# 1 TB SATA disc in my Tivo



## spitfires (Dec 19, 2006)

My Tivo now has shiny 1TB SATA disc - sweet! 1 TB for £57 all in.

Just finished installing a new disc to replace the getting-iffy Maxtor in my previously 2-disc Tivo. I got a sector fail on the disc a few weeks ago so the time came to blow the dust off my old copy of _Hinsdale_ and do a preventative upgrade before the disc fully failed. So I replaced a Maxtor 120GB + Quantum 40GB (original and still going strong!) with a shiny new Samsung 1TB SATA.

The Samsung is a lovely disc - VERY quiet, unlike the Seagate/Maxtors.

1TB Samsung HD103SI EcoGreen F2. £42.51 (inc. delivery). Get the Ecogreen version which spins at 5400 rpm rather than 7200 - more than adequate for Tivo and helps to keep the noise level down.

For a SATA disc you will of course need an IDE-to-SATA converter. This plugs into the back of the drive and then to the IDE cable in the Tivo. Be careful: not all of these converters work in Tivo (e.g. most of the £3 ones from China/HK won't).

I used the Startech IDE2SAT (£14.22 delivered - search Google Products for Startech IDE2SAT ). This uses the Marvell 88SA8040 chip which is known to work in our Series 1 Tivos. Works straight out of the box :up:

Be careful when handling this as there is no protection on the delicate connector pins and it is very easy to bend them when removing a cable. (Tip: until you are at the "final install in tivo" stage you can get away with just pushing the connector on half-way - makes it easier to remove!). (Tip 2: put a little strip of insulation tape across the back of the soldered pins just in case it gets anywhere near the hard disc metalwork).

Don't really need 1 TB of course but it was only £5 more than a 500 GB (!) and if, as seems likely, Tivo/Virgin pull the plug on those of use without cable and turn my Tivo into a brick, then I can take the disc out and use it in a PC.

(Other converters which should work:

Delock 61702 (Marvell 88SA8052 chip) but hard to find outside of Germany
http://www.delock.com/produkte/grup...SATA_IDE_61702.html?action=showpdf&groupid=2&

IDE-SATA07 from Worldspan (Marvell 88SA8052) but long lead time since it's sourced from Taiwan
http://www.span.com/product_info.php?products_id=26930

Addonics ADSAIDE (Marvell 88SA8052) from Aimtec in UK but expensive
http://www.aimtec.co.uk/addonics-online/sata-to-ide-converter.html
)


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## mjd (Jun 12, 2002)

Hi,
I want to upgrade my Tivo to a 1TB, any advice you can suggest its been about 9 years since I upgraded from the 40GB to 160GB.

Can you suggest an up-to-date guide, I also want to add mode 0

Any help suggestions appreciated


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## spitfires (Dec 19, 2006)

Just get a new copy of the Hinsdale guide and an "LBA48" disc.

In general the progs to run are:
1) qunlock (see guide for if this is required)
2) mfsbackup
3) mfsrestore
4) copykern
5) edit_bootparms
6) mfsadd (only required if you didn't use the "x" option with (3))

Took me about 2 hours reading to remind myself what to do, then about _15_ minutes to actually do it! 

You may or may not want to set larger swap space when restoring the image - I used the max allowed by mfsrestore ("-s 511") (The jury is still out as to whether it's required or not but since "copykern" fixes the bug in mfsrestore which stopped this working it's a moot point anyway).

If you need to run edit_bootparms then the link to this in Hinsdale is wrong - search around for a copy of TivoMad floppy.

Steve Conrad's site is quite good - but obviously ignore the bit where he says you can't put a SATA disc in a Tivo!

I don't use mode 0 but there's plenty of info on here as to how to do that if you want.


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## mjd (Jun 12, 2002)

Thanks for the advice - Guess I need to do some reading around and order the bits. - Do you have a cachecard installed ?- I dont and was concerned if the Tivo with the 1TB becomes slow and unresponsive, How do you find it?


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## spitfires (Dec 19, 2006)

No I don't have a cachecard either. The menus only become slow if you have lots & lots of programmes recorded - i.e. it's not related to disc size per se. If you're going to be using mode 0 then you won't have enough progs recorded to slow it down so a cachecard is not required.


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## AMc (Mar 22, 2002)

I'm surprised you say that - I have a 400GB Tivo and without the cachecard I found it pretty sluggish. I record programmes in Best Mode 0 and suggestions at High.
Even with 512MB in the cachecard I still get the random clouds going by moment when clicking from Now Playing to the programme details.

{edited as I got the amount of memory wrong}


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

spitfires said:


> If you're going to be using mode 0 then you won't have enough progs recorded to slow it down so a cachecard is not required.


