying to run the program on a USB 2.0 SATA connector on a Windows 7 box.


So what do you mean by "USB 2.0 SATA connector" ?
What cabling and power supply are you using?
Do you know how to use Device Manager? Is your drive listed there before running mfsr?

http://www.7tutorials.com/find-missing-drivers-hidden-components-device-manager


----------



## ggieseke

dogbert44 said:


> I was thrilled to see this thread. I went out and bought a WD Red 6TB EFRX. We followed the instructions did the Tivo setup until the zip code setup, and am trying to run the program on a USB 2.0 SATA connector on a Windows 7 box. We used the Run as Administrator option.
> 
> The error occurs after the Terms and Conditions screen OK with a dialog box
> Line 726, Error 0x00000005 (5). CreateFile.
> 
> Any suggestions?


Error 5 is Access Denied, and at line 726 it's trying to open each drive on the system in read-only mode to find a suitable candidate. Something is denying your right to even read the drive in question, and it may not be the TiVo drive.

Even though you chose "Run as administrator", is the account you're logged in as a member of the Administrators group? That same subroutine has been run on nearly 1500 computers since DvrBARS was introduced back in 2013, and this is the first access denied error. I'd like to figure this one out.


----------



## lessd

HarperVision said:


> What is the advantage of doing this on a 3TB drive if the Roamio will do any drive up to that size automatically anyway?


The better type of format for AF drives, just a guess on my part.


----------



## jmbach

dogbert44 said:


> I was thrilled to see this thread. I went out and bought a WD Red 6TB EFRX. We followed the instructions did the Tivo setup until the zip code setup, and am trying to run the program on a USB 2.0 SATA connector on a Windows 7 box. We used the Run as Administrator option.
> 
> The error occurs after the Terms and Conditions screen OK with a dialog box
> Line 726, Error 0x00000005 (5). CreateFile.
> 
> Any suggestions?


Might need to make sure any anti-virus software is not blocking access as well.


----------



## gr8reb8

Worked perfectly. On my 6Tb red drive got just shy of 1000 HD hours.
Donation is on the way. Thanks!!!!


----------



## dogbert44

"Error with msfr" -- solved
I was using hardware that allows you to easily hook up SATA drives using an external power source and USB 2.0 port without the casing. I tried this on three different machines. I received the error that i posted on one machine. I got a little further before I got a different error on two other machines. The connector still works for everything else.

I opened up the machine and connected it as a normal internal drive and it worked great. Thanks for the suggestions.


----------



## ggieseke

gr8reb8 said:


> Worked perfectly. On my 6Tb red drive got just shy of 1000 HD hours.
> Donation is on the way. Thanks!!!!


Thank you!!



dogbert44 said:


> "Error with msfr" -- solved
> I was using hardware that allows you to easily hook up SATA drives using an external power source and USB 2.0 port without the casing. I tried this on three different machines. I received the error that i posted on one machine. I got a little further before I got a different error on two other machines. The connector still works for everything else.
> 
> I opened up the machine and connected it as a normal internal drive and it worked great. Thanks for the suggestions.


Glad you figured it out. I try to test all the hardware/software combinations available to me, but something unexpected always seems to crop up anyway.


----------



## DoubleTap

Hey,

I was reading on another website that 4TB could drop right in. I guess this is an error... Luckily i found this tool, but i'm running into problems.

I have a brand new WD40EURX. MFSR recognizes it right away, but I'm gettin Error 3E6 using two completely different setups

1) Win XP SP2 (upgraded to SP3, but didn't help) with a SATA on the Mobo

2) Win 7 Laptop with USB to SATA adapter.


Any suggestions would be great

Here is what i'm getting:
Line 913 Error 3E6 (...

Line 325 Error 3E6(998)

Thansk


----------



## jmbach

Some basics you may have already done.
Make sure you are running it as an administrator. 
Make sure any Antivirus programs are not blocking access to the drive. Try disabling or unloading them and run the program again.


----------



## telemark

Not a Win user here, so more a question. Would safe mode solve some issues due to software interaction?


----------



## DoubleTap

Disabled antivirus, started in safe mode, ran as administrator....

No change.

Thanks for the suggestions. Any other ideas?

Has anyone had success with the WD40EURX?


----------



## ThAbtO

DoubleTap said:


> Disabled antivirus, started in safe mode, ran as administrator....
> 
> No change.
> 
> Thanks for the suggestions. Any other ideas?
> 
> Has anyone had success with the WD40EURX?


Roamio can handle up to 3 TB without intervention (remove and drop in). For 4TB and up, follow the 1st post instructions.


----------



## jmbach

Download WD diagnostic and run it on the drive and then zero out the drive with it. Put the drive in the Roamio and let it get to the GS screen. Remove the drive and run the program again.

Will have to wait on ggsieseke to chime in.


----------



## DoubleTap

Thanks,

Yes, i did start with the first post. Here is the error i'm seeing on two separate systems.



DoubleTap said:


> Hey,
> 
> I was reading on another website that 4TB could drop right in. I guess this is an error... Luckily i found this tool, but i'm running into problems.
> 
> I have a brand new WD40EURX. MFSR recognizes it right away, but I'm gettin Error 3E6 using two completely different setups
> 
> 1) Win XP SP2 (upgraded to SP3, but didn't help) with a SATA on the Mobo
> 
> 2) Win 7 Laptop with USB to SATA adapter.
> 
> Any suggestions would be great
> 
> Here is what i'm getting:
> Line 913 Error 3E6 (...
> 
> Line 325 Error 3E6(998)
> 
> Thansk


----------



## jmbach

What USB to SATA adapter are you using.


----------



## DoubleTap

The xp box is straight off the motherboard.

The win7 is actually using a WD chassis from another WD drive


----------



## Am_I_Evil

didn't post my experience, just posted about being complete...

Originally i tried to use an external USB thing for the 6TB drive but the drive was only being recognized as 3TB by the program and was erroring out. I put it back into the TiVo and let it do its thing again then hooked it straight up to a SATA port and it was recognized without issue as 6TB and everything was smooth from there. So it is very likely that some USB enclosures might not support above 3TB.


----------



## Am_I_Evil

DoubleTap said:


> The xp box is straight off the motherboard.
> 
> The win7 is actually using a WD chassis from another WD drive


i might be wrong....but i would assume XP doesn't support a drive that big...or has something been released to allow this?


----------



## DoubleTap

Thanks. I'm also getting the same results with my Xp machine using the sata on the motherboard


----------



## DoubleTap

I'm not sure, However given I'm using two completely different setups and getting the exact same error. I'm inclined to saw its some interaction between the tool and the drive. The tool recognizes the drive seemingly fine. The error occurs when I tell it to start.



Am_I_Evil said:


> i might be wrong....but i would assume XP doesn't support a drive that big...or has something been released to allow this?


----------



## Am_I_Evil

DoubleTap said:


> I'm not sure, However given I'm using two completely different setups and getting the exact same error. I'm inclined to saw its some interaction between the tool and the drive. The tool recognizes the drive seemingly fine. The error occurs when I tell it to start.


in the program is it actually showing the drive as 4TB? because the issue i was having was mine only showing up as 3TB and i was also getting an error (while using a USB enclosure)


----------



## jmbach

DoubleTap said:


> The win7 is actually using a WD chassis from another WD drive


That might be an issue. Using enclosures rather than docks have been a known issue depending on the enclosure.


----------



## jmbach

You might be able to build a Windows PE disk and boot your desktop off of that and then use mfsr with the drive connected to the motherboard. You might also need to check if the BIOS recognizes the drive appropriately.


----------



## DoubleTap

jmbach said:


> You might be able to build a Windows PE disk and boot your desktop off of that and then use mfsr with the drive connected to the motherboard. You might also need to check if the BIOS recognizes the drive appropriately.


OK that was good advise.

I took yet another desktop i have laying around and just installed win 7 on it fresh. The hardware is a few years newer than my XP box as well.

It expanded it to 3.7TB of usable space.

Going through guided setup now!


----------



## ggieseke

Glad you got it working. I wrote 98% of the program using a WD40EFRX, and in terms of sector count etc it's identical to a WD40EURX.

That error is strange. It's happening during the generic subroutine that I use to read from disk, but the actual error code is "Invalid access to memory location".

My best guess is that your XP box and the chassis were both reporting the drive size or geometry incorrectly. XP _should_ be able to handle drives that big as long as it's not the boot drive, but the BIOS on older machines is another matter.


----------



## DoubleTap

ggieseke said:


> Glad you got it working. I wrote 98% of the program using a WD40EFRX, and in terms of sector count etc it's identical to a WD40EURX.
> 
> That error is strange. It's happening during the generic subroutine that I use to read from disk, but the actual error code is "Invalid access to memory location".
> 
> My best guess is that your XP box and the chassis were both reporting the drive size or geometry incorrectly. XP _should_ be able to handle drives that big as long as it's not the boot drive, but the BIOS on older machines is another matter.


I think you are right. When the tool first started it reported ~1.7xx TB on both setups as used and available. I was assuming that the ultimate size wouldn't appear until after the process was done.

Once i used the 3rd setup and i got 3.7xx TB at startup of the tool i knew things were looking better.

Now i have almost 650 hours!

Will be donating shortly.

Thanks


----------



## unitron

ggieseke said:


> Glad you got it working. I wrote 98% of the program using a WD40EFRX, and in terms of sector count etc it's identical to a WD40EURX.
> 
> That error is strange. It's happening during the generic subroutine that I use to read from disk, but the actual error code is "Invalid access to memory location".
> 
> My best guess is that your XP box and the chassis were both reporting the drive size or geometry incorrectly. XP _should_ be able to handle drives that big as long as it's not the boot drive, but the BIOS on older machines is another matter.


I thought XP couldn't deal with anything, boot disk or not, bigger than 2TB, at least without some kind of drive overlay software voodoo or something equally likely to screw you at the worst possible time.

Is it a partion size limit and not a drive size limit?


----------



## ggieseke

AFAIK it's only a boot disk limitation. I've had home PCs on XP and Server 2003 boxes at work with 4TB RAIDs as D: drive.


----------



## lew

I already installed a 3T drive. I read this thread thinking I might upgrade at some time in the future.

I read the thread.I see some posters are using old computers. Some issues I had (with winMfS) might be applicable.
1) Some old computers can handle drives above 2T only if you upgrade your BIOS. Your motherboards website might still have software for archived hardware.
2) Some of the (older) USB-SATA convertors don't work with some chipsets. It took me a few attempts before I isolated the issue. Opening the case and temporarily connecting the hard drive directly to the motherboard was my solution. Purchasing a newer USB-SATA adapter worked.


----------



## dougdingle

nooneuknow said:


> Question on USB to SATA adapters and drive docks (and other interfaces that might involve a bridge chip):
> 
> If one can handle (is sold as supporting) a 3TB drive, is it fairly safe to assume it might do all the way up to 6TB?
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> I paid some good money for two different model StarTech docks, and one only will do 2TB, while the other only does 3TB if I repeatedly power cycle/connect it (not a power supply issue). Sure, this was a couple years ago, and the fine print says "tested up to 2TB and 5400 RPM". But, it's kind of strange to see the lack of issues people are having with docks/adapters here, when I can't use any of mine for larger than 2TB (or "just barely" use with 3TB).
> 
> 
> It seems pretty common for docks and adapters to be sold as supporting what they were tested with, before they printed the boxes they put them in, and for them to support larger/later drives. I don't like counting on what seems common, though.


I have an Aluratek dual bay eSATA dock/duplicator, model AHDDUB100, and the specs only say "Works with all SATA drives". I've emailed tech support to ask what the biggest supported size is, but realistically don't expect an answer any time soon. I've cloned 2TB TiVo drives with it successfully more than once, and was able to read and write a 3TB drive successfully, so I assume it will clone those as well, although of course until I try it, it's all speculation.

I think the bridge chip in some units chokes on enormous sector counts, and that's why they don't work on very big drives. It's also possible that the internal cloning firmware would do the same...

Edit: So of course after casting aspersions on them, Aluratek tech support replied immediately. Maximum size drive they support for cloning (and I assume R/W) is 4TB.

Edit 2: They sent a second email saying they currently don't have anything that supports 6TB drives.


----------



## dougdingle

And may I say g, a brilliant piece of coding. Nicely done.

Looking forward to the version that allows me to copy the shows from my current 3TB to a 6TB. 

Just imagine losing all those shows and movies at once when the 6TB drive fails!


----------



## ThAbtO

Unless they were copy protected, copy from the TiVo to another or PC.


----------



## dougdingle

ThAbtO said:


> Unless they were copy protected, copy from the TiVo to another or PC.


Unless all you watch are shows that are broadcast over the air, that doesn't work very well.

I'm moving from two S3's to a Roamio, and I have to leave behind a *lot *of recorded movies and shows from non-broadcasters.

It's really, *really *annoying. DRM, for the most part, is a gigantic load of crap that only inconveniences the legitimate user.


----------



## ThAbtO

That's not always true, some cableCo will only protect selected channels while others protect everything. Transferring recordings is about the only way to same them. Unless the drive has issues that will not boot up and allow transfers long enough, then you can be out of luck.

DDRescue should work to copy drives, and if there are problems, they may also copy over.


----------



## gespears

Well Newegg has the WD Green 6 TB on sale for 225. I'd go for it but I'd really like that extra year of warranty on the red. I can't find any good pricing on the red though. Has anybody seen any good deals on it? I'm worried the price won't come down until they release a new larger drive.


----------



## aaronwt

Newegg has the 5TB green on sale today for $160 with their ShellShocker deal.

Of course I paid $180 for my 5TB Red. Which was a good deal. But $160 for the green sounds even better. Considering the 6TB green doesn't seem to go below $225.


----------



## lew

gespears said:


> Well Newegg has the WD Green 6 TB on sale for 225. I'd go for it but I'd really like that extra year of warranty on the red. I can't find any good pricing on the red though. Has anybody seen any good deals on it? I'm worried the price won't come down until they release a new larger drive.


Provantage is selling the red for 282


----------



## dougdingle

Newegg has the 5TB Red for $190 through the end of today, with promo code ESCASNX27. You need to be subscribed to their email blasts to use the promo code.


----------



## gespears

lew said:


> Provantage is selling the red for 282


I believe Newegg has it for 269.


----------



## delgadobb

I'm running into a couple things similar to what others have earlier.

Here's a synopsis of what I've tried: Using a WD 5 TB Red & I followed the directions for installing in the Tivo (SW 20.4.7) up until the start of guided setup. I clicked on 'United States' (Roamio OTA by the way), then at the first screen of guided setup I pulled power.

Using a USB Dock I tried connecting to a WinXP SP3 desktop machine as well as a Windows 7 laptop. Same problems with each as below, the Line 913 & 325 errors. I was hoping installing as an internal drive would solve the problem.

Now I'm trying the drive as an internal drive in the WinXP SP3 desktop with an administrator account. If I select, 'Run as ...', administrator is not one of the options, only my account or 'APNS certificate' (which has a red X next to it). Virus protection temporarily disabled.

When I launch mfsr & click past the initial splash screen 'as-is ... etc', I get the following error in a window titled 'Windows - Drive Not Ready': 
*Exception Processing Message c00000a3 Parameters 75b6bf7c 4 75b6bf7c 75b6bf7c*

If I click 'continue' a couple times I eventually get to the MFS Reformat window which displays: 
*561.53 GB IIII found. 
555.71 GB could be used for recordings, but only 555.70 GB is currently in use.
Click File -> Reformat Roamio Drive to continue *

(At this point it sees the drive despite the earlier error message)

When I select Reformat Roamio drive it tells me "You are about to reformat your Roamio drive. All recordings and settings will be erased." After clicking OK, I get ...

*Line 913, Error 0x000003E6 (998)

* - within the dialog window there's a red 'X' & it says 'ReadFile'. When I click OK here, I get ...

*Line 325, Error 0x000003E6 (998) 
*
- within this dialog window I now get 'ReformatRoamioDrive' along with the Red X.

FWIW, I haven't done anything to prep the WD 5 TB Red or tweak TLER. Let me know if need to do that.

Suggestions? I don't have a Windows 7 desktop yet & would rather not build one just for this, but ???


----------



## ggieseke

The main thing I see is the numbers. That first screen should read 4657.52 GB found with a WD50EFRX. 561.53 GB means that Windows is only recognizing about 12% of the drive, which isn't surprising after hitting the drive not ready errors.

I still think that XP should work if it's running on hardware that's capable of recognizing drives over 2TB, but finding the right combination of hardware and drivers may be nearly impossible for most people.

I have a Dell Optiplex 760 that should make a good test case. I'll build it with XP and see how far I get. It will be next week before I can even start, so you may want to look into Windows 7 or a Windows PE 3.1 or later boot CD.


----------



## jmbach

Run the manufacturer diagnostic on the drive. Make sure the drive is okay and it sees the full drive space.


----------



## delgadobb

ggieseke said:


> The main thing I see is the numbers. That first screen should read 4657.52 GB found with a WD50EFRX. 561.53 GB means that Windows is only recognizing about 12% of the drive, which isn't surprising after hitting the drive not ready errors.
> 
> I still think that XP should work if it's running on hardware that's capable of recognizing drives over 2TB, but finding the right combination of hardware and drivers may be nearly impossible for most people.
> 
> I have a Dell Optiplex 760 that should make a good test case. I'll build it with XP and see how far I get. It will be next week before I can even start, so you may want to look into Windows 7 or a Windows PE 3.1 or later boot CD.


Thanks for the response. I suspect it may be a quirk in the BIOS or, as you mentioned, the wrong combination of hardware & drivers. WinXP works fine for everything else I need, but I'm also fine with Windows 7. You couldn't torture me into using Windows 8 (What is it with Microsoft & every other OS? Seems like Win7 is what Vista should've been & I wouldn't be surprised if Win10/pick-a-name is what Win8 should've been.)

I've been meaning to do a new Windows 7 computer build for my mom (my build is going to be more involved with advanced hardware), so I guess this will accelerate that timeframe & I'll use it for this as well before I get it to her. Based on the earlier info & responses in this thread, I wouldn't be surprised if that does the trick.


----------



## ggieseke

Windows 8.1 has some nice stuff if you add a $5 copy of Start8 and stick to the Desktop, but overall I agree with your assessment. I used 64-bit 8.1 Pro to write mfsr because it supports VHDX files natively. Virtual 3-6TB disks are a lot cheaper than real ones for the early stages of development.

If my Roamio could mount a VHDX file over the network I'd marry it.


----------



## gespears

WD 6 TB Red are 250 at Newegg.


----------



## unitron

To sort of answer my own question about XP and drive sizes...


I discovered, via researching the 3TB WD My Book external that Best Buy had on an unpublicized sale for $91.99 as of a few days ago, that if the drive is formatted with 4096-byte sectors instead of the traditional 512-byte ones, and maybe if the enclosure electronics are designed to do some translating between the drive and the PC, XP on a regular BIOS machine can deal with an NTFS partition larger than 2TB.

Which saves me having to wade into the UEFI and GUID swamp for a while yet.

I have come to hate having to learn new things, especially when it means spending money to replace stuff.

Now get off my lawn, I've got clouds to yell at.


----------



## telemark

The external USB MyBook are 512e internal to the enclosure, but report as 4k when exposed via USB.

The bridge chip does quite a few things, some good, some surprising, some bad.


----------



## jlin

Successfully updated my Roamio Plus drive to 6TB WD drive... over 950 hours of HD capacity!

Donation will be coming soon! Thank you!


----------



## Devx

Whoa, I've been waiting for this, 6TB drive self-prep. Wish I had discovered it sooner.

Upgrade process seems simple enough too. The most difficult or time consuming step will be the copy/backup of shows to the PC and the test of the 6TB drives. 

I plan to upgrade both Roamios over the weekend. WD60EFRX drives are already on the way and copy in progress. ~35+ hours for the copy...

Really looking forward to this.

Thanks ggieseke! :up::up:

Edit: Of course I always forget about KMTTG. Does anyone know if KMTTG can transfer shows while Tivo Desktop is transferring as well? Or more specifically, can KMTTG transfer shows from Roamio A while Tivo Desktop transfers from Roamio B while running on the same PC?


----------



## ThAbtO

KMTTG can do several transfers from different Tivos, but it would slow down the network in the process.


----------



## aaronwt

ThAbtO said:


> KMTTG can do several transfers from different Tivos, but it would slow down the network in the process.


So can TiVo Desktop. You can only transfer one show at a time from each TiVo. Both KMTTG and TiVo Desktop can transfer from multiple TiVos concurrently.

As long as your network has the headroom, you can transfer from each TiVo just as fast. So from my PC running KMTTG/TiVo Dekstop, transfers are just as fast from each TiVo whether I am only transferring from one or whether I am transferring from several concurrently.


----------



## telemark

For Roamio, you're going to need a Gigabit network to multitransfer without slowdown.

At some point, your Desktop's CPU won't be able to decode at full speed, but where that is depends how old your CPU is.


----------



## aaronwt

It's no issue even with a super old quad core Athlon. The Romaio Pro isn't going to go much past 220Mb/s and that is when the tuners are offline. Four of those transfer rates(880Mb/s) should be no issue as long as the GigE network is up to snuff.


----------



## telemark

ok so it doesn't apply to you, but doesn't mean it doesn't apply to someone else.
Not everyone has quad-Core CPU's. 

All I said or meant to say was a sufficiently old CPU can't decode at 1Gbps. 
While we're at it, a sufficiently slow HDD can't write at 1Gbps.


----------



## Devx

Thanks all for the answers. Really appreciate it. Wasn't aware of the transfer capability of the apps. Not that it mattered since ultimately I became the bottleneck. I wasn't able to get back to start the transfers on the other Roamio until the first had long since finished anyway. 

Everything is hardwired at 1Gbps and writing to a RAID array on the server. If I had known before I would have started up the other transfers. It's a 4Ghz quad core from the Core 2 Duo era so several generations old but should be fine if the apps have the ability. Single transfers are holding the CPU at about 33%.

Roamio Pro is up. Up to 959 hours recording capacity, 964 hours free space. No hiccup except one which I'll detail in a quick post after this. Even the Comcast cablecard pairing was painless, 10 minutes including CC and channel verification and it was up. :up:


----------



## Devx

I did run into an error with MFSR when starting it.

Line 731, Error 0x000000EA (234)

\\.\D:
DeviceIoControl
IOCTL_VOLUME_GET_VOLUME_DISK_EXTENTS

It seems it choked on the Windows softRAID disk on my main PC. It's a dynamic RAID disk configured with GPT partition instead of MBR if that matters. I was able to bypass it by unassigning the drive letter to the array and MFSR was fine after that. It wasn't necessary to physically remove the disks or take the array offline.

I can help gather more information if needed. It's easily repeatable.


----------



## ggieseke

Devx said:


> I did run into an error with MFSR when starting it.
> 
> Line 731, Error 0x000000EA (234)
> 
> \\.\D:
> DeviceIoControl
> IOCTL_VOLUME_GET_VOLUME_DISK_EXTENTS
> 
> It seems it choked on the Windows softRAID disk on my main PC. It's a dynamic RAID disk configured with GPT partition instead of MBR if that matters. I was able to bypass it by unassigning the drive letter to the array and MFSR was fine after that. It wasn't necessary to physically remove the disks or take the array offline.
> 
> I can help gather more information if needed. It's easily repeatable.


That tells me that your D: drive spans multiple disks. I have never run into that before, but it should be fairly easy to fix. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.


----------



## ThAbtO

ggieseke said:


> That tells me that your D: drive spans multiple disks. I have never run into that before, but it should be fairly easy to fix. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.


I have multiple partitions on my main drive, and a second drive on a HD dock which I can swap drives without having to open the case. Would mfsr have any issue here?


----------



## jmbach

I have a similar setup and it runs without issue. I think the issue here was a single "drive" that is composed of multiple physical partitions/drives.


----------



## ggieseke

I doubt it. That same basic disk scanning subroutine has been around since April 2013 in DvrBARS, and this is the first time I've had cause to question it since then.

At worst it will error out. There's no way in hell for it to come out of read-only mode until it finds one (and only one) drive that it recognizes as a Roamio drive.


----------



## ncstrev

Successfully installed WD 6TB in Roamio...959 hours HD. 

Only downside is it broke CC pairing with FIOS so I lost HBO and Cinemax. Not looking forward to trying to get FIOS to "manually validate" the CC again. First time took two different reps on two different days with the first rep telling me it required a truck roll...

Thanks for hard work on this app. Donation on the way.


----------



## ThAbtO

ncstrev said:


> Successfully installed WD 6TB in Roamio...959 hours HD.
> 
> Only downside is it broke CC pairing with FIOS so I lost HBO and Cinemax. Not looking forward to trying to get FIOS to "manually validate" the CC again. First time took two different reps on two different days with the first rep telling me it required a truck roll...
> 
> Thanks for hard work on this app. Donation on the way.


Verizon FiOS

Automated Activation Line: 1-888-897-7499
Online Activation


----------



## aaronwt

ThAbtO said:


> Verizon FiOS
> 
> Automated Activation Line: 1-888-897-7499
> Online Activation


Good luck with that. I tried that it and it totally screwed up my stuff. So that not even an operator could fix it. I needed to turn in my old card and get a new one to fix it. I never did call them back to get a credit for all the downtime I had. I lost all channels except locals since I not only lost pairing but activation as well. Then once it was screwed up in the system nothing could be done to activate it again.


----------



## Dissonance

aaronwt said:


> Good luck with that. I tried that it and it totally screwed up my stuff. So that not even an operator could fix it. I needed to turn in my old card and get a new one to fix it. I never did call them back to get a credit for all the downtime I had. I lost all channels except locals since I not only lost pairing but activation as well. Then once it was screwed up in the system nothing could be done to activate it again.


The automated activation line did the exact same thing to me when I tried to repair my card. Once it was deactivated nobody could help because the card was "not on the account" at all. I strongly recommend dealing with a human for repairing.


----------



## fcfc2

ThAbtO said:


> Verizon FiOS
> 
> Automated Activation Line: 1-888-897-7499
> Online Activation


Hi, 
That number may be ok for your first attempt at pairing a new card, but if you have any issues, I have found the folks on the Verizon Direct forum seem to be pretty good at sorting things out too.
https://www.dslreports.com/forum/vzdirect


----------



## gespears

WD Green 6 TB on sale at Newegg for 220 using code ESCAVAP28 but only for 4 days. I just wish it had the 3 year warranty.


----------



## Am_I_Evil

so i did this a while ago, 6TB running without issue (replaced a 3TB)...but i also did it quickly as i was about to leave for a trip so i didn't move any shows over (this isn't the biggest deal)

but i was wondering...can i pop the 3 back in, transfer anything i need over, and then pop the 6 back in and be good to go? (i would most likely either use KMTTG or transfer some stuff to another TiVo...maybe both)


----------



## dougdingle

Am_I_Evil said:


> so i did this a while ago, 6TB running without issue (replaced a 3TB)...but i also did it quickly as i was about to leave for a trip so i didn't move any shows over (this isn't the biggest deal)
> 
> but i was wondering...can i pop the 3 back in, transfer anything i need over, and then pop the 6 back in and be good to go? (i would most likely either use KMTTG or transfer some stuff to another TiVo...maybe both)


As long as the shows aren't tagged "Do Not Copy", no reason why that wouldn't work.


----------



## mattack

Any chance of a CLI version (so it'll work on Linux or OS X), or release the code or technical info about what you did so someone else can do the same?

I don't do Windows. (If there were a legal self-booting CD/DVD to run just this program.. that would be feasible, but AFAIK, that's not possible.)


----------



## ggieseke

mattack said:


> Any chance of a CLI version (so it'll work on Linux or OS X), or release the code or technical info about what you did so someone else can do the same?
> 
> I don't do Windows. (If there were a legal self-booting CD/DVD to run just this program.. that would be feasible, but AFAIK, that's not possible.)


It should run on a Windows PE boot disk (DvrBARS does) but I haven't specifically tried mfsr yet. The problem there is that I can't legally redistribute my PE image and you need Windows and the free Windows Automated Installation Kit to build your own. It might run under BartPE.

I rely heavily on some of the Windows subsystems like the setup API and the WMI layer, so it would take a lot of work to make it generic enough to run on other operating systems. I don't have the compilers or knowledge to even begin that task.

Is there no way you can borrow a Windows 7 or 8 computer for 5 minutes?


----------



## kwjr

I bought a WD60EZRX, placed it in my brand new TiVo Roamio Plus, and expected to see it reformat. Unfortunately, it just says,

There is a serious problem with the information on the TiVo box's hard drive, and it can't be fixed. The hard drive must be reformatted. All recordings and most settings will be cleared.

To continue, press the SELECT button on your remote control.

The TiVo box will restart automatically, and you will need to repeat Guided Setup.

If you need more help, please call Customer Support.​
I pressed SELECT and waited about 5 minutes. Tried pressing SELECT again. Waited another 2-3 minutes. Still nothing. Tried restarting and got the same message. I'm now waiting again after pressing SELECT. Is this part of the normal process?


----------



## dougdingle

kwjr said:


> I bought a WD60EZRX, placed it in my brand new TiVo Roamio Plus, and expected to see it reformat.


That's not going to happen. A drive that large needs to be prepped first.

There are, I believe, two paths to the kingdom, and this thread is one of those.


----------



## kwjr

I was under the impression that step 1 of blessing it was to place it in the TiVo. Maybe I need to go back and re-read.


----------



## kwjr

Hmm, maybe I need to update the OS. Just bought it, so I assumed it would be running at least 20.4.6. Putting the original drive back in and running guided setup on it.


----------



## kwjr

That's got to be it. Running 20.4.1RC16. Upgrading now.


----------



## dougdingle

kwjr said:


> I was under the impression that step 1 of blessing it was to place it in the TiVo. Maybe I need to go back and re-read.


You are correct. My apologies. I was thinking of the other method.


----------



## gespears

6 TB Red at Newegg is on sale for 245 till the 19th.


----------



## jmbach

kwjr said:


> That's got to be it. Running 20.4.1RC16. Upgrading now.


That is correct. The OP states the minimum OS requirements for this to work.


----------



## ggieseke

kwjr said:


> That's got to be it. Running 20.4.1RC16. Upgrading now.


As noted in red before step 1, 20.4.6 is the minimum OS needed to bless it.

I bought one of the refurb basics a few weeks ago, and I was so eager to get it running that I made the same mistake. 

P.S. Using zip code 00000 and choosing Tiny TiVo for the lineup is a quick way to blast through Guided Setup while it updates.


----------



## kwjr

ggieseke said:


> As noted in red before step 1, 20.4.6 is the minimum OS needed to bless it.
> 
> I bought one of the refurb basics a few weeks ago, and I was so eager to get it running that I made the same mistake.
> 
> P.S. Using zip code 00000 and choosing Tiny TiVo for the lineup is a quick way to blast through Guided Setup while it updates.


Got it and thanks! Now I just need to get a good dock that can read this drive. Unfortunately my old Sabrent USB-DSC5 is great for IDE drives, but I get the ReadFile error when trying to access this one. MFSR only sees 1500 MB of the drive.

Can anyone recommend a good one?


----------



## jmbach

Is that the what MFSR reports for the recording space or for the drive itself. The current TiVo OS does not format large drives correctly and as such you only have about that size of recording space reported by MFSR. 

Have you tried to allow MFSR to reformat the drive anyway?


----------



## ggieseke

That's probably the dock limiting it. My old BlacX docks do the same thing with big drives. The Vantec NexStar dual dock (NST-D400SU3) that I bought back in 2013 does a great job on 4-6TB drives.


----------



## ThAbtO

The HD dock I have is a straight SATA to dock bay connector to HD. 

Just waiting for Amazon price to drop. I pay cash for my Amazon orders.


----------



## krkaufman

ggieseke said:


> P.S. Using zip code 00000 and choosing Tiny TiVo for the lineup is a quick way to blast through Guided Setup while it updates.


Cool tip; hadn't heard of it before.


----------



## larrymg2

First thanks to ggieseke for writing this program. I will be making a donation after I get everything setup.
I have a Roamio plus with a 1tb WD external drive that went bad. Removed the WD external. Internal drive maintained a number of programs.
Question: I want to replace the internal HD with a new 4-6 tb WD internal. What is the best way to copy over the left over recordings from the original plus drive to the new drive? We are on TWC CC and most of their programs are copy protected. Any help would be most appreciated.


----------



## ggieseke

larrymg2 said:


> First thanks to ggieseke for writing this program. I will be making a donation after I get everything setup.
> I have a Roamio plus with a 1tb WD external drive that went bad. Removed the WD external. Internal drive maintained a number of programs.
> Question: I want to replace the internal HD with a new 4-6 tb WD internal. What is the best way to copy over the left over recordings from the original plus drive to the new drive? We are on TWC CC and most of their programs are copy protected. Any help would be most appreciated.


You could use MFS Tools 3.2 to copy and expand to a 4TB drive, but you will have to compile it yourself and build your own linux boot CD. The downloadable ISO image was pulled. I haven't used it myself, but I think jmbach tried it on a 4TB drive.

For a 5-6TB drive, mfsr is the only choice right now and it just builds a drive with an empty MFS file system. It can't copy your existing recordings. I plan to write a copy & expand utility based on the mfsr code, but it's several months away at best.


----------



## krkaufman

ggieseke said:


> For a 5-6TB drive, mfsr is the only choice right now and it just builds a drive with an empty MFS file system. It can't copy your existing recordings. I plan to write a copy & expand utility based on the mfsr code, but it's several months away at best.


Thanks for this info.


----------



## larrymg2

ggieseke said:


> You could use MFS Tools 3.2 to copy and expand to a 4TB drive, but you will have to compile it yourself and build your own linux boot CD. The downloadable ISO image was pulled. I haven't used it myself, but I think jmbach tried it on a 4TB drive.
> 
> For a 5-6TB drive, mfsr is the only choice right now and it just builds a drive with an empty MFS file system. It can't copy your existing recordings. I plan to write a copy & expand utility based on the mfsr code, but it's several months away at best.


Thanks for the prompt response and definitive information. I guess I will have to lose copying over the recorded programs from the originial HD I don't have a comfort level compiling and building a linux boot cd. Does anyone have an update on when a new downloadable ISO will be posted?


----------



## larrymg2

Additional request. Where is a link to download the mfsr file? I don't find any on your post#1 instructions?


----------



## HarperVision

larrymg2 said:


> Thanks for the prompt response and definitive information. I guess I will have to lose copying over the recorded programs from the originial HD I don't have a comfort level compiling and building a linux boot cd. Does anyone have an update on when a new downloadable ISO will be posted?


You could try copying in real time by using an HD capture device with your PC, like the Hauppauge HD-PVR or Collossus.


----------



## ggieseke

larrymg2 said:


> Additional request. Where is a link to download the mfsr file? I don't find any on your post#1 instructions?


Just click mfsr.zip under "Attached files" on post #1.


----------



## ThAbtO

larrymg2 said:


> Additional request. Where is a link to download the mfsr file? I don't find any on your post#1 instructions?


Its the attached file in that 1st post.


----------



## larrymg2

Thank you. Completely missed it. My bad.


----------



## mattack

What is the max theoretical storage nowadays? That is, the Tivo filesystem's?

8 TB
http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Archive-Internal-Hard-Drive/product-reviews/B00QX0ZGO6


----------



## dougdingle

HarperVision said:


> You could try copying in real time by using an HD capture device with your PC, like the Hauppauge HD-PVR or Collossus.


Sooooooooooooo painful.


----------



## HarperVision

dougdingle said:


> Sooooooooooooo painful.


Yep!


----------



## dougdingle

mattack said:


> What is the max theoretical storage nowadays? That is, the Tivo filesystem's?
> 
> 8 TB
> http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Archive-Internal-Hard-Drive/product-reviews/B00QX0ZGO6


Just *imagine *the number of hours of recordings you'd lose when the thing goes belly-up. 

1200 hours, I think.


----------



## mattack

dougdingle said:


> Just *imagine *the number of hours of recordings you'd lose when the thing goes belly-up.


You can stop saying that!!!

(I'll repeat myself too -- I've killed a bare drive that I was using with a SATA<>USB connector, but except for the drive that died *along* with my OLED S3, I haven't had a drive completely die in a Tivo... yet.. It starts going flaky and I have been able to copy off or upgrade to a bigger drive -- I realize not possible with THIS program.)

Though I do keep looking at NASes to use a RAID for external Tivo storage.. Still, just putting a bigger drive in is tempting too..


----------



## dougdingle

mattack said:


> You can stop saying that!!!
> 
> (I'll repeat myself too -- I've killed a bare drive that I was using with a SATA<>USB connector, but except for the drive that died *along* with my OLED S3, I haven't had a drive completely die in a Tivo... yet.. It starts going flaky and I have been able to copy off or upgrade to a bigger drive -- I realize not possible with THIS program.)
> 
> Though I do keep looking at NASes to use a RAID for external Tivo storage.. Still, just putting a bigger drive in is tempting too..


I've lost a couple of drives over the years, but I've had a *lot *of TiVos.

The one that annoyed me most was pulling out the internal WD Green 1TB of an internal/external pair that had been running fine for about three years, and when I hooked it to my testbed machine, it refused to get past the "seeking to cylinder 0" reset at startup. Was never usable again.

There's some longtime user here (don't remember who it was) who has stated that a Green drive running for three years won't boot again if it's powered down. Proved to be true for me.


----------



## jmbach

Currently for an internal drive it is comfortably at 6TB for both Roamio and Premiere with the current partition limitations of the OS. Theoretically it could go to 8TB for a Roamio and 10TB for a Premiere, however, I am not sure I would trust it long term. Mainly because I am not sure if it would take updates properly.


----------



## mattack

Interesting that the Premiere can go bigger?!?!?!?


----------



## jmbach

It is because the Premiere will allow an extra partition whereas the Roamio will not. Add an extra partition to the Roamio, it will reformat the drive.


----------



## ggieseke

IMO, anything over 6TB on a Roamio would be a big stretch until they fix the bugs in the software that ignore the upper 32 bits in a 64-bit partition entry. After that happens, the sky's the limit.


----------



## Shatian

Has anyone gotten an s308 error at the verifying step after putting the 6 TB drive in?


----------



## jmbach

I believe that error means the TiVo cannot connect to the TiVo servers. Either the servers are down, busy, or its connection to the Internet is bad.
I don't think it is drive related.


----------



## Shatian

Well, I did the initial setup with the 1 TB drive to upgrade the firmware after the guided setup, then I put the 6 TB drive in and let it get to setup, then used your tool to expand it, and after that, I went through guided setup again and got the error. I chatted with TiVo, of course I didn't mention expanding the drive, and he basically said an error at that point meant it couldn't initialize properly and try rebooting the router/modem and trying again, otherwise return it. Everything else in the house is working, including the other TiVo I own, and it's getting an IP address, I looked at my DHCP server so...


----------



## jmbach

Does it work properly if you put the 1TB drive back in? . If it does, manually initiate a service connect and see if it connects successfully. 

If it does connect successfully, do a quick erase of the 6TB and redo the procedure. If the 6TB was used for something else first or if the procedure fails a second time, run the manufacturer diagnostic long test on it and if it passes, erase the complete drive and redo the procedure. 

If it still doesn't work then we need to regroup.


----------



## jonw747

Is mfsr compatible with 64-bit Win7?

I had problems with Win XP Pro over USB2 & USB3 (possibly due to presence of a RAID controller and/or lack of support for drives over 2GB), and also directly connected to a 64-bit Win7 machine. 

I had formatted the drive first on the Win7 machine to make sure it was working before putting it in the TiVo. When I finally got mfsr to work I had done a quick zero'ing of the drive with the Western Digital utilities and let the TiVo reformat it ... so perhaps that was the cause?

But I eventually got mfsr to run on a Windows 8.1 32-bit PC, directly connected.

Thanks for a great program. It was worth the struggle.


----------



## ggieseke

jonw747 said:


> Is mfsr compatible with 64-bit Win7?
> 
> I had problems with Win XP Pro over USB2 & USB3 (possibly due to presence of a RAID controller and/or lack of support for drives over 2GB), and also directly connected to a 64-bit Win7 machine.
> 
> I had formatted the drive first on the Win7 machine to make sure it was working before putting it in the TiVo. When I finally got mfsr to work I had done a quick zero'ing of the drive with the Western Digital utilities and let the TiVo reformat it ... so perhaps that was the cause?
> 
> But I eventually got mfsr to run on a Windows 8.1 32-bit PC, directly connected.
> 
> Thanks for a great program. It was worth the struggle.


It was written & compiled as a 32-bit program on 64-bit 8.1 Pro, and tested on both 7 and 8.1. I tried to make it compatible with XP (and it should run on it), but later evidence suggests that very few XP machines support drives that big.

The direct connection was probably the tipping point. I used a USB 3/eSATA dock for most of my tests, but as long as the BIOS and the hardware see the full drive capacity it should be happy.

Glad you got it running.


----------



## jonw747

ggieseke said:


> It was written & compiled as a 32-bit program on 64-bit 8.1 Pro, and tested on both 7 and 8.1. I tried to make it compatible with XP (and it should run on it), but later evidence suggests that very few XP machines support drives that big.
> 
> The direct connection was probably the tipping point. I used a USB 3/eSATA dock for most of my tests, but as long as the BIOS and the hardware see the full drive capacity it should be happy.
> 
> Glad you got it running.


My 64-bit Win7 machine certainly supported it (both via USB and direct connect), but I didn't bother to check what the BIOS detected (they do such a good job of hiding the drive scan these days).


----------



## moonflame

I've done a couple of hours of searching, and read through this whole thread, but I can't find the answer:

Can I make a 6tb external drive for my TiVo Roamio?

Not with this program, it seems. I followed the instructions: Opened the Roamio, connected my 6tb WD Green, allowed TiVo to partially set it up. Connected to PC and MFS Reformatter worked like a charm. Instead of putting the 6tb in the Roamio, I put it into an external drive, and put the original 3tb drive back in the Roamio instead. TiVo says it can't support the external drive.


----------



## ggieseke

moonflame said:


> I've done a couple of hours of searching, and read through this whole thread, but I can't find the answer:
> 
> Can I make a 6tb external drive for my TiVo Roamio?
> 
> Not with this program, it seems. I followed the instructions: Opened the Roamio, connected my 6tb WD Green, allowed TiVo to partially set it up. Connected to PC and MFS Reformatter worked like a charm. Instead of putting the 6tb in the Roamio, I put it into an external drive, and put the original 3tb drive back in the Roamio instead. TiVo says it can't support the external drive.


At this time, mfsr is only for building a single internal drive. I could probably write something to partition and "marry" an unapproved external drive to the internal but I'm not sure there would be enough interest to justify the effort.

Hacking the list of approved devices isn't enough once you go past 3TB because the auto-format program creates partitions that the OS can't handle. You have to do everything in one step with both drives attached to a computer. It adds a lot of complications, additional points of failure, and I don't see how it could ever divorce or remarry cleanly.


----------



## gespears

ggieseke said:


> Hacking the list of approved devices isn't enough once you go past 3TB because the auto-format program creates partitions that the OS can't handle. You have to do everything in one step with both drives attached to a computer. It adds a lot of complications, additional points of failure, and I don't see how it could ever divorce or remarry cleanly.


Sounds like just the type of challenge you are looking for!


----------



## gespears

Newegg has Red 4TB drives for 145


----------



## moonflame

Thanks for the reply, ggieseke. Donated!

1. So right now, the max TiVo size outside of Weaknees' solution is 6tb internal + 1tb external?

Except, it seems the linux-based MFS Tools 3.2 may have a kludgy workaround. I'm great at following directions, but I really have no idea what I'm doing with this software.

2. And until you make the planned Copy/Expand tool based on mfsr, there's no way for me to copy the content of my full 3tb original TiVo drive to my new 6tb internal drive?

Except via KMTTG? My plan it to transfer shows off the 3tb original, currently inside the Tivo to a separate 3tb PC formatted drive via KMTTG. I'll stick the new 6tb internal drive into the TiVo, and transfer the shows back to it from the 3tb KMTTG drive. Sounds time consuming!


----------



## jmbach

It is but the only work around for now.

At this point there is no experience with a MFSR formatted drive interacting with MFSTools 3.2. It may work just fine, trash everything, or something in between.


----------



## ggieseke

jmbach said:


> At this point there is no experience with a MFSR formatted drive interacting with MFSTools 3.2. It may work just fine, trash everything, or something in between.


3-4TB mfsr drives _should_ be fine, but on 5-6TB drives it may choke on the 1 app partition / 3 media partition layout.


----------



## jmbach

ggieseke said:


> 3-4TB mfsr drives _should_ be fine, but on 5-6TB drives it may choke on the 1 app partition / 3 media partition layout.


Thanks for clarifying what I was thinking but not saying.


----------



## jmbach

One aspect that I can think of that could cause issues is how the backup header is written to the first app partition. I have not looked at MFSTools 3.2 but since partition 12 (second app partition) physically comes after partition 10 (first app partition) some programs will just locate the start of partition 12 and then place the backup header 1 block back which would be the end of partition 10. In the greater than 4TB layout, is partition 12 physically after partition 10?


----------



## ggieseke

No, partition 12 ends up being "MFS media region 2" and starts at sector 64 right after the APM.

Since the code for 3.2 was was based on MFSTools 1.4 I wouldn't expect that kind of assumption. The rule of thumb has always been to find the first app partition and expect the primary volume header to be the first sector of that partition, and the backup header to be the last sector. You just add the size to the start address and subtract 1.


----------



## ThAbtO

moonflame said:


> Thanks for the reply, ggieseke. Donated!
> 
> 1. So right now, the max TiVo size outside of Weaknees' solution is 6tb internal + 1tb external?
> 
> Except, it seems the linux-based MFS Tools 3.2 may have a kludgy workaround. I'm great at following directions, but I really have no idea what I'm doing with this software.


Dual drives is not recommended, multiple points for possible failure and lose of recordings.



moonflame said:


> 2. And until you make the planned Copy/Expand tool based on mfsr, there's no way for me to copy the content of my full 3tb original TiVo drive to my new 6tb internal drive?
> 
> Except via KMTTG? My plan it to transfer shows off the 3tb original, currently inside the Tivo to a separate 3tb PC formatted drive via KMTTG. I'll stick the new 6tb internal drive into the TiVo, and transfer the shows back to it from the 3tb KMTTG drive. Sounds time consuming!


Transferring/copying unprotected recordings is the only way to backup/copy the shows over to the new drive as there is no backup/restore programs available for the Roamio. It may be slow, but not as slow as the previous models (Premiere, Series 3/2). Although they can only transfer one at a time, they can be queued up.

KMTTG works only for Tivo-to-PC copying of unprotected recordings. For PC-to-Tivo (and Tivo-to-PC), you would need Tivo Desktop/Plus or Pytivo. TDP is not free, but the other programs are.


----------



## zand94

I have a 6TB WD Green - followed instructions for putting into tivo until guided setup 
unplugged and plugged into my dual drive startech 2.0 dock - it detected the drive but only as a 1.5TB ... i let the reformat occur anyway but then exited the program and checked disk manager and it showed it only as a 1.5TB - i'm guessing that the dock is the problem and i should get something else correct?

(oh and i definitely will be donating once i get it up and running


----------



## jmbach

Could be. Have you tried it on a different computer?


----------



## zand94

jmbach said:


> Could be. Have you tried it on a different computer?


Tried it on my new Dell Latitude E7440 with windows 10 and on my old Asus laptop with windows 7 and saw the same results.... i'm looking for one of my 2 or 3TB drives that i pulled from my old desktop when it died and will check to see how it sees those. But i havent used this dock in a while and primarily all drives i used it for were 1TB or below so this is the first time i've run into this situation.


----------



## jmbach

Is the dock USB2 only or eSata as well. The Startech dock I use is USB3 and eSata. Haven't had the issue you are having


----------



## jmbach

Other option is if you have a desktop you can hook it up that way and try.


----------



## zand94

jmbach said:


> Is the dock USB2 only or eSata as well. The Startech dock I use is USB3 and eSata. Haven't had the issue you are having


it's USB2 and esata but i dont have any esata ports on either of my laptops.

i just ordered this - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00APP6694

I could possibly borrow a desktop from work but i dont have any desktop at home any longer.


----------



## zand94

zand94 said:


> it's USB2 and esata but i dont have any esata ports on either of my laptops.
> 
> i just ordered this - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00APP6694
> 
> I could possibly borrow a desktop from work but i dont have any desktop at home any longer.


New dock arrived - and it sees the drive fully - so ill be working on doing the upgrade shortly


----------



## faulkton

Thanks a ton! up and running 6tb red with 964 hours of space. I tried a couple external drive cases and a couple of computers and was only seeing about 1.5GB and getting errors before I a cracked a case and hooked it up directly to a mobo. That was the trick and now everything seems to be working.


----------



## ggieseke

faulkton said:


> Thanks a ton! up and running 6tb red with 964 hours of space. I tried a couple external drive cases and a couple of computers and was only seeing about 1.5GB and getting errors before I a cracked a case and hooked it up directly to a mobo. That was the trick and now everything seems to be working.


Cool beans. Enjoy.


----------



## faulkton

ggieseke said:


> Cool beans. Enjoy.


thanks for the work. I gave what i could.


----------



## dougdingle

ThAbtO said:


> Transferring/copying unprotected recordings is the only way to backup/copy the shows over to the new drive as there is no backup/restore programs available for the Roamio. It may be slow, but not as slow as the previous models (Premiere, Series 3/2). Although they can only transfer one at a time, they can be queued up.


My experience with that was not terrific. New Roamio Plus and old S3 OLED. Queued up a bunch of shows for overnight transfer, and at some point after about 30 or so shows completed transferring , the process just stopped. The Roamio indicated "Your show will transfer soon!" when I looked at the ToDo list, but I could not restart the transfer process no matter what I tried, including waiting for a couple of hours to see if it would resume. That is, incidentally, the winner for most stupid useless user info prompt to date.

So all I could do was reboot the Roamio, at which point it flushed the remainder of the ToDo transfers. Having to re-enter them was an enormous pain in the ass. You would think after several decades, they would give you the option to transfer an entire folder of shows with a couple of clicks, but no, if the folder has 27 shows, you have to go through the procedure 27 times. Just brain dead.

So the lesson for me was, queue up no more than about 30 transfers at a time.


----------



## aaronwt

dougdingle said:


> My experience with that was not terrific. New Roamio Plus and old S3 OLED. Queued up a bunch of shows for overnight transfer, and at some point after about 30 or so shows completed transferring , the process just stopped. The Roamio indicated "Your show will transfer soon!" when I looked at the ToDo list, but I could not restart the transfer process no matter what I tried, including waiting for a couple of hours to see if it would resume. That is, incidentally, the winner for most stupid useless user info prompt to date.
> 
> So all I could do was reboot the Roamio, at which point it flushed the remainder of the ToDo transfers. Having to re-enter them was an enormous pain in the ass. You would think after several decades, they would give you the option to transfer an entire folder of shows with a couple of clicks, but no, if the folder has 27 shows, you have to go through the procedure 27 times. Just brain dead.
> 
> So the lesson for me was, queue up no more than about 30 transfers at a time.


You should have used KMTTG to transfer the shows.


----------



## dougdingle

aaronwt said:


> You should have used KMTTG to transfer the shows.


I tried but could not figure out how to use it to copy from TiVo to TiVo. It just wanted to copy everything to my computer, and decrypt it in some manner.

I do like the program for certain things, and the author is to be commended for the work done, but the thing's interface is not in any way user friendly as I define that. And its functions are severely limited when it comes to dealing with with pre-Premiere boxes.


----------



## ThAbtO

dougdingle said:


> I tried but could not figure out how to use it to copy from TiVo to TiVo. It just wanted to copy everything to my computer, and decrypt it in some manner.
> 
> I do like the program for certain things, and the author is to be commended for the work done, but the thing's interface is not in any way user friendly as I define that. And its functions are severely limited when it comes to dealing with with pre-Premiere boxes.


You cannot copy Tivo-to-Tivo with a computer program, it has to be done from the Tivo itself.

KMTTG is easy to use. Just select a show from the list of the Tivo box tab and click on Start. No list? click Refresh.

(Feels like an 8 year old can do it.)


----------



## HarperVision

ThAbtO said:


> ....... (Feels like an 8 year old can do it.)


How about a caveman?


----------



## ThAbtO

HarperVision said:


> How about a caveman?


I think his name is Gronk.


----------



## dougdingle

If anyone is looking for a cloning docking station that can handle up to 8TB drives (they claim), the new Mediasonic HUR2-SU3 2 3.5" USB 3.0 UASP ProBox dualbay docking station is available from NewEgg for $25 after rebate:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816322020


----------



## aaronwt

dougdingle said:


> I tried but could not figure out how to use it to copy from TiVo to TiVo. It just wanted to copy everything to my computer, and decrypt it in some manner.
> 
> I do like the program for certain things, and the author is to be commended for the work done, but the thing's interface is not in any way user friendly as I define that. And its functions are severely limited when it comes to dealing with with pre-Premiere boxes.


You just need to make sure that the decrypt option is not selected before you initiate the transfer. I don't use this option in my setup. I just use VideoReDo directly and do a batch job in VideoReDo. Since it's only recordings for my GF that I need to do this with. So I typically have a bunch that I need to burn to disc for her.


----------



## Steve-O

Help please! I am trying to set up a WD60EZRX (Green) drive in a refurb Roamio I just received today.

First, I popped in the 6TB drive before powering up. The bootup process ended with a white-on-purple error screen reporting a major problem with the drive. Though prompted to hit "Select" on the remote to get to Guided Setup, nothing happened with any button.

Reviewing the instructions at the top of this thread, it appeared I might need to upgrade the TiVo software to a more current version. So I popped in the original drive, went through Guided Setup, and ended up with version 20.5.6.

Then I swapped the drives again. Now, the TiVo start-up process abends with a white-on-green message about a problem with the drive and the system reboots, over and over again. I never get to Guided Setup.

So, do I indeed have a bad drive, or is there a fix for this?

Thanks in advance.


----------



## ThAbtO

Steve-O said:


> Help please! I am trying to set up a WD60EZRX (Green) drive in a refurb Roamio I just received today.
> 
> First, I popped in the 6TB drive before powering up. The bootup process ended with a white-on-purple error screen reporting a major problem with the drive. Though prompted to hit "Select" on the remote to get to Guided Setup, nothing happened with any button.
> 
> Reviewing the instructions at the top of this thread, it appeared I might need to upgrade the TiVo software to a more current version. So I popped in the original drive, went through Guided Setup, and ended up with version 20.5.6.
> 
> Then I swapped the drives again. Now, the TiVo start-up process abends with a white-on-green message about a problem with the drive and the system reboots, over and over again. I never get to Guided Setup.
> 
> So, do I indeed have a bad drive, or is there a fix for this?
> 
> Thanks in advance.


Fist, the drive you have is just a Green drive, but not a Green-AV drive. (Get to that another time)
Now, that the Tivo has been updated, which needed a software update to support 4-6TB. You may need to wipe the drive for the Tivo to know its a blank one.


----------



## telemark

ThAbtO said:


> You may need to wipe the drive for the Tivo to know its a blank one.


Thats correct. You can format the drive when in a windows PC. Or use a hexeditor to zero out the first few sectors (64 is enough).


----------



## Steve-O

Success, thanks guys. Done and donated.


----------



## gespears

*Today only!!!* Newegg has the WD Red 6 TB for 239.99 using Promo Code: ESCAXAN23


----------



## aaronwt

gespears said:


> *Today only!!!* Newegg has the WD Red 6 TB for 239.99 using Promo Code: ESCAXAN23


Amazon also has it for the same price.

http://www.amazon.com/Red-6TB-NAS-Hard-Drive/dp/B00LO3KR96


----------



## dennya

Hey folks, I have a Roamio OTA coming next week. (Yay $249 lifetime deal!) Obviously 500GB isn't going to cut it, so super-happy to see the MFS Reformatter available!

Looking at cost-per-gig and our potential usage, given we're just recording OTA, it looks like a 4TB drive will work fine for us. Read the first 5 or so pages of this topic and just had a couple of questions:


If I'm going for the 4TB drive, I should opt for the WD AV-GP WD40EURX, right, since it's an AV model?
I'm assuming I can still add a second drive later using the ESATA connector if we decide we need more storage, right? How big can you go externally?
Other than having it all in the box, what's the advantage of upgrading the internal drive vs. adding more storage externally?
Current plan is to pull the standard drive and replace with the WD AV-GP 4TB, and then donate to the author for being awesome.  Should I go through the DVR setup first, before replacing the drive?

Thanks for the patience with the newb questions. I had a Philips Tivo back in 1999 (hacked with an Ethernet/buffer card and web UI!) and a DirecTiVo, but this is my first Tivo since about 2010.


----------



## dennya

dennya said:


> Current plan is to pull the standard drive and replace with the WD AV-GP 4TB, and then donate to the author for being awesome.  Should I go through the DVR setup first, before replacing the drive?


Answering my own question here, I assume I should do that to make sure that my TiVo has the firmware update needed to support the utility/larger drive before I attempt to install it.


----------



## fcfc2

dennya said:


> Hey folks, I have a Roamio OTA coming next week. (Yay $249 lifetime deal!) Obviously 500GB isn't going to cut it, so super-happy to see the MFS Reformatter available!
> 
> Looking at cost-per-gig and our potential usage, given we're just recording OTA, it looks like a 4TB drive will work fine for us. Read the first 5 or so pages of this topic and just had a couple of questions:
> 
> 
> If I'm going for the 4TB drive, I should opt for the WD AV-GP WD40EURX, right, since it's an AV model?
> I'm assuming I can still add a second drive later using the ESATA connector if we decide we need more storage, right? How big can you go externally?
> Other than having it all in the box, what's the advantage of upgrading the internal drive vs. adding more storage externally?
> Current plan is to pull the standard drive and replace with the WD AV-GP 4TB, and then donate to the author for being awesome.  Should I go through the DVR setup first, before replacing the drive?
> 
> Thanks for the patience with the newb questions. I had a Philips Tivo back in 1999 (hacked with an Ethernet/buffer card and web UI!) and a DirecTiVo, but this is my first Tivo since about 2010.


Hi,
If you are going with 4TB you have the recommended model number, but if you are seriously considering needing something larger....invest in it now. The reason being, the external extender drives are pretty much universally discouraged. The problems are that you have now doubled the odds of drive failure and because of the way Tivo uses the drive a failure of either drive means you loose all of your recordings. Plus the external drives are of rather limited capacity. 
As far as when to replace the drive, if you had a cc model, most recommend doing the upgrade immediately to avoid having to repair the cc, but with OTA that is not an issue, worst case you redo the setup.


----------



## dennya

Thanks, fcf2. Good point about a second drive being a point of failure. I had two drives (a whopping 120GB each!) in my gen 1 Philips Tivo and one of them died, so I should remember the frustration of one drive taking down the entire system. Plus I didn't realize they only supported externals up to 1TB.

Sticking with the 4TB as I think 600+ hours will be plenty given we can only record OTA material, and we delete shows after watching. I like the extra (perhaps placebo  feeling of security of going for a drive rated specifically for AV use.


----------



## HarperVision

dennya said:


> Thanks, fcf2. Good point about a second drive being a point of failure. I had two drives (a whopping 120GB each!) in my gen 1 Philips Tivo and one of them died, so I should remember the frustration of one drive taking down the entire system. Plus I didn't realize they only supported externals up to 1TB. Sticking with the 4TB as I think 600+ hours will be plenty given we can only record OTA material, and we delete shows after watching. I like the extra (perhaps placebo  feeling of security of going for a drive rated specifically for AV use.


You can make it real easy on yourself and just do a plug and play 3TB internal drive with no pc preparation needed, if you're saying you just watch and delete and are OTA only since there's not as many channels as cable to record from.


----------



## aaronwt

Won't this program also align advanced format 3TB drives?

If I put my old 3TB roamio Pro drive in my refurb Roamio I plan to run it through this program first. Unless it isn't recommended.


----------



## ggieseke

aaronwt said:


> Won't this program also align advanced format 3TB drives?
> 
> If I put my old 3TB roamio Pro drive in my refurb Roamio I plan to run it through this program first. Unless it isn't recommended.


It will align 3TB drives too, and I would do it in a heartbeat. The 4TB that I put in my refurb basic is noticeably faster than my Pro. It's running OTA instead of the full Comcast lineup and that may be the difference, but I'd like to think that properly aligning all of the MFS zones helps.

Let me know how it goes.


----------



## HarperVision

aaronwt said:


> Won't this program also align advanced format 3TB drives? If I put my old 3TB roamio Pro drive in my refurb Roamio I plan to run it through this program first. Unless it isn't recommended.





ggieseke said:


> It will align 3TB drives too, and I would do it in a heartbeat. The 4TB that I put in my refurb basic is noticeably faster than my Pro. It's running OTA instead of the full Comcast lineup and that may be the difference, but I'd like to think that properly aligning all of the MFS zones helps. Let me know how it goes.


I did not know this, thanks guys!


----------



## ThAbtO

I just got the WD40EFRX and screen shots with errors.

























Ran using WinXPsp3 and direct SATA through a HD dock.


----------



## ggieseke

Something in your setup isn't recognizing the full drive size. The first number should be 3726.02GB with a WD40EFRX. That drive has 0x1D1C0BEB0 sectors, and mfsr is only seeing the lower 32 bits of the total sector count. 0xD1C0BEB0 (3,519,069,872 in decimal) * 512 is 1,801,763,774,464 bytes.

It's probably the XP box itself, but I have seen the same problem using older docks.

XP (as an operating system) should be able to handle larger drives, but PCs old enough to be running XP usually can't due to limitations in the BIOS or the chipset.

The 998 error code is due to sloppy programming on my part. The program falls apart on drives under 3TB and tries to access memory that it hasn't allocated.


----------



## ThAbtO

Well, its not the HD SATA dock. I will try on my laptop, but have to wait until I get a USB adapter w/power.


----------



## Jakk

Hello everyone. I'm trying to figure out which 6TB drive to get for my Roamio upgrade. I've read a lot of threads and I've learned a lot but I still have a few unanswered questions.
I'd appreciate any help I can get. Thank you!

Since WD isn't making 6TB AV drives yet, which drives does Weaknees use?

If the WD basic Green drives are just as good as the AV drives except for the Intellipark problem, wouldn't Seagate basic desktop drives be a better choice? Or do Seagate drives have a feature similar to WD Intellipark?

Is there anything about Seagate drives that makes them a bad choice for TiVo compared to WD drives?

Can the features in the WD Red drives that could cause problems in a TiVo be disabled? If not, would a WD Green drive with Intellipark turned off be a better choice than a WD Red drive?


----------



## ggieseke

Weaknees uses the Purple line for 6TB drives, but they are considered a bad choice due to their low R/W cycle rating. My personal choice would be a Red or a Green.

Seagate redesigned the STx000DM00x line recently and they all seem to be 7200RPM drives now. Otherwise that would be my preferred drive. New refurb Roamio basics are coming in with ST3500414CS drives for what that's worth. If they have a 6TB version I probably wouldn't hesitate to use it.


----------



## jmbach

ThAbtO said:


> Well, its not the HD SATA dock. I will try on my laptop, but have to wait until I get a USB adapter w/power.


See if the XP box has an updated BIOS. Also see if toggling between IDE and ACHI makes a difference. Before you try toggling, male sure you toggle ACHI on in the registry otherwise you may get BSOD on boot up. Also turn off RAID if that is an option for the eSata port.


----------



## Jakk

ggieseke said:


> Weaknees uses the Purple line for 6TB drives, but they are considered a bad choice due to their low R/W cycle rating. My personal choice would be a Red or a Green.
> 
> Seagate redesigned the STx000DM00x line recently and they all seem to be 7200RPM drives now. Otherwise that would be my preferred drive. New refurb Roamio basics are coming in with ST3500414CS drives for what that's worth. If they have a 6TB version I probably wouldn't hesitate to use it.


Thank you for your reply.

Between WD Red and WD Green which is the better choice? And is a Seagate drive a better choice than either?


----------



## ggieseke

Opinions vary. My first choice for anything up to 4TB would be the WD AV Green (EURX) line. After that I'd go Red (EFRX) or Green (EZRX).

My older Seagate ST4000DM000 drives are ideal candidates, but since they re-vamped that entire line to 7200 RPMs not so much. TiVos don't need the extra speed and I'd be concerned about heat issues and power consumption.

The bottom line is that any any low-current drive in the 6500-6900RPM range will probably be fine. Focus on cost, warranty & the rated read/write cycles.


----------



## jmbach

+1


----------



## lessd

ggieseke said:


> Weaknees uses the Purple line for 6TB drives, but they are considered a bad choice due to their low R/W cycle rating. My personal choice would be a Red or a Green.


I don't understand how WD could or would design the Purple drive to have a lower R/W cycle than any other of their consumer drives, WD may just be playing games with the warranty or marketing.


----------



## krkaufman

ggieseke said:


> The bottom line is that any any low-current drive *in the 6500-6900RPM range* will probably be fine. Focus on cost, warranty & the rated read/write cycles.


I'm guessing you meant "in the 5400-5900RPM range" ?


----------



## ggieseke

krkaufman said:


> I'm guessing you meant "in the 5400-5900RPM range" ?


Yeah, that was the beer talking.


----------



## Jakk

Has anyone reported any problems using WD Red drives in a TiVo?


----------



## aaronwt

I haven't seen any in mine yet. I use a 5TB Red in my Roamio Pro and a 1TB Red in my first Roamio Basic.


----------



## dennya

The AV-GP WD40EURX install went flawlessly. Used the instructions elsewhere on TivoCommunity to open the Roamia OTA, dropped in the drive, formatted it, pulled it, and ran MFSR on it. Then sent the author $20 for beer. 

Working awesome, no issues with the power supply, etc.


----------



## Raoul99

Hi. I plan on replacing the 'original upgraded' 3TB drive in my Roamio Plus with a WD50EZRX. A couple of questions:

1) If I take out the 3TB drive (95% full) and hook it up to the pc, will I be able to transfer all the recordings to the new drive using the Tivo Desktop Plus software?

2) If I were to put the 3TB drive in a DIFFERENT Roamio, would it retain the recordings, or would it wipe the drive?

Any info would be great!

Thanks, Rick


----------



## ThAbtO

If you hook the drive up to a PC, it will think it is blank drive.
Recordings are encoded to a specific Tivo it originally recorded from and the only way to get it off, is to transfer to a PC or another Tivo over the network.


----------



## krkaufman

Raoul99 said:


> 1) If I take out the 3TB drive (95% full) and hook it up to the pc, will I be able to transfer all the recordings to the new drive using the Tivo Desktop Plus software?


No. You'd need to transfer any compatible* shows off using TiVo Desktop (or other) while the drive was still in its original TiVo, and then transfer them back once the new drive was installed and the DVR was back online.

* re: compatibility: You won't be able to offload premium content or any other shows restricted by the "copy once" flag. The scope of this restriction varies by TV provider.

There's been mention of upgrading either mfsr or MFS Tools(?) to support upgrading to 4+TB drives, but nothing is yet available (or being actively worked-on), from my understanding.



Raoul99 said:


> 2) If I were to put the 3TB drive in a DIFFERENT Roamio, would it retain the recordings, or would it wipe the drive?


Recordings won't be accessible/playable. I'm pretty sure the drive would need to be wiped for it to be usable in another TiVo.


----------



## Raoul99

Thanks for the replies. Yeah, I was afraid that the pc wouldn't be able to recognize the drive...it would have been too easy that way. I'll probably try PyTivo a shot...hopefully the learning curve won't be too bad, but I know transferring that many shows is going to take quite awhile...


----------



## ThAbtO

You can use KMTTG for Tivo-to-PC to transfer as many as you want and it will do them in sequence. It just does not do PC-to-Tivo transfers, The Push function in KMTTG is borrowed from PyTivo.


----------



## Raoul99

Thanks...I'll check it out...


----------



## gespears

Hey Guys, when I try to download MFSR.zip from the OP, it says it's "attachment.php" and not MFSR.zip.


Any suggestions?


Thanks


----------



## ThAbtO

Download worked for me.


----------



## gespears

Nevermind. 7 zip pulled it out of attachment.php


----------



## gespears

Well I donated when you first came out with this because I knew I was going to use it eventually, but it wasn't much. So I donated a little more now. It's still not much but hopefully it will buy you some root beers.


Thanks for all your hard work.


----------



## ggieseke

gespears said:


> Well I donated when you first came out with this because I knew I was going to use it eventually, but it wasn't much. So I donated a little more now. It's still not much but hopefully it will buy you some root beers.
> 
> Thanks for all your hard work.


Thanks! What's root beer?


----------



## ThAbtO

ggieseke said:


> Thanks! What's root beer?


Fake beer!


----------



## HarperVision

ThAbtO said:


> Fake beer!


Nah, that's O'Doul's. Root Beer is delicious, especially as a float!


----------



## gespears

ggieseke said:


> Thanks! What's root beer?


Good Stuff!! One of the few soft drinks that still takes okay as a diet version.


----------



## gespears

Well I got the TiVo all up and working with the 6TB and almost have all my settings back. I used KMTTG to save my season passes and what few programs that weren't copy protected (I'm on Cox in Phoenix and they set the protection bit for almost everything, it's very annoying.) KMTTG worked very well and wasn't too hard to use. But now I'm trying to get those shows copied back, but what a pain. I can't figure out how to get KMTTG and PyTiVo to work. I wonder if Desktop will copy them back? The season passes were not sweat. KMTTG is a pretty good program.


----------



## HarperVision

gespears said:


> Well I got the TiVo all up and working with the 6TB and almost have all my settings back. I used KMTTG to save my season passes and what few programs that weren't copy protected (I'm on Cox in Phoenix and they set the protection bit for almost everything, it's very annoying.) KMTTG worked very well and wasn't too hard to use. But now I'm trying to get those shows copied back, but what a pain. I can't figure out how to get KMTTG and PyTiVo to work. I wonder if Desktop will copy them back? The season passes were not sweat. KMTTG is a pretty good program.


You can use Desktop to copy them back if you publish the folder they're in into the Videos folder in Desktop. You also have to decrypt them first using KMTTG because .tivo files can't be copied back to a TiVo using TiVo Desktop (go figure, Doh!)


----------



## ThAbtO

The Tivo should be able to pull them back from TD as .Tivo files as well as .mpg.


----------



## HarperVision

ThAbtO said:


> The Tivo should be able to pull them back from TD as .Tivo files as well as .mpg.


Yes that's right, but one at a time. They will all migrate over automatically if you set it to do it that way using my suggestion.


----------



## gespears

ThAbtO said:


> The Tivo should be able to pull them back from TD as .Tivo files as well as .mpg.


Thanks, I'll try that because I have no idea how to convert them.


----------



## HarperVision

gespears said:


> Thanks, I'll try that because I have no idea how to convert them.


You just go to the FILES tab, select all the ones you want to decrypt using the shift/control and click option then make sure the decrypt check box is checked and then START JOB.


----------



## ggieseke

If you decrypt them all the metadata goes bye-bye. I would just pull them from the TiVo. You can queue up multiple requests.

Or just watch them. Roamios are so fast compared to old TiVos that you can start a transfer, begin watching it immediately, and still FF through the commercials.


----------



## HarperVision

ggieseke said:


> If you decrypt them all the metadata goes bye-bye. I would just pull them from the TiVo. You can queue up multiple requests. Or just watch them. Roamios are so fast compared to old TiVos that you can start a transfer, begin watching it immediately, and still FF through the commercials.


That's true, but isn't there a check box to save metadata?


----------



## krkaufman

HarperVision said:


> That's true, but isn't there a check box to save metadata?


I'm assuming that the context was TiVo Desktop: that is, the files need to be kept in .tivo format to maintain the metadata internally, so that the metadata would be present on the TiVo after the video was transferred back by TiVo Desktop.

Once the .tivo file has been split into metadata and an mpeg2, wouldn't you need something like pyTiVo to get the video and its metadata back onto the TiVo?

Or does TiVo Desktop have a means of combining metadata with an mpeg2?


----------



## HarperVision

krkaufman said:


> I'm assuming that the context was TiVo Desktop: that is, the files need to be kept in .tivo format to maintain the metadata internally, so that the metadata would be present on the TiVo after the video was transferred back by TiVo Desktop. Once the .tivo file has been split into metadata and an mpeg2, wouldn't you need something like pyTiVo to get the video and its metadata back onto the TiVo? Or does TiVo Desktop have a means of combining metadata with an mpeg2?


Oh yeah that's right, we're talking TD, not KMTTG.


----------



## ggieseke

krkaufman said:


> I'm assuming that the context was TiVo Desktop: that is, the files need to be kept in .tivo format to maintain the metadata internally, so that the metadata would be present on the TiVo after the video was transferred back by TiVo Desktop.
> 
> Once the .tivo file has been split into metadata and an mpeg2, wouldn't you need something like pyTiVo to get the video and its metadata back onto the TiVo?
> 
> Or does TiVo Desktop have a means of combining metadata with an mpeg2?


Pushing files from Desktop or pyTivo has never been worth a damn IMO. It depends on the TiVo "mind" servers, and even if/when it works the resulting file is marked as copy-protected. Pull it & be done.


----------



## dougdingle

ggieseke said:


> Pushing files from Desktop or pyTivo has never been worth a damn IMO. It depends on the TiVo "mind" servers, and even if/when it works the resulting file is marked as copy-protected. Pull it & be done.


Could not *possibly *agree more, especially the utter insanity of marking 'pushed' files from your computer 'copy-protected'. Just brain dead.

Also, anyone reading this topic should be aware that when TiVo Desktop is mentioned as having the ability to 'push' files to a TiVo, it is only the paid version that can do this, not the older free version.

And it's not really a 'push' in any real sense of that word - I like to think of it as a 'reach around pull' , where the program actually sends commands through the TiVo servers to the TiVo to pull the from the computer, much the same as the TiVo website can send commands to the TiVo to record something.


----------



## ThAbtO

ThAbtO said:


> I just got the WD40EFRX and screen shots with errors.
> 
> [pics removed]
> 
> Ran using WinXPsp3 and direct SATA through a HD dock.


I finally got the USB-SATA adapter and the WinXP gave me a IOCTL error on MFSR.
I now have it hooked to my laptop under Win 7 and it recognized the 4TB drive with over 3700GB.:up::up::up:










I used this USB-SATA/IDE adapter.

I have yet to re-install this drive into my Roamio Basic. (Waiting for some time between recordings.)

UPDATE: I have now installed the new drive and after the Guided Setup was done, (Also had an update to 20.5.2a, at the same time.) I now have 636 HD hrs.


----------



## krkaufman

ggieseke said:


> Pushing files from Desktop or pyTivo has never been worth a damn IMO. It depends on the TiVo "mind" servers, and even if/when it works the resulting file is marked as copy-protected. Pull it & be done.


Well, that's a bummer. I was hoping to upgrade my 3TB Pro to 6TB in the near future, Thanksgiving-ish, and had expected I could pull the non-premium shows off and put them back post-HDD upgrade, and nobody would be the wiser. I guess I *can* put them back, but these shows would then be restricted in the same way all my premium channel recordings are.

So, given that I would have already copied/archived these shows during the upgrade process, how will the Copy-Once flag affect the user experience?


Cannot download/transfer these reloaded shows from the TiVo ever again.

Cannot stream these reloaded shows out-of-home (using native TiVo features)

Anything else?


----------



## ThAbtO

krkaufman said:


> Well, that's a bummer. I was hoping to upgrade my 3TB Pro to 6TB in the near future, Thanksgiving-ish, and had expected I could pull the non-premium shows off and put them back post-HDD upgrade, and nobody would be the wiser. I guess I *can* put them back, but these shows would then be restricted in the same way all my premium channel recordings are.
> 
> So, given that I would have already copied/archived these shows during the upgrade process, how will the Copy-Once flag affect the user experience?
> 
> 
> Cannot download/transfer these reloaded shows from the TiVo ever again.
> 
> Cannot stream these reloaded shows out-of-home (using native TiVo features)
> 
> Anything else?


Pushing files to the Tivo under PyTivo will always marks them as copy-protected. However, Pulling them (from the Tivo side) does not.


----------



## krkaufman

ThAbtO said:


> Pushing files to the Tivo under PyTivo will always marks them as copy-protected. However, Pulling them (from the Tivo side) does not.


Oh, nice! Thanks. 6TB upgrade back on the project plan.


----------



## gespears

krkaufman said:


> Oh, nice! Thanks. 6TB upgrade back on the project plan.


Thanks for all the help guys. All my shows are back on the TiVo. It took a lot of time and work but basically what I did was use KMTTG to pull them to a large external hard drive on my computer, then installed desktop plus (had a serial number from way back when I bought it for 25 bucks years ago) and set the working directory to the directory where I stored the files on the external drive, then from the TiVo pulled them back from the computer to the TiVo and they look like they never left. It's funny, they all queue up in the To Do list. It takes forever to transfer them, but they all do transfer slowly but surely.

And BTW, I also used KMTTG to save all the season passes to the computer and load them back to the TiVo. That worked very well and also copied my wish lists.

So now I have a 6TB red with all my season passes and all the shows copied back. Well, since Cox here in Phoenix sets the copy protect bit on everything but the locals, I have all the things I recorded from the locals moved over. For everything else, I just utilized my TV watching time over the last several weeks making sure I watched only the copy protected stuff and got caught up on all those shows before making the switch to the 6TB drive.

It also took longer than I expected to get all my settings back to where I wanted them. Especially to get all the channels and favorites set back up the way I like them.

Oh, and can't forget I had to call Cox's Cable Card Line to pair the cable card again. But I got somebody knowledgeable and it went smoothly.


----------



## ThAbtO

I also just upgraded to a 4TB Red, 636 HD Hrs. I didn't need to transfer many shows off the original drive and back on the new one. I had copied them off to be watched later, remove commercials, etc. I only had a few hitches, while it was finishing up the Guided setup, it downloads a new update, 20.5.2a. (Talk about timing!) I restored my passes with KMTTG and had been checking the upcoming records. Most didn't notice any upcoming episodes, so I re-ordered a pass up and down, which took in the new upcoming shows.

Another issue I found was the new drive seemed to off-gas odors. I have had Green drives and I haven't noticed any odors. This was the first Red I had.


----------



## buddhawood

HELP!
I get the following error when I try to run the program

The error occurs after the Terms and Conditions screen OK with a dialog box
Line 726, Error 0x00000005 (5). CreateFile.

I searched and saw Dogbert44's problem and I have connected the drive directly to a sata port on the mother board but I get the same error. I am running Win 8.1 I have also tried a esata connection using a Win7pro laptop and get the same error
My drive is a WD40EZRX.
I have turned off anti virus and ran as admin.

Suggestions???


----------



## ThAbtO

buddhawood said:


> HELP!
> I get the following error when I try to run the program
> 
> The error occurs after the Terms and Conditions screen OK with a dialog box
> Line 726, Error 0x00000005 (5). CreateFile.
> 
> I searched and saw Dogbert44's problem and I have connected the drive directly to a sata port on the mother board but I get the same error. I am running Win 8.1 I have also tried a esata connection using a Win7pro laptop and get the same error
> My drive is a WD40EXRX.
> I have turned off anti virus and ran as admin.
> 
> Suggestions???


I hope you meant WD40EFRX.

Can you describe the steps you did so we can determine what may be the problem?


----------



## buddhawood

ThAbtO said:


> I hope you meant WD40EFRX.


Typo. WD40EZRX I have corrected original post. Thanks for the catch

Steps.
Updated new unit to 20.5.2
Installed new WD40EZRX
Went to first screen of set up, unplugged unit took out drive
tried to run mfsr via esata on win8.1 machine Error 276. I then tried via esata on Win7 machine error 276
searched posts and then tried to connect drive directly to motherboard , error 276 
I have run as admin and turned off anti virus. I have also run WD diagnostic on drive and it passed the test.


----------



## ggieseke

At that point in the program it's just trying to find all of the drives in the system and open them in read-only mode to figure out what drives are there and which one is a TiVo drive. Errror code 5 is "access denied", so something that both of those PCs have in common is blocking it.

My first guess would be anti-virus software even if it's disabled. I have tested it with Microsoft Security Essentials on Windows 7, Windows Defender on Windows 8.1, and McAfee Enterprise. What are you running?


----------



## buddhawood

ggieseke said:


> At that point in the program it's just trying to find all of the drives in the system and open them in read-only mode to figure out what drives are there and which one is a TiVo drive. Errror code 5 is "access denied", so something that both of those PCs have in common is blocking it.
> 
> My first guess would be anti-virus software even if it's disabled. I have tested it with Microsoft Security Essentials on Windows 7, Windows Defender on Windows 8.1, and McAfee Enterprise. What are you running?


Windows Defender in Win8 and Security Essentials on the Win7 machine,


----------



## ggieseke

buddhawood,

What happens if you run mfsr without the new drive attached? Do you still get the same error, or just a popup box that says No Roamio drive detected?

If you still get the error, run Disk Manager and post a screen snapshot. Maybe I can figure out what "drive" it's seeing that it can't open. DvrBARS had issues with some SD card readers, but I fixed that in mfsr. The only issue that I know of that's still outstanding is a problem listing drives that are spanned or mirrored through the OS.


----------



## buddhawood

ggieseke said:


> buddhawood,
> 
> What happens if you run mfsr without the new drive attached? Do you still get the same error, or just a popup box that says No Roamio drive detected?
> 
> If you still get the error, run Disk Manager and post a screen snapshot. Maybe I can figure out what "drive" it's seeing that it can't open. DvrBARS had issues with some SD card readers, but I fixed that in mfsr. The only issue that I know of that's still outstanding is a problem listing drives that are spanned or mirrored through the OS.


I do get the same error without the drive attached to both machine computers. I will post the shot tonight when I get home from work.


----------



## buddhawood

View attachment 23847


buddhawood said:


> I do get the same error without the drive attached to both machine computers. I will post the shot tonight when I get home from work.


here is the screen shot requested


----------



## Raoul99

I just used this to add a 5TB drive to my Roamio today...the process couldn't have gone more smoothly. I'll be using it to put a 6TB drive in my other Roamio soon.

Thanks so much for the effort, ggieseke! I just sent a few 'beers' your way...

Rick


----------



## ggieseke

buddhawood said:


> View attachment 23847
> 
> 
> here is the screen shot requested


I can't read it - too blurry.

What are all those grayed-out drives? It looks like they say Removable and No Media but I can't be sure. It looks a lot like my Lenovo ThinkStation if I enable the SD card reader in BIOS.


----------



## Raoul99

Can this also be used to expand the Roamio OTA to 6TB?


----------



## krkaufman

Raoul99 said:


> Can this also be used to expand the Roamio OTA to 6TB?


Speaking from zero hands-on experience, only observations on TCF...

YES.

edit: Though 6TB is the current max size. (Sep 2015) 500GB-3TB are drop-in simple*; 4TB-6TB require MFSR procedure. (edit: or alternate?)

* Assuming the drive wasn't previously in another TiVo; if so, you'll want to clear the initial sectors so that the TiVo will see it as a new foreign drive and do the auto-setup on it.


----------



## dennya

Confirming works fine on Roamio OTA. I used it to format a 4TB WD AV Green drive for mine.


----------



## buddhawood

ggieseke said:


> I can't read it - too blurry.
> 
> What are all those grayed-out drives? It looks like they say Removable and No Media but I can't be sure. It looks a lot like my Lenovo ThinkStation if I enable the SD card reader in BIOS.


All the grayed out are the USB card reader. I will try a better shot when I get home.


----------



## ggieseke

buddhawood said:


> All the grayed out are the USB card reader. I will try a better shot when I get home.


Disable the card reader in BIOS. That's almost certainly what's causing the error. I thought I had that fixed.


----------



## Raoul99

krkaufman said:


> Speaking from zero hands-on experience, only observations on TCF...
> 
> YES.
> 
> edit: Though 6TB is the current max size. (Sep 2015) 500GB-3TB are drop-in simple*; 4TB-6TB require MFSR procedure. (edit: or alternate?)
> 
> * Assuming the drive wasn't previously in another TiVo; if so, you'll want to clear the initial sectors so that the TiVo will see it as a new foreign drive and do the auto-setup on it.


 Thanks for the responses, krkaufman & dennya...much appreciated!


----------



## buddhawood

ggieseke said:


> Disable the card reader in BIOS. That's almost certainly what's causing the error. I thought I had that fixed.


I finaly found a computer that it would work on, my wifes laptop. I did have to buy a new dock that would read a 4TB drive though. I have at least 5 different docks but they all were maxed out at 2tb.
This is the unit I picked up at Amazon cheap and it worked great!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KBNY5SO?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00

Beer Money sent


----------



## ThAbtO

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CPGYNV4?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00

This is the USB drive adapter I used.


----------



## ggieseke

buddhawood said:


> I finaly found a computer that it would work on, my wifes laptop. I did have to buy a new dock that would read a 4TB drive though. I have at least 5 different docks but they all were maxed out at 2tb.
> This is the unit I picked up at Amazon cheap and it worked great!
> 
> http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KBNY5SO?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00
> 
> Beer Money sent


Thanks! Glad you got it working.

That dock looks like a nice choice, especially at that price. It's USB 3.0 and specifically says it supports 6TB drives.


----------



## krkaufman

ThAbtO said:


> http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CPGYNV4?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00
> 
> This is the USB drive adapter I used.


Did you find it worked for drives beyond 4TB? (e.g up to 6TB?)


----------



## ThAbtO

krkaufman said:


> Did you find it worked for drives beyond 4TB? (e.g up to 6TB?)


It worked on the WD40EFRX under Win7, failed on WinXP (seemed to limit to 2 TB).


----------



## aaronwt

So would MFS Reformatter work with a Bolt and a 4TB drive? I see the 2.5" 4TB Seagate external drives are on sale for $180. If I were to pick up a Bolt I would want to stick a 4TB drive in it.


----------



## ggieseke

aaronwt said:


> So would MFS Reformatter work with a Bolt and a 4TB drive? I see the 2.5" 4TB Seagate external drives are on sale for $180. If I were to pick up a Bolt I would want to stick a 4TB drive in it.


I have no idea. A Bolt isn't anywhere in my near future, so any experiments will require community assistance.

If you have some time on your hands, power up the Bolt with the factory drive, let it get up to the first Guided Setup screen, and yank the cord. Use DvrBARS to do a Full (sector-by-sector) backup and send me the image. It may take a while, but assuming the drive is mostly zeros the image should only be 3GB.

I'd love to take a look.


----------



## aaronwt

I don't have a Bolt yet. Although I almost picked up one last night. I need to do more research on the 4TB, 2.5 inch drive. Plus I want to see if my monthly Roamio rate stays at $6.95. If TiVo changes it then I will definitely pick up a Bolt and trash the monthly Roamio.


----------



## Kremlar

I have a 2.5" 4TB drive here and my BOLT is on the way... will report back my results!!

**Corrected above - I have a Bolt, not a Roamio.


----------



## aaronwt

Kremlar said:


> I have a 2.5" 4TB drive here and my Roamio is on the way... will report back my results!!


Where did you get the 2.5" 4TB drive from? And what is the model number? Just trying to figure out my options.


----------



## Kremlar

Hi - pulled from a USB drive. Will post more details later. 

No luck so far... TiVo boots to the "Please wait, this will take a few minutes" screen then comes up to a red screen saying:

"There is a serious problem with the information on the TiVo box's hard drive, and it can't be fixed. The hard drive must be reformatted. All recordings and most settings will be cleared. To continue, press the SELECT button on your remote control." ...

First time this came up I hit the SELECT button and it rebooted, and eventually came back to this same screen. At this point hitting the SELECT button does nothing - it stays on this screen, and a reboot brings it back to this screen as well.


----------



## jmbach

Kremlar said:


> Hi - pulled from a USB drive. Will post more details later.
> 
> No luck so far... TiVo boots to the "Please wait, this will take a few minutes" screen then comes up to a red screen saying:
> 
> "There is a serious problem with the information on the TiVo box's hard drive, and it can't be fixed. The hard drive must be reformatted. All recordings and most settings will be cleared. To continue, press the SELECT button on your remote control." ...
> 
> First time this came up I hit the SELECT button and it rebooted, and eventually came back to this same screen. At this point hitting the SELECT button does nothing - it stays on this screen, and a reboot brings it back to this screen as well.


I am confused a little. aaronwt was talking about using a 2.5 inch 4TB in a Bolt. You mention a Roamio. Which is it and what model.


----------



## Kremlar

WHOOPS! Will correct my post. It's a Bolt.

The drive is pulled from a Seagate STDR4000100 USB portable. Inside the drive is a Samsung Momentus ST4000LM016. Not a lot of info available on this drive.

Thanks


----------



## aaronwt

Kremlar said:


> WHOOPS! Will correct my post. It's a Bolt.
> 
> The drive is pulled from a Seagate STDR4000100 USB portable. Inside the drive is a Samsung Momentus ST4000LM016. Not a lot of info available on this drive.
> 
> Thanks


Ok Thanks.. That is the drive I saw on sale at BestBuy for $180. And I had read there was a 4TB drive in it from a couple of sites. It's good to get the info verified. I just hope you are able to get it setup in the Bolt.


----------



## jmbach

Kremlar said:


> WHOOPS! Will correct my post. It's a Bolt.
> 
> The drive is pulled from a Seagate STDR4000100 USB portable. Inside the drive is a Samsung Momentus ST4000LM016. Not a lot of info available on this drive.
> 
> Thanks


Thanks for the clarification. Could you make a backup of the original bolt drive with DvrBARS (use full backup as anything else it checks to see if it is a recognizable TiVo drive and we do not know the format of the bolt) we can then get ggieseke to look at it.


----------



## jmbach

Will the drive operate normally when connected your computer via SATA or eSata? Run diagnostics on it and see what the results are and what size is reported.


----------



## Kremlar

The drive seems to be recognized without issue on my PC. Initialized it as GPT and quick formatted it without issue.

FSUTIL reports this:

C:\Windows\system32>fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo i:
NTFS Volume Serial Number : 0x7434589c345862e2
NTFS Version : 3.1
LFS Version : 2.0
Number Sectors : 0x00000001d1bcafff
Total Clusters : 0x000000003a3795ff
Free Clusters : 0x000000003a3671d5
Total Reserved : 0x0000000000000000
Bytes Per Sector : 512
Bytes Per Physical Sector : 4096
Bytes Per Cluster : 4096
Bytes Per FileRecord Segment : 1024
Clusters Per FileRecord Segment : 0
Mft Valid Data Length : 0x0000000000040000
Mft Start Lcn : 0x00000000000c0000
Mft2 Start Lcn : 0x0000000000000002
Mft Zone Start : 0x00000000000c0000
Mft Zone End : 0x00000000000cc820
Resource Manager Identifier : 60C988A1-6B9C-11E5-82A9-001CC0FEA8FF


If I'm reading this correctly, I believe this is a 512e drive (4KB physical sectors, 512b emulated).


----------



## jmbach

Well the drive size is off. Might have an HPA or DCO on it. The size you are reporting is 7813771263 and a normal 4TB is 7814037168.


