# Looking to expand memory on TiVo Premier. Is this drive compatible?



## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

This site advertises a "Western Digital WDBACW0010HBK My Book Essential External 1TB - USB 2.0 Hard Drive - Brand New" for $129.00

I'm confused whether this is compatible with TiVo Premier though. I've read here that it needs to be a Western Digital My Book DVR expander, which this sounds like, but the photo on this link looks like an internal HD, even though the description says "external". Can any of you experts tell me if I'm looking at the right product?

My wife has just told me she'd like her TiVo Premier to have more space, so I'm looking at my options for doing that right now.


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## rainwater (Sep 21, 2004)

No, that drive definitely will not work in a Premiere. In fact, I believe they discontinued the My DVR version that the Premiere works with. There may be a newer version that is compatible though.


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## Stuxnet (Feb 9, 2011)

timckelley said:


> My wife has just told me she'd like her TiVo Premier to have more space, so I'm looking at my options for doing that right now.



Upgrade the internal to 2TB (319 HD hrs)


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Stuxnet said:


> Upgrade the internal to 2TB (319 HD hrs)


I read in the stickies that this isn't possible with the premier, but maybe that sticky is outdated and needs to be replaced. Is there by chance a thread here on how to do this? I've done it on S2s but I have a feeling the process is different on a premier.


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## xberk (Dec 3, 2011)

timckelley said:


> I read in the stickies that this isn't possible with the premier, but maybe that sticky is outdated and needs to be replaced. Is there by chance a thread here on how to do this? I've done it on S2s but I have a feeling the process is different on a premier.


I've bought (2) of these 2TB drives from these guys:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/BRAND-NEW-TiVo-Premiere-XL-2TB-Hard-Drive-Upgrade-Kit-/220707239250?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item33632d3552

They come pre-formated for TIVO Premiere. Literally plug and play. All you need is the correct Torx screw driver (which they will send you if you request it) ... No problems .. 317 hours of HD time .. Excellent guys to deal with too.


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## SullyND (Dec 30, 2004)

timckelley said:


> I read in the stickies that this isn't possible with the premier, but maybe that sticky is outdated and needs to be replaced. Is there by chance a thread here on how to do this? I've done it on S2s but I have a feeling the process is different on a premier.


The sticky is not current. It is possible on a premiere. Search for JMFS.


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## P42 (Jan 7, 2003)

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=455968
Super long thread covering upgrading the Premiere, 
Just pick up a Western Digital Caviar Green 2 TB Desktop Hard Drive WD20EARS, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002ZCXK0I which once the prices come down should be ~$80. 
The first post has everything you need, but, you may also need (and even though I use the same drive) to use wdidle to disable the disk idle timeout.


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## DonaldBurns65144 (Jan 11, 2011)

Key wording is "USB" - the Premiere Tivo can not use a USB external drive. It needs eSATA interface external drive unit and even then needs the the correct hard drive inside the external box.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Thanks for all these handy answers.



P42 said:


> http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=455968
> Super long thread covering upgrading the Premiere,
> Just pick up a Western Digital Caviar Green 2 TB Desktop Hard Drive WD20EARS, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002ZCXK0I which once the prices come down should be ~$80.
> The first post has everything you need, but, you may also need (and even though I use the same drive) to use wdidle to disable the disk idle timeout.


I see the price is currently $150, which you think will come down to $80. I'm not sure my wife will be patient enough to wait for the $80 price, though 2 TB for $150 seems like a good deal by itself. I was only going to give her an extra 1 TB, but when I mentioned to her she could get 2 TB, I think she smiled at that idea. Plus I assume this replaces the current drive... maybe I can usurp that drive for more space in my PC in the study, as I think I could use some more space. (Our photo albums are getting pretty big these days.)

I think I'd like to now go this route instead of using the external HD method, as it seems to give more space for less money. I'll see how it goes when I step through the instructions you linked to.


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## SullyND (Dec 30, 2004)

timckelley said:


> I think I'd like to now go this route instead of using the external HD method, as it seems to give more space for less money. I'll see how it goes when I step through the instructions you linked to.


Internal should also be more reliable (in that you have one less hard drive to fail - with an external drive if either goes both are toast [in terms of content]).