A 1TB Tivo full up with all recordings at Best will hold 350 hours of programs. In Mode 0 the number of hours will be similar and may even be higher depending on what bitrates you set in conjunction with Mode 0.

In my experience even with a Cachecard with 512MB of RAM there is a very significant slow down in Tivo menus with anything around 300 or more programs in Now Playing. So unless one mainly records movies the likelihood is that the average user will have around 400 or more programs on their disk with this many hours or recording time available unless Suggestions are turned off and unless you regularly clear out stuff that you have recorded and never found time to watch.

Obvious strategies to avoid this happening but still have Suggestions enabled would be to fill the hard drive up with as many 3 hour long BBC F1 shows as possible and as many long films of 2 hours + as possible and to set all these as Keep Until I Delete with no intention of ever deleting them.

My 500Gb at Basic with 600 programs in Now Playing and a Cachecard with 512MB of RAM just means that menu operations in Now Playing and getting to the recording and back from the recording to Now Playing take a long time but the actual manipulation of each individual recording once you are watching the recording are unaffected with Fast Forward and Rewind etc responding to the remote control immediately as normal. However deleting a recording or backing out from a recording to the Now Playing menu takes a long time with this many items in Now Playing. As I do bulk deletions of stuff I don't intend to ever watch that gets recorded (eg by Wishlists) through the Now Playing module in Tivoweb I find this isn't too much of an issue.

I'm surprised to hear that Hinsdale still takes care of most if not all of the issues connected with a 1TB drive upgrade as I thought there were quite a few additional points relevant to a 1TB drive not covered there or at www.steveconrad.co.uk/tivo I would have thought that using the www.mfslive.org site might have been the more appropriate way to handle 1TB associated issues including trying to preserve existing recordings. They even have an article on that website about how to create a 2TB Tivo


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## spitfires (Dec 19, 2006)

Pete77 said:


> there is a very significant slow down in Tivo menus with anything around 300 or more programs in Now Playing


Yes that's what I mean by "lots & lots" of recordings  I never have more than 40 or 50 programmes in Now Playing (and don't use Suggestions).

I concede that with over 100 programmes then the menus will slow considerably. This still doesn't _require_ a cachecard (which are still ridiculously expensive!) - it just makes life quicker if you use the menus a lot. Personally I use the menus twice per programme - once at the start and once at the end! 

My main purpose in changing the disc was to replace a failing Maxtor rather than to get more capacity per se. Since SATA discs are waaay cheaper than IDE discs and a 1TB is only £5 more than a 500GB it seemed silly to not get the 1TB. I, personally, will never fill it but 1TB SATA was half the price of 120GB IDE!

p.s. yes mfslive.org is an alternative resource - it's just that I've always used Hinsdale so that's what I used here.  Also mfslive doesn't cover the LBA48 issue and despite better support for more modern PCs (i.e. the old mfstools only supports IDE channels) it still fails to recognise a great many on-board SATA chips (I tried it in 2 PCs and it wouldn't work in either). You know where you are with Hinsdale 

Edit: p.p.s. I did consider that the OP said he'd already done an upgrade about 9 years ago, and therefore probably used Hinsdale at that time. I wasn't suggesting that Hinsdale is the best or indeed the only resource for someone who hasn't upgraded before.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

If going down the mfslive route to carry out the upgrade this earlier post by Dougal on upgrading a UK S1 Tivo to a 1TB drive still contains some useful relevant information.

See www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=380949&highlight=green+power+1tb


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## CarlWalters (Oct 17, 2001)

I might try a 1TB upgrade using Hooch now that PlayTV has started misbehaving


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

CarlWalters said:


> I might try a 1TB upgrade using Hooch now that PlayTV has started misbehaving


Although one rarely hears from Dave of www.tivoland.com on here these days I see that he is now only asking £109 for a 1TB pre-prepared drive at www.tivoland.com/Tivoland/Accessories.html compared to Mike's (Tivocentral's) £129.

However there is no mention of the required SATA to IDE converter and whether it is included or not? I would assume not at this price but if so it seems strange that healeydave does not have them for sale anywhere else on his website given that he maintains that the 1TB driver upgrade is a "Simple end user replacement part". Mike of course also charges extra for a suitable IDE to SATA converter but has a suitable one prominently listed on his website.


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

Pete77 said:


> Mike of course also charges extra for a suitable IDE to SATA converter but has a suitable one prominently listed on his website.


Er, no extra charges - whatever gave you that idea ?

All www.tivocentral.co.uk drives have _always_ come with everything required ready to fit including SATA convertor, 
torx screwdriver to open the tivo, and instruction guide with photos 

Can't speak for dave, but I expect he supplies a complete kit too.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

mikerr said:


> All www.tivocentral.co.uk drives have _always_ come with everything required ready to fit including SATA convertor, torx screwdriver to open the tivo, and instruction guide with photos
> 
> Can't speak for dave, but I expect he supplies a complete kit too.