----------



## gespears

It would be interesting to see if the process to use MFS Reformatter for a Roamio would work with the Bolt. Couldn't hurt anything.


----------



## aaronwt

Well I put a 4TB drive in the Roamio Basic let it boot to the guided setup, took it out, connected it to a pC, and used msfr on it. Then I put the 4TB drive in my Bolt. The Bolt booted up and is going through the guided setup right now. Hopefully everything will be fine and it will show equivalent capacity for a 4TB drive.


----------



## aaronwt

Sweet!!.... It installed an update and then rebooted. Now it's showing that I have 490HD hours available which is consistent with other people. And then I was also surprised that the box populated the Season Passes that I had when the previous drive was installed.(I had forgot to back them up with KMTTG so it was a welcome surprise)


----------



## aaronwt

I just sent another donation! Thanks again for creating MFS Reformatter (mfsr)!


----------



## ggieseke

aaronwt said:


> Well I put a 4TB drive in the Roamio Basic let it boot to the guided setup, took it out, connected it to a pC, and used msfr on it. Then I put the 4TB drive in my Bolt. The Bolt booted up and is going through the guided setup right now. Hopefully everything will be fine and it will show equivalent capacity for a 4TB drive.


Thank you!!!

I hoped that it would work on Bolts too, but without any proof either way it was a WAG at best. I really appreciate your efforts, and hope you feel better today.


----------



## aaronwt

ggieseke said:


> Thank you!!!
> 
> I hoped that it would work on Bolts too, but without any proof either way it was a WAG at best. I really appreciate your efforts, and hope you feel better today.


The reason I put it in the Roamio Basic first was because when Kremlar booted up his Bolt with a Blank 4TB drive, he got a red screen saying there was an issue. But then he used the Ross Walker method which looked like it uses a Roamio Image. So I hoped if that worked then putting the drive in a Roamio BAsic would work. Since I know the Roamio Basic will boot properly with drives larger than 3TB.

Fortunately it did work. Well at least it shows the proper amount of storage available. I will need to fill up the drive over the next couple of weeks to make sure. But so far everythiung is working like it did when I had the 500GB in the Bolt.


----------



## steff3

aaronwt said:


> Sweet!!.... It installed an update and then rebooted. Now it's showing that I have 490HD hours available which is consistent with other people. And then I was also surprised that the box populated the Season Passes that I had when the previous drive was installed.(I had forgot to back them up with KMTTG so it was a welcome surprise)


On Roamio, are season passes (1P) saved when changing HDD without the tool (3TB and under)?

Sent from my SPH-L720 using Tapatalk


----------



## aaronwt

When I replaced the drive the Season passes were still there. I guess they were either pulled from the cloud or Flash storage. But then I read a thread(which I can't find now) about issues with Amazon and Netflix loading. I had only tried the Vudu app and it still had my login info and loaded fine. But when I tried loading Amazon and Netflix, they wouldn't load. So I did a Clear and Delete Everything. Which wiped the One passes and log in info. But all the apps load now.

I probably should have done a clear and delete anyway. In the past that was always needed when ever you used an image from another TiVo. It's just that everything else seemed to work fine. But fortunately I saw that thread and checked Netflix and Amazon.


----------



## krkaufman

steff3 said:


> On Roamio, are season passes (1P) saved when changing HDD without the tool (3TB and under)?


They have been for me ... but I always make sure to do a few service connections to TiVo from the DVR whose hard drive is about to be replaced, just to be sure. (One successful connection is likely enough.)


----------



## krkaufman

aaronwt said:


> Well I put a 4TB drive in the Roamio Basic let it boot to the guided setup, took it out, connected it to a pC, and used msfr on it. Then I put the 4TB drive in my Bolt. The Bolt booted up and is going through the guided setup right now. Hopefully everything will be fine and it will show equivalent capacity for a 4TB drive.


That's interesting. I'd previously assumed that the drive would be married to the TiVo in which it originally powered-up, and that it would need to be returned to the same DVR following the MFSR tweak.

Given your report, someone could keep a base Roamio (any Roamio?) sitting around, sans service contract, expressly for the purpose of prepping 3TB or greater drives for Roamios and BOLTs, for resale on eBay.

Right?


----------



## Kremlar

What's the point? Easier to just prep the drive with a Linux boot disc.


----------



## dougdingle

Kremlar said:


> What's the point? Easier to just prep the drive with a Linux boot disc.


Easier for you, sure.

The people who buy "ready to go" drives off ebay (or from weaknees) seem to have zero interest in booting Linux or connecting bare drives to their main computer.

They are willing to pay a reasonable premium to have someone else do it and get something ready to install and boot.

Back about a thousand years ago, I hired someone to write and figure out a way to put a bootloader on a DOS laptop drive and thus upgrade a shipping Sharp laptop to a bigger drive. This was back when the BIOS contained specific tables that allowed for a limited number of drives to be attached, and this Sharp's BIOS only allowed the shipping drive to boot.

I marked the bigger drives up by $50 for my work ($80 if they also wanted the contents of the smaller drive copied over to the bigger one), and sold several hundred in the first few months. There were other bootloaders out there in the wild (some homebrew, some commercial), but people didn't want to mess with any of that - they were HAPPY to pay $50 over the cost of the drive for the service.

The service got quite well known, to the point where the Sharp service center called me and asked me to upgrade one of their in-house laptops, and when they saw how successful the procedure was, they referred lots of people to me who wanted bigger unsupported drives.

Eventually, of course, the laptop and procedure both became obsolete. But the lesson I learned was that people are willing to pay to have a basic tech service preformed so they don't have to do it.


----------



## Kremlar

No, I mean easier for you. If you were going to do this for other people, why prep the drive in a Roamio, then hook to a PC to "fix" with MFS? Why not just use the boot disc and save a step?


----------



## krkaufman

Kremlar said:


> No, I mean easier for you. If you were going to do this for other people, why prep the drive in a Roamio, then hook to a PC to "fix" with MFS? Why not just use the boot disc and save a step?


Because I'm an idiot dancing around the edges of the latest TiVo HDD upgrade technology and the Roamio/MFSR route is the only process I've come across in my flirtations -- and it seemed ridiculously simple. (And if there were a MUCH simpler way, I'd have thought that route would have been taken by the OP of this branch -- which *is* within the MFSR thread.)


----------



## Kremlar

There is a much simpler way if you check my 4TB thread.


----------



## krkaufman

Kremlar said:


> There is a much simpler way if you check my 4TB thread.


I'd have to go look for that thread; it's already harder.


----------



## aaronwt

Kremlar said:


> What's the point? Easier to just prep the drive with a Linux boot disc.


The point for me was to use MFS Reformatter. Which is supposed to


> It aligns the MFS file (application) and inode "zones" correctly for Advanced Format (4K) drives. That should improve performance and reduce wear & tear on the drive.


Whether it works with these new 4TB drives or not I don't know. But that was the reason I did this method. Otherwise if it didn't work I would have used the Ross Walker Method that you used.

The initial process is quicker than the Ross Walker method since I can have the drive in the Bolt in under ten minutes. But for Amazon and Netflix to work properly I needed to do a Clear and Delete which took some time.


----------



## Kremlar

> The initial process is quicker than the Ross Walker method since I can have the drive in the Bolt in under ten minutes. But for Amazon and Netflix to work properly I needed to do a Clear and Delete which took some time.


Just an FYI, the Ross Walker method took about 10 minutes or so on an old HP workstation I had kicking around. Definitely not 20 mins.


----------



## aaronwt

Kremlar said:


> Just an FYI, the Ross Walker method took about 10 minutes or so on an old HP workstation I had kicking around. Definitely not 20 mins.


Did you also need to perform a C&D?

I'm not sure if I would have needed to if I had activated it after installing the 4TB drive. But I ran it for a few days with the stock 500GB drive.


----------



## Kremlar

> Did you also need to perform a C&D?


No, everything seemed OK. Only thing is the activation screen kept referring to UNKNOWN. Like "Please contact UNKNOWN to activate service". Not sure why, but others were reporting that stock Bolts did that too so likely unrelated to the drive upgrade.

I am using Netflix, Amazon Prime and Plex for apps so far without issue. Drive is probably only 15% or so full so not a good capacity test yet.


----------



## aaronwt

Kremlar said:


> No, everything seemed OK. Only thing is the activation screen kept referring to UNKNOWN. Like "Please contact UNKNOWN to activate service". Not sure why, but others were reporting that stock Bolts did that too so likely unrelated to the drive upgrade.
> 
> I am using Netflix, Amazon Prime and Plex for apps so far without issue. Drive is probably only 15% or so full so not a good capacity test yet.


Yes I had the UNKNOWN show up on the stock drive too. But it disappeared soon after activation so I don't think I saw it when I upgraded to the 4TB drive.


----------



## ggieseke

I'd like to throw a cautionary note in here at this point regarding Bolts.

Both the Ross Walker method (which is actually telemark's 4TB Roamio community edition image) and mfsr are based on Roamios, and there have been several changes in the Bolt line. The /var partition has been moved entirely to flash and most of the SQLite partition appears to be in flash also. That shouldn't matter much other than wasted disk space, but the swap partition has doubled in size. That could bite early adopters in the butt down the line.

See telemark's "Bolt HDD Development" thread for details of the new layout. This is all his work since I don't have a Bolt.

My thanks to aaronwt, krkaufman, and other early adopters for their willingness to go out on the edge. It's great to know that it works at all for Bolts (I didn't really expect that), but if you can hold off for a few weeks to let us get our ducks in a row new tools should be available soon...


----------



## krkaufman

ggieseke said:


> My thanks to aaronwt, *krkaufman*, and other early adopters ...


You can scrub my name from that list; I'm just a prospective BOLT customer trying to determine the risks/rewards of the purchase, and a Roamio 3TB owner looking at a mid-term 6TB upgrade -- who thanks YOU and the others named for *their* efforts.


----------



## ggieseke

krkaufman said:


> You can scrub my name from that list; I'm just a prospective BOLT customer trying to determine the risks/rewards of the purchase, and a Roamio 3TB owner looking at a mid-term 6TB upgrade -- who thanks YOU and the others named for *their* efforts.


Sorry, thought you had already gone there.

Edit: Going to 6TB on a Roamio with the existing tools is tested & proven. Bolts are the question mark.


----------



## krkaufman

ggieseke said:


> Edit: Going to 6TB on a Roamio with the existing tools is tested & proven. Bolts are the question mark.


_Right!_ I didn't emphasize "upgrade" in the right way... as in the ability to go to a bigger drive *and* retain recordings and settings -- as opposed to having to start with a fresh drive and relying on manual settings and recording migration, where possible.

(It's mostly a matter of wanting to be able to do the upgrade without any noticeable change to the users; if we hit the storage wall before it's possible, they'll just have to deal with it. I suppose I should be partially grateful to Comcast, for doing such a poor job of carrying HD channels in our town; it really saves on storage space!)


----------



## aaronwt

I was at over 80% full on my 4TB drive this morning on my Bolt. The sys info screen was showing 96HD hours available. So at least everything is still working with over 3TB of content on the drive.

EDIT: I really need to add up the actual space that the content is using. I'll do that tonight. Or at least start it.


----------



## krkaufman

aaronwt said:


> EDIT: I really need to add up the actual space that the content is using. I'll do that tonight. Or at least start it.


Wouldn't the KMTTG pie chart give you that info?


----------



## aaronwt

krkaufman said:


> Wouldn't the KMTTG pie chart give you that info?


It would if all the shows were fine. It doesn't recognize some of the shows for some reason so those are omitted in the calculation. These same shows also don't show up when viewing the My SHows list from a Web Browser.

Unfortunately they represent half the content I have on the drive. I started to count the content up. But after just a couple of seconds I figured I'm not going to waste my time since it would take much longer than I thought. KMMTTG isn't even showing the correct amount of total storage space available either..

I'm at 90% now and it's showing up to 46 HD available


----------



## aaronwt

Hmmm.. I'm surprised I was able to fill up the disc. I could never get to 100% with the Roamio Pro because it kept deleting things unless I made them KUID. I made nothing KUID on the BOlt. And it's showing "DISK FULL" on the sys info screen. And showing 100% in the My Shows section.

I need to figure out if it's actually deleted anything yet. Or still adding content without anything being deleted.


----------



## keenanSR

aaronwt said:


> Hmmm.. I'm surprised I was able to fill up the disc. I could never get to 100% with the Roamio Pro because it kept deleting things unless I made them KUID. I made nothing KUID on the BOlt. And it's showing "DISK FULL" on the sys info screen. And showing 100% in the My Shows section.
> 
> I need to figure out if it's actually deleted anything yet. Or still adding content without anything being deleted.


How many hours of TV? I know different channels/shows have different file sizes, but I'm curious about a rough estimate for the size drive you used.

Thanks


----------



## aaronwt

keenanSR said:


> How many hours of TV? I know different channels/shows have different file sizes, but I'm curious about a rough estimate for the size drive you used.
> 
> Thanks


Since it has showed DISk Full and 100%, I deleted two shows so they would be in the recently deleted folder. These should be the first shows to be deleted if the drive was actually full. But I've now transferred at least 150GB more of content to the Bolt and those shows are still in the recently deleted folder. So the Bolt is still using space on the drive.

EDIT: And I just initiated another transfer of over 100GB. And those shows are still there in the Folder. I'll see how it is in the morning since I have all four tuners set to make recordings until 8AM.


----------



## aaronwt

ggieseke said:


> Here's version 1.0.0.2. I added support for Bolts and hopefully fixed the bug in post #184.
> 
> Early Bolts get a red screen error message when trying to format drives over 3TB. If it has already updated to 20.5.4a it will act like a Roamio running 20.4.6 or later and make it to Guided Setup. Either way, that's the time to hook the drive up to your PC and run mfsr.
> 
> Profs to telemark for providing disk images for me to work on and aaronwt for testing it.


Is this the same version I used last night?

So now I just need to go back and use this on my 4TB drive I put in the first Bolt. If I just reformat it in the PC and then put it back in the Bolt, and go through the process again after the Guided setup comes up, will this work? Or do I need to do more to the drive to prepare it?


----------



## ggieseke

aaronwt said:


> Is this the same version I used last night?
> 
> So now I just need to go back and use this on my 4TB drive I put in the first Bolt. If I just reformat it in the PC and then put it back in the Bolt, and go through the process again after the Guided setup comes up, will this work? Or do I need to do more to the drive to prepare it?


It's identical except for the OS mirrored/spanned drives patch that I added today. That one was way overdue and only affects people with that particular drive setup with respect to selecting the correct drive to reformat, which isn't the case for you.

The beta version you were gracious enough to run today is good to go.

You don't HAVE to reformat the drive that you already have working based on a Roamio layout, but if you can offload the recordings it would be worth the effort. I don't know why they changed the drive layout but there was probably a reason behind it. If TiVo thinks the swap needs to be bigger and the SQLite partition needs to be smaller I'm not about to argue with them.


----------



## mattack

I just (re-)read a bunch of various pages, including the first post.

Was the Premiere-capable version ever done?

I did the 3 TB drop in upgrade for my Roamio last year, and have never upgraded the Premiere 4 I also have.

Otherwise, I guess I'd use jmfs to get to 4 TB (IIRC).

Also, a non Windows, including CLI, version would be appreciated -- but I remember you saying long ago that you use some sort of Windows specific stuff (the same thing that plays .Tivo files directly?) in the app..

then again, tivodecode was rewritten entirely in Java, and now supports transport stream files!


----------



## Devx

ggieseke said:


> Here's version 1.0.0.2. I added support for Bolts and hopefully fixed the bug in post #184...





ggieseke said:


> It's identical except for the OS mirrored/spanned drives patch that I added today. That one was way overdue and only affects people with that particular drive setup with respect to selecting the correct drive to reformat, which isn't the case for you...


Still broken on patched version unfortunately.

---------------------------
Line 761, Error 0x000000EA (234)
---------------------------
\\.\D:
DeviceIoControl
IOCTL_VOLUME_GET_VOLUME_DISK_EXTENTS
---------------------------
OK 
---------------------------


----------



## aaronwt

ggieseke said:


> It's identical except for the OS mirrored/spanned drives patch that I added today. That one was way overdue and only affects people with that particular drive setup with respect to selecting the correct drive to reformat, which isn't the case for you.
> 
> The beta version you were gracious enough to run today is good to go.
> 
> You don't HAVE to reformat the drive that you already have working based on a Roamio layout, but if you can offload the recordings it would be worth the effort. I don't know why they changed the drive layout but there was probably a reason behind it. If TiVo thinks the swap needs to be bigger and the SQLite partition needs to be smaller I'm not about to argue with them.


Ok. Thanks. A few minutes ago I ran mfsr v2 on the first 4TB drive. I'm going through the guided setup now.

I just sent another donation your way.

Thanks Again!!!


----------



## ggieseke

mattack said:


> I just (re-)read a bunch of various pages, including the first post.
> 
> Was the Premiere-capable version ever done?
> 
> I did the 3 TB drop in upgrade for my Roamio last year, and have never upgraded the Premiere 4 I also have.
> 
> Otherwise, I guess I'd use jmfs to get to 4 TB (IIRC).
> 
> Also, a non Windows, including CLI, version would be appreciated -- but I remember you saying long ago that you use some sort of Windows specific stuff (the same thing that plays .Tivo files directly?) in the app..
> 
> then again, tivodecode was rewritten entirely in Java, and now supports transport stream files!


MFSTools 3.2 and the DIY 4TB Premiere thread provide two different ways to take a Premiere to 4TB. I didn't see a need for another method and mfsr just creates a formatted but empty MFS file system and expects the TiVo to fill it in. That won't work on Series 4s.

It doesn't use anything from TiVo, but there's a lot of Windows specific code that would be nearly impossible to port to another OS. It certainly wouldn't be my area of expertise and Windows computers are everywhere.


----------



## ggieseke

Devx said:


> Still broken on patched version unfortunately.
> 
> ---------------------------
> Line 761, Error 0x000000EA (234)
> ---------------------------
> \\.\D:
> DeviceIoControl
> IOCTL_VOLUME_GET_VOLUME_DISK_EXTENTS
> ---------------------------
> OK
> ---------------------------


Drat. Guess I'll have to build a test box with an OS mirror.


----------



## aaronwt

My other 4TB drive went fine using mfsr. It came back up and showed a capacity of 490HD hours like expected.


----------



## HerronScott

Just picked up a new Roamio Pro and was wondering what your thoughts were on using MFS Reformatter on it (versus using with a drive upgrade)? I'm leaning toward it as I'd prefer to do everything possible to help the drive last longer even if it is just theoretical. 

Scott


----------



## ggieseke

HerronScott said:


> Just picked up a new Roamio Pro and was wondering what your thoughts were on using MFS Reformatter on it (versus using with a drive upgrade)? I'm leaning toward it as I'd prefer to do everything possible to help the drive last longer even if it is just theoretical.
> 
> Scott


I'm probably biased, but if my Pro didn't already have a bunch of HBO & Showtime copy-protected stuff on it I'd yank the 3TB factory drive and run it through mfsr in a heartbeat for the theoretically better alignment. My basic Roamio with a 4TB mfsr drive is definitely snappier in the menus.


----------



## dougdingle

aaronwt said:


> My other 4TB drive went fine using mfsr. It came back up and showed a capacity of 490HD hours like expected.


490 hrs for 4TB doesn't sound right, unless I'm missing something.

I have about 450 hours on a 3TB in a Roamio Pro.


----------



## ThAbtO

It should be around 640 HD Hrs on a 4TB.

I got 636 hrs on my 4TB Roamio.


----------



## Kremlar

dougdingle said:


> 490 hrs for 4TB doesn't sound right, unless I'm missing something.
> 
> I have about 450 hours on a 3TB in a Roamio Pro.


The Bolt estimates less.


----------



## aaronwt

ThAbtO said:


> It should be around 640 HD Hrs on a 4TB.
> 
> I got 636 hrs on my 4TB Roamio.


This is for a Bolt. The estimated HD hours on a Bolt are completely different than with a Roamio.


----------



## dougdingle

aaronwt said:


> This is for a Bolt. The estimated HD hours on a Bolt are completely different than with a Roamio.


That's interesting (and slightly weird). While the HD hours capacity estimates are just that because the box can't know what level of compression the people along the supply chain are going to apply, and also can't know how many much more highly compressed 'side channels' you're going to record, there must have been some serious complaints about overestimation to have them cut the amount of available time per gigabyte by about 30%.

Or else the TiVo overhead on the disk has gotten bloated beyond belief.

Strange.


----------



## jmbach

Since the Bolt does 4k recordings, I believe is the reason why the estimate is lower. I have been following aaronwt on his trials filling up his Bolt. Based on what he has reported so far, it appears that you can fill up the Bold with more hours of HD programming than it reports.


----------



## dougdingle

jmbach said:


> Since the Bolt does 4k recordings, I believe is the reason why the estimate is lower. I have been following aaronwt on his trials filling up his Bolt. Based on what he has reported so far, it appears that you can fill up the Bold with more hours of HD programming than it reports.


Ah,yes, forgot that the Bolt was 4K capable. That makes sense theoretically. Although as a practical matter, it's going to be a while before anyone is sending 4K material that can be recorded (ie. isn't streamed) I would guess.


----------



## HerronScott

ggieseke said:


> I'm probably biased, but if my Pro didn't already have a bunch of HBO & Showtime copy-protected stuff on it I'd yank the 3TB factory drive and run it through mfsr in a heartbeat for the theoretically better alignment. My basic Roamio with a 4TB mfsr drive is definitely snappier in the menus.


That's interesting that you see a difference in the menu performance with the Roamio. So I know what I'll be doing Sunday assuming we get back into town soon enough.

Scott


----------



## Aero 1

Hey guys, I assume the newest version of mfsr is on post 2 of this thread and its not bolt specific? 

Going to use it on a 6tb today on a roamio but i just want to make sure thats the version i should use?

sorry that i havent gone through this whole thread but besides expanding, mfsr makes the drive better and you will see a performance? thanks.


----------



## ggieseke

Aero 1 said:


> Hey guys, I assume the newest version of mfsr is on post 2 of this thread and its not bolt specific?
> 
> Going to use it on a 6tb today on a roamio but i just want to make sure thats the version i should use?
> 
> sorry that i havent gone through this whole thread but besides expanding, mfsr makes the drive better and you will see a performance? thanks.


Version 1.0.0.2 will auto-detect the model (Roamio vs Bolt). For a Roamio you can use either version, but for a Bolt you need the latest.

I think aligning the MFS application & inode zones properly for Advanced Format drives makes a noticeable performance difference, but I'm biased.  It can't hurt and might help.


----------



## Aero 1

ggieseke said:


> Version 1.0.0.2 will auto-detect the model (Roamio vs Bolt). For a Roamio you can use either version, but for a Bolt you need the latest.
> 
> I think aligning the MFS application & inode zones properly for Advanced Format drives makes a noticeable performance difference, but I'm biased.  It can't hurt and might help.


thanks ggieseke! going to do it later after trunk or treat  I assume those steps you mention will be choosable during the process? thanks again.

edit: never mind, i must of skipped the notes section.


----------



## DPF

6Tb successfully added to my shiny new Roamio Plus. Thanks for all the work guys!

Donation sent a few days ago!

-DPF


----------



## famichel3

I've currently got a 2TB disk in my Bolt. Can I clone it to a new 4TB disk then run MSF Reformatter on the 4TB disk without loosing data?

Thanks,
Fred


----------



## jmbach

No


----------



## ej42137

jmbach said:


> Since the Bolt does 4k recordings, I believe is the reason why the estimate is lower. I have been following aaronwt on his trials filling up his Bolt. Based on what he has reported so far, it appears that you can fill up the Bold with more hours of HD programming than it reports.


The estimates are for HD recordings, not 4k.


----------



## jmbach

ej42137 said:


> The estimates are for HD recordings, not 4k.


If that is the case, then I would have to wonder why TiVo would redo the calculations they have used in the past and lower the estimates so much.


----------



## dougdingle

jmbach said:


> If that is the case, then I would have to wonder why TiVo would redo the calculations they have used in the past and lower the estimates so much.


If aaronwt is running KMTTG, I would be interested in what the Bolt is showing on its Disk Usage page when you enter, say, 3900 GB for available space.

On My Roamio, I entered 2800 GB for disk size, and it shows that based on the current mix of SD and HD recordings, I have 330 hours of recordings, taking up 1370 GB, and available space estimate is 1430 GB and about 340 hours. I do record quite a bit of low data rate SD side channels from PBS for my wife, where an hour of programming takes only 1GB of space, which accounts for why it seems I get 670 hours on a 3TB drive. The Roamio itself says 450 hours HD capacity.

If that estimate the Bolt gives is accurate for HD, something is going on.


----------



## ej42137

jmbach said:


> If that is the case, then I would have to wonder why TiVo would redo the calculations they have used in the past and lower the estimates so much.


They're lower, but assuming 4k would give a resulting capacity that would be much lower than what people have found in practice. I have no inside information as to why the Bolt estimate is different from the Roamio estimate, but I could imagine several possible explanations:

1a) Bolt has reserved a larger area for the operating system overhead in their calculations to provide for future growth.
1b) Larger buffers need to be reserved for streaming 4k.
2) A TiVo programmer made a boo-boo when he updated the estimation algorithm for Bolt.
3) TiVo is using an average bit rate representative of OTA HD instead of that for cable in the Bolt, because the Bolt is an OTA machine and they realized that they were over-promising recording hours for OTA HD.

I have noticed that last issue myself; the difference in size of recordings I make for OTA versus cable for the same broadcast programs is about the same as the difference reported by Bolt owners. But based on years of experience with TiVo, my money is on #2.


----------



## dougdingle

ej42137 said:


> They're lower, but assuming 4k would give a resulting capacity that would be much lower than what people have found in practice. I have no inside information as to why the Bolt estimate is different from the Roamio estimate, but I could imagine several possible explanations:
> 
> 1a) Bolt has reserved a larger area for the operating system overhead in their calculations to provide for future growth.
> 1b) Larger buffers need to be reserved for streaming 4k.
> 2) A TiVo programmer made a boo-boo when he updated the estimation algorithm for Bolt.
> 3) TiVo is using an average bit rate representative of OTA HD instead of that for cable in the Bolt, because the Bolt is an OTA machine and they realized that they were over-promising recording hours for OTA HD.
> 
> I have noticed that last issue myself; the difference in size of recordings I make for OTA versus cable for the same broadcast programs is about the same as the difference reported by Bolt owners. But based on years of experience with TiVo, my money is on #2.


The difference is size of recordings on OTA vs. cable is because the cablecos, being the greedy pigs they are, step on (compress) the signal YET AGAIN to leave more room for those shopping and religious channels almost no one watches but who pay through the nose for carriage.

Since 4K for Bolt is currently only available using streaming, and often uses a different much more efficient compression codec than the OTA signals, 4K content could be (and I emphasize *could be*) a smaller footprint than HD OTA.

Streaming HD is definitely a smaller footprint/datarate than the identical MPG crap being sent by the cablecos while enjoying superior images and far less compression blocking and artifacting. The worst possible signal in terms of bit rate, bit depth, and colorimetry is what cablecos are currently sending every TiVo. I understand FiOS is somewhat better, but haven't seen it for myself.

My money is on #2 as well. Nothing else makes any real sense to me. There is no way to predict how 4K will be sent to the home over cable since pretty much no one is doing so yet, for one thing, making it impossible to predict how drive space will be used.


----------



## HerronScott

Hi could someone confirm that the first Guided Setup screen is the Welcome screen that prompts for country or do I need to go beyond that?

1. Put the drive in your Roamio and power it on. It will take about four minutes to auto-format the drive. When it gets to the first Guided Setup screen, power it off.

Thanks!

Scott


----------



## HerronScott

OK, I saw a post here from nooneuknow indicating that was the screen I needed and now it's gone?

I went ahead and pulled power at the country prompt, ran MFS Reformatter and it did recognize it as a Roamio 3TB drive (this is a Roamio Pro that I'm just trying to align the drive and not an upgrade).

It still took several minutes to boot back to the country prompt. Is that expected? I expected it to boot faster the second time. Is there an easy way to check the alignment as I want to make sure it didn't format the drive again so it's unaligned.

Scott


----------



## ej42137

dougdingle said:


> Since 4K for Bolt is currently only available using streaming, and often uses a different much more efficient compression codec than the OTA signals, 4K content could be (and I emphasize *could be*) a smaller footprint than HD OTA.
> 
> Streaming HD is definitely a smaller footprint/datarate than the identical MPG crap being sent by the cablecos while enjoying superior images and far less compression blocking and artifacting. The worst possible signal in terms of bit rate, bit depth, and colorimetry is what cablecos are currently sending every TiVo. I understand FiOS is somewhat better, but haven't seen it for myself


Streaming content isn't stored; it's buffered. Such buffers would not be counted as hours of content, and in any case would consume only a small and limited amount of storage.


----------



## dougdingle

ej42137 said:


> Streaming content isn't stored; it's buffered. Such buffers would not be counted as hours of content, and in any case would consume only a small and limited amount of storage.


I am aware of that. I brought it up because I was discussing codecs, compression rates, quality, storage, and efficiency. As a video engineer, I deal with that stuff all day.

The point was that 4K will at some point soon use the more efficient H.265 codec (currently, Netflix is still using the ancient, inefficient, poor quality MPG), and if they ever find a way to get it to the Bolt for recording may actually take up less space than the equivalent HD. Which makes it even weirder that the space/time calculations are what they are.


----------



## ggieseke

HerronScott said:


> OK, I saw a post here from nooneuknow indicating that was the screen I needed and now it's gone?
> 
> I went ahead and pulled power at the country prompt, ran MFS Reformatter and it did recognize it as a Roamio 3TB drive (this is a Roamio Pro that I'm just trying to align the drive and not an upgrade).
> 
> It still took several minutes to boot back to the country prompt. Is that expected? I expected it to boot faster the second time. Is there an easy way to check the alignment as I want to make sure it didn't format the drive again so it's unaligned.
> 
> Scott


In my tests it took about 4 minutes to boot back to the first prompt after running MFSR on my Pro. It just gives it a blank drive that's formatted correctly, and expects the TiVo to flesh it out with whatever additional files it actually needs. It also has to format the /var and SQLite partitions. Your results sound typical for any drive in the 3-6TB range. It won't work at all for anything less or more, so I would assume success.

If you pop the drive and copy the first 16 sectors using a hex editor like Hxd or iBored I can confirm the layout, but I wouldn't sweat it. Sounds like a normal run to me.


----------



## HerronScott

ggieseke said:


> In my tests it took about 4 minutes to boot back to the first prompt after running MFSR on my Pro. It just gives it a blank drive that's formatted correctly, and expects the TiVo to flesh it out with whatever additional files it actually needs. It also has to format the /var and SQLite partitions. Your results sound typical for any drive in the 3-6TB range. It won't work at all for anything less or more, so I would assume success.
> 
> If you pop the drive and copy the first 16 sectors using a hex editor like Hxd or iBored I can confirm the layout, but I wouldn't sweat it. Sounds like a normal run to me.


Greg,

Thanks for the confirmation! I'll be donating shortly.

Scott


----------



## ggieseke

dougdingle said:


> I am aware of that. I brought it up because I was discussing codecs, compression rates, quality, storage, and efficiency. As a video engineer, I deal with that stuff all day.
> 
> The point was that 4K will at some point soon use the more efficient H.265 codec (currently, Netflix is still using the ancient, inefficient, poor quality MPG), and if they ever find a way to get it to the Bolt for recording may actually take up less space than the equivalent HD. Which makes it even weirder that the space/time calculations are what they are.


Everyone's "hours" estimates are just a WAG at best. No one who's in a position to know for sure can comment on the different guesstimates between a Roamio and a Bolt. Personally, my money's on on the lawyers telling them not to promise 160 hours per TB when it's a total crapshoot (especially with OTA).

No one knows for sure, so we might as well speculate about 8K or whatever they'll dream up in 2020. The total recording space per TB between models equates to a difference of a few minutes of HD content, so who cares?


----------



## kcossabo

This is a long thread on a great hack, but wanted to make sure I have this right.

For a BOLT that has been running up to November 11, 2015 you need to;

1) open it up
2) remove existing HDD
3) insert new 4TB HDD
4) power on Bolt
5) Bolt will attempt to format the new drive (4 min or so)
6) When Bolt "gets to the first Guided Setup screen" which is the first interactive screen, pull out the power
7) Down load "*version 1.0.0.2*" of MFS Reformatter
8) Connect the drive to your computer. USB 2.0 adapters will work, but are much slower than USB 3.0 or a SATA direct connection.
9) Run mfsr with an account that's a member of the Administrators group or right-click it and choose Run as Administrator. Follow the instructions from there to reformat the drive to use its full capacity.
10) Put the drive back in the TiVo and enjoy.

To confirm
1) version 1.0.0.2 is the most current version
2) no Clear and Delete is need after new drive is inserted and first run of the Guide setup is done.
3) NetFlix, Amazon, Tivo Suggestions, and PUSH from pyTivo should all work

Thank you


----------



## dougdingle

ggieseke said:


> The total recording space per TB between models equates to a difference of a few minutes of HD content, so who cares?


It's more than that. Based on what was posted here, the Bolt estimate says that it will get roughly the same number of recorded hours on a 4TB as a Roamio gets on a 3TB. So the difference is more like 30% (150 hours) than a few minutes.

In any case, as you said, it's all guesstimates because there's no way to control what the OTA or cablecos send in terms of data rate, and there is no clear idea yet of the format 4K OTA and cable signals will take.


----------



## ThAbtO

kcossabo said:


> This is a long thread on a great hack, but wanted to make sure I have this right.
> 
> For a BOLT that has been running up to November 11, 2015 you need to;
> 
> 1) open it up
> 2) remove existing HDD
> 3) insert new 4TB HDD
> 4) power on Bolt
> 5) Bolt will attempt to format the new drive (4 min or so)
> 6) When Bolt "gets to the first Guided Setup screen" which is the first interactive screen, pull out the power
> 7) Down load "*version 1.0.0.2*" of MFS Reformatter
> 8) Connect the drive to your computer. USB 2.0 adapters will work, but are much slower than USB 3.0 or a SATA direct connection.
> 9) Run mfsr with an account that's a member of the Administrators group or right-click it and choose Run as Administrator. Follow the instructions from there to reformat the drive to use its full capacity.
> 10) Put the drive back in the TiVo and enjoy.
> 
> To confirm
> 1) version 1.0.0.2 is the most current version
> 2) no Clear and Delete is need after new drive is inserted and first run of the Guide setup is done.
> 3) NetFlix, Amazon, Tivo Suggestions, and PUSH from pyTivo should all work
> 
> Thank you


Yes. You would need to be running Windows newer than XP (I had to use Windows7) for it to recognize the full size.

You would need to sign back in to Netflix, Amazon, Youtube. If you hate to use the on-screen keyboard, an alternative is to use KMTTG. The Cable card may need to be re-paired.


----------



## ThAbtO

krkaufman said:


> "older" or "newer"?


Oops. I tend to do that. Fixed.


----------



## ggieseke

dougdingle said:


> It's more than that. Based on what was posted here, the Bolt estimate says that it will get roughly the same number of recorded hours on a 4TB as a Roamio gets on a 3TB. So the difference is more like 30% (150 hours) than a few minutes.
> 
> In any case, as you said, it's all guesstimates because there's no way to control what the OTA or cablecos send in terms of data rate, and there is no clear idea yet of the format 4K OTA and cable signals will take.


I'm basing "a few minutes of HD" on the actual size of the MFS media zones, not the System Information screen. Usable GB is the only number I really look at.


----------



## aaronwt

kcossabo said:


> This is a long thread on a great hack, but wanted to make sure I have this right.
> 
> For a BOLT that has been running up to November 11, 2015 you need to;
> 
> 1) open it up
> 2) remove existing HDD
> 3) insert new 4TB HDD
> 4) power on Bolt
> 5) Bolt will attempt to format the new drive (4 min or so)
> 6) When Bolt "gets to the first Guided Setup screen" which is the first interactive screen, pull out the power
> 7) Down load "*version 1.0.0.2*" of MFS Reformatter
> 8) Connect the drive to your computer. USB 2.0 adapters will work, but are much slower than USB 3.0 or a SATA direct connection.
> 9) Run mfsr with an account that's a member of the Administrators group or right-click it and choose Run as Administrator. Follow the instructions from there to reformat the drive to use its full capacity.
> 10) Put the drive back in the TiVo and enjoy.
> 
> To confirm
> 1) version 1.0.0.2 is the most current version
> 2) no Clear and Delete is need after new drive is inserted and first run of the Guide setup is done.
> 3) NetFlix, Amazon, Tivo Suggestions, and PUSH from pyTivo should all work
> 
> Thank you


I needed to do a C&D on Bolts where I had signed into Netflix and Amazon with the previous drive. Otherwise they wouldn't load. If I hadn't signed into Netflix or Amazon then it was fine. But I'm in the habit now of just doing the C&D anyway, just in case.

And even on a 4TB drive that I had working prior to v 1.0.0.2 with a cable card card. When I ran v1.0.0.2 on it, I had to repair the cable card with FiOS.


----------



## mattack

ggieseke said:


> MFSTools 3.2 and the DIY 4TB Premiere thread provide two different ways to take a Premiere to 4TB. I didn't see a need for another method and mfsr just creates a formatted but empty MFS file system and expects the TiVo to fill it in. That won't work on Series 4s.


ok, so I may use someone's windows machine to upgrade my Premiere drive (as I said before, I upgraded my Roamio with a drop in 3 TB drive, and the Premiere 4 is just the stock drive)..

So there's no 6 TB (especially without an interim drive necessary) possible? Sure, 4 TB is way better than what's in there now, but I thought I might as well go straight to the largest "cheap-ish" drive, which is 6 TB.


----------



## ThAbtO

mattack said:


> ok, so I may use someone's windows machine to upgrade my Premiere drive (as I said before, I upgraded my Roamio with a drop in 3 TB drive, and the Premiere 4 is just the stock drive)..
> 
> So there's no 6 TB (especially without an interim drive necessary) possible? Sure, 4 TB is way better than what's in there now, but I thought I might as well go straight to the largest "cheap-ish" drive, which is 6 TB.


I did it with only a laptop handy, basic Roamio gone to a 4TB Red drive. $149 from Amazon.

So far, I haven't filled it completely yet.

KMTTG reports 625 SHOWS, 1651 GB USED, 2032 GB FREE

It can go to 6TB.


----------



## mattack

Do you mean the *Premiere*? I thought the Premiere & the Roamio had different max limit.

and my main question was -- can you go to 6 TB directly WITHOUT another drive in the middle? (Previous instructions I had found described going to I think 2 TB, THEN going to 6..)

Again, since I know I can do 4, maybe I'll just do that. But I'm just trying to find out the absolute max. This would be great to answer these FAQ-type questions in the first post in the thread.


----------



## ggieseke

Premieres are still limited to 4TB unless you do some fancy multiple-drive juggling. jmbach would be the best person to ask for details. MFSTools 3.2 should have been able to do it in one copy/expand operation, but AFAIK it still doesn't work over 4TB.

If you're not in a hurry and nothing blows up at work I hope to start working on a new project this weekend. The goal will be to take any existing Series 4 or later (even if it has an external drive) and copy/expand it to a single drive that's at least as big as the existing drive(s). 6TB will probably still be the upper limit for a single drive, but I have a few ideas that I want to test and I may add an option to "marry" unapproved external drives.


----------



## jmbach

You can take a Premiere to 6TB without and interim drive. The short is to use MFSTools 3.2 to copy source drive to 6TB target drive with the switch to limit the expansion to 4TB of the drive. Then use MFSTools 3.2 to add a app/media partition pair to get the extra 2TB of recording space. Then the hard part. At this point you have to manually coalesce that last partition pair that was added (15 and 16 to 15) followed by converting the APM to a 64bit APM. Then boot the drive in the TiVo and let it divorce the now non existent partition in the header. 

Best bet is to wait for ggieseke get his program done. It will be easier and the inodes and zones will be 4k aligned.


----------



## dougdingle

ThAbtO said:


> KMTTG reports 625 SHOWS, 1651 GB USED, 2032 GB FREE


From what I can see, KMTTG does not look at your actual drive size - it has to accept what you tell it in that box in the upper left hand corner of the pie chart screen.

So while it can do the math for number of shows, hours of recordings, average data rate, and GB USED, free space GB just seems to be subtracting GB USED from the size you told it the drive was.

Similarly, it assumes future recordings will use close to the same data space on average as what you've already recorded (a decent assumption).

If you change the number you gave it representing the drive size to something larger, it will report more space and hours left.

I can see Greg's point that the only really meaningful number is what the file system/drive reports in terms of usable space left in the media partition.


----------



## ThAbtO

dougdingle said:


> From what I can see, KMTTG does not look at your actual drive size - it has to accept what you tell it in that box in the upper left hand corner of the pie chart screen.
> 
> So while it can do the math for number of shows, hours of recordings, average data rate, and GB USED, free space GB just seems to be subtracting GB USED from the size you told it the drive was.
> 
> Similarly, it assumes future recordings will use close to the same data space on average as what you've already recorded (a decent assumption).
> 
> If you change the number you gave it representing the drive size to something larger, it will report more space and hours left.
> 
> I can see Greg's point that the only really meaningful number is what the file system/drive reports in terms of usable space left in the media partition.


Actually, it can. For Premiere/Roamio and now Bolt, under 20+. You just have to do the extra step just once.

In KMTTG:

Go to Remote Tab.
Under Info Tab
Select the Premiere or Roamio
Click Refresh
Repeat for any other Premiere or Roamio

That is all there is to it. It only has to be done once. When you go to the PlayList and click on Usage. The full space has been entered. You can test this by clearing out that field before going into the remote/Info tabs and Refresh.


----------



## ThAbtO

mattack said:


> Do you mean the *Premiere*? I thought the Premiere & the Roamio had different max limit.
> 
> and my main question was -- can you go to 6 TB directly WITHOUT another drive in the middle? (Previous instructions I had found described going to I think 2 TB, THEN going to 6..)
> 
> Again, since I know I can do 4, maybe I'll just do that. But I'm just trying to find out the absolute max. This would be great to answer these FAQ-type questions in the first post in the thread.


Yes, Roamio can go to 6TB. I would recommend the Red drives. The 4TB Red drive I put in the Roamio is so quiet, and seemed to run cooler than the original 500 GB drive.

If you cannot find a Windows PC, I may be able to help, Only as a last resort. For a small fee, and return shipping. (only for Roamio.)


----------



## dougdingle

ThAbtO said:


> Actually, it can. For Premiere/Roamio and now Bolt, under 20+. You just have to do the extra step just once.
> 
> In KMTTG:
> 
> Go to Remote Tab.
> Under Info Tab
> Select the Premiere or Roamio
> Click Refresh
> Repeat for any other Premiere or Roamio
> 
> That is all there is to it. It only has to be done once. When you go to the PlayList and click on Usage. The full space has been entered. You can test this by clearing out that field before going into the remote/Info tabs and Refresh.


Was not aware of that cool feature. Thanks.


----------



## mattack

ThAbtO said:


> Yes, Roamio can go to 6TB. I would recommend the Red drives. The 4TB Red drive I put in the Roamio is so quiet, and seemed to run cooler than the original 500 GB drive.
> 
> If you cannot find a Windows PC, I may be able to help, Only as a last resort. For a small fee, and return shipping.


You keep saying Roamio. I keep asking about the PREMIERE. e.g. Premiere 4. They're DIFFERENT Tivo platforms.


----------



## ThAbtO

mattack said:


> You keep saying Roamio. I keep asking about the PREMIERE. e.g. Premiere 4. They're DIFFERENT Tivo platforms.


Ok. Cleared that up. I thought Premiere is limited to 2TB. Same for the Series 3.


----------



## mattack

Well, I'm not sure either. I'm almost positive it can go to 4 TB.. Was hoping 6. That's what I'm trying to confirm.


----------



## ThAbtO

mattack said:


> Well, I'm not sure either. I'm almost positive it can go to 4 TB.. Was hoping 6. That's what I'm trying to confirm.


I am certain that MSFR only works on Roamio/Bolts.


----------



## jmbach

Series 3 is limited to 2TB. 
Series 4 can go higher.


----------



## mattack

ThAbtO said:


> I am certain that MSFR only works on Roamio/Bolts.


ok, bummer.. there was talk early in the thread about support for Premieres.


----------



## kcossabo

OK, Tried the MFS formater

TiVo Bolt is up and running with new HDD.

*It still can not accept a 'push'*

Using pyTivo, I CAN push to Romio, but not BOLT
BOLT CAN PULL a file from pyTiVo
BOLT CAN PULL a file from Romio

This is the same issue that I had with the other drive formater (this is a new drive I am using for this round of experiments)

I will now try a Clear & Delete....


----------



## aaronwt

I don't typically push to my TiVos so I can't say I've ever tried it with my Bolts. I use pyTiVo to pull with the Bolts.


----------



## kcossabo

aaronwt said:


> I don't typically push to my TiVos so I can't say I've ever tried it with my Bolts. I use pyTiVo to pull with the Bolts.


I went back to the original HDD, I *can not* PUSH to that drive as well 

Did TiVo Remove that ability from BOLT?

I will start a new Thread to see if ANYONE can push to a Bolt.


----------



## aaronwt

I just pushed an MP4 video to my Bolt and it worked.

EDIT: But I just tried pushing a TiVo recording and it didn't work. This is not something I normally use so I'm not sure what I need to do for the settings. But it did work on that MP4 file. I pushed it to the Bolt and was able to play it back. Apparently it didn't need to be transcoded for the Bolt. The transfer was in under a minute. But the same file being sent to my Roamio Pro is being transcoded and is taking a while to transfer. Not really sure exactly though. I just know it's taking a very long time to transfer the MP4 files to my RoamiO pro while they have been under a minute when transferring to the Bolt.

These files were only 1GB in size. I'm trying an 11.5GB mpg file now. It's transferring to the Bolt at close to 300Mb/s. WHile the transfer to my ROamio Pro was only 10.3Mb/s(as reported by pyTiVo).


----------



## dougdingle

kcossabo said:


> I went back to the original HDD, I *can not* PUSH to that drive as well
> 
> Did TiVo Remove that ability from BOLT?
> 
> I will start a new Thread to see if ANYONE can push to a Bolt.


So "push" is not really "push" on *any *Tivo.

It's more of a 'reacharound pull', where the software you use contacts the Tivo servers and has them issue a 'pull' command to the Tivo to pull the file from your machine. The Tivo servers are in the middle of the procedure, and aside from Tivo Desktop Pro, programs offering 'push' are using undocumented procedures to get it done, since Tivo has been, shall we say, uncooperative in the matter, AFAIK.

Perhaps the Bolt needs a different protocol to get that accomplished, and the software that can do this needs to be updated by the authors.


----------



## kcossabo

dougdingle said:


> So "push" is not really "push" on *any *Tivo.
> 
> It's more of a 'reacharound pull', where the software you use contacts the Tivo servers and has them issue a 'pull' command to the Tivo to pull the file from your machine. The Tivo servers are in the middle of the procedure, and aside from Tivo Desktop Pro, programs offering 'push' are using undocumented procedures to get it done, since Tivo has been, shall we say, uncooperative in the matter, AFAIK.
> 
> Perhaps the Bolt needs a different protocol to get that accomplished, and the software that can do this needs to be updated by the authors.


This and http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=10700356#post10700356

I think solved the issue. PUSH needs a setting on TiVo.com set?

Thank you and wmcbrine

I will edit if this did not fix the issue but, as the other two tivos did have it set and BOlt did not, I susspect i have been ripping, deleteting, and buying new HDD for no other reason than setting a flag on TIVO.COM device preferences. It states that it may take 24 hours to take effect so I will see.


----------



## ggieseke

kcossabo said:


> This and http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=10700356#post10700356
> 
> I think solved the issue. PUSH needs a setting on TiVo.com set?
> 
> Thank you and wmcbrine
> 
> I will edit if this did not fix the issue but, as the other two tivos did have it set and BOlt did not, I susspect i have been ripping, deleteting, and buying new HDD for no other reason than setting a flag on TIVO.COM device preferences. It states that it may take 24 hours to take effect so I will see.


Wait about 30 minutes for their servers to sync up, then force a daily call. That should do the trick.


----------



## kcossabo

For what it is is worth:

I processed my drive with Windows 10 on a Surface Pro 3, and worked like a charm. Ran as an Administrator, no issues via USB3.0


----------



## ggieseke

kcossabo said:


> For what it is is worth:
> 
> I processed my drive with Windows 10 on a Surface Pro 3, and worked like a charm. Ran as an Administrator, no issues via USB3.0


Thanks! That's nice to know.

As long as you're a member of the Administrators group it should self-elevate to the necessary rights level after popping up a UAC prompt, but using Run as administrator never hurts.

Just out of curiosity, any estimates on the run time? I have a pretty good feel for USB 3.0 speeds, but I've never run it on a tablet.


----------



## kcossabo

ggieseke said:


> Thanks! That's nice to know.
> 
> As long as you're a member of the Administrators group it should self-elevate to the necessary rights level after popping up a UAC prompt, but using Run as administrator never hurts.
> 
> Just out of curiosity, any estimates on the run time? I have a pretty good feel for USB 3.0 speeds, but I've never run it on a tablet.


Not a good source for tablet speed, as my Surface is an i7 and I did it with USB 3.0 and it was quick.


----------



## hugenut

ggieseke said:


> ***WARNING***
> 
> *THE BASICS:*
> 
> 1. Put the drive in your Roamio and power it on. It will take about four minutes to auto-format the drive. When it gets to the first Guided Setup screen, power it off. The resulting drive will only use a fraction of the total capacity, but we will fix that in the next steps.
> 
> 2. Download mfsr and unzip it to somewhere on your computer.
> 
> 3. Connect the drive to your computer. USB 2.0 adapters will work, but are much slower than USB 3.0 or a SATA direct connection.
> 
> 4. Run mfsr with an account that's a member of the Administrators group or right-click it and choose Run as Administrator. Follow the instructions from there to reformat the drive to use its full capacity.


Already stuck at #1. After the Roamio formats the new drive, do you choose the United States, then enter to the next screen of the guided set up and power down/off there? Also, how do you power off the roamio at this point? I am a noob, and could not find the right button on my remote to power it down, so I just unplugged the power cable out of the back. Then when I put my 6TB Red in a dock connected to my windows 8.1 computer, I got all kinds of errors that may be due to the dock that only shows 1.49 TB of the 6 TB red I bought, so I ordered a new one. Hope that solves my errors, but would appreciate any input on the correct screen to power off the Roamio at, and how to correctly power the unit off.


----------



## ThAbtO

hugenut said:


> Already stuck at #1. After the Roamio formats the new drive, do you choose the United States, then enter to the next screen of the guided set up and power down/off there? Also, how do you power off the roamio at this point? I am a noob, and could not find the right button on my remote to power it down, so I just unplugged the power cable out of the back. Then when I put my 6TB Red in a dock connected to my windows 8.1 computer, I got all kinds of errors that may be due to the dock that only shows 1.49 TB of the 6 TB red I bought, so I ordered a new one. Hope that solves my errors, but would appreciate any input on the correct screen to power off the Roamio at, and how to correctly power the unit off.


That is how I did it. I just pulled the cord when it asks for USA/Canada screen.

Your dock may be a bit old or unable to read the full size of the drive.

I had ordered this.

Sabrent USB 2.0 TO SATA/IDE 2.5/3.5/-INCH Hard Drive Converter With Power Supply & LED Activity Lights [4TB Support] (EC-AHDD)

Used it on a Windows 7 laptop and it got the full size.

I had canceled on another order of a different USB drive adapter because I did not think it could handle the large capacity drives. (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001OORN06?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_)


----------



## ggieseke

hugenut said:


> Already stuck at #1. After the Roamio formats the new drive, do you choose the United States, then enter to the next screen of the guided set up and power down/off there? Also, how do you power off the roamio at this point? I am a noob, and could not find the right button on my remote to power it down, so I just unplugged the power cable out of the back. Then when I put my 6TB Red in a dock connected to my windows 8.1 computer, I got all kinds of errors that may be due to the dock that only shows 1.49 TB of the 6 TB red I bought, so I ordered a new one. Hope that solves my errors, but would appreciate any input on the correct screen to power off the Roamio at, and how to correctly power the unit off.


Pulling the power cord at the first screen is fine. You can go further into Guided Setup without hurting anything, but it would just waste time since it will all have to be done again after the reformat.

It sounds like your dock is too old to work with drives over 2TB.


----------



## HerronScott

HerronScott said:


> Greg,
> 
> Thanks for the confirmation! I'll be donating shortly.
> 
> Scott


Sorry for the delay but donation sent (please donate if you use this tool!).

Scott


----------



## ggieseke

HerronScott said:


> Sorry for the delay but donation sent (please donate if you use this tool!).
> 
> Scott


Thanks! PM sent.


----------



## twentysixwheeler

Beer money sent! Thank you for awesome program!:up:

Went from 1T to 6T in less than an hour!

Took Comcast two days to fix cable card


----------



## ckeene

jmbach said:


> In my order of preferences: WD A/V Green, WD Red or Green, Seagate A/V.


What about WD Blue? Pulled a 5t out of a My Book.


----------



## ggieseke

ckeene said:


> What about WD Blue? Pulled a 5t out of a My Book.


I would avoid them. You don't need 7200RPM in a TiVo, and they probably suck more power and generate more heat.


----------



## ckeene

ggieseke said:


> I would avoid them. You don't need 7200RPM in a TiVo, and they probably suck more power and generate more heat.


This was a 5400rpm and looks like it draws the same power as the Green. Will have to open TiVo again to get drive model (forgot to write it down) to see if the IntelliPower is supported.


----------



## unitron

ckeene said:


> This was a 5400rpm and looks like it draws the same power as the Green. Will have to open TiVo again to get drive model (forgot to write it down) to see if the IntelliPower is supported.


It's not Intellipower that you need to worry about, it's Intellipark.

And as far as I know the only way to be sure is to hook the drive directly to a SATA port, or through an IDE/SATA adapter to an IDE header, on the motherboard and boot with something that lets you run

wdidle3.exe /R

to get it to "R"eport the current Intellipark status, which it will do for any and all drives connected that are capable of running Intellipark, and, if necessary, using

wdidle3.exe /D

to disable it, which it will do to any and all connected Intellipark-capable drives.

Unless it won't, in which case you can run

wdidle3.exe /S 300

to set the timer period to 5 minutes which is pretty much the same thing as disabling it as far a TiVo is concerned.


----------



## ggieseke

ckeene said:


> This was a 5400rpm and looks like it draws the same power as the Green. Will have to open TiVo again to get drive model (forgot to write it down) to see if the IntelliPower is supported.


It will probably be fine then. I ran 500GB Blue IDE drives in my Series 2s for many years and they were great.

Intellipark doesn't seem to bother Roamios, so I wouldn't worry about that too much.


----------



## GhostWidget

ggieseke said:


> It will probably be fine then. I ran 500GB Blue IDE drives in my Series 2s for many years and they were great.
> 
> Intellipark doesn't seem to bother Roamios, so I wouldn't worry about that too much.


Looks WD has folded the Green label series into the Blue: (wd . com)/en/products/products.aspx?id=770#Tab8 (Sorry, post count isn't high enough to paste actual link 

So there are some 5400 and some 7200 RPM drive now in the Blue series. The current Green models change the last letter from X to Z for their Blue model number.

Looking around at prices this CyberMonday, the comparable model Blue seems generally priced less than the Green.


----------



## grimlock

I have my new Roamio arriving later this week and I plan to add a 6TB hard drive. My silly question is this- Do I use the MFSR software linked in the first post? The link in the 2nd post? Or some other link?

And what's the difference between the WD Green and Red drives? Should I just buy the cheaper of the two, or is there something else to consider?

Thanks!

Edit- or should I be considering a WD Blue based on the post before mine?
http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Desktop-Hard-Disk-Drive/dp/B013HNYVCE


----------



## ggieseke

grimlock said:


> I have my new Roamio arriving later this week and I plan to add a 6TB hard drive. My silly question is this- Do I use the MFSR software linked in the first post? The link in the 2nd post? Or some other link?
> 
> And what's the difference between the WD Green and Red drives? Should I just buy the cheaper of the two, or is there something else to consider?
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Edit- or should I be considering a WD Blue based on the post before mine?
> http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Desktop-Hard-Disk-Drive/dp/B013HNYVCE


Either version should work on a Roamio, but I'd grab the latest version from the 2nd post. It has a few additional patches in the drive enumeration subroutine.

My personal choice for 6TB would be the Red.


----------



## gespears

grimlock said:


> And what's the difference between the WD Green and Red drives? Should I just buy the cheaper of the two, or is there something else to consider?


I got the Red because it had a three year warranty over the 2 year of the green. It's been working perfectly.


----------



## grimlock

Thanks guys, I ordered the WD Red you guys recommended.


----------



## grimlock

unitron said:


> It's not Intellipower that you need to worry about, it's Intellipark.
> 
> And as far as I know the only way to be sure is to hook the drive directly to a SATA port, or through an IDE/SATA adapter to an IDE header, on the motherboard and boot with something that lets you run
> 
> wdidle3.exe /R
> 
> to get it to "R"eport the current Intellipark status, which it will do for any and all drives connected that are capable of running Intellipark, and, if necessary, using
> 
> wdidle3.exe /D
> 
> to disable it, which it will do to any and all connected Intellipark-capable drives.
> 
> Unless it won't, in which case you can run
> 
> wdidle3.exe /S 300
> 
> to set the timer period to 5 minutes which is pretty much the same thing as disabling it as far a TiVo is concerned.


Just confirming....I can connect this directly to my PC's motherboard with a basic SATA cable to run the mfsr software with no extra steps, right? I don't need to buy something like- http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GAML7OK/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A2S4EXOOJ8Z82D

I just want to make sure I have everything on hand so I can get my Roamio up and running Friday night. The 6TB WD Red drive is here, so I am just waiting for the Roamio to arrive and/or this adapter (if necessary).

I saw the above post and I have no clue what it is talking about. If I need to understand this, then I am going to need help.

Thanks!


----------



## ThAbtO

grimlock said:


> Just confirming....I can connect this directly to my PC's motherboard with a basic SATA cable to run the mfsr software with no extra steps, right? I don't need to buy something like- http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GAML7OK/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A2S4EXOOJ8Z82D
> 
> I just want to make sure I have everything on hand so I can get my Roamio up and running Friday night. The 6TB WD Red drive is here, so I am just waiting for the Roamio to arrive and/or this adapter (if necessary).
> 
> I saw the above post and I have no clue what it is talking about. If I need to understand this, then I am going to need help.
> 
> Thanks!


You would also need to power it up first, and it has to update the Tivo software, before it can handle the 4-6TB drives. So it means it will go through the Guided Setup, make several Tivo Connections in this process. Get Guide data for the next few days, on the 4th or so Tivo connection will get update. Reboot.

Then you can swap the drive to your 6TB, power it up. When it gets to Select your country. You can unplug and remove drive. Hook up to PC and MSFR. Return it to Tivo, power, and go through Guided Setup.


----------



## grimlock

ThAbtO said:


> You would also need to power it up first, and it has to update the Tivo software, before it can handle the 4-6TB drives. So it means it will go through the Guided Setup, make several Tivo Connections in this process. Get Guide data for the next few days, on the 4th or so Tivo connection will get update. Reboot.
> 
> Then you can swap the drive to your 6TB, power it up. When it gets to Select your country. You can unplug and remove drive. Hook up to PC and MSFR. Return it to Tivo, power, and go through Guided Setup.


Thanks for the quick response!

Just to clarify this some more, I am not sure what you mean by, "Tivo connection will get update". Am I waiting for a firmware update? I think this is what you mean, maybe I am off. And if so, how do I know when this happens? Just check the account settings periodically?

This is different than the instructions on the first post, so I want to make sure I understand it. Maybe this is to cover that first point (red below) about being 20.4.6 or newer?

The first post instructions say,

"Your Roamio must running 20.4.6 or later. Earlier versions go into an endless boot loop trying to format anything over 3TB.

1. Put the drive in your Roamio and power it on. It will take about four minutes to auto-format the drive. When it gets to the first Guided Setup screen, power it off. The resulting drive will only use a fraction of the total capacity, but we will fix that in the next steps.

2. Download mfsr and unzip it to somewhere on your computer.

3. Connect the drive to your computer. USB 2.0 adapters will work, but are much slower than USB 3.0 or a SATA direct connection.

4. Run mfsr with an account that's a member of the Administrators group or right-click it and choose Run as Administrator. Follow the instructions from there to reformat the drive to use its full capacity.

5. Put the drive back in the TiVo and enjoy."

Thanks again! I love the community support!


----------



## ThAbtO

Yes, however you call it, Tivo firmware, but I just call it Tivo software. After Guided Setup is complete, you just force Tivo Connections until the status says "Pending Restart"

Settings & Messages / Settings / Network / Connect To Tivo Service Now

It will update to the latest software, 20.5.x. New Roamio may be on version < 20.4.6.


It just took me about 5 minutes hooked up to the USB2 of my laptop running Windows7. Although I have the 4TB, a 6TB may take only slightly longer.


----------



## grimlock

ThAbtO said:


> Yes, however you call it, Tivo firmware, but I just call it Tivo software. After Guided Setup is complete, you just force Tivo Connections until the status says "Pending Restart"
> 
> Settings & Messages / Settings / Network / Connect To Tivo Service Now
> 
> It will update to the latest software, 20.5.x. New Roamio may be on version < 20.4.6.
> 
> It just took me about 5 minutes hooked up to the USB2 of my laptop running Windows7. Although I have the 4TB, a 6TB may take only slightly longer.


Where do I see the "Pending Restart" message? I don't recall ever seeing that on one of my prior Tivos. Is it a pop up message, or is it in the Account Information page?

Thanks again!


----------



## ThAbtO

ThAbtO said:


> Yes, however you call it, Tivo firmware, but I just call it Tivo software. After Guided Setup is complete, you just force Tivo Connections until the status says "Pending Restart"
> 
> Settings & Messages / Settings / Network / Connect To Tivo Service Now
> 
> It will update to the latest software, 20.5.x. New Roamio may be on version < 20.4.6.
> 
> It just took me about 5 minutes hooked up to the USB2 of my laptop running Windows7. Although I have the 4TB, a 6TB may take only slightly longer.





grimlock said:


> Where do I see the "Pending Restart" message? I don't recall ever seeing that on one of my prior Tivos. Is it a pop up message, or is it in the Account Information page?
> 
> Thanks again!


In the Tivo Network screen, or System Information.


----------



## grimlock

ThAbtO said:


> In the Tivo Network screen, or System Information.


Thanks for the clarification, I am confident I can do this now! Thanks for taking the time to answer all my questions! :up:


----------



## ggieseke

ThAbtO said:


> It just took me about 5 minutes hooked up to the USB2 of my laptop running Windows7. Although I have the 4TB, a 6TB may take only slightly longer.


It should be the same. The drive size doesn't affect the amount of data written to the disk during the reformatting process.


----------



## grimlock212

I am stuck in a reformat loop. I updated the software to the latest (20.5.x) and when I put the WD Red 6tb it is just in a continuous reboot loop. What am I missing?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


----------



## grimlock212

Went and picked up a WD Green 6tb at Fry's (no red in stock). Hopefully it works better than the red. Not sure what else it could be!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


----------



## grimlock212

Yay, it worked. Lost 3 hours on that bad red drive because I suck! 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


----------



## aaronwt

I used a 5TB Red in my Roamio and that worked fine.


----------



## krkaufman

aaronwt said:


> I used a 5TB Red in my Roamio and that worked fine.


And I'm going to put a 6TB WD Red, enroute from Newegg, in my new Roamio Pro and it's going to work great. Totally great. Without any hiccups or glitches.


----------



## grimlock

I didn't mean to imply that all WD Red drives are bad, just that the one I received was bad. I would have bought another red one, but it was out of stock at Fry's, and I didn't want to wait for Newegg to ship me one.


----------



## grimlock

Sent in my donation! Keep up the hard work.


----------



## krkaufman

grimlock said:


> I didn't mean to imply that all WD Red drives are bad, just that the one I received was bad. I would have bought another red one, but it was out of stock at Fry's, and I didn't want to wait for Newegg to ship me one.


Sorry, my comment was meant as a joke... with me pre-willing the project's success.


----------



## grimlock

krkaufman said:


> Sorry, my comment was meant as a joke... with me pre-willing the project's success.


Yeah I figured out the context today when I re-read the post. I was half asleep when I responded before.


----------



## gespears

krkaufman said:


> And I'm going to put a 6TB WD Red, enroute from Newegg, in my new Roamio Pro and it's going to work great. Totally great. Without any hiccups or glitches.


That is exactly how it worked for me!! I'm sure you will have the exact same experience ;->


----------



## grimlock

gespears said:


> That is exactly how it worked for me!! I'm sure you will have the exact same experience ;->


I'm sure 99 out of 100 would say the same thing. It was super easy once I got my 2nd drive from Fry's. It was super frustrating before then! The good news is that if I ever have to do this again, I will be a complete expert. I upgraded my father's Tivo yesterday, and it went perfectly.

It was interesting to see the hardware differences between the Tivo Roamio (base model) and the Pro. They are VERY different. The Pro definitely seemed to do many processes quicker than the base model. I'm wondering if there are differences in the processor and/or RAM.


----------



## ShoutingMan

Has anyone run MFSR in Windows 10 on a Mac (in Parallels)? I don't have a dedicated Windows PC, and I'm wondering if I should go with a 3TB drive for simplicity, or try to use MFSR via my Win/Parallels to upgrade to a 4TB drive.

Thanks


----------



## krkaufman

ThAbtO said:


> Your dock may be a bit old or unable to read the full size of the drive.
> 
> I had ordered this.
> 
> Sabrent USB 2.0 TO SATA/IDE 2.5/3.5/-INCH Hard Drive Converter With Power Supply & LED Activity Lights *[4TB Support]* (EC-AHDD)
> 
> Used it on a Windows 7 laptop and it *got the full size*.


... where "full size" was 4TB, correct? That is, you can't vouch for this particular adapter working with drives larger than 4TB. Correct?

I'd purchased one of these adapters in the past and don't recall it having the "4TB Support" qualifier in the product title, so I'm guessing they've found it doesn't work so well with larger drives. (I'll know, soon enough, with a 6TB drive enroute, but I'm curious as to your experience with the adapter.)


----------



## grimlock

krkaufman said:


> ... where "full size" was 4TB, correct? That is, you can't vouch for this particular adapter working with drives larger than 4TB. Correct?
> 
> I'd purchased one of these adapters in the past and don't recall it having the "4TB Support" qualifier in the product title, so I'm guessing they've found it doesn't work so well with larger drives. (I'll know, soon enough, with a 6TB drive enroute, but I'm curious as to your experience with the adapter.)


This is why I connected directly to my computer's motherboard with a SATA cable. I didn't want to mess around with USB and getting the right adaptor for a 6tb drive.


----------



## krkaufman

grimlock said:


> This is why I connected directly to my computer's motherboard with a SATA cable. I didn't want to mess around with USB and getting the right adaptor for a 6tb drive.


Not all motherboards will support 6TB, either; glad it worked for you.


----------



## grimlock

krkaufman said:


> Not all motherboards will support 6TB, either; glad it worked for you.


Interesting. I like learning new stuff. I have pretty modern high end gaming computers, so I guess that helps. I was actually building the one computer the same day I did the TiVo upgrade. It made it easy as I already had the PC open.


----------



## aaronwt

grimlock said:


> I'm sure 99 out of 100 would say the same thing. It was super easy once I got my 2nd drive from Fry's. It was super frustrating before then! The good news is that if I ever have to do this again, I will be a complete expert. I upgraded my father's Tivo yesterday, and it went perfectly.
> 
> It was interesting to see the hardware differences between the Tivo Roamio (base model) and the Pro. They are VERY different. The Pro definitely seemed to do many processes quicker than the base model. I'm wondering if there are differences in the processor and/or RAM.


The Roamio line has the same processor. If anything the 4 tuner Roamio can be quicker since it is buffering two less tuners.


----------



## grimlock

aaronwt said:


> The Roamio line has the same processor. If anything the 4 tuner Roamio can be quicker since it is buffering two less tuners.


I think the difference was the Ethernet adaptor. 10/100 Roamio Base Model vs 10/100/1000 on the Pro.


----------



## aaronwt

grimlock said:


> I think the difference was the Ethernet adaptor. 10/100 Roamio Base Model vs 10/100/1000 on the Pro.


Yes. But that has no effect on the internal processes. It will of course affect transfer rates to a PC or another Pro/Plus.


----------



## rdevo

Donation sent, thanks !!! Now running 6tb WD red on my Roamio.


----------



## grimlock

aaronwt said:


> Yes. But that has no effect on the internal processes. It will of course affect transfer rates to a PC or another Pro/Plus.


Wouldn't it change the download speed of firmware updates as well? Or do TiVo servers not support those speeds?


----------



## ggieseke

grimlock said:


> Wouldn't it change the download speed of firmware updates as well? Or do TiVo servers not support those speeds?


Possibly, but very few internet servers can spit out files at a rate that would challenge even a good wireless G connection (54Mbps). Over the last year or so my Comcast connection has gone from 55Mbps to 100, and recently to 175. In a single-user household I can't really tell the difference.

Based on the spinning blue circles I'm seeing today on my Roamio Pro and the overall performance of TiVo's website in general I think they're using recycled 286 PCs on a 10Mbps backbone anyway.


----------



## Ed Siegler

Sorry to bug you about this, and although I posted this in a thread elsewhere, thought I would go right to the source on this one.

With using your application to make the Roamio recognize a 4TB drive, I am running into an error that stated "Invalid Apple Partition Map".

I am very new with the TiVo software thing, and have zero clue what that means. Been searching for that and also cannot come up with much.

Any insight on this?


----------



## krkaufman

Ed Siegler said:


> With using your application to make the Roamio recognize a 4TB drive, I am running into an error that stated "Invalid Apple Partition Map".
> 
> I am very new with the TiVo software thing, and have zero clue what that means. Been searching for that and also cannot come up with much.
> 
> Any insight on this?


Did you follow the steps outlined in "THE BASICS" section of the first post to this thread, especially bullet #1?

See: http://tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=10501028


----------



## HerronScott

Ed Siegler said:


> Sorry to bug you about this, and although I posted this in a thread elsewhere, thought I would go right to the source on this one.
> 
> With using your application to make the Roamio recognize a 4TB drive, I am running into an error that stated "Invalid Apple Partition Map".
> 
> I am very new with the TiVo software thing, and have zero clue what that means. Been searching for that and also cannot come up with much.
> 
> Any insight on this?


Ed,

I'm wondering if there may have been some bad information written to the drive from when you inserted it the first time with pre-20.4.6 software even though you went through the steps again with post-20.4.6 software that seemed to get to the guided setup page fine?

I'd try wiping the drive and starting fresh.

Scott


----------



## Ed Siegler

krkaufman said:


> Did you follow the steps outlined in "THE BASICS" section of the first post to this thread, especially bullet #1?
> 
> See: http://tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=10501028


Followed the directions to a "T"

Sent from my XT1080 using Tapatalk


----------



## Ed Siegler

HerronScott said:


> Ed,
> 
> I'm wondering if there may have been some bad information written to the drive from when you inserted it the first time with pre-20.4.6 software even though you went through the steps again with post-20.4.6 software that seemed to get to the guided setup page fine?
> 
> I'd try wiping the drive and starting fresh.
> 
> Scott


Hey Scott,

I thought of that myself and tried that. Tried it with a fresh, unused drive too even after the software was upgraded. Same result with the apple path response.

Reading thru this thread, seems like this may be something that happened with a Bolt as well, missing a few sectors which identified it as a TiVo drive.

Sent from my XT1080 using Tapatalk


----------



## HerronScott

Ed Siegler said:


> Hey Scott,
> 
> I thought of that myself and tried that. Tried it with a fresh, unused drive too even after the software was upgraded. Same result with the apple path response.
> 
> Reading thru this thread, seems like this may be something that happened with a Bolt as well, missing a few sectors which identified it as a TiVo drive.


You might just have to wait until Greg responds. 

If you didn't use the updated version in the second post, you might try that one.

http://tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=10501034#post10501034

Scott


----------



## Ed Siegler

HerronScott said:


> You might just have to wait until Greg responds.
> 
> If you didn't use the updated version in the second post, you might try that one.
> 
> http://tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=10501034#post10501034
> 
> Scott


I don't know if it's my PC or not but when I went to use that software...it wouldn't open for some reason. I am about to pull my last hairs out

I do appreciate your time Scott. After reading your last post, I was kind of thinking this was a Scott issue.

Sent from my XT1080 using Tapatalk


----------



## Ed Siegler

Ed Siegler said:


> I don't know if it's my PC or not but when I went to use that software...it wouldn't open for some reason. I am about to pull my last hairs out
> 
> I do appreciate your time Scott. After reading your last post, I was kind of thinking this was a Scott issue.
> 
> Sent from my XT1080 using Tapatalk


Sorry...a Greg issue

Sent from my XT1080 using Tapatalk


----------



## krkaufman

Ed Siegler said:


> I don't know if it's my PC or not but when I went to use that software...it wouldn't open for some reason. I am about to pull my last hairs out


I just downloaded the 1.0.0.2 version zip linked by Scott, and copied the exe to a new temporary folder. Double-clicking it to run produced the expected Admin authorization dialog, and then it seemed to run, as expected: lacking a connected TiVo drive, it displayed the copyright disclaimer, an error dialog saying it couldn't find a TiVo drive, and then the main application UI but with a blank listing.

p.s. On Windows 7


----------



## krkaufman

HerronScott said:


> If you didn't use the updated version in the second post, you might try that one.
> 
> http://tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=10501034


Based on the timestamp of post #31 in the "BOLT HDD development" thread and the edit timestamp for the MFSr v1.0.0.2 update, it should hopefully include the fix for the error message you're seeing.


----------



## danorum

Ed Siegler said:


> Hey Scott,
> 
> I thought of that myself and tried that. Tried it with a fresh, unused drive too even after the software was upgraded. Same result with the apple path response.
> 
> Reading thru this thread, seems like this may be something that happened with a Bolt as well, missing a few sectors which identified it as a TiVo drive.
> 
> Sent from my XT1080 using Tapatalk


I was getting the same error using the version in the first post, but it is currently reformatting using the one in the second post (version 1002 for Bolts). This is for a drive initially formatted in a Roamio OTA.

Dan


----------



## aaronwt

danorum said:


> I was getting the same error using the version in the first post, but it is currently reformatting using the one in the second post (version 1002 for Bolts). This is for a drive initially formatted in a Roamio OTA.
> 
> Dan


Version 1002 will work with Bolts and Roamios. I used it last weekend on a 3TB green drive I put in a Roamio Basic.


----------



## jmbach

Anybody whose drive is formatted with 20.5.6 release OS or newer will need to use 1.0.0.2 of MFSR for both Bolts and Roamios. TiVo changed a few bytes in block 0 that throws version 1.0.0.1 off.


----------



## ThAbtO

jmbach said:


> Anybody whose drive is formatted with 20.5.6 release OS or newer will need to use 1.0.0.2 of MFSR for both Bolts and Roamios. TiVo changed a few bytes in block 0 that throws version 1.0.0.1 off.


I had upgraded to the 4TB before it was updated to 20.5.6, and with the original version.


----------



## ggieseke

jmbach said:


> Anybody whose drive is formatted with 20.5.6 release OS or newer will need to use 1.0.0.2 of MFSR for both Bolts and Roamios. TiVo changed a few bytes in block 0 that throws version 1.0.0.1 off.


I edited the first post. Sorry for the confusion, Ed.


----------



## Ed Siegler

ggieseke said:


> I edited the first post. Sorry for the confusion, Ed.


No problem!

Greg...would there be any reason that I am unable to run the program after I download it? No matter what I do, when I go to run the program...it never opens up. Seems like my laptop keeps thinking about opening it but never does.

Sent from my XT1080 using Tapatalk


----------



## HerronScott

Ed Siegler said:


> No problem!
> 
> Greg...would there be any reason that I am unable to run the program after I download it? No matter what I do, when I go to run the program...it never opens up. Seems like my laptop keeps thinking about opening it but never does.


Ed,

You are extracting the files from the zip file and then running it versus trying to run it from the zip file? (right-click and extract all versus double-clicking on zip file and then trying to double-click on the exe).

Scott


----------



## ggieseke

Ed Siegler said:


> No problem!
> 
> Greg...would there be any reason that I am unable to run the program after I download it? No matter what I do, when I go to run the program...it never opens up. Seems like my laptop keeps thinking about opening it but never does.
> 
> Sent from my XT1080 using Tapatalk


DvrBARS will do that with certain computers that have a multi-slot universal card reader, but I rewrote the subroutine that enumerates all the drives in the computer and thought it was fixed in mfsr. Something along those lines could still be messing it up.

Do you have anything other than a CD/DVD drive that shows up with a drive letter in Disk Manager? Mirrored drives? Anything else odd about the drive configuration? What OS are you running?

If it's the card reader problem just go into Device Manager, expand the Disk Drives section, and temporarily disable the drive(s) that the card reader emulates.


----------



## Ed Siegler

ggieseke said:


> DvrBARS will do that with certain computers that have a multi-slot universal card reader, but I rewrote the subroutine that enumerates all the drives in the computer and thought it was fixed in mfsr. Something along those lines could still be messing it up.
> 
> Do you have anything other than a CD/DVD drive that shows up with a drive letter in Disk Manager? Mirrored drives? Anything else odd about the drive configuration? What OS are you running?
> 
> If it's the card reader problem just go into Device Manager, expand the Disk Drives section, and temporarily disable the drive(s) that the card reader emulates.


I cannot get that far. I cannot even open the program. When I click the icon, or even right click and run as admin, I get an hourglass that never goes away.

I am running Windows 7.

Sent from my XT1080 using Tapatalk


----------



## ggieseke

Ed Siegler said:


> I cannot get that far. I cannot even open the program. When I click the icon, or even right click and run as admin, I get an hourglass that never goes away.
> 
> I am running Windows 7.
> 
> Sent from my XT1080 using Tapatalk


Can you go into Disk Manager and post a screen snapshot?


----------



## unitron

ggieseke said:


> Can you go into Disk Manager and post a screen snapshot?


And be sure to specify brand and model of drive as well, as that seems to suddenly be an issue.


----------



## Ed Siegler

Not a problem...been away for a few days and after Christmas, I'll get right to it 

Sent from my XT1080 using Tapatalk


----------



## disturbedfred

Just donated in anticipation of the flawless installation of this swell bit of code on my newly ordered WD60EFRX. Thanks to all who helped create this, you make everyone's life better.


----------



## andrewtn

Shatian said:


> Has anyone gotten an s308 error at the verifying step after putting the 6 TB drive in?


Posting this in case it helps someone like me in the future.

I got this s308 error after putting a 3 TB Drive in. I tried multiple times during the guide setup but got the same error at the 'verifying' step. However, after unplugging and restarting the Tivo I was able to get past the error without trouble.

Scared me for a moment but it turned out okay..


----------



## plazman30

1. Got my Roamio in the mail
2. Removed 500 GB drive and put in WD 3 TB drive.
3. Waited for the TiVo to initialize and get to the select language screen
4. Unplugged the TiVo and remove the 3 TB drive
5. Ran MSF Reformatter on it using an external USB 2.0 to SATA dock
6. When it finished, I turned off the dock and stuck the drive back into the TiVo.
7. Reassembled the TiVo and put in place of the Roamio.

I've been staring at "Welcome! Stating up..." for 10 minutes now. No yellow light flickering on the front of the TiVo.

Any ideas?

Before I ran MFS Reformatter, it booted up in about 2 minutes with the 3 TB drive in there.


----------



## HerronScott

plazman30 said:


> 1. Got my Roamio in the mail
> 2. Removed 500 GB drive and put in WD 3 TB drive.
> 3. Waited for the TiVo to initialize and get to the select language screen
> 4. Unplugged the TiVo and remove the 3 TB drive
> 5. Ran MSF Reformatter on it using an external USB 2.0 to SATA dock
> 6. When it finished, I turned off the dock and stuck the drive back into the TiVo.
> 7. Reassembled the TiVo and put in place of the Roamio.
> 
> I've been staring at "Welcome! Stating up..." for 10 minutes now. No yellow light flickering on the front of the TiVo.
> 
> Any ideas?
> 
> Before I ran MFS Reformatter, it booted up in about 2 minutes with the 3 TB drive in there.


That sounds exactly like what I did except that mine was a Roamio Pro so I was just using the same 3TB drive that it came with.

I did comment here that it took several minutes to boot after running MFSR and I was expecting it to boot faster but it was reported that's to be expected. 10 minutes though seems much longer than what I recall.

Scott


----------



## plazman30

Well, I just unplugged the TiVo and pulled the drive out. Linux says the drive is 3 TB of completely unallocated space. So I made a GUID partition table on the drive and a blank unformatted partition.

Popped it back in and still nothing. Pulled the drive out again and once again gparted told me the drive did not have a partition table on it.

I popped the old 500 GB in and fires right up and takes me to the language selection screen.

When I first put the 3 TB in there, the TiVo booted just fine. Don't remember how long it took though. I'm going to leave it plugged in for an hour or so and see what happens. The fact that the TiVo is wiping the partition table tells me that it may be trying to format the drive and I am just not giving it enough time to finish. But 15 minutes seems like plenty of time. It did not take 15 minutes when I first put the 3 TB drive in.


----------



## plazman30

Left the drive in for around 45 minutes. Nothing. I put the drive in my PC and created and ext4 partition and formatted it to blank it and just popped in the TiVo.

When I put the original 500 GB drive in, it turns around it seems to boot fine. The TiVo says starting up, then after about 30 seconds, the yellow lights flash like the HD is booting up. Then the screen changes to "Almost there..." and then we're at guided setup.

With the 3 TB drive it, it says 'Starting up..." then the yellow lights flash for a little bit, and it stays at "Starting up..." and never switches to "Almost there..."

Very frustrating. Anyone ever see anything like this?

I've been at this for a couple of hours and it's getting really frustrating, since no one can watch TV till I get this done.


----------



## krkaufman

plazman30 said:


> 1. Got my Roamio in the mail
> 2. Removed 500 GB drive and put in WD 3 TB drive. ...


You may have simply skipped mentioning it, but the first thing that needs to happen is you need to allow the Roamio to do a software update, per the OP.



ggieseke said:


> *THE BASICS:*
> 
> Your Roamio must running 20.4.6 or later. Earlier versions go into an endless boot loop trying to format anything over 3TB.
> 
> 1. Put the drive in your Roamio and power it on. It will take about four minutes to auto-format the drive. When it gets to the first Guided Setup screen, power it off. The resulting drive will only use a fraction of the total capacity, but we will fix that in the next steps.
> 
> ...


----------



## HerronScott

krkaufman said:


> You may have simply skipped mentioning it, but the first thing that needs to happen is you need to allow the Roamio to do a software update, per the OP.


I thought the same thing at first but discounted it because he indicated the following. Figured his TiVo must have a new enough version to support the 3TB drives. But good idea to complete the guided setup with the original 500GB drive and then try again with the 3TB drive.

"Before I ran MFS Reformatter, it booted up in about 2 minutes with the 3 TB drive in there."

Scott


----------



## plazman30

Plugged in the old drive. Did the guided setup and got the fall updated.

Powered down the TiVo and put the 3 TB back in and then I boot up, every light on the front of the TiVo comes on and flashes, green, red, blue and yellow. Drive works just fine in my PC without any issues.

And it worked just fine (got me to guided setup) before I ran mfs reformatter. Not sure what I can do to get this drive to work in my Roamio.

Right now the drive has a GUID partition table with no partitions. Is there something I need to do to get the TiVo to recognize the drive as completely blank, so it will initialize it?


----------



## plazman30

Ok, pulled the drive out AGAIN.

Put it in a USB2 to SATA dock. Formatted the drive. Copied files back and forth it to without issue. The drive works just fine.

I turned around and then used gdisk to erase the partition table and mbr from the disk, making as blank as it can possibly be. Plugged it into my TiVo and booted it up. Once again got "Welcome! Starting up...", and then about a minute later all the lights on the front of the TiVo, the red, green, blue and yellow all start continuously flashing.

I'm at a complete loss now. The thing works fine on the TV and my wife is happily watching live TV right now. But I don't want to move my OnePasses and recordings over till I get this damn 3 TB drive to work.


----------



## HerronScott

plazman30 said:


> Ok, pulled the drive out AGAIN.
> 
> Put it in a USB2 to SATA dock. Formatted the drive. Copied files back and forth it to without issue. The drive works just fine.
> 
> I turned around and then used gdisk to erase the partition table and mbr from the disk, making as blank as it can possibly be. Plugged it into my TiVo and booted it up. Once again got "Welcome! Starting up...", and then about a minute later all the lights on the front of the TiVo, the red, green, blue and yellow all start continuously flashing.
> 
> I'm at a complete loss now. The thing works fine on the TV and my wife is happily watching live TV right now. But I don't want to move my OnePasses and recordings over till I get this damn 3 TB drive to work.


Really strange. What model drive is it and what's the date code? Also, what was the current rating on that replacement power supply you bought?

Scott


----------



## HerronScott

HerronScott said:


> Really strange. What model drive is it and what's the date code? Also, what was the current rating on that replacement power supply you bought?


I went back to your other thread where you ordered the replacement power brick from Amazon and that it's supposed to be 2A like the TiVo OEM one. There was some discussion last year about the TiVo 2A power brick possibly running near it's limits with upgraded drives. One recommended replacement was the 2.5A one that comes with Cisco TA's. Check out this thread which discusses it.

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=10207870#post10207870

Scott


----------



## plazman30

HerronScott said:


> I went back to your other thread where you ordered the replacement power brick from Amazon and that it's supposed to be 2A like the TiVo OEM one. There was some discussion last year about the TiVo 2A power brick possibly running near it's limits with upgraded drives. One recommended replacement was the 2.5A one that comes with Cisco TA's. Check out this thread which discusses it.
> 
> http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=10207870#post10207870
> 
> Scott


The power supply is rated at 12V 2.0amp.

I am also thinking it's the power supply unable to power the drive.

I used mfstool 3.2 to image the 500 GB drive and then restore onto the 3 TB drive. When I did that, I actually got it to boot.

So, I actually went through the effort to mount the drive properly at that point and seal down the lid.

I rebooted and all the lights went flashing again.

I'm going to see what my options are for a 2.5A power supply. I really can't wait much longer to get this set up, I wasted all day today on it.

For now the 500 GB is in place. The OnePasses are moved over. I won't do any more till the official TiVo brick comes in.


----------



## plazman30

If anyone is curious, the Cisco tuning adapter is part # 4019611. It appears the same brick is also used for some ACER laptops. I found a couple of them on eBay for ~US$10


----------



## jmbach

The rainbow of lights you describe sounds like the TiVo no longer sees the drive. It could very well be the power supply not providing enough power to keep the drive up and operational. 
If you want to test it. Power the drive via a separate power supply when it is connected to the TiVo. If it boots through and works, then your TiVo needs a more powerful brick to use the larger drive.


----------



## plazman30

Yeah, I am about to order the 2.5 amp adapter off of eBay. It's weird that it was able to see the drive twice.


----------



## ThAbtO

plazman30 said:


> The power supply is rated at 12V 2.0amp.
> 
> I am also thinking it's the power supply unable to power the drive.
> 
> I used mfstool 3.2 to image the 500 GB drive and then restore onto the 3 TB drive. When I did that, I actually got it to boot.
> 
> So, I actually went through the effort to mount the drive properly at that point and seal down the lid.
> 
> I rebooted and all the lights went flashing again.
> 
> I'm going to see what my options are for a 2.5A power supply. I really can't wait much longer to get this set up, I wasted all day today on it.
> 
> For now the 500 GB is in place. The OnePasses are moved over. I won't do any more till the official TiVo brick comes in.


What is the make/model of that 3TB drive? You never mentioned it.

If its not a WD green or Red drive, then that drive consumes more power and can produce more heat, which higher RPM drives can do.


----------



## plazman30

ThAbtO said:


> What is the make/model of that 3TB drive? You never mentioned it.
> 
> If its not a WD green or Red drive, then that drive consumes more power and can produce more heat, which higher RPM drives can do.


It's a Western Digital Green AV Drive:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DXFEQGI


----------



## plazman30

I'd like to thank everyone for their help today. It was quite a frustrating day. Hopefully when the new power adapter comes in, I'll be all set.


----------



## aaronwt

The stock Roamio Basic power supply works with the 3TB WD Green drive I installed. Model WD30EZRX.


----------



## jmbach

Unfortunately the power ratings of our drives and power supplies are an average rating. If a drive needed a little more power coupled with a power supply that provided a little less than a situation could occur that would cause to drive not to be fully powered up and remain functional. Especially true if in the ideal working setting the drive plus the other TiVo power requirements are near the maximum power the supply can give.


----------



## HerronScott

aaronwt said:


> The stock Roamio Basic power supply works with the 3TB WD Green drive I installed. Model WD30EZRX.


Note that he had purchased a replacement power supply from Amazon which is supposed to be rated for 2A but it is not the one that comes with the TiVo (he's waiting for a replacement from TiVo).

Scott


----------



## plazman30

HerronScott said:


> Note that he had purchased a replacement power supply from Amazon which is supposed to be rated for 2A but it is not the one that comes with the TiVo (he's waiting for a replacement from TiVo).
> 
> Scott


And here is where the problem. The genuine TiVo power supply will be here on Thursday. And I have ordered a 2.5a 12v power supply that will be here next Tuesday. So, sometime in the next week, I should be all set.


----------



## HerronScott

plazman30 said:


> And here is where the problem. The genuine TiVo power supply will be here on Thursday. And I have ordered a 2.5a 12v power supply that will be here next Tuesday. So, sometime in the next week, I should be all set.


Fingers crossed one of them resolves this issue for you and it's not something else!

Scott


----------



## Ed Siegler

ggieseke said:


> Can you go into Disk Manager and post a screen snapshot?


My apologies for not getting to this sooner. Between family Christmas time and a wicked cold, this kinda got pushed to the backburner.

I downloaded your file to my work PC and everything ran flawlessly here. Said my 4TB drive has been reformatted and is ready for use. Will give it a shot hen I get home.

Will keep you posted.

(Thank you all very much for your help)


----------



## gespears

plazman30 said:


> And here is where the problem. The genuine TiVo power supply will be here on Thursday. And I have ordered a 2.5a 12v power supply that will be here next Tuesday. So, sometime in the next week, I should be all set.


Guys, please correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't I read somewhere that the drive has to be clean when you install it in the Roamio? I thought you needed to do a "zero write test" (or whatever it's called) with the WD diags to clean it if it had anything written on it before?

Or am I all wet?


----------



## ggieseke

gespears said:


> Guys, please correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't I read somewhere that the drive has to be clean when you install it in the Roamio? I thought you needed to do a "zero write test" (or whatever it's called) with the WD diags to clean it if it had anything written on it before?
> 
> Or am I all wet?