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## cherry ghost (Sep 13, 2005)

timckelley said:


> Thanks for all these handy answers.
> 
> I see the price is currently $150, which you think will come down to $80. I'm not sure my wife will be patient enough to wait for the $80 price, though 2 TB for $150 seems like a good deal by itself. I was only going to give her an extra 1 TB, but when I mentioned to her she could get 2 TB, I think she smiled at that idea. Plus I assume this replaces the current drive... maybe I can usurp that drive for more space in my PC in the study, as I think I could use some more space. (Our photo albums are getting pretty big these days.)
> 
> I think I'd like to now go this route instead of using the external HD method, as it seems to give more space for less money. I'll see how it goes when I step through the instructions you linked to.


I paid $80 about 6 months ago, but prices have gone up with the recent hard drive shortages. It replaces the current drive, but you'll want to keep that as is in case the 2TB ever fails. That way you can put it back in or make another copy.


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## rainwater (Sep 21, 2004)

timckelley said:


> Plus I assume this replaces the current drive... maybe I can usurp that drive for more space in my PC in the study, as I think I could use some more space. (Our photo albums are getting pretty big these days.)
> 
> I think I'd like to now go this route instead of using the external HD method, as it seems to give more space for less money. I'll see how it goes when I step through the instructions you linked to.


Basically you hook both drives to your pc using the internal sata connections and boot from the cd you created with the iso you downloaded and follow the instructions. It is quite simple if you can handle hooking the drives up to a pc.


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## ShinySteelRobot (Apr 2, 2010)

Upgrading the internal drive in a Premiere can be found in the Upgrade forum area, look for the super long thread on JMFS.


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## compnurd (Oct 6, 2011)

Thats a good deal to buy it from that guy already loaded to go. I would wait though until 20.2 is fully rolled out though if you have it already as it looks like you would lose it for the time being


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## rainwater (Sep 21, 2004)

You will have to re-pair your cablecards if you change drives so be aware of that.


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## Thunderclap (Nov 28, 2005)

Not to hijack, but can one upgrade the drive after buying lifetime subscription, or would this break contract?


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## rainwater (Sep 21, 2004)

Thunderclap said:


> Not to hijack, but can one upgrade the drive after buying lifetime subscription, or would this break contract?


You lose your warranty but your lifetime still exists.


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## donnoh (Mar 7, 2008)

rainwater said:


> You will have to re-pair your cablecards if you change drives so be aware of that.


Not necessarily true in all cases. Charter doesn't pair the cards to the machine and I also believe that Fios doesn't either.


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

rainwater said:


> You will have to re-pair your cablecards if you change drives so be aware of that.


Not if you copy old drive to new with JMFS.


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## P42 (Jan 7, 2003)

timckelley said:


> I see the price is currently $150, which you think will come down to $80. I'm not sure my wife will be patient enough to wait for the $80 price, though 2 TB for $150 seems like a good deal by itself. I was only going to give her an extra 1 TB, but when I mentioned to her she could get 2 TB, I think she smiled at that idea.


Paying an extra $70 to put a smile on ones wife's face is cheap money 
It is likely to be several more months before the current hard drive spike in prices settles down to previous levels.
For some links to stories google: hard drive shortage



rainwater said:


> You will have to re-pair your cablecards if you change drives so be aware of that.


If he _changes_ to a hard drive that was not previously paired with his cable cards yes, but if he _clones_ his existing hard drive to a new hard drive then no, it will already have the pairing info and wish lists.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

as for the guy that sells drives preformatted and ready to plug in, that's nice, but I assume my wife would lose all her NP, SPs and wishlists, which she doesn't want to lose.

It sounds like the ISO CD will preserve it all. I'm not sure how to re-pair cable cards, so it will be nice to avoid that, which sounds like I will by going this cloning route. (I assume running the ISO CD is what you mean by cloning the hard drive.)

This does sound simpler than back in the days when I upgraded my S2s. I had to run commands and be careful with syntax, reading instructions along the way, etc, when I did that, whereas it sounds like this CD automates a lot of that.

BTW, I just bought this premier last October (or maybe it was September), so I'm sure it's till under warranty. I guess this could be a sticky point of even doing this, but I don't think I've ever made a warranty claim in all the years I've had TiVos, and if the hard drive is what goes out, I'm replacing it anyhow.

I suppose I could worry about the motherboard, but I've only ever had one motherboard go bad, and that was on an S1 I'd used for a few years, and I bought it used from ebay to begin with.