I think that the unsighted citrus possibly used to charge extra for the IDE to SATA adapter to go with his SATA drives although of course I was never a customer for one so can't be sure.

Probably Tivoland include the IDE to SATA adapter in view of their suggestion its a complete easy fit solution but its hard to be absolutely sure without asking them, especially given the £20 price difference (roughly about the cost of one decent IDE to SATA adapter that will actually work in a Tivo).

If my two Samsung HA250JC 250Gb drives do fail before Tivo service ends in the UK (although I'm sure you no doubt have plans to help us out with a replacement EPG service if that happens) I think will probably buy a pre-prepared SATA drive and adapter as I think its pretty hopeless to transfer recordings from 2 x 250GB hard drives to a 1TB SATA driver as far as I have previously gathered due to the number of partitions etc. I also only have a laptop PC with its only working USB sockets on a PCMCIA card (as all the original rubbish three HP ones broke off in the first 18 months even though I have never had either of the sockets in the PCMCIA card break in the nearly four subsequent years) so I imagine that copying between three IDE drives and one SATA drive would be a lot of hassle. I bought a 2.5" external Iomega SATA 500Gb hard drive enclosure and drive recently that doesn't want to talk to my HP Notebook so I suspect that it is probably generally SATA drive unfriendly with the current Bios (the last released by HP).

I believe there are ways to extract those recordings I consider important and reinsert them on the Tivo although its probably easier just to download them to the notebook with TyTools and watch them with VLC Media Player on the Notebook.


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## mjd (Jun 12, 2002)

Thanks for all the suggestions - I will http://www.mfslive.org/ as suggested.

Can mode 0 be enabled without a network connection?

Thanks


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## DX30 (May 22, 2005)

mjd said:


> Can mode 0 be enabled without a network connection?


Yes - I've run the scripts using a serial connection to a bash prompt. ISTR someone else did without any external connection by arranging for the script to run once during boot. The details are somewhere in this forum - maybe someone with a better memory than me could point you at them.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

mikerr said:


> Can't speak for dave, but I expect he supplies a complete kit too.


I see that interestingly the price of a 1TB drive upgrade at Tivocentral has fallen by £20 during the course of today from £129 to only the same £109 as is being charged by Tivoland. What a wonderful thing competition sometimes is for the good old consumer.

It has to be said that given whatever the rather serious problems are with Tivoland's server (where the pages seem to take about a minute each to load) that this does tend to tip things rather in favour of placing an order with Tivocentral.

And I would be tempted to go ahead right now if there was an easy way to just copy all my recordings across. On the other hand going for a 1TB drive does mean it would be time to start recording everything at Best anyway so perhaps I have to bite the bullet and start afresh apart from my Tivoweb and hacks configuration, which will be copied straight over. But there again I am rather tempted to see how long those trusty Samsung HA250JCs are actually good for. They might very well last until the end of Tivo S1 service in the UK, not of course that I'm expecting that to happen for several more years.

Also can Mike comment on whether the UK Tivo S1 could in theory support a 1.5TB or 2TB SATA drive?


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## spitfires (Dec 19, 2006)

Pete77 said:


> problems are with Tivoland's server (where the pages seem to take about a minute each to load)


That's usually caused when someone is running the website from their bedroom rather than using a hosting company. Nothing wrong with that - I've done it myself in the past! - it just means the pages are slow to load since their upload speed (even with broadband) is usually capped at 256k (so even if *you* are on 8Mb download you are constrained by their slower upload speed).



Pete77 said:


> And I would be tempted to go ahead right now if there was an easy way to just copy all my recordings across.


Easily do-able - even with your copy-2-discs-to-1 requirement. (It's a one-line command!) Hinsdale guide tells you how to do this.



Pete77 said:


> whether the UK Tivo S1 could in theory support a 1.5TB or 2TB SATA drive?


In theory yes, in practice well.... 
- the old version of mfstools only supported swap partitions of size suitable for 1TB. I believe mfslive supports 2TB discs but the alternative is you don't bother with the larger swap size - this is only used by the GSOD repair utility which (a) is rarely triggered (b) doesn't work anyway with terminal disc failure!
- if you filled 2TB with recordings your Tivo would obviously grind to a halt - would probably literally freeze up - due to lack of memory. (Know the feeling!)


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

spitfires said:


> Easily do-able - even with your copy-2-discs-to-1 requirement. (It's a one-line command!) Hinsdale guide tells you how to do this.