It shouldn't matter unless the drive has already been formatted by a Roamio or a Bolt. Anything else (including Series 1-4 drives) will be wiped and reformatted by the TiVo automatically.

That said, TEST IT FIRST!


----------



## Ed Siegler

HerronScott said:


> Ed,
> 
> I'm wondering if there may have been some bad information written to the drive from when you inserted it the first time with pre-20.4.6 software even though you went through the steps again with post-20.4.6 software that seemed to get to the guided setup page fine?
> 
> I'd try wiping the drive and starting fresh.
> 
> Scott


Greg and Scott...

Worked like a charm utilizing my work PC. Two of the four drives have been formatted correctly and installed. After moving some recordings around, I'll upgrade the other two.

Gentlemen...THANK YOU for your help and patience.

Sent from my XT1080 using Tapatalk


----------



## ggieseke

Ed Siegler said:


> Greg and Scott...
> 
> Worked like a charm utilizing my work PC. Two of the four drives have been formatted correctly and installed. After moving some recordings around, I'll upgrade the other two.
> 
> Gentlemen...THANK YOU for your help and patience.
> 
> Sent from my XT1080 using Tapatalk


Cool beans. Let me know if you want to try to troubleshoot the home PC.


----------



## Mammatus

Those of you behind all of this work are amazing -- and I greatly appreciate all you put into this. 

I have a base-model Roamio and would like to undertake an upgrade. I know the western digital EURX is the perferred model for those seeking the simple plug-and-play upgrade to 3TB. However, is there a "most-recommended" model for those seeking the 4-5-6TB upgrades?


----------



## ThAbtO

Mammatus said:


> Those of you behind all of this work are amazing -- and I greatly appreciate all you put into this.
> 
> I have a base-model Roamio and would like to undertake an upgrade. I know the western digital EURX is the perferred model for those seeking the simple plug-and-play upgrade to 3TB. However, is there a "most-recommended" model for those seeking the 4-5-6TB upgrades?


WD Green AV drives are the most recommended, as well as the Red EFRX. Mostly for the low power consumption. I have a 4TB Red in my basic Roamio and its pretty quiet.


----------



## Mammatus

ThAbtO said:


> WD Green AV drives are the most recommended, as well as the Red EFRX. Mostly for the low power consumption. I have a 4TB Red in my basic Roamio and its pretty quiet.


Fantastic - thank you!


----------



## lessd

ggieseke said:


> It shouldn't matter unless the drive has already been formatted by a Roamio or a Bolt. Anything else (including Series 1-4 drives) will be wiped and reformatted by the TiVo automatically.
> 
> That said, TEST IT FIRST!


You are correct, I use WD Lifeguard Diag, a free WD program and do a quick erase, works every time.


----------



## plazman30

Cisco Tuning Adapter power supply came in yesterday. Just took some time out to make an image of my 500 GB internal using mfstools 3.2. I put it in the Roamio, sealed it up, and used the 2.5A tuning adapter power brick.

Fired right up, and after about 2-3 minutes I was at the TiVo menu with all my recordings, OnePasses and a working ToDo list. Hard Drive says it has 441 hours of HD and my drive capacity is 7%.

So, everything worked! Just in time to put the ball drop on!


----------



## plazman30

Spoke to soon. HD works great. Can record new shows. But all of my existing content throws an error when I try and play it. Ah well, luckily there wasn't too much there to begin with.


----------



## jmbach

plazman30 said:


> Cisco Tuning Adapter power supply came in yesterday. Just took some time out to make an image of my 500 GB internal using mfstools 3.2. I put it in the Roamio, sealed it up, and used the 2.5A tuning adapter power brick.
> 
> Fired right up, and after about 2-3 minutes I was at the TiVo menu with all my recordings, OnePasses and a working ToDo list. Hard Drive says it has 441 hours of HD and my drive capacity is 7%.
> 
> So, everything worked! Just in time to put the ball drop on!


Since you used MFSTools 3.2, this really is in the wrong thread. 


plazman30 said:


> Spoke to soon. HD works great. Can record new shows. But all of my existing content throws an error when I try and play it. Ah well, luckily there wasn't too much there to begin with.


If you did not use the -a switch in the copy command line you did not copy the actual recordings. So you essentially have the the directory tree without the corresponding data for the recordings.


----------



## HerronScott

plazman30 said:


> Cisco Tuning Adapter power supply came in yesterday. Just took some time out to make an image of my 500 GB internal using mfstools 3.2. I put it in the Roamio, sealed it up, and used the 2.5A tuning adapter power brick.
> 
> Fired right up, and after about 2-3 minutes I was at the TiVo menu with all my recordings, OnePasses and a working ToDo list. Hard Drive says it has 441 hours of HD and my drive capacity is 7%.
> 
> So, everything worked! Just in time to put the ball drop on!


So sounds like the 3rd party power supply probably wasn't up to it even though it was supposed to be rated at the OEM 2A. Weren't you supposed to get the TiVo power supply yesterday also? I'd be curious whether it worked as well (but I would stick with the 2.5A one long term).

Scott


----------



## plazman30

HerronScott said:


> So sounds like the 3rd party power supply probably wasn't up to it even though it was supposed to be rated at the OEM 2A. Weren't you supposed to get the TiVo power supply yesterday also? I'd be curious whether it worked as well (but I would stick with the 2.5A one long term).
> 
> Scott


I was supposed to get it yesterday, but it did not come in. Tracking now says tomorrow.


----------



## plazman30

jmbach said:


> Since you used MFSTools 3.2, this really is in the wrong thread.
> 
> If you did not use the -a switch in the copy command line you did not copy the actual recordings. So you essentially have the the directory tree without the corresponding data for the recordings.


Well, there goes my mistake. There were not that many TV shows on there. I can watch most of them on the web, so I am going to leave it alone. I'm just happy the drive works and I have 3 TB of storage now.


----------



## Tivoitis

Greg, thanks for putting this together! Donation has been sent.

As a data point, I used a WD Red 6TB drive (WD60EFRX) and ran MFSR 1.0.0.2 on an older HP DM1Z laptop running Win10 connected to a Plugable Hard Drive Dock (USB3-SATA-U3) on a USB 2 port.

When I first connected the dock, the drive capacity wasn't correctly detected and I saw the same errors as posted in http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=10522045#post10522045 (Line 913, 325). I had to get the most up-to-date driver installed followed by a reboot. After the first reboot, I saw the correct drive capacity detected, and MFSR ran further before a different error came up (I missed recording the exact error code). I think additional Windows updates happened and after another reboot, the third time running MFSR was finally the charm. It took around five minutes to run (I think).

Restoring all my Season Passes via KMTTG was a snap, so another vote for that for anyone migrating a currently in service Tivo.


----------



## ggieseke

Tivoitis said:


> Greg, thanks for putting this together! Donation has been sent.
> 
> As a data point, I used a WD Red 6TB drive (WD60EFRX) and ran MFSR 1.0.0.2 on an older HP DM1Z laptop running Win10 connected to a Plugable Hard Drive Dock (USB3-SATA-U3) on a USB 2 port.
> 
> When I first connected the dock, the drive capacity wasn't correctly detected and I saw the same errors as posted in http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=10522045#post10522045 (Line 913, 325). I had to get the most up-to-date driver installed followed by a reboot. After the first reboot, I saw the correct drive capacity detected, and MFSR ran further before a different error came up (I missed recording the exact error code). I think additional Windows updates happened and after another reboot, the third time running MFSR was finally the charm. It took around five minutes to run (I think).
> 
> Restoring all my Season Passes via KMTTG was a snap, so another vote for that for anyone migrating a currently in service Tivo.


Thanks for the donation! Windows 10 is still a work in progress and some older machines like an IBM ThinkStation that I upgraded at work should never have passed the initial tests (it croaked when the first major upgrade hit), but it's slowly getting there. Glad you got it working.

It's great to see Kevin updating kmttg again - I couldn't live without it.


----------



## spsnomad

Got mine working -- my guess is that the initial version of the TiVo firmware was a little on the old side. I tried using the new version and it kept switching back and forth between the green screen and the TiVo logo. 

I put the original hard disk in, went through the setup and it grabbed an update. Once that was in place, I put in the 6 GB drive again and it tried to repair it again. I did a Windows format on it and deleted the partition and then it worked. 

I couldn't figure out any way to determine which version of the software the TiVo shipped with, but regardless, once I got the TiVo to accept the 6 GB drive, the MFSR software worked like a champ!

In case anyone wants to replicate it, it's a Roamio Pro and the new HD is a WD Red 6 GB. 

Many thanks to Greg for writing this -- it was much easier than blessing drives in the past!


----------



## plazman30

HerronScott said:


> So sounds like the 3rd party power supply probably wasn't up to it even though it was supposed to be rated at the OEM 2A. Weren't you supposed to get the TiVo power supply yesterday also? I'd be curious whether it worked as well (but I would stick with the 2.5A one long term).
> 
> Scott


The power supply came in on Saturday. Haven't has a chance to test and see if it would work. The 2.5A is working great though. I was lucky to find it on eBay.

I have had the Roamio reboot once, which caused my wife to immediately grumble about the upgrade. Then I reminded her about the Premiere and how many time it spontaneously rebooted on us over the last 6 years that we owned the thing.


----------



## bornsupercharged

Awesome work! I bought a 500GB TiVo Bolt and had planned on attaching external storage, only to find out the maximum you could do (re: only option) was the 1TB WD. I searched and found this thread and Ross Walker's website, and bought the STDR4000100. A couple things to note:

1) The STDR4000100 drive is actually thicker than the stock 500GB drive but fit okay
2) When you take the STDR4000100 drive out of its enclosure, put it straight into the powered off TiVo and then power it up. When the guide setup starts, unplug the TiVo. Now put the drive BACK into its enclosure, and plug the USB cable into your computer and run mfsr.exe as administrator. Let it do its thing, then take the drive back out of the enclosure and place back into the TiVo, and screw it all back in.
3) I didn't have any V312 errors, everything worked fine. 
4) Ross' website says the 4TB would show 490 HD hours but mine actually shows 637 HD hours.

My wife can now record everything she wants. After store discounts and a couple reward certificates, I ended up paying less than $100 for the 4TB drive, meaning by buying the 500GB I essentially got a 4TB Bolt for less than the price of the retail 1TB Bolt. Very pleased. My TiVo Mini should hopefully arrive today so looking forward to playing around with that, these are my first TiVos. 

Thank you very much for all the hard work you guys put into writing the software and testing it, and writing up the documentation outlining the steps, etc. :up:


----------



## brobin10

bornsupercharged said:


> Awesome work! I bought a 500GB TiVo Bolt and had planned on attaching external storage, only to find out the maximum you could do (re: only option) was the 1TB WD. I searched and found this thread and Ross Walker's website, and bought the STDR4000100. A couple things to note:
> 
> 1) The STDR4000100 drive is actually thicker than the stock 500GB drive but fit okay
> 2) When you take the STDR4000100 drive out of its enclosure, put it straight into the powered off TiVo and then power it up. When the guide setup starts, unplug the TiVo. Now put the drive BACK into its enclosure, and plug the USB cable into your computer and run mfsr.exe as administrator. Let it do its thing, then take the drive back out of the enclosure and place back into the TiVo, and screw it all back in.
> 3) I didn't have any V312 errors, everything worked fine.
> 4) Ross' website says the 4TB would show 490 HD hours but mine actually shows 637 HD hours.
> 
> My wife can now record everything she wants. After store discounts and a couple reward certificates, I ended up paying less than $100 for the 4TB drive, meaning by buying the 500GB I essentially got a 4TB Bolt for less than the price of the retail 1TB Bolt. Very pleased. My TiVo Mini should hopefully arrive today so looking forward to playing around with that, these are my first TiVos.
> 
> Thank you very much for all the hard work you guys put into writing the software and testing it, and writing up the documentation outlining the steps, etc. :up:


thanks for the info!

my 500gb tivo bolt, mini and 4tb seagate are on their way now!

hope to post back with positive results soon!


----------



## brobin10

bornsupercharged said:


> Awesome work! I bought a 500GB TiVo Bolt and had planned on attaching external storage, only to find out the maximum you could do (re: only option) was the 1TB WD. I searched and found this thread and Ross Walker's website, and bought the STDR4000100. A couple things to note:
> 
> 1) The STDR4000100 drive is actually thicker than the stock 500GB drive but fit okay
> 2) When you take the STDR4000100 drive out of its enclosure, put it straight into the powered off TiVo and then power it up. When the guide setup starts, unplug the TiVo. Now put the drive BACK into its enclosure, and plug the USB cable into your computer and run mfsr.exe as administrator. Let it do its thing, then take the drive back out of the enclosure and place back into the TiVo, and screw it all back in.
> 3) I didn't have any V312 errors, everything worked fine.
> 4) Ross' website says the 4TB would show 490 HD hours but mine actually shows 637 HD hours.
> 
> My wife can now record everything she wants. After store discounts and a couple reward certificates, I ended up paying less than $100 for the 4TB drive, meaning by buying the 500GB I essentially got a 4TB Bolt for less than the price of the retail 1TB Bolt. Very pleased. My TiVo Mini should hopefully arrive today so looking forward to playing around with that, these are my first TiVos.
> 
> Thank you very much for all the hard work you guys put into writing the software and testing it, and writing up the documentation outlining the steps, etc. :up:


i forgot to ask in my previous post, but did you ensure your tivo bolt was on any certain software version PRIOR to initially installing the 4tb seagate into your bolt?


----------



## bornsupercharged

brobin10 said:


> i forgot to ask in my previous post, but did you ensure your tivo bolt was on any certain software version PRIOR to initially installing the 4tb seagate into your bolt?


No it was fully updated with latest software from TiVo. It had done at least 1 full update, so I was on the latest version.:up:


----------



## sequestre

Has anybody looked into the new 8TB archive drive by Seagate? I see from the reviews that some are successfully using them in HTPCs. I wonder if it would work in the Roamio? I just bought a Roamio OTA and I'm looking for a drive.


----------



## ggieseke

sequestre said:


> Has anybody looked into the new 8TB archive drive by Seagate? I see from the reviews that some are successfully using them in HTPCs. I wonder if it would work in the Roamio? I just bought a Roamio OTA and I'm looking for a drive.


I have a one idea that I'd like to try if I ever get my hands on an 8TB drive, but I don't expect it to work. Until they fix some bugs in the OS, Roamios and Bolts are extremely unlikely to break the 6TB limit.


----------



## sequestre

ggieseke said:


> I have a one idea that I'd like to try if I ever get my hands on an 8TB drive, but I don't expect it to work. Until they fix some bugs in the OS, Roamios and Bolts are extremely unlikely to break the 6TB limit.


That's good to know. I guess I'll set my sights on a 6TB then.
Thanks!


----------



## TiV0_user

I just upgraded a new Roamio basic using MFSR 1.0.0.2. Worked flawlessly. Used a WD 6TB Red. Now showing 961 HD hours available in Tivo system information. Thanks to ggieseke for his excellent work on this software utility. Sent a $20 donation.


----------



## tivobw

Hey ggieseke, thanks for mfsr. I wanted to share my experience so you had another data point. I'm using mfsr with a Seagate STDR4000100 (4TB) and a Tivo Bolt 500GB system.


I prepared the Seagate STDR4000100 (4TB) using Ross Walker's guide (thanks Ross, I will have some feedback on this in another thread with some additional tips). 
Next, I took the Seagate and connected it directly via SATA to the motherboard of my Dell Dimension E520 and booted up.
When I tried to run mfsr as Administrator, after the Terms & Conditions screen I clicked "OK" and then a malloc error popped up. Hmm.
Rebooted the Dell and tried again. This time I was able to get mfsr to discover the prepared Tivo drive. It showed the following.
After the 1st screen I selected File->Format drive and the 2nd and 3rd screens popped up.


























I then turned off the Dell, placed the eSATA->USB connector on the Seagate which had been included with the drive, then connected the Seagate via an external USB 2.0 port on the Dell. Turned on the Dell and the drive was detected and formatted fine:

















I'm elated this worked! Popped it in the Tivo and booted up. After a long guided setup, it's now showing 639 HD hours of total recording capacity. I want to make sure after getting the Cablecard activated that this works before I call it a success (Comcast was closed at 11:30PM last night, what?? ).

Any idea what the "1 media regions" error is, and why that was only shown when connected directly to the motherboard via SATA? I tried that method first, as it seemed that would work better/faster (as I knew the Dell only had USB 2.0 ports). Even with USB 2.0, mfsr formatted the drive in less than about 2 minutes.


----------



## HerronScott

tivobw said:


> Any idea what the "1 media regions" error is, and why that was only shown when connected directly to the motherboard via SATA? I tried that method first, as it seemed that would work better/faster (as I knew the Dell only had USB 2.0 ports). Even with USB 2.0, mfsr formatted the drive in less than about 2 minutes.


I found a post on one of the forums that indicates that the Dell E520 Intel SATA RAID controller doesn't support drives larger than 2TB with the ROM version supplied by Dell.

http://www.win-raid.com/t609f13-Dell-Dimension-E-BIOS-DM-ICH-R-ROM-Upgrade-TB-disks.html

Scott


----------



## tivobw

HerronScott said:


> I found a post on one of the forums that indicates that the Dell E520 Intel SATA RAID controller doesn't support drives larger than 2TB with the ROM version supplied by Dell.
> 
> http://www.win-raid.com/t609f13-Dell-Dimension-E-BIOS-DM-ICH-R-ROM-Upgrade-TB-disks.html
> 
> Scott


Incredible! Dell for the win... :down::down::down:

Thanks for the info; I guess that's one advantage OS/X (Mac) has over Windows (PC clones) - consistency of platform. With a Mac, you know what you're going to get. With a PC, there are so many different BIOS versions and vendors, who knows...


----------



## HerronScott

tivobw said:


> Incredible! Dell for the win... :down::down::down:
> 
> Thanks for the info; I guess that's one advantage OS/X (Mac) has over Windows (PC clones) - consistency of platform. With a Mac, you know what you're going to get. With a PC, there are so many different BIOS versions and vendors, who knows...


It looks like the E520 was released in 2006 so if it is a chipset limitation, I don't think this would be Dell's fault.

I did find another post that indicated you might need to update your Intel RST drivers to support drives above 2TB also.

Scott


----------



## ggieseke

tivobw said:


> Incredible! Dell for the win... :down::down::down:
> 
> Thanks for the info; I guess that's one advantage OS/X (Mac) has over Windows (PC clones) - consistency of platform. With a Mac, you know what you're going to get. With a PC, there are so many different BIOS versions and vendors, who knows...


Glad you got it working. Lots of older hardware can't handle drives over 2TB (who knew back then?) and some of the ones that can barf on AF drives even if they aren't over 2TB. The Lenovo D20 I'm typing on is a perfect example of the latter case.

RAID controllers like the one on your E520 can be really touchy, but using a USB adapter was a good call. Kudos.

The "one media region" error is directly related to the first screenshot that only showed 1678.02GB. In that configuration the PC was only recognizing a fraction of the drive. In the later screenshots it saw the full drive capacity.


----------



## gespears

Hey @gegieseke, what do you make of the problems some are having with the 4TB Seagate Drives? I'm assuming you saw that thread.


----------



## tivobw

ggieseke said:


> Glad you got it working. Lots of older hardware can't handle drives over 2TB (who knew back then?) and some of the ones that can barf on AF drives even if they aren't over 2TB. The Lenovo D20 I'm typing on is a perfect example of the latter case.
> 
> RAID controllers like the one on your E520 can be really touchy, but using a USB adapter was a good call. Kudos.
> 
> The "one media region" error is directly related to the first screenshot that only showed 1678.02GB. In that configuration the PC was only recognizing a fraction of the drive. In the later screenshots it saw the full drive capacity.


Thanks! Glad I got it working. Cablecard activated this morning and the Bolt is working great (all apps are working too). Really like the Bolt and we're pleased with the upgrade from our old Tivo HD (which is going upstairs in a bedroom).

Really appreciate your software; sent you a donation to help keep the good work going.


----------



## aaronwt

gespears said:


> Hey @gegieseke, what do you make of the problems some are having with the 4TB Seagate Drives? I'm assuming you saw that thread.


What problems have there been with the 4TB Seagate drives.? I have been using two of them in my Bolts since October. So far I have not run into any issues.


----------



## gespears

aaronwt said:


> What problems have there been with the 4TB Seagate drives.? I have been using two of them in my Bolts since October. So far I have not run into any issues.


I saw that you found the thread I was talking about. I hope it's not a drive issue, or maybe just a certain run or something.

I tried to post the link but it didn't let me.


----------



## ggieseke

gespears said:


> Hey @gegieseke, what do you make of the problems some are having with the 4TB Seagate Drives? I'm assuming you saw that thread.


Hard to say until people pull their drives and test them. I'm also curious if the people who are having problems used the 4TB Roamio image or mfsr. If it was the image (which was never meant for Bolts), the smaller swap partition could be the problem.


----------



## aaronwt

ggieseke said:


> Hard to say until people pull their drives and test them. I'm also curious if the people who are having problems used the 4TB Roamio image or mfsr. If it was the image (which was never meant for Bolts), the smaller swap partition could be the problem.


I went back and changed mine when the newer version of mfsr came out.


----------



## gespears

ggieseke said:


> Hard to say until people pull their drives and test them. I'm also curious if the people who are having problems used the 4TB Roamio image or mfsr. If it was the image (which was never meant for Bolts), the smaller swap partition could be the problem.


Very interesting. I haven't had a lot of luck with the Seagate drives so I hope that's not it. I've always wondered if that drive was meant to hold up to 24/7 use.

I guess time will tell. Thanks so much for your hard work to make our TiVos better.


----------



## ChrisFix

Is there a way to restore a drive back to an NTFS format after running mfsr and installing in a TiVo?
My WD WD50EZRX seemed to format correctly with mfsr and TiVo setup went okay, but the drive was creating a lot of stuttering/freezing video and I removed it.
After trying to restore it for Windows diagnostics using Gparted and DiskPart, I screwed it up so that it now only shows up as a 500Gb drive...and I have no tools or ideas left as to how to "factory reset" the drive again.
Is it possible, or is the drive just toast?
Is the stuttering/freezing video playback a bad drive or just some incompatibility with use with the Roamio? I know others here report using the same drive without issue...
Thanks in advance!


----------



## jmbach

Get WD diagnostic utility and write zeros to the full drive (full erase) and that will test your drive and prep it for any OS. You could just have a bad drive. 


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


----------



## ChrisFix

jmbach said:


> Get WD diagnostic utility and write zeros to the full drive (full erase) and that will test your drive and prep it for any OS. You could just have a bad drive.
> 
> Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


I'll give that a try, but I did try WD Diags and so far it seems to think it is a 561GB drive - and tests it as good - but I haven't tried the writing zeros yet...

Edit: 5 hours to go...that's a lot of zeros!


----------



## ChrisFix

jmbach said:


> Get WD diagnostic utility


WD Lifeguard wrote zeros, but only on 117,760,6575 Sectors, so it is only seeing 561Gb as well.
It correctly ID's the drive as WDC WD50 EZRX.
Prior to mfsr prep for the TiVo, Windows correctly saw all 5TBs, and after mfsr expansion the TiVo saw it as a 5TB drive.
While the drive wasn't working well in the TiVo, it did indeed work, as it did as just a data drive on Windows - so I don't think the current issue is the drive, I'm pretty certain it's something I did with gparted that seems to have locked out most of the drive from being seen.

Any other suggestions?


----------



## jmbach

Consider using a program like hdat2 to check for a HPA or DCO on it.


----------



## ChrisFix

jmbach said:


> Consider using a program like hdat2 to check for a HPA or DCO on it.


I got a copy of BCWipe Total WipeOut - Jetico and it doesn't show the disk as having HPA or DCO (it does show HPA and DCO for my boot drive, so I know it does show it if it is there).
It showed the same 561GB partition as WD Lifeguard even after wiping it again with the Total WipeOut software.


----------



## jmbach

RMA the drive. Not sure what else it could be.


----------



## lessd

ChrisFix said:


> I got a copy of BCWipe Total WipeOut - Jetico and it doesn't show the disk as having HPA or DCO (it does show HPA and DCO for my boot drive, so I know it does show it if it is there).
> It showed the same 561GB partition as WD Lifeguard even after wiping it again with the Total WipeOut software.


Windows 10 puts a hidden partition on any hard drive its installed on, as I have great backup software I don't need this hidden partition, so I back up my Windows 10, use WD Lifeguard software to do a quick zero write on the drive, the hidden partition is gone, I then restore Windows 10 and expand to the full drive, no problem until the next Window 10 build.


----------



## ChrisFix

jmbach said:


> RMA the drive. Not sure what else it could be.


Thanks for your help and advice. I'll continue to play with it for a little more and see what I find. Learned more about drive sectors today than I probably needed...but it might come in handy someday!


----------



## ggieseke

ChrisFix said:


> Thanks for your help and advice. I'll continue to play with it for a little more and see what I find. Learned more about drive sectors today than I probably needed...but it might come in handy someday!


I have never seen a situation quite like yours, but I think jmbach is onto something. I'd send it back.

MFSR depends on Windows. If Windows sees the whole drive it will act accordingly. If it only sees 561GB it won't even try. How is that 5TB connected?


----------



## unitron

ChrisFix said:


> Thanks for your help and advice. I'll continue to play with it for a little more and see what I find. Learned more about drive sectors today than I probably needed...but it might come in handy someday!


Are you trying to do this on a GigaByte brand motherboard?

Do you have a boot cd with

hdparm

on it?


----------



## ChrisFix

ggieseke said:


> I have never seen a situation quite like yours, but I think jmbach is onto something. I'd send it back.
> 
> MFSR depends on Windows. If Windows sees the whole drive it will act accordingly. If it only sees 561GB it won't even try. How is that 5TB connected?


Via esata...
And yes, MFSR doesn't like what it's seeing!!


----------



## ChrisFix

unitron said:


> Are you trying to do this on a GigaByte brand motherboard?
> 
> Do you have a boot cd with
> 
> hdparm
> 
> on it?


It's not a GigaByte brand, it's an Acer slim desktop...here is an ebay listing for the motherboard that's in it:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Acer-Aspire...D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557
I've made a few different boot CDs, the Ultimate Boot CD, Gparted, hdat2_51, and bc wipe...but I don't know if hdparm is on any of those but I'm guessing it is! 
What would I be looking for with that command?


----------



## ggieseke

ChrisFix said:


> It's not a GigaByte brand, it's an Acer slim desktop...here is an ebay listing for the motherboard that's in it:
> http://www.ebay.com/itm/Acer-Aspire...D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557
> I've made a few different boot CDs, the Ultimate Boot CD, Gparted, hdat2_51, and bc wipe...but I don't know if hdparm is on any of those but I'm guessing it is!
> What would I be looking for with that command?


I don't think we're talking HPAs here. In that case Windows would report a drive that's a few hundred meg below true capacity, but mfsr wouldn't give a sh*t. It was designed to handle ANYTHING over 2TB and up to 6TB. It's a program, not an image.

If Windows only sees 561GB on a 5TB drive that's just weird.


----------



## unitron

ChrisFix said:


> It's not a GigaByte brand, it's an Acer slim desktop...here is an ebay listing for the motherboard that's in it:
> http://www.ebay.com/itm/Acer-Aspire...D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557
> I've made a few different boot CDs, the Ultimate Boot CD, Gparted, hdat2_51, and bc wipe...but I don't know if hdparm is on any of those but I'm guessing it is!
> What would I be looking for with that command?


It's on the UBCD, but you have to load PartedMagic and then exit that into the Linux shell to get to the command line.

If any of those others boot directly into a Linux command line, then

hdparm -?

will bring up the list of options for the command if the command is available.

Let's assume you find it.

While on the command line, do

fdisk -l

(that's a lowercase L)

to figure out which is the drive you're having trouble with.

If you usually only have the one installed drive, then that drive will probably be

/dev/sda

the optical drive will probably be

/dev/sdb

and the drive in which we are interested will probably be

/dev/sdc

It's possible that

fdisk

will choke on the optical drive and not get any further, if so try

fdisk -l /dev/sdc

and

fdisk -l /dev/sdd

until you know what designation that instance of Linux is using for the drive to be looked at.

Assume it's

/dev/sdc

for this discussion, and adjust if necessary

hdparm -N /dev/sdc

should show you the full LBA number of the drive and whether there's a Host Protected Area on the drive and what the apparent (and smaller) LBA number is as a result.

Report back with results, and include brand and model number of drive.


----------



## unitron

ChrisFix said:


> Is there a way to restore a drive back to an NTFS format after running mfsr and installing in a TiVo?
> My WD WD50EZRX seemed to format correctly with mfsr and TiVo setup went okay, but the drive was creating a lot of stuttering/freezing video and I removed it.
> After trying to restore it for Windows diagnostics using Gparted and DiskPart, I screwed it up so that it now only shows up as a 500Gb drive...and I have no tools or ideas left as to how to "factory reset" the drive again.
> Is it possible, or is the drive just toast?
> Is the stuttering/freezing video playback a bad drive or just some incompatibility with use with the Roamio? I know others here report using the same drive without issue...
> Thanks in advance!


For future reference, a drive with the version of the Apple Partition Map on it that TiVos use should look like an empty drive to anything (like DOS, Windows, and Linux) looking for an IBM/DOS style Master Boot Record, or MBR, so you shouldn't have to do anything other than let Windows format it NTFS the same way it would a new empty drive.

You didn't remove this drive from a WD external enclosure, did you?

(I'm wondering if Advanced Format 4K sectors are involved in the problem somehow)


----------



## jmbach

I think the drive just went bad. He was able to initialize it in the TiVo and then MFSR saw the drive and blessed it. He put it back in the TiVo and it worked for a while. When he started having worsening video issues, he removed the drive to examine it. Upon re examination is when all programs only see the drive in its current state.


----------



## sequestre

Well I finally got around to installing my 6TB HD in my TiVo Roamio OTA. Thanks so much to all that were involved. (Donation sent)
Everything went flawless.


----------



## ChrisFix

jmbach said:


> I think the drive just went bad. He was able to initialize it in the TiVo and then MFSR saw the drive and blessed it. He put it back in the TiVo and it worked for a while. When he started having worsening video issues, he removed the drive to examine it. Upon re examination is when all programs only see the drive in its current state.


That's a good summary of the situation...
Contacted Western Digital and RMA has been set up.

I think this drive must have been bad from the start. I initially purchased for use with Tablo, but it had glitchy video on that system - which I attributed to incompatibility with Tablo because a lot of different drives had issues with that DVR. A Seagate 5TB worked out of the box for Tablo (a drive they tested as "supported") and I later re-purposed the WD for my TiVo - except it had very glitchy video performance there as well.
In between the two DVR installs, I used it for a variety of light duty data storage and it worked fine, but I think there must be a bunch of bad sectors on the drive that the DVR applications quickly exposed.

Thank you all for such helpful assistance. This is a great forum and I've learned a lot from you all!


----------



## alyssa

easiest upgrade ever... well the drop in roamio upgrade to a 3tb was simpler but the extra 3tb of space is worth the extra 5 min's!!

i used a WD 6TBRed with a homebuilt computer- gigabyte mobo

donation sent


----------



## ggieseke

alyssa said:


> easiest upgrade ever... well the drop in roamio upgrade to a 3tb was simpler but the extra 3tb of space is worth the extra 5 min's!!
> 
> i used a WD 6TBRed with a homebuilt computer- gigabyte mobo
> 
> donation sent


Thanks!


----------



## jaejae

So I upgraded the drive on my Roamio (v20.5.6) to a 4TB WD40EURX. I followed the directions (using MSFR 1.0.0.2) and everything seemed to be working fine (Tivo shows 637 HD hour capacity). Then after about a day I started getting random reboots and eventually the Tivo got stuck in an infinite reboot loop.

Thinking this could be a bad drive I plugged the drive back into the computer and used WD Diagnostic Tools to run an extended test on the drive, however all came back ok as the drive PASSED.

Thinking I did something wrong I reformatted the drive, followed all the steps again and all was working fine for about 2 hours but I just got another random reboot. WD Diagnostic Tools shows everything is fine. My 2TB drive was working fine. Is it possible this is a bad drive even though SMART is showing everything is okay? Any suggestions before I go through the hassle of RMAing the drive?


----------



## jmbach

What model roamio do you have. 


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


----------



## jaejae

jmbach said:


> What model roamio do you have.


Model# TCD848000


----------



## jmbach

Hmm. It is possible that the drive is still bad. Did you do both a read and write test on it? Might consider downloading HDD Guardian and let it have a look at the drive. There can be some errors that do not trigger smart but are still present causing you some issues.


----------



## jaejae

jmbach said:


> Hmm. It is possible that the drive is still bad. Did you do both a read and write test on it? Might consider downloading HDD Guardian and let it have a look at the drive. There can be some errors that do not trigger smart but are still present causing you some issues.


So I awoke today with the Roamio flashing all its lights and it was stuck on the "Welcome" Loading Screen. I unplugged it for a few seconds and plugged it back in and it's working again but something is definitely wrong.

How do I perform both a read and write test on the drive? I don't recall seeing that option in WD Diagnostic Tools. Is that something I do with HDD Guardian?


----------



## jmbach

HDD Guardian just reads the SMART information of the drive and reports what it sees in more detail. WD Diagnostics has the extended test and write zeros in the extended testing screen for the drive. Just double click on the drive.


----------



## jaejae

jmbach said:


> HDD Guardian just reads the SMART information of the drive and reports what it sees in more detail. WD Diagnostics has the extended test and write zeros in the extended testing screen for the drive. Just double click on the drive.


Ok thanks! Should I run HDD Guardian while performing the extended read/write test with WD Diagnostics?


----------



## jmbach

FWIW, usually when the Roamio flashes all its lights and you see that screen it is acting like it is not seeing the drive or the drive is disconnected. Wonder if there has been a change with the firmware settings of the drive that is causing this behavior. Some the the WD EURX drives had the puis toggled causing the TiVo and older computers not to see them but newer computers had no issues. Yours sounds different but could be something similar.


----------



## jmbach

jaejae said:


> Ok thanks! Should I run HDD Guardian while performing the extended read/write test with WD Diagnostics?


No run it after WD is finished


----------



## jaejae

Something interesting... WD tools reports that SMART data is okay (PASS).

HDD Guardian is reporting that I should replace the drive soon. It appears that the threshold for "relocated sector account" is approaching the failure rate. I did notice something I recorded the other night kept freezing, skipping large sections of video, and eventually became unwatchable. At one point it completely froze the Tivo for several minutes and the unit wouldn't accept any commands.

I wonder if running an extended write test is even worth it at this point....


----------



## jmbach

The only thing that running it will help is possibly triggering a fail on one of their tests that you can send with the drive. Although I have just sent a screen shot of the HDD Guardian screen with the drive and had no issues with RMA. Adding a fail result on one of their tests would definitely make it easier to RMA the drive.


----------



## jaejae

jmbach said:


> The only thing that running it will help is possibly triggering a fail on one of their tests that you can send with the drive.


Ran an extended test hoping to do just that. Test passed and nothing worsened but still not feeling comfortable with this drive. Here is a screen shot of the health status:


----------



## jmbach

I would replace the drive. Send in that print out with the unit. That is what I have done with both WD and Seagate. They never questioned it but YMMV. 

Some might suggest running spinrite on the drive. Sometimes it sends a flakey drive over the edge. 


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


----------



## RWDPLZ

Just installed a 6TB WD Red in a Roamio Plus, worked flawlessly, thanks!


----------



## dougdingle

Has there been any progress in software which would allow the upgrading of a 3TB drive to a 6TB drive while keeping all the shows?


----------



## ggieseke

dougdingle said:


> Has there been any progress in software which would allow the upgrading of a 3TB drive to a 6TB drive while keeping all the shows?


I still have it at the top of my private To Do List but work has me slammed right now, including most of my off-duty time when I'm home. Once things quiet down I already have at least 75% of the code written.


----------



## dougdingle

ggieseke said:


> I still have it at the top of my private To Do List but work has me slammed right now, including most of my off-duty time when I'm home. Once things quiet down I already have at least 75% of the code written.


That would be outstanding.

Please PM me when you're ready to have someone torture the code.


----------



## sysedr

Has anyone noticed that mfsr.exe in the 1.0.0.3 zip file lists 1.0.0.2 when you select help about MFS reformat? Wondering if the dialog box was just not updated or did the old version get zipped up by mistake?


----------



## ggieseke

sysedr said:


> Has anyone noticed that mfsr.exe in the 1.0.0.3 zip file lists 1.0.0.2 when you select help about MFS reformat? Wondering if the dialog box was just not updated or did the old version get zipped up by mistake?


My bad. I edited the version block (right-click the exe & choose Properties) but forgot about the Help - About dialog. I will fix it tonight when I get home.


----------



## ggieseke

ggieseke said:


> My bad. I edited the version block (right-click the exe & choose Properties) but forgot about the Help - About dialog. I will fix it tonight when I get home.


Fixed.


----------



## gburrell

A while back I upgraded my Roamio Pro to 6TB. Everything seem to be fine and it reports 957 hours of capacity. However I just noticed it seems to be stuck at 57% and as it records new shows it deletes the older shows.

Any ideas as to what I should do. Has any one else seen this. I went back through the tread and see no mention of this.

Thanks in advance.


----------



## ggieseke

gburrell said:


> A while back I upgraded my Roamio Pro to 6TB. Everything seem to be fine and it reports 957 hours of capacity. However I just noticed it seems to be stuck at 57% and as it records new shows it deletes the older shows.
> 
> Any ideas as to what I should do. Has any one else seen this. I went back through the tread and see no mention of this.
> 
> Thanks in advance.


Do you have any 1 Passes set to Keep Until I Delete?


----------



## Tivoitis

gburrell said:


> A while back I upgraded my Roamio Pro to 6TB. Everything seem to be fine and it reports 957 hours of capacity. However I just noticed it seems to be stuck at 57% and as it records new shows it deletes the older shows.
> 
> Any ideas as to what I should do. Has any one else seen this. I went back through the tread and see no mention of this.
> 
> Thanks in advance.


Are you able to use KMTTG to get an independent look at your disk usage?

From my personal experience, I used a WD Red 6TB and saw 959 hours. In the first month, I recorded non-stop to push it up to the 100% mark and max out my usage. I definitely did not have any issue getting past 57%.


----------



## gburrell

ggieseke said:


> Do you have any 1 Passes set to Keep Until I Delete?


Most of my 1 passes are keep until I delete, although right now the shows being deleted are older stuff that I pushed down on the machine by PyTivo. I still have them all on my PC so nothing crticically lost yet, but trying to figure out why it is happening


----------



## gburrell

Tivoitis said:


> Are you able to use KMTTG to get an independent look at your disk usage?
> 
> From my personal experience, I used a WD Red 6TB and saw 959 hours. In the first month, I recorded non-stop to push it up to the 100% mark and max out my usage. I definitely did not have any issue getting past 57%.


OK so using kmttg I see only 3179 MB and its showing 99% full so I guess this means that the drive didn't get expanded properly, even though it is only showing 57% on the Tivo. At this stage it looks like I need to move everything off it again and redo the whole process. Or are there any other options?

On second look it appears kmttg doesn't read the disk size so it it was showing 99% full I see at the top I can change the disk size after which it shows free space.


----------



## ThAbtO

gburrell said:


> On second look it appears kmttg doesn't read the disk size so it it was showing 99% full I see at the top I can change the disk size after which it shows free space.


On KMTTG, go to Remote tab -> Info tab and Click Refresh on your selected Tivo. The full size will get reported to the "Disk Usage" button automatically.

I currently have 71% of 3683GB used on the 4TB Roamio.


----------



## gburrell

ThAbtO said:


> On KMTTG, go to Remote tab -> Info tab and Click Refresh on your selected Tivo. The full size will get reported to the "Disk Usage" button automatically.
> 
> I currently have 71% of 3683GB used on the 4TB Roamio.


Thanks,

I get :

softwareVersion 20.5.6.RC21-USA-6-840
userDiskSize 5800281808 (5531.58 GB)
userDiskUsed 3325972480 (57.34%)

However it never goes above 57%, and deletes the old shows.

So it appears the disk size is right, however something else seems to be going on.


----------



## ThAbtO

gburrell said:


> Thanks,
> 
> I get :
> 
> softwareVersion 20.5.6.RC21-USA-6-840
> userDiskSize 5800281808 (5531.58 GB)
> userDiskUsed 3325972480 (57.34%)
> 
> However it never goes above 57%, and deletes the old shows.
> 
> So it appears the disk size is right, however something else seems to be going on.


One possibility is the Tivo software is limiting it to 3.3TB.


----------



## ggieseke

Using KUID a lot can cause strange things to happen, which is what I suspect is happening here.


----------



## gburrell

ggieseke said:


> Using KUID a lot can cause strange things to happen, which is what I suspect is happening here.


SO if that is the case is there anyway to change everything KUID to something else.
Or do I have to do it all manually.


----------



## dougdingle

ggieseke said:


> Using KUID a lot can cause strange things to happen, which is what I suspect is happening here.


Can you be more specific about what can happen?

I use KUID a lot, have for a decade, and haven't run into any issues, certainly nothing like this.

Is it specific to the 6TB mods?


----------



## gburrell

gburrell said:


> SO if that is the case is there anyway to change everything KUID to something else.
> Or do I have to do it all manually.


Sorry I just checked actually all my shows are keep until space needed. I don't think I have anything that is keep until I delete.

Also if I turn on Tivo Suggestions I will get maybe 3 or 4 shows recorded after I delete a few shows. Those will quickly get deleted as well.

Would any of the kickstarts like 54 or 57 help?

Thanks


----------



## ggieseke

gburrell said:


> Sorry I just checked actually all my shows are keep until space needed. I don't think I have anything that is keep until I delete.
> 
> Also if I turn on Tivo Suggestions I will get maybe 3 or 4 shows recorded after I delete a few shows. Those will quickly get deleted as well.
> 
> Would any of the kickstarts like 54 or 57 help?
> 
> Thanks


I'm not sure why it seems to be hitting a wall in your case. KUID was my best guess because I have seen people who use it a lot have issues like yours, but apparently that's not the case this time. There were some problems with transferred shows from pyTivo or TiVo Desktop not showing up correctly in the disk usage when Roamios first came out, but as far as I know those issues were fixed before I even wrote this program.

There are lots of 6TB Roamios and even a few 12TB ones from weaKnees that have no problem using all the disk space, so it isn't a limitation of the OS itself. If the TiVo recognizes it, it should use it.

If it was my box I'd probably pull the drive, hook it up to a PC, and run the long read diagnostics from WD or Seagate. If it passes that test a kickstart 57 or 58 in the TiVo itself may catch any MFS errors.

Have you tried a cold boot by pulling the power cord for about 30 seconds?


----------



## ggieseke

dougdingle said:


> Can you be more specific about what can happen?
> 
> I use KUID a lot, have for a decade, and haven't run into any issues, certainly nothing like this.
> 
> Is it specific to the 6TB mods?


I don't want to start that battle again because it has already been hashed to death in multiple threads even before the S3s came out. My personal opinion is that you're probably more likely to run into unexplained walls or premature deletions, but that's all it is based on what other people have posted. The only show I ever used KUID on was South Park, and that was on one of my Series 2 649s.

I haven't seen anything specific to 6TB mods (or anything over 3TB) that would imply an OS limit other than the ones that we already know about. Once a TiVo is happy with the MFS file system it should use it all. If it doesn't like it it will reformat the drive the minute you boot it up.

My basic Roamio has been up to about 93% in daily use with a 4TB mfsr drive without any problems, and there are lots of people like Tivoitis who pushed it all the way just to see what would happen.


----------



## dougdingle

ggieseke said:


> I don't want to start that battle again because it has already been hashed to death in multiple threads even before the S3s came out. My personal opinion is that you're probably more likely to run into unexplained walls or premature deletions, but that's all it is based on what other people have posted. The only show I ever used KUID on was South Park, and that was on one of my Series 2 649s.
> 
> I haven't seen anything specific to 6TB mods (or anything over 3TB) that would imply an OS limit other than the ones that we already know about. Once a TiVo is happy with the MFS file system it should use it all. If it doesn't like it it will reformat the drive the minute you boot it up.
> 
> My basic Roamio has been up to about 93% in daily use with a 4TB mfsr drive without any problems, and there are lots of people like Tivoitis who pushed it all the way just to see what would happen.


OK, thanks. I have never read any of those threads, and did not know some considered it an issue. I actually had to look up what KUID stood for.

I have been a user of KUID with the *vast *majority of my recordings (like 95%) for more than a decade, on all sorts of platforms including DirecTivo, and never had any sort of issue like that.


----------



## gburrell

ggieseke said:


> I'm not sure why it seems to be hitting a wall in your case. KUID was my best guess because I have seen people who use it a lot have issues like yours, but apparently that's not the case this time. There were some problems with transferred shows from pyTivo or TiVo Desktop not showing up correctly in the disk usage when Roamios first came out, but as far as I know those issues were fixed before I even wrote this program.
> 
> There are lots of 6TB Roamios and even a few 12TB ones from weaKnees that have no problem using all the disk space, so it isn't a limitation of the OS itself. If the TiVo recognizes it, it should use it.
> 
> If it was my box I'd probably pull the drive, hook it up to a PC, and run the long read diagnostics from WD or Seagate. If it passes that test a kickstart 57 or 58 in the TiVo itself may catch any MFS errors.
> 
> Have you tried a cold boot by pulling the power cord for about 30 seconds?


I did a kickstart 67 and will monitor it for a few days and see what happens.  If it doesn't work I'll have to transfer everything off angain and redo the whole process to see what happens.

Thanks.


----------



## aaronwt

ggieseke said:


> I don't want to start that battle again because it has already been hashed to death in multiple threads even before the S3s came out. My personal opinion is that you're probably more likely to run into unexplained walls or premature deletions, but that's all it is based on what other people have posted. The only show I ever used KUID on was South Park, and that was on one of my Series 2 649s.
> 
> I haven't seen anything specific to 6TB mods (or anything over 3TB) that would imply an OS limit other than the ones that we already know about. Once a TiVo is happy with the MFS file system it should use it all. If it doesn't like it it will reformat the drive the minute you boot it up.
> 
> My basic Roamio has been up to about 93% in daily use with a 4TB mfsr drive without any problems, and there are lots of people like Tivoitis who pushed it all the way just to see what would happen.


Yes. All five of my mfsr drives have been at 100% with no issues. A 5TB in a Roamio Pro. A 3TB in a refurb Roamio Basic, a 1TB in a Roamio Basic, and two 4TB drives in two Bolts.


----------



## ThAbtO

I just resolved an issue where my 4TB Roamio would time out in the middle of downloading shows. It had about 1187 shows stored, I then cleared out a few shows, KMTTG downloaded the shows normally again.

"Read Timed out errors."

I think there is an upper limit on how many shows there are, 1185+, which would interfere with downloads, and possible recording operations.


----------



## ChrisFix

So I'm trying MFSR again with a different 5TB WD Green drive - this one taken from a Western Digital Elements 5 TB External Hard Drive WDBWLG0050HBK-NESN.

I know the controller used with this external drive isn't usable with different size drives...and I'm wondering if there are any special considerations in using MFSR with the harvested drive (understanding the controller has no role once the drive is removed)?

My plan was to drop the drive into my Roamio Basic, let TiVo format it, then remove and install the TiVo formatted drive into a generic external USB case I have to run MFSR on the drive.
Does that sound correct - or is there anything else I need to do, such as perform a fresh format on the drive in Windows before first installing it in TiVo?

Thanks very much for any sage advice you all may have!!


----------



## ggieseke

ChrisFix said:


> So I'm trying MFSR again with a different 5TB WD Green drive - this one taken from a Western Digital Elements 5 TB External Hard Drive WDBWLG0050HBK-NESN.
> 
> I know the controller used with this external drive isn't usable with different size drives...and I'm wondering if there are any special considerations in using MFSR with the harvested drive (understanding the controller has no role once the drive is removed)?
> 
> My plan was to drop the drive into my Roamio Basic, let TiVo format it, then remove and install the TiVo formatted drive into a generic external USB case I have to run MFSR on the drive.
> Does that sound correct - or is there anything else I need to do, such as perform a fresh format on the drive in Windows before first installing it in TiVo?
> 
> Thanks very much for any sage advice you all may have!!


As long as the drive doesn't have a hidden area or encryption it should be fine. The description for that external doesn't mention anything like that.

If it turns out to be a Purple drive I'd have second thoughts...


----------



## ChrisFix

ggieseke said:


> If it turns out to be a Purple drive I'd have second thoughts...


No, it's a WD Green WD50EZRX...I'm holding it in my hand!


----------



## KirkO

My apologies if this has been asked before, but I have seen conflicting information.

I have a new Roamio OTA that I plan on upgrading the hard drive on. I have not even purchased a new drive yet. Is this MFS Reformatter tool required if you upgrade to a 3TB drive, or only 4TB and larger?

I saw this post elsewhere, where it said you needed to do it on 3TB or bigger because if you put in a 3TB drive, the Roamio will only format it to 2.2TB without this MFS Tool?

rosswalker.co.uk/tivo_upgrade/#roamio

How many HD hours does a 3TB drive give you, anyone know? I believe the 4TB gives you 640 Hrs.

Thanks!


----------



## jmbach

KirkO said:


> My apologies if this has been asked before, but I have seen conflicting information.
> 
> I have a new Roamio OTA that I plan on upgrading the hard drive on. I have not even purchased a new drive yet. Is this MFS Reformatter tool required if you upgrade to a 3TB drive, or only 4TB and larger?
> 
> I saw this post elsewhere, where it said you needed to do it on 3TB or bigger because if you put in a 3TB drive, the Roamio will only format it to 2.2TB without this MFS Tool?
> 
> How many HD hours does a 3TB drive give you, anyone know? I believe the 4TB gives you 640 Hrs.
> 
> Thanks!


You only need to use MFSR to upgrade a Roamio or Bolt to a 4TB to 6TB drive. It is optional to use on a 3TB drive. The reason to use it on a 3TB drive is to gain a theoretical read/write efficiency by having the full MFS structure 4k aligned and not just the partitions 4k aligned.


----------



## ggieseke

The rough rule of thumb is 160 hours/TB. In practice a Roamio with a 3TB drive will show 476 hours in the System Information screen.


----------



## SomeRandomIdiot

Do you know how large of a capacity drive this program will work with?


----------



## ggieseke

SomeRandomIdiot said:


> Do you know how large of a capacity drive this program will work with?


6TB is the limit. I have an 8TB Red on the way once WD starts shipping them next month, but I don't have any real hope that the 6TB limit for an internal drive can be broken at this point.

It's probably just $373.46 down the drain.


----------



## SomeRandomIdiot

ggieseke said:


> 6TB is the limit. I have an 8TB Red on the way once WD starts shipping them next month, but I don't have any real hope that the 6TB limit for an internal drive can be broken at this point.
> 
> It's probably just $373.46 down the drain.


What about a MobileSTOR MS4UT+B - 4 Bay USB 3.0 / eSATA Hardware RAID 5 Tower in Raid Configuration (or atleast that was my thinking).

That would seem to allow expansion of Drive Space - and the Safety of Raid 5 from a Hard Drive Crash.

Just need to wire the internal sata connection to the eSATA connection on the unit.


----------



## ggieseke

SomeRandomIdiot said:


> What about a MobileSTOR MS4UT+B - 4 Bay USB 3.0 / eSATA Hardware RAID 5 Tower in Raid Configuration (or atleast that was my thinking).
> 
> That would seem to allow expansion of Drive Space - and the Safety of Raid 5 from a Hard Drive Crash.
> 
> Just need to wire the internal sata connection to the eSATA connection on the unit.


The TiVo would see it as the internal drive, so 6TB would still be the limit.


----------



## SomeRandomIdiot

ggieseke said:


> The TiVo would see it as the internal drive, so 6TB would still be the limit.


So the 6TB is a TiVo limit in their firmware?


----------



## jmbach

Technically 3TB is the limit of their firmware at this point. With the tools available to use we can extend it further but there a limit. Once TiVo fixes a small but significant bug in their OS, much larger drives would be possible.


----------



## mb117

I don't have enough posts to send a PM. I upgraded my Roamio to 6TB with no issues and my Bolt to 4TB with zero issues. Donation sent.


----------



## toricred

I'm not sure if this is related to mfsr, but I reformatted a new 4TB drive today for my Bolt using version 1.0.0.3. Since rebooting my One Passes don't seem to be recording. In fact I can't even start a recording from the guide. I have to actually bring up the channel live and then select record. Any ideas how to fix this?


----------



## jmbach

Try forcing a call home.


----------



## toricred

I won't know If the one pass is fixed for a little while, but now I can at least start a recording from the guide. I'm getting a V312 (Pandora is still loading try back in a few moments) error when trying any of the streaming services.

UPDATE:

Clear & Delete Everything fixed all the problems.


----------



## hasharp

I cant seem to locate msmf reformatter tool. the link seems to be invalid. I just bought a 4tb western digital blue drive. can anyone help me find the software


----------



## jmbach

Link worked for me. Make sure you are downloading version 1.003.


----------



## ggieseke

hasharp said:


> I cant seem to locate msmf reformatter tool. the link seems to be invalid. I just bought a 4tb western digital blue drive. can anyone help me find the software


See post #2 in this thread.


----------



## sliderbob

Will the new 8tb work in the Tivo Roamio?

http://www.amazon.com/Red-8TB-Hard-..._5?ie=UTF8&qid=1459550773&sr=8-5&keywords=8tb


----------



## ThAbtO

The limit is currently at 6TB.


----------



## disturbedfred

disturbedfred said:


> Just donated in anticipation of the flawless installation of this swell bit of code on my newly ordered WD60EFRX. Thanks to all who helped create this, you make everyone's life better.


Worked flawlessly. Now at less than 18% with suggestions turned on. I never leave suggestions turned on.


----------



## ndanieley

I have a new Bolt, and I'm following the instructions at Ross Walker's site. 
I've tried running mfsr on the seagate ST4000LM drive that I recently bought, and I get

This drive would have 1 media regions, which isn't supported at this time

and a box that says

line 325, error 0x0000000D

at the top of the box and

ReformatBoltDrive

in the body. I don't see any mention of this error in the forum; any idea what's going on?

(edit) I should mention that I'm running version 1.0.0.3 of mfsr on windows 7.


----------



## jmbach

What size drive does the operating system display for the drive? The one media region statement usually applies to small drives. So my hunch is that the OS is not seeing the drive as a 4TB drive but something much smaller. 


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


----------



## ndanieley

jmbach said:


> What size drive does the operating system display for the drive? The one media region statement usually applies to small drives. So my hunch is that the OS is not seeing the drive as a 4TB drive but something much smaller.
> 
> Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


mfsr says

series 6 1678.02 GB ST4000LM 016-1N2170 found

which I thought roughly matched up with the Tivo formatting drives to just 2 TB.


----------



## ThAbtO

ndanieley said:


> mfsr says
> 
> series 6 1678.02 GB ST4000LM 016-1N2170 found
> 
> which I thought roughly matched up with the Tivo formatting drives to just 2 TB.


You need to be using at least Windows 7 for it to recognize over 2TB.


----------



## ggieseke

ThAbtO said:


> You need to be using at least Windows 7 for it to recognize over 2TB.


The first post said it was Windows 7. It's probably connected using an older USB 2.0 dock that can't handle drives over 2TB.

MFSR is seeing the correct ST4000LM drive with a Bolt file system, but not the full capacity. That means that Windows doesn't see it as a 4TB drive either.

Can you hook it up directly to an internal SATA port?


----------



## ndanieley

ggieseke said:


> The first post said it was Windows 7. It's probably connected using an older USB 2.0 dock that can't handle drives over 2TB.
> 
> MFSR is seeing the correct ST4000LM drive with a Bolt file system, but not the full capacity. That means that Windows doesn't see it as a 4TB drive either.
> 
> Can you hook it up directly to an internal SATA port?


I thought of that this morning. looks like attempting to use the USB adapter did something to the drive; I couldn't get it to register as larger than 1.6TB under windows or linux. I've hooked it up internally and am wiping it now; I'll try again once that's done.


----------



## ndanieley

ggieseke said:


> The first post said it was Windows 7. It's probably connected using an older USB 2.0 dock that can't handle drives over 2TB.
> 
> MFSR is seeing the correct ST4000LM drive with a Bolt file system, but not the full capacity. That means that Windows doesn't see it as a 4TB drive either.
> 
> Can you hook it up directly to an internal SATA port?


okay, that fixed it. not only did I have to connect to an internal port, but I had to use a newer computer: the 10 year old one I tried first could only see 2TB. thanks for the help!


----------



## Paulson

Anybody get 8TB's working yet? I've got a WD Green that I can't shut off the Idle Timer (get a VSCSENDKEY cmd error.) I've tried using wdidle3, hdparm -j, idle3-tools. Just can't shut the power management off on the thing (came out of a mybook.)

Anyway so that's my problem. I don't have another 6TB hard drive laying around but have about 5 8TB drives (plus the $249.99 WD mybook that doesn't have the intellipark issues, 5400rpm drive) Would be great if someone could figure it out. I'd gladly pay. Already donated once, would love to donate again.


----------



## ggieseke

Paulson said:


> Anybody get 8TB's working yet? I've got a WD Green that I can't shut off the Idle Timer (get a VSCSENDKEY cmd error.) I've tried using wdidle3, hdparm -j, idle3-tools. Just can't shut the power management off on the thing (came out of a mybook.)
> 
> Anyway so that's my problem. I don't have another 6TB hard drive laying around but have about 5 8TB drives (plus the $249.99 WD mybook that doesn't have the intellipark issues, 5400rpm drive) Would be great if someone could figure it out. I'd gladly pay. Already donated once, would love to donate again.


I'm working on it right now, but any results are at least a week or two away.

How are you connecting that drive? All of the tools you mentioned require a direct SATA connection, not a USB or eSATA dock.


----------



## Paulson

Bummer 

I have no TV right now because charter is too stupid to know how to re-pair a cablecard without sending a technician. I don't want to not have TV for two weeks but I also don't want them to send out a technician to give me a different cablecard only to do the same in two weeks again.

Anyways I connected the drive up via SATA in two different machines. It's long been liberated from it's enclosure (I keep them for warranty purposes but that's about it.) And since it was in the TiVo it racked up about 58K LCC's in a matter of probably 10 days max. Plus it was causing pixelation issues and whatnot. I was having random pixelation and dropouts which I can only assume were due to the intellipark feature.

I'm almost to the point where I should just call up and cancel TV. Most of the stuff we watch is online anyways.


----------



## jmbach

I have charter as well. I feel your pain. What cableCARD you use.


----------



## Paulson

Motorola

It took 5 minutes to re-pair the card one other time, this time I talked to about 7 people and none of them could. Card has worked for over a year & 1/2 without issue so I know it's not the card. Signal levels are fine. Just a matter of not getting the right person to fix it and they won't let me talk to the right person because I've contacted them too many times to try to resolve the problem. Instead of fixing the issue in their system their way of resolving it is to send out a technician to replace it with a card that probably hasn't ever been provisioned or will have a ton of issues provisioning as well.


----------



## jmbach

I have the same kind. I usually will call the next day. At the voice prompt I say cableCARD. They normally just ask you for the card's serial number and id. However, the data id has to be updated at their end otherwise it will not pair. The data id changes every time the TiVo creates a new image on the drive or when you remove and reinsert the card and the TiVo had a power cycle between. All this to say you need to find somebody that has the ability to update the data id on their side. Just ask to go up to the next tier support if the tier you are talking to cannot update the data id. Sometimes I get someone who fakes the update to the data id just to get me off the phone. I just call back. However I will say lately I have had good luck and usually get so easy one at the first or second try. I think it is because I say cableCARD at the voice prompt.


----------



## Paulson

I tried 7 times yesterday and now they refuse to do anything until they send out a tech. So I can ask them to retry but they will say there's a scheduled appointment and tell me to flake off. 

They did ask for the host ID and data ID but none of them were able to make it work. I just have little faith in them. And I'll be activating a premiere and will be using that until I can get the 8TB drive in the roamio (because I don't want to do this very often.) I'll probably end up having an issue there too and will have to go through the whole thing again when switching back to the roamio.

Oh well. The things we do to get more space!


----------



## ThAbtO

Paulson said:


> I tried 7 times yesterday and now they refuse to do anything until they send out a tech. So I can ask them to retry but they will say there's a scheduled appointment and tell me to flake off.
> 
> They did ask for the host ID and data ID but none of them were able to make it work. I just have little faith in them. And I'll be activating a premiere and will be using that until I can get the 8TB drive in the roamio (because I don't want to do this very often.) I'll probably end up having an issue there too and will have to go through the whole thing again when switching back to the roamio.
> 
> Oh well. The things we do to get more space!


The current limit is 6TB in the Roamio.


----------



## ggieseke

ThAbtO said:


> The current limit is 6TB in the Roamio.


*Was* the limit. 










I have lots of work and testing to do yet, but it looks good so far.


----------



## Paulson

If you want me to be the next tester please PM me with a link to the download. I've got an 8TB drive and I'm missing my roamio so much!

Just to clarify it's an 8TB Seagate ST8000DM0002 drive (so desktop, not the archive ones) that would go into a Roamio Pro.

Aside from compiling I can do linux/windows commands and have a spare PC ready for the task.

I'm really excited in case you can't tell. I'd gladly send a $50 donation your way (I got the drive for free anyways.)

Also if anyone else wants a great deal on an 8TB drive you can pick up a mybook for mac (comes with a 3 year warranty), remove it from the enclosure and use it. It's $249.99 on eBay. I bought 6 of them for a nas box. It'll have a WD80EZZX in it, which as far as most of us can tell is a HGST helioseal similar to a RED or PURPLE drive and as far as I can tell doesn't have the dreaded green park issues.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/351702153235?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT


----------



## ggieseke

Paulson said:


> If you want me to be the next tester please PM me with a link to the download. I've got an 8TB drive and I'm missing my roamio so much!
> 
> Just to clarify it's an 8TB Seagate ST8000DM0002 drive (so desktop, not the archive ones) that would go into a Roamio Pro.
> 
> Aside from compiling I can do linux/windows commands and have a spare PC ready for the task.
> 
> I'm really excited in case you can't tell. I'd gladly send a $50 donation your way (I got the drive for free anyways.)
> 
> Also if anyone else wants a great deal on an 8TB drive you can pick up a mybook for mac (comes with a 3 year warranty), remove it from the enclosure and use it. It's $249.99 on eBay. I bought 6 of them for a nas box. It'll have a WD80EZZX in it, which as far as most of us can tell is a HGST helioseal similar to a RED or PURPLE drive and as far as I can tell doesn't have the dreaded green park issues.
> 
> http://www.ebay.com/itm/351702153235?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT


I haven't looked at those Seagates. Their "archive" drives and the WD Purples use SMR, which I don't think is a good idea for TiVos. I used a WD80EFZX Red.


----------



## emerz

Looks like Weaknees has an 8TB Roamio upgrade now available.

"TiVo Roamio Pro - 8 TB Drive for up to 1280 HD hours"


----------



## ggieseke

Version 1.0.0.4 for drives up to 8TB is now available. See post #2 in this thread for the dropbox link (it's slightly too big to upload here).


----------



## fcfc2

ggieseke said:


> Version 1.0.0.4 for drives up to 8TB is now available. See post #2 in this thread for the dropbox link (it's slightly too big to upload here).


Hi and thank you for your great work! 
I am a bit confused though regarding which version of the software works for which models of Tivo. The 1003 I thought was just for Bolts over 4TB, does the 1004 replace that or not. Is it (1004) only for Roamios?
One other question, was your testing on 1004 done with the WD Red or the Seagate 8TB?


----------



## ggieseke

fcfc2 said:


> Hi and thank you for your great work!
> I am a bit confused though regarding which version of the software works for which models of Tivo. The 1003 I thought was just for Bolts over 4TB, does the 1004 replace that or not. Is it (1004) only for Roamios?
> One other question, was your testing on 1004 done with the WD Red or the Seagate 8TB?


1004 includes all of the previous capabilities, so just grab the latest. Deleting older versions would probably break links on other sites, so I keep them around.

It should work on Bolts too, but it hasn't been tested in the real world yet. I used the WD80EFZX Red, which is the ONLY drive that I recommend at this point. The Seagate 8TB "archive" drives and their 8TB NAS drive have a rated workload/year that isn't impressive. The ST8000DM0002 drives and their actual specs aren't available yet, so I can't offer an opinion.


----------



## dougdingle

ggieseke said:


> I used the WD80EFZX Red, which is the ONLY drive that I recommend at this point. The Seagate 8TB "archive" drives and their 8TB NAS drive have a rated workload/year that isn't impressive. The ST8000DM0002 drives and their actual specs aren't available yet, so I can't offer an opinion.


The WD Red 8TB drives are on sale at Newegg for the next five days for $330 with coupon code ESCETGN29. Note that codes can only be used by those subscribing to their daily email 'blasts'. Easy to sign up and cancel if all you want is this drive.


----------



## aaronwt

dougdingle said:


> The WD Red 8TB drives are on sale at Newegg for the next five days for $330 with coupon code ESCETGN29. Note that codes can only be used by those subscribing to their daily email 'blasts'. Easy to sign up and cancel if all you want is this drive.


That is just amazing. 8TB for only a little more than I paid for 250GB drives back in the early 2000s.


----------



## ggieseke

aaronwt said:


> That is just amazing. 8TB for only a little more than I paid for 250GB drives back in the early 2000s.


My pre-order from WD in March was $345 and with tax it was $373.46, but if I hadn't bought it back then we wouldn't be adding to this thread. 

I still remember when buying 16 HP C2247 SCSI drives was a large chunk of our IT budget for the year. 1GB drives were big medicine back then.


----------



## Paulson

ggieseke said:


> I haven't looked at those Seagates. Their "archive" drives and the WD Purples use SMR, which I don't think is a good idea for TiVos. I used a WD80EFZX Red.


Only the 10TB purple drive uses SMR. The rest are regular.

I've got the ST8000DM002 and so far haven't had any issues with it in the roamio. I had 6 4TB seagate st4000dm002's in a nas box for 2 years 24/7 with hard workloads and had absolutely zero issues.

If you want a good 8TB drive I suggest you pick up the 8TB mybook for mac external enclosure (comes with a 3 year warranty and a wd80ezzx drive.) I put 6 of them in my nas box. They are $249.99 shipped on eBay. Just remove from the enclosure, keep all the bits in the box, if you ever have a warranty issue pop it back in the enclosure and send back to WD for a replacement. If I wouldn't have gotten my seagate 8TB for free (eBay snafu with a crazy seller) I would have used one of those in there. As far as most people can tell it's a WD red 8TB without the tler feature. Regardless they work great in my nas box that gets a ton of usage.

I have used a bunch of the archive 8TB drives from seagate and wouldn't recommend them. They are soooooo slow. Don't know how they'd perform in a TiVo but I can tell you they are slow. Great read times, but slow write. Good for storage and reading but not for much else.

Here's a link to the eBay listing for 8TB mybook for mac:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/351702153235


----------



## dougdingle

ggieseke said:


> My pre-order from WD in March was $345 and with tax it was $373.46, but if I hadn't bought it back then we wouldn't be adding to this thread.
> 
> I still remember when buying 16 HP C2247 SCSI drives was a large chunk of our IT budget for the year. 1GB drives were big medicine back then.


Oh, you young whippersnappers! 

My first machine was a CPM based Heathkit Z100, and once I actually found it useful, I bought a 15 megabyte (yes, *megabyte*) 5.25" disk and matching controller for it for $1,100. That was around 1978, so roughly $3K in today's dollars.

Wondered whatever I was going to do with all that room!


----------



## ggieseke

Paulson said:


> Only the 10TB purple drive uses SMR. The rest are regular.


Are you sure? The 8TB Purple spec sheet that I looked at in March specifically mentioned SMR as if it was a good thing, and had a very clear workload/year rating that was around 175TB. I did the math and that was only about 11 months of Live TV buffer on a basic Roamio.

Can't find the link right now, but one review I saw on the 8TB mybook for mac was interesting. They peeled off the EZZX label to find a blank white label, and when they peeled that one off the original HGST label was underneath. Probably still a fairly good fit for TiVos and the price is right, but aren't they 7200RPM? Might run a bit hot and noisy.


----------



## Zonker007

Paulson said:


> As far as most people can tell it's a WD red 8TB without the tler feature. [/url]


Can your enable TLER with the WD hard drive utility?

Thanks,

Z


----------



## Paulson

ggieseke said:


> Are you sure? The 8TB Purple spec sheet that I looked at in March specifically mentioned SMR as if it was a good thing, and had a very clear workload/year rating that was around 175TB. I did the math and that was only about 11 months of Live TV buffer on a basic Roamio.
> 
> Can't find the link right now, but one review I saw on the 8TB mybook for mac was interesting. They peeled off the EZZX label to find a blank white label, and when they peeled that one off the original HGST label was underneath. Probably still a fairly good fit for TiVos and the price is right, but aren't they 7200RPM? Might run a bit hot and noisy.


The EZZX drives don't have the white label over them, that was only the HGST He8 helium drives (enterprise drives.) The WD80EZZX don't have the label over them They are 5400RPM drives.

I can't find anything about SMR on the datasheet for the 8TB purple. Also other than in mybook's there is nothing about the wd80ezzx. It's definitely got better performance than the 8TB seagate archive drives so I doubt it's SMR.


----------



## abdiddy

Hey what's up everybody,

I am trying to upgrade my Roamio OTA with a WD Green WD40EZRX 4 TB Hard drive. I put the new 4TBdrive into my Roamio and when I get to the first screen where it asks me to select the country I disconnected my Roamio from the power and pulled the 4TB drive out of the roamio. I then hooked the 4TB drive to my laptop to complete the process and ran MFSR. I select run as administrator but I keep getting the rror message "no Roamio or Bolt drive found" and then a blank MFSR Reformatter screen pops up. 

What could I be doing wrong? I tried using all versions 1.0.0.2.1.0.0.3 and 1.0.0.4


----------



## fcfc2

abdiddy said:


> Hey what's up everybody,
> 
> I am trying to upgrade my Roamio OTA with a WD Green WD40EZRX 4 TB Hard drive. I put the new 4TBdrive into my Roamio and when I get to the first screen where it asks me to select the country I disconnected my Roamio from the power and pulled the 4TB drive out of the roamio. I then hooked the 4TB drive to my laptop to complete the process and ran MFSR. I select run as administrator but I keep getting the rror message "no Roamio or Bolt drive found" and then a blank MFSR Reformatter screen pops up.
> 
> What could I be doing wrong? I tried using all versions 1.0.0.2.1.0.0.3 and 1.0.0.4


How are you connecting to the laptop? Do you have any other computers you can use and make a direct sata connection?


----------



## abdiddy

I am connecting with a StarTech USB 3.0 to 2.5" SATA III Hard Drive Adapter Cable w/ UASP - SATA to USB 3.0 Converter for SSD/HDD - Hard Drive Adapter Cable from Amazon


I tried my laptop and my wife's laptop and both keep getting the same error.


----------



## jmbach

Try using WD diagnostic and do a long test followed buy a write zero. 

Did this come out of an enclosure? 

Even though your setup sounds like it should work, you might need a direct SATA connection.


----------



## ggieseke

Does Windows see the drive in Disk Manager?


----------



## ThAbtO

abdiddy said:


> I am connecting with a StarTech USB 3.0 to 2.5" SATA III Hard Drive Adapter Cable w/ UASP - SATA to USB 3.0 Converter for SSD/HDD - Hard Drive Adapter Cable from Amazon
> 
> I tried my laptop and my wife's laptop and both keep getting the same error.


I do not see anything on that drive adapter for 4TB support.


----------



## abdiddy

ThAbtO said:


> I do not see anything on that drive adapter for 4TB support.


Uh oh... could that be my problem? 
What drive adapter have you guys used?

The drive is also not from an enclosure. Just a regular WD green internal hard drive.

I'll try WD diagnostics. Just need to figure out how to run it.


----------



## ThAbtO

Sabrent USB 2.0 TO SATA/IDE 2.5/3.5/-INCH Hard Drive Converter With Power Supply & LED Activity Lights [4TB Support] 

This was what I used for my Roamio's 4TB upgrade. In addition, I had to use a machine with Windows 7. WinXP did not support the size.


----------



## ggieseke

This is a nice little dock, and very reasonably priced.

http://www.amazon.com/Plugable-Lay-Flat-Docking-Station-Supports/dp/B00APP6694


----------



## abdiddy

I ordered that dock from Amazon. I am hoping that is my problem. 

I will yet you guys know how I make out.

Thanks for all the help everyone.


----------



## primaryforce

I updated my Bolt this morning with the new 50.6.1.RC4 software. After the process started, all the LEDs on the Bolt started flashing and would not stop. I was using a 6 TB WD external drive connect to a eSATA I added to my Bolt. I finally had to reinstall the stock 500 GB drive and everything seemed fine and the software upgrade was made. I even tried reformatting the 6 TB drive with the latest reformatting tool but every time I try a to connect this drive all the lights on the Bolt just flash.


----------



## ggieseke

primaryforce said:


> I updated my Bolt this morning with the new 50.6.1.RC4 software. After the process started, all the LEDs on the Bolt started flashing and would not stop. I was using a 6 TB WD external drive connect to a eSATA I added to my Bolt. I finally had to reinstall the stock 500 GB drive and everything seemed fine and the software upgrade was made. I even tried reformatting the 6 TB drive with the latest reformatting tool but every time I try a to connect this drive all the lights on the Bolt just flash.


I would check all the cable connections and test the drive itself by hooking it up to a PC and running the WD diagnostics. I don't have a Bolt, but both of my Roamios updated to 20.6.1 this morning and they are still happy with MFSR drives. The update doesn't seem to have changed anything with regards to the MFS file system (or fixed the existing bugs that limit it to 2TB partitions).


----------



## pwlcheng

My 4TB Premiere Elite, 6TB Roamio and 6TB Bolt all updated to 20.6.1 with no problem.


----------



## keenanSR

Posting the below for a friend who can't access the forum currently,

-------------------

Purchased WD 6TB Red. Followed instructions for Format on Roamio Pro.

Takes about 4 minutes as noted in instructions.

Tivo got to USA/Canada setup selection, pulled plug - as no other way to power down gracefully.

Go to spare Windows XP SP3 Machine that is apart and used for moving around drives and stuff in house.

Promise SATA300 TX4 Controller detects drive successfully in Boot Bios and reports proper size.

Downloaded MFSR1004.zip and run it. Finds the WD Red Drive successfully - although it says

SERIES 5 1492.03 GB WD WD60 and Model Number

Obviously its strange as this is showing 1493.03 GB and not 6000 GB....but I start the format program anyway from the File Tab as per instructions and immediately get error:

LINE 984, ERROR 0X0000003E6(998) ReadFile

Hit ok on pop up and get

LINE 337, ERROR 0X0000003E6(998) ReformatRoamioDrive

And that's it.

Also tried MFSR1003.zip and MFSR1004.zip and both have the same error.

Downloaded Western Digital Data Lifeguard Drive Diagnostic Program - run Quick Test - no issues

Then run Extended Test - Hours later No errors as well - although the diagnostic program is only reporting 1.6TB as well.

Thinking that the first error says "ReformatRoamioDrive", perhaps I need to do that again.

Wipe the Drive Partition - reinstall in Roamio Pro - Power Up.

Takes about 4 minutes again. Pull plug at USA/Canada beginning of setup.

Reinstall in Computer and boot.

Run MFSR1004 Again. Same exact errors.

I have run this machine in Linux with 4TB Drives for DirecTV transfers with no issues - this is the first 6TB Drive I have tried on it - but the Promise Bios shows the correct size - even if Windows does not.

Suggestions?


----------



## Diana Collins

Windows XP doesn't support GPT so it will only ever see the MBR which limits the max drive size to 2TB (well, technically it is 4 trillion sectors, which with 512k sectors is 2TB, but I digress). So what Windows sees may not be significant. I have read that this shouldn't matter to MSFR, but have no direct experience.


----------



## ggieseke

It's not a GPT vs MBR issue since TiVos don't use either one, but Diana Collins is on the right track (thanks). The line "SERIES 5 1492.03 GB WD WD60" says that Windows XP isn't seeing the entire drive. It should say 5589.03 GB for a WD 6TB drive.

Technically XP is capable of running mfsr, but in reality almost every computer old enough to still be running XP wasn't built to handle drives over 2TB. I should probably modify the first post in this thread and tell people not to waste their time trying. Our trusty old "TiVo wrangling" PCs just aren't up to it.

I have also seen this in older docks and USB to SATA converters, even on PCs running Windows 10. If you try again on newer hardware it should work fine.


----------



## ThAbtO

keenanSR said:


> Posting the below for a friend who can't access the forum currently,
> 
> -------------------
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Purchased WD 6TB Red. Followed instructions for Format on Roamio Pro.
> 
> Takes about 4 minutes as noted in instructions.
> 
> Tivo got to USA/Canada setup selection, pulled plug - as no other way to power down gracefully.
> 
> Go to spare Windows XP SP3 Machine that is apart and used for moving around drives and stuff in house.
> 
> Promise SATA300 TX4 Controller detects drive successfully in Boot Bios and reports proper size.
> 
> Downloaded MFSR1004.zip and run it. Finds the WD Red Drive successfully - although it says
> 
> SERIES 5 1492.03 GB WD WD60 and Model Number
> 
> Obviously its strange as this is showing 1493.03 GB and not 6000 GB....but I start the format program anyway from the File Tab as per instructions and immediately get error:
> 
> LINE 984, ERROR 0X0000003E6(998) ReadFile
> 
> Hit ok on pop up and get
> 
> LINE 337, ERROR 0X0000003E6(998) ReformatRoamioDrive
> 
> And that's it.
> 
> Also tried MFSR1003.zip and MFSR1004.zip and both have the same error.
> 
> Downloaded Western Digital Data Lifeguard Drive Diagnostic Program - run Quick Test - no issues
> 
> Then run Extended Test - Hours later No errors as well - although the diagnostic program is only reporting 1.6TB as well.
> 
> Thinking that the first error says "ReformatRoamioDrive", perhaps I need to do that again.
> 
> Wipe the Drive Partition - reinstall in Roamio Pro - Power Up.
> 
> Takes about 4 minutes again. Pull plug at USA/Canada beginning of setup.
> 
> Reinstall in Computer and boot.
> 
> Run MFSR1004 Again. Same exact errors.
> 
> I have run this machine in Linux with 4TB Drives for DirecTV transfers with no issues - this is the first 6TB Drive I have tried on it - but the Promise Bios shows the correct size - even if Windows does not.
> 
> 
> 
> Suggestions?


Same thing happened to me and it was a good thing I had a laptop running Windows 7.


----------



## keenanSR

Thanks for the responses folks!


----------



## ryanmp31

Hey guys,

Just thought I'd share my experience with this same error in case it can help anybody else out there. I was using a windows 10, 32 bit OS, connecting the new HDD to my PC via a Thermaltake USB to SATA cradle adapter. Using this method, I was getting this exact same error through MFS, and the tool was only recognizing like 1.6TB for this new 4TB drive. To resolve, I shut down the PC, cracked it open, and hooked the new HDD up to the spare SATA connector on the motherboard. This took care of the problem, as when I rebooted, I immediately saw the full 4TB available to format through the tool.

Going through the TiVo setup menus now, all is working well so far.


----------



## ThAbtO

ryanmp31 said:


> Hey guys,
> 
> Just thought I'd share my experience with this same error in case it can help anybody else out there. I was using a windows 10, 32 bit OS, connecting the new HDD to my PC via a Thermaltake USB to SATA cradle adapter. Using this method, I was getting this exact same error through MFS, and the tool was only recognizing like 1.6TB for this new 4TB drive. To resolve, I shut down the PC, cracked it open, and hooked the new HDD up to the spare SATA connector on the motherboard. This took care of the problem, as when I rebooted, I immediately saw the full 4TB available to format through the tool.
> 
> Going through the TiVo setup menus now, all is working well so far.


It looks like your USB adapter does not support 4TB and larger drives.


----------



## scoombs

ThAbtO said:


> It looks like your USB adapter does not support 4TB and larger drives.


Nor should a 32-bit OS?


----------



## ThAbtO

It seemed to work when it was directly connected by SATA.


----------



## ggieseke

scoombs said:


> Nor should a 32-bit OS?


32-bit Windows is fine.


----------



## elprice7345

The largest 2.5 inch HD I can find is 4TB, so I'm assuming anyone upgrading to a larger HD is attaching via SATA cable to an external drive enclosure?


----------



## ggieseke

elprice7345 said:


> The largest 2.5 inch HD I can find is 4TB, so I'm assuming anyone upgrading to a larger HD is attaching via SATA cable to an external drive enclosure?


Yes.


----------



## jerrykur

Hi,

I am getting a non pro Roamio. Can I use this to stick a 4 TB or larger drive into the unit? Or does it have to be a Pro to run the larger drives.


----------



## jmbach

Any Roamio can run the larger drive. However, if you have a base Roamio and you are having booting issues or experiencing frequent reboots, that you get a more robust power brick for it.


----------



## jerrykur

jmbach said:


> Any Roamio can run the larger drive. However, if you have a base Roamio and you are having booting issues or experiencing frequent reboots, that you get a more robust power brick for it.


Thanks. I have not got the unit yet and will watch out for the power issue. Any recommendation on an upgraded power brick?


----------



## ThAbtO

jerrykur said:


> Thanks. I have not got the unit yet and will watch out for the power issue. Any recommendation on an upgraded power brick?


I have the WD40EFRX 4TB Red drive in my Roamio basic with the original power and have not suffered any problems.


----------



## jmbach

Would at a minimum go with LITE-ON PB-1300-02SA-ROHS AC Adapter. It is 2.5A and 12V. I went for a similar one with a little more power. It is 3.33A at 12V. The Roamio only draws the amperage it needs so having a little more than what is needed is ok. The only issue would be if a component failed inside the Roamio that called for more power. That could cause other component failure due to exposure to the excess power draw. Reason you don't go too high so that does not happen. I also would stick with the LiteON brand.

However as ThAbtO stated, his is working fine with the original power supply. I found issues that resolved with upgraded power supply. My Roamio Base unit has a 6TB WD Red drive.


----------



## rgr

Is it possible to modify the tool to preserve existing content if I only want to align my existing 3TB drive for whatever performance improvements it provides?


----------



## ggieseke

rgr said:


> Is it possible to modify the tool to preserve existing content if I only want to align my existing 3TB drive for whatever performance improvements it provides?


Not at this time. I'm working on a new program that will copy & expand your existing drive(s) to a new AF-aligned drive up to 8TB, but it's probably a few months away.


----------



## rgr

ggieseke said:


> Not at this time. I'm working on a new program that will copy & expand your existing drive(s) to a new AF-aligned drive up to 8TB, but it's probably a few months away.


Excellent! Ill keep a watch on this thread for that. Another question - will the larger size or alignment be impacted by TiVo software updates, or are those pretty much uncaring as to format, once done?


----------



## ggieseke

rgr said:


> Excellent! Ill keep a watch on this thread for that. Another question - will the larger size or alignment be impacted by TiVo software updates, or are those pretty much uncaring as to format, once done?


No impact unless the drive gets damaged in such a way that the TiVo decides to reformat it from scratch. My 4TB basic Roamio has been through quite a few updates since I set it up last summer. I also ran my 8TB drive through a forced KS57 since the layout is really unconventional, and it passed all the MFS file system checks.


----------



## jerrykur

new 4TB in Roamio Base works great. Donation sent!

Only one minor glitch/feature. Recordings come up with the ! saying they are going to be deleted to make room for more space. Since the drive is 0% full, this is not a real issue. But still interesting.


----------



## mattack

That is NOT HOW THE TIVO WORKS.

You set a specific time to save recordings.. Anytime AFTER that, it will show up with a !.. meaning it _CAN_ be deleted.. not that it *WILL*.


----------



## jerrykur

jmbach said:


> Would at a minimum go with LITE-ON PB-1300-02SA-ROHS AC Adapter. It is 2.5A and 12V. I went for a similar one with a little more power. It is 3.33A at 12V. The Roamio only draws the amperage it needs so having a little more than what is needed is ok. The only issue would be if a component failed inside the Roamio that called for more power. That could cause other component failure due to exposure to the excess power draw. Reason you don't go too high so that does not happen. I also would stick with the LiteON brand.
> 
> However as ThAbtO stated, his is working fine with the original power supply. I found issues that resolved with upgraded power supply. My Roamio Base unit has a 6TB WD Red drive.


I ended up with a 12V 3A unit from Amazon. Lots of good reviews where the only reason I selected it. Seems to work fine. Thanks for the information on the amperage.


----------



## jerrykur

mattack said:


> That is NOT HOW THE TIVO WORKS.
> 
> You set a specific time to save recordings.. Anytime AFTER that, it will show up with a !.. meaning it _CAN_ be deleted.. not that it *WILL*.


Strange. I don't remember setting anything different with any of my previous Tivo units 2,3, 4 . Where is this setting in the menus?


----------



## ej42137

jerrykur said:


> Strange. I don't remember setting anything different with any of my previous Tivo units 2,3, 4 . Where is this setting in the menus?


There is no general setting; you set it for an individual recording when you change its properties; on Series 2 or 3 you can also set it in the Season Pass, but with the Series 4 software that setting was withdrawn because its only useful purpose was to confuse people. (You only had a range of a few days.)

TiVos only delete recordings when it needs space for a new recording, you have limited the number of recordings to keep for a season pass, you have a recording with time-limited copy protection (very rare these days), or you explicitly ask it to. (Or when it makes a mistake, of course.)


----------



## ThAbtO

You can set Keep Until I Delete on season/one Pass but it only works on future recordings.


----------



## CrashHD

ggieseke said:


> Not at this time. I'm working on a new program that will copy & expand your existing drive(s) to a new AF-aligned drive up to 8TB, but it's probably a few months away.


Super
Double
Awesome!

Wish I could do something to help. Hope it goes well if you try.


----------



## nyjklein

NEVERMIND! 

Apparently it was the old USB 2.0 to Sata case I was using. I switched to a newer USB 3.0 to SATA case and that worked!

Says 7449.23 GB allocate for recordings

Thanks very much for this program.

So I got an 8TB WD80EFZX drive. Attached it to Bolt and got to Guided setup. Unplugged, attached it via USB to my Windows 10 machine. Ran MFSR 1.004 as admin and selected "Format Tivo Drive". But MFSR complians: "this drive would have one media region which is supported at this time". Then when I click OK it says "line 339, error 0x0000000D (13).

Did I miss a step?

Jeff


----------



## ggieseke

nyjklein said:


> NEVERMIND!
> 
> Apparently it was the old USB 2.0 to Sata case I was using. I switched to a newer USB 3.0 to SATA case and that worked!
> 
> Says 7449.23 GB allocate for recordings
> 
> Thanks very much for this program.
> 
> So I got an 8TB WD80EFZX drive. Attached it to Bolt and got to Guided setup. Unplugged, attached it via USB to my Windows 10 machine. Ran MFSR 1.004 as admin and selected "Format Tivo Drive". But MFSR complians: "this drive would have one media region which is supported at this time". Then when I click OK it says "line 339, error 0x0000000D (13).
> 
> Did I miss a step?
> 
> Jeff


It's nice to know for sure that the 8TB version works on Bolts.


----------



## nyjklein

ggieseke said:


> It's nice to know for sure that the 8TB version works on Bolts.


softwareVersion 20.6.1.RC12-USC-11-849
userDiskSize 7771621072 (7411.60 GB)
userDiskUsed 31334400 ( 0.40%)

Lotsa space!

Jeff


----------



## mattack

Wait, so shouldn't the first post be updated to mention 8 TB?


----------



## ggieseke

mattack said:


> Wait, so shouldn't the first post be updated to mention 8 TB?


I have been putting all of the update notices in post #2, which I reserved for just that purpose. Most people won't read either one, but you're probably right.

I suck at marketing.


----------



## HarperVision

ggieseke said:


> ....... I suck at marketing.


You fit right in here with TiVo then!


----------



## shayster

ggieseke said:


> Here's version 1.0.0.2. I added support for Bolts and hopefully fixed the bug in post #184.
> 
> Early Bolts get a red screen error message when trying to format drives over 3TB. If it has already updated to 20.5.4a it will act like a Roamio running 20.4.6 or later and make it to Guided Setup. Either way, that's the time to hook the drive up to your PC and run mfsr.
> 
> Profs to telemark for providing disk images for me to work on and aaronwt for testing it.
> 
> 2016-02-21: Added version 1.0.0.3. It fixes a bug that ONLY affects Bolt drives over 4TB.
> 
> 2016-04-29: Version 1.0.0.4 works on 8TB drives.
> You can download it from
> 
> I just placed a order for 4TB WD AV drive for a external esata rosewill enclosure using esata. does this program work. I ask because I just plugged it in to the laptop using the USB 3 cable, formatted in windows to ntfs. I then loaded winmfs and messed around with the drive o where it reported it as a model 2 or 3 drive ?
> 
> anyways I tried your program all 4 versions and they all say no tive drive.
> 
> any idea how to format this external drive using the USB cable so when I attach it to the BOLT , it will recognize it? so far after many trials the Bolt does not see a external drive attached , I'm ofcourse using the Esata cable when it's hooked to the Bolt.
> 
> I have a second laptop with UBUNTU , so If I need to download or use a command string I could use your help .
> 
> much appreciated
> thank you for all responses


----------



## ThAbtO

shayster said:


> I just placed a order for 4TB WD AV drive for a external esata rosewill enclosure using esata. does this program work. I ask because I just plugged it in to the laptop using the USB 3 cable, formatted in windows to ntfs. I then loaded winmfs and messed around with the drive o where it reported it as a model 2 or 3 drive ?
> 
> anyways I tried your program all 4 versions and they all say no tive drive.
> 
> any idea how to format this external drive using the USB cable so when I attach it to the BOLT , it will recognize it? so far after many trials the Bolt does not see a external drive attached , I'm ofcourse using the Esata cable when it's hooked to the Bolt.
> 
> I have a second laptop with UBUNTU , so If I need to download or use a command string I could use your help .
> 
> much appreciated
> thank you for all responses


Read the instructions in the 1st posting. WinMFS does not work on Premiere, Roamio, Bolt models. You would need to use Windows 7 or later for MFSR to recognize drives larger than 2TB.

In the original post, you need to connect the drive to the Roamio, Bolt and power it up until it asks for your country/setup. (Also, make sure the Tivo is current in its Tivo Software v20.5.x Minimum. New Tivos need to connect to service several times until it gets an update and rebooted.) Then, power it off, remove drive and power it in PC and MSFR. Return to Tivo afterwards. Process takes only about 5 minutes.

If you are going to use an external device on the Tivo, it will not work. This application is meant for using a drive to replace the internal drive only.

