# Provide a sensible upgrade of My DVR expansion



## danschn (Apr 22, 2004)

Now that the Western Digital TiVo-certified 1 Terabyte MyDVR Expander is officially here, owners of the 500 GB version should be offered a growth path to move the contents of the old drive to the new drive if they wish to upgrade.

I think TiVo splits programs content between the internal and external drives in order to prevent a user from transporting a library of programs by moving the hard drive around. This is understandably at the behest of the industry and DRM . Thus, if one "divorces" the external drive from the TiVo, all content that is split is lost , which is probably everything that was TiVo'ed since the old drive was married to the TiVo, at a minimum.

Most users who already own the 500GB drive and wish to upgrade would probably sacrifice all their recorded content  as a consequence of upgrading their hardware, which it seems to me TiVo should encourage without such a heavy penalty.

Since my TiVo is networked, I could copy as much content as possible to my PC (assuming I have the space), and then lose all non-copyable content, which in my case is all programs recorded off of premium stations like HBO and Showtime. Others have it worse, depending on what copy flags their cable provider sets, or who operate their TiVo without networking.

So the choice becomes: content or upgraded hard drive, a tough choice which the technology doesn't require. My TiVo - a Series 3 - has an unused USB port even after the Tuning Adaptor has been added. I should be able to temporarily have both external DVR expanders hang off the TiVo and copy the split programs from the old 500GB drive to the new 1TB drive, and then divorce the old, marry the new and be a happy customer .


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## ewilts (Feb 26, 2002)

danschn said:


> Now that the Western Digital TiVo-certified 1 Terabyte MyDVR Expander is officially here, owners of the 500 GB version should be offered a growth path to move the contents of the old drive to the new drive if they wish to upgrade.


Just because you want them to doesn't mean they *should* offer a growth path.

I agree that it would be a useful feature, but for the few people that would actually do this, you might be better off using something like MFStools to add both drives to a PC, copy the data, and expand one. That option might not be available today, but if not, I suspect it will be in the future.

I don't think that TiVo has a data expansion/migration high enough on its wish list to take away resources from other things they're working on.


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## johnny99 (Nov 10, 2008)

I would buy one of the 1TB expansion drives if there was an easy upgrade path from my current 500GB drive. Since Tivo doesn't provide an easy upgrade path, they have lost my sale.


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## stevewjackson (Nov 2, 2007)

ewilts said:


> Just because you want them to doesn't mean they *should* offer a growth path.
> 
> I agree that it would be a useful feature, but for the few people that would actually do this, you might be better off using something like MFStools to add both drives to a PC, copy the data, and expand one. That option might not be available today, but if not, I suspect it will be in the future.
> 
> I don't think that TiVo has a data expansion/migration high enough on its wish list to take away resources from other things they're working on.


I recently bought a DVR Expander, and I would've waited had there been a hint of a 1TB model to come along so soon after. So an upgrade path would certainly be nice should I want to move up to a larger one. But MFSTools is useless since I don't have (and will never own) a PC. And even if I did, or if there were a Mac-compatible solution, tools like that are not officially supported anyway -- a deal-breaker for some of us.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

I agree with the OP, there should be an easy way to move from the approved 500GB WD My DVR Expander drive to the new 1TB model without sacrificing all of the recordings made since it was attached. At the moment there simply isn't one.

Spike (author of the winMFS program) still hasn't been able to come up with a method that would allow the content of an external drive and an internal drive to be combined and written to a single larger internal drive. I'm not sure he'll be able to address this issue either.

The "problem" resides with the way TiVo recognizes expansion drives; by the drive model. Using "dd" to make an exact copy of the content of an existing expansion drive so it can be moved to a new/identical expansion drive works. However, due to the recognition method TiVo employs, the same wouldn't work for non-identical drives. You might want to try posting on the MSFLive Forum and see what Spike has to say.

Again, I agree that TiVo should provide some kind of upgrade option but I also agree with others here and doubt that's going to happen any time soon (if ever) so it may be left to only those that are comfortable with a DIY project which is too bad.

I on a positive note (sort of) the WD 1TB My DVR Expander has already come down in price from $189 to $168 at Amazon.


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