When I last looked in to the matter it didn't seem to be possible if you had already upgraded before from the original 2 x 20Gb drives to 2 x 250Gb due to the number of partitions that now existed. Of course perhaps I am thinking of a further 2 drive to 2 drive upgrade and not a 2 drive to 1 drive consolidation? I think 2 drives to 2 drives at the time presented problems in terms of having 5 drives attached to a PC at once!



> - the old version of mfstools only supported swap partitions of size suitable for 1TB. I believe mfslive supports 2TB discs but the alternative is you don't bother with the larger swap size - this is only used by the GSOD repair utility which (a) is rarely triggered (b) doesn't work anyway with terminal disc failure!


I always got the impression that it was far more actively involved in the day to day management of recordings than that from the enthusiasm of a now retired former competitor of Mike's to always make the swap partition as large as possible.



> if you filled 2TB with recordings your Tivo would obviously grind to a halt - would probably literally freeze up - due to lack of memory. (Know the feeling!)


2TB at Best would be 700 hours of Tivo recording space. Not very different from 613 hours on 500GB at Basic, especially in percentage terms. So I expect a Tivo would cope ok but have rather painfully slow menus as mine does now.

I never get to watch must of the stuff I have horded for ages anyhow so I expect that 1TB and limiting myself to 350 hours and having reasonable menu speeds (with a Cachecard and 512MB of RAM) would probably be the best bet.

However bearing in mind that there are two of them and that the Samsung HA250JC drives have now been running for five and a half years they obviously do seem to be quite reliable.


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## spitfires (Dec 19, 2006)

Pete77 said:


> When I last looked in to the matter it didn't seem to be possible if you had already upgraded before from the original 2 x 20Gb drives to 2 x 250Gb due to the number of partitions that now existed.


Ah right - I've got a funny feeling if you started with a dual drive system then you can't switch to a single drive system. Could be wrong on that. If so, then to change to a 1 disc setup you would need to buy a pre-imaged disc and get your recordings off/on with mfs_ftp.

Yes there's a limit to the number of partitions but this usually means you can only do 5 upgrades before you run out. Or you simply do as I do which is go back to the very first dump I did in 2003 before any upgrades at all - this then sets me back to 5 permitted (IYSWIM).



Pete77 said:


> I always got the impression that it was far more actively involved in the day to day management [...] to always make the swap partition as large as possible.


The swap partition is used all the time (for paging of virtual memory) but the only time it needs shedloads is when mfsfix is running. Otherwise the standard 64MB swap partition is enough.



Pete77 said:


> However bearing in mind that there are two of them and that the Samsung HA250JC drives have now been running for five and a half years they obviously do seem to be quite reliable.


Don't forget though that you need *both* of them working to run a mfsbackup - if *either* one goes t*ts-up then you won't be able to get anything off your Tivo at all! That's why I swapped from 2 discs back to 1.

And remember the older they are the more likely they are to fail! I usually 'life' the discs in my servers to replace them before they go klunk and become irretrievable. Experience shows that Seagate discs last 2 years (was 3 years but they've got worse!), Maxtor 3 years, WD 4 years. Can't say for Samsung - haven't been running them long enough yet. Anything over that and you really should "plan for failure".

Having said that I am truly truly stunned that the original Quantum Fireball from 2002 is still running happily in my Tivo even though I've replaced the second drive 3 times!


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

spitfires said:


> And remember the older they are the more likely they are to fail! I usually 'life' the discs in my servers to replace them before they go klunk and become irretrievable. Experience shows that Seagate discs last 2 years (was 3 years but they've got worse!), Maxtor 3 years, WD 4 years. Can't say for Samsung - haven't been running them long enough yet. Anything over that and you really should "plan for failure".
> 
> Having said that I am truly truly stunned that the original Quantum Fireball from 2002 is still running happily in my Tivo even though I've replaced the second drive 3 times!


I have checked both drives with smartctl tonight and neither shows any reallocated sectors. I know the drives are over five years old but drives are like other mechanical equipment and if you get a good one they often seem to insist on going on and on and on. Also like the Quantum Fireballs the Samsung HA250JC was specifically designed for PVR use and marketed on that basis (including the lower 5400rpm spin speed)

The tv I am using (a CRT set) was repaired at 6 months old and four a half years old but now at over 12 years old it potters on and on with no issues. The Neff dishwasher, fridge, freezer and cooker and the gas boiler here are also now in their 20th year.

The hard drive replacement is only really justified if I get a new 50" HD tv where I will need Mode 0 for acceptable picture quality. But I won't be doing that just yet as I am on the verge of moving within the next 6 to 12 months and as thing stand one of the possible options is to move out of the country either temporarily (for a year or so) or permanently.

I will try and go over to my sister's to watch an F1 GP in HD in the only part of this season and see how much difference it really makes on her Panasonic LCD widescreen via her Sky HD box.


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