No USB drive will work in a Tivo. The only external drive that will work is the Tivo approved 500MB/1TB drives. Not only that, you risk losing recordings if ever either drive fails. Shows are stored partly on 1 drive and partly on the other. *Not recommended by many Tivo users.*


----------



## rtoledo

ThAbtO said:


> Read the instructions in the 1st posting. WinMFS does not work on Premiere, Roamio, Bolt models. You would need to use Windows 7 or later for MFSR to recognize drives larger than 2TB.
> 
> In the original post, you need to connect the drive to the Roamio, Bolt and power it up until it asks for your country/setup. (Also, make sure the Tivo is current in its Tivo Software v20.5.x Minimum. New Tivos need to connect to service several times until it gets an update and rebooted.) Then, power it off, remove drive and power it in PC and MSFR. Return to Tivo afterwards. Process takes only about 5 minutes.
> 
> If you are going to use an external device on the Tivo, it will not work. This application is meant for using a drive to replace the internal drive only.
> 
> No USB drive will work in a Tivo. The only external drive that will work is the Tivo approved 500MB/1TB drives. Not only that, you risk losing recordings if ever either drive fails. Shows are stored partly on 1 drive and partly on the other. *Not recommended by many Tivo users.*


Hi I asked this question from my sons laptop, so I went ahead and registered him as Shayster.

I have the drive connected using the esata cable, on win7 machine now, but no matter what it never sees the hard drive. and it is intended for external.

Does this mean I have to buy the the WD extender to use a external drive ?

can the WD extender have the drive removed and a 4TB av drive of theirs put into the guts ?

anyone know if that would work ?

thank you guys. I could do a hack to the box and put that 4TB in the internal, but was hoping not to now.

guess I need to read some more.

I saw a article that says a 3tb drive would auto format from withing the Tivo ? that would be ok for now for me.

I downloaded the mfstool.3.2 iso burned it booted it up , did not have the root password ? more reading tomorrow that was posted in here, and tried to install it in my Ubuntu laptop. but did not find a way to that ? too burned out , time to go to bed. will try tomorrow

thank you guys


----------



## ThAbtO

As noted before, the application is meant only for replacing/upgrading the internal drive only. (Doing so, would generally void the warranty.) Someone had modded the Tivo case to use an external as an internal. _Not recommended for novices._

I recommend you use the Tivo right out of the box, at least, until the return period has passed. This would ensure everything is in proper working order and the subscription properly issued.

The Tivo will format the drive when you install it in the first time, and it will recognize the first 3TB. Hooking up to the PC and MSFR will "extend" that for the remaining space.

I had waited for over a year until the warranty ran over before I had upgraded the drive. I used a WD40EFRX and its running quiet and nicely. I chose this drive for its quietness, lower heat, lower power consumption (slightly lower then the original or a green 4TB.)


----------



## jmbach

rtoledo said:


> Hi I asked this question from my sons laptop, so I went ahead and registered him as Shayster.
> 
> I have the drive connected using the esata cable, on win7 machine now, but no matter what it never sees the hard drive. and it is intended for external.
> 
> Does this mean I have to buy the the WD extender to use a external drive ?
> 
> can the WD extender have the drive removed and a 4TB av drive of theirs put into the guts ?
> 
> anyone know if that would work ?
> 
> thank you guys. I could do a hack to the box and put that 4TB in the internal, but was hoping not to now.
> 
> guess I need to read some more.
> 
> I saw a article that says a 3tb drive would auto format from withing the Tivo ? that would be ok for now for me.
> 
> I downloaded the mfstool.3.2 iso burned it booted it up , did not have the root password ? more reading tomorrow that was posted in here, and tried to install it in my Ubuntu laptop. but did not find a way to that ? too burned out , time to go to bed. will try tomorrow
> 
> thank you guys


The information for logging on to root on the MFSTools 3.2 ISO is in the post with the links.

You can add the 4TB external drive to the bolt with MFSTools 3.2. We should have that conversation in that thread.


----------



## rtoledo

ThAbtO said:


> As noted before, the application is meant only for replacing/upgrading the internal drive only. (Doing so, would generally void the warranty.) Someone had modded the Tivo case to use an external as an internal. _Not recommended for novices._
> 
> I recommend you use the Tivo right out of the box, at least, until the return period has passed. This would ensure everything is in proper working order and the subscription properly issued.
> 
> The Tivo will format the drive when you install it in the first time, and it will recognize the first 3TB. Hooking up to the PC and MSFR will "extend" that for the remaining space.
> 
> I had waited for over a year until the warranty ran over before I had upgraded the drive. I used a WD40EFRX and its running quiet and nicely. I chose this drive for its quietness, lower heat, lower power consumption (slightly lower then the original or a green 4TB.)


I had to make sure I understood it, I have the WD40efrx coming next week. I will probably buy a 3TB 2.5 for my wife's front room, so it's internal. mine evil laugh. I will be doing the 3.5" hack , just need to find links to the cables used to hook up a external .


----------



## rtoledo

jmbach said:


> The information for logging on to root on the MFSTools 3.2 ISO is in the post with the links.
> 
> You can add the 4TB external drive to the bolt with MFSTools 3.2. We should have that conversation in that thread.


will talk to you on that thread. thanks.


----------



## CrashHD

ThAbtO said:


> The Tivo will format the drive when you install it in the first time, and it will recognize the first 3TB. Hooking up to the PC and MSFR will "extend" that for the remaining space.


Any thoughts what might happen if one who was currently running at 3TB drive copied that 3TB drive over to an 8TB drive using dd. Might mfsr then "extend" that drive, while keeping recordings, or is it more complicated than that?


----------



## jmbach

Won't work. MFSR does not extend a drive but creates a new MFS structure using some of the information placed on the drive when the TiVo blesses it.


----------



## CrashHD

jmbach said:


> Won't work. MFSR does not extend a drive but creates a new MFS structure using some of the information placed on the drive when the TiVo blesses it.


I was doubtful that would work, but thought it worth asking. Thanks.


----------



## jmbach

CrashHD said:


> I was doubtful that would work, but thought it worth asking. Thanks.


The author of MFSR is working on a program to do what you are wanting.


----------



## CrashHD

I think I remember reading about that. Maybe a few pages back in this thread even. If it's release hits my cash flow right, I intend to be an early tester. Gotta unload a few old lifetimed 2TB S3 units on ebay to produce hobby funds. Been dragging my heels too long on that one.


----------



## ggieseke

CrashHD said:


> I think I remember reading about that. Maybe a few pages back in this thread even. If it's release hits my cash flow right, I intend to be an early tester. Gotta unload a few old lifetimed 2TB S3 units on ebay to produce hobby funds. Been dragging my heels too long on that one.


I got started writing actual code about a month ago, but haven't made any progress in the last two weeks. Work and life in general keep me pretty busy, so you can probably drag your heels a while longer.


----------



## ckk

ggieseke said:


> I got started writing actual code about a month ago, but haven't made any progress in the last two weeks. Work and life in general keep me pretty busy, so you can probably drag your heels a while longer.


Just a quick question -- my XL4 is actively dying right now, and so I plan to put in a new drive tomorrow. I apologize, I haven't had time to read the entire thread.

Looks like I should stick to 3T for an XL4 at this time, no way to make the Tivo see more than 3T?

Thanks a lot!
--CKK


----------



## ggieseke

ckk said:


> Just a quick question -- my XL4 is actively dying right now, and so I plan to put in a new drive tomorrow. I apologize, I haven't had time to read the entire thread.
> 
> Looks like I should stick to 3T for an XL4 at this time, no way to make the Tivo see more than 3T?
> 
> Thanks a lot!
> --CKK


MFSR is strictly for Roamios and Bolts. If your current drive is still working you can use MFSTools 3.2 to copy and expand it up to 4TB. You can even go up to 6TB by following the instructions in jmbach's 6TB Premiere thread.

If it's dead, you can build a new 2TB drive with DvrBARS and a clean XL4 image (see your PMs). Once the 2TB drive upgrades to the latest software in your TiVo you can copy it to a larger drive using the steps listed above.


----------



## ckk

ggieseke said:


> MFSR is strictly for Roamios and Bolts. If your current drive is still working you can use MFSTools 3.2 to copy and expand it up to 4TB. You can even go up to 6TB by following the instructions in jmbach's 6TB Premiere thread.
> 
> If it's dead, you can build a new 2TB drive with DvrBARS and a clean XL4 image (see your PMs). Once the 2TB drive upgrades to the latest software in your TiVo you can copy it to a larger drive using the steps listed above.


Thanks!


----------



## Bane7

Anyone successfully upgraded a Roamio to 8tb single internal drive using this method? What is the general process?

Any help appreciated.


----------



## ggieseke

Bane7 said:


> Anyone successfully upgraded a Roamio to 8tb single internal drive using this method? What is the general process?
> 
> Any help appreciated.


Version 1.0.0.4 added support for 8TB drives on 4/29. See post #2 for the download link.


----------



## Bane7

ggieseke said:


> Version 1.0.0.4 added support for 8TB drives on 4/29. See post #2 for the download link.


Is there a way to copy shows over from my existing drive?

Thanks


----------



## dougdingle

Bane7 said:


> Is there a way to copy shows over from my existing drive?


Not directly (for now).

You can use the two-step method of copying those programs where the "do not copy" bit is not set to your computer's drive, then copy them back to the new drive.

Programs and movies with the "do not copy" bit set cannot be copied in that way. Most cablecos set the bit on everything except for those shows which are also available using an antenna (CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX, CW, PBS etc.).


----------



## Radagast2013

Reference post #2 for MFSR software.

----------------
I use 360 Total Security on my Windows 10 machine. It reports that all three of these links contain a known Trojan Horse virus. Am I doing something wrong? Has anyone else experienced this? Are there new links somewhere?


----------



## jmbach

What Trojan does it indicate it is?


----------



## Radagast2013

it says Trojan/HEUR/QVM10.1.Malware.Gen


----------



## jmbach

I am not 100% sure but I think it is flagging it based on heuristic evaluation and not because of any actual virus detection. Heuristic evaluation looks at how the program "operates" and flags it because similar programs that are viruses operate in a similar way. 

The programs are not a virus. 


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


----------



## CrashHD

dougdingle said:


> You can use the two-step method of copying those programs where the "do not copy" bit is not set to your computer's drive, then copy them back to the new drive.


How does one do this?


----------



## ggieseke

Radagast2013 said:


> I use 360 Total Security on my Windows 10 machine. It reports that all three of these links contain a known Trojan Horse virus. Am I doing something wrong? Has anyone else experienced this? Are there new links somewhere?


It's a false detection, which hasn't been reported before. Microsoft Security Essentials, Windows Defender, McAfee VirusScan Enterprise, and Malwarebytes don't detect anything. Here are the MD5 checksums for all three files.

MFSR1002.ZIP	8537954B00561BBACD66983ADEBA4DA1
MFSR1003.ZIP	25C265CD31D76D90A7D4CC35D9A4F8FC
MFSR1004.ZIP	12B2E264E6305E0507276F7663B508BA


----------



## CrashHD

jerrykur said:


> I ended up with a 12V 3A unit from Amazon. Lots of good reviews where the only reason I selected it. Seems to work fine. Thanks for the information on the amperage.


Any chance you can post a link to that 3A Amazon unit?


----------



## dougdingle

CrashHD said:


> How does one do this (copy shows off tivo to computer, then back to another tivo or newer drive)?


Sorry I'm late in replying, missed seeing this.

You can use either the (now discontinued and unsupported) free TiVo Desktop software or else pytivo. There may be others, but those two are what I've used. Use Google to find them, and there's a long pytivo thread here on tivocommunity.

Either one has to be installed on your computer, and your computer and tivo have to be on your home network.

Once you have the software running, use it to connect to the tivo to get a program list. Programs with the red circle and slash through it cannot be copied, everything else can.

Copy what you can to your computer, then connect to the computer from the new tivo/drive from the My Programs area, and pull everything back onto the new drive.

It used to be that when you were pulling shows back to the tivo, if the show didn't appear anywhere in the current guide, the tivo would not put the shows into folders but listed them as individuals. Don't know if that's still true, haven't done this is a long time.


----------



## bilj65

I"m getting Error 0x00000020 (32) CreateFile in line 1237 (mfsr 1.0.0.4) or line 1223 (mfsr 1.0.0.2) on WD40EURX that was installed fresh into Roamio (basic) which had already been running ok on a WD20EURX and was updated to version 20.6.x (can't remember exactly, but has latest update).

I put the clean (zeored) WD40EURX into TiVo, power up, when Guided Setup starts I remove power to Tivo then remove the drive.
I put the drive on a free SATA port on an ASUS Crossfire V Formula-Z motherboard and boot up Windows 10 64-bit.
There are a few other drives installed -- Samsung 850 (boot drive) and a Samsung 830, and an old HGST 2TB SATA drive.
I have Norton Security but I have tried temporarily disabling it.
I am logged in as an admin and use Run as Administrator to launch mfsr.
I first tried 1.0.0.4 and got the error. Then I zeroed the drive, and tried mfsr again and no error -- it just told me there was no Roamio or Bolt drive detected.
I reloaded the zeroed drive in the TiVo and then tried again with 1.0.0.2 and same error (slightly different line number).
Any suggestions?
I will soon try it with a different computer (Intel NUC with only a Samsung M.2 NVMe drive and an 1 open SATA port.)
Any suggestions would be welcomed.
Thanks.


----------



## ggieseke

bilj65 said:


> I"m getting Error 0x00000020 (32) CreateFile in line 1237 (mfsr 1.0.0.4) or line 1223 (mfsr 1.0.0.2) on WD40EURX that was installed fresh into Roamio (basic) which had already been running ok on a WD20EURX and was updated to version 20.6.x (can't remember exactly, but has latest update).
> 
> I put the clean (zeored) WD40EURX into TiVo, power up, when Guided Setup starts I remove power to Tivo then remove the drive.
> I put the drive on a free SATA port on an ASUS Crossfire V Formula-Z motherboard and boot up Windows 10 64-bit.
> There are a few other drives installed -- Samsung 850 (boot drive) and a Samsung 830, and an old HGST 2TB SATA drive.
> I have Norton Security but I have tried temporarily disabling it.
> I am logged in as an admin and use Run as Administrator to launch mfsr.
> I first tried 1.0.0.4 and got the error. Then I zeroed the drive, and tried mfsr again and no error -- it just told me there was no Roamio or Bolt drive detected.
> I reloaded the zeroed drive in the TiVo and then tried again with 1.0.0.2 and same error (slightly different line number).
> Any suggestions?
> I will soon try it with a different computer (Intel NUC with only a Samsung M.2 NVMe drive and an 1 open SATA port.)
> Any suggestions would be welcomed.
> Thanks.


Error 32 is a sharing violation, which means that another application already has the drive open. I have gotten it if I was viewing the drive with a hex editor or some kind of drive utility.

Close any other programs that could be accessing the drive and try it again.


----------



## bilj65

Perfect, thanks for the info. Something was latching onto all the drives, as I also could not eject any USB drives. I struggled a while to figure out the culprit, and eventually punted and went for the easy solution of booting into Safe mode, then it worked fine. I used 1.0.0.2 on my Roamio because there's an edit in your post #1 about that. 

For anyone else needing to do this, the easiest way to get into Safe mode (especially on Windows 10) is to run MSCONFIG, set Safe mode as the boot mode and Windows will always boot into Safe mode until you run MSCONFIG again and turn it off.
Afterwards I just had to re pair the card with Comcast to get premium channels back (the Data ID changes when hard drive changes) and now I'm up and running again.

Thanks so much!


----------



## Zonker007

I would like to replace the OEM drive with an 8TB drive now that my 1yr warranty has expired. Do you have any recommendations? I think the best cost/approach is to buy a desktop drive in an enclosure and liberate the drive.

The Seagate Expansion 8TB USB 3.0 3.5" Desktop External Hard Drive STEB8000100 is available for $189 from newegg

The WD My Book desktop 8TB USB 3.0 external hard drive is available from Jet.com (via Dell) for 213.50 with their current promotional discounts.

I have not heard great things about Seagate, but the WD drive appears to be just a rebranded WD Red.

If anyone has experience with either of these drives, I would appreciate any feedback.

Thanks,

Z


----------



## ThAbtO

Its hard to tell what drive is in an external and may not yield the proper drive that is usable in a Tivo. 

Look for WD red WD80EFZX or one that is not 7200RPM.


----------



## Worf

Yeah, they build drives for external enclosures nowadays - the drive lacks the SATA interface and instead terminates directly into a USB port. These kind of drives are unusable.

You also don't want to use the Seagate - those are SMR drives and while great for archiving data, they do not perform great in a DVR application.


----------



## 172pilot

Regarding PyTivo:



dougdingle said:


> It used to be that when you were pulling shows back to the tivo, if the show didn't appear anywhere in the current guide, the tivo would not put the shows into folders but listed them as individuals. Don't know if that's still true, haven't done this is a long time.


Anyone know this for sure? My son has recorded EVERY Simpsons episode, and has been watching one per day since sometime in 2014.. I certainly dont want those 560+ shows to NOT be in a folder when I'm done, so that'd be a dealbreaker..

Thanks!


----------



## dougdingle

172pilot said:


> Regarding PyTivo:
> 
> Anyone know this for sure? My son has recorded EVERY Simpsons episode, and has been watching one per day since sometime in 2014.. I certainly dont want those 560+ shows to NOT be in a folder when I'm done, so that'd be a dealbreaker..
> 
> Thanks!


Easy enough to check. Transfer just two of the Simpsons shows to the TiVo, see if they wind up in a folder.

If not, there is still a workaround. You can use TiVo Desktop Plus (has to be the paid Plus version), create a folder on your drive called "Simpsons", and put all the episodes in there. Then point Desktop Plus to it under File...Pick Videos To Publish. A folder called Simpsons will be created on the TiVo, and anything put into that folder on the computer will upload to the Simpsons folder on the TiVo.

Quite likely pytivo has a similar function, I'm just not familiar enough with it to definitively say so.


----------



## ggieseke

172pilot said:


> Regarding PyTivo:
> 
> Anyone know this for sure? My son has recorded EVERY Simpsons episode, and has been watching one per day since sometime in 2014.. I certainly dont want those 560+ shows to NOT be in a folder when I'm done, so that'd be a dealbreaker..
> 
> Thanks!


This should be a separate thread, probably in the TiVo Home Media Features & TiVoToGo forum. It has nothing to do with MFSR.


----------



## jmbach

+1


----------



## pruffy

new tivo user here i have a 1tb roamio ota, i have a 4tb hdd id like to put in it. i tried ross walker windows free method didnt work for me kept getting errors not too fmiliar with linux. so now im trying msft reformat. when i launch program on windows 10(set for compatiability for windows 7 and set to run as admin. i click file reformat tivo hdd. i then get error mfs volume header not found. please help what am i doing wrong i really want to use this 4tb int hdd in tivo roamio ota


----------



## jmbach

Did you put the 4TB drive in your TiVo first and let it boot to the welcome screen before hooking the drive up to the computer and running MFSR?


----------



## pruffy

jmbach said:


> Did you put the 4TB drive in your TiVo first and let it boot to the welcome screen before hooking the drive up to the computer and running MFSR?


no audio/video connection made just power plugged in and 4tb in tivo seat for 45 minutes.


----------



## ThAbtO

The first thing MSFR needs is to have the new drive in the Roamio and let it boot up to the first screen (asking for Country,) then unplug and remove drive, hook up to PC, boot to windows, run MSFR, Shutdown, return drive to Roamio. The time it takes is about 20 minutes.

What drive model are you using?


----------



## pruffy

ThAbtO said:


> The first thing MSFR needs is to have the new drive in the Roamio and let it boot up to the first screen (asking for Country,) then unplug and remove drive, hook up to PC, boot to windows, run MSFR, Shutdown, return drive to Roamio. The time it takes is about 20 minutes.
> 
> What drive model are you using?


Hitachi H3D40003254SE, was a transplant ripped it from my dtv hr34(I upgraded that internal awhile back, though the roamio ota would get better use of this).


----------



## ThAbtO

Have you tried a complete wipe of the drive as well as running a full diagnostics?


----------



## pruffy

ThAbtO said:


> Have you tried a complete wipe of the drive as well as running a full diagnostics?


no I'll do that next via epm partition master I'll wipe completely when I have access to pc. Then I'll put in tivo and run guided setup.


----------



## ThAbtO

Be sure to run a full diagnostics on the drive to make sure its still viable. I think it will run overnight.


----------



## pruffy

Drive empty all unallocated. Hooked 4tb to tivo powered on all connections made. Welcome screen solid green light blinking orange light almost there screen then green screen serious problem detected reboot.


----------



## ggieseke

pruffy said:


> new tivo user here i have a 1tb roamio ota, i have a 4tb hdd id like to put in it. i tried ross walker windows free method didnt work for me kept getting errors not too fmiliar with linux. so now im trying msft reformat. when i launch program on windows 10(set for compatiability for windows 7 and set to run as admin. i click file reformat tivo hdd. i then get error mfs volume header not found. please help what am i doing wrong i really want to use this 4tb int hdd in tivo roamio ota


Did you run the Roamio with the factory 1TB and let it update the OS to the latest version before trying MFSR? What version of MFSR are you using?

Forget everything in the Ross Walker method and read the first two posts in this thread, especially the warnings in red.


----------



## pruffy

ggieseke said:


> Did you run the Roamio with the factory 1TB and let it update the OS to the latest version before trying MFSR? What version of MFSR are you using?
> 
> Forget everything in the Ross Walker method and read the first two posts in this thread, especially the warnings in red.


guided setup complete on 1tb. Software roamio ota 20.6.1. I used 1.0.0.2 and 1.0.0.3 of mfsr.


----------



## ThAbtO

pruffy said:


> Drive empty all unallocated. Hooked 4tb to tivo powered on all connections made. Welcome screen solid green light blinking orange light almost there screen then green screen serious problem detected reboot.


If you had run the manufacturer's diagnostics software on the drive, it would have detected any problems of the drive. Tivo is very finicky of what drives and of the sectors within to be perfect (not many are).

I would recommend WD Red Drives over the WD Green AV drives. I also think WD is moving some Green AV to be labeled as Blue, and AV is getting less common.

I have a WD 4TB Red Drive in my Roamio Basic for nearly a year now and no problem, super quiet. The 1TB Green AV drive in the Series 3 is noisier.


----------



## pruffy

I have put a Seagate 4tb internal in it and am currently running guided setup. Afterwards I'll hook to PC and run msfr. Progress is being made.


----------



## pruffy

Seagate 4tb pulled from roamio ota at guided setup info complete then put in PC ran msfr 1.0.0.2 complete. Now putting drive back in roamio


----------



## pruffy

Success 638 hours of HD. Thanks all for your help, I'm now getting back into the tivo game.


----------



## ThAbtO

You could have just pulled the plug when it has reached the point where it asks for the country and save the time of Guided Setup for after the drive re-install.


But otherwise....... Great work......

BTW, I had a small issue getting the drive to work initially because of my PC running Windows XP. Then, I had to get a USB SATA drive adapter to use with the laptop I had running Windows 7. That delayed me for about a week.


----------



## CrashHD

ggieseke said:


> Not at this time. I'm working on a new program that will copy & expand your existing drive(s) to a new AF-aligned drive up to 8TB, but it's probably a few months away.


Any chance this is still in the works? I'm looking to go from a 3TB to an 8TB soon (before fall tv gets fully into swing). If the timing works out, I'd love to beta test for you.


----------



## ggieseke

CrashHD said:


> Any chance this is still in the works? I'm looking to go from a 3TB to an 8TB soon (before fall tv gets fully into swing). If the timing works out, I'd love to beta test for you.


It's still in the works, but no progress lately. We switched to new ERP software at work and I'm putting in 60-70 hours a week stomping bugs. The way things are going I probably won't get back to it until Oct at the earliest.


----------



## bcurran3

May I have permission to distribute the mfsr binary via Chocolatey (www.chocolatey.org)? or a direct link to download not behind a login would work just as well.


----------



## ggieseke

bcurran3 said:


> May I have permission to distribute the mfsr binary via Chocolatey (www.chocolatey.org)? or a direct link to download not behind a login would work just as well.


The link for the latest version (1.0.0.4) in post #2 doesn't require a login. Please just refer to this thread if you post about MFSR elsewhere.

I would like to avoid having multiple copies floating around on the internet.
1. It's hard enough to get people to read the instructions anyway.
2. There's already out-of-date information about it on another site. 
3. Someone would bundle malware into it.
4. Etc.


----------



## krkaufman

ggieseke said:


> 2016-04-29: Version 1.0.0.4 works on 8TB drives.


Dear ggieseke, does this 1.0.0.4 version for 8TB drives (or some earlier version) override or resolve your concern expressed in post #230:


ggieseke said:


> IMO, anything over 6TB on a Roamio would be a big stretch until they fix the bugs in the software that ignore the upper 32 bits in a 64-bit partition entry.


I ordered an 8TB drive seeing MFSr was capable of handling them, but just stumbled across this older post and am now wondering if the caution is still applicable.

Thanks in advance for any feedback.


----------



## krkaufman

krkaufman said:


> .. does this 1.0.0.4 version for 8TB drives (or some earlier version) override or resolve your concern expressed in post #230:


I've been informed the answer is ~yes, concerns resolved.~ Thanks!


----------



## ggieseke

krkaufman said:


> Dear ggieseke, does this 1.0.0.4 version for 8TB drives (or some earlier version) override or resolve your concern expressed in post #230:


Yes it does. You still have to have at least one MFS app partition and none of the four MFS partitions can exceed 2TB, but I figured out how to shoehorn a media zone into an oversized app partition.

There's still only one 8TB drive that I would recommend: the WD80EFZX Red.


----------



## krkaufman

ggieseke said:


> Yes it does. You still have to have at least one MFS app partition and none of the four MFS partitions can exceed 2TB, but I figured out how to shoehorn a media zone into an oversized app partition.


Thank you, for the response *and* the product.



ggieseke said:


> There's still only one 8TB drive that I would recommend: the WD80EFZX Red.


Phew!


----------



## locksmythe

My 6 TB MFSR formatted drive has started making noise, which I assume means potential failure is imminent. Is there a means of making a duplicate before it fails? MFS Tools could only do up to 4TB?


----------



## dougdingle

Use a cloning dock. I use the Mediasonic HUD1-SU3, which supports drives up to 8TB, and clones my 3TB Roamio drive in about 7.5 hours.

What it doesn't seem able to do is clone smaller drives. I have been unable to make it work on 128GB SSD drives, for example.


----------



## locksmythe

Does a roamio care what drive it is? Okay to clone the WD Green to WD Red, since the green is no longer in production?


----------



## dougdingle

locksmythe said:


> Does a roamio care what drive it is? Okay to clone the WD Green to WD Red, since the green is no longer in production?


Yep. No problem at all. The Roamio loves the greens and the reds. I have both.


----------



## mattack

You could just do a bit for bit copy to a drive the same size or larger, correct?


----------



## locksmythe

There is no way to expand to fill an 8 TB drive, though, so I should just clone directly to another 6 TB?


----------



## dougdingle

mattack said:


> You could just do a bit for bit copy to a drive the same size or larger, correct?


Yes. The good news is if you boot to Linux and do a DD_repair type copy, you can copy and not have to deal with stalling due to bad sectors, which will be ignored after an attempt to recover them.

The bad news is that if the bad sectors are in the area of the disk that defines its structure, you could spend many hours copying a drive that resulted in a bootable drive with no shows on the new one.

The other bad news is that it takes a LOT longer to use software to clone a drive than a dock takes. At least here it does. A LOT longer. My dock will clone a 3TB drive in 7.5 hours, and it took almost twice that long when connected to a computer and going through an OS.


----------



## dougdingle

locksmythe said:


> There is no way to expand to fill an 8 TB drive, though, so I should just clone directly to another 6 TB?


No way to do so currently that I know of, so cloning to a 6TB from a 6TB seems a good solution.


----------



## Menarion

Drive went bad on my Roamio this week. Utilized your program to get a working 6TB drive. Worked very well. Sent a donation as well. Great work on this!


----------



## byonik

PSA: I successfully upgraded a Roamio Plus to an 8TB WD80EZZX that was pulled from a WD 8TB MyBook. So far, so good. Recording capacity is showing 1281 HD hours now.

The WD80EZZX is supposedly an HGST He8 "HelioSeal" drive running at 5400 with TLER disabled. I have also seen a some reports indicating the 8TB WD Red is also an HGST He8, but with TLER enabled and spinning at 7200. I've always had good luck with HGST drives, so hopefully this one keeps the streak alive.


----------



## ThAbtO

byonik said:


> I have also seen a some reports indicating the 8TB WD Red is also an HGST He8, but with TLER enabled and spinning at 7200. I've always had good luck with HGST drives, so hopefully this one keeps the streak alive.


I believe that the report you saw is for the WD Red Pro line.


----------



## byonik

ThAbtO said:


> I believe that the report you saw is for the WD Red Pro line.


I was referring to this article: Western Digital Red 8TB Full Review - Consumer Helium Hard Disk | Internals, Testing Methodology and System Setup


----------



## ThAbtO

byonik said:


> I was referring to this article: Western Digital Red 8TB Full Review - Consumer Helium Hard Disk | Internals, Testing Methodology and System Setup


I see the HGST Drive says 7200 RPM, but neither of the WD Reds shows it.


----------



## Zonker007

byonik said:


> PSA: I successfully upgraded a Roamio Plus to an 8TB WD80EZZX that was pulled from a WD 8TB MyBook.


Same here.. I posted my results in this message:

Waking from Standby causes Tivo Roamio OTA to reboot

Z


----------



## dmark1867

jmbach said:


> You can take a Premiere to 6TB without and interim drive. The short is to use MFSTools 3.2 to copy source drive to 6TB target drive with the switch to limit the expansion to 4TB of the drive. Then use MFSTools 3.2 to add a app/media partition pair to get the extra 2TB of recording space. Then the hard part. At this point you have to manually coalesce that last partition pair that was added (15 and 16 to 15) followed by converting the APM to a 64bit APM. Then boot the drive in the TiVo and let it divorce the now non existent partition in the header.
> 
> Best bet is to wait for ggieseke get his program done. It will be easier and the inodes and zones will be 4k aligned.


Was this program ever updated?
I am so lost, not sure what to use - jmfs, MFSTools 3.2, etc

I have a tivo premier 320gb drive, never been upgraded, running software 20.6.1a.RC10
I would like to preserve all settings and I have new a wd red 3tb drive

I was thinking i could use mfstools 3.2

the more i read the more i get confused.

can you toss me the right direction


----------



## jmbach

dmark1867 said:


> Was this program ever updated?
> I am so lost, not sure what to use - jmfs, MFSTools 3.2, etc
> 
> I have a tivo premier 320gb drive, never been upgraded, running software 20.6.1a.RC10
> I would like to preserve all settings and I have new a wd red 3tb drive
> 
> I was thinking i could use mfstools 3.2
> 
> the more i read the more i get confused.
> 
> can you toss me the right direction


  Go here for a start.


----------



## dmark1867

jmbach said:


> Go here for a start.


jmbach,

Thank you so much for getting back to me.

I created a post here:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/community/index.php?threads/mfs-tools-3-2.529148/page-

27#post-11070916

Also I reviewed your post here and got a little confused:
6TB Premiere

In my case (I am going from a 320gb to a 4tb drive) and I want to keep everything
I would only need to issue
mfstool copy -ai /dev/sda /dev/sdb

Please let me know or reply to my post, thanks again!


----------



## jmbach

dmark1867 said:


> jmbach,
> 
> Thank you so much for getting back to me.
> 
> I created a post here:
> http://www.tivocommunity.com/community/index.php?threads/mfs-tools-3-2.529148/page-
> 
> 27#post-11070916
> 
> Also I reviewed your post here and got a little confused:
> 6TB Premiere
> 
> In my case (I am going from a 320gb to a 4tb drive) and I want to keep everything
> I would only need to issue
> mfstool copy -ai /dev/sda /dev/sdb
> 
> Please let me know or reply to my post, thanks again!


That's all you need to do as long as sda is your source drive and sdb is your target drive. This will work up to a 4TB drive.


----------



## NYHeel

Stupid question, but which program is the correct one to use if I want to upgrade from my 3 TB drive inside a Roamio Plus (already upgraded at purchase) to a larger drive, likely a 4 or 6 TB drive, while keeping all of my recordings and settings? Is this currently possible?

There are a bunch of new great programs in the last few years and I've lost track of which ones do what.


----------



## fcfc2

Currently, the largest you can go to would be the 4TB with MFS Tools 3.2, MFS Tools 3.2


----------



## maelstr0m

I'm attempting to upgrade a new Roamio Pro to a WD Red 8TB drive.

I started up the Roamio as delivered and let it update itself. I verified the version is > 20.4.6. I think it is 20.6.3. I swapped in the new 8TB drive and turned it on, but I seem to be caught in the endless boot loop. 

It sounded like a Roamio HD upgrade was going to be within my skillset, but I can't get past step #1. Any advice on how to get the Roamio to auto-format the drive.


----------



## jmbach

maelstr0m said:


> I'm attempting to upgrade a new Roamio Pro to a WD Red 8TB drive.
> 
> I started up the Roamio as delivered and let it update itself. I verified the version is > 20.4.6. I think it is 20.6.3. I swapped in the new 8TB drive and turned it on, but I seem to be caught in the endless boot loop.
> 
> It sounded like a Roamio HD upgrade was going to be within my skillset, but I can't get past step #1. Any advice on how to get the Roamio to auto-format the drive.


Are you upgrading a Roamio Basic/OTA, Plus, or Pro. 
Can you describe how the Roamio is boot looping. How many boot screens does it go through before looping.


----------



## Zombo

jmbach said:


> Are you upgrading a Roamio Basic/OTA, Plus, or Pro.
> Can you describe how the Roamio is boot looping. How many boot screens does it go through before looping.


I am seeing the same problem with a Roamio OTA and a WD red (WD60EFRX). The loop is:

1. Screen with "Welcome! Starting up..."
2. Screen with "Almost there... Just a few moments more."
3. Green screen for 1~2 seconds, then back to #1.

This is after I updated firmware with original HD. Any ideas? Thanks for your help in advance!


----------



## jmbach

Zombo said:


> I am seeing the same problem with a Roamio OTA and a WD red (WD60EFRX). The loop is:
> 
> 1. Screen with "Welcome! Starting up..."
> 2. Screen with "Almost there... Just a few moments more."
> 3. Green screen for 1~2 seconds, then back to #1.
> 
> This is after I updated firmware with original HD. Any ideas? Thanks for your help in advance!


My first suggestion is to get a replacement power brick about 1/2 to 1 amp more than the original power brick. The larger drive requires a little more power.


----------



## maelstr0m

Yep, I've got the same behavior as Zombo. Mine is the Roamio Pro.


----------



## jmbach

maelstr0m said:


> Yep, I've got the same behavior as Zombo. Mine is the Roamio Pro.


Roamio pro is different as it has a built-in power supply. I don't have an issue with mine booting up an 8TB drive. Can you try a different drive either one the same size or one smaller but bigger than the original.


----------



## maelstr0m

I've got nothing like that laying about. I might have a 1.5 TB available, but that is less than the factory 3TB. 

There was recent software update, could that be interfering with the auto-format?


----------



## jmbach

maelstr0m said:


> I've got nothing like that laying about. I might have a 1.5 TB available, but that is less than the factory 3TB.
> 
> There was recent software update, could that be interfering with the auto-format?


I doubt it. When a new version of software comes out, I let my Roamio Plus auto format an 8TB drive to see if TiVo fixed the 64 bit bug in their OS that prevents people from using drives larger than 3TB. I just tested 20.6.3 and the drive auto formatted and booted just fine. However the 64 bit bug has not been fixed yet. 
Have you run WD diagnostics long test on the drive yet?


----------



## maelstr0m

The WD quick test was fine but the extended test is still a long time from finishing.


----------



## jmbach

maelstr0m said:


> The WD quick test was fine but the extended test is still a long time from finishing.


I have had some drives that failed at the full erase test but passed the other tests.

If you want to make sure it is not an auto format issue, use MFSTools 3.2 to copy the original drive to the 8TB with the command mfstool copy /dev/sdX /dev/sdY. It should only take a few minutes and then you can put the 8TB in. If it boots up then it may be something with auto format. Since the 64 bit bug was not fixed, if you check the recording space on that drive it should be a little over 200 hours of recording time. If that is the case, then run MFSR on that 8TB drive. It should create a 8TB drive with 8TB of recording space.

If the 8TB did not boot, then consider to run a test with the drive hooked to the TiVo but powered by an external power supply. If that doesn't work. Time to think and scratch head more.


----------



## ggieseke

I haven't had time to test 20.6.3 yet, but if jmbach says it works I believe him. You could also try pulling the drive right after the green screen and see if mfsr recognizes it. The typical time for the auto-format to complete is just over 3 minutes on a Roamio, and if it makes it far enough into that process there should be enough of a file system to work with.


----------



## maelstr0m

jmbach said:


> If you want to make sure it is not am auto format issue, use MFSTools 3.2 to copy the original drive to the 8TB with the command mfstool copy /dev/sdX /dev/sdY. It should only take a few minutes and then you can put the 8TB in. If it boots up then it may be something with auto format.


I've only got a single external HDD Dock, so t.This sounds like I'll need to open up the computer to have both connected at the same time.


----------



## Zombo

ggieseke said:


> I haven't had time to test 20.6.3 yet, but if jmbach says it works I believe him. You could also try pulling the drive right after the green screen and see if mfsr recognizes it. The typical time for the auto-format to complete is just over 3 minutes on a Roamio, and if it makes it far enough into that process there should be enough of a file system to work with.


Ok, tried seeing if MFS Reformatter would work -- unfortunately in this case it doesn't. Here's what I see:

"Series5 5589.03 GB WDC WD60 EFRX-68L0BN1 found.

Click File -> Reformat TiVo Drive to continue."

(Click File -> Reformat)

Final warning pop-up

(Click OK)

Error window pops-up. "MFS volume header not found"

(Click OK)

Error window pops-up. "Line 337, Error 0xFFFFFFFF (4294967295)" etc.

Next test: using an external power supply for the 6TB drive.


----------



## Zombo

External power supply does not help. The green screen still lasts 1~2 seconds before rebooting. My assumption is that something is interfering with the auto-formatting -- maybe with this particular type of drive? It gets far enough into the process so that MFSR recognizes it as a TiVo drive, but can't do anything with it...


----------



## jmbach

Run a quick erase on it and see if it will boot up in the TiVo. 
Is this a normal red or one out of an external enclosure.


----------



## jmbach

BTW, is the Roamio is updated to the latest OS. We did see that behavior with earlier OSes


----------



## ggieseke

So it's seeing a valid first sector and enough of a partition table to identify the drive, but it can't find the volume header. That means that the auto-format routine failed in the very early stages. I second the suggestion to try wiping the drive. The short Write Zeros test in WD's Data Lifeguard Diagnostics is my tool of choice.

In all my original testing, a Roamio would wipe any drive that it didn't recognize, but there have been some recent posts that suggest existing Windows or other partitions may screw up the auto-formatter these days.


----------



## Zombo

Success! Did a quick erase in windows. Swapped into Roamio for auto-formatting. Swapped back into PC for MFSR. Then back to Roamio -- 6TB of recording goodness! 

Thanks for your help!


----------



## ggieseke

Zombo said:


> Success! Did a quick erase in windows. Swapped into Roamio for auto-formatting. Swapped back into PC for MFSR. Then back to Roamio -- 6TB of recording goodness!
> 
> Thanks for your help!


Excellent news! It sounds like any existing data on a drive really can be an issue.


----------



## duh FooL

So I upgraded my Roamio Pro with the WD 8TB Red NAS drive.
After running mfsr, I restarted mfsr and it shows:
Series5 7452.04 GB found
5399.79GB allocated for recordings.
Is this correct?
I'm about to unplug and let it boot, but wanted to confirm before I start migrating all my shows from the Roamio.


----------



## ggieseke

duh FooL said:


> So I upgraded my Roamio Pro with the WD 8TB Red NAS drive.
> After running mfsr, I restarted mfsr and it shows:
> Series5 7452.04 GB found
> 5399.79GB allocated for recordings.
> Is this correct?
> I'm about to unplug and let it boot, but wanted to confirm before I start migrating all my shows from the Roamio.


You just found a display bug in 1.0.0.4.  The correct number should be 7447.79 GB allocated for recordings, but it's still ready to plug in and you should see over 1280 hours in the System Information screen on your Roamio.

At the end of the program it goes back through the partition table and adds up the ones specifically tagged as media partitions, but on drives over 6TB I had to put a 4th media zone in the application partition that it's not taking into account. Sorry for the confusion.


----------



## duh FooL

ggieseke said:


> You just found a display bug in 1.0.0.4.  The correct number should be 7447.79 GB allocated for recordings, but it's still ready to plug in and you should see over 1280 hours in the System Information screen on your Roamio.
> 
> At the end of the program it goes back through the partition table and adds up the ones specifically tagged as media partitions, but on drives over 6TB I had to put a 4th media zone in the application partition that it's not taking into account. Sorry for the confusion.


No problem.
I went with the 8TB drive was people had posted success with it, but no one had reported this anomaly before.
I booted it anyway and saw the expected number of hours, so I was hoping it was a non-functional bug.

Great work.


----------



## sfhub

About to upgrade a Roamio Pro to 6TB using WD Red WD60EFRX. Is there any reason to keep the original pro 3TB drive around or is it safe to repurpose into a Roamio OTA? Used to keep old S3 drives around for a copy of original image, but from what I understand on Roamio, the drives are initially blank and the images are kept somewhere else.

In the past whenever there were hard drive problems, there were some early symptoms and which allowed some time to to dd_rescue onto a similar size drive and fortunately the errors were in media areas, not critical data.


----------



## jmbach

sfhub said:


> About to upgrade a Roamio Pro to 6TB using WD Red WD60EFRX. Is there any reason to keep the original pro 3TB drive around or is it safe to repurpose into a Roamio OTA? Used to keep old S3 drives around for a copy of original image, but from what I understand on Roamio, the drives are initially blank and the images are kept somewhere else.
> 
> In the past whenever there were hard drive problems, there were some early symptoms and which allowed some time to to dd_rescue onto a similar size drive and fortunately the errors were in media areas, not critical data.


The only reason to keep it around is if there a must have recording that it would be devastating to you if you lost it. Otherwise go ahead and re-purpose the drive. I would do a quick erase on the drive first with WD Diagnostic before putting it in the new machine.

The OS on the Roamio and Bolt models reside on a flash drive on the motherboard.


----------



## HoosontheTeevo

Hello - thanks for this excellent resource and
ggieseke and Jmbach et. al. for your help and guidance.

I have a Tivo Roamio Plus that I upsized to 4TB with Telemark's guide in early 2015.
I would now like to go to 8TB from 4TB with a WD Red 8TB drive.
If I want to save any recordings from my current drive I will need to transfer them to a PC first using kmttg/tivo desktop and then transfer them back with pytivo or pulling from the Tivo "devices" menu after the new drive is in.
I will use posts #1 and #2 of this thread and since my Tivo Roamio software is 20.6.3 I'm good to go and will use MSFR 1.004 for the 8TB size.
I don't have to do anything special or get to skip anything since I already did something similar to upgrade to the 4TB lastyear? I pop the fresh drive in the Tivo briefly to the guided setup (country) before pulling it and putting it into my Win 7 machine for the MSFR format. (it formats but retains a section with the Tivo formatting that it received by booting it up in the roamio briefly?)
There is no direct copy/clone/disk to disk copy procedure I can do to retain my shows more quckly - and I'll have to use the transfer shows/push back to get them back on my new drive?
(just thought of this) could I add a used 2nd roamio to my system and use it just for storage/transfer during this upgrade? Would it need its own cable card and Tivo subscription if it was just to store shows already recorded on my main Roamio?) 
And is there any need for a power-brick/transformer upgrade for my roamio plus when i go to the WD 8TB 5400rpm drive?
THanks for any further info/clarification. Sorry for redundancies. I plan to donate as I did before.


----------



## ThAbtO

HoosontheTeevo said:


> (just thought of this) could I add a used 2nd roamio to my system and use it just for storage/transfer during this upgrade? Would it need its own cable card and Tivo subscription if it was just to store shows already recorded on my main Roamio?)


Each Tivo requires its own service subscription to operate. 
It also is not a good device for long term storage of shows.
Cable card is used just for access to record off cable and once recording is finished, its not required anymore.

You can download shows and store them on a large (can be a NAS) hard drive as .MPG, or MPEG4. Some NAS system even has the ability of PyTivo service so transfers back to Tivo are possible.


----------



## ggieseke

1-5 Correct.
6. I have a program in the very early development stages to do just that, but stuff got crazy at work back in late July and I haven't touched it since then and probably won't be able to get back to it this year. Had to work the 4-day Thanksgiving weekend and Christmas/New Years is looking sketchy.
7. It would have to have an active subscription, but not a CableCARD.
8. The internal power supply in a Plus should be fine - it was designed for 3.5" drives. I've been running my Basic with a 4TB Red for more than a year with the wimpy external factory power supply, and I used it for the 8TB development because it was already open and my Pro was harder to get to.


----------



## delgadobb

Heads-up for anyone who shops at Frys Electronics & gets their daily promo codes: 

In today's promo codes they have a WD 8 TB MyCloud external drive for $198.01 with promo code (normally $250). In addition it's part of their 'we pay the sales tax' promotion for certain items. I have reserved one for pickup in Las Vegas & it's supposed to cost me $198.01 out the door. They are only available for store pickup & technically available until tomorrow (12/8/2016) at this price with promo code, though I'd recommend picking it up soon as these may sell out.

I mention this because last year I purchased a 5 TB MyCloud drive from Frys on Black Friday for $88 (wish I'd gotten two.) I decided to open it up & lo & behold there was a 5 TB WD Red inside. That's been running strong in my Roamio OTA for about a year now. From personal experience & the digging around I've done, it sounds like a WD Red or equivalent is in these drives. Worst case I figure it's a WD Green or equivalent; I don't think Green drives go that large, tho. Internal WD 8 TB Red drives go for over $300 at the cheapest vendors, so this could be a great deal for anyone looking to upgrade.

Caveat: I'm not making any promises here. There is a reasonable expectation of what type of drive may be inside, but there's no way to know for sure until you open it. I'm just the messenger, but hopefully I'm bringing some people a good message


----------



## delgadobb

Here you go ... managed to open the case & found this inside ... SKU# 8755441 @ Frys

WD 8TB My Cloud Personal Network Attached Storage - NAS -WDBCTL0080HWT-NESN


----------



## Mikeguy

delgadobb said:


> Here you go ... managed to open the case & found this inside ... SKU# 8755441 @ Frys
> 
> WD 8TB My Cloud Personal Network Attached Storage - NAS -WDBCTL0080HWT-NESN


Thanks for the follow-up--good show!


----------



## HoosontheTeevo

Thanks delgadobb - unfortunately i'm on the east coast - and don't have access to that sale. that mycloud looks like it is about $300. I'm looking at the 8tb mybook that is listed around $229 and may or may not have the 8tb WD Red clone (EZZX) in it.
any chance these enclosures can be opened - and if it isn't the desired drive- they could be put back together so they are in new/returnable condition?


----------



## sfhub

Just some information for the community.

I was going to do this on an old WinXP box but ran into the 2TB limitation. Even though my motherboard BIOS supports full 48-bit LBA (so theoretically it should support 128PB), effectively this is being limited to 32-bit LBA (2TB) due to WinXP OS-level drivers. The drivers tend to overlow the bits and the drive size you see is just the amount that is over a multiple of 2TB, for example 6TB (around 5.5TB) shows up as 1496GB.

If you have (I believe) Intel ICH7 or newer IO chip, you can obtain newer Intel RST drivers to address the OS issue. I think the last version which both fixed the 32-bit OS limitation and works on WinXP is 10.1.0.1008.

Search downloads

Now, my board uses ICH5R i/o chipset and none of the Intel RST packages that fixed the 32-bit limitation would install on ICH5R boards. I tried forcing it and my system wouldn't boot (if you play with this stuff, make sure you have ability to get to previous known working driver set up). I suspect if you have older (but not ancient board like mine), you can get this working just by installing the aforementioned Intel RST drivers.

Incidentally I know this is just a higher level (relatively) driver issue, because Western Digital Data Lifeguard does see my drive as 6TB and it can write zeros and run extended tests on it, however Windows Disk Management does the 32-bit overflow thing. Theoretically I think MFSR could work on these older boards if it bypassed some windows functions but I am sure it isn't worth the effort. The way these older systems work with 48-bit LBA is they push the LBA address twice in the 32-bit registers, so access is slower but it works. This wouldn't fix the issue with WinXP and larger than 2TB obviously, but MFSR doesn't really need to deal with OS high-level limitations since the drive is never intended to live on the WinXP box. It just needs to get the proper data written out, which I believe should be possible since WD Data Lifeguard can do it.

I was gifted one of those really inexpensive win10 laptops (I think less than $100) which don't even come with hard drive ports anymore, instead opting for onboard 32GB eMMC memory. I thought it was a useless unit (I need to do a lot of work just to get the monthly all-in-one win10 updates to install on a 32GB drive, and most people can't even get the updates to install), especially after I found out it didn't have a SATA port so I couldn't upgrade to decent SSD, but it turns out to be perfect for almost one-time use to do the TiVo partition readjustment. Since it didn't have any drive ports I decided to go with a SATA-to-USB adapter that supported greater than 2TB.

I wanted something I could pick up locally which basically means Frys. If someone wants a unit that is known to work with larger drives:
Vantec IDE/SATA TO USB 3.0 Adapter It is around $19.99 but I am sure it goes on sale eventually at frys. I could probably get something in the $10-$12 range if I tried, but it wouldn't be local and I would have to wait.

Plugged it into the drive and into the win10 laptop, immediately Windows Disk Management could see the full 6TB size, far less effort, especially since I had this useless laptop lying around. Incidentally I am amazed they can get a PC with 14" display, USB3 port, and decent battery life down below the $100 price point. The previous version of the same laptop (same price) actually came with SATA port so you could put in Samsung SSD and have a usable laptop.

I also was under the impression these Roamios just came with blank drives and the OS formatted whatever it saw. That apparently isn't the case. There is TiVo partition info on the drive even before first turning on the unit. You won't have issues putting a blank drive in (the OS is kept separately and will format the drive), just the original drive isn't blank, in case you are the cautious type and want to save off what was originally there before doing any modifications.

As an aside, even if your WinXP can't recognized larger than 2TB on its own, I believe you can effectively use up to 16TB as a non-boot windows drive without additional drivers. The way this is done is to format the drive on a different PC as NTFS using 4KB blocks.

The 2TB limit we are talking about is on the LBA (logical block address). With 512byte block size, that means 2TB. If you increase the block size to 4KB (8x larger) then the limit is 2TB*8=16TB. However you can't do the format on the PC in question because the tools won't recognize the full drive, doing the 2TB 32-bit overflow thing.

Now I'm being hit with a stupid TiVo bug. I got the Roamio because Comcast all of a sudden started charging "outlet fees" on each of my S3 OLED cablecards (4 total). I was paying $1.50 each which is what is on the rate sheet, but now they were charging something like $14.99 per card with some credits for customer equipment. They wanted to charge me something like $50/mo for CableCards which have been in my TiVo for a decade and most likely listed as "worthless/obsolete" in their inventory. I have long ago paid for their full value in rental fees.

I complained left and right, escalated, multiple levels, complained to local franchise authority and eventually a few weeks later got a letter from corporate apologizing and reinstating my previous rate.

I knew the writing was on the wall though so got the Roamio so I could get back down to a single cablecard where I wouldn't have these stupid outlet fee issues. I am sure Comcast will do this to me every few months to wear me down.

So I picked up the Roamio and wanted to offload the S3 shows onto the Roamio. Now I get hit with the 2.6.3.RC7 bug where S3s can access the Roamio but the Roamio (and Bolt, Premier) cannot access the S3s (C423 error). Big good it would do to offload my shows back onto the S3s I am trying to retire. Who knows when TiVo will fix this problem. There are claims they are working on it, but I am not confident it will happen soon. I haven't been back here in a while and didn't realize after the Rovi purchase it seems software bugs are being introduced more often than bugs being fixed. I am sure I'm affected by the HDMI audio DD/PCM bug that is also in this software version, but right now I am watching stuff through Slingbox so don't really care.

So Premiere's can work around the bug by switching to SD menus. I get the feeling HD menus is something like a whole different implementation of TiVo living side-by-side with the more solid older implementation in the SD menus. Any change in the HD menus seems to break everything else. Perhaps nobody is around that even understands the SD menus and the people doing HD menu implementation are just operating blind.

I am sure a bunch of people are annoyed with the recent CyberMonday/Whitesale where they picked up a 4 or 6 tuner Roamio with the intention of retiring their older units and finding out just a few days after they purchased their unit, a software/OS update comes that breaks the ability to access their older S3/HDs. I think TiVo/Rovi has this backwards. Usually you disable access to force people to buy a newer unit. You don't sell them the unit first, then disable access. I am being facetious here, obviously this is a bug, not a feature created by marketing.

Also as an aside, I went with the 6TB vs the 8TB WD Red because the 8TB seemed to run warmer and had clicking noises. Also it seemed more people were complaining about reliabilty even though theoretically the helium drives should have less wear and tear. I think the problems weren't with the platters but with the motors and head. I am sure many of the drives are fine and all drives have isolated reliability issues. With the clicking noise and the slightly more heat on the Hitachi/WD Helium 8TB, I just went with the tried and true 6TB "old" technology drives.

Hope someone finds this info useful.


----------



## ggieseke

Good info.

I'm still not sure what some of the 8TB WD drives in those enclosures really are under the hood. Maybe the HGST 7200RPM version? The WD80EFZX that I bought straight from WD when it came out is actually slightly quieter than the WD60EFRX drives that I've grown to trust & love. Mine peaked out at about 117F after 3 days of continuous stress tests.

Technically XP can handle drives over 2TB except for the boot drive, but after 40+ pages in this thread I realize that the odds of finding the right combination of chipsets and drivers on a box that old are slim to none. That applies to a lot of older USB docks too. For the record, if Disk Manager can't see the full capacity mfsr won't see it either.


----------



## sfhub

ggieseke said:


> Good info.
> 
> I'm still not sure what some of the 8TB WD drives in those enclosures really are under the hood. Maybe the HGST 7200RPM version? The WD80EFZX that I bought straight from WD when it came out is actually slightly quieter than the WD60EFRX drives that I've grown to trust & love. Mine peaked out at about 117F after 3 days of continuous stress tests.


I think the 5400RPM WD80EFZX is quieter than the WD60EFRX in general but there is some clicking noise I have heard on a few them. Maybe it is some thermal recalibration the drive does. I think it runs slightly hotter than WD60EFRX though, just a small amount. The specs say it uses more power so that isn't surprising.



ggieseke said:


> Technically XP can handle drives over 2TB except for the boot drive, but after 40+ pages in this thread I realize that the odds of finding the right combination of chipsets and drivers on a box that old are slim to none. That applies to a lot of older USB docks too. For the record, if Disk Manager can't see the full capacity mfsr won't see it either.


At the low level WinXP handles larger than 2TB drive, but somewhere above that there is a 2TB 32-bit limitation on stock WinXP SP3. I could not try the fixed drivers because the 10.1 Intel RST (storage) drivers don't support my older chipset (ICH5R is from 2002 days), but supposedly ICH7 and higher is supported (which is probably around 2005 days), so if someone wanted to try something real quick, here is the link for the 10.1.0.1008 driver: Search downloads
It should work for any motherboard using Intel IO chipset, which is most, if not all, boards using Intel CPU.

Here is an example of someone getting a 3TB drive recognized with 10.1.0.1008 so theoretically if you can get that done, MFSR should work fine with it.
How to solve a 3TB hard drive showing up as 746gb


----------



## sfhub

sfhub said:


> I also was under the impression these Roamios just came with blank drives and the OS formatted whatever it saw. That apparently isn't the case. There is TiVo partition info on the drive even before first turning on the unit. You won't have issues putting a blank drive in (the OS is kept separately and will format the drive), just the original drive isn't blank, in case you are the cautious type and want to save off what was originally there before doing any modifications.


Just to clarify, the refurb Roamio 500GB OTA came with tivo partition info on the drive. The brand new June 2016 built Roamio Pro came with blank drive. Perhaps they turn on the refurbs to test them and that is why they come with TiVo partition on the drive.

So on a new Roamio Pro, there is literally no information of value on the drive until first boot.


----------



## sfhub

Curious, is this expected behavior?

On the original 3TB drive, the Free space is less than Capacity

On the new MFSR 6TB drive, the Free space is MORE than Capacity.

I am going by screenshots, so I don't think my eyes are playing tricks on me.

This is with 20.6.3.RC7 on Roamio Pro.

Original 3TB WD30EURX drive
3TB - 476 HD or 3270 SD Capacity
3TB - 473 HD or 3267 SD Free

New 6TB WD60EFRX
6TB - 959 HD or 6606 SD Capacity
6TB - 964 HD or 6653 SD Free


----------



## jmbach

If I am not mistaken it is due to empty buffers. Once it starts getting video in the buffers, it will fix itself.


----------



## sfhub

Ok, great, although neither the original drive nor the new drive ever had a cablecard installed so the buffers wouldn't have been filled on the original drive either.


----------



## jmbach

Good point. I know it fixes itself after being on for awhile. Noticed that same issue when's expanding my Premiere. A discussion at that time seem to point to the video buffers. Perhaps is it downloaded content that fills in the gap.


----------



## sfhub

As you mentioned, it did fix itself.

I still don't have CableCARDs installed so the buffer shouldn't be filling up, but after some connects to the mothership and reboots, it did fix itself. I noticed before the last reboot, I still had a green line item under My Shows for TiVo Suggestions, even though I had disabled TiVo Suggestions under Settings. After the last reboot, the TiVo Suggestions line item was gone and the free space looks appropriate.

Thanks for your help.

WD60EFRX
Cap 6TB - 959 HD or 6606 SD (initial)
Free 6TB - 964 HD or 6653 SD

Cap 6TB - 959 HD or 6606 SD (steady state)
Free 6TB - 956 HD or 6603 SD


----------



## ggieseke

It's normal, and those numbers look right for a 6TB drive. I think it's because the space it reserves for ads is empty on a new drive, but that's just a guess.


----------



## manicmethod

I used mfs on a 4tb WD purple drive, everything seemed fine, Roamio booted up but during set up I always get an N11 error when it is connecting. It worked on the stock drive, I've changed between wired/wireless (I normally use wired only), removed switches, restarted over and over, etc. Could this be related to mfs or is it something unrelated? There is very little recent info about N11 errors that I've found, and none that had to do with upgrading a drive. 

If I put the old drive back in everything works as expected...


----------



## Jim861

Zombo said:


> Success! Did a quick erase in windows. Swapped into Roamio for auto-formatting. Swapped back into PC for MFSR. Then back to Roamio -- 6TB of recording goodness!
> 
> Thanks for your help!


Which version of MFSR did you use? I have a Roamio basic 500gb that I put a 2tb drive in and worked fine. Then I tried a WD blue 6tb following the instructions at the beginning of this thread and on Getting info (Connection interrupted). I first used 1003 version. Then used DISKPART to try again.
Thank You


----------



## manicmethod

manicmethod said:


> I used mfs on a 4tb WD purple drive, everything seemed fine, Roamio booted up but during set up I always get an N11 error when it is connecting. It worked on the stock drive, I've changed between wired/wireless (I normally use wired only), removed switches, restarted over and over, etc. Could this be related to mfs or is it something unrelated? There is very little recent info about N11 errors that I've found, and none that had to do with upgrading a drive.
> 
> If I put the old drive back in everything works as expected...


Hrm... This randomly started working after I posted this. Perhaps it was an issue with Tivo's infrastructure?


----------



## sfhub

manicmethod said:


> Hrm... This randomly started working after I posted this. Perhaps it was an issue with Tivo's infrastructure?


TiVo servers had problems yesterday into late at night.


----------



## scht99

My 3TB SMR drive just failed after over a year of use in Dec. I put in a standard 2TB seagate 2.5 drive (no prep) and it was running fine until today (lasted about a month). Same flashing 4 light failure.

Question: has mfsr been updated to allign 2TB drives (in the first post it mentions this might be desirable?).

I don't want to put in another 2TB and have it fail (the whole reason I went 2 TB was that I wanted cheap, internal and not fail like the SMR drive)

Anything else I might do to make this thing last longer?


----------



## jmbach

scht99 said:


> Question: has mfsr been updated to allign 2TB drives (in the first post it mentions this might be desirable?).


Not yet.


----------



## HoosontheTeevo

*** (problem with 4TB previous roamio plus drive put into a roamio OTA after MFSR - I couldn't get it co complete guided setup.... original down below.....)***
UPDATE
SOLVED...
- got it to complete guided setup, loaded guide data, channel scan and I am up and running - OTA with 4TB is running well. (636 hrs of HD available).
I did a couple things - not sure what solved it (or if it was just tivo server/rovi guide issues that finally resolved on tivos server end?...)

1. I took the 4TB drive out and re-did mfsr reformatting again - got a successful result - then put it back in and went through the whole thing again.
failed again. then I kept selecting to check network or try again, etc.
2.At one point the failure listed the firewall ports i needed to open - so i went into my verizon router and added them on my verizon fios router
...failed again...
3. then I found a thread where another Tivo user was having Tivo Desktop/PC - tivo - connection issues which I've also been having (so who knows if this did anything) and so for my tivo boxes - I went in and checked the box for "IGMP allowed" for each for each tivo box listed by their static ip addresses
Solved: Communication between wired and wireless network on actiontec MI424WR - Page 6 - Verizon Fios Community

direct link to the router page where you do this once you're logged in to your router (for verizon actiontec anyway)
http://192.168.1.1/index.cgi?active_page=6061

Then after all of these steps - I go through full guided setup again -
and it failed again, and then one more time - and it finally completed.

So in the words of Clark's cousin Eddie... "I don't know" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Thanks for the MFS Reformatter/procedure* ggieseke, *donation sent. 
Put an 8TB WD liberated from a mybook (EZZX) in the Roamio Plus - now at 1281 hrs of HD capacity. wow.



_-------detals of finally getting it to work. and original problem/question posted further below -------------_
_this a.m it went further at first (so maybe it was the tivo servers that I saw aluded to in another post as giving some problems last night - so maybe that was the 'connection' issue). - getting setup info (completed all), then on to channel scan, completed that then "connect to tivo service for program info - and it got through the end of that - but then after hitting select it got "connection error n11 again- and i had to start over._

_So when it went through again it listed all the possible firewall ports that had to be unblocked - so i went into my fios actiontec router and added them._

_then i did it all again - and at this point it froze - and i think it was because i had the cover off and the fan wasn't able to move the heat away from the hard drive, so i had to power cycle and start again with the top on._

_then this time it finally completed_

_country select_
_guided setup_
_getting setup info - prepairing, connecting, getting info, disconnectin, loading info, done_
_then channel scan - done_
_then 'will now connect to the tivo service to get program info"_
_passed all steps same as above under getting setup info..._
_through loading and done, select to continue._
_then a different result - a message like - 'there is enough guide data for the day to get you started" and then "press the tivo button to start using your new tivo._

_hooray! persistence pays off_
_----------------- original problem below -------------------_
_Hello - Need help with an issue I'm having getting a 4TB to work in a Roamio OTA. hanging at guided setup - s03 or n11 error..._


_pulled the stock 500gb drive on the ota after i set it up and everything was working fine with antenna/channels/recording/transferring, etc._
_powered down, and pulled the 500gb drive so i could put in a 4TB drive that came from a roamio plus (working fine) - a 4TB WD AV GP EURX from a former upgrade (telemark's procedure from spring of 2015) of that roamio plus. had never had any issues. _
_i did not put it into the OTA and power up to Country screen like you would with a new drive - since it had been in a tivo roamio i assumed it had the tivo file system on it (that may not be the correct term). hope this isn't a big mistake._
_pulled one of my internal sata drives and placed the former roamio 4TB in my windows 7 64bit pc - powered up and ran MFSReformatter - which recognized a tivo drive with 3700 odd gb of space - and i hit file - format tivo drive.and it reported that it formatted it and it was ready for a tivo with 3722gb of space +/-._
_put it in the OTA - powered up - and it hung on guided setup at the end of getting and uploading guide data and gave me an "S03" error. (which searches tell me isn't great) - then i tried again - and it hung on the getting info/ 'downloading' stage (earlier) - and gave me a connection lost/connection interrupted error (n11?). check the network, etc. (i had used my fios router settings to assign static ip addresses to my tivos - is there any specific guidance on what address to assign? I just assigned the address as static that DHCP had already automatically assigned - and the tivos are like 192.168.1.17 and .18 or something. Does this naming/numbering determine anything - should I assign them .1 and .2 slots or space them out more,? does it matter?_
_this drive had been fine in the roamio plus with cablecard - working fine up to the day before. _
_did i need to do some sort of more extensive reformatting/1's/0's overwriting to make this used 4TB ready for MFSR and the OTA?_

_thanks for any thoughts and help._


----------



## godsey1

Has anyone tried the 8tb drive for an extended period? My pro just got to 89% full and need more storage. Thanks for all the work you all have put into this. I was looking at weaknees' upgrade kits. Thanks for any help,

Tony


----------



## Zonker007

godsey1 said:


> Has anyone tried the 8tb drive for an extended period? My pro just got to 89% full and need more storage. Thanks for all the work you all have put into this. I was looking at weaknees' upgrade kits. Thanks for any help,
> 
> Tony


I have been using the WD 8TB hard drive for 5 months now and is around 40% full. It has worked flawlessly since I installed it. The recent firmware upgrade fixed the problem with rebooting when waking from sleep. That was the only issue I had experienced.

Waking from Standby causes Tivo Roamio OTA to reboot

Let me know if you have any questions.

Z


----------



## Jim861

Tony,

I installed a 6TB WD blue drive that came out of WD external drive into a OTA Romio. I used the software listed in the second post of this thread and is working fine. (I hope it will work on your model Tivo) I thought I was doing something wrong or the software was not working for me. It turned out the TIVO server was having problems. This said if you have problems with process failing in step 5 "5. Put the drive back in the TiVo and enjoy." from 1st post in this thread just try restarting the Tivo a few hours later. I wasted hours trying to wipe the drive and start over. I would get a Blue/Green drive from WD or a Samsung 5900rpm drive. I would not go with a 7200 rpm drive because of the heat. It may not cause a problem, but my box was 10-15deg F higher, may not cause a problem. Also about 50 KW more power a year for a higher speed drive, ~$5 savings plus "may" extend the life of your Tivo. i did measure it power usage. I used 2TB Toshiba 7200 rpm drive for a short time and the extra heat made me get a lower rpm drive.

My 6tb drive was an external WD that was $110 of clearance. It seam that external drive are a lower cost than bare drives.

I think if you buy a drive and can not get it to work I think weaknees' has a service to format it for you. If you do use this software please donate to the author, which in need to do.


----------



## godsey1

THanks Jim861 and Zonker007 for the info. I am going to get the drive from Ebay and as soon as it gets here I will try it out. Thanks again.

Tony


----------



## godsey1

This is the drive I am looking at: 8TB WD RED WD80EFZX SATA NASware 3.0 3.5" SATA III Internal NAS Hard Drive 128mb | eBay My Tivo is a Roamio Pro model. I am hoping this drive will work. If I do this, I will donate for all the hard work that has been put into this. Thanks again,

Tony


----------



## Zonker007

godsey1 said:


> This is the drive I am looking at: 8TB WD RED WD80EFZX SATA NASware 3.0 3.5" SATA III Internal NAS Hard Drive 128mb | eBay My Tivo is a Roamio Pro model. I am hoping this drive will work. If I do this, I will donate for all the hard work that has been put into this. Thanks again,
> 
> Tony


For $299 I would just buy this drive: WD 8TB My Cloud Personal Network Attached Storage - NAS - WDBCTL0080HWT-NESN-Newegg.com

You get the same WD Red 8TB inside, but you can reuse the external case with another drive as a networked drive. Someone posted that this drive sold for $199 in early December at Frys. I never saw the sale, but if I did I would have jumped all over 2 of them.

Here is the link to the post: MFS Reformatter (mfsr)

Z


----------



## godsey1

I want a warranty with it. I can get a 3 year square trade for around $42. I belive if you take that one apart you loose it (warranty). When I get it, what cable do I need to get to hook it up to a Gateway laptop that has usb hook ups? I am not very well on computer stuff. I just barely got my Roamio setup, tech wise. Thanks again for all the great help. 

What would be really great is a YouTube video on how to do this. I think I can get most of it done now, but it would be nice to be able to see it done.

Tony


----------



## delgadobb

Zonker007 said:


> For $299 I would just buy this drive: WD 8TB My Cloud Personal Network Attached Storage - NAS - WDBCTL0080HWT-NESN-Newegg.com
> 
> You get the same WD Red 8TB inside, but you can reuse the external case with another drive as a networked drive. Someone posted that this drive sold for $199 in early December at Frys. I never saw the sale, but if I did I would have jumped all over 2 of them.


That was me. It was $198.01 in early December & Frys had a promotion where they paid the sales tax. I almost bought two. WD 8 TB MyCloud $198.01 @ Frys today; likely WD Red inside

Although I can't guarantee anything, from my research it certainly looks like the 8TB MyCloud external drive consistently has the WD80EFZX (Red) inside the enclosure. I had to do a little work to extract the drive & install it in my Roamio Base. Getting it out of the enclosure requires patience & a gentle touch as there are sensitive clips holding it together. The hardest part was removing a metal bracket on one side blocking just what I wanted to do; it was attached with hex screws & one of them was stripped. Once I finished removing that piece, installing in the Roamio was easy.

My update is that I've been running the drive just fine for about 6 weeks now, it's just over 40% full. I've transferred a number of things & been recording movies/shows on all 4 tuners frequently to stress test it. The only concern so far is it runs hotter than my other Tivos - motherboard temperature (MBT on System Info screen) is generally 49-50 where my Roamio Pro (standard 3 TB drive) is 46 as I write this. Is this a significant cause for concern? I've tried to give the 8TB Roamio decent ventilation, but would be happy to install a small exterior fan if anyone has one to recommend.

The last 4 drives I've used for Tivo upgrades have all come from external drives that were FAR cheaper than their internal counterparts (going back 2+ years, so there is some history.) All are working great. The best deal of the bunch was the WD 5 TB Red from Fry's two Black Fridays ago (Nov 2015) for $88. I was thinking I should've gotten two at the time (using my buddy's promo code for the 2nd); who knew drive prices were going to stagnate? That would still be a phenomenal deal today!


----------



## godsey1

What about the laptop coolers that go under them and hook up via the usb port? If the are quite seems like a good fix to keep it cool.

Tony


----------



## aaronwt

godsey1 said:


> What about the laptop coolers that go under them and hook up via the usb port? If the are quite seems like a good fix to keep it cool.
> 
> Tony


It shouldn't need a laptop cooler.

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk


----------



## ggieseke

The basic and OTA Roamios run a bit hotter than the Plus / Pro models due to the case design and lousy airflow, but those are normal temps. After working out the 8TB version of this software I got lazy and never put the lid back on my basic. It runs at 32C without it.


----------



## delgadobb

Interesting. What downside is there to running a Roamio Base without the lid? 

I have mine set up in an entertainment center on a shelf with the tuning adapter above yet not touching. Let me explain. I took the top from a Toshiba SDH400 where the tuner went & use it to insulate the Roamio from the heat of the tuning adapter. (Imagine the top of the case from a Tivo HD, about 17 inches wide & 3 inches high. It kinda forms a 'tent' around the Roamio.) The tuning adapter is on top of the Toshiba case. 

Is it reasonable to just take the lid off my Roamio Base & run it that way for an extended period? I'd think the reduced heat would be a reasonable tradeoff given that it would be protected from most elements. There are glass doors at the front of the entertainment center. The biggest risk would likely be a buildup of dust over an extended period - I'd likely blow it out every once in a while with compressed air.


----------



## godsey1

That's good that they don't run hot enough that you need a cooler/extra fan on them.

Tony


----------



## ggieseke

delgadobb said:


> Interesting. What downside is there to running a Roamio Base without the lid?
> 
> I have mine set up in an entertainment center on a shelf with the tuning adapter above yet not touching. Let me explain. I took the top from a Toshiba SDH400 where the tuner went & use it to insulate the Roamio from the heat of the tuning adapter. (Imagine the top of the case from a Tivo HD, about 17 inches wide & 3 inches high. It kinda forms a 'tent' around the Roamio.) The tuning adapter is on top of the Toshiba case.
> 
> Is it reasonable to just take the lid off my Roamio Base & run it that way for an extended period? I'd think the reduced heat would be a reasonable tradeoff given that it would be protected from most elements. There are glass doors at the front of the entertainment center. The biggest risk would likely be a buildup of dust over an extended period - I'd likely blow it out every once in a while with compressed air.


I don't see any downside with a setup like that. It should be fairly safe from kids, pets, spills, etc and the power supply is external anyway.


----------



## godsey1

I have just ordered the hard drive, had to decide if I wanted to put that much money in to it. What cable do I need to hook the drive up to a Gateway laptop via usb? Thanks for all the great information,

Tony


----------



## delgadobb

Posted this in the Roamio area. Given the time-sensitive nature of the deal (good until 3/1/17), I'm posting it here as well for those that may not get to that area in the short term ...

For those who missed the Frys deal I posted about in December ...

WD 8 TB MyCloud $198.01 @ Frys today; likely WD Red inside

... This could be a great opportunity to upgrade your Roamio to about 1280 hrs HD. Here's another great deal on a 8 TB WD Drive. Some may not have had access to a Fry's for that sale, this time it's at NewEgg.com for $199.99 w/code EMCRCCD36. Once again, it's an external drive so you'd have to do a little work to extract it from the case (see my thread above to see what I found inside mine.) There's a reasonable expectation that it's a WD80EZZX drive inside. Mine was relatively straightforward to remove with the caveat that it had a weird metal bracket on the side requiring removal of hex screws. For my efforts I retrieved a WD80EFZX 8 TB Red drive which is still going strong in my upstairs Roamio. Here's the link to the MyBook at NewEgg:

WD My Book 8TB USB 3.0 Desktop Hard Drive WDBBGB0080HBK-NESN Black - Newegg.com

Just about everyone on here should be able to order from NewEgg & a lot of us won't get hit with tax.

Here's a teardown of the drive so you can see what you're likely to find inside:

WD My Book 8TB - 5400rpm WD80EZZX with Benchmarks

I suppose this could also be utilized for those with a Bolt trying to expand their storage with some of the modified setups that have been done, but I won't speculate beyond that. I'm just the messenger relaying the information; do with it what you wish.


----------



## ggieseke

godsey1 said:


> I have just ordered the hard drive, had to decide if I wanted to put that much money in to it. What cable do I need to hook the drive up to a Gateway laptop via usb? Thanks for all the great information,
> 
> Tony


Depends on what drive you ordered. Up to 2TB almost any USB dock or adapter will do. Beyond that I'd stick with USB 3.0 devices that were made in the last few years, even if your Gateway laptop doesn't have a 3.0 port. Older devices tend to crap out over 2TB, so check the model number online. This one is quite reasonable...

Plugable USB 3.0 SATA Lay Flat Hard Drive Dock | Plugable


----------



## godsey1

It's the WD Red drive 8tb. Looks like this will work. I'll give it a shot. Thanks,

Tony


----------



## godsey1

Got the hard drive and external drive bay dock in. The 8TB drive went into the Roamio clicked on USA, unpluged the system, putting the drive back into the system now. I will post back about how it does tomorrow. The file on the computer took all of maybe 3 minutes, it took longer to get the program running. I will donate after my test. Thanks a lot for your time and expert computer knowledge,

Tony


----------



## godsey1

Everything seems to have worked, the only thing is the cable card is not wanting to work with the new hard drive. I will put the old one back in and see what happens. Thanks again,

Tony


----------



## jmbach

godsey1 said:


> Everything seems to have worked, the only thing is the cable card is not wanting to work with the new hard drive. I will put the old one back in and see what happens. Thanks again,
> 
> Tony


You will have to re pair the CableCARD


----------



## godsey1

I have already made 2 calls into them and the reset 5he card and the tuning adapter. I will have to call them on the old drive because it is not getting the channels either. I will be back shortly.

Tony


----------



## jmbach

godsey1 said:


> I have already made 2 calls into them and the reset 5he card and the tuning adapter. I will have to call them on the old drive because it is not getting the channels either. I will be back shortly.
> 
> Tony


What is the manufacturer of your cableCARD and who is your cable provider.


----------



## godsey1

Motorola and Charter.

Tony


----------



## godsey1

We can't get it to work on the old drive, so they are sending out a card by a tech. Darn it.

Tony


----------



## jmbach

godsey1 said:


> We can't get it to work on the old drive, so they are sending out a card by a tech. Darn it.
> 
> Tony


I have the same. The issue with Motorola cableCARD is that it generates a new data id anytime the current drive and cableCARD gets dissociated. For example booting up the drive without the cableCARD installed and then inserting the cableCARD. Alternatively booting a fresh image with the cableCARD installed. Problem I have with Charter, is that the tech you get is unable to change the data id even though he may state he did. Commonly they just want to send a hit to the card which does nothing because the data id is different so the card will not pair. And of course they want to roll a truck for it. Usually I have to call back several times to get someone who knows what to do on their end. I usually have them tell me the data id that they have at their end before I offer mine. I have had at times go up the chain to higher levels. So far the highest I have gone up is 5 levels in two different departments.

All this to say is to keep on calling back. Wait several hours for change of shift. Eventually you will get there.


----------



## godsey1

Thanks for the info. They have me down for a tech on the 21st. If they are going to take that long, I will get a satellite system. I may call again in a couple hours.

Tony


----------



## ThAbtO

Satellite will not work on Tivo.


----------



## godsey1

This I know. I ended up calling 6 times and changed out the hard drives 4 times. I am done with it until the tech shows up. Thanks again for the help and info.

Tony


----------



## jmbach

godsey1 said:


> This I know. I ended up calling 6 times and changed out the hard drives 4 times. I am done with it until the tech shows up. Thanks again for the help and info.
> 
> Tony


Keep the large hard drive in. Call again tomorrow. I know it is frustrating. There is a good chance when the tech comes out with the new card, that he cannot get it paired either and they will tell you the TiVo itself is bad. Don't believe them. Just smile and wave to them but make sure you keep a card. Sometimes you need to ask them to delete the current pairing they have in their system before they can re pair the card. Have you looked at the troubleshooting I n the official TiVo website for additional help?

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


----------



## godsey1

I have tried everything that tivo has listed, I have unplugged everything and rehooked it all back up in every combination that is possible. I didn't know t hat they can delete the pairing. I will try that. Thanks,

Tony


----------



## godsey1

Jmbach that worked. I am getting every channel now. Thank you thank you thank you. The lady at charter said she has never done that, so I hope the adopt that as part of their trouble shooting (deleting the pairing and then repair). Just waiting on the guide to fill up. Donation coming soon to the coders. Thanks again everyone.

Tony


----------



## jmbach

godsey1 said:


> Jmbach that worked. I am getting every channel now. Thank you thank you thank you. The lady at charter said she has never done that, so I hope the adopt that as part of their trouble shooting (deleting the pairing and then repair). Just waiting on the guide to fill up. Donation coming soon to the coders. Thanks again everyone.
> 
> Tony


By deleting the pairing it forces a complete re pair of the cableCARD instead of the partial paring they have repeatedly tried on your card.


----------



## godsey1

It works great. Thanks again,

Tony


----------



## BP-isMe

Another Happy MFSR User!

FYI: I got an 8 TB WDC My Book, Removed the disk, Followed Instructions in first post. Only problem was my Sata-USB controller was too old and caused an error in MFSR. I then used the controller board that came with the My Book and all went well. My Roamio Plus now says 1281 Hours.

THANK YOU...Donation Sent...Brad


----------



## ggieseke

BP-isMe said:


> Another Happy MFSR User!
> 
> FYI: I got an 8 TB WDC My Book, Removed the disk, Followed Instructions in first post. Only problem was my Sata-USB controller was too old and caused an error in MFSR. I then used the controller board that came with the My Book and all went well. My Roamio Plus now says 1281 Hours.
> 
> THANK YOU...Donation Sent...Brad


Thanks for the donation! Using the My Book controller was quick thinking.


----------



## Zonker007

*WD 8TB My Cloud Personal Network Attached Storage - NAS -WDBCTL0080HWT-NESN*

8TB WD Red Fry's sale - Monday Promo Code - $249

Frys.com Email Campaign 03.13.17!

This one has the 8TB Red drive in it as posted in this thread.


----------



## Mikeguy

Zonker007 said:


> *WD 8TB My Cloud Personal Network Attached Storage - NAS -WDBCTL0080HWT-NESN*
> 
> 8TB WD Red Fry's sale - Monday Promo Code - $249
> 
> Frys.com Email Campaign 03.13.17!
> 
> This one has the 8TB Red drive in it as posted in this thread.


8TB WD My Book at Amazon.com - $209.

Amazon.com: WD 8TB My Book Desktop External Hard Drive - USB 3.0 - WDBBGB0080HBK-NESN: Computers & Accessories


----------



## Zonker007

Mikeguy said:


> WD My Book at Amazon.com $209.
> Amazon.com: WD 8TB My Book Desktop External Hard Drive - USB 3.0 - WDBBGB0080HBK-NESN: Computers & Accessories


Yeah this one has the WD80EZZX in it and not the WD Red. I saw this drive on sale at Best Buy for $170


----------



## Mikeguy

Zonker007 said:


> Yeah this one has the WD80EZZX in it and not the WD Red. I saw this drive on sale at Best Buy for $170


Thanks for the clarification. I had read the post up above stating that the poster had retrieved a WD Red from his (if I understood correctly--or maybe that was a typo?). MFS Reformatter (mfsr)

Apart from that, any idea what the difference is between the WD Red and the WD80EZZX?


----------



## fcfc2

Mikeguy said:


> Thanks for the clarification. I had read the post up above stating that the poster had retrieved a WD Red from his (if I understood correctly--or maybe that was a typo?). MFS Reformatter (mfsr)
> 
> Apart from that, any idea what the difference is between the WD Red and the WD80EZZX?


The WD80EZZX is what was initially found inside the WD MyBook external enclosures and although I see some being offered for sale that appear to have been liberated from the enclosure, I have seen no references to differences in performance between these and the standard WD Red's. 
I have also seen isolated reports of the standard Red's being found in these enclosures so it may just be if WD ran short, they used what they had available. 
I would personally be more comfortable with the standard Red's but I might be tempted if the price was significantly lower on the WD80EZZX.


----------



## Mikeguy

Thanks for the info. Would be nice if the price of these came down some (lol, of course).


----------



## godsey1

Just an update. The drive is still doing great just over a week into it, the guide has a bunch of channels that has no guide data. This has nothing to do with this file. May have to re-do everything and re-pair the card. Thanks again to the coders,

Tony


----------



## jmbach

godsey1 said:


> Just an update. The drive is still doing great just over a week into it, the guide has a bunch of channels that has no guide data. This has nothing to do with this file. May have to re-do everything and re-pair the card. Thanks again to the coders,
> 
> Tony


Guide data has nothing to do with pairing your cableCARD. If forcing a few connections with the TiVo servers don't resolve it, you might need to perform a clear guide data to get it to regenerate.


----------



## godsey1

I have done clear guild data once every couple days and multiple connections a day and it still has not straightened up. Will keep trying for a few more day. Thanks for the input.

Tony


----------



## ggieseke

There have been a lot of guide data issues lately, and nobody has been getting updates. They seem to have it fixed now.


----------



## HerronScott

godsey1 said:


> I have done clear guild data once every couple days and multiple connections a day and it still has not straightened up. Will keep trying for a few more day. Thanks for the input.
> 
> Tony


You had guide data on these stations before the hard drive change? If not or you don't know, then this is probably just a lineup issue for your zip code/cable company that you need to report to TiVo so those channels get added to your lineup which will populate the guide data for them.

Scott


----------



## godsey1

They were all filled in. I figure it got messed up doing the switch. This is the first time they have had our zip code on the guide. It has been a town over from us. I may put that in and see what happens. That's for the information.

Tony


----------



## godsey1

Scott that was it. I put it to cookeville and the entire guide is populated. Thanks for helping. 

Tony


----------



## HerronScott

godsey1 said:


> Scott that was it. I put it to cookeville and the entire guide is populated. Thanks for helping.
> 
> Tony


Sure, you could also report the channel issues for your zip code so they get that lineup fixed. Might help another TiVo owner in your zip code. 

Scott


----------



## godsey1

Ok. Thanks again.


----------



## c3nav1

ggieseke said:


> It's nice to know for sure that the 8TB version works on Bolts.


ggieseke,
I used your MFSR 1.0.0.4 on my Tivo Roamio with a 4TB WD AV Green EURX (the good one) using a technician PC with a SATA connection and it worked like a charm with 638 HD / 4398 SD hours.
I have an old Series2 w/ lifetime service and I just pulled the trigger on the $99 lifetime service transfer with new Tivo Bolt purchase ($300 total). I would like to just pull the 500GB and replace it with the largest 2.5" drive that I can use -- would really like to know what you and others in the know recommend. I have seen 3TB, 4TB, and now 5TB drives in the 2.5" form factor, just not sure what works or is the best, but I assume the 5400 RPM models would be the best ... I wonder if they are still limited to 1.5GB/s?

I also have a 3TB WD AV Green EURX (also the good one). I bought this one initially before I found your MFSR software since it could be used in the Roamio without modification. Do you (or anybody else out there) know what E-SATA case would work for this drive to add this extra storage to the new Bolt?

BTW I sent you a $30 donation on 3/11/17 for your great software


----------



## ThAbtO

c3nav1 said:


> ggieseke,
> I used your MFSR 1.0.0.4 on my Tivo Roamio with a 4TB WD AV Green EURX (the good one) using a technician PC with a SATA connection and it worked like a charm with 638 HD / 4398 SD hours.
> I have an old Series2 w/ lifetime service and I just pulled the trigger on the $99 lifetime service transfer with new Tivo Bolt purchase ($300 total). I would like to just pull the 500GB and replace it with the largest 2.5" drive that I can use -- would really like to know what you and others in the know recommend. I have seen 3TB, 4TB, and now 5TB drives in the 2.5" form factor, just not sure what works or is the best, but I assume the 5400 RPM models would be the best ... I wonder if they are still limited to 1.5GB/s?
> 
> I also have a 3TB WD AV Green EURX (also the good one). I bought this one initially before I found your MFSR software since it could be used in the Roamio without modification. Do you (or anybody else out there) know what E-SATA case would work for this drive to add this extra storage to the new Bolt?
> 
> BTW I sent you a $30 donation on 3/11/17 for your great software


AFAIK, I recently (yesterday) searched on Amazon and there was only 1 2.5" drive available and its a 4TB. There were also a bunch of 2TB ones.

Yes, 5400/5900 RPM drives are recommended in all Tivos, The 7400+ RPM drives would use more power and produce more heat, plus no benefit.


----------



## Andrew Macaulay

Hi,
This is my first time trying to upgrade a 1 TB bolt.
I used an external 3.5 In housing (Rosewill Armer RX304-APU3-35B - External 3.5" SATA III 6 Gb/s Hard Drive Enclosure - USB 3.0 & eSATA Connection, Aluminum Body, 80 mm Variable Speed Fan with On / Off Switch, LED Display Panel-Newegg.com)

SATA to ESATA external Cable Addonics Product: eSATA Port for Panel Mount to Left Angle SATA Cable 
The Tivo views this as an internal drive although it is physically external.

The expensive part = a 8TB Western Digital Red drive - WD Red 8TB NAS Hard Disk Drive - 5400 RPM Class SATA 6Gb/s 128MB Cache 3.5 Inch - WD80EFZX-Newegg.com
Although I was lucky and got it used on ebay for cheaper.

All in all - the process was fairly easy.
The biggest stumbling block for me was understanding what an error meant at the MFRS1004 software setup.
In my case I was plugging the new drive into the computer via ESATA. The software did not like that I had an A: drive already in the computer. The error message was fairly cryptic.
I stumbled across the solution by linking the hard drive via Internal SATA connection Vs ESata cable into a port in the computer. I disconnected the existing A: drive to open up the connection and it worked fine. - Perhaps adding that the PC can not have an A: drive would be useful in the instructions.

Other posting show drilling a slot in the back of the TIVO bolt to hook up the ESATA connector. I did not do that - all I did was leave the TIVO case unclicked in one corner and slipped the cable out the opening. Not as pretty but a whole lot easier - especially as you don't see the back of the bolt during use.

Now I am a happy camper with 1,283 HD or 8,849 SD recording hours.

I now need to make a donation - I bookmarked the link during the MFRS process - the link is timebound & I guess I waited too long.

Thanks you all for making this upgrade process so easy !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


----------



## ggieseke

Andrew Macaulay said:


> Hi,
> This is my first time trying to upgrade a 1 TB bolt.
> I used an external 3.5 In housing (Rosewill Armer RX304-APU3-35B - External 3.5" SATA III 6 Gb/s Hard Drive Enclosure - USB 3.0 & eSATA Connection, Aluminum Body, 80 mm Variable Speed Fan with On / Off Switch, LED Display Panel-Newegg.com)
> 
> SATA to ESATA external Cable Addonics Product: eSATA Port for Panel Mount to Left Angle SATA Cable
> The Tivo views this as an internal drive although it is physically external.
> 
> The expensive part = a 8TB Western Digital Red drive - WD Red 8TB NAS Hard Disk Drive - 5400 RPM Class SATA 6Gb/s 128MB Cache 3.5 Inch - WD80EFZX-Newegg.com
> Although I was lucky and got it used on ebay for cheaper.
> 
> All in all - the process was fairly easy.
> The biggest stumbling block for me was understanding what an error meant at the MFRS1004 software setup.
> In my case I was plugging the new drive into the computer via ESATA. The software did not like that I had an A: drive already in the computer. The error message was fairly cryptic.
> I stumbled across the solution by linking the hard drive via Internal SATA connection Vs ESata cable into a port in the computer. I disconnected the existing A: drive to open up the connection and it worked fine. - Perhaps adding that the PC can not have an A: drive would be useful in the instructions.
> 
> Other posting show drilling a slot in the back of the TIVO bolt to hook up the ESATA connector. I did not do that - all I did was leave the TIVO case unclicked in one corner and slipped the cable out the opening. Not as pretty but a whole lot easier - especially as you don't see the back of the bolt during use.
> 
> Now I am a happy camper with 1,283 HD or 8,849 SD recording hours.
> 
> I now need to make a donation - I bookmarked the link during the MFRS process - the link is timebound & I guess I waited too long.
> 
> Thanks you all for making this upgrade process so easy !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Glad you got it working! I don't know why it didn't like an eSATA connection, but some computers like my Lenovo D30 have multiple busses and separate drivers for each one. I can't use the eSATA connection because it already has 8 internal drives (the max).

If you really want to donate, the first post in this thread has a button for that.


----------



## krkaufman

Andrew Macaulay said:


> The expensive part = a 8TB Western Digital Red drive - WD Red 8TB NAS Hard Disk Drive - 5400 RPM Class SATA 6Gb/s 128MB Cache 3.5 Inch - WD80EFZX-Newegg.com


Current $290 price on Amazon for the 8TB Red is historically low. (link) See also this parallel thread for today-only WD drive sale at Best Buy. (6TB drive still available)


----------



## Bruzer

Looking forward to installing a 3TB Toshiba MQ03ABB300 HD in my new 500GB Bolt. I realize I don't need to use mfsr, but I figured I might as well configure my HD as best I can before I start using it.

Just a couple questions:

1. The original instructions are for the Roamio, but I assume it will be the same for the Bolt (let it auto-format, then power off at the first Guided Setup), correct? Do I just unplug the Bolt to do the power off?

2. Once I've run mfsr and returned the HD to the Bolt, how much of the setup can be done without a CableCard? I plan to pull the CableCard from my Premiere, then pair it with the Bolt, but I'm not sure when that needs to happen. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Bruzer


----------



## ThAbtO

You would not need to power off, or even do MSFR for up to 3TB and use the full capacity.


----------



## Bruzer

ThAbtO said:


> You would not need to power off, or even do MSFR for up to 3TB and use the full capacity.


Right, I realize I don't *need* to use msfr. I was simply trying to gain the benefits of using it:


> It aligns the MFS file (application) and inode "zones" correctly for Advanced Format (4K) drives. That should improve performance and reduce wear & tear on the drive.


----------



## jmbach

Bruzer said:


> 2. Once I've run mfsr and returned the HD to the Bolt, how much of the setup can be done without a CableCard? I plan to pull the CableCard from my Premiere, then pair it with the Bolt, but I'm not sure when that needs to happen. Any help would be appreciated.


You can do the whole setup without a cableCARD. You just won't see any of your channels. When going through guided setup, just choose the option that states you will get the cableCARD later.


----------



## Eric Miller

best buy has the 8th wd easy store on sale for $180 right now. Just picked up to and opened them up. WD80EFZX inside! Getting ready to try to upgrade 2 of my new bolts.

WD - easystore® 8TB External USB 3.0 Hard Drive - Black


----------



## Bruzer

jmbach said:


> You can do the whole setup without a cableCARD. You just won't see any of your channels. When going through guided setup, just choose the option that states you will get the cableCARD later.


Thanks jmbach. Things worked just as you said. Honestly, getting my old cableCARD paired with my new Bolt was the hardest part of the entire process. I called the number for Comcast cableCARD, but their system somehow transferred me to their regular support team. It was literally 30 minutes before the support person was able to work with someone else to get the pairing in place!

Speaking of cableCARDs, I have a couple questions:

1. Can I get my Premiere to work without a cableCARD? I have one of those DTA boxes from Comcast. Will that work with the Premiere?

2. If I need a cableCARD for the Premiere, does that need to be obtained from Comcast, or is that something I can just purchase elsewhere, then contact Comcast to get it paired?

Thanks again.

Bruzer


----------



## HerronScott

Bruzer said:


> 1. Can I get my Premiere to work without a cableCARD? I have one of those DTA boxes from Comcast. Will that work with the Premiere??


No, you will need to get a CableCARD to receive Comcast cable content.



Bruzer said:


> 2. If I need a cableCARD for the Premiere, does that need to be obtained from Comcast, or is that something I can just purchase elsewhere, then contact Comcast to get it paired?


No, you need to get the CableCARD from Comcast. They won't pair one that doesn't belong to them.

Scott


----------



## Bruzer

HerronScott said:


> No, you will need to get a CableCARD to receive Comcast cable content.
> 
> No, you need to get the CableCARD from Comcast. They won't pair one that doesn't belong to them.
> 
> Scott


Thank you Scott!


----------



## mortym

I have a refurbished Roamio OTA and attempted to upgrade with a WD40EZRX green drive. I first did a complete reset on the original 500GB drive disconnecting power at the first setup screen. Then, followed the instructions on page 1 using MSFR 1002. Everything went good right connecting the last step on the screen "Verifying" when hangs and returns a failure "Error 308". Re-tied connecting several times, tried wireless, same error. Switch back to original 500GB drive and it completes. Any ideas? Is this something specific with refurbished units? (Running firmware 20.7.1)


----------



## jmbach

Try a Kickstart 58.


----------



## ggieseke

You could also try zip code 00000 and one of the TiVo test lineups. They're really small, so there's not much data to load or verify.

If that works, force a connection or two and let the dust settle for an hour or so before switching to your actual zip code and provider.


----------



## imrf

Bruzer said:


> Looking forward to installing a 3TB Toshiba MQ03ABB300 HD in my new 500GB Bolt.


I"m on my second drive and I have to say, I'd avoid it. First one developed bad sectors within 45 days and recordings just went haywire. Fought MacSales to get it replaced since Toshiba will only give you a cash card back, no replacement drives, and now this new one seems to be acting up. Started watching a recording last night and it stuttered for a while then stopped. Streamed the same show from my old Premier unit just fine. Went back to the Bolt and it wouldn't play anything. Powered it off and on, too 15 minutes to come back up and then wouldn't tune any channels. Got it going once and had the Tivo wipe the drive, not it's just hanging at preparing to load program guide. I guess I'll find out tonight if it finished up. I think it's time for me to find a different drive, as these Toshibas suck!


----------



## fcfc2

imrf said:


> I"m on my second drive and I have to say, I'd avoid it. First one developed bad sectors within 45 days and recordings just went haywire. Fought MacSales to get it replaced since Toshiba will only give you a cash card back, no replacement drives, and now this new one seems to be acting up. Started watching a recording last night and it stuttered for a while then stopped. Streamed the same show from my old Premier unit just fine. Went back to the Bolt and it wouldn't play anything. Powered it off and on, too 15 minutes to come back up and then wouldn't tune any channels. Got it going once and had the Tivo wipe the drive, not it's just hanging at preparing to load program guide. I guess I'll find out tonight if it finished up. I think it's time for me to find a different drive, as these Toshibas suck!


Did you use MSFR with your Toshiba? There are several of us who have been using them in our Bolts for 3-4 months and your post is the first one I have seen reporting problems.


----------



## aaronwt

I've been using my two 4TB msfr drives in my Bolts since October 2015. So far, things have been fine after 1.5 years of use.


----------



## imrf

fcfc2 said:


> Did you use MSFR with your Toshiba? There are several of us who have been using them in our Bolts for 3-4 months and your post is the first one I have seen reporting problems.


No because all reports for that drive said it wasn't needed.


----------



## fcfc2

imrf said:


> No because all reports for that drive said it wasn't needed.


Hi,
Well I used MSFR on my 3TB Toshiba even though it wasn't "needed" but because it was suggested that it might help with the wear and tear on the drive. Not sure if that was the reason for the early demise of your drives, but I recommend using MSFR whenever possible, i.e., 3TB+.


----------



## imrf

fcfc2 said:


> Hi,
> Well I used MSFR on my 3TB Toshiba even though it wasn't "needed" but because it was suggested that it might help with the wear and tear on the drive. Not sure if that was the reason for the early demise of your drives, but I recommend using MSFR whenever possible, i.e., 3TB+.


It would be pathetic if 30 days in a DVR killed the drive. I just wiped the drive and started over from scratch on the drive. I'll see how it goes. I guess I could run it on it now and see if it helps.


----------



## iBattaglia

need help i have folllowed everything and what not and everything seems to work for my Tivo HDD from a 848 system and when almost completing i get this ****ing error MFS reformat error the drive would have 1 media regions, and than another after it wtf? it shouldn't we this hard to reformat a hardrive lol its a ****ing hardrive not a nasa drive like wtf is going on so frustrated here its 1tb and want it


----------



## Zonker007

*8TB WD Red in external easystore USB 3.0 External Hard Drive Case $179.99

WD - easystore® 8TB External USB 3.0 Hard Drive - Black

Picked up 2 of them - free shipping from Best Buy*


----------



## jhill1977

I'm getting the following error when trying to run MFSR 1.04 to prep an 8TB WD Red drive for use in my Bolt+. I allowed the Bolt+ to auto format the drive and unplugged it at the first setup screen.

I searched this thread, but didn't see this error mentioned. I get the same error using my ESATA enclosure as well as the WD EasyStore USB controller board that came in the enclosure, so I don't believe it's a controller issue. Lastly, I am running the utility with admin rights...

Thanks in advance...

Justin


----------



## HerronScott

iBattaglia said:


> need help i have folllowed everything and what not and everything seems to work for my Tivo HDD from a 848 system and when almost completing i get this ******* error MFS reformat error the drive would have 1 media regions, and than another after it wtf? it shouldn't we this hard to reformat a hardrive lol its a ******* hardrive not a nasa drive like wtf is going on so frustrated here its 1tb and want it


MFS Reformatter does not reformat a drive for use in a PC (per your other thread). It has a specific function for reformatting a drive for use in a TiVo.

Scott


----------



## ggieseke

jhill1977 said:


> I'm getting the following error when trying to run MFSR 1.04 to prep an 8TB WD Red drive for use in my Bolt+. I allowed the Bolt+ to auto format the drive and unplugged it at the first setup screen.
> 
> I searched this thread, but didn't see this error mentioned. I get the same error using my ESATA enclosure as well as the WD EasyStore USB controller board that came in the enclosure, so I don't believe it's a controller issue. Lastly, I am running the utility with admin rights...
> 
> Thanks in advance...
> 
> Justin


Error 5 is access denied. The only time I've seen it is if another program is accessing the drive, even in read-only mode.

You shouldn't have to choose "run as administrator", but the account you log in with does have to be a member of the Administrators group.

What OS are you running, and do you have any other programs that could be holding the drive open?


----------



## jhill1977

ggieseke said:


> Error 5 is access denied. The only time I've seen it is if another program is accessing the drive, even in read-only mode.
> 
> You shouldn't have to choose "run as administrator", but the account you log in with does have to be a member of the Administrators group.
> 
> What OS are you running, and do you have any other programs that could be holding the drive open?


I'm running Windows 7 Pro 64-bit and am using a Rosewill ESATA doc that was recommended by others on the forum.

Well, I managed to get MFSR to run in safe mode, and it indicated 7449.47 available for recording, but after connecting the drive back to by Bolt+ with my esata doc, I get the psychotic four flashing lights on my TiVo... ugh.

Can anyone offer me any insight into what's happening here ??


----------



## jhill1977

jhill1977 said:


> I'm running Windows 7 Pro 64-bit and am using a Rosewill ESATA doc that was recommended by others on the forum.
> 
> Well, I managed to get MFSR to run in safe mode, and it indicated 7449.47 available for recording, but after connecting the drive back to by Bolt+ with my esata doc, I get the psychotic four flashing lights on my TiVo... ugh.
> 
> Can anyone offer me any insight into what's happening here ??


***SUCCESS***

Well, after running the MFS Reformatter on a virgin Win7 Pro laptop in normal mode, it looks like I've got an 8TB Bolt+ with 1279 hours of HD recording space. I'm guessing one of the MANY utilities running on my laptop was preventing MFSR from running properly, even in SAFE MODE.

I'll update this thread as I move along, but things are looking good. I'll be sure to make a PayPal donation for this awesome software. Thanks again to all the TiVO Masters that made this all possible.

Justin


----------



## jhill1977

Thanks again for the your time put into this project. I jut donated $10 as a small thanks for your efforts.


----------



## hdeditor

This is my first BOLT upgrade, so pardon me if this issue was addressed. I did a thread search and didn't find the problem I'm encountering.

I'm upgrading a 500GB BOLT to 3TB using the instructions found at rosswalker.co.uk/tivo_upgrade/#BOLT .
I'm to the point in the instructions where I'm to run MFSR.EXE (version in MFSR1004.zip).

I've connected a Thermaltake BlacX external drive "toaster" with USB 2.0. I'm running 32-bit Windows 10 Pro on an Intel I-7-3770 chip.

The target drive is a TOSHIBA MQ03ABB300 2.5 3TB 5400RPM SATA.

As instructed, I right-clicked on the file and ran as admin. I say OK at the UAC prompt, and get the "Terms and Conditions" window. I click OK and after a few seconds I get this error message:









In case it isn't displaying, it says "Line 846, Error 0x0000002 (2)
\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE2
DeviceIoControl
IOCTL_DISK_GET_DRIVE_LAYOUT_EX"

What do I need to do to proceed with the upgrade?


----------



## hdeditor

UPDATE: I moved the drive dock "toaster" to my gaming rig, which has only 1 hard drive.

I was able to get the program to run AND see the drive, however....

When I go "FILE | Reformat Tivo Drive", the "Final Warning" box pops up. I click OK and get the error message "This drive would have 1 media regions, which isn't supported at this time."

Any thoughts?


----------



## jmbach

That error is usually because you are running MFSR on a drive smaller than 3 TB. 
What are you trying to do. Currently there is no way to copy the 500 GB to a 3TB drive. The only thing you can do is drop the 3TB in your Bolt. Let the Bolt auto format it. Then let MFSR align the inodes.
You will lose any recordings you have.


----------



## Quaro

What's the benefit of aligning the nodes?


----------



## ggieseke

Quaro said:


> What's the benefit of aligning the nodes?


Aligning the app and inode zones properly for Advanced Format (4K sector) drives should improve performance and reduce the overall workload on the drive.


----------



## hdeditor

jmbach said:


> That error is usually because you are running MFSR on a drive smaller than 3 TB.
> What are you trying to do. Currently there is no way to copy the 500 GB to a 3TB drive. The only thing you can do is drop the 3TB in your Bolt. Let the Bolt auto format it. Then let MFSR align the inodes.
> You will lose any recordings you have.


I do thank you for the reply.
However, I was _not_ trying to copy the 500 GB drive to the 3TB drive. The original Tivo drive had been boxed up for storage. I did follow the directions (put the 3TB in the Tivo, pulled the power at the first setup screen, etc.)
Something else was happening and I did get it to work, as I detail in my update.


----------



## hdeditor

UPDATE 2: Success!
It appears that the dock I was using was not able to properly see SATA drives larger than 2TB. I ran down to my local friendly Microcenter and picked up a Vantec SATA USB3 adapter. The software still didn't see the drive on the main computer (same issue as above), but it did see on my gaming rig (the one with one physical drive). The gaming rig is much older, only USB 2 ports on a old Intel Core2 Duo E6750 processor @ 2.66GHz with only 2GB Ram, on Windows 10 32bit.

But, it did the job and a Paypal donation is winging it's way through the internets!


----------



## ggieseke

hdeditor said:


> UPDATE 2: Success!
> It appears that the dock I was using was not able to properly see SATA drives larger than 2TB. I ran down to my local friendly Microcenter and picked up a Vantec SATA USB3 adapter. The software still didn't see the drive on the main computer (same issue as above), but it did see on my gaming rig (the one with one physical drive). The gaming rig is much older, only USB 2 ports on a old Intel Core2 Duo E6750 processor @ 2.66GHz with only 2GB Ram, on Windows 10 32bit.
> 
> But, it did the job and a Paypal donation is winging it's way through the internets!


Error 2 is "file not found". In this case the "file" is an entire physical drive as defined by Windows. If you open Disk Manager, \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE2 should be the third entry (it's zero based).

A particular brand of SD card readers has been the bane of both DvrBARS and MFSR because the driver they wrote is crap, but MFSR uses the Windows setup layer instead of the WMI layer in an effort to avoid that bug. Both programs still use DeviceIoControl, which is about as low-level as it gets. Can you post a screenshot from Disk Manager?

The PC that I wrote it on has 7 physical drives not counting the optical drive (2 configured as a RAID1 mirror and 5 6TB Reds configured as a 24TB RAID5 array). At any given time I may have 3 or 4 more virtual drives mounted, but I've never seen error 2 before.

Thanks for the donation!


----------



## hdeditor

ggieseke said:


> Error 2 is "file not found". In this case the "file" is an entire physical drive as defined by Windows. If you open Disk Manager, \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE2 should be the third entry (it's zero based).
> 
> Can you post a screenshot from Disk Manager?


Here it is.


----------



## Johnny Danger

8TB upgrade issues using the mfsr.exe ( version 1004) software.

8TB Western digital from a MYBOOK. I believe these are the red drive.

I placed it in the TIVO and did the initial setup. I took it out and placed it inside my external USB docking station and tried to use MFSR1004 software.

Drive not ready. " The drive is not ready for use; its door may be open. Please check drive A: and make sure that a disk is inserted and that the drive door is closed. "

I hit continue and I received the message

Series5 1308.04 GB WDC WD80 EZZX-11CSGA0 Found. 1302.22DB allocated for recordings.

I click File>reformat TIVO drive
Receive error message then when I tried to format I received " Line 984 Error 0X000003E6(99...

Line 337 error 0X000003E6(99....)

"Reformatroamiodrive" 

I took the drive out, shut down PC, connected it to a SATA connection inside the computer and sale result.

Please advise?

Thanks.


----------



## ggieseke

Johnny Danger said:


> 8TB upgrade issues using the mfsr.exe ( version 1004) software.
> 
> 8TB Western digital from a MYBOOK. I believe these are the red drive.
> 
> I placed it in the TIVO and did the initial setup. I took it out and placed it inside my external USB docking station and tried to use MFSR1004 software.
> 
> Drive not ready. " The drive is not ready for use; its door may be open. Please check drive A: and make sure that a disk is inserted and that the drive door is closed. "
> 
> I hit continue and I received the message
> 
> Series5 1308.04 GB WDC WD80 EZZX-11CSGA0 Found. 1302.22DB allocated for recordings.
> 
> I click File>reformat TIVO drive
> Receive error message then when I tried to format I received " Line 984 Error 0X000003E6(99...
> 
> Line 337 error 0X000003E6(99....)
> 
> "Reformatroamiodrive"
> 
> I took the drive out, shut down PC, connected it to a SATA connection inside the computer and sale result.
> 
> Please advise?
> 
> Thanks.


What OS are you running?

I haven't seen that error before. For some reason it isn't seeing the entire drive, because it should say Series5 7452.04 GB drive found.


----------



## jmbach

And what computer are you running it on. 


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


----------



## Johnny Danger

jmbach said:


> And what computer are you running it on.
> 
> Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


'

Here are some of the hardware specs on my computer. Is this what you were asking for or something else?

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate service pack 1
Processor Intel I7 CPU 870 2.93 Ghz
64-Bit operating system
Gigabyte motherboard

Thanks.


----------



## Johnny Danger

ggieseke said:


> What OS are you running?
> 
> I haven't seen that error before. For some reason it isn't seeing the entire drive, because it should say Series5 7452.04 GB drive found.


OS is Windows 7 Ultimate Service pack 1
Maybe I should format it using EASEUS Partition master or try it on a different PC?

Please give me some options to try.

Thanks.


----------



## ClearToLand

Johnny Danger said:


> 8TB upgrade issues using the mfsr.exe ( version 1004) software.
> 
> *8TB Western digital from a MYBOOK. I believe these are the red drive*.
> 
> I placed it in the TIVO and did the initial setup. I took it out and placed it inside my external USB docking station and tried to use MFSR1004 software.
> 
> *Drive not ready*. " The drive is not ready for use; its door may be open. Please check drive A: and make sure that a disk is inserted and that the drive door is closed. "
> 
> I hit continue and I received the message
> 
> Series5 1308.04 GB WDC WD80 EZZX-11CSGA0 Found. 1302.22DB allocated for recordings.
> 
> I click File>reformat TIVO drive
> Receive error message then when I tried to format I received " Line 984 Error 0X000003E6(99...
> 
> Line 337 error 0X000003E6(99....)
> 
> "Reformatroamiodrive"
> 
> *I took the drive out, shut down PC, connected it to a SATA connection inside the computer and sale result.*
> 
> Please advise?
> 
> Thanks.





Johnny Danger said:


> '
> 
> Here are some of the hardware specs on my computer. Is this what you were asking for or something else?
> 
> OS: Windows 7 Ultimate service pack 1
> *Processor Intel I7 CPU 870 2.93 Ghz*
> 64-Bit operating system
> Gigabyte motherboard
> 
> Thanks.





Johnny Danger said:


> OS is Windows 7 Ultimate Service pack 1
> Maybe I should format it using EASEUS Partition master or *try it on a different PC?*
> 
> *Please give me some options to try.*
> 
> Thanks.


That CPU is pretty old by today's standards (Q2 2009):

*PassMark 5407 - Intel Core i7-870 @ 2.93GHz - Price performance comparison*​
So the chipset, motherboard, BIOS are also (probably) old too.

Try using a newer computer - you covered the BIGGEST base by directly connecting the new 8TB HDD directly to a SATA port on the motherboard so if that didn't work...


----------



## ggieseke

Anything that's running Windows 7 or later should be fine. I suspect that the Gigabyte motherboard may have installed a Host Protected Area on the drive. They're notorious for that.

I would give another (non-Gigabyte) computer a shot at it. If it still doesn't see the entire drive (7452.04 GB), try using the short write zeros test in Data Lifeguard Diagnostics or Seatools and then start over from scratch.


----------



## Johnny Danger

I think I got it to work.

I plugged it in a newer computer however it was still gigabyte motherboard since I built all the computers in my house and always used Gigabyte. 
I downloaded a software called " Mini Tools Partition wizard" 
Best Free Partition Manager for Windows | MiniTool Partition Free

Then I think I initialized it in like a GPT disk, then I created a partition for windows with the NTFS file system. Then after applying all these settings, windows could recognize the 8TB drive in its system. I then turn off the PC, remove the hard drive, placed it in the TIVO and did the TIVO setup then unplugged the TIVO, took the hard drive back to the PC and ran the MSF software and it said that it was successful. So fingers crossed, this worked.

I have not tested it yet in the TIVO but so far so good.


----------



## sfhub

Will just document here in case it is useful in the future.

May 6, 2017 build TiVo 500GB Bolt

OS Version
Factory - 20.6.3.RC14-USC-11-849
After first download - 20.7.1.RC2-USC-11-849

Power Supply
12V 3Amp power supply
Model NBS40C120300VU
Made in China by NetBlt
Should have enough headroom to handle any HD people may upgrade to.

Power Usage (stock drive, measured using Kill-a-Watt)
11W at initial setup screen
13W after initial setup

Fan noise
Far less than expected. There is very slight pulsing electrical buzzing audible from about 3ft away (probably PWM fan speed control). Other than the buzzing, slight fan (air flow) noise audible from 3ft away. 6ft away I don't hear the buzzing or the fan.

Temperature (liveTV, nothing else recording)
58C ODT (ambient 24C)


----------



## gsu13

Somewhat of a newbie, but did convert my Roamio OTA with a cable card adapter. Just wanted people to remember that an 8TB drive would have about 7450 GB usable space. Till I did a google search did I realize I didn't lose over 500 GB or do something wrong

Thanks to Eric Miller and Zonker007 and found that the WD easystore 8TB has a WD80EFZX inside, used MFSR v1.0.0.4. Followed everything from the instructions at rosswalker.co.uk and got the message 7452.04 GB WD easystore 25FB found. 7446.22 GB is allocated for recordings

Tivo says 1283 HD hours or 8845 SD hours!

Thanks especially to creator of MFS - donation is on its way



Eric Miller said:


> best buy has the 8th wd easy store on sale for $180 right now. Just picked up to and opened them up. WD80EFZX inside! Getting ready to try to upgrade 2 of my new bolts.
> 
> WD - easystore® 8TB External USB 3.0 Hard Drive - Black





Zonker007 said:


> *8TB WD Red in external easystore USB 3.0 External Hard Drive Case $179.99
> 
> WD - easystore® 8TB External USB 3.0 Hard Drive - Black
> 
> Picked up 2 of them - free shipping from Best Buy*


----------



## gsu13

Wanted to confirm that the old 1TB drive I took out of the Roamio OTA can be re-formatted for something else? In the old days of upgrading Tivo 1s, 2s, HDs, it was recommended to keep the old drive in case you needed it for warranty or for creating another drive, but it seems the operating system is not on the HD anymore with Roamios and Bolts, so there is no purpose to keeping the old drive anymore?


----------



## Mikeguy

gsu13 said:


> Wanted to confirm that the old 1TB drive I took out of the Roamio OTA can be re-formatted for something else? In the old days of upgrading Tivo 1s, 2s, HDs, it was recommended to keep the old drive in case you needed it for warranty or for creating another drive, but it seems the operating system is not on the HD anymore with Roamios and Bolts, so there is no purpose to keeping the old drive anymore?


Still has been recommended to hold on to it, in case you need TiVo service on the box.


----------



## HerronScott

sfhub said:


> Will just document here in case it is useful in the future.
> 
> May 6, 2017 build TiVo 500GB Bolt
> 
> OS Version
> Factory - 20.6.3.RC14-USC-11-849
> After first download - 20.7.1.RC2-USC-11-849
> 
> Power Supply
> 12V 3Amp power supply
> Model NBS40C120300VU
> Made in China by NetBlt
> Should have enough headroom to handle any HD people may upgrade to.
> 
> Power Usage (stock drive, measured using Kill-a-Watt)
> 11W at initial setup screen
> 13W after initial setup
> 
> Fan noise
> Far less than expected. There is very slight pulsing electrical buzzing audible from about 3ft away (probably PWM fan speed control). Other than the buzzing, slight fan (air flow) noise audible from 3ft away. 6ft away I don't hear the buzzing or the fan.
> 
> Temperature (liveTV, nothing else recording)
> 58C ODT (ambient 24C)


Pretty much matches my experience almost exactly with our Bolt (500GB manufactured May 8th). Your fan description is dead on. It has a slight buzzing sound compared to the HD fan which is on the shelf above it and I would have said 2-3 feet for the audible level as well. And our ODT is 60C (open shelf).

Scott


----------



## HerronScott

ggieseke said:


> It works on 3TB drives as well. It will not run on 2TB or smaller drives. If there's enough interest in creating smaller drives that are fully AF aligned that can be addressed later.


Greg,

Did you ever add support for 2TB drives? I'm thinking of going with the 2TB WD for the Bolt I got my son and would prefer to have your alignment done on it.

Scott


----------



## ggieseke

HerronScott said:


> Greg,
> 
> Did you ever add support for 2TB drives? I'm thinking of going with the 2TB WD for the Bolt I got my son and would prefer to have your alignment done on it.
> 
> Scott


Sorry, but no.


----------



## HerronScott

ggieseke said:


> Sorry, but no.


Any chance of convincing you to add it?  I'll have a unit to support testing.

I am curious what in your program has to be modified due to the drive size at least for those drives in the 1TB, 2TB, 3TB range (versus larger drives).

Scott


----------



## TheCryptkeeper

HerronScott said:


> Any chance of convincing you to add it?  I'll have a unit to support testing.
> 
> I am curious what in your program has to be modified due to the drive size at least for those drives in the 1TB, 2TB, 3TB range (versus larger drives).
> 
> Scott


I believe the program works with 3TB drives. I used it on a 3TB Toshiba drive to upgrade my Bolt.


----------



## HerronScott

TheCryptkeeper said:


> I believe the program works with 3TB drives. I used it on a 3TB Toshiba drive to upgrade my Bolt.


It does (I used it with the 3TB drive that came in my Roamio Pro). I was hoping to use it with a 2TB drive which it does not work with and was just curious what difference the drive size made with reference to what the program does (what has to be changed to accommodate the smaller sizes).

Scott


----------



## TheCryptkeeper

HerronScott said:


> It does (I used it with the 3TB drive that came in my Roamio Pro). I was hoping to use it with a 2TB drive which it does not work with and was just curious what difference the drive size made with reference to what the program does (what has to be changed to accommodate the smaller sizes).
> 
> Scott


That's a good question. I wish there was some way to combine the expanded drive size capabilities of MFSR with the transfer abilities of MFSTools 3.2.


----------



## ggieseke

It does some fairly convoluted math to calculate how many MFS media zones just under the 2TB limit will be required and the best possible layout for them without wasting any more disk space than necessary. Since the original goal was to create 4TB or larger drives it fails when the answer is less than 2 or greater than 4. I'll take a look at the code to see if there's an easy way to skip past that whole section for smaller drives and just align the application & inode zones.


----------



## HerronScott

ggieseke said:


> It does some fairly convoluted math to calculate how many MFS media zones just under the 2TB limit will be required and the best possible layout for them without wasting any more disk space than necessary. Since the original goal was to create 4TB or larger drives it fails when the answer is less than 2 or greater than 4. I'll take a look at the code to see if there's an easy way to skip past that whole section for smaller drives and just align the application & inode zones.


Thanks Greg! I appreciate the time you've taken to create these tools. I'll donate more for this one if you can get it working! 

Scott


----------



## godsey1

Got a question. If I take out my 8tb drive and put the original drive back in, will it do a factory reset? I want to see if it will have the guide data filled in. The data has been messed up for a while. 

Tony


----------



## ThAbtO

No, it will retain what was there before.


----------



## godsey1

Thanks alot.


----------



## ThAbtO

Except the cablecard will get unpaired, DataID may be different.


----------



## godsey1

Yep it got unmarried. I set my location about 60 miles from my house got everything working again and all my channels are showing programs in the guide. Tivo couldn't/wouldn't help me with this, they have been looking at it for over a month, and then needed all my information again. Bad business. 

I was just wanting to make sure it wasn't this program, and it is not. My 8tb drive has been running perfect from day 1. Thanks again for your had work on this.


----------



## Slope

I tried running 1.0.0.4 on a 4TB WD Red drive (WD40EFRX). I was getting the permission error I saw in this thread so I booted in safe mode. I launch the program and it says "Series 5 1678.02GB WD40EFRX-68N32NO Found". When I click File - Format Tivo Drive I get two errors: Line 984 Error 0x000003E6(998) Read File. When I click okay, I get Line 337 Error 0x000003E6(998) Reformat Roamio Drive.

Any thoughts as to what I'm doing wrong?


----------



## ThAbtO

Slope said:


> I tried running 1.0.0.4 on a 4TB WD Red drive (WD40EFRX). I was getting the permission error I saw in this thread so I booted in safe mode. I launch the program and it says "Series 5 1678.02GB WD40EFRX-68N32NO Found". When I click File - Format Tivo Drive I get two errors: Line 984 Error 0x000003E6(998) Read File. When I click okay, I get Line 337 Error 0x000003E6(998) Reformat Roamio Drive.
> 
> Any thoughts as to what I'm doing wrong?


You need to run MSFR with administrator access, and at least Windows that can access >2TB, such as Windows 7.


----------



## Slope

ThAbtO said:


> You need to run MSFR with administrator access, and at least Windows that can access >2TB, such as Windows 7.


Sorry, I should have added that. I'm logged in with admin access on Windows 7. I also tried right clicking on it and running as administrator, but get the same result.


----------



## ThAbtO

How are you connecting the drive?

I used a USB2 drive adapter/power which has 4TB support. (used the same model drive to Roamio basic model.)


----------



## sfhub

Slope said:


> it says "Series 5 1678.02GB WD40EFRX-68N32NO Found".


You might have an issue with your computer recognizing > 2TB drives. This could be anywhere in the chain. Even if your BIOS has 48-bit LBA (meaning it can recognize 128PB), there may be drivers in your system that are limit to 32-bit addressing, effectively giving you a 2TB limit unless the software bypasses windows drivers.

If you low level format the first few bytes of the drive and stick it in the windows box, then bring up disk administrator, it should say the full size of the drive (and it should match what you expect). If it doesn't then you are hitting some limitation somewhere in the system.

This post gives more background.
MFS Reformatter (mfsr)

In some cases, if you have Intel chipset, you can download some RST drivers from Intel that will fix the problem. If you have a newer PC (newer as in newer OS, possibly a laptop) around, the quickest way might be to just buy a $15 USB to SATA adapter (there is a Vantec one that I use referenced in the post I gave) that advertises working with 6TB (or 4TB or 8TB) drives, then doing MFSR from there. It seriously might be less work to do this than figure out where the limitation is in your case.


----------



## ggieseke

Slope said:


> I tried running 1.0.0.4 on a 4TB WD Red drive (WD40EFRX). I was getting the permission error I saw in this thread so I booted in safe mode. I launch the program and it says "Series 5 1678.02GB WD40EFRX-68N32NO Found". When I click File - Format Tivo Drive I get two errors: Line 984 Error 0x000003E6(998) Read File. When I click okay, I get Line 337 Error 0x000003E6(998) Reformat Roamio Drive.


Your computer isn't seeing the whole drive. For a WD40EFRX it should show 3726.02GB (not 1678.02GB) in both Disk Manager and MFSR. I suspect that you're using an older USB dock or adapter that doesn't support drives over 2TB, but there's a chance that it's a BIOS or driver issue if the computer is really old.

As long as you are logged in using an account that's a member of the Administrators group you shouldn't need to right-click and choose Run as administrator or boot in safe mode. The administrator rights it needs are hard-coded into a manifest that's embedded in the program, so Windows will pop up a User Account Control prompt either way. After that MFSR grants itself the additional permissions it needs to run. I tried to make it as user friendly as possible.


----------



## insanegeek

I've gotten a raid controller to experiment with and unlike most it outputs via esata rather than via the PCI, etc bus. I am able to use an esata to sata cable and plug into a free sata slot on my PC without issue, which I'm thinking I should be able to do similarly in the sata slot of the existing Tivo drive, can mfsr be used on a drive that presents itself as larger than 8TB i.e. 16TB or 24TB?


----------



## ggieseke

No. 8TB is the limit for an "internal" drive at his time.


----------



## Ekard

I tried using 1.0.0.4 on a 3T Toshiba that was in a Bolt that died and now needs to go in a replacement Bolt. I am using an external set-up on a win7 machine. I am getting an error message, 'no Roamio or Bolt drive found'. Any thoughts on what the problem is? does mfsr not work with Toshiba drives?


----------



## Ekard

HerronScott said:


> Thanks Greg! I appreciate the time you've taken to create these tools. I'll donate more for this one if you can get it working!
> 
> Scott


Any update on this? I think my drive is under 3T...


----------



## ThAbtO

Ekard said:


> Any update on this? I think my drive is under 3T...


MSFR does not work on drives smaller than 3TB. Its main purpose is to expand >3TB.


----------



## Ekard

ThAbtO said:


> MSFR does not work on drives smaller than 3TB. Its main purpose is to expand >3TB.


According to drive manager my Toshiba 3T MQ03ABB300 is more like 2800G... I get an error trying to use mfsr 1003: no roamio or bolt found. I think I have found another way to wipe it using one of my PCs...


----------



## ThAbtO

<3TB would not need MSFR. Just hook up to Tivo.

For 4> TB, the drive needs to be hooked up to the Tivo and powered to the country screen. Then, remove and to PC/MSFR for expansion.


----------



## jmbach

Ekard said:


> I tried using 1.0.0.4 on a 3T Toshiba that was in a Bolt that died and now needs to go in a replacement Bolt. I am using an external set-up on a win7 machine. I am getting an error message, 'no Roamio or Bolt drive found'. Any thoughts on what the problem is? does mfsr not work with Toshiba drives?


You can use MFSR on a 3TB to 4k align the partitions and inodes.

To clarify. 
This drive was in a Bolt already and previously was a working image and now you want to run MFSR on it and put it back in the new bolt.

I would recommend in this case, since you have lost all recordings, "recertify" the drive by using the manufacturer diagnostic and do a full write followed by a full read. If it passes, place it in the Bolt and let it auto format to guided setup. Pull the drive and run MFSR on it and put it back in the Bolt.


----------



## ggieseke

Ekard said:


> According to drive manager my Toshiba 3T MQ03ABB300 is more like 2800G... I get an error trying to use mfsr 1003: no roamio or bolt found. I think I have found another way to wipe it using one of my PCs...


It should work on that drive. 3TB in drive manufacturer terminology is about 2790GB in Disk Manager. Are you letting the Bolt auto-format the drive before running MFSR?



ThAbtO said:


> MSFR does not work on drives smaller than 3TB. Its main purpose is to expand >3TB.


I wrote a version (1.0.0.5) for HerronScott that also works on smaller drives, but I haven't posted it yet. Most people don't care enough about aligning the zones to bother with the extra step when it works without it. If anyone wants to try it out let me know.


----------



## Darr

ggieseke said:


> I wrote a version (1.0.0.5) for HerronScott that also works on smaller drives, but I haven't posted it yet. Most people don't care enough about aligning the zones to bother with the extra step when it works without it. If anyone wants to try it out let me know.


<-- Raises hand.

I have Win10 Pro x64 and Win7 Pro x64 machines, each having USB 3.0 SATA docks (amazon.com/dp/B0099TX7O4 ) with which to try it on, and a couple 'refurbished' 500GB All-In Lifetime-transfer Bolt boxes that I want to upgrade to 3TB as soon as the drives arrive (I chose the free USPS option, so that could be 4 or 5 days yet), but I have some 1TB drives I could try in them in the meantime. I figure I can check their layouts before and after on a CentOS 7.3 box I also have.


----------



## ggieseke

PM sent.

Let me know how it goes. The easiest way to read the before and after drive layouts is probably the mfsinfo command in MFSTools 3.2 - I don't think CentOS can read TiVo's modified version of the Apple Partition Map.


----------



## Darr

ggieseke said:


> PM sent.
> I don't think CentOS can read TiVo's modified version of the Apple Partition Map.


I'm not certain of that, either... but I was hoping with the HFSTools kernel mod installed, from the EPEL repo, that it would.
We'll see I guess. 

Thanks.

[edit] No, hfsplus-tools did not seem to help. :|
I wish OneDrive had a side-load option... it's telling me the MFSTools images will take an hour to download, and then they're not UEFI... so maybe I'll look at VMware, too, if that will let me avoid disabling secure-boot.


----------



## generaltso

ggieseke said:


> I wrote a version (1.0.0.5) for HerronScott that also works on smaller drives, but I haven't posted it yet. Most people don't care enough about aligning the zones to bother with the extra step when it works without it. If anyone wants to try it out let me know.


Any chance that new version also supports drives larger than 8TB?  I've got a 10TB drive that would be perfect for my Roamio Pro. Thanks for all your work on this!


----------



## rainbow

jmbach said:


> You can use MFSR on a 3TB to 4k align the partitions and inodes.
> 
> To clarify.
> This drive was in a Bolt already and previously was a working image and now you want to run MFSR on it and put it back in the new bolt.
> 
> I would recommend in this case, since you have lost all recordings, "recertify" the drive by using the manufacturer diagnostic and do a full write followed by a full read. If it passes, place it in the Bolt and let it auto format to guided setup. Pull the drive and run MFSR on it and put it back in the Bolt.


I unfortunately cloned my original 500g hd to a 3tb Toshiba, but the TiVo only recognizes the 500gb size on the new one. I did not have any programs recorded on the original one, but did have all my season passes listed, and thought that would be a good way to not have to do them all over again on the new HD.

I googled and could not find any hd diagnostic tool for Toshiba. I called them and was told that they don't have any tool to be able to reformat the drive.

does anyone know a way to reformat/wipe out their drives? figured I would reformat and then just put it into the TiVo, assuming that by doing that it would recognize the 3TB size, I tried the MFSR pgrm, but it did not work.
I used a wavlink 2 bay dock to clone. I ran into a similar problem when I cloned a series 3 hd to a larger hd. the series 3 did not recognize the larger size at all. I even did a clear and delete and it still would not recognize the larger size hd. I ended up using the WD diagnostic to reformat/zero out the larger HD and started over again without cloning it, which worked.


----------



## ThAbtO

MSFR only works for Roamio or Bolt models as they can initialize drives without an image and MSFR expands it past 3TB.


----------



## sfhub

ggieseke said:


> I wrote a version (1.0.0.5) for HerronScott that also works on smaller drives, but I haven't posted it yet. Most people don't care enough about aligning the zones to bother with the extra step when it works without it. If anyone wants to try it out let me know.


So just to clarify, the data partition is aligned with drives under 3TB but the OS partitions are not? or all partitions are not aligned.


----------



## rainbow

ThAbtO said:


> MSFR only works for Roamio or Bolt models as they can initialize drives without an image and MSFR expands it past 3TB.


just in case you are responding to me, I am trying to replace the 500gb in my bolt to 3t using Toshiba hd.


----------



## ThAbtO

rainbow said:


> just in case you are responding to me, I am trying to replace the 500gb in my bolt to 3t using Toshiba hd.


Unless you have used MFSTools 3.2 to clone it, MSFR does not do that, it only expands past 3TB.


----------



## ggieseke

generaltso said:


> Any chance that new version also supports drives larger than 8TB?  I've got a 10TB drive that would be perfect for my Roamio Pro. Thanks for all your work on this!


Not at this time.



sfhub said:


> So just to clarify, the data partition is aligned with drives under 3TB but the OS partitions are not? or all partitions are not aligned.


All of the MFS partitions are aligned, but within the "application" partitions there are a bunch of header structures and two different kinds of "zones" that hold the actual data. The inode zones contain the inode tables for the entire MFS file system, and the file zones contain all of the miscellaneous directories & files except the recordings. The inode and file zones are what I align with MFSR for better performance and drive longevity (hopefully). I have always hesitated to compare my basic Roamio with a 4TB MFSR drive on OTA to my Pro with a factory 3TB drive on Comcast because the lineups and number of tuners are completely different, but I bought another Pro during the summer sale and ran MFSR on the factory drive it came with. It's noticeably faster even though everything else (lineup, tuners, one-passes, favorite channels, physical drives, etc) are identical.


----------



## ggieseke

ThAbtO said:


> Unless you have used MFSTools 3.2 to clone it, MSFR does not do that, it only expands past 3TB.


I have never tried cloning a 500GB to a 3TB and then feeding it to MFSR, but I think it would work. I only use the factory format to identify the drive for safety's sake and to suck out a few values like the unique drive identifier. After that it throws everything else in the trash and reformats it based on the physical drive size as reported by Windows.



rainbow said:


> I unfortunately cloned my original 500g hd to a 3tb Toshiba, but the TiVo only recognizes the 500gb size on the new one. I did not have any programs recorded on the original one, but did have all my season passes listed, and thought that would be a good way to not have to do them all over again on the new HD.


To be clear, MFSR doesn't "expand" your existing drive and the information it contains - it reformats it from ground zero and no previous information is retained.


----------



## rainbow

This is the error message I got when trying to use Mfsr:
This drive would have 1 mediaregions, which is unsupported at this time.
Line 339. Error oxooooooo(13).

Last year I purchased a WAVLINK standalone dual bay HD docking station that can handle up to 8tb. It can clone 1 hard drive to another larger size hd, without being hooked up to a computer. Per my previous post, I had used It once before to clone a series 3 hd upgrading to a larger hd. But I was unable to get it to recognize the larger hd space even with all of the tools this community has provided. I ultimately zeroed out the hard drive using the western digital diagnostic tools, installed it, did clear and delete, did a new setup, and it is working fine now. So this was my 2nd time to try the wavlink clone, with the new 3tb toshiba for the bolt. Obviously it did not work. 
So the bolt only recognizes the 3tb toshiba as a 500gb. Having talked with toshiba today, I It appears that toshiba does not have a hd diagnostic tool to zero out their hard drives. I can return it to toshiba to replace it but have been trying to figure out if there is a way to get that drive zeroed out so I can then pop it into the bolt the bolt do its thing.

Update 955p

Re the error meesage I got, I was using my older docking station. I just used the wavlink and the mfsr program recognized the hard drive . Fingers crossed that it worked. I will follow up re results.


Update 1045p
It worked. System info now shows 478HD or 3289 SD hours
Yoo-hoo!


----------



## elephant

rainbow said:


> This is the error message I got when trying to use Mfsr:
> This drive would have 1 mediaregions, which is unsupported at this time.
> Line 339. Error oxooooooo(13).
> 
> Update 955p
> 
> Re the error meesage I got, I was using my older docking station. I just used the wavlink and the mfsr program recognized the hard drive . Fingers crossed that it worked. I will follow up re results.
> 
> Update 1045p
> It worked. System info now shows 478HD or 3289 SD hours
> Yoo-hoo!


Exactly what worked? You got a reformatted 3TB drive without programs and settings? So there was no benefit to copying the old Bolt drive, in fact it cost you having to recover it?


----------



## jlin

Have an existing 6TB in my Roamio Plus Pro.. would like to upgrade it to an 8TB while keeping the recorded shows. Is that possible ?

I also have a dual drive clone station to copy the drive as well.


----------



## ggieseke

jlin said:


> Have an existing 6TB in my Roamio Plus Pro.. would like to upgrade it to an 8TB while keeping the recorded shows. Is that possible ?
> 
> I also have a dual drive clone station to copy the drive as well.


Cloning it would just give you an 8TB drive with 6TB of usable space. At this time there is not any way to make that upgrade and keep your current shows.


----------



## jlin

Alright.. bought the $160 WD 8TB external yesterday from Bestbuy, extracted the drive and put it into my $40 Craiglist Roamio. Here's the result!


----------



## jmbach

I am going to assume that you did not 'just' put the drive in the Roamio but did the MFSR procedure on the drive and then 'just' put the drive in the Roamio. 

Sent from my SM-G950U1 using Tapatalk


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## jlin

jmbach said:


> I am going to assume that you did not 'just' put the drive in the Roamio but did the MFSR procedure on the drive and then 'just' put the drive in the Roamio.
> 
> Sent from my SM-G950U1 using Tapatalk


yes I had the Roamio bless the drive first until the Country Setup screen, then put it back to PC for MFSR to expand the drive and then back to Tivo.

The 1283 total HD hours sound about right for 8TB?


----------



## ggieseke

jlin said:


> yes I had the Roamio bless the drive first until the Country Setup screen, then put it back to PC for MFSR to expand the drive and then back to Tivo.
> 
> The 1283 total HD hours sound about right for 8TB?


Yup. That's exactly what I got when I wrote it.


----------



## jlin

Good job on the software! I'll make a donation shortly.

Can I use the same procedure to upgrade my Bolt to 8TB, provided I use the external eSata method? I should have bought more than 1 of that 8TB deal at Bestbuy last week for $159 !


----------



## ggieseke

jlin said:


> Good job on the software! I'll make a donation shortly.
> 
> Can I use the same procedure to upgrade my Bolt to 8TB, provided I use the external eSata method? I should have bought more than 1 of that 8TB deal at Bestbuy last week for $159 !


Yes, but with the recent reports of Bolts upgrading to 20.7.2 experiencing problems I would make sure that you have a direct SATA connection from the Bolt to the drive. Bypass any intermediate eSATA connections or controllers. You can still use the enclosure's power.


----------



## JCN

ggieseke said:


> Yes, but with the recent reports of Bolts upgrading to 20.7.2 experiencing problems I would make sure that you have a direct SATA connection from the Bolt to the drive. Bypass any intermediate eSATA connections or controllers. You can still use the enclosure's power.


Yep, just leave it in the enclosure and remove the sata cable and replace with the sata cable direct from the tivo board.


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## jlin

JCN said:


> Yep, just leave it in the enclosure and remove the sata cable and replace with the sata cable direct from the tivo board.


Can you show me a before and after picture? I'm interested in getting a similar setup for my Bolt as well.


----------



## JCN

Yes.The rosewell back cover comes off with 2 screws and everything is right there. For now I just left the cover off. I will get you pics of everything.


----------



## jlin

The original Rosewell thread had all the pictures expired on the first post. 

I'm motivated given that I updated my Roamio to 8TB and one of my Bolts to 3TB over the weekend... I want to next try 8TB external upgrade on my 2nd Bolt.


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## JCN

Yeah it'll work out nice. I'll get the pics for you I'll have them tomorrow.


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## JCN

I just got done using mfsr on my 6tb drive and its doing its thing on the Tivo. I thought I would do it on the 8tb because I lost my recordings anyway and I thought I would start from scratch. This is what comes on the screen. Help!


----------



## jmbach

JCN said:


> I just got done using mfsr on my 6tb drive and its doing its thing on the Tivo. I thought I would do it on the 8tb because I lost my recordings anyway and I thought I would start from scratch. This is what comes on the screen. Help!


Probably did not need to redo the drive since it was already showing 8 TB. I think the error is because the drive is already formatted to 8 TB and you are running MFSR on it again. It looks like you will need erase the drive, bless it with the Bolt, then run MFSR on it. 
ggieseke will know better details on the error.

Sent from my SM-G950U1 using Tapatalk


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## JCN

jmbach said:


> Probably did not need to redo the drive
> since it was already showing 8 TB. I think the error is because the drive is already formatted to 8 TB and you are running MFSR on it again. It looks like you will need erase the drive, bless it with the Bolt, then run MFSR on it.
> ggieseke will know better details on the error.
> 
> Sent from my SM-G950U1 using Tapatalk


Actually the only reason I really bothered with it is because the screen was blank and the green light was off on that TiVo and I thought well that don't make sense so that's what actually motivated me to do it. And I could hear the drive like clicking every few seconds so I'm not sure what was going on but I thought since everything that occurred might be smart to do that. Didn't forget about the pics just trying to get my system back together.


----------



## ggieseke

JCN said:


> Actually the only reason I really bothered with it is because the screen was blank and the green light was off on that TiVo and I thought well that don't make sense so that's what actually motivated me to do it. And I could hear the drive like clicking every few seconds so I'm not sure what was going on but I thought since everything that occurred might be smart to do that. Didn't forget about the pics just trying to get my system back together.


A clicking sound every few seconds isn't a good sign. Usually that means that the drive is stuck trying to read a bad sector over & over, and it's called the click of death. I would connect it to a computer and use the WD diagnostics to zero the drive (at least the short write zeros test). Then bless it in the Bolt and try running MFSR again.

If it still acts up after that it's probably time to run the full write zeros test and the long read test. MFSR should be able to read MFSR drives, but I don't recall if I ever specifically tested that scenario with 8TB drives. I'll try it tomorrow morning to see if it's just a stupid bug, but theoretically the only thing that should be able to cause that error message would be a 10TB drive.


----------



## ClearToLand

JCN said:


> ...*I could hear the drive like clicking every few seconds*...


How old is the HDD? Is it one that you 'shucked'?

I don't like running External 3.5" HDDs 24x7 because of the excessive heat generated. Now that I'm older, and a little wiser, I have CrystalDiskInfo running in my Sys Tray. When I use my Seagate 3TB 3.5" External for extended writing sessions, I have a small fan in a vacuum-vise that I use to keep it somewhat cool(er).


ggieseke said:


> A clicking sound every few seconds isn't a good sign. Usually that means that the drive is stuck trying to read a bad sector over & over, and it's called the click of death. *I would connect it to a computer and use the WD diagnostics to zero the drive (at least the short write zeros test).* Then bless it in the Bolt and try running MFSR again.
> 
> *If it still acts up after that it's probably time to run the full write zeros test and the long read test...*


I had a second 2.5" HDD (first was HGST, second was WD) fail in my HP G7-1310US laptop that I was using as a HTPC more than likely due to overheating (each HDD lasted ~2 years). WD DLG wouldn't acknowledge it's existence so I used ViVard 0.4 from the UBCD (Ultimate Boot CD). It found, and re-mapped over 1000 consecutive bad sectors (well, I don't know how many it could actually re-map before it ran out of space). Funny thing, I saw no warning that things were going south, just that the HDD appeared to be getting slower and slower so I finally ran a CHKDSK and it would consistently hang in the same spot after many hours. After ViVard, booting into Linux (from UBCD) allowed me to recover all the data on the HDD via my LAN.


----------



## JCN

ggieseke said:


> A clicking sound every few seconds isn't a good sign. Usually that means that the drive is stuck trying to read a bad sector over & over, and it's called the click of death. I would connect it to a computer and use the WD diagnostics to zero the drive (at least the short write zeros test). Then bless it in the Bolt and try running MFSR again.
> 
> If it still acts up after that it's probably time to run the full write zeros test and the long read test. MFSR should be able to read MFSR drives, but I don't recall if I ever specifically tested that scenario with 8TB drives. I'll try it tomorrow morning to see if it's just a stupid bug, but theoretically the only thing that should be able to cause that error message would be a 10TB drive.


Yeah when I heard that sound the bolt green light was off so I thought that was kind of strange so what I did was after I couldn't do the format I went down and plugged it back in paired to CableCARD did all that stuff on both the bolts and it seems to be working fine. It was almost like the hard drive was looking for something from the Bolt. It is interesting though that error code. Only you would know. It was definitely over my head.


----------



## JCN

ClearToLand said:


> How old is the HDD? Is it one that you 'shucked'?
> 
> I don't like running External 3.5" HDDs 24x7 because of the excessive heat generated. Now that I'm older, and a little wiser, I have CrystalDiskInfo running in my Sys Tray. When I use my Seagate 3TB 3.5" External for extended writing sessions, I have a small fan in a vacuum-vise that I use to keep it somewhat cool(er).
> I had a second 2.5" HDD (first was HGST, second was WD) fail in my HP G7-1310US laptop that I was using as a HTPC more than likely due to overheating (each HDD lasted ~2 years). WD DLG wouldn't acknowledge it's existence so I used ViVard 0.4 from the UBCD (Ultimate Boot CD). It found, and re-mapped over 1000 consecutive bad sectors (well, I don't know how many it could actually re-map before it ran out of space). Funny thing, I saw no warning that things were going south, just that the HDD appeared to be getting slower and slower so I finally ran a CHKDSK and it would consistently hang in the same spot after many hours. After ViVard, booting into Linux (from UBCD) allowed me to recover all the data on the HDD via my LAN.


Yeah I think it was that the bolt was probably sleeping or something. Both drives are under a year old and I run them pretty cool. Like 85 degrees. At least that's what the case thermometer reads, don't know how accurate that really is. They're in a remote location with lots of free conditioned air.


----------



## JCN

jlin said:


> Can you show me a before and after picture? I'm interested in getting a similar setup for my Bolt as well.


































I had the Bolt cover on, with the hard drive cover removed and that's where the sata cable exits the Bolt. Now I just leave the total cover off, free air because I can. They are in a closed door office. Hard drive and fan power are disconnected. I think the only difference I see is that when I was using the electronics in the hard drive enclosure connected esata I thought the drive would sleep when the bolt was in power saving. I could be wrong.


----------



## aaronwt

What does it mean when msfr says


> This drive would have 1 media regions, which isn't supported at this time.


This would be a drive that I would assume is based on 20.7.2 RC24. SInce my Bolt had updated to it and this is a 1TB drive I put in it.

EDIT: Crap!! I forgot that msfr only works on larger drives. Nevermind.


----------



## ThAbtO

MSFR does not work on any drives smaller than 3TB.


----------



## fcfc2

ThAbtO said:


> MSFR does not work on any drives smaller than 3TB.


There is a new private release, ask for it with a PM, that is supposed to work on the smaller drives.


----------



## ggieseke

aaronwt said:


> What does it mean when msfr says
> 
> This would be a drive that I would assume is based on 20.7.2 RC24. SInce my Bolt had updated to it and this is a 1TB drive I put in it.
> 
> EDIT: Crap!! I forgot that msfr only works on larger drives. Nevermind.


PM sent (MFSR 1.0.0.5 private release). Let me know how it goes.


----------



## aaronwt

Thanks. I used it on a 3TB WD AV drive I just put in a ROamio OTA. And I used it on a 1TB Toshiba drive in the Bolt.

Although I ended up removing the 1TB Toshiba since it would make a relatively loud noise every few seconds When reading/writing 4+ streams to the drive. So I ended up using mfsr on the 500GB WD AV drive that comes with the Bolt. And I put that in the Bolt for now. I'll fill it up and see if I run into any issues.


----------



## sliderbob

What would be the best way to do this scenario..1 have 1 roamio with 1.5tb drive and a roamio plus with 4tb drive...both about 85% full and I want to purchase the 8tb red WD80EFZX drive to replace the 4tb in the Roamio plus and I want to save all recordings, if possible.


----------



## jmbach

sliderbob said:


> What would be the best way to do this scenario..1 have 1 roamio with 1.5tb drive and a roamio plus with 4tb drive...both about 85% full and I want to purchase the 8tb red WD80EFZX drive to replace the 4tb in the Roamio plus and I want to save all recordings, if possible.


Not possible yet unless you offload all your recordings on a PC and then restore them after you create the 8 TB image with MFSR.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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## aaronwt

ggieseke said:


> PM sent (MFSR 1.0.0.5 private release). Let me know how it goes.


I've been running MFSR 1.0.0.5 on a 500GB drive now for almost two weeks with no issues. The drive is running consistently at 100% full and it's been fine.


----------



## ggieseke

aaronwt said:


> I've been running MFSR 1.0.0.5 on a 500GB drive now for almost two weeks with no issues. The drive is running consistently at 100% full and it's been fine.


I know it's hard to tell given all the variables like internet traffic and the state of TiVo's servers at any given moment, but do you see any difference in performance?


----------



## aaronwt

ggieseke said:


> I know it's hard to tell given all the variables like internet traffic and the state of TiVo's servers at any given moment, but do you see any difference in performance?


I've not noticed any difference. All my Bolts seem just as snappy.


----------



## byonik

byonik said:


> PSA: I successfully upgraded a Roamio Plus to an 8TB WD80EZZX that was pulled from a WD 8TB MyBook. So far, so good. Recording capacity is showing 1281 HD hours now.
> 
> The WD80EZZX is supposedly an HGST He8 "HelioSeal" drive running at 5400 with TLER disabled. I have also seen a some reports indicating the 8TB WD Red is also an HGST He8, but with TLER enabled and spinning at 7200. I've always had good luck with HGST drives, so hopefully this one keeps the streak alive.


Well, here we are 10 months later, and I'm sad to report my WD80EZZX is dying. Got the GSOD boot loop on my Roamio this week, and after running various Tivo diagnostics, I extracted the HDD and ran WD diagnostics on it, which found many errors (wouldn't even finish test).

So I'm now attempting to clone it to a new WD80EFAX Red I just liberated from a WD EasyStore. Hopefully this one will last more than a year!


----------



## collin

jmbach said:


> Not possible yet unless you offload all your recordings on a PC and then restore them after you create the 8 TB image with MFSR.


What software or method would be used to offload onto PC and then restore them?

I'm familiar with KMTTG to bring recordings onto PC but not sure if this is the tool to put them back onto the Tivo. I want to upgrade the 2TB drive from my Roamio but move existing recordings and season passes to the larger drive. I understand KMTTG can do that for the season passes but am not sure how to do the recordings or if this is even possible. I am reading the DVRBARS thread but it's not clear if it can copy to a larger drive and while keeping the extra space.


----------



## jmbach

collin said:


> What software or method would be used to offload onto PC and then restore them?
> 
> I'm familiar with KMTTG to bring recordings onto PC but not sure if this is the tool to put them back onto the Tivo. I want to upgrade the 2TB drive from my Roamio but move existing recordings and season passes to the larger drive. I understand KMTTG can do that for the season passes but am not sure how to do the recordings or if this is even possible. I am reading the DVRBARS thread but it's not clear if it can copy to a larger drive and while keeping the extra space.


Good questions and I am not 100% sure of the answer. I have used KMTTG and Pytivo a long while back to do just that. However I have not kept up with those programs and with all the changes TiVo has done, not sure if all the original functionality is still present. Would investigate those threads for those answers.

DvrBARS is for backup and restore for drives 2 TB or less. It does not expand.

Sent from my SM-G950U1 using Tapatalk


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## Dan203

My version of pyTivo is pretty easy to use and works both ways. (Download and upload)


----------



## zombiephysicist

2 Questions:

(1) When will version MFSR 1.0.0.5 be released?
(2) Anyone using a 4TB or 5TB 2.5" drive on a Bolt(+) for a decently long period of time with no problems? I'm reading about all the 4TB problems (I guess the only 4/5TB 2.5" drives are Seagates) and wondering if it's worth upgrading from the 3TB drive?

Perhaps question 2 is more appropriately answered in its own thread here?
Success Upgrading Bolt(+) with 4TB, 5TB + 2.5" Internal Drives?


----------



## ggieseke

If you want 1.0.0.5 for a drive under 3TB just let me know. That's the only change, and I haven't tested it on larger drives yet to make sure that I didn't introduce a bug.


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## zombiephysicist

ggieseke said:


> If you want 1.0.0.5 for a drive under 3TB just let me know. That's the only change, and I haven't tested it on larger drives yet to make sure that I didn't introduce a bug.


Oh I see, it wouldn't offer any advantages on a 2.5" 5TB drive?

I ordered one to give it a try. For some reason I thought you mentioned that 1.0.0.5 offered better alignment (of stuff I don't understand that helps with efficiency and wear/tear), but looks like I have that wrong. That those alignment features are already baked in for larger than 3TB drives already as of 1.0.0.4, but this now introduces those features for smaller than 3TB drives?

Oh yea, and happy to test 1.0.0.5 version and to confirm it works on big drives too.


----------



## ggieseke

zombiephysicist said:


> Oh I see, it wouldn't offer any advantages on a 2.5" 5TB drive?
> 
> I ordered one to give it a try. For some reason I thought you mentioned that 1.0.0.5 offered better alignment (of stuff I don't understand that helps with efficiency and wear/tear), but looks like I have that wrong. That those alignment features are already baked in for larger than 3TB drives already as of 1.0.0.4, but this now introduces those features for smaller than 3TB drives?
> 
> Oh yea, and happy to test 1.0.0.5 version and to confirm it works on big drives too.


Correct. Aligning the application and inode 'zones' correctly for AF drives has always been in mfsr, but it wouldn't run at all on drives under 3TB because I never considered that possibility when writing a program to build drives in the 4-8TB range. 1.0.0.5 bypasses the math that calculates the number of media zones needed and hard codes that value to two for smaller drives, which lets the rest of the program run.

PM sent.


----------



## zombiephysicist

ggieseke said:


> Correct. Aligning the application and inode 'zones' correctly for AF drives has always been in mfsr, but it wouldn't run at all on drives under 3TB because I never considered that possibility when writing a program to build drives in the 4-8TB range. 1.0.0.5 bypasses the math that calculates the number of media zones needed and hard codes that value to two for smaller drives, which lets the rest of the program run.
> 
> PM sent.


Thanks so much. I used 1.0.0.5 to format a Seagate 2.5" 5TB drive. It worked like a charm. It formats down to around 4.6TB usable, and the Tivo shows 799hrs of total storage. Now we just have to wait and see if this 5TB dies after 6-9 months like the 4TB units seem to for others, or if it will go the distance.

Few interesting facts that I didn't see mentioned (they probably were mentioned but I just didn't come across it).

First, the 3TB that comes with the Bolt+ now was a WD Blue drive. It was also a 15mm drive like the 5TB Seagate replacing it. I've seen others mention a 3TB Toshiba drive, which must be another source. Here is the table of the WD drive, for those that want to get the exact same drive as an upgrade.

Thanks so much again!


----------



## HerronScott

zombiephysicist said:


> First, the 3TB that comes with the Bolt+ now was a WD Blue drive. It was also a 15mm drive like the 5TB Seagate replacing it. I've seen others mention a 3TB Toshiba drive, which must be another source. Here is the table of the WD drive, for those that want to get the exact same drive as an upgrade.


It has been mentioned but unfortunately that drive (WD30NPRZ) has a limited number of sources and as a result is very expensive for the size (~$290).

Scott


----------



## zombiephysicist

Has anyone formatted/tried using the new seagate ST12000NM0007 12TB drive?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0759Q9FXZ/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Thinking of updating the Roamio Pro...


----------



## ggieseke

zombiephysicist said:


> Has anyone formatted/tried using the new seagate ST12000NM0007 12TB drive?
> 
> https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0759Q9FXZ/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
> 
> Thinking of updating the Roamio Pro...


The mfsr limit is still 8TB.


----------



## sfhub

ggieseke said:


> The mfsr limit is still 8TB.


Is that predicated on a known TiVo OS/App limit (meaning known OS limitation) or an availability of 12TB drives to test with (meaning in theory it should work, but not enabled until drives are available for testing), or possibly both (meaning there might be a limit, but one might not know until testing)?


----------



## zombiephysicist

Interesting


ggieseke said:


> The mfsr limit is still 8TB.


Thanks, that's good to know. If you are interested in a guinea pig, I'm willing to give it a shot formatting it up.


----------



## jmbach

sfhub said:


> Is that predicated on a known TiVo OS/App limit (meaning known OS limitation) or an availability of 12TB drives to test with (meaning in theory it should work, but not enabled until drives are available for testing), or possibly both (meaning there might be a limit, but one might not know until testing)?


That is based on current knowledge of TiVo OS limitations.

Sent from my SM-G950U1 using Tapatalk


----------



## ggieseke

It's predicated on a known bug in the TiVo OS that won't let you have MFS partitions over 2TB and the fact that there are only 4 MFS partitions on a Roamio or Bolt internal drive. Weaknees is selling 10TB internal drives, so they must have figured out some way around it but they forgot to tell me how.


----------



## zombiephysicist

ggieseke said:


> It's predicated on a known bug in the TiVo OS that won't let you have MFS partitions over 2TB and the fact that there are only 4 MFS partitions on a Roamio or Bolt internal drive. Weaknees is selling 10TB internal drives, so they must have figured out some way around it but they forgot to tell me how.


You took the words out of my mouth as they are selling it. I wonder if there is some way to setup multiple partitions on the internal drive almost as if it's multiple drives setup? Maybe 2 5TB partitions?

But you're right, they sell 10TB single and 2 10TB upgrade kits here:
TiVo Roamio Pro Series5 TiVo Upgrade Kits and Hard Drives


----------



## sfhub

ggieseke said:


> It's predicated on a known bug in the TiVo OS that won't let you have MFS partitions over 2TB and the fact that there are only 4 MFS partitions on a Roamio or Bolt internal drive. Weaknees is selling 10TB internal drives, so they must have figured out some way around it but they forgot to tell me how.


It has been a while so excuse my poor memory.

I remember there were various limitations. I think there was a 15 partition limit in the apple partition map. Many of those partitions seemed to be occupied by the OS/swap/etc. I remember there were some paired application and media partitions. I remember there was some concept of "Zones" I remember WinMFS added a third application/media partition pair using up 15 partition slots. There may have also been a partition name limitation.

Now this part I am a little fuzzy on. I vaguely recall there was some discussion that the assumption that application and media partitions needed to be paired wasn't actually true and this may have allowed further expansion when previously it was thought no partition slots were left. I might be remembering incorrectly.

I'd have to look back at my notes, but I recall I was only supposed to be able to expand my S3 OLED drive once, but WinMFS had some change that allowed me to expand a second time.

With the OS sitting on flash memory has that freed up any more partition slots?

Is any of this relevant or is it all already accounted for?


----------



## zombiephysicist

A friend of mine just ordered a 10TB upgrade from weakness, I probably can plug it into my PC and take a look for you guys if you like. I don't know anything about this type of stuff, so you guys would have to give me commands to get any dumps of information you might want... no "rm * -r" jokes please 

He should get it in the next few days.


----------



## sfhub

Ok, I found the post I was thinking of now.



> Re: MFS partition move/resize tool Tue, 29 March 2005 19:16 Go to previous messageGo to previous message
> Jamie is currently offline Jamie
> Messages: 13
> Registered: October 2004
> Member
> 
> I was interested in doing an MFS zone resize tool a while back, but I ended up doing a quick and dirty one-off to expand my disk instead, as described below. wc_b suggested the approach.
> 
> The key insight is the observation that MFS zones need not be in a one-to-one correspondence with partitions. You can coalesce adjacent partitions together, and as long as they were adjacent in the MFS superblock devlist, and you delete the additional devices there, MFS doesn't care.
> 
> To expand a disk with a full partition table:
> 
> * Copy the disk to the new larger disk with an mfsbackup|mfsrestore pipeline. Do not 'optimize' the partition layout in the restore. You want partitions 13-15 to be contiguous on disk.
> * Run pdisk on the new disk and verify that partitions 13-15 are contiguous. Delete partitions 13-15 and replace them with a single partition 13 that covers the space of the previous 13-15.
> * Edit the devlist in the MFS superblock to list only partitions 10-13, dropping 14 and 15. You just need to put a zero byte after "/dev/hda13" in the devlist string. The devlist is at byte offset 36 in the first MFS partition (10).
> * MFS will reject the patched superblock unless you update the CRC. mfs_info -f in recent mfs_* releases can do that.
> 
> The resulting disk should be acceptable to the tivo and to mfsadd. I've never tried to back mine up, so I'm not sure about mfsbackup. If you want to play it safe, run mfscheck/fsfix on it before and after running mfsadd, and save the original disk.
> 
> YMMV. If this method corrupts your disk, it's not my fault.


So what causes the 4 partition limit?

Is it because that is what TiVo recognizes. Is it because that is how much space there is in the devlist to specify partitions or something else?

Do the data structures in MFS zones have any 2TB type limitations? Are MFS zones decoupled from the physical partitions. Could you for example add one 2TB media partition that went up to the 8TB point, but then when MFS Zones gets coupled to the parition, lie to MFS Zones and tell it that partition is greater than 2TB, so while the partition map only pointed up to 8TB, the MFS Zones gets tricked into accessing all 12TB, accessing space on the drive that hasn't been allocated to any partition?

Is there some trick to change the block size from 512 to 4k so the 2TB partition limit becomes an 8TB partition limit (I'm assuming the 2TB limit is based on 512byte blocks and the limitations of a 32-bit number)

Again, I am thinking out loud, but for example, could you tell the OS that this disk should be referenced using 4K blocks, then adjust all the partition values appropriately (size divided by 4, start location divided by 4, etc.) thereby allowing greater than 2TB partitions to be mounted by the kernel, but then in the MFS Zones just use 512b block locations, since the MFS Zones seem to be divorced somewhat from how the partitions are specified. This assumes everything was 4k-aligned to start with or the division math doesn't work out.

It has been many years since I looked at this stuff and I didn't look at it that closely even back then, so excuse me if I am making suggestions that don't make sense. I am just brainstorming out loud with only minimal knowledge of the internal MFS structures.

Also to clarify my knowledge (these are questions, not statements)...
1) the source of the 2TB partition limit is a 32-bit value limitation in the Apple Partition Map?
2) the source of the 4 partition limit is the number of characters allocated to specify the devlist in the MFS superblock?
3) when people talk about 64-bit MFS layout, they are talking about the MFS Zones?


----------



## ggieseke

On Roamios and Bolts you can't add partitions like you can on Premieres, or I'd already have a 10/12 TB version. There's some kind of hardware mapping between the APM and the flash memory that pukes on the floor if there's not a one-to-one mapping between what they expect to see and what's on the drive. Some partitions like the OS get redirected to flash memory, and others are expected to be on the physical drive.

It's not a limitation of the APM, it's because the OS hasn't been updated to match the capabilities they designed into their own 64-bit file system. The auto-format routine that lets you build drives up to 3TB works perfectly on any size drive, but then the OS comes along and rejects it entirely. MFSR takes several different paths to avoid that bug like creating 3 media partitions and one app partition (5-6TB) or even cramming a 4th media 'zone' into the one remaining app partition (8TB), but that's as far as I've gotten.

If anyone has any suggestions I'm all ears.


----------



## sfhub

ggieseke said:


> It's not a limitation of the APM, it's because the OS hasn't been updated to match the capabilities they designed into their own 64-bit file system.


To clarify the 2TB media partition limit is
1) Linux OS issue
2) TiVo App issue
3) Apple Partition issue
4) other
5) some combination of the above


----------



## ggieseke

sfhub said:


> To clarify the 2TB media partition limit is
> 1) Linux OS issue
> 2) TiVo App issue
> 3) Apple Partition issue
> 4) other
> 5) some combination of the above


Mostly #2. Their own auto-format routine creates a 64-bit MFS file system with two app partitions and two media partitions using the same basic layout that they have always used. All of the APM partitions, the MFS volume header, the zone headers, and zone bitmaps are perfect and it has no problem reading the entire thing.

Then along comes the bug. TiVo has always rounded down the MFS partitions in the APM to even multiples of 1024 sectors, and the total of those rounded down values is the total number of sectors in the MFS file system for everything (header structures, zones etc). That one little bit of code only adds the lower 32 bits of the 64-bit partition entries to the 64-bit total, and when it doesn't match the total that's already entered correctly in the volume header it reformats the drive to make it comply. That's why a 6TB drive might end up with less usable space than a 3TB drive.

The Linux OS used to choke on drives over 2TB but that was fixed when 20.3.8 came out for Premieres, long before Roamios were introduced.


----------



## sfhub

Please correct me if I'm wrong:

Standard APM looks like


Code:


 #:                type name                
 1: Apple_partition_map Apple                
 2:               Image Bootstrap 1          
 3:               Image Kernel 1            
 4:                Ext2 Root 1              
 5:               Image Bootstrap 2          
 6:               Image Kernel 2            
 7:                Ext2 Root 2              
 8:                Swap Linux swap          
 9:                Ext2 /var                
10:                 MFS MFS application region
11:                 MFS MFS media region    
12:                 MFS MFS application region 2
13:                 MFS MFS media region 2

Expanded 6TB APM looks like


Code:


 #:                type name                
 1: Apple_partition_map Apple                
 2:               Image Bootstrap 1          
 3:               Image Kernel 1            
 4:                Ext2 Root 1              
 5:               Image Bootstrap 2          
 6:               Image Kernel 2            
 7:                Ext2 Root 2              
 8:                Swap Linux swap          
 9:                Ext2 /var                
10:                 MFS MFS application region
11:                 MFS MFS media region    
12:                 MFS MFS application region 2
13:                 MFS MFS media region 2  
14:                 MFS New MFS Application  
15:                 MFS New MFS Media        
16:          Apple_Free Extra

Expanded 8TB APM looks like


Code:


 #:                  type name                      
  1   Apple_partition_map Apple                    
  2                 Image Bootstrap 1              
  3                 Image Kernel 1                  
  4                  Ext2 Root 1                    
  5                 Image Bootstrap 2              
  6                 Image Kernel 2                  
  7                  Ext2 Root 2                    
  8                  Swap Linux swap                
  9                  Ext2 /var                      
 10                   MFS MFS application region    
 11                   MFS MFS media region          
 12                   MFS MFS application region 2
 13                   MFS MFS media region 2   
 14                   MFS New MFS Application      
 15                   MFS New MFS Media            
 16                   MFS New MFS Media

Is there a reason APM #14 cannot be made MFS Media instead of MFS Application to create contiguous 8TB (APM #13,14,15,16) with appropriate adjustments to the MFS Zones, since there doesn't seem to be a one-to-one requirement between the MFS Zones and the APM partition entries.


----------



## jmbach

sfhub said:


> Please correct me if I'm wrong:
> 
> Standard APM looks like
> 
> 
> Code:
> 
> 
> #:                type name
> 1: Apple_partition_map Apple
> 2:               Image Bootstrap 1
> 3:               Image Kernel 1
> 4:                Ext2 Root 1
> 5:               Image Bootstrap 2
> 6:               Image Kernel 2
> 7:                Ext2 Root 2
> 8:                Swap Linux swap
> 9:                Ext2 /var
> 10:                 MFS MFS application region
> 11:                 MFS MFS media region
> 12:                 MFS MFS application region 2
> 13:                 MFS MFS media region 2
> 
> Expanded 6TB APM looks like
> 
> 
> Code:
> 
> 
> #:                type name
> 1: Apple_partition_map Apple
> 2:               Image Bootstrap 1
> 3:               Image Kernel 1
> 4:                Ext2 Root 1
> 5:               Image Bootstrap 2
> 6:               Image Kernel 2
> 7:                Ext2 Root 2
> 8:                Swap Linux swap
> 9:                Ext2 /var
> 10:                 MFS MFS application region
> 11:                 MFS MFS media region
> 12:                 MFS MFS application region 2
> 13:                 MFS MFS media region 2
> 14:                 MFS New MFS Application
> 15:                 MFS New MFS Media
> 16:          Apple_Free Extra
> 
> Expanded 8TB APM looks like
> 
> 
> Code:
> 
> 
> #:                  type name
> 1   Apple_partition_map Apple
> 2                 Image Bootstrap 1
> 3                 Image Kernel 1
> 4                  Ext2 Root 1
> 5                 Image Bootstrap 2
> 6                 Image Kernel 2
> 7                  Ext2 Root 2
> 8                  Swap Linux swap
> 9                  Ext2 /var
> 10                   MFS MFS application region
> 11                   MFS MFS media region
> 12                   MFS MFS application region 2
> 13                   MFS MFS media region 2
> 14                   MFS New MFS Application
> 15                   MFS New MFS Media
> 16                   MFS New MFS Media
> 
> Is there a reason APM #14 cannot be made MFS Media instead of MFS Application to create contiguous 8TB (APM #13,14,15,16) with appropriate adjustments to the MFS Zones, since there doesn't seem to be a one-to-one requirement between the MFS Zones and the APM partition entries.


Unfortunately TiVo has decreased the number of available partitions in Roamio and newer models to 14 max. Anything over, it reformats the drive. In Premiere and newer models the standard partition layout has 14 partitions defined. Partition 14 is a Sqlite partition and cannot be used as a MFS partition.
So in Roamio and newer models you have partition 10,11,12,13 as MFS partitions and in the Premiere you can have partition 15 as well.

Sent from my SM-G950U1 using Tapatalk


----------



## sfhub

jmbach said:


> Unfortunately TiVo has decreased the number of available partitions in Roamio and newer models to 14 max. Anything over, it reformats the drive.


Is it the presence of more than 14 partitions in the APM the causes the reformat to trigger or the attempt to reference the partitions that causes the reformat?

If the former, is it just some hard coded integrity check in the code, or is there some accompanying modifiable area that might be used for post-production adjustments to # of partitions.

Just thinking out loud, for example is there something in the sqlite database that can be modified that would allow more partitions like in the past?

Is it possible to access the logs and see what it is complaining about with > 14 partitions?


----------



## ggieseke

sfhub said:


> Is it the presence of more than 14 partitions in the APM the causes the reformat to trigger or the attempt to reference the partitions that causes the reformat?
> 
> If the former, is it just some hard coded integrity check in the code, or is there some accompanying modifiable area that might be used for post-production adjustments to # of partitions.
> 
> Just thinking out loud, for example is there something in the sqlite database that can be modified that would allow more partitions like in the past?
> 
> Is it possible to access the logs and see what it is complaining about with > 14 partitions?


I believe (speculation only) that Roamios and Bolts use a hardware chip that I saw several years ago that remaps some partitions to flash memory and leaves others on the platter drive as far as the OS is concerned. In any case, every attempt that I have made to add a new partition or even to remove one has resulted in an instant reformat of the drive long before the OS kicks in and starts logging what's going on. Obviously Weaknees knows more than we do at this point, but I don't expect them to volunteer that information.


----------



## sfhub

ggieseke said:


> I believe (speculation only) that Roamios and Bolts use a hardware chip that I saw several years ago that remaps some partitions to flash memory and leaves others on the platter drive as far as the OS is concerned. In any case, every attempt that I have made to add a new partition or even to remove one has resulted in an instant reformat of the drive long before the OS kicks in and starts logging what's going on. Obviously Weaknees knows more than we do at this point, but I don't expect them to volunteer that information.


Hmm, usually those hardware chips that check integrity of the boot process look at hash and signed critical portions that are unchanging. Perhaps that is the trigger causing the reformats.


----------



## ggieseke

I'm just guessing about the hardware, but I have given up on trying to add partitions like you can on Premieres.


----------



## sfhub

ggieseke said:


> I'm just guessing about the hardware, but I have given up on trying to add partitions like you can on Premieres.


Just brainstorming of course. If the reason for the reformat is the bootloader is checking a signed hash of specific portions of the Apple Partition Map and it is failing when there are changes, then perhaps there may be different partition tables (with associated signed hash) out there that could be used as a basis for more partitions. Perhaps that is what weaknees got access to. Yes, I know, if the assumption is wrong, garbage in, garbage out.


----------



## zombiephysicist

So here is the iBored shot of the 10TB drive from weeknees, and also a shot of the 10tb drive they use, a WD purple drive.


----------



## HerronScott

zombiephysicist said:


> So here is the iBored shot of the 10TB drive from weeknees, and also a shot of the 10tb drive they use, a WD purple drive.


It would be helpful to have the mfsinfo partition information for the drive.

Scott


----------



## dvr_kamikaze

PM Sent. I've got a 2TB Western Digital AV-GP drive that I'd like to try it on. Thanks.


----------



## Eli42

Scott, what is mfsinfo? This? MFS Tools - Upgrading america one TiVo at a time
What command line should be run?


----------



## Legacy777

I thought I'd share this in case anyone else runs across this in the future.

I purchased a Toshiba 3TB drive (MQ03ABB300) and was going to run MFS tools on it for posterity sake and when trying to do so the drive only showed up as a 746 GB in Windows. After a little searching I ran across this link:

How Can You Fix 3TB Drive Only Shows 746GB in Windows 10

I determined that my particular issue was because my USB to SATA converter only supported 2TB. I ended up using a SATA to ESATA cable to connect to my laptop and the drive showed up properly in Windows. I was then able to use MFS Tools to format the drive.

Josh


----------



## sfhub

Legacy777 said:


> I determined that my particular issue was because my USB to SATA converter only supported 2TB. I ended up using a SATA to ESATA cable to connect to my laptop and the drive showed up properly in Windows. I was then able to use MFS Tools to format the drive.


This also works
Vantec IDE/SATA TO USB 3.0 Adapter


----------



## ClearToLand

Once upon a time we had a 127GB motherboard / BIOS limit on PCs (something to do with LBA48 IIRC? Or was in Win2K / WinXP?). Same (kind of) story, different day...


----------



## sfhub

ClearToLand said:


> Once upon a time we had a 127GB motherboard / BIOS limit on PCs (something to do with LBA48 IIRC? Or was in Win2K / WinXP?). Same (kind of) story, different day...


There are limits everywhere with kludges upon kludges to work around. 24vs48-bit LBA in BIOS, 32vs64-bit addressing in drivers, advanced 4k sectors, SATA, SATA2, SATA3, PCIe, NVMe, etc. etc.

Partial list

Large Disk HOWTO: History of BIOS and IDE limits


----------



## ClearToLand

sfhub said:


> There are limits everywhere with kludges upon kludges to work around. 24vs48-bit LBA in BIOS, 32vs64-bit addressing in drivers, advanced 4k sectors, etc. etc.
> 
> Partial list
> 
> Large Disk HOWTO: History of BIOS and IDE limits


Ah yes, _memories_... 

I spent a few minutes with GOOGLE looking for a LINK like yours, but couldn't readily find one.

While my Dad, who lived one week past his 100th birthday, and my MIL, who missed her 103rd birthday by 3 months, saw many technological advances during their LONG lives, as '_simple folk_', I don't believe that it affected them (i.e. Radio vs TV, AM vs FM, Black & White vs Color, Rotary vs Touchtone, etc...) as much as it affects me - a 'Techie / Nerd / Baby Boomer', who has had to deal with Moore's Law and (sometimes) discard perfectly good 'devices' simply because the 'standard' has changed so fast (i.e. NTSC vs ATSC; Reel-to-reel vs cassette / 8-track vs CD vs MP3; etc...).

My grandchildren will NEVER understand how folks could even survive WITHOUT computers / tablets / smartphones / *INTERNET*, etc...


----------



## Legacy777

sfhub said:


> This also works
> Vantec IDE/SATA TO USB 3.0 Adapter


Thanks! It may be time to replace my existing adapter.


----------



## zombiephysicist

Eli42 said:


> Scott, what is mfsinfo? This? MFS Tools - Upgrading america one TiVo at a time
> What command line should be run?


Is there a way to run this off a usb stick? I have this drive until Monday. I gave the msfr author some of the info including a partition he. dump, so I think he's working on it. So I think he's working on it. I can upload it here if there is interest.


----------



## jmbach

zombiephysicist said:


> Is there a way to run this off a usb stick? I have this drive until Monday. I gave the msfr author some of the info including a partition he. dump, so I think he's working on it. So I think he's working on it. I can upload it here if there is interest.


Go here.


----------



## zombiephysicist

jmbach said:


> Go here.


Sorry this is a bit too complicated for me. I made 3 dumps of the disk2file dumps that I can share. I already gave them to gg, so hopefully he can make sense of them.


----------



## jmbach

zombiephysicist said:


> Sorry this is a bit too complicated for me. I made 3 dumps of the disk2file dumps that I can share. I already gave them to gg, so hopefully he can make sense of them.


I am sure he will.
If you don't feel confident is burning an ISO of MFSTools 3.2 or unzipping the USB/HDD version and writing to a USB stick, then don't. The commands to get the information are pretty easy.


----------



## zombiephysicist

jmbach said:


> I am sure he will.
> If you don't feel confident is burning an ISO of MFSTools 3.2 or unzipping the USB/HDD version and writing to a USB stick, then don't. The commands to get the information are pretty easy.


I could do the ISO, but my machine no longer has a CD. The USB stick seemed involved. I got it and couldn't even decompress it the .tar.gz format (windows 10 doesnt seem to handle that natively)...I figured it would go downhill from there.


----------



## jmbach

zombiephysicist said:


> I could do the ISO, but my machine no longer has a CD. The USB stick seemed involved. I got it and couldn't even decompress it the .tar.gz format (windows 10 doesnt seem to handle that natively)...I figured it would go downhill from there.


Install 7zip on your windows computer. It will decompress just about everything. However, since this an MFSR thread we should probably discuss this via PM if you are considering going further with guidance.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


----------



## HerronScott

jmbach said:


> Go here.


I'm assuming WinMFS won't work on the newer Roamio/Bolt drives for at least dumping the mfsinfo?

Scott


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## jmbach

No for a couple of reasons but the main thing is the change of endianess. 

Sent from my SM-G950U1 using Tapatalk


----------



## ggieseke

I'm pretty sure even MFSTools 3.2 won't recognize it as a TiVo drive.


----------



## jmbach

ggieseke said:


> I'm pretty sure even MFSTools 3.2 won't recognize it as a TiVo drive.


For the most part it does. Pretty sure mfsinfo will in all cases. Copying and backing up it depends on what version OS auto formatted the drive because the info in the boot sector is not as consistent as it used to be. Reason why the program bootsectorfix is loaded on the ISO as well.

Sent from my SM-G950U1 using Tapatalk


----------



## dvr_kamikaze

dvr_kamikaze said:


> PM Sent. I've got a 2TB Western Digital AV-GP drive that I'd like to try it on. Thanks.


ggieseke, thanks for the v. 1.0.0.5. I'm up and running with no issues. Donation made. Well, I do have one issue, the WD20EURX drive I bought from Amazon has no warranty. The page shows a 3 year warranty, but when I tried to register it with WD, no dice. The seller was the prime provider and when I contacted them about this, the best offer they've made is giving me a 1 year warranty from them or letting me return it. I'm thinking of returning it because I got sold a pig in a poke, but I can't find a good source for the WD20EURX that will have a full warranty. I can find Purples, but I've seen that you are not a fan of the purple drives due to the lower R/W cycle ratings. Is that still the case with the newest PURZ drives? Last version was PURX. I can't find R/W cycle info, just load/unload cycles that are rated at half of what Red drives are rated for. Weaknees is selling the Purple drives. Any changed opinions?


----------



## ggieseke

The Annualized Workload Rating is the same on Reds & Purples these days (180TB/yr), and as you noted Weaknees is selling Purples. WD also bumped the warranty up to 3 years. Load/unload ratings don't really worry me because I have everything on a good UPS and never let the drives spin down. I'm on the fence as opposed to my earlier "I wouldn't pee on a Purple" opinion, but I just don't know.

I'll probably stick to Reds if for no other reason than that I already have a bunch of them around including spares. I'd love to see a really long run from HD Tune Pro and compare it to this.








.


----------



## dvr_kamikaze

ggieseke said:


> The Annualized Workload Rating is the same on Reds & Purples these days (180TB/yr), and as you noted Weaknees is selling Purples. WD also bumped the warranty up to 3 years. Load/unload ratings don't really worry me because I have everything on a good UPS and never let the drives spin down. I'm on the fence as opposed to my earlier "I wouldn't pee on a Purple" opinion, but I just don't know.
> 
> I'll probably stick to Reds if for no other reason than that I already have a bunch of them around including spares. I'd love to see a really long run from HD Tune Pro and compare it to this.
> 
> View attachment 30933
> .


Thanks for the information. It's now a non-issue for me though as Amazon refunded me $30 after I contacted them about the hard drive not actually having the warranty quoted on the sales page. If I do upgrade the drive in the future, I'll only be looking at Reds and Purples. The WD20EURX drive I got from Amazon was born in 2014. New old stock I guess.


----------



## MixMastaMM

I'm getting an error saying "WriteFile" when trying to reformat my Seagate STDR4000100. Running on Win 10, ran MFS as admin with compatibility set to Win7

Tried on another PC, worked like a charm.


----------



## ggieseke

MixMastaMM said:


> I'm getting an error saying "WriteFile" when trying to reformat my Seagate STDR4000100. Running on Win 10, ran MFS as admin with compatibility set to Win7
> 
> Tried on another PC, worked like a charm.


The exact WriteFile error number would help, but the most likely culprit is some other program (antivirus etc) holding the drive open. Glad you got it to work.

You shouldn't need to set the compatibility mode. I wrote it on 8.1 and have tested it on 7 - 10.


----------



## vbgregg

I had a little problem and wondered if someone can clear things up for me. I have a Roamio and a Bolt, and I planned to upgrade both. I figured I would do the following:

1. remove the old hard drive and insert the new hard drive
2. start the Tivo and pull the plug when it asks for the country
3. remove new hard drive and put it in a Windows computer
4. run MFSR
5. put new hard drive back into Tivo and enjoy more storage

I had some recordings on the old hard drive. After step #3, I also put the old hard drive back into the Tivo. I planned to transfer the recordings to a different Tivo.

All was fine when I did this with the Roamio, but not with the Bolt. After putting the old drive back into the Bolt, it acted as if the old hard dive was empty. I did not delete any recordings or do anything other than remove the old drive, start to format the new drive, and then put the old drive back.

Does the Bolt always wipe a drive each time it is installed, even if it is already formatted correctly and filled with recordings? This did not happen with the Roamio. I guess I should have transferred the recordings before doing anything else.

Thanks in advance for any clarifications.

Gregg


----------



## jmbach

vbgregg said:


> I had a little problem and wondered if someone can clear things up for me. I have a Roamio and a Bolt, and I planned to upgrade both. I figured I would do the following:
> 
> 1. remove the old hard drive and insert the new hard drive
> 2. start the Tivo and pull the plug when it asks for the country
> 3. remove new hard drive and put it in a Windows computer
> 4. run MFSR
> 5. put new hard drive back into Tivo and enjoy more storage
> 
> I had some recordings on the old hard drive. After step #3, I also put the old hard drive back into the Tivo. I planned to transfer the recordings to a different Tivo.
> 
> All was fine when I did this with the Roamio, but not with the Bolt. After putting the old drive back into the Bolt, it acted as if the old hard dive was empty. I did not delete any recordings or do anything other than remove the old drive, start to format the new drive, and then put the old drive back.
> 
> Does the Bolt always wipe a drive each time it is installed, even if it is already formatted correctly and filled with recordings? This did not happen with the Roamio. I guess I should have transferred the recordings before doing anything else.
> 
> Thanks in advance for any clarifications.
> 
> Gregg


It is unknown at this time why the Bolt does that but that is the current behavior people have experienced with the Bolts.

Sent from my SM-G950U1 using Tapatalk


----------



## vbgregg

jmbach said:


> It is unknown at this time why the Bolt does that but that is the current behavior people have experienced with the Bolts


Thanks for the quick and helpful reply. I guess I should have bought 2 Roamios rather than a Roamio and a Bolt, especially since the Roamio can take an 8-TB 3.5" drive. What does the Bolt do that the Roamio does not?


----------



## jmbach

vbgregg said:


> Thanks for the quick and helpful reply. I guess I should have bought 2 Roamios rather than a Roamio and a Bolt, especially since the Roamio can take an 8-TB 3.5" drive. What does the Bolt do that the Roamio does not?


Mainly 4K

Sent from my SM-G950U1 using Tapatalk


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## sfhub

vbgregg said:


> 1. remove the old hard drive and insert the new hard drive
> 
> I had some recordings on the old hard drive. After step #3, I also put the old hard drive back into the Tivo. I planned to transfer the recordings to a different Tivo.


Before step #1 would have been the good time to copy shows from one TiVo to the other (using TiVo Online for quickest selection of shows to transfer over) Copy protected stuff won't copy over though.


----------



## sfhub

vbgregg said:


> What does the Bolt do that the Roamio does not?


MoCA 2.0, more memory, faster CPU. The result is App load faster and definitely re-load much faster since they are more often in memory. Bolt's can also use the upcoming Vox remote without needing a dongle.

It isn't pretty, but you can run a long SATA cable direct from mainboard SATA port to the SATA port of a 3.5" drive sitting in an enclosure, if you want 8TB.


----------



## vbgregg

Thanks for the information. I appreciate the help.

Also, even though my recordings were gone, I thought that all of my OnePass stuff would be downloaded from Tivo Online, but I ended up re-doing all of that. I guess I assumed it would be re-loaded automatically. Is there some special procedure to follow, or did I just have to wait longer? I forced a connection to Tivo central twice, but pretty much all of my settings seemed to be gone, except for the name of my Bolt.


----------



## sfhub

vbgregg said:


> I forced a connection to Tivo central twice, but pretty much all of my settings seemed to be gone, except for the name of my Bolt.


When you look at the One Pass manager on TiVo Online for your unit, does (or did) it still have your One Passes from before the C&DE? It is possible TiVo changed this functionality. I haven't done a reset where I needed the One Pass from before the reset in a long time but when I did, I was also prepared to redo the list, but was pleasantly surprised they showed up the next day. I don't know when they showed up as I just got distracted before re-entering the One Passes.


----------



## vbgregg

When I went to Tivo Online, my Bolt showed up, but the One Pass list was empty.

I wondered if it might show up later (though I don't know why it would disappear in the first place), but I got impatient and probably only waited a few hours before simply re-entering all of the One Passes.


----------



## sfhub

vbgregg said:


> When I went to Tivo Online, my Bolt showed up, but the One Pass list was empty.
> 
> I wondered if it might show up later (though I don't know why it would disappear in the first place), but I got impatient and probably only waited a few hours before simply re-entering all of the One Passes.


Looking back, it is possible I was doing Clear Program Information & ToDo List rather than Clear & Delete Everything. I would have to experiment to see if that was the case.

I had a friend who didn't have ToDo list information at online.tivo.com and that was because of some opt-in "more" privacy he had asked for, but wasn't aware would have that effect.


----------



## TechnoJunky

jlin said:


> Alright.. bought the $160 WD 8TB external yesterday from Bestbuy, extracted the drive and put it into my $40 Craiglist Roamio. Here's the result!
> 
> What did you do to upgrade the bolt to 8tb? I want to do the same with the two bolts I have.


----------



## pm974

ggieseke said:


> If you want 1.0.0.5 for a drive under 3TB just let me know. That's the only change, and I haven't tested it on larger drives yet to make sure that I didn't introduce a bug.


How could I get 1.0.0.5? I'd like to try it on my 5tb.


----------



## ggieseke

pm974 said:


> How could I get 1.0.0.5? I'd like to try it on my 5tb.


PM sent.


----------



## pm974

ggieseke said:


> PM sent.


Thank you for the file.

I used it one my first PC and got this error:
DeviceIoControl
IOCTL_VOLUME_GET_VOLUME_DISK_EXTENTS
Then it turned out that I had Boxcryptor installed on that PC as the reformater kept looking for that drive letter.

I switch to PC#2 with a single drive, plugged the Seagate 5TB drive via a USB adapter, ran the 1.0.0.5 and everything went A-OK.

Thank you again. Made a dono.


----------



## mapott00

Is there a version that supports drives larger than 8tb? That would certainly be useful.

Mike


----------



## ggieseke

mapott00 said:


> Is there a version that supports drives larger than 8tb? That would certainly be useful.
> 
> Mike


Not yet. I would have sworn that it's impossible, but Weaknees now sells a 10TB drive for Roamios.

Back to the drawing board.


----------



## Ronald Pasqualini

ggieseke said:


> Here's version 1.0.0.2. I added support for Bolts and hopefully fixed the bug in post #184.
> 
> Early Bolts get a red screen error message when trying to format drives over 3TB. If it has already updated to 20.5.4a it will act like a Roamio running 20.4.6 or later and make it to Guided Setup. Either way, that's the time to hook the drive up to your PC and run mfsr.
> 
> Profs to telemark for providing disk images for me to work on and aaronwt for testing it.
> 
> 2016-02-21: Added version 1.0.0.3. It fixes a bug that ONLY affects Bolt drives over 4TB.
> 
> 2016-04-29: Version 1.0.0.4 works on 8TB drives.





ggieseke said:


> Here's version 1.0.0.2. I added support for Bolts and hopefully fixed the bug in post #184.
> 
> Early Bolts get a red screen error message when trying to format drives over 3TB. If it has already updated to 20.5.4a it will act like a Roamio running 20.4.6 or later and make it to Guided Setup. Either way, that's the time to hook the drive up to your PC and run mfsr.
> 
> Profs to telemark for providing disk images for me to work on and aaronwt for testing it.
> 
> 2016-02-21: Added version 1.0.0.3. It fixes a bug that ONLY affects Bolt drives over 4TB.
> 
> 2016-04-29: Version 1.0.0.4 works on 8TB drives.


Will Version 1.0.0.4 work on a Tivo Bolt with the following WD disk drive installed: Purple 8TB Surveillance Hard Disk Drive - 5400 RPM Class SATA 6 Gb/s 128MB Cache 3.5 Inch - WD80PURZ


----------



## ggieseke

Ronald Pasqualini said:


> Will Version 1.0.0.4 work on a Tivo Bolt with the following WD disk drive installed: Purple 8TB Surveillance Hard Disk Drive - 5400 RPM Class SATA 6 Gb/s 128MB Cache 3.5 Inch - WD80PURZ


As long as you connect the drive directly to the Bolt with a SATA cable (bypassing any controller circuitry in the external enclosure) it should work fine. 20.7.4 doesn't like the eSATA controller in most enclosures or docks for some reason.


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## Ronald Pasqualini

ggieseke said:


> As long as you connect the drive directly to the Bolt with a SATA cable (bypassing any controller circuitry in the external enclosure) it should work fine. 20.7.4 doesn't like the eSATA controller in most enclosures or docks for some reason.


Thanks for the quick response!
Will this 3.5" disk fit inside the Bolt, or will the Bolt only accept internal 2.5" disks?


----------



## ggieseke

Bolts only have room for a 2.5" internal.


----------



## nyjklein

Eric Miller said:


> best buy has the 8th wd easy store on sale for $180 right now. Just picked up to and opened them up. WD80EFZX inside! Getting ready to try to upgrade 2 of my new bolts.
> 
> WD - easystore® 8TB External USB 3.0 Hard Drive - Black


$149 at BestBuy for Cyber Monday!

Jeff


----------



## bigtimbercreek

I replaced the drive in my new Tivo OTA with a WD 4 TB WD40EFRX drive. I went through the setup screens on the Tivo. When I connect the new drive to my desktop and run mfsr, I get this error:

Line 742, Error 0x00000005..
Big red X CreateFile

The new drive is connected via a powered usb sata adapter. When I check disk management it says this:

Disk 2 Unknown, 3726.02 GB Not Initialized, Unallocated

Does anyone have any suggestions on what I'm doing wrong, and why I cannot get mfsr to work? I've read through many threads, and I am not sure what to do to get the drive to work so I can put it back in my new Tivo OTA.

Thank you very much for your help.


----------



## ggieseke

That's an "access denied" error while it's trying to open one of the drives on your computer in read-only mode to see if it's a TiVo drive. If you have any disk utilities other than Windows Disk Management open that could be the problem, or possibly even an antivirus program.


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## shwru980r

I just got my Roamio OTA from the cyber Monday sale and am trying to use an 8tb easy store drive. I went through guided set up initially with the original drive and the Roamio OTA has hydra. Does hydra support formatting an 8TB drive to use with MFSR? The drive passed the WD diagnostic test. With the 8TB drive, the Roamio will get to the first screen and then to the "almost there screen" and stay there for a minute and then gets the green screen and reboots and starts over again.


----------



## ggieseke

Hydra shouldn't really matter because the OS is on flash memory, but I have no experience with it yet. They may have changed something.

Ideally, all you should have to do is plug in the drive and get it to the first "country selection" screen, then run MFSR on a PC and put the drive back in the TiVo.


----------



## toricred

It worked with my new Bolt and an older Easy Store drive just this morning.


----------



## shwru980r

ggieseke said:


> Hydra shouldn't really matter because the OS is on flash memory, but I have no experience with it yet. They may have changed something.
> 
> Ideally, all you should have to do is plug in the drive and get it to the first "country selection" screen, then run MFSR on a PC and put the drive back in the TiVo.


Thanks. I ran the data lifeguard utility on a PC and erased the entire drive. Then tried the drive in the Roamio again and got to the first 'country selection'. Then ran the MFSR utility on the drive connected to a PC. Reinstalled the drive and the Roamio is up and running on Hydra with 1283 HD hours. It's a WD white drive, not the red drive some people were getting. I registered the drive with WD for the warranty and saved all the parts inside the external case. If it dies prematurely I will try to make a warranty claim.


----------



## ggieseke

shwru980r said:


> Thanks. I ran the data lifeguard utility on a PC and erased the entire drive. Then tried the drive in the Roamio again and got to the first 'country selection'. Then ran the MFSR utility on the drive connected to a PC. Reinstalled the drive and the Roamio is up and running on Hydra with 1283 HD hours. It's a WD white drive, not the red drive some people were getting. I registered the drive with WD for the warranty and saved all the parts inside the external case. If it dies prematurely I will try to make a warranty claim.


Good to know it works on Hydra. The short write zeros test should be enough to wipe any existing partitions on the drive, but I always run the full write test and the long read test on any new drive.


----------



## shwru980r

ggieseke said:


> Good to know it works on Hydra. The short write zeros test should be enough to wipe any existing partitions on the drive, but I always run the full write test and the long read test on any new drive.


I tried the 8TB drive when I first received the Roamio without running guided setup with the original drive and had similar issues. I would get the green and then the purple screen. I tried the short write zeros and that didn't resolve the issue. That's when I put the original drive in and completed guided setup and then tried the 8TB drive again and it still wouldn't get to 'country selection', but it only got the green screen and no purple screen. So I decided to run the long write zeros and it finally worked.


----------



## tommage1

shwru980r said:


> Thanks. I ran the data lifeguard utility on a PC and erased the entire drive. Then tried the drive in the Roamio again and got to the first 'country selection'. Then ran the MFSR utility on the drive connected to a PC. Reinstalled the drive and the Roamio is up and running on Hydra with 1283 HD hours. It's a WD white drive, not the red drive some people were getting. I registered the drive with WD for the warranty and saved all the parts inside the external case. If it dies prematurely I will try to make a warranty claim.


What is the model number on your white? I've actually seen 2 model numbers on the whites. WD80EMAZ and WD80EZAZ. I ended up with the EMAZ. From what I've heard some of the whites (maybe reds too, don't know), have an issue with legacy computers not recognizing them. Has to do with the SATA power connection. Mine works on my newer computer but I tried it with an older computer and sure enough did not recognize it. Workaround is supposed to use a molex to SATA power adapter or cut the orange wire on the SATA power connector wire. I tried the molex, it recognizes the drive but freezes on the black boot screen.

Since I seem to have gotten one of the drives with the legacy problem am wondering if it would affect the drive if I tried to use it in a Roamio. I'm kind of waiting until someone comes up with a way to copy and expand current drive to the 8TB without losing the recordings (I have a nearly full 4 TB in there now, would take long time to move and would lose wishlist folders). Am debating if I want to return the drive or not, I shucked it with no damage to enclosure so can put back together easily.


----------



## tommage1

Quotes about the problem with the EMAZ. Something to do with "Power Disable".

"My model WD80EMAZ does not spin up. The drive only works when used through the included adapter. I have tried different PSUs in different hosts with different SATA cables. No luck.

"The solution is to cut the +3v3 power connection to the drive. You can do this in several ways, one way is to cut the orange wire on the SATA power connectors, one is to use Molex to SATA adapters, one is to cover the three +3v3 pins on the drives with tape. I used the tape technique, and it works great. I recommend kapton tape, but other types of thin tape should work. It's fine to cover the 4th pin as well, it's one of 6 ground pins. It appears that WD is using a "feature" called power disable"
Link to HGST/WD document about Power Disable.

https://www.hgst.com/sites/default/files/resources/HGST-Power-Disable-Pin-TB.pdf


----------



## shwru980r

tommage1 said:


> What is the model number on your white? I've actually seen 2 model numbers on the whites. WD80EMAZ and WD80EZAZ. I ended up with the EMAZ. From what I've heard some of the whites (maybe reds too, don't know), have an issue with legacy computers not recognizing them. Has to do with the SATA power connection. Mine works on my newer computer but I tried it with an older computer and sure enough did not recognize it. Workaround is supposed to use a molex to SATA power adapter or cut the orange wire on the SATA power connector wire. I tried the molex, it recognizes the drive but freezes on the black boot screen.
> 
> Since I seem to have gotten one of the drives with the legacy problem am wondering if it would affect the drive if I tried to use it in a Roamio. I'm kind of waiting until someone comes up with a way to copy and expand current drive to the 8TB without losing the recordings (I have a nearly full 4 TB in there now, would take long time to move and would lose wishlist folders). Am debating if I want to return the drive or not, I shucked it with no damage to enclosure so can put back together easily.


I got the WD80EMAZ and it's working flawlessly in my Roamio OTA. I've got a newer computer so I didn't experience the legacy issue. If you want to transfer your existing recordings to the new drive you're going to need another intermediate hard drive for your PC so you can transfer the recordings from your old hard drive and then transfer them back to the new hard drive. You might as well put the easystore back in the external enclosure and use it that way, especially if you got the black Friday deal.

The MFSR instructions state that you can use a USB adapter for the hard drive connected to a PC, which I don't think has a legacy issue. So theoretically you could :

1. Remove the hard drive from the enclosure
2. Put it in the Roamio and run guided setup to the country setting
3. Remove the hard drive from the Roamio.
4. Reinstall the hard drive in the enclosure
5. Connect to PC and run MFSR
6. Remove the hard drive from the enclosure.
7. Reinstall the hard drive in the Roamio.


----------



## tommage1

shwru980r said:


> I got the WD80EMAZ and it's working flawlessly in my Roamio OTA. I've got a newer computer so I didn't experience the legacy issue. If you want to transfer your existing recordings to the new drive you're going to need another intermediate hard drive for your PC so you can transfer the recordings from your old hard drive and then transfer them back to the new hard drive. You might as well put the easystore back in the external enclosure and use it that way, especially if you got the black Friday deal.
> 
> The MFSR instructions state that you can use a USB adapter for the hard drive connected to a PC, which I don't think has a legacy issue. So theoretically you could :
> 
> 1. Remove the hard drive from the enclosure
> 2. Put it in the Roamio and run guided setup to the country setting
> 3. Remove the hard drive from the Roamio.
> 4. Reinstall the hard drive in the enclosure
> 5. Connect to PC and run MFSR
> 6. Remove the hard drive from the enclosure.
> 7. Reinstall the hard drive in the Roamio.


Ok thanks for info. The legacy problem I was worried about was since it is supposedly a power supply type issue (older power supplies provide something different to that Pin 3). I was curious if the Tivo Roamio power supply would work with this model without cutting/taping/adapters etc. Sounds like it does, thanks. I didn't want to wipe things off the drive to test it until I was sure the drive model had worked for someone, once I do that it would not really be returnable. I will hang in there until someone perhaps comes up with a way to copy and expand a Roamio drive to 8TB, I'm good for now with my 4TB. Just wanted to make sure this model drive will work with the Roamio if/when that happens, if it did not work at all with the Roamio I would return it. My main computer does work ok with the shucked drive by the way, I just read about the problems some people had with this model (computer user issues, not Tivo) and wanted to check myself by hooking up to an older computer  The link to the manufacturer document that describes it is interesting.


----------



## ThAbtO

PCs with Windows older than Windows 7 would not be able to read the full capacity >3TB.


----------



## tommage1

ThAbtO said:


> PCs with Windows older than Windows 7 would not be able to read the full capacity >3TB.


It was not a capacity issue with the older computer, has to do with the Pin 3 thing, it's some kind of new drive standard started in 2016. Did not recognize the drive at all in the BIOS, didn't even get to the OS. Older computer is running Win 7, as is the newer computer (I don't like Win 10, seems geared towards smart phone users rather than actual computer users). I use my computer as a COMPUTER, not a phone................. I run programs, not "apps"


----------



## sfhub

tommage1 said:


> It was not a capacity issue with the older computer, has to do with the Pin 3 thing, it's some kind of new drive standard started in 2016.


The drive being stuck in reset is an incompatibility issue with the Power Reset feature and voltage supplied on pin 3 - 3V.

There may be a separate issue with older OSs recognizing larger drives for MFSR purposes.

Any combination of these issues could be relevant, depending on the setup.


----------



## shwru980r

I tried to rollback from hydra yesterday after I upgraded to the 8TB easystore drive on my Roamio OTA and I got stuck in a boot loop going from "powering up" to "a few minutes more". I had to erase the drive again on my PC and then boot to country on the Roamio, Run MFSR on PC and then complete guided setup again on the Roamio.


----------



## tommage1

shwru980r said:


> I tried to rollback from hydra yesterday after I upgraded to the 8TB easystore drive on my Roamio OTA and I got stuck in a boot loop going from "powering up" to "a few minutes more". I had to erase the drive again on my PC and then boot to country on the Roamio, Run MFSR on PC and then complete guided setup again on the Roamio.


So after you did that did you end up with Hydra again or G3? Not really sure how the relationship between the flash drive and the hard drive works. Even though you got stuck in boot loop maybe the flash drive had been rolled back to G3 and then when you put in the zeroed/MFSR hard drive you got G3? If not I'm wondering if you can get G3 with the 8TB drive, if it installs Hydra when first putting in, then you get stuck in loop when trying to roll back and you have to mostly start over then how can you get to G3?


----------



## shwru980r

tommage1 said:


> So after you did that did you end up with Hydra again or G3? Not really sure how the relationship between the flash drive and the hard drive works. Even though you got stuck in boot loop maybe the flash drive had been rolled back to G3 and then when you put in the zeroed/MFSR hard drive you got G3? If not I'm wondering if you can get G3 with the 8TB drive, if it installs Hydra when first putting in, then you get stuck in loop when trying to roll back and you have to mostly start over then how can you get to G3?


The rollback from hydra to the G3 interface was finally successful after I reformated the 8TB drive. The rollback process is advertised that you will lose all recordings and settings and you will have to rerun guided setup. I assume that means that the hard drive will be unconditionally formatted and the Roamio can't format the 8TB drive properly.


----------



## tommage1

shwru980r said:


> The rollback from hydra to the G3 interface was finally successful after I reformated the 8TB drive. The rollback process is advertised that you will lose all recordings and settings and you will have to rerun guided setup. I assume that means that the hard drive will be unconditionally formatted and the Roamio can't format the 8TB drive properly.


Sounds good, just wanted to make sure 8TB drive can be setup with G3.


----------



## untfan

In reading through the thread, I didn’t see this specially asked/answered: 

I have a new > 3TB drive, can I “bless” in on a different Roamio then it is destined for and then MFSR it and move it to the desired location, or does the MFSR tool pull specifics from the header which identifies which Roamio first formatted it?

I have an old refurb Roamio OTA that I bought for the extra remote etc, and the Plus is still transferring shows so I am just trying to get one step ahead.

Thanks.


----------



## ggieseke

untfan said:


> In reading through the thread, I didn't see this specially asked/answered:
> 
> I have a new > 3TB drive, can I "bless" in on a different Roamio then it is destined for and then MFSR it and move it to the desired location, or does the MFSR tool pull specifics from the header which identifies which Roamio first formatted it?
> 
> I have an old refurb Roamio OTA that I bought for the extra remote etc, and the Plus is still transferring shows so I am just trying to get one step ahead.
> 
> Thanks.


I think it would work, but I haven't tried it. The only thing I actually keep from the original "blessing" is a 16-byte field from the first sector on the drive that I think is a globally unique identifier for the drive.


----------



## sfhub

untfan said:


> In reading through the thread, I didn't see this specially asked/answered:
> 
> I have a new > 3TB drive, can I "bless" in on a different Roamio then it is destined for and then MFSR it and move it to the desired location, or does the MFSR tool pull specifics from the header which identifies which Roamio first formatted it?


You might need to do a clear and delete everything after you move the drive to the new TiVo to get it working right.


----------



## untfan

untfan said:


> In reading through the thread, I didn't see this specially asked/answered:
> 
> I have a new > 3TB drive, can I "bless" in on a different Roamio then it is destined for and then MFSR it and move it to the desired location, or does the MFSR tool pull specifics from the header which identifies which Roamio first formatted it?


Just to close the topic - I was finally able to finish transferring the shows of the 4TB drive in the Roamio Plus and had a 3-hour non-recording window to take down the system. I had previously "blessed" the 8TB drive in a refurb Roamio OTA which updated itself to Hydra on the first boot (as it wasn't active on any account). Then took the drive to MFSR and reformatted it. Plopped it in the Roamio Plus and proceeded. The Roamio Plus recognized the full 1200+ hours and had the proper TSN showing, so no need to do a C&D Everything. Note the Roamio Plus is running the GEN3 interface (I didn't think the "blessing" on Hydra would be a problem, but just wanted to add that data point).

Donation Sent.


----------



## aleckarty

I'm trying to get a 10tb installed in my Roamio. Is it correct that MFSR apparently currently only will reformat to 8tb. Is there any plan to upgrade MFSR to reformat up to 10tb? Is the only other way to go to 10 tb is via Weaknees?


----------



## ThAbtO

The limit on anything from here is 8TB. 10TB may be in the works when time permits for the original designer.


----------



## Tivogre

Pulled the trigger on the $159 Best Buy sale on 8TB WD external drives. 
I shucked out the drive (a White model WD80EMAZ), and ran through the process.

The only hiccup was that my PC (relatively new) wouldn't spin up the drive until I used external power w/o the 3.3v on pin 3 (and of course re-pairing the FiOS Cable Card).

Hellooooooo 1281 hours HD!!!


----------



## fishkorp

Tivogre said:


> Pulled the trigger on the $159 Best Buy sale on 8TB WD external drives.
> I shucked out the drive (a White model WD80EMAZ), and ran through the process.
> 
> The only hiccup was that my PC (relatively new) wouldn't spin up the drive until I used external power w/o the 3.3v on pin 3 (and of course re-pairing the FiOS Cable Card).
> 
> Hellooooooo 1281 hours HD!!!


Do you have a quick way/number for Verizon to repair your CC? Every time I call it's like these people never heard of it. I spend hours on the phone to get my premium channels to work again.


----------



## Tivogre

fishkorp said:


> Do you have a quick way/number for Verizon to repair your CC? Every time I call it's like these people never heard of it. I spend hours on the phone to get my premium channels to work again.


 I always just call 1-800-VERIZON and say "cable card pairing" at the voice prompt. I tell them that my existing Cable Card has lost its pairing and I can not access premium channels. It usually takes about 15-20 minutes to get them to get it right, but it never seems like "they've never heard of it".


----------



## fishkorp

Tivogre said:


> I always just call 1-800-VERIZON and say "cable card pairing" at the voice prompt. I tell them that my existing Cable Card has lost its pairing and I can not access premium channels. It usually takes about 15-20 minutes to get them to get it right, but it never seems like "they've never heard of it".


Ok thanks. Wonder if that number routes to same support as number shown on the TiVo. Every time but 1 it takes either hours or multiple attempts then hanging up and calling back. The most common response is "I can't help you if it's not our equipment." Maybe I just have really bad luck with Fios customer service reps. Will be putting new HDD in my Bolt Vox this weekend, so was hoping to make the call to them painless.


----------



## DocNo

Awesome utility - I used it on the 3TB seagate - SMR does indeed suck for Tivo's. I'll be using it on an 8TB WD Red tomorrow and kicking that Seagate to the curb (or for a time machine backup drive).

Donated!

EDIT: 8TB Red is working perfectly with the Bolt. Awesome! I just passed the SATA cable out the side of the case where the internal hard drive used to be. I had an external power supply from a USB Drive kit that had molex/SATA connector and it powered the WD drive perfectly. Which was good since the internal SATA power connectors in my desktop PC wouldn't power up the drive - must be that pin 3 thing. Oh well, no worries - just used my external supply for the time it took to process the drive in the PC before final installation to the Tivo. I just have the drive sitting on the shelf next to my Tivo. I doubt most people will even notice it; I certainly don't care


----------



## lapdog12

Just upgraded my roamio pro to an 8tb drive that I shucked from a WD Easystore. I got the drive on sale for $159 from Best Buy and shucked it. I broke the tabs while shucking because I wasn't careful enough. That's ok, since I don't really need the enclosure, maybe I could stick another drive in there at some point.

Here's what I did:

1) Completely erased the new drive with WD Diagnostics. That took over 12 hours. I just did this because I read a few people having problems with data on the new drive.

2) Removed the cover of my Roamio Pro. Just (4) t-10 torx screws on the back of the case and just slide it backwards to get it off.

3) I removed the old drive with the same t-10 torx screwdriver and took off the rails as well.

4) I put the rails onto the new drive while I "blessed" it. Turned on the tivo until it got to the "country" selection and then pulled the plug. (This took about 5 min or less)

5) I had to take off the rails because my computer case has a SATA dock on top of it that I had to slide into place.

6) Then I ran MSFR in "Run as administrator" mode, right click to get that.

7) Then MSFR detected the Tivo hard drive and said "click file to format the drive". So I went to the top left of the program and clicked "file" where it had a choice to reformat the drive. Then it worked it's magic. (Took just a couple of minutes.)

8) Then I put the rails back on and mounted it into the Tivo. (I kept the case off until I finally knew everything was working.)

9) Then I had to run through the set up. This of course takes 15-20min or so to input your info and download the data. 

10) Once all the data loaded I checked to see that I had my full 1281 hours of HD recording. I then had to call TWC/Spectrum Cable Card help to have them re-pair my cable card. Just in case, here's their direct number: 1-866-532-2598

11) Once that was all set and completely working, I did another forced network connection to start downloading more guide info. I will do a couple more for sure, but this first one is taking a while.

Luckily for me, everything has gone smoothly so far. Thanks again for the program and a donation has been sent.


----------



## Saugus

Tivogre said:


> I shucked out the drive (a White model WD80EMAZ), and ran through the process.
> 
> The only hiccup was that my PC (relatively new) wouldn't spin up the drive until I used external power w/o the 3.3v on pin 3 (and of course re-pairing the FiOS Cable Card).
> 
> Hellooooooo 1281 hours HD!!!


I just shucked the same HDD for upgrading my TiVo Roamio OTA (All-In). Does this drive work (i.e., spin up) in the Roamio OTA without modification even though it has the Power Disable Feature, or does the TiVo's SATA power connector's pin 3 have to be insulated or blocked somehow?


----------



## MSL

I have a Roamio 1TB OTA that I purchased a new WD Red 8TB drive for. I installed the Red into my Tivo and waited until it got to the country screen then unplugged it and ran MFSR 1.1.04 which appeared to see and format the drive correctly.

I then put the 8TB drive into my Tivo which started booting and then just stopped doing anything. I couldnt get a signal on my TV and the activity lights stopped flashing.

I tried re-formatting the drive using MFSR 1.0.04 as well as 1.0.02 and both versions say that there is not a valid Roamio drive attached.

Do you all have any ideas on what to do next? I am currently running WD Diagnostics to erase the entire drive and then try the process again.

Thank you for your help


----------



## Saugus

As I just went through this process using an 8TB, WD80EMAZ White-label drive, shucked from a WD EasyStore external enclosure purchased from Best Buy, I'll relate my experiences:

First, I attached the drive to my older PC's eSATA connection and attempted to run the WD Tools to remove the drive's factory contents and formatting. This proved problematic because this particular drive has the SATA 3.2+/3.0 Power Disable feature, and for some reason my PC's Motherboard-supplied Molex to SATA cables didn't work quite right: I ran into a failed erase and errors in a sector check. I disconnected the drive from the eSATA interface and used a stand-alone Molex to SATA power adapter on one of the Molex cables from my PC's Power Supply and a standard SATA data cable to connect the drive directly to the Motherboard.

Knowing this would be a many days-long process (since my PC is still running Windows 7 and its SATA ports are all only SATA 3Gb/s) I first wanted to allay any doubts about a possibly defective drive. I started by using the Windows Disk Management utility to long-format the drive into a single NTFS partition and followed that up by mounting the drive in Windows and running a comprehensive chkdsk with testing and automatic sector repair enabled. All that completed normally and no errors were detected. Reassured that the disk was fine, I used WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows to completely erase the drive and disconnected it from the PC.

I loosely replaced my TiVo Roamio OTA's original 500GB drive with the now blank 8TB drive into its opened chassis, connected it all back up to the TV system, turned the TV system on and then connected the power cable to the TiVo and let it do its thing until the country-selection screen appeared. Then I disconnected the TiVo.

I had been concerned that the Power Disable feature of the drive would pose a problem with the TiVo Roamio OTA, but it appears that at least this TiVo lacks the legacy +3.3vDC power to pin 3 of its SATA power connector, thus there is no problem using HDDs with, or without, the feature.

I removed the 8TB drive from the TiVo and reconnected it to the PC's Motherboard; powered on the PC and ran MFSR 1.0.0.4. I Followed the onscreen prompts to complete the process, exited the program, powered down the PC, disconnected the drive and completely installed it into the TiVo chassis and fully re-assembled the Roamio OTA. I Connected it all back up to the TV system, applied the power cable to the TiVo and, when prompted, selected the country and ran through Guided Setup. Everything completed without a hitch and I now have a full 1281 hours of HD recording capacity in my TiVo Roamio OTA.

One other thing that I should note is that prior to beginning this entire process I did roll back my TiVo Roamio OTA from Hydra to Gen3. I did that primarily because I still prefer the Gen3 user interface. While I cannot say for sure, I don't believe The HDD replacement process would change (or possibly fail) regardless of the firmware version. Upon first powering up, the TiVo's firmware automatically, and without user intervention, prepares the blank HDD for its use and formats it up to 3TB. It is only necessary to use MFSR if you are replacing the original TiVo HDD with one that has a capacity greater than 3TB.

Here's hoping others will find my experience instructive and helpful. Good luck!


----------



## ggieseke

MSL said:


> I have a Roamio 1TB OTA that I purchased a new WD Red 8TB drive for. I installed the Red into my Tivo and waited until it got to the country screen then unplugged it and ran MFSR 1.1.04 which appeared to see and format the drive correctly.
> 
> I then put the 8TB drive into my Tivo which started booting and then just stopped doing anything. I couldnt get a signal on my TV and the activity lights stopped flashing.
> 
> I tried re-formatting the drive using MFSR 1.0.04 as well as 1.0.02 and both versions say that there is not a valid Roamio drive attached.
> 
> Do you all have any ideas on what to do next? I am currently running WD Diagnostics to erase the entire drive and then try the process again.
> 
> Thank you for your help


I would hook it back up to a PC and run at least the short write zeros test with the WD diagnostics, then try the whole process again from scratch. Make sure that the SATA and power connections are seated correctly at both ends when you hook it back up to the Roamio.

P.S. Is the Roamio running Hydra or the gen 3 software?


----------



## MSL

Saugus

The only part of that process I didnt do was erase the drive before connecting.

I took the brand new drive, connected it to the Tivo and booted it to the country screen. Then I shut down the Tivo and connected it to my computer where I uses MFSR 1.0.0.4 and completed formatting with that, I shut down the PC and inserted the drive into my Tivo and booted it up.

I get the initial splash screen and then the Tivo stays powered on but nothing happens. It stops outputting video. I took the drive back to my PC and zero wrote the drive, reconnected it back to the Tivo to get the initial boot screen and then used MFSR again, same result. I now took the original 1TB drive the Tivo shipped with and put it back in the Tivo to try that. Same result.

Did I brick the unit?

GGieseke - How do I tell what OS it is running when it doesnt complete the boot process?


----------



## jmbach

Does the unit ever boot to the point that you can get into the Kickstart portal. If it does, try running a kickstart 58. 

BTW when/if you get to the initial start up screen, pressing the INFO key gives you the OS version and from there we can figure out the generation of the UI on the machine.


----------



## ggieseke

MSL said:


> Saugus
> 
> The only part of that process I didnt do was erase the drive before connecting.
> 
> I took the brand new drive, connected it to the Tivo and booted it to the country screen. Then I shut down the Tivo and connected it to my computer where I uses MFSR 1.0.0.4 and completed formatting with that, I shut down the PC and inserted the drive into my Tivo and booted it up.
> 
> I get the initial splash screen and then the Tivo stays powered on but nothing happens. It stops outputting video. I took the drive back to my PC and zero wrote the drive, reconnected it back to the Tivo to get the initial boot screen and then used MFSR again, same result. I now took the original 1TB drive the Tivo shipped with and put it back in the Tivo to try that. Same result.
> 
> Did I brick the unit?
> 
> GGieseke - How do I tell what OS it is running when it doesnt complete the boot process?


If the original drive doesn't work either it sounds like something has gone bad in the unit or the drive cables. Can you hear the drive spin up when you plug it in? Did you reseat the drive cables at both ends?

You could also try a different HDMI cable to make sure that it's not just a bad connection to your TV.

Is this a new TiVo, or one that you had up and running before?


----------



## MSL

Sorry, I got a bit busy with life here. I am a WMC user who is transitioning to Tivo if I can get a larger hard drive to work. But while I was messing with this, I had the power supply in my WMC computer die and so I was busy with that.

I do hear the drive power up and spin. I know the HDMI cable is good but I did swap it out anyway just in case.

I will try re-seating the cables.

It was a new unit I just bought as a test to see if this could replace my WMC machine. The unit was working fine until a swapped out the hard drive. I assume something with the drive swap killed the Tivo box. I am not sure what happened. I followed the directions to place the new drive in the unit and wait until the country screen, then power down and move drive to a PC for formatting using MFSR 1.0.0.4. Formatt completed with no errors. I moved the drive over to the new box and turned it on. I saw the welcome screen and then the unit has been dead since then.

What did I do wrong?
I would like to get a new Tivo and try this again but I dont want to kill another box. I cant afford this, my wife will kill me. Any pointers?


----------



## ggieseke

I had a "conversation" recently with another user who went through two 8TB drives on a Bolt with the same symptoms. I still don't know if both of them were bad but eventually he put the original drive back in the Bolt, downgraded it from Hydra to gen3, and got it working with the third 8TB drive that he tried.

I don't have enough data to blame Hydra, but if it doesn't work with the factory drive send it back (with the original drive) while it's still under warranty. When the replacement shows up, make sure that it works and downgrade it to gen3 before trying MFSR again.


----------



## CloudAtlas

ggieseke said:


> [&#8230;] downgraded it from Hydra to gen3, and got it working with the third 8TB drive that he tried.
> 
> [&#8230;] I don't have enough data to blame Hydra,


For what it's worth, my Roamio Pro 8TB WD Red (installed July 2016) has been running Hydra without issues since November. Thanks again for MFSR!


----------



## ggieseke

CloudAtlas said:


> For what it's worth, my Roamio Pro 8TB WD Red (installed July 2016) has been running Hydra without issues since November.


Thanks! That matches the posts that I saw from people with MFSR drives when Hydra came out.

I still haven't confirmed if a Roamio or Bolt that's already running Hydra plays nice with MFSR. I don't have a Bolt, but I guess it's time for me to load Hydra on my spare Pro and find out one way or another.


----------



## Groop

Very nicely done on the tool! Been researching upgrade procedures last several days to make sure I've got every aspect nailed. Will be using a Hyper-V VM of MFStools and (hopefully) attaching physical disks for the backup and restoration to larger drive.

I just finished formatted a WD RED NAS 4TB using your procedure. It's hooked up via a USB 3.0 to Sata adapter from TrippLite. Reformat instantly recognized the drive soon as it had been initialized to the 1st set up screen from the Roamio.

Definitely appreciate the work. Planning to throw a few bucks your direction once all this is completed.

For others doing the same thing related to MFS Tools:

It's unfortunate the entire procedures (MFS tools) aren't more streamlined and intuitive. They do require more than novice level experience to pull it off successfully, so I imagine there are many out there possibly stuck or unable to attain victory.

Anyone reading this in that category and running Windows 10 I strongly recommend you go the Hyper-V route using MFS Tools 3.2 VHD. It's a pre packaged virtual machine ready to rock with native MFS tools commands available straight away.

Doing it this way will allow you to bypass the entire isolated boot process of your PC to Linux. Instead you'll have complete access to everything (the web for research) from your windows environment and simply execute the procedures within a linux virtual machine window.

You can use the procedures found here if you're not familiar with Hyper-V:
How to create a Linux virtual machine on Windows 10 using Hyper-V

You can find a MFS Tools 3.2 VHD usable with Hyper-V in post #131 here:
MFS Tools 3.2

Note of the most important aspects that may confuse a novice might be you can't just access any physical disk in the physical machine from the virtual machine by default. This is because they're being used by Windows.

To do that (for any except the boot disk) all you need to do is use disk management to take a disk offline. The bottom pane -> select disk -> right click -> offline is where you find that option.

Once it's offline you can then add the physical disk to the VM using the settings for the VM (when the VM is off and not booted). At that point the disk will be added in sequence starting at /dev/sdb etc. /dev/sda will be the virtual disk you created at the start, if you did. I recommend you do that since you can use that for mounting a folder and making a backup to it and restore from it.

You could later open that virtual disk in windows if you want or need to manipulate it for some reason, which may include further backing up its content wherever you want (such as a NAS) while being able to use windows instead of Linux if you're not familiar with Linux much.

Will revisit this post at the end of my attempts at transfer from org drive to 4TB.

------------------------------------------
Updated:
Wrote at a speed of 29MiB for just under 9 hours, my factory 1TB now duplicated to a 4TB WD RED NAS. Booted up perfectly, nothing lost, 637HD recording hours capacity available.

Good stuff.


----------



## BobbyM5

ggieseke said:


> If you want 1.0.0.5 for a drive under 3TB just let me know. That's the only change, and I haven't tested it on larger drives yet to make sure that I didn't introduce a bug.


Would you be willing to let me test 1.0.0.5 (or later)? I want to upgrade my Bolt to a 5TB drive.

Thanks, Bob


----------



## ggieseke

BobbyM5 said:


> Would you be willing to let me test 1.0.0.5 (or later)? I want to upgrade my Bolt to a 5TB drive.
> 
> Thanks, Bob


For 3TB and larger drives, just use the existing version. 1.0.0.5 is only needed fpr 2TB and smaller drives.


----------



## Leopold

Thank you for this software. I just used it on a 6TB and donated promptly after setup


----------



## aleckarty

Any prediction when support for 10Tb drives will be available? For this, a nice donation would be left by me, and I trust by more than a few others.


----------



## ThAbtO

The Tivo software itself does not support such a huge size yet.


----------



## Dan W

Hi all -

Anyone have any success in mounting a TiVo drive to a Mac to run MFS Reformatter via Parallels?

I've tried a few different ways but can't seem to get the Mac (or Windows via Parallels) to recognize the partially formatted TiVo 6TB drive -

Any help here would be amazing - thanks!


----------



## zombiephysicist

ThAbtO said:


> The Tivo software itself does not support such a huge size yet.


Not true. Weaknees sells 10TB drives. Have installed one. It works.

TiVo Roamio Pro Series5 TiVo Upgrade Kits and Hard Drives


----------



## jmbach

zombiephysicist said:


> Not true. Weaknees sells 10TB drives. Have installed one. It works.
> 
> TiVo Roamio Pro Series5 TiVo Upgrade Kits and Hard Drives


TiVo software itself does not support large drives natively. It does through a lot of gymnastics of the APM and MFS.


----------



## Tivogre

I'm finally taking the plunge on an 8TB External Drive for the Bolt + !!!

Got the recommended Rosewill RX304-APU-35B enclosure and installed an 8TB WD Drive shucked from an easystore ($169 at Best Buy last week).










First step was to cut out a small section of the air intake vent to allow a SATA extension cable (1 male end and 1 female end) to exit the rear of the case:










Then, I found a path to run a SATA cable out of the Bolt case, and secured the cable with wire ties to the fan mount screw:










Finally, drilled two 3/8" holes and carefully connected then with a Dremel (back of the Bolt case, just to the right of the metal plate):










Extension cable from drive enclosure mated to SATA cable from the Bolt:










Up and running with 1279HD hours.

Currently applying updates (probably Hydra)...


----------



## Tivogre

1 week later, 1st 8TB Bolt is up and running rock-solid!

I just finished doing my second one. 

12 tuners and 16TB should be good.... for a while!


----------



## Paul White

ggieseke said:


> ***WARNING***
> 
> 1. This software is provided "as is" with absolutely no warranty of any kind.
> 
> 2. It is copyrighted and may NOT be used commercially.
> 
> 3. Opening your TiVo will void the manufacturer's warranty.
> 
> 4. While every effort has been made to prevent data loss, the ultimate responsibility is yours.
> 
> *OVERVIEW:*
> 
> This is a Windows program designed to reformat large (4TB - 6TB) Roamio drives. I call it a reformatter because it depends on some variables from the original auto-format process even though it throws most of them out the window. It should run on XPSP3, but I have only tested it on Windows 7 and 8.1 so far.
> 
> Edit: Support for Bolts and drives up to 8TB has been added. See post #2 for the latest version.
> 
> *THE BASICS:*
> 
> Your Roamio must running 20.4.6 or later. Earlier versions go into an endless boot loop trying to format anything over 3TB.
> 
> 1. Put the drive in your Roamio and power it on. It will take about four minutes to auto-format the drive. When it gets to the first Guided Setup screen, power it off. The resulting drive will only use a fraction of the total capacity, but we will fix that in the next steps.
> 
> 2. Download mfsr and unzip it to somewhere on your computer.
> 
> 3. Connect the drive to your computer. USB 2.0 adapters will work, but are much slower than USB 3.0 or a SATA direct connection.
> 
> 4. Run mfsr with an account that's a member of the Administrators group or right-click it and choose Run as Administrator. Follow the instructions from there to reformat the drive to use its full capacity.
> 
> 5. Put the drive back in the TiVo and enjoy.
> 
> *NOTES:*
> 
> If you run this program on an existing drive you will lose all of your settings and recordings.
> 
> It aligns the MFS file (application) and inode "zones" correctly for Advanced Format (4K) drives. That should improve performance and reduce wear & tear on the drive. This is something that I don't think has ever been addressed before.
> 
> It works on 3TB drives as well. It will not run on 2TB or smaller drives. If there's enough interest in creating smaller drives that are fully AF aligned that can be addressed later.
> 
> It only works on Roamios. If there is enough interest in a version for Premieres that can also be addressed in a later version.
> 
> *SPECIAL THANKS GO TO...*
> 
> jmbach, telemark, nooneuknow, and the original pioneers of MFS like Spike and comer.
> 
> *FINAL NOTE:*
> 
> It took over 400 hours of development time, a new WD 6TB Red drive, and a new copy of Visual Studio 2013 Pro to get this far. If you save a few hundred dollars by using this program instead of buying a prepared drive, *PLEASE* donate to the cause.
> 
> 
> 
> Edit: Roamios running 20.5.6 or later should use version 1.0.0.2 from post #2.


----------



## Paul White

After stumbling around trying to get my USB 2.0 adapter to work I connected the 4 tb drive to my desk top and it worked great. Sending a $20 donation.


----------



## ggieseke

Paul White said:


> After stumbling around trying to get my USB 2.0 adapter to work I connected the 4 tb drive to my desk top and it worked great. Sending a $20 donation.


Thank you!


----------



## pullingj

7452.04 GB found.
7449.47 GB is allocated for recordings.

$25 donation sent. Thanks so much!


----------



## am45931472

Has anyone done a hard drive upgrade on the Tivo Vox yet? I would assume its the same/similar to the bolt.

Planning on swapping out the 500GB drive in my new tivo vox DVR for a Western Digital 8TB WD80EMAZ. This comes from a shucked WD Easy store. Just spent like 5+ days running bad blocks on the drive to verify that the drive was good. bad blocks takes forever on large drives. This will be an external drive setup with Esata on an external bay connected to the internal sata port on my tivo vox obviously as this is a 3.5 inch drive however since I have not purchased an external drive bay yet I thought I would try to just get off the ground with it and attach the drive to my tivo vox directly with the internal joined sata power and data cable however when I do that I just crazy flashing lights on the box and it sounds like the drive never spins up. This drive is known to have the 3.3v power issue. I had no problem with it connecting it to my PC motherboard to do bad blocks on it but just no life on the tivo board.

I will probably get that Rosewill RX304-APU-35B, it looks surprising great. I own a decent amount of rosewill rackmounts, they're ok quality.

I plan on basically following the plan layed out in a previous post

1. remove the old hard drive and insert the new hard drive
2. start the Tivo and pull the plug when it asks for the country
3. remove new hard drive and put it in a Windows computer
4. run MFSR
5. put new hard drive back into Tivo and enjoy more storage

Then spend forever using tivo online to copy over shows from my old Tivo Roamio plus


----------



## ThAbtO

I was unable to find info on the WD80EMAZ anywhere, including WDC.com, Amazon.


----------



## ggieseke

am45931472 said:


> This will be an external drive setup with Esata on an external bay connected to the internal sata port on my tivo vox


You should go straight from the SATA port on the TiVo to the drive, bypassing any eSATA connectors or electronics in the enclosure (except the power cable). The 20.7.2 update broke most of the external drive setups until somebody figured out that now you have to use a direct SATA - SATA connection.

Latest Software Update Broke my Hard eSATA Drive Hack on Bolt


----------



## am45931472

ggieseke said:


> You should go straight from the SATA port on the TiVo to the drive, bypassing any eSATA connectors or electronics in the enclosure (except the power cable). The 20.7.2 update broke most of the external drive setups until somebody figured out that now you have to use a direct SATA - SATA connection.
> 
> Latest Software Update Broke my Hard eSATA Drive Hack on Bolt


Thats for the heads up. That news sucks. Obviosuly it would be nice, neat and clean to keep the drive in an external bay, sucks that may not be doable anymore. I also know that the shorter the sata cable the better, the more shielded the better.


----------



## am45931472

am45931472 said:


> Thats for the heads up. That news sucks. Obviously it would be nice, neat and clean to keep the drive in an external bay, sucks that may not be doable anymore. I also know that the shorter the sata cable the better, the more shielded the better.


Also annoying how many people dont actually read the details a thread. So many complaints in your linked thread where people talk about the eSATA port on the Tivo, instead of peoples hacked/modded internal sata to esata cable. anyone who reads this forum in details knows that the esata ports on the back of tivo are trouble and require endorsed enclosures.


----------



## ggieseke

am45931472 said:


> Thats for the heads up. That news sucks. Obviosuly it would be nice, neat and clean to keep the drive in an external bay, sucks that may not be doable anymore. I also know that the shorter the sata cable the better, the more shielded the better.


It's still doable, just a bit uglier if you have to notch out a SATA cable entry in your external enclosure. I'm actually surprised that anyone's still selling eSATA externals. I have a dual-drive USB3/eSATA dock from NexStar that I bought in 2013, but it's an antique these days. Fewer connections and components involved is also a good thing.


----------



## Joe39565

This is a parts list for Bolt cooling and hard drive modifications.

Rosewill Hard Drive Enclosure 3.5 Inch SATA III to USB 3.0 or eSATA RX304-APU3-35B

Cut 2 holes; one for direct connection for SATA HD cable, and the other for 120 mm cooling fan power wiring mounted on top of Bolt.

8TB WD Red WD80Efax NASware3.0 3.5" SATA III NAS Hard Drive 256mb cache

24" 3 pin to 3 pin Extension Power PC Fan Cable Black Sleeved FC33-24BKS

Note: Connect fan end to fan and cut off other end and soldered Red (+ 12V) and Black (ground) wires to SATA power on Rosewill circuit board.

SATA 3.0 III SATA3 6Gb Hard Drive Data Direct Right Angle Cable 45 cm (17.71654")

Cooler Master 120mm Silent Fan S2S-124K-GP

120 mm Fan Dust Filter Guard Cover

Added 120 mm cooling fan to top cover of Bolt, and had to cut two more holes at rear of Bolt for SATA & Fan Power, plus about 70 more ventilation holes to case bottom.


----------



## Joe39565

A few more pictures.

Showing RF antenna epoxied in place.

Cutouts to back of Bolt for fan power and SATA wiring.

Modifications to Rosewill box showing cutouts for cables and provision for tywrap and getting fan power to other side of circuit board.


----------



## ckennylin

Hi - I've been out of the loop for a long, long time but decided to take advantage of the recent sale to move my 3 Premieres with 4TB each to the Bolt and upgrade each with Seagate 5TB drives shucked from Backup+ drives that I found on sale for $110.

Yes, I know they are SMR drives but for the price, it's worth a shot.

On all three new Bolts, I swapped in the 5TB and ran MFSR on the drives. The upgrade went well, but the more I used it, and try to learn/teach older family members who are accustomed to the Premiere, I was at a point of asking Tivo to move my Lifetime Subs to the Premieres and send the Bolt back. But apparently this is a well known issue and there is a downgrade path, so I took it.

Once the downgrade process occurred, the first Bolt with the 5TB drive went into a boot loop. Luckily I had another on hand to try the downgrade on and that too went into a boot loop.

Once I swapped in the factory 500GB drive, the downgrade completed successfully and I got the expected capacity.

As a sanity check, I used WD's Data Lifeguard to wipe the first and last sectors on the 5TB drive and swapped it back in. This time I did NOT get a boot loop, and pulled the drive once it was ready for the Guided Setup.

However, when I ran MFSR on the 5TB drive, I get an error that the drive was not recognized as a Roamio or Bolt drive. I ran MFSR on the 500GB drive and got the same error.

I placed the 5TB drive back in and completed the guided setup, but this time, I got a drastically reduced capacity i.e. 47 Hr HD.

I reconnected the 5TB drive to a PC and in Windows, the Disk management shows 2 partitions of 2TB each.

Right now, I am running a FULL ERASE on the 5TB drive (12-13 HOURS!!!) and will try again to see if:

1. Will MFSR recognize the 5TB as a Roamio / Bolt drive?
2. If not and I complete the Guided Setup, what will my capacity be?

Did the downgrade affect how the drive is being recognized by MFSR?

With the factory 500GB, I'll also try "upgrading" back to the New Experience and then try to upgrade with the 5TB again - in theory it should work because it's worked before the downgrade.

Any insights / hints would be greatly appreciated!


----------



## ggieseke

I haven't personally tested it with a Bolt that's running Hydra or downgrading from Hydra to TE3, but something sounds funky. For one thing you shouldn't be able to see ANY partitions in Windows Disk Management no matter how big the drive is or what OS it's running. It should show up as as "unknown" with nothing more than than the total disk space and prompt you to initialize it for Windows. If you let it do that you're screwed. My advice would be to avoid running Disk Manager altogether.

MFSR 1.0.0.4 doesn't work with drives under 3TB, so I'll send you a link to the beta of 1.0.0.5 so that you can test it with the factory 500GB drives.

P.S. I think that using SMR drives of any size is a really bad idea. They WILL fail at some point (usually within a year or less), and who wants to lose 5TB of recordings?


----------



## zombiephysicist

I think the issue is the new UI is on the machine, so you need to get it working with the old UI before you try to do the drive swap. I have a 5TB in my bolt. It's been over 11 months and so far, knock wood, it's running fine at 85% capacity. That said, a lot of people have reported issues. I have a thread here on the reliability.

Success Upgrading Bolt(+) with 4TB, 5TB + 2.5" Internal Drives?

So far I'm the only one doing reports on it.


----------



## ckennylin

OK, here are the results:

1. Sanity Check: MFSR versions 1002-1005 all recognized a virgin factory 500GB Bolt drive.
2. Sanity Check: MFSR versions 1002-1005 all recognized a Downgraded (TE4 -> TE3) factory 500GB Bolt drive after Quick Setup.

Full Erase of a 5TB Seagate drive took 12 Hours and 55 Minutes using WD's Data Lifeguard (no thanks to SMR technology!).

MFSR versions 1002-1005 DO recognize the 5TB drive. After Guided setup, I now have 798 HD / 5511 SD Hours available!

I think the downgrade process did not truly see the drive as "blank" so there are definitely signatures left that caused the 5TB drive to boot loop. When I did a quick erase of the 5TB drive (first and last xx sectors), it still left enough signatures for the Bolt to consider it a valid (but much smaller!) drive which gave me 47 HD hours, and the bits left was valid enough for Disk Management (and other partitioning utilities) to see it as 2 partitions which were not necessarily valid. MFSR did not recognize the drive.

Lesson Learned: when downgrading from TE4 -> TE3, FULL ERASE the drive before repeating the upgrading process.

2 more Bolts to go, need to restore TE3 at my parents 40 minutes away :-(

I'll be adding another 2-3 data points to the long term 5TB experience. I'm setting my Power Saving Setting to Manual to avoid potential issues with drive spindowns.

Thank You All!!!


----------



## ggieseke

Excellent! I have a Bolt to play with now since the Summer Breeze sale, so I should be able to replicate your steps and figure out where things went wrong.


----------



## echo2400

I have a Tivo Roamio OTA 1 TB annam trying to reformat 8 TB WD RED WD80EFZX. 
I installed the hard drive and unplugged it when it was on the Country set up screen. I removed the Hard Drive and plugged it into a powered adapter connecting it via USB-3 to my laptop. 
i downloaded the latest file on the site and 
i am getting an error. A box with Line 624,Error0x00000020 (32)
a RED X CreateFile and can click on ok or x out. Does anyone have any idea what is going wrong? Thanks in advance.


----------



## ggieseke

echo2400 said:


> I have a Tivo Roamio OTA 1 TB annam trying to reformat 8 TB WD RED WD80EFZX.
> I installed the hard drive and unplugged it when it was on the Country set up screen. I removed the Hard Drive and plugged it into a powered adapter connecting it via USB-3 to my laptop.
> i downloaded the latest file on the site and
> i am getting an error. A box with Line 624,Error0x00000020 (32)
> a RED X CreateFile and can click on ok or x out. Does anyone have any idea what is going wrong? Thanks in advance.


That's a sharing violation error. Some other program on your computer has the drive open, and MFSR requires exclusive access. Do you have any other drive utilities or tools running that might be trying to read the drive?


----------



## csmiles

A few months back, I replaced the 1 TB drive in my Romio. It was a green drive and I replaced it with a WD 3 TB green drive (not labeled as an AV drive). After a few test recording, I noted a lot errors (scrambled glitchy video) in the recordings, so went back to using the 1 TB drive which was ok ... and I finished out the season of shows with that. NOW with the new seasons shows coming up I re-visited this thinking that I should have purchase the AV version of the WD green drive ... 3TB. That's when I came across this thread. As a result I purchased a 4TB WD Red (the larger drives being much more expensive than the 4TB) ... and success! (I ran into on quick issue... the apple partition thing...fixed by using a later version of mfsr).

A couple of questions.

When I originally replaced the 1 TB with the 3 TB, was the glitchy performance probably due to the drive not being the AV version of the drive? Would the mfsr reformatter have allowed the 3TB to have functioned more efficiently resulting in that drive functioning without the glitches (most probably)?

My main curiosity really revolved being curious about the reformatter ... I read through a bunch of posts (including the 'spoiler' in post #4) ... still left wondering if the glitch I would occasionally get even on the 1TB drive may be at least partly due to the drive not being used as efficiently as possible (hence mfsr) ... What I most notice is when recording MULTIPLE shows at once ... some shows having a significant amount of scrambled video in them. Should mfsr help that issue to some extent?


----------



## csmiles

PS not done testing, but donated 25 to the cause ... great job. One way or another this appears to be THE solution to not enough Tivo space for me. THANK YOU


----------



## ThAbtO

I have been using the WD40EFRX red for almost 4 years and without a hitch. Not even lost a show, for which I have kept on it several seasons of OTA shows. Most I transfer to the PC, remove commercials and archive on a NAS.


----------



## ggieseke

csmiles said:


> A few months back, I replaced the 1 TB drive in my Romio. It was a green drive and I replaced it with a WD 3 TB green drive (not labeled as an AV drive). After a few test recording, I noted a lot errors (scrambled glitchy video) in the recordings, so went back to using the 1 TB drive which was ok ... and I finished out the season of shows with that. NOW with the new seasons shows coming up I re-visited this thinking that I should have purchase the AV version of the WD green drive ... 3TB. That's when I came across this thread. As a result I purchased a 4TB WD Red (the larger drives being much more expensive than the 4TB) ... and success! (I ran into on quick issue... the apple partition thing...fixed by using a later version of mfsr).
> 
> A couple of questions.
> 
> When I originally replaced the 1 TB with the 3 TB, was the glitchy performance probably due to the drive not being the AV version of the drive? Would the mfsr reformatter have allowed the 3TB to have functioned more efficiently resulting in that drive functioning without the glitches (most probably)?
> 
> My main curiosity really revolved being curious about the reformatter ... I read through a bunch of posts (including the 'spoiler' in post #4) ... still left wondering if the glitch I would occasionally get even on the 1TB drive may be at least partly due to the drive not being used as efficiently as possible (hence mfsr) ... What I most notice is when recording MULTIPLE shows at once ... some shows having a significant amount of scrambled video in them. Should mfsr help that issue to some extent?


The standard WD Green drives shouldn't perform any differently than the AV Greens (which they quit making). The only real difference was in the warranty and the IntelliPark settings. Did you test the 3TB drive thoroughly with a drive utility like WD's Data Lifeguard Diagnostics before putting it in the Roamio?

Using mfsr on the 3TB drive would probably have helped performance in the user interface a bit, but it's not a big enough difference to affect the recordings. My oldest Roamio Pro has been working flawlessly with the factory 3TB drive and layout since Roamios came out and I beat the heck out of it daily.

You should enjoy the Red. I also have a basic Roamio with a mfsr-formatted 4TB Red that's so old it has NASware 2.0 firmware instead of 3.0. It's recording from antenna instead of cable, which really gives it a workout due to the higher bitrate. If you're still seeing glitches I would look into your signal strengths and the RS corrected and RS uncorrected numbers in the diagnostics screen.


----------



## ThAbtO

ggieseke said:


> The standard WD Green drives shouldn't perform any differently than the AV Greens (which they quit making). The only real difference was in the warranty and the IntelliPark settings.


The noise factor and 24/7 operation is the difference.


----------



## csmiles

ggieseke said:


> The standard WD Green drives shouldn't perform any differently than the AV Greens (which they quit making). The only real difference was in the warranty and the IntelliPark settings. Did you test the 3TB drive thoroughly with a drive utility like WD's Data Lifeguard Diagnostics before putting it in the Roamio?
> 
> Using mfsr on the 3TB drive would probably have helped performance in the user interface a bit, but it's not a big enough difference to affect the recordings. My oldest Roamio Pro has been working flawlessly with the factory 3TB drive and layout since Roamios came out and I beat the heck out of it daily.
> 
> You should enjoy the Red. I also have a basic Roamio with a mfsr-formatted 4TB Red that's so old it has NASware 2.0 firmware instead of 3.0. It's recording from antenna instead of cable, which really gives it a workout due to the higher bitrate. If you're still seeing glitches I would look into your signal strengths and the RS corrected and RS uncorrected numbers in the diagnostics screen.


In my first try months ago with the 3TB drive (and without using mfsr), I didn't run any diagnostics on it. When it didn't perform up to par, I just integrated it into my system as another drive where it doesn't seem to have a problem.

After reading through threads on this forum, I did run diagnostics on the 4 TB Red drive which were fine, and I also erased it entirely with lifeguard (which was pointless probably). I AM running on an antenna, not cable.

Since the new season of shows is starting now, this was a bit of a last minute things (received the drive Friday). So to test it in the real world so I don't lose a bunch of shows to recording problems I did several sessions of recording 3 or 4 shows from the antenna at a time (at times even downloading from the Roamio using kmttg while also recording which I'm sure puts a much greater load on the drive) ... so far zero hiccups in the video that I've watched, so hopefully I'll be getting clean recordings!

I'll check the RS corrected vs uncorrected ... I think I did that a long time ago, but will look into it again. Thanks!


----------



## csmiles

ThAbtO said:


> I have been using the WD40EFRX red for almost 4 years and without a hitch. Not even lost a show, for which I have kept on it several seasons of OTA shows. Most I transfer to the PC, remove commercials and archive on a NAS.


Thanks ... and that's what I do, ie, transfer via kmttg to PC and archive


----------



## alyssa

I assume I am not the first person to notice that I did not have to run mfs as an administrator. 

the donation will be forthcoming once funds are available next week


----------



## ggieseke

alyssa said:


> I assume I am not the first person to notice that I did not have to run mfs as an administrator.


It's designed to grant itself the necessary Windows privileges at run time so that you don't have to manually run it as Administrator. That still throws off people using WinMFS on old Series 3 TiVos, so I figured out a way around it when I wrote DvrBARS back in 2013. Thanks for noticing!


----------



## junesen

I'm helping a friend upgrade her Roamio OTA to a larger disk. I bought a WD Red 4 TB drive (instead of a 3TB because it was on sale) and was planning to run MSFR on it before taking it up to her place (one hour drive away) and put it in her TiVo. However, I notice that the instructions says that I need to let the Roamio format it first before running MSFR. My question is: can I put the drive into my Roamio OTA; have it format it and then run MSFR; and then put it into her TiVo? Or does the formatting it on my Roamio personalize the drive for my Roamio?


----------



## ggieseke

junesen said:


> I'm helping a friend upgrade her Roamio OTA to a larger disk. I bought a WD Red 4 TB drive (instead of a 3TB because it was on sale) and was planning to run MSFR on it before taking it up to her place (one hour drive away) and put it in her TiVo. However, I notice that the instructions says that I need to let the Roamio format it first before running MSFR. My question is: can I put the drive into my Roamio OTA; have it format it and then run MSFR; and then put it into her TiVo? Or does the formatting it on my Roamio personalize the drive for my Roamio?


You can probably get by with it on a Roamio.


----------



## junesen

Great! What is the latest version of MSFR and where can I get it?


----------



## ggieseke

junesen said:


> Great! What is the latest version of MSFR and where can I get it?


See post #2 in this thread. The latest version is 1004.


----------



## Snowball3

Hey and thanks ggieseke for the hard work you put into this! My questions are. 

1) Could this internal storage upgrade work with a 10 tb internal hard drive on a Tivo Roamio OTA? I have read through the posts in this thread but it only seems to go up to 8tb. Are there instructions for a 10 tb?

2) If it can work do I just follow the same instructions you put on your second post?

3) Also if it can work what 10 tb internal hard drive would you recommend . I noticed on Amazon they had "Seagate 10TB IronWolf NAS SATA 6Gb/s NCQ 256MB" for about $300. Would this work? 

Thanks again for such a great program!


----------



## ThAbtO

The limit is currently at 8TB.


----------



## aaronwt

zombiephysicist said:


> I think the issue is the new UI is on the machine, so you need to get it working with the old UI before you try to do the drive swap. I have a 5TB in my bolt. It's been over 11 months and so far, knock wood, it's running fine at 85% capacity. That said, a lot of people have reported issues. I have a thread here on the reliability.
> 
> Success Upgrading Bolt(+) with 4TB, 5TB + 2.5" Internal Drives?
> 
> So far I'm the only one doing reports on it.


I still have one 4TB Seagate SMR drive in use in a Bolt. It's been 36 months now and still working fine.


----------



## MarkSTA

If MFSR is to be upgraded can it go to 12TB? Looking at using a WD gold drive.

Thanks


----------



## Snowball3

If it cant go up to 10 TB and can only go up to 8TB will this work on a Tivo Ota Roamio? It mentioned needing to be a software version of above 20 mine is 21. 

Also what 8TB Internal Hard Drive is recommended? I was leaning toward seagate. What type of specs do I need it to have listed though. Or can one be recommended? Sorry about the questions I just wanted to confirm things before putting money into this. Thank you to anyone who can help!


----------



## ThAbtO

MSFR is only for Roamio or Bolt. Recommended is WD Red (not Pro, 7200+ RPM) drives. Up to 3TB for a simple drop and swap, or up to 8TB with MSFR.


----------



## ggieseke

Snowball3 said:


> If it cant go up to 10 TB and can only go up to 8TB will this work on a Tivo Ota Roamio? It mentioned needing to be a software version of above 20 mine is 21.
> 
> Also what 8TB Internal Hard Drive is recommended? I was leaning toward seagate. What type of specs do I need it to have listed though. Or can one be recommended? Sorry about the questions I just wanted to confirm things before putting money into this. Thank you to anyone who can help!


WD Red is my personal choice. MFSR works on any Roamio or Bolt, including OTA models.


----------



## MarkSTA

I have sucessfully used a WD Purple 8TB in a Roamio. Has anyone else had any positive or negitive experiences with this WD family of drives?


----------



## zombiephysicist

If you want a 10TB drive Weaknees is your only option currently:

TiVo Roamio Pro Series5 TiVo Upgrade Kits and Hard Drives

I have not seen any 12TB options or that anyone has yet figured out how to format a 12 or 14TB (which are out/available for around $500) to work on TiVo.

https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Iron...6447&sr=8-1&keywords=14tb+hard+drive+ironwolf


----------



## aaronwt

zombiephysicist said:


> If you want a 10TB drive Weaknees is your only option currently:
> 
> TiVo Roamio Pro Series5 TiVo Upgrade Kits and Hard Drives
> 
> I have not seen any 12TB options or that anyone has yet figured out how to format a 12 or 14TB (which are out/available for around $500) to work on TiVo.
> 
> https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Iron...6447&sr=8-1&keywords=14tb+hard+drive+ironwolf




$600 for the 10TB drive!!!?!?! Wow!!!


----------



## LarryAtHome

MarkSTA said:


> I have sucessfully used a WD Purple 8TB in a Roamio. Has anyone else had any positive or negitive experiences with this WD family of drives?


I am using a 3TB Purple drive in my Roamio OTA
It is working fine and is about 1.5yr old now. These drives are made for 24hr/7day use and multiple stream recording. They look like a cousin to the RED drives. May just be a firmware difference.


----------



## collin

LarryAtHome said:


> I am using a 3TB Purple drive in my Roamio OTA
> It is working fine and is about 1.5yr old now. These drives are made for 24hr/7day use and multiple stream recording. They look like a cousin to the RED drives. May just be a firmware difference.


I'm setting up a 3TB Purple drive my my sister's Roamio.

Is there any benefit to using mfsr on the drive for the 4K alignment or whatever?

Side note: any need or way to turn off TLER on this drive?


----------



## jmbach

collin said:


> Is there any benefit to using mfsr on the drive for the 4K alignment or whatever?


In theory less wear and tear on the drive and better performance. However, in reality, these things we are unable to measure and verify. All that being said. I would do it.



collin said:


> Side note: any need or way to turn off TLER on this drive?


Not sure if this is an issue with the WD Purple line of drives. This feature is on the WD Red line of drives and with NASWare 3.0 can be turned off but the setting does not survive a power cycle of the drive. I have had not issue with TLER being on and have not heard anything from the community either.


----------



## Snowball3

ThAbtO said:


> MSFR is only for Roamio or Bolt. Recommended is WD Red (not Pro, 7200+ RPM) drives. Up to 3TB for a simple drop and swap, or up to 8TB with MSFR.


Thank you (and everyone else) for your replies. It has been very helpful. I initially thought to go with 7200 because I assumed it would run faster but will instead go with the WD Red 5400 8tb since it seems more recommended for this. Also appreciate it being verified that it will work for Roamio OTA .


----------



## jlin

I see that Bestbuy has the 10tb drive on-sale for $179.

Does anyone know if it's possible to use the MFS formatter for the Roamio?


----------



## jmbach

jlin said:


> I see that Bestbuy has the 10tb drive on-sale for $179.
> 
> Does anyone know if it's possible to use the MFS formatter for the Roamio?


MFSR can be used up to an 8TB drive. I do not know what it would do if it was presented with a 10TB drive.


----------



## ThAbtO

jmbach said:


> MFSR can be used up to an 8TB drive. I do not know what it would do if it was presented with a 10TB drive.


Errors out with 'too many partitions.'


----------



## jmbach

ThAbtO said:


> Errors out with 'too many partitions.'


Well there you go. Problem solved.


----------



## bac

Thanks for *MFSR1004.zip !!! I just donated. Great stuff! 
*
Thanks I just picked up a 5TB Seagate backup plus on sale at Costco for $75!! installed in Bolt without a problem and running cool. The backup plus comes with a SATA to USB3.0 converter and cable that you can use to connect to your PC, then save for other tinkering! Cheers


----------



## HerronScott

bac said:


> Thanks I just picked up a 5TB Seagate backup plus on sale at Costco for $75!! installed in Bolt without a problem and running cool. The backup plus comes with a SATA to USB3.0 converter and cable that you can use to connect to your PC, then save for other tinkering! Cheers


Have you read about the issues with SMR drives and Bolts? They have been known to have early "failures" with Bolts.

Scott


----------



## Snowball3

I would also like to know how this has worked on Tivo Bolt OTA. They are offering a deal if you trade in your Tivo Roamio OTA for like a $200 discount toward Tivo Bolt OTA. I would like to put an 8tb hard drive into the Tivo Bolt OTa if I traded it in. But people have mentioned (like the previous post) that there are drive failures if you do this? Is this correct? Would this work on Tivo Bolt OTA with an 8tb harddrive? And would you recommend trading in for the new Tivo Bolt OTA over the Roamio? The 4k part intrigues me. But I am unsure. Thank you in advance to anyone who can help answer my questions!


----------



## ThAbtO

Snowball3 said:


> I would also like to know how this has worked on Tivo Bolt OTA. They are offering a deal if you trade in your Tivo Roamio OTA for like a $200 discount toward Tivo Bolt OTA. I would like to put an 8tb hard drive into the Tivo Bolt OTa if I traded it in. But people have mentioned (like the previous post) that there are drive failures if you do this? Is this correct? Would this work on Tivo Bolt OTA with an 8tb harddrive? And would you recommend trading in for the new Tivo Bolt OTA over the Roamio? The 4k part intrigues me. But I am unsure. Thank you in advance to anyone who can help answer my questions!


IMO, The Bolt is an inferior product and should be avoided.

Upgrading the Bolt drive to 8TB is more difficult since they use 2.5" laptop drives not PC drives. The largest 2.5" is about 5TB. 3.5" PC drives do not really fit in a Bolt.


----------



## Godey

Snowball3 said:


> I would also like to know how this has worked on Tivo Bolt OTA. They are offering a deal if you trade in your Tivo Roamio OTA for like a $200 discount toward Tivo Bolt OTA. I would like to put an 8tb hard drive into the Tivo Bolt OTa if I traded it in. But people have mentioned (like the previous post) that there are drive failures if you do this? Is this correct? Would this work on Tivo Bolt OTA with an 8tb harddrive? And would you recommend trading in for the new Tivo Bolt OTA over the Roamio? The 4k part intrigues me. But I am unsure. Thank you in advance to anyone who can help answer my questions!


I went this exact route. traded in my roamio ota for the bolt ota and got the 5TB Seagate backup plus from Costco for $94. Used mfsr to format it and installed without any issues. So far I like the upgrade. will see how long the seagate last.


----------



## Godey

ThAbtO said:


> IMO, The Bolt is an inferior product and should be avoided.


Why is the Bolt an inferior product?


----------



## Snowball3

Thank you for replying! I am very tempted to trade it in because I keep reading how the "4k tv switch is coming around the corner". But at the same time I watch a lot of old shows that really wont effect that I don't think. But I am worried that they are really trying to phase out Roamio and push the Bolt so I fear certain support (maybe the Channel guide?) or any issues that arise will have them being like you need to upgrade as my only solution. But mainly I am on the fence because so many people say that swapping out the harddrive to like 8tb makes this thing fail quick. OR maybe not even possible like Thabto mentioned. That would void the warranty and leave me with a very expensive paper weight lol. Godey if it isn't too much trouble could you post an update sometime down the line and mention if you have any trouble with it? I wish this had been around a little longer so I could read more feedback on peoples experiences doing this. 

-Thank you all again!


----------



## ggieseke

Snowball3 said:


> Thank you for replying! I am very tempted to trade it in because I keep reading how the "4k tv switch is coming around the corner". But at the same time I watch a lot of old shows that really wont effect that I don't think. But I am worried that they are really trying to phase out Roamio and push the Bolt so I fear certain support (maybe the Channel guide?) or any issues that arise will have them being like you need to upgrade as my only solution. But mainly I am on the fence because so many people say that swapping out the harddrive to like 8tb makes this thing fail quick. OR maybe not even possible like Thabto mentioned. That would void the warranty and leave me with a very expensive paper weight lol. Godey if it isn't too much trouble could you post an update sometime down the line and mention if you have any trouble with it? I wish this had been around a little longer so I could read more feedback on peoples experiences doing this.
> 
> -Thank you all again!


A few people have used those 5TB Seagate backup drives, but I don't expect them to last very long. Using SMR drives in a TiVo is a really bad idea. In the 2.5" drive world that includes some 2TB drives, most 3TB drives, and everything over 3TB.


----------



## Snowball3

ggieseke said:


> A few people have used those 5TB Seagate backup drives, but I don't expect them to last very long. Using SMR drives in a TiVo is a really bad idea. In the 2.5" drive world that includes some 2TB drives, most 3TB drives, and everything over 3TB.


That is what worries me and making me lean toward just staying with the Roamio OTA. It sounds like I could use more storage on it (8TB) and it will last longer without the same trouble. Unless people have experienced any sort of trouble upgrading their Roamio OTA to 8TB? I haven't heard anything though about that. Have you?


----------



## DL05

ggieseke said:


> PM sent (MFSR 1.0.0.5 private release). Let me know how it goes.


I've broken a 2tb hard drive and have read I need to use 1.0.0.5 to format it. Is this true? Is this available yet?


----------



## DL05

More on the broken 2tb drive...

So I bought a Bolt, 1gb. I bought a WD Blue 2tb drive. I put the 2tb in and booted the Bolt. It went through the setup screen, downloaded an update, and then asked me to reboot. Once I rebooted, it says "Starting Up" but just sits there. I can't seem to get the 2tb drive to get past "Starting Up".

I wanted to try to start over with the drive...but can't seem to find a way around it.

The original drive starts the configuration wizard and gets by the "Starting Up" screen.

Any thoughts?


----------



## jmbach

DL05 said:


> More on the broken 2tb drive...
> 
> So I bought a Bolt, 1gb. I bought a WD Blue 2tb drive. I put the 2tb in and booted the Bolt. It went through the setup screen, downloaded an update, and then asked me to reboot. Once I rebooted, it says "Starting Up" but just sits there. I can't seem to get the 2tb drive to get past "Starting Up".
> 
> I wanted to try to start over with the drive...but can't seem to find a way around it.
> 
> The original drive starts the configuration wizard and gets by the "Starting Up" screen.
> 
> Any thoughts?


With the latest TE4 (Hydra/Mira) interface update, there are several drives that are stuck in the starting up screen. Most of the reported drives are the 4 TB WD40NPZZ, but there are other smaller drives that have been reported as well. No one is sure why one drive works or the other does not. If you downgrade the Bolt interference to TE3 (Encore), the drive should work. In order to do that, you will need to boot the drive that works in the bolt and follow directions on this forum found elsewhere.


----------



## DL05

jmbach said:


> With the latest TE4 (Hydra/Mira) interface update, there are several drives that are stuck in the starting up screen. Most of the reported drives are the 4 TB WD40NPZZ, but there are other smaller drives that have been reported as well. No one is sure why one drive works or the other does not. If you downgrade the Bolt interference to TE3 (Encore), the drive should work. In order to do that, you will need to boot the drive that works in the bolt and follow directions on this forum found elsewhere.


Would I just need to copy the working drive to the non-working drive?

Since the 2tb drive is brand new (this is the non-working drive); it would likely make sense for me to use the 1tb working drive for now...then copy it / expand it to a bigger drive later (if I decide). Would you agree? I don't think it makes a lot of sense for me to get this drive working with the newest update if it's a known problem for some drives.


----------



## DL05

Yep, so I'm just going to get the 1tb drive going now, take the 2tb drive back and order one from Amazon to upgrade it to. Any recommendations / known good option?


----------



## jmbach

DL05 said:


> Would I just need to copy the working drive to the non-working drive?
> 
> Since the 2tb drive is brand new (this is the non-working drive); it would likely make sense for me to use the 1tb working drive for now...then copy it / expand it to a bigger drive later (if I decide). Would you agree? I don't think it makes a lot of sense for me to get this drive working with the newest update if it's a known problem for some drives.


Unfortunately it won't work. At least it did not for me. The only way to get the 2TB to work is put the 1TB in and revert the interface to TE3. Then it will work. Otherwise, you will have to play roulette with new drives until you find one that works. Interestingly, the Seagate drives seem to work. Only issue is that they are shingled drives and they seem to experience premature failure.


----------



## DL05

jmbach said:


> Unfortunately it won't work. At least it did not for me. The only way to get the 2TB to work is put the 1TB in and revert the interface to TE3. Then it will work. Otherwise, you will have to play roulette with new drives until you find one that works. Interestingly, the Seagate drives seem to work. Only issue is that they are shingled drives and they seem to experience premature failure.


Putting the 1tb drive back in just takes me through the setup again. I never booted the Tivo to this drive.

So what you're saying, go ahead and get the 1tb working drive going...I can revert back to TE3 interface, and then put in whatever drive I want? My other option is to buy a drive, cross my fingers, and it may work with Hydra, or may not...but putting the original drive in each time I can revert back to TE3?


----------



## jmbach

DL05 said:


> Putting the 1tb drive back in just takes me through the setup again. I never booted the Tivo to this drive.
> 
> So what you're saying, go ahead and get the 1tb working drive going...I can revert back to TE3 interface, and then put in whatever drive I want? My other option is to buy a drive, cross my fingers, and it may work with Hydra, or may not...but putting the original drive in each time I can revert back to TE3?


Once you revert to TE3 (Encore), there appears to be no drive incompatibility. Once you are on TE3 you stay on TE3 until you tell TiVo otherwise.


----------



## Steve-O

Hi, I could use some help...I purchased a Weaknees refurb Tivo Roamio Plus last month, with a 1 TB WD-AV drive in it. I tried replacing it with a WD Red 3TB drive that I pulled from a NAS and reformatted, but the Roamio would spontaneously shut off about when boot-up was completed.

Last week I purchased a new WD Red 4TB drive, hoping to get past the spontaneous shut off. Following the instructions in the top post, I put the 4TB drive in the Roamio until the first screen came up, at which point I removed the drive. I put it in a USB3 hard drive dock connected to a PC running Windows Pro 10.0.17134.

I downloaded and installed MFSR 1.0.0.4 and ran it as administrator. After OK'ing the T&C's screen, the next screen reports an error, malloc (Line 684, Error 0x00000008).

I found one other mention of malloc in this thread, which involved rebooting, but that didn't help in my case.

If it matters, I am also running disk pooling software, called DriveBender, on this PC. The boot disk is a 128GB SSD, but there are six pooled drives besides that.

Can you help me?


----------



## ggieseke

That error is basically "out of memory". It can happen any time the software tries to allocate memory, but I've never seen it happen before if you got to the first screen in Guided Setup.

It's happening during my initial scan of all the drives, but at a point where it's just trying to get the Vendor ID like "Western Digital" or "Seagate". I've never heard of DriveBender, but a bug somewhere in that software would be my first guess. Do you have access to a generic Windows PC without 3rd-party drive pooling software?


----------



## Steve-O

ggieseke said:


> That error is basically "out of memory". It can happen any time the software tries to allocate memory, but I've never seen it happen before if you got to the first screen in Guided Setup.
> 
> It's happening during my initial scan of all the drives, but at a point where it's just trying to get the Vendor ID like "Western Digital" or "Seagate". I've never heard of DriveBender, but a bug somewhere in that software would be my first guess. Do you have access to a generic Windows PC without 3rd-party drive pooling software?


I also tried it on my laptop, a MacBook Pro 2015 with a BootCamp partition running Windows10. I got a different error there, something about partitioning, but as that is a work computer, I don't wanna fool around with it.

That brings me back to the home PC. What I can do is make a Ghost image type of backup of the running system and reset Windows back to factory settings (i.e., no Drive Bender) and try again. Or I can see if that PC in the corner gathering dust is bootable...


----------



## Steve-O

Steve-O said:


> I also tried it on my laptop, a MacBook Pro 2015 with a BootCamp partition running Windows10. I got a different error there, something about partitioning, but as that is a work computer, I don't wanna fool around with it.
> 
> That brings me back to the home PC. What I can do is make a Ghost image type of backup of the running system and reset Windows back to factory settings (i.e., no Drive Bender) and try again. Or I can see if that PC in the corner gathering dust is bootable...


That PC gathering dust in the corner IS dust. Won't boot. Throwing it out.

Connected my USB dock with Roamio-formatted Red drive to a work PC. Ran mfsr and got this error: "Invalid Apple partition format."

I think I will have to zero out this disk (will Data Lifeguard do this?) and stick it in the Roamio again for re-formatting.

I think mfsr is choking on the way this drive is formatted.

Agreed?


----------



## ggieseke

Steve-O said:


> That PC gathering dust in the corner IS dust. Won't boot. Throwing it out.
> 
> Connected my USB dock with Roamio-formatted Red drive to a work PC. Ran mfsr and got this error: "Invalid Apple partition format."
> 
> I think I will have to zero out this disk (will Data Lifeguard do this?) and stick it in the Roamio again for re-formatting.
> 
> I think mfsr is choking on the way this drive is formatted.
> 
> Agreed?


Data Lifeguard Diagnostics will definitely zero the drive. It's worth a try.


----------



## ThAbtO

Steve-O said:


> I tried replacing it with a WD Red 3TB drive that I pulled from a NAS and reformatted, but the Roamio would spontaneously shut off about when boot-up was completed.


You reformatted this drive to what? It should be blank with no partitions.


----------



## Steve-O

ThAbtO said:


> You reformatted this drive to what? It should be blank with no partitions.


Not sure what you mean. This was not a new drive, it was a system pull.


----------



## ThAbtO

Steve-O said:


> Not sure what you mean. This was not a new drive, it was a system pull.


Whether its new or old, for Tivo image, it should be erased/blank no partitions, before putting in an image for Premiere and older model Tivos. No images for Roamio or Bolt.


----------



## Steve-O

ThAbtO said:


> Whether its new or old, for Tivo image, it should be erased/blank no partitions, before putting in an image for Premiere and older model Tivos. No images for Roamio or Bolt.


I get it. That's why, after pulling the 3TB from a NAS, I erased it in WD DLD. Still, the drive caused my Roamio to shut off after restarting. And then I bought a new 4TB Red, which didn't do that, and that's the drive I'm using now.


----------



## Ubergeekin

Currently trying to upgrade my Roamio Series 5 from the original 500GB disk to a new 4TB Seagate Red disk. MFSR can't reformat it, and Winmfs give me a partition signature error. Are there updated tools available?


----------



## ThAbtO

Ubergeekin said:


> Currently trying to upgrade my Roamio Series 5 from the original 500GB disk to a new 4TB Seagate Red disk. MFSR can't reformat it, and Winmfs give me a partition signature error. Are there updated tools available?


Did you put it into the Roamio first and get it initalized, before MSFR?

WinMFS does not work with anything Premiere and newer.

Seagate does not label drives Red, or Blue or any color.


----------



## Ubergeekin

ThAbtO said:


> Did you put it into the Roamio first and get it initalized, before MSFR?
> 
> WinMFS does not work with anything Premiere and newer.
> 
> Seagate does not label drives Red, or Blue or any color.


I put it into the Roamio first and allowed it to initialize the disk
I put it into a USB 3.0 carriage and connected it to my Win10 laptop 
Set MSFR to use Win7 compatibility, ran as administrator
Error: No Roamio or Bolt drive found

To clarify, the disk is:
Seagate 4TB SATA IronWolf (NAS) 3.5" 
Model: ST4000VNA08


----------



## jmbach

Ubergeekin said:


> I put it into the Roamio first and allowed it to initialize the disk
> I put it into a USB 3.0 carriage and connected it to my Win10 laptop
> Set MSFR to use Win7 compatibility, ran as administrator
> Error: No Roamio or Bolt drive found
> 
> To clarify, the disk is:
> Seagate 4TB SATA IronWolf (NAS) 3.5"
> Model: ST4000VNA08


Make sure you download the latest MSFR as the newer Roamio/Bolt OS does not initialize block 0 completely on the drive as they used to since the OS only cares about block 0 on the internal flash drive. 
The latest version of MSFR corrects for this.


----------



## ThAbtO

Ubergeekin said:


> I put it into the Roamio first and allowed it to initialize the disk
> I put it into a USB 3.0 carriage and connected it to my Win10 laptop
> Set MSFR to use Win7 compatibility, ran as administrator
> Error: No Roamio or Bolt drive found
> 
> To clarify, the disk is:
> Seagate 4TB SATA IronWolf (NAS) 3.5"
> Model: ST4000VNA08


Does laptop have any card readers? can they be disabled in BIOS?

This is the drive from Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Iron...d=1547509644&sr=8-1&keywords=ST4000VNA08&th=1

It looks like with 6TB and up, they are 7200RPM.


----------



## Ubergeekin

I cleaned the disk, put it back into the Roamio to reinitialize the disk. MFSR is now sees the disk but errors at Line 1059: 0x00000002: with message ReadFile. I'm assuming this is some kind of stack error. The windows event log shows Event ID 153 / Disk / The IO operation at logical block address xxx for Disk 1 was retried.


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## Ubergeekin

I'm using MSFR 1.0.0.4 is there a later rev?

ThAbt0: No card readers


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## ThAbtO

I'd try ignore the error and run it in Roamio, after GS, check System Information.


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## Ubergeekin

I know it's not completing the format, it runs for about 30 seconds and then throws the error. Then I have to clean the disk, put it back into the Roamio for initialization, then reconnect it to the laptop to attempt MFSR again. Needless to say, but it takes a lot of time to do this. Is there no other method, a boot disk tool, or some other method that would make it easier to complete this task?


----------



## jmbach

Ubergeekin said:


> I know it's not completing the format, it runs for about 30 seconds and then throws the error. Then I have to clean the disk, put it back into the Roamio for initialization, then reconnect it to the laptop to attempt MFSR again. Needless to say, but it takes a lot of time to do this. Is there no other method, a boot disk tool, or some other method that would make it easier to complete this task?


Run the manufacturer's diagnostic on the drive. The full diagnostic both read and write.


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## Ubergeekin

The disk checks out. So I'm not sure why the tool isn't working for reformatting the disk.


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## ThAbtO

What does MSFR say on the space? Should be around 3800. Ignore the error and put it back in the Tivo.


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## jmbach

Ubergeekin said:


> I'm using MSFR 1.0.0.4 is there a later rev?


That Revision should be fine. ggeseike would probably have better advise.

From what I gather from the error it is having a problem reading a file.

So make sure any antivirus program is disabled, run MFSR as administrator, no other program is trying to access the drive while MFSR is working on it.

Try another computer.


----------



## ggieseke

Ubergeekin said:


> I cleaned the disk, put it back into the Roamio to reinitialize the disk. MFSR is now sees the disk but errors at Line 1059: 0x00000002: with message ReadFile. I'm assuming this is some kind of stack error. The windows event log shows Event ID 153 / Disk / The IO operation at logical block address xxx for Disk 1 was retried.


That's a file not found error, and the 'file' in this case is the entire physical drive. I've never seen this error in MFSR. If it can identify the drive at all it shouldn't lose it during the reformat.

The reason it uses ReadFile at all is that when you access a drive at this level in Windows it has to be done in aligned blocks of 4096 bytes. For example, if it needs to write 6000 bytes at offset 2000 it has to read the entire first block and the entire last block where that data is going to be written to fill in the surrounding data. Then it can write back the full aligned block of 8192 bytes.

I would take MFSR out of compatibility mode first (it's not necessary). If that still doesn't work, try jmbach's advice about looking for other programs that could be interfering or even trying a different computer altogether.


----------



## Snowball3

Sorry for the dumb questions. But I was wondering if someone could tell me how to properly check a hard drive to make sure it is running good and free of any errors or anything that is failing inside of it. I want to put an 8tb 5400 Rpm WD inside of the roamio OTA tivo following ggieseke MFSR format but I want to know the new drive is working properly beforehand. I googled it and found a program called *Hard Disk Sentine*l but I am not sure if it really works or if I really want to pay 30 bucks just to check it out. I am running windows 10 by the way. If anyone could let me know what to check for and how I should check my drive I would really appreciate it!

-Also If I purchased a WD hard drive on Amazon sold by Amazon. Does the warranty still hold up. Say it is two years and it fails within that would it still be covered and would I have to send it to Amazon or register it with WD once I get it from Amazon on WD website and send it to WD. Thanks for the help sorry for the question if its obvious.


----------



## ggieseke

Snowball3 said:


> Sorry for the dumb questions. But I was wondering if someone could tell me how to properly check a hard drive to make sure it is running good and free of any errors or anything that is failing inside of it. I want to put an 8tb 5400 Rpm WD inside of the roamio OTA tivo following ggieseke MFSR format but I want to know the new drive is working properly beforehand. I googled it and found a program called *Hard Disk Sentine*l but I am not sure if it really works or if I really want to pay 30 bucks just to check it out. I am running windows 10 by the way. If anyone could let me know what to check for and how I should check my drive I would really appreciate it!
> 
> -Also If I purchased a WD hard drive on Amazon sold by Amazon. Does the warranty still hold up. Say it is two years and it fails within that would it still be covered and would I have to send it to Amazon or register it with WD once I get it from Amazon on WD website and send it to WD. Thanks for the help sorry for the question if its obvious.


I use Western Digital's Data Lifeguard Diagnostics to test drives. It's free, and I usually do a full zeros test followed by the long read test.

I would register the drive when you get it to lock in the purchase date. Warranty replacements are handled directly by WD.


----------



## Snowball3

ggieseke said:


> I use Western Digital's Data Lifeguard Diagnostics to test drives. It's free, and I usually do a full zeros test followed by the long read test.
> 
> I would register the drive when you get it to lock in the purchase date. Warranty replacements are handled directly by WD.


Thank you so much for replying! I found the download for Western Digital's Data Lifeguard Diagnostics. Is the full zero test and long read test built into that program or is it a seperate test on the computer? Everything should say like zero bad sectors or healthy drive and I am good to go? Thanks again for your help!


----------



## ggieseke

They're built into the program.


----------



## Snowball3

ggieseke said:


> They're built into the program.


Thanks again! Excited to try your program!


----------



## sliderbob

Still awaiting for the Petabyte drive...lol. Maybe another 10 years?


----------



## multiple

Can you format multiple drives in advance and run mfsr on each? I want to know if I can keep some spare pre-mfsr'd drives or will the TiVo reformat the drive down to its basic state which then requires mfsr to be rerun again? (I want to do this because I've switched over to a Mac and my PC is on its last legs)

Is there a limit to the number of drives you can stick into a TiVo? I tried inserting 3 drives with the same configuration. The first drive formatted to the initial setup screen. However, all subsequent drives just seem to spin forever, never reaching the initial setup screen. I then put the first mfsr'd drive back in, but it too never reached the initial setup screen (after about 15 min). I'm just hoping the firmware does't count the number of drives it has formatted and then hangs after a certain count is reached.

This TiVo is currently on TE4.

Next steps I'll try. Inserting the original drive and if that works I'll try the new drive again. If that then fails, I'll try reverting back to TE3 on the original drive (assuming that will work). I expect if the original drive fails then my TiVo is dead. For now, I'm going to let the TiVo spin on the first mfsr'd drive overnight to see if it gets to the initial setup screen.


----------



## ggieseke

multiple said:


> Can you format multiple drives in advance and run mfsr on each?


I don't think there's any limit, but I've seen several posts lately that make me think the latest version of TE4 has problems formatting some drives. Reverting to TE3 may be your best option. You could also try wiping the drive with the short write zeros test in WD's Data Lifeguard Diagnostics.

Is it a Roamio or a Bolt?


----------



## multiple

The problem resolved itself overnight.



ggieseke said:


> Is it a Roamio or a Bolt?


It is a Bolt.

Can you pre-mfsr a spare drive?

Will the eventual drive swap revert the drive back to a pre-mfsr state or will it retain the mfrs formatting but erase all the content? I expect it is the former.


----------



## ggieseke

multiple said:


> Can you pre-mfsr a spare drive?
> 
> Will the eventual drive swap revert the drive back to a pre-mfsr state or will it retain the mfrs formatting but erase all the content? I expect it is the former.


It's trickier with a Bolt than a Roamio because most of the database is in flash memory. We know that you can't put an old drive back in a Bolt and expect to keep the shows, but I don't know if it reformats the drive or just wipes the shows.


----------



## Snowball3

When opening up your Tivo OTA Roamio to switch the internal hard drives is it necessary to lay it on anti static mat and use an anti static wristband? If so how exactly do I ground it? I have seen people use this three prong plug they plug into their outlet and then clamp onto but that seems pretty dangerous if you are not a hundred percent sure about how your house is wired? Which I am not. Do you think it is a necessary? Do I just lay the anti static mat down. Lay the opened and (unplugged) tivo on top of the mat for ten minutes. Then use the chord attached to the mat with the alligator clamp to clamp onto my tivo? And then use my wristband to clamp onto the same area of my tivo? Where on my tivo would I clamp it to? Any metal area or a specific plastic area? Would I need any other precaution to be safe? I have watched videos trying to find the answer but I haven't found one that addresses how to do this simply with a Tivo. Thank you so much in advance if you can help!


----------



## ggieseke

Snowball3 said:


> When opening up your Tivo OTA Roamio to switch the internal hard drives is it necessary to lay it on anti static mat and use an anti static wristband? If so how exactly do I ground it? I have seen people use this three prong plug they plug into their outlet and then clamp onto but that seems pretty dangerous if you are not a hundred percent sure about how your house is wired? Which I am not. Do you think it is a necessary? Do I just lay the anti static mat down. Lay the opened and (unplugged) tivo on top of the mat for ten minutes. Then use the chord attached to the mat with the alligator clamp to clamp onto my tivo? And then use my wristband to clamp onto the same area of my tivo? Where on my tivo would I clamp it to? Any metal area or a specific plastic area? Would I need any other precaution to be safe? I have watched videos trying to find the answer but I haven't found one that addresses how to do this simply with a Tivo. Thank you so much in advance if you can help!


I wouldn't sweat it too much. If you live in an extremely low humidity area, touch a water pipe or something else with a good ground connection first, then don't scuff your feet on the carpet before working on it. Tivos don't use a 3-wire power cable, so leaving it plugged in won't ground the chassis (and could kill you if you touch the power supply).

You can use an anti static mat and wrist strap if necessary. As long as the TiVo chassis, the drive case, and your body are at the same potential it doesn't matter if you could taser the next person you touch. If you get a spark every time you touch a doorknob or shake hands it might be worth the additional effort.


----------



## MarkSTA

ggieseke said:


> That's a file not found error, and the 'file' in this case is the entire physical drive. I've never seen this error in MFSR. If it can identify the drive at all it shouldn't lose it during the reformat.
> 
> The reason it uses ReadFile at all is that when you access a drive at this level in Windows it has to be done in aligned blocks of 4096 bytes. For example, if it needs to write 6000 bytes at offset 2000 it has to read the entire first block and the entire last block where that data is going to be written to fill in the surrounding data. Then it can write back the full aligned block of 8192 bytes.
> 
> I would take MFSR out of compatibility mode first (it's not necessary). If that still doesn't work, try jmbach's advice about looking for other programs that could be interfering or even trying a different computer altogether.


----------



## MarkSTA

It may be nothing, but I did have some issues with mfsr when attemping to use with a drive connected via USB, that did not happen when I then connected via SATA. Just an idea to try maybe.


----------



## Snowball3

ggieseke said:


> I wouldn't sweat it too much. If you live in an extremely low humidity area, touch a water pipe or something else with a good ground connection first, then don't scuff your feet on the carpet before working on it. Tivos don't use a 3-wire power cable, so leaving it plugged in won't ground the chassis (and could kill you if you touch the power supply).
> 
> You can use an anti static mat and wrist strap if necessary. As long as the TiVo chassis, the drive case, and your body are at the same potential it doesn't matter if you could taser the next person you touch. If you get a spark every time you touch a doorknob or shake hands it might be worth the additional effort.


Thank you for your input! Hopefully I can pull this off okay lol


----------



## cherb

Ubergeekin said:


> I cleaned the disk, put it back into the Roamio to reinitialize the disk. MFSR is now sees the disk but errors at Line 1059: 0x00000002: with message ReadFile. I'm assuming this is some kind of stack error. The windows event log shows Event ID 153 / Disk / The IO operation at logical block address xxx for Disk 1 was retried.


I had a similar issue in my PC with a boot drive and a separate software mirror set. Unplugging the mirror set and booting with just my boot drive and drive to be prepped resolved the problem.


----------



## cherb

I tried to prep a new 4TB drive in a brand new Bolt running TE4 (21.8.3) and it got stuck at the Starting Up screen. I went ahead and ran it through MFSR 1.0.0.4 just to confirm and it would still hang at Starting Up. What's interesting is I then downgraded the original drive to TE3. Once downgraded I put the prepped 4TB back in the bolt and it came up fine under TE3 with the full capacity.

Just to confirm my suspicion that the upgraded drive wouldn't work in TE4, I went ahead and used the app to upgrade to TE4. Sure enough on reboot it got stuck at the Starting Up screen again. Putting the original drive back in and downgrading to TE3, then putting the new drive got it working again.

It seems that maybe something changed in a newer version of TE4 that is preventing at least some (if not all) larger drives from working, even if run through MFSR.

BTW, I've had a Roamio running TE3 and a 10TB drive for a couple of years (using MFSR 1.0.0.4) and it's been working great for those asking about 10TB support (it is not a SMR drive).


----------



## MarkSTA

cherb said:


> I tried to prep a new 4TB drive in a brand new Bolt running TE4 (21.8.3) and it got stuck at the Starting Up screen. I went ahead and ran it through MFSR 1.0.0.4 just to confirm and it would still hang at Starting Up. What's interesting is I then downgraded the original drive to TE3. Once downgraded I put the prepped 4TB back in the bolt and it came up fine under TE3 with the full capacity.
> 
> Just to confirm my suspicion that the upgraded drive wouldn't work in TE4, I went ahead and used the app to upgrade to TE4. Sure enough on reboot it got stuck at the Starting Up screen again. Putting the original drive back in and downgrading to TE3, then putting the new drive got it working
> 
> It seems that maybe something changed in a newer version of TE4 that is preventing at least some (if not all) larger drives from working, even if run through MFSR.
> 
> BTW, I've had a Roamio running TE3 and a 10TB drive for a couple of years (using MFSR 1.0.0.4) and it's been working great for those asking about 10TB support (it is not a SMR drive).


----------



## MarkSTA

Are you utilizing the full 10TB capacity, or is it only recognizing 8TB?


----------



## HerronScott

cherb said:


> I tried to prep a new 4TB drive in a brand new Bolt running TE4 (21.8.3) and it got stuck at the Starting Up screen. I went ahead and ran it through MFSR 1.0.0.4 just to confirm and it would still hang at Starting Up. What's interesting is I then downgraded the original drive to TE3. Once downgraded I put the prepped 4TB back in the bolt and it came up fine under TE3 with the full capacity.
> 
> Just to confirm my suspicion that the upgraded drive wouldn't work in TE4, I went ahead and used the app to upgrade to TE4. Sure enough on reboot it got stuck at the Starting Up screen again. Putting the original drive back in and downgrading to TE3, then putting the new drive got it working again.
> 
> It seems that maybe something changed in a newer version of TE4 that is preventing at least some (if not all) larger drives from working, even if run through MFSR.


What model drive did you use as yes after the last TE4 update there were reports of issues with some drives (you should be able to find these in the Bolt forum)?

Scott


----------



## zombiephysicist

Sorry if this is the wrong forum/thread to ask this...

If I buy a new 7.68TB SSD drive for my Bolt and plug it in, and the Bolt has the current software updates, when I plug in the new drive, will the Bolt automatically format the drive to it's capacity.

I think I remember in one of the threads here, someone mentioned you don't have to do anything special, just plug in an empty drive, and now the TiVo will format it for you. Is that correct? Or should I still use MFS Reformatter (mfsr) to format the drive?


----------



## ThAbtO

Roamio and Bolts will format and recognize up to 3TB. You would need to use MSFR to expand beyond that 3TB to recognize. However, a SSD may not be up to par with all the constant reads and writes to last the years. (So I've heard.)


----------



## zombiephysicist

ThAbtO said:


> Roamio and Bolts will format and recognize up to 3TB. You would need to use MSFR to expand beyond that 3TB to recognize. However, a SSD may not be up to par with all the constant reads and writes to last the years. (So I've heard.)


Thanks, ok, so I still have to do the MSFR bit again.

As for how long they last, they basically last as long (worst case) or longer than traditional drives (assuming you get a modern SSD).

Using SSDs in DVRs - in Koherence


> If you're using the Samsung 850 EVO, then you drive might last about six years. On the other hand, if you're using the SanDisk or WD Blue, then you should be good for 16 years.


Hard drives last 5-7 years...

The down side is this:
*



The "Always Recording" Workload

Click to expand...

*


> Now let's redo the math assuming that you have a TiVo-style live cache and a four tuner box. The live cache records 24/7, so with four tuners you're recording 96 hours/day, or 8x more than the 12 hours/day we were assuming previously.
> 
> At 96 hours/day, the Samsung 850 EVO now lasts a bit less than a year, and the SanDisk and WD Blue about 2 years. Most people would find this an unacceptably low lifespan.


However, our TiVo always goes in *sleep mode* when we turn it off, and I believe in that mode, it does not do the live TV caching and only records set recordings. *I think SLEEP MODE is key.* See here: https://support.tivo.com/articles/Features_Use/Power-Saving-and-Standby-Modes

So..... I think we should be OK, and I'm willing to give it a go with this 7.68TB SSD going for $1200:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07JQ2F2WG/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1


----------



## DocNo

zombiephysicist said:


> If I buy a new 7.68TB SSD drive for my Bolt and plug it in, and the Bolt has the current software updates, when I plug in the new drive, will the Bolt automatically format the drive to it's capacity.


What @ThAbtO said - you have to prep the drive before the bolt will use it (I'm using a WD Red 8TB drive right now with my bolt). And your SSD experience will be short lived. Tivo writes constantly and SSD's have a fraction of lifetime that magnetic disks to; you will kill that SSD pronto sticking it in a Tivo. And it's performance will likely suck worse than a magnetic hard drive due to the way flash media works in a device like Tivo that constantly writes - unless you buy an enterprise grade flash drive that would cost more than you car in 7.68TB capacity.

There is ZERO advantage to using an SSD in a Tivo; indeed it's a really bad idea from performance and reliability standpoints. Just stick with plain old spinning rust  I just used an external power supply for the 3.5" hard drive and ran a SATA cable out the back of the bolt to the hard drive which is just sitting on the shelf out of sight behind my bolt. Works a treat.


----------



## dougdingle

zombiephysicist said:


> Sorry if this is the wrong forum/thread to ask this...
> 
> If I buy a new 7.68TB SSD drive for my Bolt and plug it in, and the Bolt has the current software updates, when I plug in the new drive, will the Bolt automatically format the drive to it's capacity.
> 
> I think I remember in one of the threads here, someone mentioned you don't have to do anything special, just plug in an empty drive, and now the TiVo will format it for you. Is that correct? Or should I still use MFS Reformatter (mfsr) to format the drive?


Not to rain on your parade, but SSDs have proven to be no faster at almost anything than spinning drives in a TiVo. Apparently, they do boot a little faster from a cold start.

Because the TiVos write to the drive constantly (maintaining that 30 minute buffer for every tuner), SSDs will wear out rather quickly. And because there is no TRIM feature in the TiVo OS (AFAIK), an SSD will tend to slow down once it's had most of its areas written to once.

The only real upside is that there's no spinning drive noise and heat, although the WD RED drives I use run cool.


----------



## DocNo

zombiephysicist said:


> However, our TiVo always goes in sleep mode when we turn it off, and I believe in that mode, it does not do the live TV caching and only records set recordings


You might want to test that. My hard drive makes noise in sleep mode or not, whether a schedule recording is active or not.

Consumer SSDs do not have the capacity to TRIM while under load. It's a matter of channels to flash memory and having enough over provisioned space to do garbage collection. I guarantee Tivo is not going to issue TRIM commands as it deletes old content. As soon as your SSD fills up and the last of your completely empty flash cells is consumed your performance is going to go into the toilet when your SSD has only partially filled flash cells to work with and to write new content it has to read the partially full cell first, cache that, then do a slow erase operation, write back the cached content then write the new content.

Enterprise drives made for server environments cost 4-8 times what consumer drives cost for a reasons - their controllers are a lot beefier, they have a lot more paths available to write to multiple flash cells at once, and they are over-provisioned so they have plenty of space to work with irrespective of TRIM or not and to also cover for the eventual bad cells and provide dramatically longer lifetimes.

But hey - go for it. It's only money


----------



## zombiephysicist

It's probably worth it to check out my post above. Basically if you turn off the live record feature (by putting your TiVo into stand by mode) an SSD will last as long if not longer than a spinner.

However, for the BOLTs we have another reason to try this. Not for speed (although I suspect this will get rid of my many beach ball wait screens) but for solving the 2.5" dying drive problem. Many people that have upgraded from the standard 3TB WD 2.5" drive in the Bolt end up having problems. Apparently with wear on those drives.

I even started a thread on it: Success Upgrading Bolt(+) with 4TB, 5TB + 2.5" Internal Drives?

So there are potential other gains. But check out my post above MFS Reformatter (mfsr), I think it gets to some of the tradeoffs.


----------



## DocNo

If you can find a drive with a SandForce controller they are better since they tend to rely on over-provisioning which works whether TRIM is there or not. Which it isn't with Tivo.


----------



## zombiephysicist

DocNo said:


> If you can find a drive with a SandForce controller they are better since they tend to rely on over-provisioning which works whether TRIM is there or not. Which it isn't with Tivo.


So I think the drive is an enterprise drive:
Micron 5210 ION SSD

It's made for a lot of database use, like big scale lots of read/write database use. Not sure what controller it uses. The do a comparison of the wear in this PDF: https://www.micron.com/-/media/clie...10_ssd_vs_hdd_endurance_white_paper.pdf?la=en


----------



## dougdingle

zombiephysicist said:


> However, for the BOLTs we have another reason to try this. Not for speed (although I suspect this will get rid of my many beach ball wait screens)


Although it's possible, I would be surprised if an SSD actually helped that.

When I accidentally disconnected my network cable from my Roamio a while back, it went crazy with almost every keypress generating the beach ball. My impression is that the vast majority of spinning blue beach balls are because TiVo now insists that every single little thing you do on any of their devices go through their server first, and there are times when the server you connect to will be sluggish for whatever reason, and they spin the ball waiting for it to stop being comatose.

But I haven't tried that in a while, so maybe they've fixed that issue. I just find it difficult to believe that waiting for a drive would cause the box to buffer unless all your tuners were showing 4K/UHD content, and even then...


----------



## cherb

MarkSTA said:


> Are you utilizing the full 10TB capacity, or is it only recognizing 8TB?


Correction, apparently I put the 8TB drive in and not the 10TB at my last upgrade. Just confirmed the capacity as I had another issue that forced me to pull off the cover.


----------



## makysti

HerronScott said:


> Wow, this is great addition to the community. I don't have a Roamio yet but will certainly plan on using this and donating when I do get one.
> 
> Scott


 Agree...


----------



## quietfly

Any advantage to using this a a 3gb drive? I know the roamio is plug and play at that capacity, but I was wondering if there .might be some longevity gains by using it. My last 3tb drive just failed at 5years to the day.....I'd like this one to last longer if possible.


----------



## ggieseke

quietfly said:


> Any advantage to using this a a 3gb drive? I know the roamio is plug and play at that capacity,  but I was wondering if there .might be some longevity gains by using it. My last 3tb drive just failed at 5years to the day.....I'd like this one to last longer if possible.


Theoretically, aligning the inode and application zones properly for 4K drives should result in slightly better performance and reduced disk writes. Compared to the amount of disk IO in the media zones (which are already properly aligned on the factory layout) it's a small change, but it can't hurt.


----------



## dougdingle

quietfly said:


> Any advantage to using this a a 3gb drive? I know the roamio is plug and play at that capacity, but I was wondering if there .might be some longevity gains by using it. My last 3tb drive just failed at 5years to the day.....I'd like this one to last longer if possible.


Five years is a decent span, considering the drive is working 24/7. You didn't mention which manufacturer's drive and model it was.

You can always buy two WD RED drives and a cloning dock, and clone the current one to the other one, rotating them every 90 days (or whatever you like). I've been doing that with a pair of 4TB drives for a few years years now. The drives will last longer (twice as long, maybe), and additionally, you don't lose more than 90 days of recordings if one drive goes belly up.


----------



## JulianSF

Hello everyone - I am a complete newbie at trying to upgrade my Roamio. I am not really a techy person, but can maneuver around a PC. I have Windows 10 and I updated my Tivo's software to the latest, but not the greatest. I was using a Seagate 4T hard drive and was able to get to the first page on Tivo when it asks which country you are from. Everything went well until I tried to run the MFSR tool. It did it's thing, then when I tried to put the new hard drive into my Tivo, all lights started to flash. I placed the original drive back in the Tivo and it booted up fine. Having said that, I don't know what to do now. In reading this thread, it looks like some folks have mentioned that they ran some kind of software to check if there were errors on the hard drive. This is something I don't know how to use. :-( 

Having said what my problem is, does anyone know what I should do next? Should I just have the drive I am trying to upgrade just reformatted? Which version of the MFSR should I be using? This is where I am stumped. UGH!


----------



## jmbach

JulianSF said:


> Hello everyone - I am a complete newbie at trying to upgrade my Roamio. I am not really a techy person, but can maneuver around a PC. I have Windows 10 and I updated my Tivo's software to the latest, but not the greatest. I was using a Seagate 4T hard drive and was able to get to the first page on Tivo when it asks which country you are from. Everything went well until I tried to run the MFSR tool. It did it's thing, then when I tried to put the new hard drive into my Tivo, all lights started to flash. I placed the original drive back in the Tivo and it booted up fine. Having said that, I don't know what to do now. In reading this thread, it looks like some folks have mentioned that they ran some kind of software to check if there were errors on the hard drive. This is something I don't know how to use. :-(
> 
> Having said what my problem is, does anyone know what I should do next? Should I just have the drive I am trying to upgrade just reformatted? Which version of the MFSR should I be using? This is where I am stumped. UGH!


What model drive is it and model Roamio?

I would run the manufacturer's diagnostic on it first doing a complete read and write.


----------



## JulianSF

First of all thank you for getting back to me. I have a couple Tivos I want to do this with and was attempting this with a Roamio first.

The Roamio model is TCD84800 - the hard drive was taken from back up box - It's Seagate Desktop - I dowloaded the Seagate tool for Windows, but when I launch the software, it does not recognize the drive.

I checked the Disk Management, and on the left it shows the Drive with a red down arrow, underneath that is shows Unknown, 3.86 GB, Not Initialized..... On the right side it shows 3.86 GB Unallocated. Does this make sense to you? As I mentioned, I am a newbie at using Disk Management...


----------



## jmbach

JulianSF said:


> First of all thank you for getting back to me. I have a couple Tivos I want to do this with and was attempting this with a Roamio first.
> 
> The Roamio model is TCD84800 - the hard drive was taken from back up box - It's Seagate Desktop - I dowloaded the Seagate tool for Windows, but when I launch the software, it does not recognize the drive.
> 
> I checked the Disk Management, and on the left it shows the Drive with a red down arrow, underneath that is shows Unknown, 3.86 GB, Not Initialized..... On the right side it shows 3.86 GB Unallocated. Does this make sense to you? As I mentioned, I am a newbie at using Disk Management...


What is the model of the drive. I would expect 3.86 TB not GB


----------



## JulianSF

It's a Seagate ST4000DM000, 4TB


----------



## ggieseke

JulianSF said:


> First of all thank you for getting back to me. I have a couple Tivos I want to do this with and was attempting this with a Roamio first.
> 
> The Roamio model is TCD84800 - the hard drive was taken from back up box - It's Seagate Desktop - I dowloaded the Seagate tool for Windows, but when I launch the software, it does not recognize the drive.
> 
> I checked the Disk Management, and on the left it shows the Drive with a red down arrow, underneath that is shows Unknown, 3.86 GB, Not Initialized..... On the right side it shows 3.86 GB Unallocated. Does this make sense to you? As I mentioned, I am a newbie at using Disk Management...


The red arrow in Disk management just means that your computer has classified the disk as offline for some reason. You can right-click the drive to bring it back online, then try SeaTools again. It will probably still show up in Disk Management as Unknown, but that's okay because Windows doesn't understand the format that TiVo uses anyway.

If Seatools still won't see it, try WD's Data Lifeguard Diagnostics to test the drive. I recommend running the full Write Zeros followed by the long read test.

Once you know that the drive is good, put it in the Roamio and let it come up to the first screen in Guided Setup. Hook it back up to the computer and run MFSR. It should select the drive automatically and let you reformat it to use the full 4TB. Once that's done it's ready.


----------



## JulianSF

I tried the WD Data Lifeguard, and it did recognize the drive, but when I tried to erase the Full Data option, I got a window that said Delete Particians Error. I also tried the following SMART, QUICK ERASE, got all test failed - here is what it showed for all tests:

Test Option: *ERASE*
Model Number: Seagate Expansion Desk
Unit Serial Number: NA4K6QTK
Firmware Number: 070B
Capacity: 4000.79 GB
SMART Status: Not Available
Test Result: *FAIL*
Test Error Code: 20- Delete Partitions error!
Test Time: 10:07:48, April 14, 2019

Test Option: *EXTENDED TEST*
Model Number: Seagate Expansion Desk
Unit Serial Number: NA4K6QTK
Firmware Number: 070B
Capacity: 4000.79 GB
SMART Status: Not Available
Test Result: *FAIL*
Test Error Code: 08-Too many bad sectors detected.
Test Time: 10:08:08, April 14, 2019

Test Option: *QUICK TEST*
Model Number: Seagate Expansion Desk
Unit Serial Number: NA4K6QTK
Firmware Number: 070B
Capacity: 4000.79 GB
SMART Status: Not Available
Test Result: *FAIL*
Test Error Code: 08-Too many bad sectors detected.
Test Time: 10:08:25, April 14, 2019

Test Option: *ERASE*
Model Number: Seagate Expansion Desk
Unit Serial Number: NA4K6QTK
Firmware Number: 070B
Capacity: 4000.79 GB
SMART Status: Not Available
Test Result: *FAIL*
Test Error Code: 20- Delete Partitions error!
Test Time: 11:44:24, April 14, 2019

Do you think this disk is just fried?


----------



## jmbach

JulianSF said:


> I tried the WD Data Lifeguard, and it did recognize the drive, but when I tried to erase the Full Data option, I got a window that said Delete Particians Error. I also tried the following SMART, QUICK ERASE, got all test failed - here is what it showed for all tests:
> 
> Test Option: *ERASE*
> Model Number: Seagate Expansion Desk
> Unit Serial Number: NA4K6QTK
> Firmware Number: 070B
> Capacity: 4000.79 GB
> SMART Status: Not Available
> Test Result: *FAIL*
> Test Error Code: 20- Delete Partitions error!
> Test Time: 10:07:48, April 14, 2019
> 
> Test Option: *EXTENDED TEST*
> Model Number: Seagate Expansion Desk
> Unit Serial Number: NA4K6QTK
> Firmware Number: 070B
> Capacity: 4000.79 GB
> SMART Status: Not Available
> Test Result: *FAIL*
> Test Error Code: 08-Too many bad sectors detected.
> Test Time: 10:08:08, April 14, 2019
> 
> Test Option: *QUICK TEST*
> Model Number: Seagate Expansion Desk
> Unit Serial Number: NA4K6QTK
> Firmware Number: 070B
> Capacity: 4000.79 GB
> SMART Status: Not Available
> Test Result: *FAIL*
> Test Error Code: 08-Too many bad sectors detected.
> Test Time: 10:08:25, April 14, 2019
> 
> Test Option: *ERASE*
> Model Number: Seagate Expansion Desk
> Unit Serial Number: NA4K6QTK
> Firmware Number: 070B
> Capacity: 4000.79 GB
> SMART Status: Not Available
> Test Result: *FAIL*
> Test Error Code: 20- Delete Partitions error!
> Test Time: 11:44:24, April 14, 2019
> 
> Do you think this disk is just fried?


I would say so.

However, if this drive came out of an enclosure, it might be encrypted with a password. In that case, it will only work when it is in the enclosure it came out of. You can put it back in the enclosure and run the same tests and see if you get the same results.

If you get the same results, then yes it is fried.


----------



## JulianSF

Thanks for the info - I decided to just ditch the Seagate and go with the WD40EFRX - it seems that people like this drive and it seems to have minimal issues.

I do have a question about the version of MFSR I should be using - it seems that there is the MFSR 1002, 1003 and 1004. Is there a preferred one for the Roamio? Also, are these the same steps to upgrade a Bolt?


----------



## ThAbtO

It can work on a Bolt. You just have to use 2.5 inch laptop drives. They fail more often then the 3.5 inch drives.


----------



## ggieseke

JulianSF said:


> I do have a question about the version of MFSR I should be using - it seems that there is the MFSR 1002, 1003 and 1004. Is there a preferred one for the Roamio? Also, are these the same steps to upgrade a Bolt?


Always use the latest version (1004).


----------



## JulianSF

SUCCESS!!!!

This is fantastic!

Thank you *jmback* & *ggieseke* for all of your help on this!

P.S. - made donation - thanks for all the hard work to all who made this possible.


----------



## Shave Jacket

So I'm having some trouble getting my Bolt back up and running. I got the dreaded 4 flashing lights a week ago and decided to go the external 8TB WD red HD in an external case route. I have done all the mods and got everything I believe hooked up correctly. Then I powered up the Bolt with the new HD for the first time ... let everything initialize and then unplugged the Bolt once it asked for a country. I ran the most up to date MSFR on the new HD (I'm using Windows 10 but ran it in Windows 7 compatibility mode) and got no issues. MSFR completed and told me to re-connect the HD to the Bolt and power up. I did this and while my TIVO will power on and gives me a startup screen. It goes black after a minute or so and then does nothing at all. I just have a green light on the bolt but no actual output through the HDMI port. Any ideas what may be causing this? Any suggestions for next steps? Thanks for any help!


----------



## jmbach

Recommend doing a complete write and read on the 8 TB drive and the repeat the procedure.


----------



## Shave Jacket

jmbach said:


> Recommend doing a complete write and read on the 8 TB drive and the repeat the procedure.


Please forgive my ignorance but how do I do a complete write and read on the new HD? I've done some googling on it but I'm not really sure exactly what I'm supposed to be doing.

Happy Easter all.


----------



## jmbach

Shave Jacket said:


> Please forgive my ignorance but how do I do a complete write and read on the new HD? I've done some googling on it but I'm not really sure exactly what I'm supposed to be doing.
> 
> Happy Easter all.


You can download WD diagnostic


----------



## dougdingle

Shave Jacket said:


> Please forgive my ignorance but how do I do a complete write and read on the new HD? I've done some googling on it but I'm not really sure exactly what I'm supposed to be doing.
> 
> Happy Easter all.


As jmbach said, download the WD diagnostics for Windows from the WD site, hook the 8TB drive to an actual SATA port in the computer (I've had issues using a USB3 dock and USB3 adapters for this), then select the drive, and select "Erase" then "Full Erase", followed by "Extended Test" when the erase is complete. If everything passes, try the procedure again.

Make sure you select the correct drive in the WD Diagnostics - there's no coming back from a full erase once it starts.


----------



## Shave Jacket

dougdingle said:


> As jmbach said, download the WD diagnostics for Windows from the WD site, hook the 8TB drive to an actual SATA port in the computer (I've had issues using a USB3 dock and USB3 adapters for this), then select the drive, and select "Erase" then "Full Erase", followed by "Extended Test" when the erase is complete. If everything passes, try the procedure again.
> 
> Make sure you select the correct drive in the WD Diagnostics - there's no coming back from a full erase once it starts.


Just to make sure I'm using the right program we are talking about WD Data LifeGuard Diagnostics program right?


----------



## jmbach

Shave Jacket said:


> Just to make sure I'm using the right program we are talking about WD Data LifeGuard Diagnostics program right?
> 
> View attachment 40539


Yes


----------



## dougdingle

That's the one.


----------



## Shave Jacket

Success! Thanks for the help! Donation coming shortly.


----------



## PDXPat

Question for this thread. Recently attempted to upgrade a Tivo Bolt Vox from 500GB to a 2TB Seagate ST2000LM007 hard drive. Validated that the hard drive was in good working condition before and after the attempted upgrade.

Placing the hard drive into Tivo Bolt for first initialization it will not get past the "Starting Up" screen. When taking the hard drive out and running the 0004 version of MFS Reformatter I get an error message "This drive would have 1 media regions, which isn't supported at this time." Followed by error message Line 339, Error 0x0000000D <ReformatBoltDrive>.

Any suggestions? Thanks.

PDXPat


----------



## ggieseke

PDXPat said:


> Question for this thread. Recently attempted to upgrade a Tivo Bolt Vox from 500GB to a 2TB Seagate ST2000LM007 hard drive. Validated that the hard drive was in good working condition before and after the attempted upgrade.
> 
> Placing the hard drive into Tivo Bolt for first initialization it will not get past the "Starting Up" screen. When taking the hard drive out and running the 0004 version of MFS Reformatter I get an error message "This drive would have 1 media regions, which isn't supported at this time." Followed by error message Line 339, Error 0x0000000D <ReformatBoltDrive>.
> 
> Any suggestions? Thanks.
> 
> PDXPat


Normally you don't need MFSR unless the drive is over 3TB. The TiVo should format it on its own, and MFSR was was designed for 3TB - 8TB drives. I'm sending you a link to a beta version that will work on smaller drives.

The last two versions of Hydra seem to have some bugs in the auto-format process. I would start off by zeroing the new drive with WD's Data Lifeguard Diagnostics (the short Write Zeros test is fine), then see if the Bolt can format it without going into a boot loop.

If that doesn't work, I would put the original drive back in it and downgrade the Bolt to the older TE3 software before trying to upgrade the drive. Don't forget to zero the 2TB Seagate again. You should be able to reinstall Hydra if you prefer it once the drive upgrade is complete.


----------



## PDXPat

Thank you ggieseke - unfortunately, still no luck with this drive. I will fall back to the 500GB drive for now.

I "zeroed" out the drive multiple times with various tools, e.g. WD Data Lifeguard, DOS shell via the format tool, no luck getting past the "Starting Up" screen on the Tivo Bolt.

The beta version of MFSR no longer generated the error message, so thank you for that. Unfortunately, that bug fix did not get me past the "Starting Up" screen on the Tivo.

Here are the complete details of the Seagate hard drive in case these breadcrumbs are helpful now or in the future:

Mobile HDD 2TB
Part Number: 1R8174-570
WWN: 5000C500B50505D6
ST2000LM007
FW:EB01
DOM: 13Feb2019


----------



## HerronScott

PDXPat said:


> Here are the complete details of the Seagate hard drive in case these breadcrumbs are helpful now or in the future:
> 
> Mobile HDD 2TB
> Part Number: 1R8174-570
> WWN: 5000C500B50505D6
> ST2000LM007
> FW:EB01
> DOM: 13Feb2019


Is this TE3 or TE4? The last TE4 update I believe caused some drives to not work (but they work fine with TE3).

Scott


----------



## PDXPat

@HerronScott - I believe I am running TE4. Thanks for the context. I have searched a bit for any confirmation of drives that are compatible with TE4 but have not seen a definitive list. If anyone has a link to one would appreciate (re) sharing. Thanks.


----------



## Mammothboy

hi guys i have the same issue as ggieseke any help would be appreciated


----------



## HerronScott

Mammothboy said:


> hi guys i have the same issue as ggieseke any help would be appreciated


What issue is that? I don't think Greg is having any issues (he created MFSR).

Scott


----------



## Mammothboy

Hello Scott, 

I have a TiVo bolt that has a dead hard drive I was trying to replace it with a 2 TB drive but it simply will not format as mentioned in previous posts. Im runing T4 and it just sit their.

I "zeroed" out the drive multiple times with various tools, e.g. WD Data Lifeguard, DOS shell via the format tool, no luck getting past the "Starting Up" screen on the Tivo Bolt.

The beta version of MFSR no longer generated the error message, so thank you for that. Unfortunately, that bug fix did not get me past the "Starting Up" screen on the Tivo.


----------



## ggieseke

Mammothboy said:


> Hello Scott,
> 
> I have a TiVo bolt that has a dead hard drive I was trying to replace it with a 2 TB drive but it simply will not format as mentioned in previous posts. Im runing T4 and it just sit their.
> 
> I "zeroed" out the drive multiple times with various tools, e.g. WD Data Lifeguard, DOS shell via the format tool, no luck getting past the "Starting Up" screen on the Tivo Bolt.
> 
> The beta version of MFSR no longer generated the error message, so thank you for that. Unfortunately, that bug fix did not get me past the "Starting Up" screen on the Tivo.


Unfortunately, downgrading the user interface to TE3 is probably the only way to get past that issue. The last version of Hydra broke something in the auto-format software for Bolts and 21.9.1.x doesn't seem to be any better.


----------



## RIX527

Is it possible to use the MFSR tool to prepare a raid for use with a TiVo Bult? I would like to create reliable storage for a TiVo bolt system. My idea is to use an external 4 bay esata storage running raid 10 (4x 4tb drives), with approximately 8tb of usable dvr storage. I’d run the esata cable directly to the esata port on the TiVo motherboard, as I’ve seen others accomplish successfully in this forum. Is this technically possible?


----------



## ThAbtO

No. That is not possible. The esata port is an unreliable connection. Besides, Tivo doesn't use raid. You would be better off using it as NAS instead. It can then store shows long term.

With v21.x you cannot transfer back to Tivo and have to use Plex.
V20.x can still transfer both ways.


----------



## shmo55

ndanieley said:


> I thought of that this morning. looks like attempting to use the USB adapter did something to the drive; I couldn't get it to register as larger than 1.6TB under windows or linux. I've hooked it up internally and am wiping it now; I'll try again once that's done.


Ok, I was able to get this to work by hooking it to a USB 3.0 USB, and it recognized the entire drive. Nice!!


----------



## TechnoJunky

Hope this helps everyone upgrading a Bolt+ to an 8TB drive. I've upgraded all my Tivos to 8TB drives (roamio, bolt, bolt+,white, black) with no problems until this last time. On my current Bolt+ (black 4 tuners.. shouldn't matter) when connecting smaller drives the power from the motherboard would spin up the disc. But when connecting the 8TB drive it wouldn't spin up and go into the dreaded ALL LIGHTS FLASHING boot loop. To fix the issue (or what I did) you will have to power the drive from another source and use a data cable to connect the drive to the motherboard. I'm happy to say all is well after my 3TB drive died.

I've only used the WD EasyStore 8TB HDs from Best Buy. Catch them on sale from time to time any were from 130$ to 150$ for the best deals.


----------



## SCCThree

Donated $15. Worked like a champ on my 4tb drive. Thanks!


----------



## sender_name

TechnoJunky said:


> Hope this helps everyone upgrading a Bolt+ to an 8TB drive. I've upgraded all my Tivos to 8TB drives (roamio, bolt, bolt+,white, black) with no problems until this last time. On my current Bolt+ (black 4 tuners.. shouldn't matter) when connecting smaller drives the power from the motherboard would spin up the disc. But when connecting the 8TB drive it wouldn't spin up and go into the dreaded ALL LIGHTS FLASHING boot loop. To fix the issue (or what I did) you will have to power the drive from another source and use a data cable to connect the drive to the motherboard. I'm happy to say all is well after my 3TB drive died.
> 
> I've only used the WD EasyStore 8TB HDs from Best Buy. Catch them on sale from time to time any were from 130$ to 150$ for the best deals.
> 
> View attachment 41769


I just bought a Bolt VOX and I am looking to upgrade the drive...I can't seem to figure out what the acceptable 2.5" July 2019 internal 2TB drive to use is.... I see a lot of people using external enclosures and bypassing the onboard interface and just going direct to the tivo sata connector...what I am wondering is how are they powering up the external enclosure? Are they flicking the power switch at the same time or stealing power somewhere from the tivo?


----------



## ThAbtO

External enclosures have their own power source. They would be powering up the drive prior to powering up the Tivo.


----------



## sender_name

ThAbtO said:


> External enclosures have their own power source. They would be powering up the drive prior to powering up the Tivo.


Ok, I was just wondering if it was a timed thing...Like you have to flick the power on at a certain time or just make sure it's on before the tivo powers up...and does it fail when you have a power outage because there needs to be a delay between powering up the external and then the tivo?


----------



## Mikeguy

People have seemed to have liked the earlier Toshiba 2.5" drives, e.g. the 3TB MQ03ABB300 model. There also is a 1TB and 2TB (MQ03ABB200) in that line, and the 2TB has had some nice pricing.


----------



## sender_name

OK...I just snagged one of the 3TB from Macsales. It looks like the bang for your buck what I need. I've been living with a Series 3 with a 155 hours of HD for many years so I'll basically have that amount per tuner on my 4 tuner bolt Vox.
Question for the MFS. Should I put the 3TB drive in the bolt, let it format etc and then take it out and run it through MFS for alignment? Does it work for the Bolt?


----------



## ggieseke

sender_name said:


> Question for the MFS. Should I put the 3TB drive in the bolt, let it format etc and then take it out and run it through MFS for alignment? Does it work for the Bolt?


Yes, MFSR works on 3TB Bolts. I think it's worth a extra few minutes to properly align the MFS inode and app zones for 4K drives, but obviously my opinion is biased since I wrote it.


----------



## Merrick2019

Hi,

I just wanted to ask - the last drive upgrade I did was on a Series 3 OLED but have a Roamio. I had to upgrade to the Roamio at exactly the same time I was moving my wife and 4 kids into a 90% completed house and Verizon changed many channels to MP4 (which the OLEDs don't decode) and I was just so overwhelmed I didn't have time to do anything myself so just got a 6TB Roamio straight from Weaknees. So I just ordered a Bolt VOX and it's sitting on my table. I want to upgrade the drive and started looking into this. It's not perfectly clear what the process is - though it seems to have changed quite a bit from Series 1-3 days and certainly isn't like winmfs anymore. I just wanted to ask a couple of clarifying questions - sorry if this is all covered in 3+ years of previous discussion.

It looks like, at least as far as the Bolts go, simply putting a new compatible drive into the system is all you have to do. It will get setup by the TiVo but there is no need (and apparently no available way?) to clone the old drive to a new drive and seemlessly reboot. Is that correct?

And if I gather correctly what the point of MFSR is, that you take that new drive prepared by the TiVo and MFSR realigns the drive structure to efficiently handle 4K content.

Do I have that mostly correct?

Otherwise, can you point me to a reasonably concise description of the steps in the drive replacement, can you point me to discussion on maximum drive sizes and drive choices for the Bolt VOX?

Thanks!
Merrick


----------



## ThAbtO

Merrick2019 said:


> It looks like, at least as far as the Bolts go, simply putting a new compatible drive into the system is all you have to do. It will get setup by the TiVo but there is no need (and apparently no available way?) to clone the old drive to a new drive and seemlessly reboot.


Under TE3/v20, up to 3TB, you can just swap the drives and not need to hook up to a PC, MSFR is only for alignment. Over 3TB, you would need to use MSFR to expand to full capacity.

WinMFS will not work on anything newer than Series 3.

Bolt uses laptop drives (2.5inch) so its hard to find a reliable one. Some have used 3.5inch drives bypassing the eSATA connection and connecting into the MB's SATA port, and use an external housing.


----------



## Mikeguy

ThAbtO said:


> Under *TE3*/v20, up to 3TB, you can just swap the drives and not need to hook up to a PC, MSFR is only for alignment. Over 3TB, you would need to use MSFR to expand to full capacity.
> 
> WinMFS will not work on anything newer than Series 3.
> 
> Bolt uses laptop drives (2.5inch) so its hard to find a reliable one. Some have used 3.5inch drives bypassing the eSATA connection and connecting into the MB's SATA port, and use an external housing.


TE4 as well, right?

The Toshiba 2.5" 3TB drive seems to have worked relatively well for people (among 2.5" drives), and still can be found (although no longer being manufactured). E.g. currently at macsales.com.


----------



## Snowball3

Hello, I am having a problem with my tivo I was hoping someone could help please. 

So, I have a tivo roamio ota. I reformatted MFS as according to the instructions on this thread. I upgraded with a WD 8tb RED NAS. Everything worked great and synced and gave me crazy storage! That worked fine for a few months so then I decided to get a Tivo Mini Vox which said it would work with my Roamio. Again, everything worked perfectly (once I figured out the whole moca mess) for a few months. But then after a few months it began to screw things up and constantly restart/reboot. Now my tivo works and records but I have noticed that I have been getting a lot of partial recordings. At first I thought it was the mini. But then I caught my Tivo Roamio OTA restarting and finally realized that it will just randomly restart and reboot for seemingly no reason then go back to working fine. Sometimes it reboots a lot sometimes not for a long time. I dont even have like a crazy amount of shows stored up. I even deleted a bunch of things to see if that was clogging it up (sorry not computer smart lol) . Could someone please tell me how to fix this. Do I need to reformat or downgrade/upgrade something with MFS? Would going back to the original hard drive simply fix this (dont want to really do this) I really want to fix this . Any help would be greatly appreciated thank you!


----------



## ThAbtO

Mikeguy said:


> TE4 as well, right?


Its rather buggy in that department.


----------



## jmbach

Snowball3 said:


> Hello, I am having a problem with my tivo I was hoping someone could help please.
> 
> So, I have a tivo roamio ota. I reformatted MFS as according to the instructions on this thread. I upgraded with a WD 8tb RED NAS. Everything worked great and synced and gave me crazy storage! That worked fine for a few months so then I decided to get a Tivo Mini Vox which said it would work with my Roamio. Again, everything worked perfectly (once I figured out the whole moca mess) for a few months. But then after a few months it began to screw things up and constantly restart/reboot. Now my tivo works and records but I have noticed that I have been getting a lot of partial recordings. At first I thought it was the mini. But then I caught my Tivo Roamio OTA restarting and finally realized that it will just randomly restart and reboot for seemingly no reason then go back to working fine. Sometimes it reboots a lot sometimes not for a long time. I dont even have like a crazy amount of shows stored up. I even deleted a bunch of things to see if that was clogging it up (sorry not computer smart lol) . Could someone please tell me how to fix this. Do I need to reformat or downgrade/upgrade something with MFS? Would going back to the original hard drive simply fix this (dont want to really do this) I really want to fix this . Any help would be greatly appreciated thank you!


Disconnect the mini from the network for a week and see if you still have the issue. I read on the forum somewhere that an aberrant mini was causing the host TiVo to reboot.


----------



## UpgraderIthink

ggieseke said:


> Yes, MFSR works on 3TB Bolts. I think it's worth a extra few minutes to properly align the MFS inode and app zones for 4K drives, but obviously my opinion is biased since I wrote it.


Is there somewhere where you state why the MFS IS helpful for the Toshiba 3TB. I understand you can just pop it in the Bolt and the Bolt does the rest but again don't understand than why it helps to use MFS (thought you note something about 4K usage). Any advise and reasoning here would be greatly appreciated as I get the Bolt Thursday


----------



## ggieseke

UpgraderIthink said:


> Is there somewhere where you state why the MFS IS helpful for the Toshiba 3TB. I understand you can just pop it in the Bolt and the Bolt does the rest but again don't understand than why it helps to use MFS (thought you note something about 4K usage). Any advise and reasoning here would be greatly appreciated as I get the Bolt Thursday


MFS uses two types of partitions (application & media), and three types of "zones" (application, inode & media). The partitions are all aligned properly for 4K access, but the header fields in the application partition throw the application and inode zones out of alignment. MFSR skips a few 512-byte sectors between the headers and the actual zones where the data lives to align them properly. It also resizes the media partitions and zones slightly to account for the 10MB block size used to read and write the actual recordings, which results in less wasted space at the end of each media partition.

It's a REALLY small difference, but I think it makes the user interface a bit snappier. The actual recordings in the media zones are properly aligned either way. If you have to tear your computer apart and hook up the drive with a direct SATA connection to the motherboard it's probably not worth the time. I use a USB docking station so it only takes me about a minute to hook up the drive and run MFSR. That doesn't count opening the case and changing out the drive mounting brackets, but you have to do that anyway if you're swapping out a drive.


----------



## UpgraderIthink

ggieseke said:


> MFS uses two types of partitions (application & media), and three types of "zones" (application, inode & media). The partitions are all aligned properly for 4K access, but the header fields in the application partition throw the application and inode zones out of alignment. MFSR skips a few 512-byte sectors between the headers and the actual zones where the data lives to align them properly. It also resizes the media partitions and zones slightly to account for the 10MB block size used to read and write the actual recordings, which results in less wasted space at the end of each media partition.
> 
> It's a REALLY small difference, but I think it makes the user interface a bit snappier. The actual recordings in the media zones are properly aligned either way. If you have to tear your computer apart and hook up the drive with a direct SATA connection to the motherboard it's probably not worth the time. I use a USB docking station so it only takes me about a minute to hook up the drive and run MFSR. That doesn't count opening the case and changing out the drive mounting brackets, but you have to do that anyway if you're swapping out a drive.


Thanks so much. I only have a laptop so it sounds like, while MFS would be helpful, it would not be worth my time to try to figure out an external storage option to use MFS


----------



## Mikeguy

ggieseke said:


> MFS uses two types of partitions (application & media), and three types of "zones" (application, inode & media). The partitions are all aligned properly for 4K access, but the header fields in the application partition throw the application and inode zones out of alignment. MFSR skips a few 512-byte sectors between the headers and the actual zones where the data lives to align them properly. It also resizes the media partitions and zones slightly to account for the 10MB block size used to read and write the actual recordings, which results in less wasted space at the end of each media partition.
> 
> It's a REALLY small difference, but I think it makes the user interface a bit snappier. The actual recordings in the media zones are properly aligned either way. If you have to tear your computer apart and hook up the drive with a direct SATA connection to the motherboard it's probably not worth the time. I use a USB docking station so it only takes me about a minute to hook up the drive and run MFSR. That doesn't count opening the case and changing out the drive mounting brackets, but you have to do that anyway if you're swapping out a drive.


Many thanks for the explanation and recommendations! Helpful, as is the software. :clapping:


----------



## John B. GAITHER

Im stuck. I bought a Seagate 4TB ST4000LM024. When pulling it out of the houseing, destroyed the usb plug stuff in back. I installed and ran the hd, fully installed Tivo, and ran it for a day. With only Tivo format I have 285 Hours HD or 1957 SD of recording capcity. Pulled it out to redo and run MFSR, but Win7 did not reconize it. My version of Win7 only had diskpart verions from 2009. Downloaded a freeware disk partition prog, and re-fromatted all 4TB to NTFS. Installed in Tivo Bolt TCD84950. Plugged in Tivo, ran startup until it asked for Country. Unplugged, hooked up into desktop, but Windows does not reconize my 4TB HD. What did I do wrong?


----------



## ggieseke

John B. GAITHER said:


> Im stuck. I bought a Seagate 4TB ST4000LM024. When pulling it out of the houseing, destroyed the usb plug stuff in back. I installed and ran the hd, fully installed Tivo, and ran it for a day. With only Tivo format I have 285 Hours HD or 1957 SD of recording capcity. Pulled it out to redo and run MFSR, but Win7 did not reconize it. My version of Win7 only had diskpart verions from 2009. Downloaded a freeware disk partition prog, and re-fromatted all 4TB to NTFS. Installed in Tivo Bolt TCD84950. Plugged in Tivo, ran startup until it asked for Country. Unplugged, hooked up into desktop, but Windows does not reconize my 4TB HD. What did I do wrong?


Windows won't recognize it as anything but an Unknown physical drive in Disk Manager, and if you run Disk Manager be sure NOT to let it "initialize" the drive or it will destroy the TiVo formatting.

Just hook the drive up to the computer and run MFSR. It will find it.


----------



## John B. GAITHER

I panicked. Rebooted, and reconnected the Seagate Drive. Win7 still did not see it, but SeaTools did. Ran MFSR. Success. Put Bolt back together. Ran Tivo install. Now I have up to 639 HD or 4401 SD hours to fill up in my OTA Installation.
Running Series6
Hydra-Mira-4-6

A donation is on it’s way.

How stable is install on Seagate, should I worry about Tivo booting the drive out?


----------



## ggieseke

John B. GAITHER said:


> How stable is install on Seagate, should I worry about Tivo booting the drive out?


Accurate documentation is hard to find, but most reviews seem to agree that the ST4000LM024 uses SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) technology. That's usually bad in a TiVo where the drive is always writing at least 4 streams unless it's in Standby mode with the drive powered down. Anecdotal reports from other members here suggest that it will fail in 18-24 months. TiVo doesn't even sell the 3TB Bolt anymore.

Your best bet would be to replace the internal drive with a 3.5" PMR (Perpendicular Magnetic Recording) drive like the WD40EFRX Red in an external enclosure. That requires a direct SATA connection from the motherboard on the Bolt to the drive, which means notching the cases at both ends to run the SATA cable. There are several threads on that in the Bolt forum.


----------



## Glenn B

Awesome work. Thanks. Went from 2TB to 4TB available. Had to turn off Google Drive during format. Donated!


----------



## barnabas1969

I'm considering buying a Bolt Vox 1TB and adding an external 3.5" 4TB drive connected to the Bolt's internal SATA port. If I have to downgrade to TE3 in order to get this drive to work, can I then upgrade again to TE4?


----------



## Mikeguy

barnabas1969 said:


> I'm considering buying a Bolt Vox 1TB and adding an external 3.5" 4TB drive connected to the Bolt's internal SATA port. If I have to downgrade to TE3 in order to get this drive to work, can I then upgrade again to TE4?


Yep.


----------



## Glenn B

barnabas1969 said:


> I'm considering buying a Bolt Vox 1TB and adding an external 3.5" 4TB drive connected to the Bolt's internal SATA port. If I have to downgrade to TE3 in order to get this drive to work, can I then upgrade again to TE4?


I bought Bolt Vox 1TB in July. Bought this Seagate Ext Drive and pulled drive out -
*Seagate Backup Plus Portable 4TB External Hard Drive HDD (STDR4000900)*
Installed and booted up tivo
Used mfs on the drive
Windows 10 gave me some error.
It think I reran with As Administrator option to make it happy
Reinstalled the drive and full 4TB available.
Awesome work by the community!

Note: I gave myself a bit of extra work by screwing together the drive assembly etc and then had to pull it all apart again after booting up tivo the first time.
Just connect the cables and leave the drive sitting on top of Bolt board for the 2 minutes it takes to boot up.

Seagate Backup Plus Portable 4TB External Hard Drive HDD (STDR4000900) 
by Amazon.com 
Learn more: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0196J43TE/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_-87DDbAY45XKT


----------



## aaronwt

Glenn B said:


> I bought Bolt Vox 1TB in July. Bought this Seagate Ext Drive and pulled drive out -
> *Seagate Backup Plus Portable 4TB External Hard Drive HDD (STDR4000900)*
> Installed and booted up tivo
> Used mfs on the drive
> Windows 10 gave me some error.
> It think I reran with As Administrator option to make it happy
> Reinstalled the drive and full 4TB available.
> Awesome work by the community!
> 
> Note: I gave myself a bit of extra work by screwing together the drive assembly etc and then had to pull it all apart again after booting up tivo the first time.
> Just connect the cables and leave the drive sitting on top of Bolt board for the 2 minutes it takes to boot up.
> 
> Seagate Backup Plus Portable 4TB External Hard Drive HDD (STDR4000900)
> by Amazon.com
> Learn more: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0196J43TE/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_-87DDbAY45XKT


Good luck with that. That should be another SMR drive like most of the 2.5" Seagates.
Make sure you transfer any content you want to keep regularly to a PC from that TiVo drive. For if/when you have some issues.


----------



## barnabas1969

Mikeguy said:


> Yep.


Thanks. After doing a lot of reading here, I plan on using the following...

WD Red 3.5" 5400RPM 4TB WD40EFRX

Hard drive enclosure, with SATA cable directly plugged into the drive (not using the eSATA port), and directly plugged into the SATA port inside the Tivo. I found a post that says this enclosure works...

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00N1Q2M6A/ref=ox_sc_act_title_4?smid=A3K929QT0IENFR&psc=1

Plus, I need a long SATA cable with a 90 degree connector on one end (I've got plenty of those).

Does that drive sound like a good choice?


----------



## net lander

ggieseke said:


> .....
> 2016-04-29: Version 1.0.0.4 works on 8TB drives.


Thank you very much. Used MSFR, works well on my 8tb roamio. Donated via paypal.

Using Settings --> Help --> System Info, for 8tb on roamio I now have: 1283 HD or 8845 SD hours capacity 

Thanks to all in tivo community. Extremely helpful.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Linky for future travelers wanting bigger hard disk (more than 3tb):*

Use msfr if don't mind losing previous recording, easy to use with minimal steps...if done correctly, it'll said "Congratulations, it is successful" in the end :
MFS Reformatter (mfsr)

Use MFSTools if wanting content migration from previous HD to bigger (8tb or 10tb...):
MFS Tools 3.2
Sample of direction for 10TB on roamio via MFSTools:
DIY 10TB Roamio


----------



## net lander

nooneuknow said:


> ....
> My order of preferences list (starting with best WDs @5400RPM, all technically in the "green" class):
> 
> *WD AV Green EURX* - Currently only available up to 4TB - 3yr warranty.
> *WD Red EFRX* (is an AV drive, but has TLER, and is meant for use with a proper RAID controller) - 3yr warranty.
> *WD Green EZRX* (non-AV) - 2yr warranty. If it had 3yr, would be bumped up one line in list.
> *Seagate AV* (5900RPM)
> *Other brands*, as long as they are low-RPM "green" power profile 5400-5900RPM
> .................


I bought WD easystore, and it contain WD 8TB White (WD80EMAZ with S/N: 7SJNxxxx). What do u think of this drive compare to WD red or green?


----------



## jmbach

net lander said:


> I bought WD easystore, and it contain WD 8TB White (WD80EMAZ with S/N: 7SJNxxxx). What do u think of this drive compare to WD red or green?


These drives were originally Red drives repackaged.

I think they are fine and have 2 of them in use in my TiVos and 6 of them in my NAS unit.


----------



## Sonyad

barnabas1969 said:


> Thanks. After doing a lot of reading here, I plan on using the following...
> 
> WD Red 3.5" 5400RPM 4TB WD40EFRX
> 
> Hard drive enclosure, with SATA cable directly plugged into the drive (not using the eSATA port), and directly plugged into the SATA port inside the Tivo. I found a post that says this enclosure works...
> 
> https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00N1Q2M6A/ref=ox_sc_act_title_4?smid=A3K929QT0IENFR&psc=1
> 
> Plus, I need a long SATA cable with a 90 degree connector on one end (I've got plenty of those).
> 
> Does that drive sound like a good choice?


Get an sata extension cable. That way if you need to move things around, you can disconnect externally instead of having to open the Bolt or external enclosure to disconnect the drive.


----------



## barnabas1969

Sonyad said:


> Get an sata extension cable. That way if you need to move things around, you can disconnect externally instead of having to open the Bolt or external enclosure to disconnect the drive.


When I ordered everything, I bought a SATA extension cable and a SATA cable with a 90 degree connector on one end so that it could be disconnected without opening the external enclosure.

However, after more research, I opted to do it a different way (link below). This method doesn't require me to drill holes in the Bolt, so my 24 month warrantee is preserved.

Use the eSATA port with an external drive (up to 8TB DVR Expander) - simple method!


----------



## Sonyad

Sounds interesting. My eyes glazed over trying to comprehend MSTools. I remember last year trying to create a bootable flash drive and that process went nowhere fast. Anyway I've already drilled my case, so I've burned that bridge.

Everyone's been saying the Esata port no longer works due to a previous Tivo update. Your process avoids that issue?


----------



## Snowball3

Hello, I have a red 8tb internal hard drive swapped out with my tivo roamio and mfs reformatted. I am starting to have problems with my tivo rebooting a lot and causing me to have partial recordings frequently. Some days its fine with no issues whatsoever. some days there is nothing I can seem to do to make it stop rebooting. I thought it was maybe too many shows but I have deleted so much and it isn't even that loaded. Do I need to update something or change something to make the rebooting stop? I reformatted and swapped my internal hard drive maybe 8 months ago maybe an update was released that I missed? If someone could help me I would really appreciate it. I spent a lot on the internal and don't want to swap it back. Thank you if you can help!


----------



## ThAbtO

Do you have a UPS or just a surge suppressor?


----------



## ggieseke

Snowball3 said:


> Hello, I have a red 8tb internal hard drive swapped out with my tivo roamio and mfs reformatted. I am starting to have problems with my tivo rebooting a lot and causing me to have partial recordings frequently. Some days its fine with no issues whatsoever. some days there is nothing I can seem to do to make it stop rebooting. I thought it was maybe too many shows but I have deleted so much and it isn't even that loaded. Do I need to update something or change something to make the rebooting stop? I reformatted and swapped my internal hard drive maybe 8 months ago maybe an update was released that I missed? If someone could help me I would really appreciate it. I spent a lot on the internal and don't want to swap it back. Thank you if you can help!


Could there be a connection? Sure, because nobody really knows how many recordings it might take to start overloading the UI so much that it starts timing out. Now that most cable companies are using H.264 compression at lower resolutions that question gets even bigger. My baseline Roamio Pro with a factory 3TB drive has over 1,000 hours of HD recordings and 15% free space even though it's only rated for 476 hours.

For what it's worth, I have several other Roamios and one Bolt on MFSR drives ranging from 4TB to 8TB. They're all rock solid, so if you're having frequent reboots I would look for other factors.


----------



## ej42137

ggieseke said:


> Could there be a connection? Sure, because nobody really knows how many recordings it might take to start overloading the UI so much that it starts timing out. Now that most cable companies are using H.264 compression at lower resolutions that question gets even bigger. My baseline Roamio Pro with a factory 3TB drive has over 1,000 hours of HD recordings and 15% free space even though it's only rated for 476 hours.
> 
> For what it's worth, I have several other Roamios and one Bolt on MFSR drives ranging from 4TB to 8TB. They're all rock solid, so if you're having frequent reboots I would look for other factors.


I have a 13TB Roamio that I run for a year at a time without deleting anything, almost all recordings KUID; at times it gets to 95% full. The UI always performs about the same as my smaller TiVos that I actively manage.

I can assure you that the number of shows recorded does not significantly impact the UI performance.


----------



## Snowball3

I have a "CSP806U Professional Surge Protector, 3000J/125V". I actually bought it to protect the tivo from being ruined in case the power surges on and off. Do you think this could be the culprit of my Tivo constantly rebooting? I am a little worried to leave it just plugged into the wall out of fear that surge might ruin it but if its like this now with the protector? I never thought that the surge protector might be the issue. Is there something safer I should be using where I wouldn't have these constant rebootnproblems? Or any other ideas of what might be the problem? Thank you again in advance for the help!


----------



## jmbach

Snowball3 said:


> I have a "CSP806U Professional Surge Protector, 3000J/125V". I actually bought it to protect the tivo from being ruined in case the power surges on and off. Do you think this could be the culprit of my Tivo constantly rebooting? I am a little worried to leave it just plugged into the wall out of fear that surge might ruin it but if its like this now with the protector? I never thought that the surge protector might be the issue. Is there something safer I should be using where I wouldn't have these constant rebootnproblems? Or any other ideas of what might be the problem? Thank you again in advance for the help!


I have all my TiVos on UPS. Either APC or Cyberpower. Never had an issue with rebooting.


----------



## ThAbtO

Snowball3 said:


> I have a "CSP806U Professional Surge Protector, 3000J/125V". I actually bought it to protect the tivo from being ruined in case the power surges on and off. Do you think this could be the culprit of my Tivo constantly rebooting? I am a little worried to leave it just plugged into the wall out of fear that surge might ruin it but if its like this now with the protector? I never thought that the surge protector might be the issue. Is there something safer I should be using where I wouldn't have these constant rebootnproblems? Or any other ideas of what might be the problem? Thank you again in advance for the help!


Surge protectors only protect if the power spikes, in which most would shut the power off to the devices (even for a few seconds) and the Tivo reboots when power resumes. You should be using a UPS where there is a battery that supports the devices when it shuts the power off on surges and when the power browns (lowers) or a blackout (power failure).


----------



## dougdingle

It sounds more like it might be your power supply in the Roamio going intermittent or starting to fail than the amount of recordings you have. But there are quite a few possibilities.


----------



## Snowball3

It wasn't the surge protector because I unplugged it from that and plugged it directly into the wall and had the same problem. I have no idea how to test if the power supply is starting to fail in my roamio. Can that be tested?. My tivo roamio isn't even that old. If it is that I guess I am pretty much out of luck and have to get a new one then? My last ditch effort is to swap out the 8tb internal hard drive and put back in the original. Maybe it is my hard drive failing? If the original works with no problem then I will know it is my internal hard drive I swapped in. Do I have to download or downgrade anything before I swap back the original hard drive that came with my tivo roamio? Or is there any specific procedure I am to follow to restore it to the original way it came? Thank you so much for any help!


----------



## dougdingle

Swapping the original drive back in to see if it stops rebooting would probably be the next logical step.


----------



## jmbach

Snowball3 said:


> It wasn't the surge protector because I unplugged it from that and plugged it directly into the wall and had the same problem. I have no idea how to test if the power supply is starting to fail in my roamio. Can that be tested?. My tivo roamio isn't even that old. If it is that I guess I am pretty much out of luck and have to get a new one then? My last ditch effort is to swap out the 8tb internal hard drive and put back in the original. Maybe it is my hard drive failing? If the original works with no problem then I will know it is my internal hard drive I swapped in. Do I have to download or downgrade anything before I swap back the original hard drive that came with my tivo roamio? Or is there any specific procedure I am to follow to restore it to the original way it came? Thank you so much for any help!


If this is a Roamio with an external power supply, then you can get a replacement with a little more amperage (same volts) which may solve your problem. The power supply on those Roamios were not built to handle the load of larger drives that people are using eventhough the increased power load is marginal.

You might try a UPS that will buffer the output during brown outs. Plugging it into the wall or surge suppressor will not protect you from a reboot caused by a brown out.


----------



## Snowball3

jmbach said:


> If this is a Roamio with an external power supply, then you can get a replacement with a little more amperage (same volts) which may solve your problem. The power supply on those Roamios were not built to handle the load of larger drives that people are using eventhough the increased power load is marginal.
> 
> You might try a UPS that will buffer the output during brown outs. Plugging it into the wall or surge suppressor will not protect you from a reboot caused by a brown out.


Thank you for your reply jmbach. That makes sense what you mentioned about the power supply. I am a little worried since it is a pretty new tivo and no one else seems to have the same problem as me. Can you please recommend a good external power supply for tivo roamio and if you know a UPS that will do what you mentioned? Sorry for the trouble thank you so much for you and anyone who can help!


----------



## ThAbtO

If this is a 6 tuner Roamio Plus/Pro, then the power supply is internal, unlike the 4 tuner Roamio Basic/OTA which is a power brick.


----------



## jmbach

Snowball3 said:


> Thank you for your reply jmbach. That makes sense what you mentioned about the power supply. I am a little worried since it is a pretty new tivo and no one else seems to have the same problem as me. Can you please recommend a good external power supply for tivo roamio and if you know a UPS that will do what you mentioned? Sorry for the trouble thank you so much for you and anyone who can help!


This UPS is what I have on two of my TiVos. 
What model Roamio you have.


----------



## Snowball3

I have TiVo - Roamio OTA 1TB Digital Video Recorder - Model: TCD846000. The power is 12 VDC. I believe it is a 4 turner. I love your UPS jmbach that is pretty awesome. I will have to see if my tivo can be saved first. Since my tivo is a power brick like Thabt0 said. Then perhaps it can be swapped out with something more powerful? If someone could recommend what should work or a link to one I would very much appreciate it. It would be nice to test that out before I got to the hassle of swapping everything. Has anyone else had to swap the power out on their Tivo Roamio Ota? Thank you once again for the help!


----------



## jmbach

Snowball3 said:


> I have TiVo - Roamio OTA 1TB Digital Video Recorder - Model: TCD846000. The power is 12 VDC. I believe it is a 4 turner. I love your UPS jmbach that is pretty awesome. I will have to see if my tivo can be saved first. Since my tivo is a power brick like Thabt0 said. Then perhaps it can be swapped out with something more powerful? If someone could recommend what should work or a link to one I would very much appreciate it. It would be nice to test that out before I got to the hassle of swapping everything. Has anyone else had to swap the power out on their Tivo Roamio Ota? Thank you once again for the help!


LiteON Laptop Charger AC Adapter Power Supply PA-1041-71 12V 3.33A 40W is the one I use with my basic Roamio 6 TB.


----------



## Snowball3

Thank you for the quick reply. I believe this is the one you have?

https://www.amazon.com/Lite-PA-1041-71-Replacement-adapter-Monitor/dp/B0163TBWNK

Just curious if my Roamio has a power of 12 VDC what is the difference with a power of 12 V. I dont know anything about voltage and just wanted to make sure this has the correct power to work with my tivo with the 8tb hook up before I buy. Thank you all for your help!


----------



## ThAbtO

My Roamio Basic which currently have a 4TB WD40EFRX and its original power brick, is running strong for over 4 years. Its only 35% full.


----------



## jmbach

Snowball3 said:


> Thank you for the quick reply. I believe this is the one you have?
> 
> https://www.amazon.com/Lite-PA-1041-71-Replacement-adapter-Monitor/dp/B0163TBWNK
> 
> Just curious if my Roamio has a power of 12 VDC what is the difference with a power of 12 V. I dont know anything about voltage and just wanted to make sure this has the correct power to work with my tivo with the 8tb hook up before I buy. Thank you all for your help!


The adapter is 12 VDC which is what your Roamio runs on. It just can provide extra amperage when the Roamio calls for it.

The one that comes with the Roamio is usually adequate. It would be nice if all adapters provided the power that is marked on them but in reality it is the average of what it is designed for. So there is a small +- range of what you are getting from the number stamped on the adapter. If your adapter is on the - side and you put a larger drive in, the power may not be sufficient in all operational states and you could have glitches. Anything from pixelation to reboots.


----------



## Snowball3

Thank you for replying and explaining that to me. What I am gathering with a power adapter I need to make sure it says 12v. Could this 12v power adapter work just as well?

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/yamaha-ac-power-adapter-black/9658108.p?skuId=9658108

I only ask because it is not only cheaper but something I can easily and quickly return and try something else if it does not work instead of having to ship it back and forth. Or would you suggest I stay with what you originally stated?

man ThAbto you are lucky! I feel like I am the only one who is having these reboot problems. I don't want to give up on it now after putting so much money in. I am hopeful for this to FINALLY be the fix. But it looks like I am going to have to try and swap back to the original hard drive and see how that performs. But it is such a hassle I am trying these last ditch efforts first lol.


----------



## jmbach

Snowball3 said:


> Thank you for replying and explaining that to me. What I am gathering with a power adapter I need to make sure it says 12v. Could this 12v power adapter work just as well?
> 
> https://www.bestbuy.com/site/yamaha-ac-power-adapter-black/9658108.p?skuId=9658108
> 
> I only ask because it is not only cheaper but something I can easily and quickly return and try something else if it does not work instead of having to ship it back and forth. Or would you suggest I stay with what you originally stated?
> 
> man ThAbto you are lucky! I feel like I am the only one who is having these reboot problems. I don't want to give up on it now after putting so much money in. I am hopeful for this to FINALLY be the fix. But it looks like I am going to have to try and swap back to the original hard drive and see how that performs. But it is such a hassle I am trying these last ditch efforts first lol.


That one will not work because the amperage is less than the TiVo adapter. If you do not want to get the one I use, then you will need to make sure of several things when choosing a replacement power adapter. The replacement needs to be 12 VDC, at least 2.5 anp rating, the barrel size and polarity needs to be the same as the TiVos.


----------



## Snowball3

I am in over my head and you obviously know way more than I do. So I will just trust the one that you are using since I know for sure that it will work.

Just to confirm is this the one you are using?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0163TBWNK?tag=vglnk-c830-20

^ I wanted to double check because I didn't see anything about 12vdc or at least 2.5 anp rating that you mentioned I needed and I didn't want to get the wrong one by mistake. 
Thank you for being so helpful and I apologize for bothering you with this lol


----------



## jmbach

Snowball3 said:


> I am in over my head and you obviously know way more than I do. So I will just trust the one that you are using since I know for sure that it will work.
> 
> Just to confirm is this the one you are using?
> 
> https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0163TBWNK?tag=vglnk-c830-20
> 
> ^ I wanted to double check because I didn't see anything about 12vdc or at least 2.5 anp rating that you mentioned I needed and I didn't want to get the wrong one by mistake.
> Thank you for being so helpful and I apologize for bothering you with this lol


After doing some research, looks like it is no longer being manufactured and you can get old new stock.

I'll see if I can find a suitable replacement. In the meantime get the UPS and that might solve it all.


----------



## Snowball3

Thank you for taking the time to look for a replacement for me. I am looking into the UPS you mentioned. Hate to throw so much more money at it like this but I think it has a chance of being the problem. Perhaps some of the changes in power/surges from various things turning on and off (the furnace? dryer?) maybe they temporarily disrupt the power going to the tivo and it causing these reboots. I am just guessing or hoping lol.

From my understanding the UPS carries an uninterrupted power supply so when my tivo is plugged in all those problems of things turning on and any surges causing these reboots should be eliminated? Is that correct or am I way off again lol.

Thank you all for your help!


----------



## ThAbtO

A brownout is when the power dips, like when you turn on a heavy power use device like the furnace heater and you see your lights dim, and brightens back up when it comes back up.



Snowball3 said:


> From my understanding the UPS carries an *uninterrupted power supply*


That is what UPS stands for.

It will help with brownouts by switching to the battery until the power returns to proper voltage. There are also more expensive models that are SMART UPS, where it draws more power to bring the power back to standard for devices. It can do this indefinitely because it does not draw from the battery, unlike regular UPS. When power returns, the battery gets recharged.

It does not matter what size UPS you use as Tivo does not consume lots of power. A computer that consumes more power will make the battery last shorter. The main point of a UPS is to allow proper shutdown of computers when there is a power failure.


----------



## Snowball3

Thank you ThAbtO for explaining that to me! It sounds to me like a Smart UPS is the way to go. Unfortunately they are very expensive. The only ones I could find around $200.00 are these 3.

1) https://www.amazon.com/Tripp-Lite-L..._54?keywords=smart+ups&qid=1572859436&sr=8-54

2) https://www.amazon.com/APC-Smart-UP..._21?keywords=smart+ups&qid=1572859320&sr=8-21

3) https://www.amazon.com/Tripp-Lite-B..._1_6?keywords=smart+ups&qid=1572859232&sr=8-6

^ I believe this is what you are talking about when you say Smart UPS. I know it states it on the title but just making sure. I had originally planned to go with what jmbach recommended..

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FBK3QK/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_z4KUDb7BG13MC

You mentioned that tivo doesn't consume that much power. I don't want to over pay when I don't have to. But I also want this problem to be over with lol. Let's say the problem is these brownouts where the power dips and some other device may be hogging up the power. If it were something like a dryer that would only be for like an hour. But if it were like a furnace in the winter that could be a long time. If I got a UPS System and I only hooked up the tivo to it and nothing else to conserve as much of the battery as possible. Do you think my best bet is a Smart UPS or could I manage with a less expensive "regular UPS" ? If I went with just a regular one and hooked just a tivo up to it do you think the "CyberPower CP1500AVRLCD Intelligent LCD UPS System, 1500VA/900W" is overkill? Or would something cheaper work just as well. There are many UPS Systems out there but what specs I need is where I am unsure. Trying to find the cheapest solution lol. Thank you again for being so helpful!


----------



## ThAbtO

The bigger the VA/W is, the longer the UPS can support the devices connected. For example, A UPS that supports a PC for an hour can support a Tivo, that is the only device connected, for up to 4 hours. Include the TV and it can cut it down to 1 1/2 hours. (This is just for example and would not be exact in the real world.)


----------



## ej42137

Snowball3 said:


> Has anyone else had to swap the power out on their Tivo Roamio OTA?


Lots of people have reported their TiVo external power supplies failing; I myself had to replace two of them out of four.



Snowball3 said:


> Just curious if my Roamio has a power of 12 VDC what is the difference with a power of 12 V. I dont know anything about voltage and just wanted to make sure this has the correct power to work with my tivo with the 8tb hook up before I buy. Thank you all for your help!


These power supplies produce Direct Current; 12 V and 12 VDC are the same in this context, 12 volts of direct current. You need exactly 12 volts and at least as much amperage as the TiVo power supply. I replaced my TiVo power supplies with the KNACRO AC 100-240V to DC 12V 8A 8.5A 102W Switching Power Supply Adapter DC 5.5mm X 2.5mm Plug 12V 8.5A Power Supply.

As you realize, if the problem happens without a UPS, the UPS is not the cause of the problem. Getting a good UPS is an excellent idea (I don't have any TiVos not connected to a smart UPS) but I would focus on the power supply issue first. If a new PS doesn't fix your problem, you've either got a bad hard drive or your TiVo's electronics are buggered somehow. Or your house current is incredibly bad and your UPS is not doing its job.


----------



## 3 Cushion John

ThAbtO said:


> Roamio and Bolts will format and recognize up to 3TB. You would need to use MSFR to expand beyond that 3TB to recognize. However, a SSD may not be up to par with all the constant reads and writes to last the years. (So I've heard.)


Have Bolt 500. Installed new 2T drive and stuck in Start up. Thoughts plz?


----------



## ggieseke

3 Cushion John said:


> Have Bolt 500. Installed new 2T drive and stuck in Start up. Thoughts plz?


The only thing I can think of is to try zeroing the drive with WD's Data Lifeguard Diagnostics, then try again.

Bolts running recent versions of TE4 just seem to reject some drives during the auto-format process. You might also be able to roll it back to TE3 on the factory drive and get the new 2TB properly formatted before going back to TE4.


----------



## 3 Cushion John

Thank you very much. Have DoD zeroing out software, will run that on new drv and try again.


----------



## jmbach

3 Cushion John said:


> Thank you very much. Have DoD zeroing out software, will run that on new drv and try again.


What is the model number of the drive


----------



## 3 Cushion John

jmbach said:


> What is the model number of the drive


WD20SPZX - Amazon... Still running wipe.

Put a 1T red WD 3.5 in and all 4 lights just flash. Had data on it I think. Just wanted to see what Bolt would do..


----------



## jmbach

3 Cushion John said:


> WD20SPZX - Amazon... Still running wipe.
> 
> Put a 1T red WD 3.5 in and all 4 lights just flash. Had data on it I think. Just wanted to see what Bolt would do..


You need an external power supply to hook a 3.5" drive to a Bolt.


----------



## 3 Cushion John

3 Cushion John said:


> WD20SPZX - Amazon... Still running wipe.
> 
> Put a 1T red WD 3.5 in and all 4 lights just flash. Had data on it I think. Just wanted to see what Bolt would do..


Have MFSTools 3.3. Tried to copy 500 to 2T. 500 gave primary boot partition error. Couldn't get -bootsectorfix to run on 500. Bad command or not sure. Have some Linux knowledge.


----------



## 3 Cushion John

jmbach said:


> You need an external power supply to hook a 3.5" drive to a Bolt.


Oh, I have an enclosure, Ill try to get that to power on.thanx


----------



## jmbach

3 Cushion John said:


> Have MFSTools 3.3. Tried to copy 500 to 2T. 500 gave primary boot partition error. Couldn't get -bootsectorfix to run on 500. Bad command or not sure. Have some Linux knowledge.


If you can get a better description of the error message would help figure it out why it did not work.

From the description you gave, sound like you did not type it in correctly.


----------



## Snowball3

Thank you ej42137 for explaining that to me. Its crazy how much money I have thrown at this thing.

You mentioned this one...

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06Y2QZB2T/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It is currently unavailable on amazon. I am currently searching for it on other websites. If another replacement power supply ..something that will work good with my Tivo Roamio OTA could be recommended I would really appreciate it! I prefer it to be at best buy so I can just run in and get it. But no matter what I search I cant seem to find the right one. But of course will order online if I have to. I would like to keep it around 20 dollars or so. Can anyone suggest one that is in stock? Thank you for your help!


----------



## ThAbtO

Snowball3 said:


> I would like to keep it around 20 dollars or so.


You would only get a surge protector for around $20. The smallest/cheapest UPS starts around $60. A 350/500VA would last about 1/2 hr on battery alone.


----------



## Snowball3

I was asking for the replacement power supply adapter not the ups. I want to see if that is the problem like ej mentioned.


----------



## jmbach

Snowball3 said:


> Thank you ej42137 for explaining that to me. Its crazy how much money I have thrown at this thing.
> 
> You mentioned this one...
> 
> https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06Y2QZB2T/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
> 
> It is currently unavailable on amazon. I am currently searching for it on other websites. If another replacement power supply ..something that will work good with my Tivo Roamio OTA could be recommended I would really appreciate it! I prefer it to be at best buy so I can just run in and get it. But no matter what I search I cant seem to find the right one. But of course will order online if I have to. I would like to keep it around 20 dollars or so. Can anyone suggest one that is in stock? Thank you for your help!


This one should work. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073ZQ9SZZ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_zlHWDbZY7A4S5


----------



## jlin

12TB Eastystore is on sale at Bestbuy for $179 now.

I have the upgraded 10TB drive in my Roamio Plus... is it possible to get it up to 12TB?


----------



## ThAbtO

It may or may not work as no one has made it to that size yet. There is an unknown limit as to how big a size it can get to.


----------



## jmbach

jlin said:


> 12TB Eastystore is on sale at Bestbuy for $179 now.
> 
> I have the upgraded 10TB drive in my Roamio Plus... is it possible to get it up to 12TB?


Yes but it depends. Post the results of mfsinfo -d of the drive in the 10 TB DIY thread and we will continue there.


----------



## Snowball3

jmbach said:


> This one should work. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073ZQ9SZZ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_zlHWDbZY7A4S5


Thank you for the recommendation. I am crossing my fingers it will work and I dont have to swap out the hard drive. I will let update how it goes once I receive it. Thanks again!


----------



## Snowball3

Okay finally had enough time to test out some things and here is what I discovered.

First I ordered and used this power supply that was suggested...

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073ZQ9SZZ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_zlHWDbZY7A4S5

Oddly enough it did help with the rebooting problems. The first day I only had a few shows that were partial recordings. Which was sadly a big improvement for me. Then the next day a few more and then a few more again until it was pretty much the same. So unfortunately that wasn't the answer.

So a recap I swapped out my Tivo Roamio OTA hard drive with an 8TB WD Red Internal Hard Drive 5400 RPM WD80EFAX

I did this by using the MFS Reformatter. According to this thread it mentions..

"Your Roamio must running 20.4.6 or later. Earlier versions go into an endless boot loop trying to format anything over 3TB."

My Software version is: 21.9.6.v5-846-6-846

So I believe I am running the correct version since it is above 20.4.6. Then it says "Roamios running 20.5.6 or later should use version 1.0.0.2 from post #2."...and goes on to say "2016-04-29: Version 1.0.0.4 works on 8TB drives."

So I downloaded and used "MFSR1004 Zip" to reformat my drive.

After installation I started getting many constant reboots and partial recordings until it became a daily problem. To Fix this I got a new UPS and more powerful external power supply. Neither did anything and I still have the same problems.

Then recently the tivo started to reboot for the millionth time but this time was different - it was stuck in a never ending reboot cycle and never did come back on to the main tivo home screen. It just stayed at the tivo is starting up stage or whatever it says there. So I opened the Tivo back up and swapped the old (original) hard drive back in. Its been a few days and the tivo has worked perfectly on the original without a single reboot. Something that hasn't happened since I swapped the hard drives. Only I have like no space on it.

So I thought - I guess my WD RED 8tb Hard drive has gone bad which I was bothered by since it was bought earlier THIS year. So I decided to test it (I tested it before I installed it on the tivo and it passed fine.). I used the WD S.M.A.R.T. (Self Monitoring Analysis And Reporting Technology) Program to run a Quick test and then an extended test. To my surprise it passed both of them and had positive green check marks for everything on both the Quick and the very thorough Extended Test. I have the results saved in case anyone has a question/suggestion.

I thought for sure my swapped out hard drive was going to be the issue. This thread is many pages long though. Maybe the path I followed was outdated by using the "Version 1.0.0.4 works on 8TB drives." Or maybe I am suppose to upgrade my tivo firmware or something (which i don't even know how to do.) Or perhaps maybe There is something I need to further change in the settings for my WD 8tb Red Internal hard drive 5400 RPM. Maybe something to prevent it from rebooting for whatever reason?

I apologize for such a long post but felt I needed to explain things in detail. Please if you could let me know what is wrong and what I can do based on what I have described in this post I would greatly appreciate it. It was a new hard drive tested and working perfectly before I put it in. It was also the recommended hard drive to use for this MFS reformatting with 8tb. And now since I put it in and my tivo works perfectly with the original. I already spent a lot on the 8tb so I need to fix this. Your help would be so appreciated!


----------



## ThAbtO

The version 21.x may be the problem, too buggy, doesn't like large drives, etc. It may also be the reason Tivo stopped selling 3Tb Bolts. There is no Tivo software upgrade, but if you were to go down to v20.x, albeit losing shows on the drive, but you do not have much or any to lose since you just upgraded to 8TB via MSFR.


----------



## Snowball3

Thank you for the reply ThAbtO...

You mentioned my Tivo software version of "21.9.6.v5-846-6-846" doesn't do well with large drives. And the creator of MFS Reformatter stated ""Your Roamio must be running 20.4.6 or later. Earlier versions go into an endless boot loop trying to format anything over 3TB."

Could you please suggest what version I should downgrade to? Which version do you use and do you have any reboot issues with it? I assume you have a pretty large drive as well. 

Sorry to be a bother but how exactly do you go about downgraded your tivo software? Is there a simple way to do it since I don't even know how to go about that. Thank you all for your help!


----------



## ThAbtO

There are only 2 versions for Roamio/Bolts. V20.7.4 or TE3 Vs. v21.x or TE4/Hydra. (Both are later than v20.4.6)

My Roamio is on 20.7.4.

there are other threads here on downgrading.

For example.
Rollback Bolt VOX Hydra to Classic


----------



## Snowball3

Thank you for replying. I will try to downgrade to 20.7.4. since that seems to work for you. I will look more deeply into the thread you suggested. Hopefully it isn't too complicated lol. When I downgrade will it need to delete all my recordings in order to successfully downgrade? Also do I have to repeat the MFS Reformat steps of using "Version 1.0.0.4 works on 8TB drives." Where I put the drive in and reformat it using this "1.0.0.4. version" as if it were the first time I was doing this?

-Thanks again!


----------



## ThAbtO

You will lose recordings but after downgrading, you should be done. If you have a copy of your shows, you can transfer them back to it.


----------



## Snowball3

I was able to downgrade it successfully. It seems to work except for the fact that it clogged up the wifi terribly with my tivo mini. Couldn't even hardly play a game on an app until I unplugged the mini and then it cleared up. Which is odd since the mini isn't even on wifi it is on Moca. 

I think I messed up with one thing though. This was originally a 1tb Roamio OTa I upgraded it to 8tb. I had used the MFS reformatter on it before. But I didn't do it after I downgraded. I simply put it back in because I wasn't sure if I had to or not. So I check the recording capacity and free space on my tivo and it says...

Recording capacity: Variable, up to 220 HD or 1511 SD Hours
Free Disck Space : Variable, up to 206 HD or 1426 SD Hours.

^ That cant be right for 8tb I dont think. A TB claims to give you 500 hours of hd video. 

Do you think I need to reformat it again? If so do I need to erase all my shows first or will the MFS Reformat do that for me?

If I need to reformat it once again are these the proper instructions? 

1- Tivo- Reset to defaults.

2- put the 8tb drive in (or just leave it in since it is already there?) at the first guided setup screen turn it off. 

3- Download and unzip 2016-04-29: Version 1.0.0.4 

4- Connect to computer

5- Open unzipped file by right click run as an administrator. Follow setup instructions. 

6- Put it back in the tivo.

^ Sorry to repeat the steps just want to double check I got everything right this time if I need to reformat it again. Thank you!


----------



## ggieseke

Snowball3 said:


> I was able to downgrade it successfully. It seems to work except for the fact that it clogged up the wifi terribly with my tivo mini. Couldn't even hardly play a game on an app until I unplugged the mini and then it cleared up. Which is odd since the mini isn't even on wifi it is on Moca.
> 
> I think I messed up with one thing though. This was originally a 1tb Roamio OTa I upgraded it to 8tb. I had used the MFS reformatter on it before. But I didn't do it after I downgraded. I simply put it back in because I wasn't sure if I had to or not. So I check the recording capacity and free space on my tivo and it says...
> 
> Recording capacity: Variable, up to 220 HD or 1511 SD Hours
> Free Disck Space : Variable, up to 206 HD or 1426 SD Hours.
> 
> ^ That cant be right for 8tb I dont think. A TB claims to give you 500 hours of hd video.
> 
> Do you think I need to reformat it again? If so do I need to erase all my shows first or will the MFS Reformat do that for me?
> 
> If I need to reformat it once again are these the proper instructions?
> 
> 1- Tivo- Reset to defaults.
> 
> 2- put the 8tb drive in (or just leave it in since it is already there?) at the first guided setup screen turn it off.
> 
> 3- Download and unzip 2016-04-29: Version 1.0.0.4
> 
> 4- Connect to computer
> 
> 5- Open unzipped file by right click run as an administrator. Follow setup instructions.
> 
> 6- Put it back in the tivo.
> 
> ^ Sorry to repeat the steps just want to double check I got everything right this time if I need to reformat it again. Thank you!


You'll probably have reformat it again. Just rerun MFSR.

A good ballpark estimate is 160 hours per TB. On a Roamio you should see about 1260 hours with an 8TB drive.


----------



## Snowball3

Thank you ggieseke. Do I need to delete all the recordings first or will running your MFSR Reformatter wipe the drive for me? Thank you for your reply!


----------



## ggieseke

Snowball3 said:


> Thank you ggieseke. Do I need to delete all the recordings first or will running your MFSR Reformatter wipe the drive for me? Thank you for your reply!


MFSR will wipe it.


----------



## Snowball3

Thank you ggieske I will give it a try hopefully it goes well now that I have downgraded. I haven't had any issues with the drive so far so crossing my fingers for when i format it


----------



## bhill1976

Need help with an MFSR Line 846 Error (IO_CTL_DISK_GET_DRIVE_LAYOUT_EX), please.

Background:
i successfully upgraded by TIVO Bolt to a 4TB Seagate STDR40000100 HD several years ago, but the drive recently failed. Purchased an identical replacement drive and attempted a sector by sector drive copy using ddrescue (unsuccessfully). I put the new drive in the TIVO, let the TIVO reformat the drive to fix a serious drive problem and ran guided setup (maybe my first mistake). I was at a point where I had 285 HD recording capacity (was expecting 600+). Now I'm trying to unlock the full 4TB disk space using the MFSR tool, but getting the error noted above. 

If I connect the drive to my windows 10 laptop, I can see it in device manager, but I can't see the drive in file explorer. I'm guessing the error is related to this. I tried initializing the disk, but was afraid to go so far as to format the disk with a new simple volume partition. I'm just technical enough to be dangerous 

Do I need to format the disk as NTFS or exFAT? Should I attempt to sector copy the disk again with ddresue to get me back to the point where TIVO can format the disk, but stop short of running guided setup? Is there an easy/simple way to get past the error and get the Bolt to recognize the 4TB on the disk.


----------



## ThAbtO

bhill1976 said:


> If I connect the drive to my windows 10 laptop, I can see it in device manager, but I can't see the drive in file explorer.


They should not be able to see anything about the drive except bios.



bhill1976 said:


> Do I need to format the disk as NTFS or exFAT?


No.


bhill1976 said:


> Is there an easy/simple way


Erase the drive, let the Tivo initialize it. Reconnect to PC. MSFR it. Ignore the errors. Note here the space allocated in MSFR. If it seems right, return it to Tivo.


----------



## bhill1976

ThAbtO said:


> They should not be able to see anything about the drive except bios.
> 
> No.
> 
> Erase the drive, let the Tivo initialize it. Reconnect to PC. MSFR it. Ignore the errors. Note here the space allocated in MSFR. If it seems right, return it to Tivo.


ThAbtO - Thanks for the quick response! Can I erase the drive using the commend prompt terminal to run diskpart and the clean command?


----------



## ggieseke

bhill1976 said:


> Need help with an MFSR Line 846 Error (IO_CTL_DISK_GET_DRIVE_LAYOUT_EX), please.


I haven't seen that error before, but there have been some issues with certain SD card readers. You might try temporarily disabling any unnecessary devices that Windows sees as a drive in Device Manager and try it again.

Using the clean command in diskpart will work, but it's really easy to make a mistake and wipe the wrong drive. I usually recommend the write zeros test in WD's Data Lifeguard Diagnostics instead because you can see the make, model & serial number of the drive before committing to anything drastic.


----------



## bhill1976

ggieseke said:


> I haven't seen that error before, but there have been some issues with certain SD card readers. You might try temporarily disabling any unnecessary devices that Windows sees as a drive in Device Manager and try it again.
> 
> Using the clean command in diskpart will work, but it's really easy to make a mistake and wipe the wrong drive. I usually recommend the write zeros test in WD's Data Lifeguard Diagnostics instead because you can see the make, model & serial number of the drive before committing to anything drastic.


Thanks! Ended up using diskpart (the disk sizes made it obvious which disk I'd be wiping). I believe the problem comes down to my laptop having 2 internal drives. The second one is a small solid state drive that is supposed to improve performance and the MFSR must have been trying to read it and encountering an error. I got around this problem by running the MFSR tool on my daughter's laptop. The new drive is in the Bolt and showing over 600 hours of capacity. Thanks again for the help!


----------



## anadelman

I connected a 3TB drive to my Bolt (via an external enclosure as described in this community) when I received it. It's been working fairly well, but occasionally reboots (as I'm reading about in this thread). However, I thought it might be the drive, so I decided it was time to bite the bullet and upgrade it via MFSR. MFSR worked just fine. The system goes through setup just fine, gets program info just fine, loads it all, then starts organizing it (I've never seen it do that before). After about 3 minutes of "organizing", it reboots and starts the setup process from the beginning. Any ideas as to what's wrong? I used MFSR 1.0.0.4 and I'm on the latest Bolt OS.


----------



## Johnny Danger

anadelman said:


> I connected a 3TB drive to my Bolt (via an external enclosure as described in this community) when I received it. It's been working fairly well, but occasionally reboots (as I'm reading about in this thread). However, I thought it might be the drive, so I decided it was time to bite the bullet and upgrade it via MFSR. MFSR worked just fine. The system goes through setup just fine, gets program info just fine, loads it all, then starts organizing it (I've never seen it do that before). After about 3 minutes of "organizing", it reboots and starts the setup process from the beginning. Any ideas as to what's wrong? I used MFSR 1.0.0.4 and I'm on the latest Bolt OS.


Are we suppose to use MFSR 1.0.0.4 or MFS Tools 3.2 ?????

I wish there was a basic walkthough or guide that you could follow step by step directions instead of trying to piece together fragments off forum and internet.


----------



## ThAbtO

Johnny Danger said:


> Are we suppose to use MFSR 1.0.0.4 or MFS Tools 3.2 ?????


MFSR is just a program to expand what a Roamio or Bolt stopped at when preparing the drive, at 3TB, for larger drives to use the full space.

You would need MFSTools 3.3x to do backup/restore. It would keep all settings/passes, etc. While MFSR is starting anew.


----------



## Johnny Danger

ThAbtO said:


> MFSR is just a program to expand what a Roamio or Bolt stopped at when preparing the drive, at 3TB, for larger drives to use the full space.
> 
> You would need MFSTools 3.3x to do backup/restore. It would keep all settings/passes, etc. While MFSR is starting anew.


The " MFSR1004.zip" max size hard drive is only 8TB max?

What about 10TB, 12TB or 14TB hard drive?

It would be easier if the software just worked on the larger drive instead of forcintg you to make an expanded tivo drive with a smaller drive then having to boot your computer from a USB drive into some command line interface to have to manually clone and apply fixes to the drive?

That MFSR1004 software just ran from windows and took a few seconds. Very fast and easy to run this process.

Is there anyway to request this softare work on up to 14TB drive from the developer? 
This feature would be greatly appreciated.


----------



## CrashHD

This stuff is a continual work in progress. The methods evolve over time. These guys have done this for free, done an outstanding job, and don't owe anyone anything, and still help a lot of people with what amounts to basically hand holding on an already easy process. I really don't think complaints about how this easy process might be easier are properly called for. If this isn't easy enough for you, there is always weaknees. They have two levels of more easier, drop in drives, or send them your tivo and do it for you.
If you want do DIY, then do your part. If you need to ask for help, fine, but try not to leave a post that is just dripping with backhanded complaint about how the process isn't easy enough for you.


----------



## CrashHD

So I'm looking for an idea here.
Every few years, I upgrade my tivo hard drives, and retire the former tivo drives to a less stressful life. "Put them out to pasture" so to speak...

I'm also going to cable, so I have a new (to me) Roamio Plus. I have a 14 TB drive to put in it. I know I could use MFSTools 3.2's new method to use the full capacity of the drive, but here's the part where I'm getting a little greedy.

I'd like to optimize the partition layout such that all MFS partitions are their full 2TB (give or take a tiny bit) potential size. Is there a way I can get mfsr to do it's thing on the first 8.0TB of the drive (giving me 4 2.0TB partitions), and then use MFS Tools 3.2 to expand out the rest of the way?
MFSR errors out upon noticing the drive is too big.
I've tried limiting the drive to 8TB using HPA with ATAtool. MFSR crashes with an error. I'll have to repeat this process again and note the specific error when I get back to this (running out of time today). 
It was suggested to me to use hdparm, and I tried that first, but it was not present on the mfstools image. I tried ATAtool instead. Possibly the next thing to try is getting a more full featured linux environment and trying hdparm again.
What I am pursuing is the idea that if I start with 8TB in 4 partitions via MFSR, 24TB is the theoretical maximum potential of the DVR. I tend to run my hardware deep into obsolescence, and I am a digital hoarder, so the possibility I could one day use a 24TB tivo is realistic. I'm also working toward less tivos and bigger of them by having one big dvr and minis.


----------



## ggieseke

CrashHD said:


> Is there a way I can get mfsr to do it's thing on the first 8.0TB of the drive (giving me 4 2.0TB partitions), and then use MFS Tools 3.2 to expand out the rest of the way?


I sent you a beta version of MFSR that formats drives over 8TB. It just ignores the extra space and treats the drive as a WD80EFZX so that you can use MFS Tools 3.3 from there.


----------



## Johnny Danger

ggieseke said:


> I sent you a beta version of MFSR that formats drives over 8TB. It just ignores the extra space and treats the drive as a WD80EFZX so that you can use MFS Tools 3.3 from there.


Where did you send the beta version of MFSR to?

Thanks.


----------



## ggieseke

Johnny Danger said:


> Where did you send the beta version of MFSR to?


I sent a link to CrashHD via conversations.


----------



## CrashHD

I been delayed in testing it. The new drive doesn't pass WD's diagnostic test. I'm thinking of sending it back for warranty.


----------



## halloran

Hello gang

Trying to get a Bolt+ up and running. Original 3TB drive failed a few years ago (as most of them did). Replaced with a WD Red 6TB in Rosewill enclosure direct sata to the motherboard, that drive just died. I have a freshly shucked WD 10TB white label ready to be "TiVo'ed". My understanding is that if I want more than 8TB to be usable, I'll need an experimental version of MFSR and then I'll also need to use MFS Tools. If I just do the MFSR part now, can I do the MFS Tools later without destroying recordings, or do I have to do everything now? Where might I obtain the necessary version of MFSR?

Thanks for the help


----------



## ggieseke

halloran said:


> If I just do the MFSR part now, can I do the MFS Tools later without destroying recordings, or do I have to do everything now? Where might I obtain the necessary version of MFSR?


I think you can expand it with MFS Tools later. Beta version of MFSR sent.


----------



## ThAbtO

halloran said:


> Original 3TB drive failed a few years ago (as most of them did). Replaced with a WD Red 6TB in Rosewill enclosure direct sata to the motherboard, that drive just died.


Avoid using Tivo software version v21 (AKA Hydra) as that would be the cause of most drives killed. You would only lose the VOX ability.


----------



## jmbach

halloran said:


> Hello gang
> 
> Trying to get a Bolt+ up and running. Original 3TB drive failed a few years ago (as most of them did). Replaced with a WD Red 6TB in Rosewill enclosure direct sata to the motherboard, that drive just died. I have a freshly shucked WD 10TB white label ready to be "TiVo'ed". My understanding is that if I want more than 8TB to be usable, I'll need an experimental version of MFSR and then I'll also need to use MFS Tools. If I just do the MFSR part now, can I do the MFS Tools later without destroying recordings, or do I have to do everything now? Where might I obtain the necessary version of MFSR?
> 
> Thanks for the help


You can expand later with MFSTools.

Sent from my SM-G988U using Tapatalk


----------



## aaronwt

My Bolt with a 4TB drive crapped out a few days ago. After 53 months of use on the 4TB drive. So I had put in a stock 500GB Bolt drive.
But today I found a Toshiba 1TB drive that I had pulled out of my PS4 Pro, back in 2016. So I just put that in the Bolt and used MSFR on the Drive. (I used the version of MSFR I got back in 2017, that worked on the smaller drives)

Thanks. Donation sent.


----------



## myfins1

ggieseke said:


> I think you can expand it with MFS Tools later. Beta version of MFSR sent.


ggieseke: I read a pretty decent portion of this thread hoping to find more about this Beta version of MFSR. Is there any chance you need another tester?

I have a Bolt+ from 2017 whose OEM drive finally crashed. It lasted longer than I was expecting. My first Bolt+ crashed in just over a year from purchase. I installed 2.5 form factor 4tb drive in it in 2017.

I have decided I will be converting to a 3.5 form factor 10tb drive after reading another thread where you directed someone to this thread for MFS reformatter (MRFS) {10TB Bolt?}.

I have ordered a WD RED NAS WD100EFAX 10tb drive. I will be completing a fresh install without any recovered recordings. I was hopeful this beta MFSR will assist in formatting a driver larger than 8tb for use in a Bolt+.


----------



## ggieseke

myfins1 said:


> Is there any chance you need another tester?


Sent.


----------



## ThAbtO

myfins1 said:


> I have ordered a WD RED NAS WD100EFAX 10tb drive. I will be completing a fresh install without any recovered recordings. I was hopeful this beta MFSR will assist in formatting a driver larger than 8tb for use in a Bolt+.


MSFR is limited (I believe, still) to 8TB. You would need to use MFSTools 3.2/3.3 and the 10Tb Roamio thread. Also, I believe v21/Hydra/TE4 cannot handle it, and need to be on v20 of Tivo software.


----------



## ggieseke

ThAbtO said:


> MSFR is limited (I believe, still) to 8TB


The beta version of MFSR in question treats even larger drives as 8TB instead of rejecting them. That saves a few rounds of mfsadd/fix cycles in MFS Tools on 10 or 12 TB drives.


----------



## myfins1

I just wanted to report that I used the latest MFSR Beta tool to setup a Western Digital Red NAS 10 TB (WD100EFAX). In my setup I have a TiVo Bolt+. I am using TE4 Hydra. My OEM 3TB drive died. I did not attempt to recover or maintain recordings. So this was a clean install.

I setup an external drive using the Rosewill Hard Drive Enclosure 3.5 Inch SATA III to USB 3.0 or eSATA. I bypasses the Rosewill internal board for USB/eSata and my Sata drive is connected directly to the TiVo Mainboard Sata socket.

This was a pretty simple installation with only one hiccup but it wasn't really a hiccup at all. I am a Mac user and I used Parallels 15 with Windows 10 to run MFSR. Normally I do everything using my Sata USB 3 Dock (Nekteck USB Type C USB3.1 (USB-C) to SATA).

I started by installing brand new WD Red 10tb into TiVo and allowed it to boot up. Once I reached the guided setup screen I pulled from TiVo to run MFSR. This is where my hiccup happened. I could not get MFSR to recognize my drive. Windows wasn't seeing it either but my Mac was. I read on another post someone mentioned that a specific dock didn't support a 10tb drive and had an 8tb limit. I looked up my dock and sure enough it supports up to 8tb drive. I went ahead and slapped the newly TiVo formatted drive into the new Rosewill enclosure using the built in USB/eSata to connect to my Mac using USB. Once I completed this Windows recognized the drive as did MFSR. It allowed me to reformat it smoothly.

Summary:
1. New drive into TiVo for Formatting
-Pulled once on Guided Setup
2. Put Drive in Windows using Rosewill external enclosure
-Used the external enclosure USB to Sata functions with USB cable to MAC
3. Run MSFR
4. Installed back to the TiVo
5. Completed Guided Setup

The End result:










Before:










After:


----------



## ringo->

I upgraded my first bolt no issues with MFSR and a Rosewill external case with WD Red 8TB drive running rock solid for a long time. Just bought a new bolt for my wife and can't get this to work this time. Downloaded MFSR1004 and have a WD Red WD80EFZX. Can't get past first step looks like. Plug the drive in the Bolt. Tivo comes up on the screen for a second then goes to all 4 lights flashing. Never stops flashing all 4 lights. I have left it on that for a long time, say 20-30 min. Nothing comes back on the screen. Don't ever get to Guided Setup. Even pulled the plug and plugged into three different computers, 2 Win10 both external usb and internal sata, and an old Win7 usb and run MFSR and all say no TiVo drive found.


----------



## ggieseke

ringo-> said:


> I upgraded my first bolt no issues with MFSR and a Rosewill external case with WD Red 8TB drive running rock solid for a long time. Just bought a new bolt for my wife and can't get this to work this time. Downloaded MFSR1004 and have a WD Red WD80EFZX. Can't get past first step looks like. Plug the drive in the Bolt. Tivo comes up on the screen for a second then goes to all 4 lights flashing. Never stops flashing all 4 lights. I have left it on that for a long time, say 20-30 min. Nothing comes back on the screen. Don't ever get to Guided Setup. Even pulled the plug and plugged into three different computers, 2 Win10 both external usb and internal sata, and an old Win7 usb and run MFSR and all say no TiVo drive found.


The 4 lights flashing usually indicates a bad drive. Did you test it first, and are you using a direct SATA cable connection between the motherboard and the drive?


----------



## 3 Cushion John

I think I had the same lights, and checked tightness of SATA on MBoard. It was a little loose. Fixed it.


----------



## ringo->

Looks like it was a power issue with the external enclosure so I got a new one. Got it all working, ran through guided setup and completed successfully with new 8TB drive. I use a cable card and didn't have it with me on the test bench so I skipped that part in the guided setup but all worked on TE4. Hooked everything back up to the TV with cable card in powered it up and all worked. Started getting some channels but not all so called the cable guys to marry my card to the new Bolt. While on hold the Bolt green screened saying TiVo box has detected a serious problem and is now attempting to fix it. Reboots kept saying the same. I put the OEM drive in to finish the call and get the cable card working. I am now trying to start over with worse luck. I have downgraded to TE3 to help avoid issues but now no external drive will recognize in the Bolt only the OEM drive. Now when I plug in an 8TB external drive to the Bolt to run initial step to get to Begin Guided Setup screen the lights flash as they should (no all 4 flashing like before) but it green screens saying detected a serious problem and never starts the setup process. I have tried 4 brand new 8TB WD Red drives. 3 different models of Red drive and all do the same. I have tried 2 different external enclosures that I bypassed the onboard sata and ran a straight sata cable from 8TB drive sata connector to Bolt MB sata connector. Even tried 4 different sata cables. The drives all connect to the PC and I can run diskpart no issues. It recognizes them fine. The only thing I can think to do at this point is order the exact enclosure I have been using for years on the other Bolt with the 8TB drive upgrade. I finally found it again. It is that old Rosewill HD enclosure with the fan and the digital temp gauge on the front. Just can't seem to figure out why it worked fine, completed upgrade, showed 1283HD hours, (even on TE4) then green screened and now always green screens on all drives except OEM 500GB


----------



## mllacey

ggieseke said:


> The beta version of MFSR in question treats even larger drives as 8TB instead of rejecting them. That saves a few rounds of mfsadd/fix cycles in MFS Tools on 10 or 12 TB drives.


Is there a timeframe in which you will be releasing the Beta version of MFSR to the public, I would love to try it on upgrading my TE4 Bolt & Roamio from a 3TB to a 10TB Red Drives.

Thank you in advance.


----------



## ggieseke

mllacey said:


> Is there a timeframe in which you will be releasing the Beta version of MFSR to the public, I would love to try it on upgrading my TE4 Bolt & Roamio from a 3TB to a 10TB Red Drives.


I sent you the beta. It will probably never released officially because it's hard-coded to assume that the drive is over 8TB, but anyone is welcome to it.


----------



## mllacey

ggieseke said:


> I sent you the beta. It will probably never released officially because it's hard-coded to assume that the drive is over 8TB, but anyone is welcome to it.


Thank you.
I'm now copying my files to my backup Tivo Premier and will be working on this tomorrow.
I will post the results when complete.


----------



## mllacey

mllacey said:


> Thank you.
> 
> I've copied all files from the 3TB to my LifeTime Tivo Premier.
> I then did a full Surface check on the WD 10TB drive pulled from my WD Easystore. I connected the WD 10TB to the Tivo Bolt+ with my External Rosewill Enclosure and it took longer than expected but format the drive. I powered down the WD TB drive at the Setup Screen and installed it into my PC off a spare Sata Connector and ran the Beta MFSR. The WD 10TB drive was recognized and allowed me to format it.
> 
> I then installed the drive back into the External Rosewill Enclosure connected directly to the SATA Port and the other end conn to the SATA port of the Tivo Bolt+ and completed the setup with no issue. I confirmed no connection issues to Tivo several times and also ran a Kickstart 58 to confirm NO issues. This went pretty seemless but note that I did not choose to run a MFS Add to expand the full 10TB.
> 
> Thanks so much, ggieseke for updating MFSR to work with drives larger than 8TB.


----------



## ECuster

ggieseke, I am trying to create a 14TB drive for a Roamio. There is nothing on the original 1TB drive that I want to keep. Would it be possible to get a copy of your modified MFSR that is capable of working with drives larger than 8TB?

Thanks you in advance.


----------



## ggieseke

ECuster said:


> ggieseke, I am trying to create a 14TB drive for a Roamio. There is nothing on the original 1TB drive that I want to keep. Would it be possible to get a copy of your modified MFSR that is capable of working with drives larger than 8TB?
> 
> Thanks you in advance.


Sent.


----------



## ECuster

ggieseke, thank you for forwarding the beta version of MFSR. Unfortunately, either I am doing something wrong or it has run into an issue with the 14TB drive I have.


----------



## ggieseke

ECuster said:


> ggieseke, thank you for forwarding the beta version of MFSR. Unfortunately, either I am doing something wrong or it has run into an issue with the 14TB drive I have.
> 
> View attachment 49557


How is the drive attached to your computer, and does MFSR see the correct size for that drive?


----------



## ECuster

The first time through I placed the empty 14TB drive into the Roamio and it created a 3TB are on the drive. The Roamio booted and everything was working properly. I pulled it out and connected it the computer via USB. I'm trying a second approach where I used MFSTools to copy the original Roamio 1TB drive onto the 14TB drive. When I start up MFSR I see:








I only copied a 1TB drive to the new 14TB drive; why does this show a 4TB recording area even though I have not tried to format it yet?

When I select Reformat it produces:









Then when I click OK:









I'm open to any suggestions you have on the best way to proceed.


----------



## ggieseke

ECuster said:


> I'm open to any suggestions you have on the best way to proceed.


I've never tested it against a drive that was already formatted by MFS Tools. Since you have already copied and expanded it to 4TB with MFS Tools, it would probably be a lot easier to forget MFSR and just continue to use MFS Tools to expand it from there.


----------



## waterandland

How do I get MFS Formatter Tools Program on a bookable CD?


----------



## ThAbtO

Pardon me. 

MFSR reformatter is not to be on a CD... It is in fact, just a small Windows program.


----------



## ggieseke

waterandland said:


> How do I get MFS Formatter Tools Program on a bookable CD?


Are you talking about MFS Reformatter (this thread) or MFS Tools 3.2?


----------



## Bryan_K

Hi,

Any idea why I am getting this message when running v 1.0.0.4 (as an administrator) ?










I removed all other drives with the exception of my boot drive.

I installed the drive in my Bolt XL and waited for the Getting Started menu, then connected it via SATA into my desktop.


----------



## ggieseke

Bryan_K said:


> Hi,
> 
> Any idea why I am getting this message when running v 1.0.0.4 (as an administrator) ?
> 
> View attachment 51351
> 
> 
> I removed all other drives with the exception of my boot drive.
> 
> I installed the drive in my Bolt XL and waited for the Getting Started menu, then connected it via SATA into my desktop.


I haven't seen that error before, but certain SD card readers have been known to cause problems with it. Can you tell what your desktop has assigned as T: drive?


----------



## Bryan_K

ggieseke said:


> I haven't seen that error before, but certain SD card readers have been known to cause problems with it. Can you tell what your desktop has assigned as T: drive?


Hi,

Thanks for the quick response.

I think my T: mapping may have been a Google drive cache. I tried in safe mode and it worked perfectly. Just put drive in my Bolt and it's working with 8TB of storage. Interestingly, the Windows 7 machine I used to run the formatter now won't boot and is hanging on Loading Operating System.... I better go check all of the drive connections....


----------



## jackster159

New to using MFS. Picked up a roamio plus, pulled the 1 tb hard drive. Put in an 8tb WD white label (supposedly same as red these days). Let tivo start up until the what country you are in screen. Shut down the tivo, put it in an external dock, ran MFS, it showed as 1 tb drive, and errors on trying to do anything. The not trying to move any files as the original 1 tb drive had nothing and the 8tb had nothing. I ran it as admin, as well. Any help appreciated! Thanks!
Drive shows up as Series 5 1308.04 GB Generic Hard Drve 1302.22 GB allowed for recordings
line 984 readfile eror and
line 337 reformat roamio drive
running 1.00.4


----------



## ggieseke

jackster159 said:


> New to using MFS. Picked up a roamio plus, pulled the 1 tb hard drive. Put in an 8tb WD white label (supposedly same as red these days). Let tivo start up until the what country you are in screen. Shut down the tivo, put it in an external dock, ran MFS, it showed as 1 tb drive, and errors on trying to do anything. The not trying to move any files as the original 1 tb drive had nothing and the 8tb had nothing. I ran it as admin, as well. Any help appreciated! Thanks!
> Drive shows up as Series 5 1308.04 GB Generic Hard Drve 1302.22 GB allowed for recordings
> line 984 readfile eror and
> line 337 reformat roamio drive
> running 1.00.4


It's probably the dock not recognizing a drive that big. How old is it?


----------



## jackster159

You may be right, it is an older dock, I'd say 5 yrs or more. I will look for a different dock. Will the roamio only format the 8tb to 1.3 or should it format to 3tb on its own?

Found a newer sata to usb interface, recognizes the drive correctly and is doing its magic as I type. Your assessment was right on! Thanks so much!


----------



## ggieseke

jackster159 said:


> You may be right, it is an older dock, I'd say 5 yrs or more. I will look for a different dock. Will the roamio only format the 8tb to 1.3 or should it format to 3tb on its own?


It will format it to some seemingly random value under 2TB. What actually happens is that the firmware formats it correctly for the full drive size, then when it reboots the OS takes the lower 32 bits of the 64-bit drive size and reformats it again accordingly.


----------



## marcao

Greg,
can you help sending me the Beta version of MFS reformatter? I plan to install a 10TB purple drive on a Roamio. Thanks!


----------



## ggieseke

marcao said:


> Greg,
> can you help sending me the Beta version of MFS reformatter? I plan to install a 10TB purple drive on a Roamio. Thanks!


Sent.


----------



## wingedpower

Hi all, looking for the latest version of beta version of the MFS Reformatter. My Tivo Series5/Roamio Pro is starting to glitch and am looking to upgrade/replace the drive. Looks like many of the links out there have bitrotted or haven't been updated in a long long time. Is MFSR still being maintained and if so, where or whom should I reach out to to get the latest version that supports the new larger drive sizes? thx!


----------



## ggieseke

wingedpower said:


> Hi all, looking for the latest version of beta version of the MFS Reformatter. My Tivo Series5/Roamio Pro is starting to glitch and am looking to upgrade/replace the drive. Looks like many of the links out there have bitrotted or haven't been updated in a long long time. Is MFSR still being maintained and if so, where or whom should I reach out to to get the latest version that supports the new larger drive sizes? thx!


Version 1.0.0.4 is still the latest version. You can download it from post #2 of this thread.

It still only goes up to 8TB.


----------



## Francorossobianco

ggieseke said:


> Here's version 1.0.0.2. I added support for Bolts and hopefully fixed the bug in post #184.
> 
> Early Bolts get a red screen error message when trying to format drives over 3TB. If it has already updated to 20.5.4a it will act like a Roamio running 20.4.6 or later and make it to Guided Setup. Either way, that's the time to hook the drive up to your PC and run mfsr.
> 
> Profs to telemark for providing disk images for me to work on and aaronwt for testing it.
> 
> 2016-02-21: Added version 1.0.0.3. It fixes a bug that ONLY affects Bolt drives over 4TB.
> 
> 2016-04-29: Version 1.0.0.4 works on 8TB drives.


Hi and thanks for this tool. My Bolt died with the 4 flashing LEDs, I've got a clean 4TB SSD that used to be in an older Bolt, so I know it will work with TiVo. Just want to ask which version I should use, the latest one or 1.0.0.2, which seems to be the one most applicable for a Bolt and a 4TB drive. Thanks.


----------



## ggieseke

Francorossobianco said:


> Hi and thanks for this tool. My Bolt died with the 4 flashing LEDs, I've got a clean 4TB SSD that used to be in an older Bolt, so I know it will work with TiVo. Just want to ask which version I should use, the latest one or 1.0.0.2, which seems to be the one most applicable for a Bolt and a 4TB drive. Thanks.


Use the latest version (1.0.0.4).


----------



## Johnny Danger

ggieseke said:


> Version 1.0.0.4 is still the latest version. You can download it from post #2 of this thread.
> 
> It still only goes up to 8TB.


I saw a 14GB hard drive on sale the other day.

When will the software support larger than 8 TB hard drives. I already have 100% of my 8TB filled to the max.


----------



## ggieseke

Johnny Danger said:


> When will the software support larger than 8 TB hard drives.


I don't have any plans to rewrite it at this time. You can go to 14TB with MFS Tools 3.x.


----------



## Johnny Danger

ggieseke said:


> I don't have any plans to rewrite it at this time. You can go to 14TB with MFS Tools 3.x.


Don't you just have to tweak it a little to to do 14TB vs 8TB?

Its not like that 2TB limit that was due to the CPU/OS limitation that some devices have .

It almost seem like the Amish saying that what they are using is just the right amount of technology with the horse and buggy being the 8TB hard drive. 
Like freeze framing some random place and saying nothing above this line may be crossed.


----------



## ThAbtO

Johnny Danger said:


> When will the software support larger than 8 TB hard drives. I already have 100% of my 8TB filled to the max.


8TB Premiere

Roamio 8TB

Use the processes in there and repeat until its all filled in.


----------



## dougdingle

Johnny Danger said:


> Don't you just have to tweak it a little to to do 14TB vs 8TB?
> 
> Its not like that 2TB limit that was due to the CPU/OS limitation that some devices have .
> 
> It almost seem like the Amish saying that what they are using is just the right amount of technology with the horse and buggy being the 8TB hard drive.
> Like freeze framing some random place and saying nothing above this line may be crossed.


A few alternatives you can explore:

-Depending on TiVo model, sometimes you can add an external drive for additional storage

-Find someone who has written software that supports what you are trying to do.

-Write a better utility yourself, making it available for free to everyone the way MFS Tools is.


----------



## jmbach

Johnny Danger said:


> Don't you just have to tweak it a little to to do 14TB vs 8TB?


Unfortunately a little tweak just won't cut it here.



Johnny Danger said:


> Its not like that 2TB limit that was due to the CPU/OS limitation that some devices have .


Correct. It is an actual bug in the TiVo software. By report they apparently fixed it in the latest TE4 release but TE3 still has it. Talk to TiVo about it and I would appreciate it if you can get them to fix it for TE3.

If you are on TE4, drop a large drive in it and it should format it to the correct size. Just make sure you backup all your recordings prior to formatting a new drive so you can restore them afterwards.

Sent from my SM-G988U using Tapatalk


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## Bwatford141

Question... I used mfsr a few years ago to upgrade my Roamio to 8TB. I just recently switched to a Roamio OTA. Can I Clear & Delete everything on the 8TB, put it in the OTA and be good to go?


----------



## ThAbtO

Bwatford141 said:


> Can I Clear & Delete everything on the 8TB, put it in the OTA and be good to go?


You need to run C&DE on it *while* its in the OTA.


----------



## njweb

Thanks ggieseke for this great utility!

A few quick questions all:

Background / setup:
I have a Roamio (Series 5) running software version *20.7.4*b.RC3...
I have a 3 TB HDD in there now (upgraded back in 2015) and want to upgrade to 8 TB.

I bought an *8 TB WD EasyStore today* (will need to 'shuck' it since it is an external drive in an enclosure).

Regarding the following comment by ggieseke in post #1: "_Edit: Roamios running 20.5.6 or later should use version 1.0.0.2 from post #2."
_
*Question 1: I assume the comment in post #2 (in italics above) was before 1003 and 1004 were developed?
Meaning I can use msfr1004 to format my 8TB HDD, even with TiVO version 20.7.4.xxxxx right?

Question 2: I plan to copy my 3TB HDD TiVO recordings to my 8 TB HDD.
Should I copy them over as the FINAL step, e.g. follow standard steps 1-5 as follows and then as final step, copy my recordings from the 3 TB drive (after pulling the old 3 TB drive out and connecting the new 8 TB drive; guess I would connect the old TiVO 3 TB HDD to my laptop with a SATA to USB adapter (I already have a SATA to USB adapter from UGreen) to the 8 TB drive using 'TiVO Desktop' software?

STEP 1. Put the drive in your Roamio and power it on. It will take about four minutes to auto-format the drive. When it gets to the first Guided Setup screen, power it off. The resulting drive will only use a fraction of the total capacity, but we will fix that in the next steps.

STEP 2. Download mfsr and unzip it to somewhere on your computer.

STEP 3. Connect the drive to your computer. USB 2.0 adapters will work, but are much slower than USB 3.0 or a SATA direct connection.

STEP 4. Run mfsr with an account that's a member of the Administrators group or right-click it and choose Run as Administrator. Follow the instructions from there to reformat the drive to use its full capacity.

STEP 5. Put the drive back in the TiVo and enjoy.*

*STEP 6. (ADDED BY ME) - Copy TiVO recordings from old 3 TB HDD to newly installed 8 TB in Roamio, using TiVO software. *
*For the last step, can I use 'TiVO Desktop' sofware OR PyTiVO software to copy the files over from the old HDD onto the new 8 TB drive once the new one is installed in the Roamio?*

*If someone can confirm I am on the right track, I would appreciate it, thanks!*


----------



## ggieseke

njweb said:


> Thanks ggieseke for this great utility!
> 
> A few quick questions all:
> 
> Background / setup:
> I have a Roamio (Series 5) running software version *20.7.4*b.RC3...
> I have a 3 TB HDD in there now (upgraded back in 2015) and want to upgrade to 8 TB.
> 
> I bought an *8 TB WD EasyStore today* (will need to 'shuck' it since it is an external drive in an enclosure).
> 
> Regarding the following comment by ggieseke in post #1: "_Edit: Roamios running 20.5.6 or later should use version 1.0.0.2 from post #2."
> _
> *Question 1: I assume the comment in post #2 (in italics above) was before 1003 and 1004 were developed?
> Meaning I can use msfr1004 to format my 8TB HDD, even with TiVO version 20.7.4.xxxxx right?
> 
> Question 2: I plan to copy my 3TB HDD TiVO recordings to my 8 TB HDD.
> Should I copy them over as the FINAL step, e.g. follow standard steps 1-5 as follows and then as final step, copy my recordings from the 3 TB drive (after pulling the old 3 TB drive out and connecting the new 8 TB drive; guess I would connect the old TiVO 3 TB HDD to my laptop with a SATA to USB adapter (I already have a SATA to USB adapter from UGreen) to the 8 TB drive using 'TiVO Desktop' software?
> 
> STEP 1. Put the drive in your Roamio and power it on. It will take about four minutes to auto-format the drive. When it gets to the first Guided Setup screen, power it off. The resulting drive will only use a fraction of the total capacity, but we will fix that in the next steps.
> 
> STEP 2. Download mfsr and unzip it to somewhere on your computer.
> 
> STEP 3. Connect the drive to your computer. USB 2.0 adapters will work, but are much slower than USB 3.0 or a SATA direct connection.
> 
> STEP 4. Run mfsr with an account that's a member of the Administrators group or right-click it and choose Run as Administrator. Follow the instructions from there to reformat the drive to use its full capacity.
> 
> STEP 5. Put the drive back in the TiVo and enjoy.*
> 
> *STEP 6. (ADDED BY ME) - Copy TiVO recordings from old 3 TB HDD to newly installed 8 TB in Roamio, using TiVO software. *
> *For the last step, can I use 'TiVO Desktop' sofware OR PyTiVO software to copy the files over from the old HDD onto the new 8 TB drive once the new one is installed in the Roamio?*
> 
> *If someone can confirm I am on the right track, I would appreciate it, thanks!*


If you want to keep your recordings the best bet is to copy the 3TB drive directly to the 8TB drive using the mfscopy command in MFS Tools 3.x, then add two more partitions using the mfsadd command. You wouldn't use MFSR at all in this scenario. See the following thread for more info.

DIY 10TB Roamio

If you can get it to run at all, TiVo Desktop will only let you copy recordings from your running 3TB drive to your computer, then send them back later.


----------



## njweb

ggieseke said:


> If you want to keep your recordings the best bet is to copy the 3TB drive directly to the 8TB drive using the mfscopy command in MFS Tools 3.x, then add two more partitions using the mfsadd command. You wouldn't use MFSR at all in this scenario. See the following thread for more info.
> 
> DIY 10TB Roamio
> 
> If you can get it to run at all, TiVo Desktop will only let you copy recordings from your running 3TB drive to your computer, then send them back later.


Thanks! Let me check that thread.

I did more reading up after posting and was just about done reading those (before your reply).
I believe I could also use KMTTG to copy the shows from my 3 TB HDD (while still in the Roamio) to a computer HDD.
I could then later use PyTiVO to copy them back from my PC to the 8 TB drive right?

But I assume the solution you provided above ('DIY 10TB Roamio' thread) is my best bet as you noted, so let me check that thread now!
Thanks again.


----------



## ThAbtO

Using MFSTools will be a long process time. Transferring shows is a longer process and more tedious as you can only transfer a few shows at a time back to the Tivo.

Note: Tivo is not a good long term storage medium, if the Tivo fails, you lose it all. But if its kept on a computer HD, then any failures with that drive is most recoverable.


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## njweb

ggieseke said:


> If you want to keep your recordings the best bet is to copy the 3TB drive directly to the 8TB drive using the mfscopy command in MFS Tools 3.x, then add two more partitions using the mfsadd command. You wouldn't use MFSR at all in this scenario. See the following thread for more info.
> 
> DIY 10TB Roamio
> 
> If you can get it to run at all, TiVo Desktop will only let you copy recordings from your running 3TB drive to your computer, then send them back later.


Thanks again! Replying, with a quote to your post again, now that I read the above thread.
The mfscopy method you suggested is indeed much faster it seems, after comparing that to the PyTiVo Desktop method e.g.

Steps (the way I see it) using mfscopy method for* MY particular scenario ** . This is based on copying steps from the post by jmbach in the above 'DIY 10TB Roamio' thread and then editing it with my specifics (credit to jmbach for the method and steps).

* My scenario is *to copy my 3 TB HDD (incl. my TiVO recordings) to my 8TB HDD*:

Steps the way I see it (correct me if I am wrong - would be great if someone could verify these steps):
1) Remove my current 3TB HDD (which contains all my TiVO recordings) from my Roamio.

2) Download the following disc image (there are 3 in the post): _MFSTools 3.32-devel ISO
Live ISO. md5 hash for ISO: 378e9d1b439d221ba4aafb2b9074d556_

3) Hook up both the old 3 TB Roamio HDD and the new blank unformatted 8 TB HDD to one of my computers.

4) Boot the computer up with the MFSTools 3.32 image (specific one above, right?), using username *root* with password *tivo*

5) Run the following command at the command line; this is to determine the names of my drives: *lsblk -o name,size,vendor*
sdX is my source drive and sdY is my target drive.
_
6) Run the command *mfscopy -am 2040 /dev/sdX /dev/sdY *and then wait about 5 - 6 hours I reckon for 3 TB of data to copy from 3TB to 8TB HDD at ~100 MBps).
sdX is my source drive and sdY is my target drive._

7) Once that command is finished, put the 8 TB (target drive) into the TiVo and make sure it boots up properly and make sure it connects to TiVo successfully.

8) Once that is done, return the drive to the computer. Will still use sd*Y* for the target drive.

9) Reverify the target drive name by using the command *lsblk -o name,size,vendor*.

10) Next run the command *mfsadd -xcm 2040 /dev/sdY (to *add about 2 TB of recording space and place the partitions in order to allow them to be coalesced when moved). As noted by jmbach if there is less than 2 TB of space, it will use whatever space I have left to add recording time.

11) Once that runs successfully then run the command *mfsaddfix /dev/sdY*.

*12) (is this correct too Repeat step 10 (mfsadd) and step 11 (mfsaddfix) (2 more times?) till I get to my total of 8 TB of space, right?
*
13) Install the 8 TB drive in Roamio again.
*
Hope I understood it all and captured all the right steps above?*
I will post this in jmbach's thread since I will now be using his method, instead of mfsr, as you suggested.
*Thanks again!*


----------



## ThAbtO

njweb said:


> sdX is my source drive and sdY is my target drive.


sdX and sdY are just examples. Yours will vary as it can be sda or sdb, etc. You would need to determine which is your source and which is the target.


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## njweb

ThAbtO said:


> sdX and sdY are just examples. Yours will vary as it can be sda or sdb, etc. You would need to determine which is your source and which is the target.


Thanks! Yes, I did get that, but I do appreciate the clarification / warning (in case I hadn't understood that since that could have caused problems to say the least if I had the wrong drive letter specified!).

I ordered a second SATA to USB adapter in the meantime (been using one to successfully connect some old 3.5" internal drives to my laptop since I no longer have the desktop they were originally installed in):
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MYU0EAU/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Although if I wait to shuck the external one till after I have copied the 3TB of recordings to the 8 TB drive, I could get away with one I guess, since after step 7 is done, I will not need to connect both drives to my computer anymore, so I can shuck the 3 TB after step 6 and then use the single SATA to USB adapter with the 8 TB drive for the last few steps on the computer (i.e. steps 10 - 12).
*
Do all the steps look correct the way I documented them?*


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## gabrielstern

jmbach said:


> Unfortunately a little tweak just won't cut it here.
> 
> Only problem with te4 or hydra is even if it can auto format an 8tb drive is if you backed up your recordings to a computer is they won't transfer back from a computer and with tivo online it is sneaky and finicky, and will look like it transfered a complete recording but only transfer 24 minutes of the program, you are much better off reverting the tivo back to te3 after you back up your recordings.
> 
> Then using mffs reformator or following the 10 tb diy romio method using mffs tools 3.2.
> 
> if it wIll also work work on tivo bolts, which I have not tested yet.
> 
> After you do that if you want to upgrade back to hydra or te3.
> 
> although I do not recomend it as with te4 they introduced a software update or patch that fries out the internal power sata connector on the motherboard, and also does not power down the hard drive when in standby causing premature hard drive wear as the drives run hotter in tivo bolts,, vs romios.
> 
> Correct. It is an actual bug in the TiVo software. By report they apparently fixed it in the latest TE4 release but TE3 still has it. Talk to TiVo about it and I would appreciate it if you can get them to fix it for TE3.
> 
> If you are on TE4, drop a large drive in it and it should format it to the correct size. Just make sure you backup all your recordings prior to formatting a new drive so you can restore them afterwards.
> 
> Sent from my SM-G988U using Tapatalk


----------



## jmbach

How about cleaning up your post a little. Looks like you intermingled your comments with my comments and attributed all to me as a quote.

Sent from my SM-G988U using Tapatalk


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## gabrielstern

jmbach said:


> How about cleaning up your post a little. Looks like you intermingled your comments with my comments and attributed all to me as a quote.
> 
> Sent from my SM-G988U using Tapatalk


Sorry was replying to the other guy about te4 and reformatting, I did create spaces in the paragraphs but forget to create a space at the top, after yours, will be more mindful next time.

Thanks for all your work with mffs 3.2 tools will be very soon using it and your method for an 8 tb drive for my series 4.

I do have one quick question, though will the 10 tb diy for romios also work with bolts? or is their a different method or thread for the bolts?


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## jmbach

gabrielstern said:


> Sorry was replying to the other guy about te4 and reformatting, I did create spaces in the paragraphs but forget to create a space at the top, after yours, will be more mindful next time.
> 
> Thanks for all your work with mffs 3.2 tools will be very soon using it and your method for an 8 tb drive for my series 4.
> 
> I do have one quick question, though will the 10 tb diy for romios also work with bolts? or is their a different method or thread for the bolts?


The same method will work for Bolts

Sent from my SM-G988U using Tapatalk


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## gabrielstern

jmbach said:


> The same method will work for Bolts
> 
> Sent from my SM-G988U using Tapatalk


Thanks a lot.


----------



## Trey1234

njweb said:


> Thanks ggieseke for this great utility!
> 
> A few quick questions all:
> ...
> 
> *If someone can confirm I am on the right track, I would appreciate it, thanks!*


Did those steps that you typed out work for you? If so I'm going to follow them for upgrading by Bolt 500gb to a 2tb drive. I just wanted to ask before I cracked things open.
Thanks!


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## gabrielstern

Trey1234 said:


> Did those steps that you typed out work for you? If so I'm going to follow them for upgrading by Bolt 500gb to a 2tb drive. I just wanted to ask before I cracked things open.
> Thanks!


The mmfs tools 3.2 method is intended for bolts and romios for hard drives over 8tb.

Same with mffs reformattor that is intended for hard drives between 4 and 8tbs.

If it is just a 2tb hard drive the bolt will auto format automatically on hard drives up to 3 tabs.

Same with romios.

Hope this answers your question

And clears up any confusion.


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## Trey1234

gabrielstern said:


> The mmfs tools 3.2 method is intended for bolts and romios for hard drives over 8tb.
> 
> Same with mffs reformattor that is intended for hard drives between 4 and 8tbs.
> 
> If it is just a 2tb hard drive the bolt will auto format automatically on hard drives up to 3 tabs.
> 
> Same with romios.
> 
> Hope this answers your question
> 
> And clears up any confusion.


Well I don't want to lose my recordings/cable card pairing. I know if I slap a new drive in the bolt it will format it and give me a fresh start but that's not what I wanted. I was hoping to follow the steps in the previous post to copy my 500gb drive (and all existing data/settings) to the new drive. THEN expand the new drive to the maximum storage of 2tb.


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## gabrielstern

Trey1234 said:


> Well I don't want to lose my recordings/cable card pairing. I know if I slap a new drive in the bolt it will format it and give me a fresh start but that's not what I wanted. I was hoping to follow the steps in the previous post to copy my 500gb drive (and all existing data/settings) to the new drive. THEN expand the new drive to the maximum storage of 2tb.


You can use kttmg to back up all recordings and settings such as one passes to a computer.

Personally I prefer to use tivo py to back up recordings, and transfer back but you would need to then manually mark which recordings are one pass and reset them up trust me a clean install works best.

You can get tivo py or kttmg right from the link in the tivo comunity forum.

Their might be a way with mffs tools 3.2 but I am just not sure what if any commands there.

You may want to reach out to jmbach for that information, on if he has developed a process and knows the commands to copy over a bolt or romio under 4tbs.

You also have to remember if you don't do it right with bolts you will lose all settings and recordings.

That's why either way you need to back up your recordings. Settings and one passes are easy to reset up.


----------



## gabrielstern

gabrielstern said:


> You can use kttmg to back up all recordings and settings such as one passes to a computer.
> 
> Personally I prefer to use tivo py to back up recordings, and transfer back but you would need to then manually mark which recordings are one pass and reset them up trust me a clean install works best.
> 
> You can get tivo py or kttmg right from the link in the tivo comunity forum.
> 
> Their might be a way with mffs tools 3.2 but I am just not sure what if any commands there.
> 
> You may want to reach out to jmbach for that information, on if he has developed a process and knows the commands to copy over a bolt or romio under 4tbs.
> 
> You also have to remember if you don't do it right with bolts you will lose all settings and recordings.
> 
> That's why either way you need to back up your recordings. Settings and one passes are easy to reset up.


Also one other question is your bolt since you said it has a 500 gig drive.

Is it running te3 or Quattro with the blue graphics or hydra?

Also is it a vox or non vox model?

If it is a non vox and you upgraded to hydra.

Then and it is revertable back to te3 you would lose all settings regardless.

But I would still reach out jmbach, regardless to see if using mffs tools 3.2 you can still transfer everything in case but regardless you still need to back everything up to a computer.

But with hydra it gets even trickier because you can't transfer a recording directly and unless kttmg can do it you can't transfer a recording back to a device running hydra from a computer.

You would have to transfer the recordings first to another tivo that is not running hydra.

Then use tivo online to transfer it over to your intended target tivo.


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## jmbach

Trey1234 said:


> Did those steps that you typed out work for you? If so I'm going to follow them for upgrading by Bolt 500gb to a 2tb drive. I just wanted to ask before I cracked things open.
> Thanks!


If you are wanting to maintain recordings and cableCARD pairing, use MFSTools to copy the drive.

Sent from my SM-G998U using Tapatalk


----------



## gabrielstern

jmbach said:


> If you are wanting to maintain recordings and cableCARD pairing, use MFSTools to copy the drive.
> 
> Sent from my SM-G998U using Tapatalk


So mffs tools 3.2 can copy a 500 gig bolt drive to a 2tb.

Was not sure even though it is not my tivo.

Could you post the commands for the person that needs assistance or is it available directly on the mffs tools 3.2 forum.

For those that have romios or bolts and wish to copy to drives under 4 tbs


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## mattack

gabrielstern said:


> You can use kttmg to back up all recordings and settings such as one passes to a computer.


Except protected recordings.
Except many recordings will have glitches when you download them to the computer (TS recordings, needed for basically any HD channel nowadays AFAIK, will have glitches in them due to bugs on the Tivo end).


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## gabrielstern

mattack said:


> Except protected recordings.
> Except many recordings will have glitches when you download them to the computer (TS recordings, needed for basically any HD channel nowadays AFAIK, will have glitches in them due to bugs on the Tivo end).


That's why tivo py is great for sending them back it defragments and rearranges the files when you send them back.

But not everyone likes to due things with clean software installs with romios and bolts, and just reformatt a big hard drive and then send the recordings back.

For me if I need to back up recordings and season passes I create another hard drive in my romio or my series 4 with the romio as bieng the preffered device, and the computer as secondary.


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## Trey1234

jmbach said:


> If you are wanting to maintain recordings and cableCARD pairing, use MFSTools to copy the drive.
> 
> Sent from my SM-G998U using Tapatalk


That's what I want. If I use these commands from user njweb (Post#1492 in this thread on the previous page) will I be successful? I know that the sdX and sdY in his example may be different drive designations on my end. My Bolt is a plain old Bolt 500gb (no vox) with TE3. It may have come with TE4 when I got it refurb from Tivo but I downgraded to TE3 I believe. I am copying it to a 2tb or smaller harddrive.

mfscopy -am 2040 /dev/sdX /dev/sdY (This is to copy my current 500gb drive to the new drive)

mfsadd -xcm 2040 /dev/sdY (This is to create a partition that will use the remainder of the drive for additional recording capacity)


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## ggieseke

Trey1234 said:


> That's what I want. If I use these commands from user njweb (Post#1492 in this thread on the previous page) will I be successful? I know that the sdX and sdY in his example may be different drive designations on my end. My Bolt is a plain old Bolt 500gb (no vox) with TE3. It may have come with TE4 when I got it refurb from Tivo but I downgraded to TE3 I believe. I am copying it to a 2tb or smaller harddrive.
> 
> mfscopy -am 2040 /dev/sdX /dev/sdY (This is to copy my current 500gb drive to the new drive)
> 
> mfsadd -xcm 2040 /dev/sdY (This is to create a partition that will use the remainder of the drive for additional recording capacity)


In your case you don't need the "m 2040" modifier to the mfscopy command, or the mfsadd command to create another partition. That's for drives over 4TB.

mfscopy -a /dev/sdX /dev/sdY will copy and expand your current drive in one step.


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## gabrielstern

Trey1234 said:


> That's what I want. If I use these commands from user njweb (Post#1492 in this thread on the previous page) will I be successful? I know that the sdX and sdY in his example may be different drive designations on my end. My Bolt is a plain old Bolt 500gb (no vox) with TE3. It may have come with TE4 when I got it refurb from Tivo but I downgraded to TE3 I believe. I am copying it to a 2tb or smaller harddrive.
> 
> mfscopy -am 2040 /dev/sdX /dev/sdY (This is to copy my current 500gb drive to the new drive)
> 
> mfsadd -xcm 2040 /dev/sdY (This is to create a partition that will use the remainder of the drive for additional recording capacity)


Even if you did upgrade to hydra but did not downgrade yet still attempt to follow the commands outlined for mffs. 3.2

that way your settings and pairings are preserved then you can use tivo py or kttmg to back up your recordings and with kttmg your one passes. If you need to

Then you can just go to the forum for rolling back a romio from hydra. Which also works for bolts.


----------



## gabrielstern

gabrielstern said:


> Even if you did upgrade to hydra but did not downgrade yet still attempt to follow the commands outlined for mffs. 3.2
> 
> that way your settings and pairings are preserved then you can use tivo py or kttmg to back up your recordings and with kttmg your one passes. If you need to
> 
> Then you can just go to the forum for rolling back a romio from hydra. Which also works for bolts.


The easiest way to know if you are still running te3 is by the screen background is it a blue background and if you can connect to another tivo and play a show does it offer the transfer a recording directly option.

If the answer is yes on either of the 2 or both you are running te3.

Just remember then on the app screen to ignore the get better tivo experierience.

You will be doing yourself a huge favor.


----------



## njweb

Trey1234 said:


> Did those steps that you typed out work for you? If so I'm going to follow them for upgrading by Bolt 500gb to a 2tb drive. I just wanted to ask before I cracked things open.
> Thanks!


Hi,

Just saw your post now. To answer your question, I used MFSTools: see my post here. 
DIY 10TB Roamio
IMPORTANT - Note step 12 in the post linked above, should be "Repeat step 10 (mfsadd) and step 11 (mfsaddfix) (*ONE* more time) to get to my total of 8 TB of space." (My original steps noted "*two* more times", but jmbach confirmed for 8TB, I only need to run those commands a total of two times and since I already had them listed once in steps 10 and 11, I only needed to run the mfsadd and mfsaddfix commands ONE more time in step 12).

The upgrade worked fine using the above steps. However, I had neglected to perform a 'kickstart 58' and, apparently as a result, after a few weeks of completing the upgrade, I noticed my ONLY issue - the EPG (TV guide grid) data had stopped getting refreshed - all channels were showing_ "to be announced" in the program guide; i.e. guide data ran out...._

I resolved that as follows:
Roamio guide showing "to be announced" on all channels in grid!
To try to fix this:
I first tried connecting to TiVo service but it fails on the final step.
I then (before I found out that it was a known bug, with TE3 at least) tried the 'Reset to Defaults' > 'Clear Guide Data and To Do List', but it got stuck...<< *do NOT do this if you have TE3 (no idea why TiVO did not disable this 'clear guide and...' feature in TE3 since it does not work and soft bricks the TiVO when using TE3).*
Anyway, based on a post here, to get out of being stuck (soft bricked) on the _"Clearing Guide data & the To Do List... This may take up to an hour"_ message, *I performed a kickstart 57 *and that got me back to being able to view TV (recordings are also intact) in under an hour; also, after an hour or so of completing the kickstart 57, the guide data came back and has been fine since then (that was back in Jan!). 

_*Good luck whichever tool you choose (MFS Reformatter or MFS Tools)!*_


----------



## gabrielstern

njweb said:


> Hi,
> 
> Just saw your post now. To answer your question, I used MFSTools: see my post here.
> DIY 10TB Roamio
> IMPORTANT - Note step 12 in the post linked above, should be "Repeat step 10 (mfsadd) and step 11 (mfsaddfix) (*ONE* more time) to get to my total of 8 TB of space." (My original steps noted "*two* more times", but jmbach confirmed for 8TB, I only need to run those commands a total of two times and since I already had them listed once in steps 10 and 11, I only needed to run the mfsadd and mfsaddfix commands ONE more time in step 12).
> 
> The upgrade worked fine using the above steps. However, I had neglected to perform a 'kickstart 58' and, apparently as a result, after a few weeks of completing the upgrade, I noticed my ONLY issue - the EPG (TV guide grid) data had stopped getting refreshed - all channels were showing_ "to be announced" in the program guide; i.e. guide data ran out...._
> 
> I resolved that as follows:
> Roamio guide showing "to be announced" on all channels in grid!
> To try to fix this:
> I first tried connecting to TiVo service but it fails on the final step.
> I then (before I found out that it was a known bug, with TE3 at least) tried the 'Reset to Defaults' > 'Clear Guide Data and To Do List', but it got stuck...<< *do NOT do this if you have TE3 (no idea why TiVO did not disable this 'clear guide and...' feature in TE3 since it does not work and soft bricks the TiVO when using TE3).*
> Anyway, based on a post here, to get out of being stuck (soft bricked) on the _"Clearing Guide data & the To Do List... This may take up to an hour"_ message, *I performed a kickstart 57 *and that got me back to being able to view TV (recordings are also intact) in under an hour; also, after an hour or so of completing the kickstart 57, the guide data came back and has been fine since then (that was back in Jan!).
> 
> _*Good luck whichever tool you choose (MFS Reformatter or MFS Tools)!*_


That was for user trey 1234 I was just offering some assistance.

Thankfully jmbach and ggieseke jumped in and gave him the correct commands for mffs tools 3.2, as he wants to copy and expand from a 500 gig to a 2tb.

And did not want to just back everything up and

Let the bolt auto format.

As for me I have also had some issues with te3 but not like when I was running hydra.

At first my romio and bolt worked well with hydra

But gradually it got worse and worse and first overwhelmed my romio and then it overwhelmed my bolts so I downgraded after I backed everything up.

For me I prefer the mfs reformattor method and a clean install.

But mffs tools 3.2 has its purpose too and is great for making 6tb and 8tb series 4 drives.

And 3 and 4tb drives for series 4 tivos.

But with that I like to use jmfs first to expand to a 1tb and 2tb image then use mffs tools 3.2 to expand further with those images.

As for using mffs tools 3.2 for my romios and bolts that will happen when I upgrade to a 10 tb drive which is a few years off.


----------



## meathead50

i recently got the 3 flashing lights of death on my TiVo Edge. i purchased a new HDD (unfortunately all i could get is an SSD) and i was wondering what i am missing. i have read that the EDGE unit will auto-format a new drive (had the machine sitting for 12 hours with no success). i have tried to use MFS Reformatter, but i keep getting an error message (Line 325, Error 0x0000000D (13)) and it will not let me reformat the new drive. Has anyone else experienced this issue?


----------



## ThAbtO

It never got to initialize the drive.


----------



## gabrielstern

meathead50 said:


> i recently got the 3 flashing lights of death on my TiVo Edge. i purchased a new HDD (unfortunately all i could get is an SSD) and i was wondering what i am missing. i have read that the EDGE unit will auto-format a new drive (had the machine sitting for 12 hours with no success). i have tried to use MFS Reformatter, but i keep getting an error message (Line 325, Error 0x0000000D (13)) and it will not let me reformat the new drive. Has anyone else experienced this issue?


Don't know a lot about edge dvrs but unless a solid state drive came pre-installed I would not recomend them. I know edge dvrs run hydra.

And hydra runs a drive check.

You may want to consider purchasing a western digital red or purple 3tb desktop size drive and installing that externally on top and installing brackets into the hard drive screw holes and mounted a 120 millimeter fan on top to keep cool fan pwms that can be powered externally are easy to find.


----------



## ggieseke

meathead50 said:


> i recently got the 3 flashing lights of death on my TiVo Edge. i purchased a new HDD (unfortunately all i could get is an SSD) and i was wondering what i am missing. i have read that the EDGE unit will auto-format a new drive (had the machine sitting for 12 hours with no success). i have tried to use MFS Reformatter, but i keep getting an error message (Line 325, Error 0x0000000D (13)) and it will not let me reformat the new drive. Has anyone else experienced this issue?


Most SSDs won't work at all on a TiVo, and TE4 is fussier about which drives it will use than TE3. Error 13 is a generic "invalid data" code that I use when the data on the drive doesn't match what I expect to see, so I would agree with @ThAbtO that the Edge never even tried to format the drive.


----------



## gabrielstern

Exactly. Also it may be that the power sata port in the motherboard got fried also that's why I stopped running hydra in all my tivos but with the edge that is not an option to run te3 instead.

On my one bolt that's what happened and it would not at first let me revert it back.

Then I plugged the stock hard drive back in and it let me then revert it. But after that it would not power on any hard drive. So I had to plug an external USB adapter power sata adapter to power my 8tb drive than just use the sata data from the motherboard to get it working but if you that route you need to install 1 and half inch brackets into a desktop size drive and mount externally everything on top of the tivo. And then on top of the brackets mount a 120 millimeter fan and power it externally to control the heat from the hard drive.

I am not sure if that will work on edge dvrs or tivos running hydra.

I also recomend if that works using cmr western digital red drives or purple drives.


----------



## vinylm

ggieseke said:


> The beta version of MFSR in question treats even larger drives as 8TB instead of rejecting them. That saves a few rounds of mfsadd/fix cycles in MFS Tools on 10 or 12 TB drives.


hi

I have two bolts 3TB and one Roamio OTA/CC (500GB), and after I've read some of the discussions on the forums, I'd like to upgrade these guys to large drives maybe even 10 to 14 TB ones.

a) are you still recommending the WD green drives or are the WD Red drives the choice now? b) could you send me the beta version of MFSR so that I can expand these drives once I receive them?

thanks


----------



## ggieseke

vinylm said:


> hi
> 
> I have two bolts 3TB and one Roamio OTA/CC (500GB), and after I've read some of the discussions on the forums, I'd like to upgrade these guys to large drives maybe even 10 to 14 TB ones.
> 
> a) are you still recommending the WD green drives or are the WD Red drives the choice now? b) could you send me the beta version of MFSR so that I can expand these drives once I receive them?
> 
> thanks


Beta sent. Use Red Plus drives (not Red or Red Pro).


----------



## generaltso

ggieseke said:


> Beta sent. Use Red Plus drives (not Red or Red Pro).


Would you mind sending over that beta to me as well? What's the maximum drive size that it supports? Are Purple drives still recommended as well? Thanks!


----------



## ggieseke

generaltso said:


> Would you mind sending over that beta to me as well? What's the maximum drive size that it supports? Are Purple drives still recommended as well? Thanks!


Sent. I think 20TB is the current max, but I would check out the DIY 10TB Roamio and MFS Tools threads for the latest info. Purple drives seem to be fine.

FWIW, I think going over 6 or 8 TB is nuts given that most cable companies are now 720p. My Roamio Pro (Comcast) has over 1000 hours of recordings on the factory 3TB drive and it's only 85% full.


----------



## gabrielstern

ggieseke said:


> Sent. I think 20TB is the current max, but I would check out the DIY 10TB Roamio and MFS Tools threads for the latest info. Purple drives seem to be fine.
> 
> FWIW, I think going over 6 or 8 TB is nuts given that most cable companies are now 720p. My Roamio Pro (Comcast) has over 1000 hours of recordings on the factory 3TB drive and it's only 85% full.


Depends on the compression rate. The cable company uses.

I have Comcast also.

Most HD files now with Comcast use 3 to 4 gigs per 2 hour program.

Which is what SD files used to be prior to late 2016.

But if you have a lot of old recordings from prior to late 2016. And a tivo update they used around 6 gigs of data.

And that was from a 2014 or 2015 update.

Prior to that HD recordings used between 9 to 13 gigs of data per 2 hr recording.

That's why expanded hard drives work and besides with the reformatting on the bigger drives the picture quality is a lot better.

Vs the stock tivo hard drives.

But if you go above 6tbs .

I recomend installing on top of the hard drive a USB powered fan that involves a pair of book shelf brackets a 14 dollar 120 m fan and an external power source and a 4 pin pwm splitter powered through the USB adapters.

To keep the hard drive cool.

Especially if affixing on top of a bolt.


----------



## gabrielstern

gabrielstern said:


> Depends on the compression rate. The cable company uses.
> 
> I have Comcast also.
> 
> Most HD files now with Comcast use 3 to 4 gigs per 2 hour program.
> 
> Which is what SD files used to be prior to late 2016.
> 
> But if you have a lot of old recordings from prior to late 2016. And a tivo update they used around 6 gigs of data.
> 
> And that was from a 2014 or 2015 update.
> 
> Prior to that HD recordings used between 9 to 13 gigs of data per 2 hr recording.
> 
> That's why expanded hard drives work and besides with the reformatting on the bigger drives the picture quality is a lot better.
> 
> Vs the stock tivo hard drives.
> 
> But if you go above 6tbs .
> 
> I recomend installing on top of the hard drive a USB powered fan that involves a pair of book shelf brackets a 14 dollar 120 m fan and an external power source and a 4 pin pwm splitter powered through the USB adapters.
> 
> To keep the hard drive cool.
> 
> Especially if affixing on top of a bolt.


Not sure if the romios exhaust fan is adequate enough to keep hard drive cool.

As the both the purple and red drives get real hot at 6 tbs and above. Especially the 8tbs.


----------



## dougdingle

> That's why expanded hard drives work and besides with the reformatting on the bigger drives the picture quality is a lot better.Vs the stock tivo hard drives.


No, sorry, that is incorrect. Starting way back with the first digital TiVo (the dual cablecard S3 with THX), TiVo has recorded bit-for-bit _*exactly *_what it sees coming down the cable or antenna. Exactly bit for bit.

There is zero improvement in PQ unless you were somehow using a drive that was too slow or defective and there would be dropped frames, breakup, audio hits, etc.


----------



## gabrielstern

dougdingle said:


> No, sorry, that is incorrect. Starting way back with the first digital TiVo (the dual cablecard S3 with THX), TiVo has recorded bit-for-bit _*exactly *_what it sees coming down the cable or antenna. Exactly bit for bit.
> 
> There is zero improvement in PQ unless you were somehow using a drive that was too slow or defective and there would be dropped frames, breakup, audio hits, etc.


I was talking about the series 4s and newer.

On my tivos all 2 hr HD recordings I had for the amount of gigs per recording was at between 9 and 12 gigs. From 2014 to late 2016 they were around 6 gigs per 2hr recording since then my 2 hr HD recordings from cable are between 3 and 4 gigs per recording if I used an antenna they gigs per recording would be higher.

It's due to the compression from cable.

With Comcast so the gigs used now for HD is now what SD recordings gigs were.

From cable 10 years ago.


----------



## generaltso

gabrielstern said:


> Not sure if the romios exhaust fan is adequate enough to keep hard drive cool.
> 
> As the both the purple and red drives get real hot at 6 tbs and above. Especially the 8tbs.


The 128MB Cache version of the 8TB Purple runs at 5640 rpms, so I'm hoping it would stay a little cooler than the 7200 rpm drives.


----------



## dougdingle

gabrielstern said:


> I was talking about the series 4s and newer.
> 
> On my tivos all 2 hr HD recordings I had for the amount of gigs per recording was at between 9 and 12 gigs. From 2014 to late 2016 they were around 6 gigs per 2hr recording since then my 2 hr HD recordings from cable are between 3 and 4 gigs per recording if I used an antenna they gigs per recording would be higher.
> 
> It's due to the compression from cable.
> 
> With Comcast so the gigs used now for HD is now what SD recordings gigs were.
> 
> From cable 10 years ago.


That's a source issue and has nothing to do with the type or size of hard drive used in the TiVo, contrary to what you said : _"with the reformatting on the bigger drives the picture quality is a lot better"_

Recorded/playback PQ is identical to incoming PQ as long as the drive works and is fast enough. The TiVo does nothing to the incoming digital bitstream.


----------



## gabrielstern

generaltso said:


> The 128MB Cache version of the 8TB Purple runs at 5640 rpms, so I'm hoping it would stay a little cooler than the 7200 rpm drives.


They do but I found even with the purples and red plus cmr drives at 6tbs they run hot with bolts even at the lower rpms. With the romios and series 4s those same models at 6tbs and above run hot even in romios.

And series 4s.

As I ran tests on them a month ago.

I am just curios with the exhaust fans if that is enough to circulate out the hot air and if their are vents to draw enough cool air in so the drives don't get hot. In the romios and series 4s. So there is enough circulation enclosed.


----------



## gabrielstern

gabrielstern said:


> They do but I found even with the purples and red plus cmr drives at 6tbs they run hot with bolts even at the lower rpms. With the romios and series 4s those same models at 6tbs and above run hot even in romios.
> 
> And series 4s.
> 
> As I ran tests on them a month ago.
> 
> I am just curios with the exhaust fans if that is enough to circulate out the hot air and if their are vents to draw enough cool air in so the drives don't get hot. In the romios and series 4s. So there is enough circulation enclosed.


I.bring this up because when the drives run at 110 degrees or hotter they start getting errors. When the temperatures are kept on the drives themselves at around 90 degrees or lower they don't have issues.


----------



## jmbach

gabrielstern said:


> I.bring this up because when the drives run at 110 degrees or hotter they start getting errors. When the temperatures are kept on the drives themselves at around 90 degrees or lower they don't have issues.


Most manufacturers have the safe operating temperature of the drives between 32 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit. There also seems to be a higher failure rate when the drives are operating on the lower end of the safe operating temperature.

Sent from my SM-G998U using Tapatalk


----------



## ThAbtO

vinylm said:


> are you still recommending the WD green drives or are the WD Red drives the choice now?


The WD Red Plus still applies.


----------



## bradenmcg

I have a WD Purple in-hand (WD40PURX-64N96Y0) and trying to put it into a Roamio that had its stock 1TB drive crap out. This Roamio is still on TE3 (but was otherwise current on firmware).

Do I need to do anything special to use all 4TB, or will the Roamio do it by itself? I tried MFSR 1.0.0.4 and it got most of the way and then crapped out at the end (unfortunately I didn't catch the error messages, cat walked across keyboard and hit spacebar closing the dialogs that I saw pop up).

To be clear, I put it in the Roamio, allowed it to boot to the welcome / first setup screen, then powered off and took to a laptop with USB3 HDD dock. (I don't have any desktops so I can't do an internal/direct SATA connection.) I ran MFSR as admin, it saw the drive, so I then did the re-format/extend format on it, and it sat around for a while and then pooped out at the end.

Do I need a newer version of MFSR?


----------



## ThAbtO

Put the drive in, ignore the error as it might not be anything.

You should be able to have 630+ HD hrs.


----------



## bradenmcg

ThAbtO said:


> Put the drive in, ignore the error as it might not be anything.
> 
> You should be able to have 630+ HD hrs.


That's what I'm in the process of trying right now, thanks. Waiting for the initial guided setup to finish so I can actually see drive space.
I can say that I tried mfsck and mfsinfo on it (Before putting it back into the Roamio, but after using MFSR) and mfstool didn't like it... but mfstool also didn't like it when I first pulled it out of the Roamio after the Roamio did initial format (it said something like "volume size XXXXX does not match partition size YYYY" or something along those lines... but XXX and YYY were the same number. :frowning: (Wishing I had taken screenshots on all of this... I expected it to be pretty straightforward).

I had nothing to copy from the old drive (old drive won't even show up to mfstool), so I just wanted 4TB usable. :neutral:


----------



## ThAbtO

Make sure you were using MFSTools 3.3 and not some version older than 3.2.


----------



## bradenmcg

ThAbtO said:


> Make sure you were using MFSTools 3.3 and not some version older than 3.2.


I have the 3.32-devel liveCD ISO that was posted elsewhere here, that was the newest I could find... was running it in VMware Fusion on a MBP with the USB dock passed-through to it.

That's also how I ran MFSR. MFSR is in a Win10 VM, I ran it elevated / "as admin"... does MFSR want to be run in compatibility mode for any reason?

[edit]
Nope. Just finished all of initial setup and it's only showing "280 HD hours" in Free Disk Space. 

[edit 2]
Put it through MFSR again, this time with a different USB adapter (First one was a "Pluggable" brand "dock-style" USB-C device). Second adapter was a Vantec CB-ISA225-U3... and success this time.


----------



## ClearToLand

bradenmcg said:


> I have a WD Purple in-hand (WD40PURX-64N96Y0) and trying to put it into a Roamio that had its stock 1TB drive crap out. This *Roamio is still on TE3* (but was otherwise current on firmware).
> 
> *Do I need to do anything special* ...


Did you run Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostics *BEFORE* you did anything else with your new HDD?  

I'm constantly amazed how practically no one besides me, and occasionally @jmbach , recommend running FULL READ-WRITE-READ DIAGNOSTICS on *EVERY* HDD before installing it in a TiVo unit.  


bradenmcg said:


> ...*to use all 4TB*, or *will the Roamio do it by itself?*...


No. The largest HDD that TE3 will format is 3TB. And that is one of the reasons why I recommend not going higher than 3TB in ANY TiVo unit. TiVo units should *NOT* be treated as 'SECURE Long Term Storage' - SEARCH TCF for my earlier post this evening on that subject.


bradenmcg said:


> ...I tried MFSR 1.0.0.4 and it got most of the way and then crapped out at the end (unfortunately *I didn't catch the error messages*, cat walked across keyboard and hit spacebar closing the dialogs that I saw pop up)....


Personally I would start over (and keep the cat away from the keyboard). I run 3 tests in Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostics on *ALL* new HDDs I buy *BEFORE* they come anywhere near being put into service. I have several Western Digital Easystore 8TB HDDs that take ~9 days each to test:

Extended Test 1: Read entire HDD to see what we're working with. 67 hours projected.
Write Zeros Full: Make sure *ALL* sectors are write-able. 67 hours projected.
Extended Test 2: Read entire HDD to see what we have now. 67 hours projected.
I also run MemTest86+ (for days!) on *ALL* PC memory before putting it into service. I want no surprises and eliminating as many variable beforehand simplifies any future troubleshooting.


bradenmcg said:


> ...To be clear, I put it in the Roamio, allowed it to boot to the welcome / first setup screen, then powered off and took to a laptop with USB3 HDD dock. (I don't have any desktops so I can't do an internal/direct SATA connection.) I ran MFSR as admin, it saw the drive, so I then did the re-format/extend format on it, and it sat around for a while and then *pooped out at the end*.
> 
> *Do I need a newer version of MFSR?*


MFSR Re-Formatter (Thanks @ggieseke !:thumbsup: ) was originally written to handle HDDs larger than 3TB and 4TB is the next larger size so, no. *EVERY* version of MFSR Re-Formatter written can handle 4TB HDDs.

I'd be concerned about the '_pooped out_' part.  

There's a thread here on TCF with a title like "Roamio 10TB Upgrade". Find it and read it.


----------



## ClearToLand

bradenmcg said:


> ...I can say that I tried mfsck and mfsinfo on it (Before putting it back into the Roamio, but after using MFSR) and *mfstool didn't like it*... but mfstool also didn't like it when I first pulled it out of the Roamio after the Roamio did initial format (it said something like "volume size XXXXX does not match partition size YYYY" or something along those lines... but XXX and YYY were the same number. :frowning: (Wishing I had taken screenshots on all of this... I expected it to be pretty straightforward)...


The old saying goes: "_Pay me now or pay me later..._"  

If a tool gives you an error, you research AND CORRECT the error before proceeding.  That's why the author of the program put Error Messages into it. 

Take the words from the error message and put them into GOOGLE like this:

*GOOGLE*: "volume size" "does not match partition size" site:tivocommunity.com​
Good Luck! 


Spoiler



Not ALL advice from all TCF members is GOOD advice...


----------



## bradenmcg

ClearToLand said:


> The old saying goes: "_Pay me now or pay me later..._"
> 
> If a tool gives you an error, you research AND CORRECT the error before proceeding.  That's why the author of the program put Error Messages into it.
> 
> Take the words from the error message and put them into GOOGLE like this:
> 
> *GOOGLE*: "volume size" "does not match partition size" site:tivocommunity.com​
> Good Luck!
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Not ALL advice from all TCF members is GOOD advice...


While I appreciate what you're trying to do, I understand all of this. I've been working in IT for more than 2 decades at this point.  I thought it was going to be an easy process, where the tools just worked, hence the lack of screenshots along the way to document errors. I'm chalking up the failures to _something_, most likely the USB3 dock I used at first (or the cable I was using with it)... and I don't care enough to troubleshoot it further. It worked fine the second time with a different USB adapter (hence why I documented the adapter model in my previous post).

I'm in a hurry, this is at my parents' house, and I don't have 12-24-48 hours to put the drive through a wringer. They have no working "TV" (and haven't for 2 days already, as the drive GSOD'd and was sitting at the boot screen and then looping over and over). My dad is getting annoyed that he can't watch sports.

As far as running full diags on a HDD - it's a new drive, on a Tivo. It's not "mission critical data" like unreplaceable family photos/videos.

HDD failures (and indeed, a lot of tech failures) work on a bathtub curve. Generally, when they work fine at the beginning, they'll tend to work fine for eons (or at least years  ), until they finally die. If this one dies in the next few days, I'll be back here again doing it again with another drive either way, so all I've done by testing it first is waste several hours/days of my time (and leave my parents without TV the whole time). *shrug*


----------



## ThAbtO

Mustn't forget the power adapter. It needs to be 3 amps or more. The OEM 2 amp is just too small to handle the larger and slightly more power hungry then the OEM parts.


----------



## bradenmcg

ThAbtO said:


> Mustn't forget the power adapter. It needs to be 3 amps or more. The OEM 2 amp is just too small to handle the larger and slightly more power hungry then the OEM parts.


This particular Pluggable dock has a 3A (yes, 3_000mA_) @ 12V brick, but I apparently brought the wrong brick with me... The one I had was *5 amp *@12V! Should've been _more than enough_ power there, especially for a single ~5900RPM WD Purple. The high power brick was part of why I figured it was my best choice to start. I've used it in the past with plenty of other higher-performance (7.2k RPM) spinning rust without problems. The other variable here was the USB-C cable I used, which was an AmazonBasics cable that I bought a while back because it was _supposed_ to be a full 3.1gen2 / 10Gbps-capable USB-C cable, with the proper "e-marker" chip and all of that mess. I've used the same cable without issue on an M.2 drive in a USB-C 10Gb enclosure (and flogged it with a bunch of speed testing to see what it would do), so I'm not really sure why something went awry with the dock here.

In any case, the second SATA->USB adapter worked (I actually used the same [email protected] PSU with the Vantec SATA-USB kit, instead of using its own smaller brick, so I *know* the power brick _wasn't_ the problem), the software worked. I can only blame my own procedure (possibly I should've gone all the way through the first guided setup before pulling the drive?), or something amiss with the hardware or the virtualization layer in play. :grimacing: Unfortunately I don't really have a working desktop PC anymore (nor did I want to lug it to my parents' house and screw with using a TV as a display or anything), so USB adapter was my only real option here.

*I do appreciate the help from both of you though, as well as the efforts of the software authors, without whom we would all be up the proverbial fecal creek without the proverbial oars.* :raisedhands:

I feel like a few "sticky" posts in the upgrade section with the procedural steps for some of this stuff (including current software links and potential pitfalls/gotchas) would help cut down on a lot of questions though. I had to do a bunch of searching to turn up the "right" mfstools links and procedure, and poke around a bit more for MFSR - yes, I had already read through a good chunk of posts in both of those threads before I started.


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## jmbach

bradenmcg said:


> I have a WD Purple in-hand (WD40PURX-64N96Y0) and trying to put it into a Roamio that had its stock 1TB drive crap out. This Roamio is still on TE3 (but was otherwise current on firmware).
> 
> Do I need to do anything special to use all 4TB, or will the Roamio do it by itself? I tried MFSR 1.0.0.4 and it got most of the way and then crapped out at the end (unfortunately I didn't catch the error messages, cat walked across keyboard and hit spacebar closing the dialogs that I saw pop up).
> 
> To be clear, I put it in the Roamio, allowed it to boot to the welcome / first setup screen, then powered off and took to a laptop with USB3 HDD dock. (I don't have any desktops so I can't do an internal/direct SATA connection.) I ran MFSR as admin, it saw the drive, so I then did the re-format/extend format on it, and it sat around for a while and then pooped out at the end.
> 
> Do I need a newer version of MFSR?


The only thing I recommend is a full read and write on the drive with WD diagnostic. This will remap any flaky sectors. The MFS system does not have robustness to take care of bad sectors.

Sent from my SM-G998U using Tapatalk


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## ClearToLand

ggieseke said:


> ...
> *THE BASICS:*
> ...
> 4. Run mfsr with an account that's a member of the Administrators group or right-click it and choose Run as Administrator. *Follow the instructions from there to reformat the drive to use its full capacity*...
> ...
> *It works on 3TB drives as well*...


After _YEARS_ of procrastination, tonight I _FINALLY_ ran MFS Reformatter on a WD30EFRX that I bought and ran through Western Digital Data Life Guard Diagnostic _YEARS_ ago for a refurbed Lifetime Roamio OTA that I bought _YEARS_ ago and everything worked PERFECTLY. 

Except for one thing - "*Follow the instructions from there to reformat the drive to use its full capacity*" didn't appear. I saw a 'Status Message' reporting the detection of my WD30EFRX but I had to CLICK on '*File*' to find, and begin, the reformat process. Did this change from the original 2015 version? Maybe I'm just an OCD Old Fart, but updating Post #1 might help '_someone_' who could get confused waiting to see something that doesn't appear.

Thanks for the program. This will be my _FIRST_, of four, Roamio Basic / OTA units with "_aligned MFS file (application) and inode "zones" correctly for Advanced Format (4K) drives_" and I hope that this WD30EFRX runs flawlessly for another decade (if TiVo, the company, survives that long  ).


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## ggieseke

ClearToLand said:


> Except for one thing - "*Follow the instructions from there to reformat the drive to use its full capacity*" didn't appear. I saw a 'Status Message' reporting the detection of my WD30EFRX but I had to CLICK on '*File*' to find, and begin, the reformat process. Did this change from the original 2015 version? Maybe I'm just an OCD Old Fart, but updating Post #1 might help '_someone_' who could get confused waiting to see something that doesn't appear.


The UI hasn't changed. Post #1 could be worded better, but most people figure it out like you did.


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## Ipaqjoe

Since this thread now spans several years, I assume many version(s) of drive testing tools have been used. I read through nearly all 78 pages and couldn't find a good answer.

The apparent tools (mentioned by name WD Data Lifeguard...) used to test drives appears to have been replaced about 2 years ago.
*Windows Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows has been DEPRECATED*

Link

The latest version "Dashboard 3.4.2.9" tells me this when I click the "Drive Utilities" > ERASE DRIVE option *No erase is available, please use your system BIOS to erase the device.*
I assume the ERASE option was the full WRITE test mentioned?









To test my brand new upgrade drive WDC WD40EFZX, I planned on doing this:
FULL READ TEST
"Drive Utilities" > S.M.A.R.T. > S.M.A.R.T. Diagnostic Extended Test
Full extended test (4TB drive) took about 7 hours, directly connected via internal SATA cable.















FULL WRITE TEST
Elevated command prompt (Windows 10)
FORMAT D: /FS:NTFS /P:0 V:/TIVO
(FS + V totally optional, /P:0 should only write a single 0 to entire drive)
Currently doing this now, 57% done after 3.5-4 hours

Then repeat the FULL READ TEST above a second time.
Thoughts, or different tools available?


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## ggieseke

Data Lifeguard Diagnostics can still be downloaded from WD even though it is deprecated and most of the links are gone from their website.

Data Lifeguard Diagnostics

I haven't used Dashboard, but it may be refusing to erase the drive because it's already formatted for Windows as your D: drive.


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## Ipaqjoe

ggieseke said:


> Data Lifeguard Diagnostics can still be downloaded from WD even though it is deprecated and most of the links are gone from their website.
> 
> Data Lifeguard Diagnostics
> 
> I haven't used Dashboard, but it may be refusing to erase the drive because it's already formatted for Windows as your D: drive.


The previous version 1.37 we linked DOES still work under Windows 10 and it allows the quick or FULL ERASE.
Not sure why dashboard would remove that option.

As a quick test, I deleted all partitions on the new WD drive after the windows format using DISKPART but Dashboard still refused to do an ERASE.
The next drive I test I'll ensure I open dashboard before windows asks to initialize the drive [but don't expect any difference.]


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## plcousins

generaltso said:


> Would you mind sending over that beta to me as well? What's the maximum drive size that it supports? Are Purple drives still recommended as well? Thanks!


Would you mind sending over that beta to me as well? Thanks..


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## plcousins

ggieseke said:


> Beta sent. Use Red Plus drives (not Red or Red Pro).


Sorry all for the double post, but I realize I did reply to ggieseke in my request for the beta that supports >8TB drives. @ggieseke would you please send it to me too?


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## ggieseke

plcousins said:


> Would you mind sending over that beta to me as well? Thanks..


Sent.


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## plcousins

ggieseke said:


> Sent.


Thank you. It worked for me, but I observed a few quirks and I'm not sure if they are expected, so I thought I should let you know. I appreciate the help and wanted to provide beta feedback in case it is helpful.

The drive was recognized and the proper size was reported, both during startup and after reformat.

I did a kickstart 57 on the tivo because I was experiencing a validation error during guided setup. It reported MFS errors and fixed them. I don't think it was related to my validation error S308, but I thought the MFS check reporting and fixing errors was potentially interesting.

After completing guided setup, it was clear that only 8TB of the 12TB drive were recognized. With mfstools, I used mfsadd and mfsaddfix twice to activate the remaing 4TB. Reinstalled in tivo bolt and all storage now recognized (~2000HD hours).

Thanks again...PC


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## ggieseke

plcousins said:


> Thank you. It worked for me, but I observed a few quirks and I'm not sure if they are expected, so I thought I should let you know. I appreciate the help and wanted to provide beta feedback in case it is helpful.
> 
> The drive was recognized and the proper size was reported, both during startup and after reformat.
> 
> I did a kickstart 57 on the tivo because I was experiencing a validation error during guided setup. It reported MFS errors and fixed them. I don't think it was related to my validation error S308, but I thought the MFS check reporting and fixing errors was potentially interesting.
> 
> After completing guided setup, it was clear that only 8TB of the 12TB drive were recognized. With mfstools, I used mfsadd and mfsaddfix twice to activate the remaing 4TB. Reinstalled in tivo bolt and all storage now recognized (~2000HD hours).
> 
> Thanks again...PC


I haven't seen any MFS errors reported before, but I'm glad you got it working. Basically, mfsr creates a formatted empty MFS file system with only one entry for the root directory.


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## tommeboy23

I am using MFSR1004 .. I just recently upgraded my pc to Windows 11 and got an obscure error and drive not found when running MSFR ?
(I can redo and post if needed) 
So I switched to a Windows 10 pc and re-ran MSFR and everything worked great with no issues.

Is there a release that will work with Windows 11 ? or just have to use Windows 10 ?


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## ggieseke

tommeboy23 said:


> I am using MFSR1004 .. I just recently upgraded my pc to Windows 11 and got an obscure error and drive not found when running MSFR ?
> (I can redo and post if needed)
> So I switched to a Windows 10 pc and re-ran MSFR and everything worked great with no issues.
> 
> Is there a release that will work with Windows 11 ? or just have to use Windows 10 ?


I would need the error message to even hazard a guess. I have never even seen Windows 11.


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## gsutkin

I received the error "This drive would have 5 media regions, which isn't supported at this time."
What does that mean? I can't find it on this thread.
It then gives a "Line 339" Error
I am using MFSR1004 on a WD101PURP (10TB Purple drive)
Thanks!


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## ggieseke

gsutkin said:


> I received the error "This drive would have 5 media regions, which isn't supported at this time."
> What does that mean? I can't find it on this thread.
> It then gives a "Line 339" Error
> I am using MFSR1004 on a WD101PURP (10TB Purple drive)
> Thanks!


It means that you're trying to format a drive over 8TB, which it wasn't designed for. I just sent you the beta version that allows you to format even larger drives to 8TB, then you can use MFS Tools to add additional 2TB partitions.


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## gsutkin

Thank you!


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## gsutkin

gsutkin said:


> Thank you!


That was easy and worked perfectly. Thanks again!


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## Gorbuth

This might be an impertinent question. I am a brand new member. I was viewing mfsr discussion, noticed there are 1560 posts, which are scattered in time. I clicked on LATEST, where the 2007 posts still appear. Is there anyway to arrange the 1560 posts in the thread temporally, so for example the 2022 posts will come on top, and one can scroll backwards in time? That will be a great time-saver for a user, to hunt for the latest updates, etc.


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## ThAbtO

The last page is always the latest.

When you click "Jump to latest", that would only jump to your first unread.


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## CrashHD

I get the following errors when attempting to mfsr a 14TB WD drive:



















Any ideas what I'm running into here?


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## ggieseke

CrashHD said:


> I get the following errors when attempting to mfsr a 14TB WD drive:
> 
> 
> View attachment 74919
> 
> Any ideas what I'm running into here?


MFSR was only designed for drives up to 8TB. I have a beta version (available on request) that will treat larger drives as 8TB - is that what you're using?


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## CrashHD

ggieseke said:


> MFSR was only designed for drives up to 8TB. I have a beta version (available on request) that will treat larger drives as 8TB - is that what you're using?


Yes. Could there be a problem with the copy I have?

1.0.0.4 runs, but aborts upon noticing the drive is too big.
The beta gives the pictured errors.


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## CrashHD

I took the drive, ran it through manufacturer's diagnostics, and then full erased the drive. Passed with no problems. Put it back in the tivo, let the tivo do it's format, then put the drive in the PC and tried MFSR again. Same results. 
Maybe I have a bad copy of the beta? You sent it to me a few years ago, but I got sidetracked and am just now getting back to this project.


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## CrashHD

Any chance I can get a copy of the mfsr beta for drives over 8TB? I'm wondering if there's a problem with the copy I have from a few years back (never successfully tested it then)


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## ggieseke

CrashHD said:


> Any chance I can get a copy of the mfsr beta for drives over 8TB? I'm wondering if there's a problem with the copy I have from a few years back (never successfully tested it then)


Sent.

Not sure what's causing that error. It indicates that the program is trying to access memory that it doesn't own. Is this TiVo running TE4?


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## godsey1

I figured it out. Thanks.


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## CrashHD

ggieseke said:


> Sent.
> 
> Not sure what's causing that error. It indicates that the program is trying to access memory that it doesn't own. Is this TiVo running TE4?


It is not. In the time in between I upgraded to TE4, dabbled with it, was unimpressed, and rolled it back.

"up"grading to TE4 allowed it to access the full drive automatically, but then rolling back to TE3 resulted in a weird error preventing the successful completion of guided setup. To get out of that, I had to use WD diagnostics to erase the drive, and allow the Tivo to format it again (using the same approximately 3 TB that you get with TE3 and before using MFSR


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## CrashHD

I tried with the newly downloaded copy, and got the same errors. 
I erased the drive with WD diagnostics, let the DVR boot up and complete the first guided setup, and put it in my PC to run MFSR


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## CrashHD

I do not know, or understand, what has made the difference, but having a little time and deciding to grasp at some straws, I took the original 1TB drive from this Roamio Plus (I may have erroneously referred to it as a pro in previous discussion) and I put it in the duplication dock to the 14TB drive. 

It then booted successfully, and showed a recording capacity number on the Sys info screen that suggested it was still using 1TB of the drive (as expected, thus far). The NPL showed recordings known to be on the original drive, although I did not attempt playback to test them.

I then took this drive, and ran it through the MFSR beta. This time the program did not error out. It appeared to complete successfully. I then installed the drive. The Tivo booted, and repeated Guided Setup (unexpected, but satisfactory result). Upon completion of GS, the NPL is blank (again, unexpected, but still satisfactory result). Checking the recording capacity in the Sys Info screen shows 1281 HD hours or 8830 SD hours, which seems approximately correct for an 8 TB MFS. 

From this point, I should be good to expand the rest of the drive using the MFS Tools process, although I think I'm just going to use the DVR a few days first.


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## jimdkc

Bought a 10TB drive instead of reading more of this thread! Can I get the MFSR Beta?


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## ggieseke

jimdkc said:


> Bought a 10TB drive instead of reading more of this thread! Can I get the MFSR Beta?


Sent.


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## Patrick2050

Hello ggieseke,

Could I get a copy of the MFSR Beta too?

Thank you!


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## ggieseke

Patrick2050 said:


> Hello ggieseke,
> 
> Could I get a copy of the MFSR Beta too?
> 
> Thank you!


Sent.


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## kjsmithtx

@ggieseke 
can i get beta of MFSR also please?


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## ggieseke

kjsmithtx said:


> @ggieseke
> can i get beta of MFSR also please?


Sent.


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## rickydee

Tried to run MFSR 1.004 today to reformat an 8 TB WD80EFZZ that was brand news and pulled after being formatted by a Roamio and pulled right a guided setup.

When I load MFSR it sees a Series 5 1308.04 GB Generic External Found with 1.302.22 GB allocated to recordings. When I attempt to reformat it I receive an error 0x000003E6 at line 984 Read file and then the same error at line 337 reformat roamio drive.

Please let me know if you have any thoughts as to why I am receiving this error. Please also send me the beta if that could possibly help. Thx in advance.

Actually, my problem seems to have been using an older Thermaltake that didn't support 8 tb drives.


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## ggieseke

rickydee said:


> Actually, my problem seems to have been using an older Thermaltake that didn't support 8 tb drives.


That's what it sounds like to me.


----------