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## P42 (Jan 7, 2003)

The standard warranty is 90days, you pay ~$40 extra to extend that to a total of 3years.

There are other ways of moving the NP, SPs and wishlists, check in the TiVo Home Media Features & TiVoToGo section, it is either pyTivo or kmttg that has the capability of backing up and restoring them.

Yup, the ISO is what I was referring to for cloning. It is way simpler then ye olde S2 upgrade process. It will recognize the Tivo and new drives better, make an educated guess as to which is which and ask to you confirm, and then a few guided prompts. The hard part is opening the Tivo and computer, and waiting several hours for the clone.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

P42 said:


> There are other ways of moving the NP, SPs and wishlists, check in the TiVo Home Media Features & TiVoToGo section, it is either pyTivo or kmttg that has the capability of backing up and restoring them.


It seems like every single HD show my wife has tried to move from her TiVo to mine using HMO gets rejected because of copywrite protection or something. I read about this in another thread, and they say to blame Time Warner for this, instead of TiVo. OTOH, some people in that thread got pretty ticked, because they felt that when they bought the TiVo, it was marketed as being able to share shows with other TiVos.


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## P42 (Jan 7, 2003)

Moving shows is something else all together. Tivo does have to respect the copywrite flag, the issue maybe how aggressive your supplier is setting the copywrite flag, and whether they are right in all cases. I'm not well versed in when it should and should not be applied, but I believe that what is available OTA in your area should not have the bit set, expect the bit to be set on Premium channels, the ones in-between I don't know. Others will be more knowledgeable on this.

In summary, Tivo does let you share shows, the cable company and license holders are the limiting factor. 

With the new firmware on the Premiere, streaming not moving, is possible between Premieres, but this will not support pre-Premiere Tivos.


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## xberk (Dec 3, 2011)

P42 said:


> Moving shows is something else all together. Tivo does have to respect the copywrite flag, the issue maybe how aggressive your supplier is setting the copywrite flag, and whether they are right in all cases. I'm not well versed in when it should and should not be applied, but I believe that what is available OTA in your area should not have the bit set, expect the bit to be set on Premium channels, the ones in-between I don't know. Others will be more knowledgeable on this.
> 
> In summary, Tivo does let you share shows, the cable company and license holders are the limiting factor.
> 
> With the new firmware on the Premiere, streaming not moving, is possible between Premieres, but this will not support pre-Premiere Tivos.


I'm not so sure how the copyright flag is set on commercial programming. But when I "push" my own home video via pyTIVO from my PC to my Premiere, the flag gets set -- but if I "pull" the same video (initiate the transfer from my TIVO) from the same PC to the same TIVO the flag is not set. Imagine my shock when I couldn't transfer my own home video between my two TIVOs .. That FLAG was clearly set by TIVO not the copyright holder, namely me ! I think I have all this correct .. can someone else confirm?


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

is there an external option for the premiere elite's that anyone is aware of?


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## DeWitt (Jun 30, 2004)

Internal with JMFS is the way to go. I have two machines rocking 2 TB each. The upgrade was easy, all recordings settings etc are preserved and I keep the old drives as a backup or reinsert for warranty repaair. I used USB/SATA adapters which is slower, but still I let it run overnight and everything was good in the morning. Using the usb adapters I did not even have to open the case of my PC.


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## P42 (Jan 7, 2003)

xberk said:


> I'm not so sure how the copyright flag is set on commercial programming. But when I "push" my own home video via pyTIVO from my PC to my Premiere, the flag gets set -- but if I "pull" the same video (initiate the transfer from my TIVO) from the same PC to the same TIVO the flag is not set.


Ask over in the TiVo Home Media Features & TiVoToGo section, someone there will no doubt have a better understanding.


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## P42 (Jan 7, 2003)

DeWitt, it is not clear if you are responding to timckelley or MichaelK. If MichaelK then your reply is un-helpful at the Elite ships with a 2TB drive internally.

MichaelK, the external drives that work with the regular Premiers _should_ work with the Elite. But be aware of the disadvantage of using an external drive.
Weakness does offer a 2TB external for $449


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

DeWitt said:


> Internal with JMFS is the way to go. I have two machines rocking 2 TB each. The upgrade was easy, all recordings settings etc are preserved and I keep the old drives as a backup or reinsert for warranty repaair. I used USB/SATA adapters which is slower, but still I let it run overnight and everything was good in the morning. Using the usb adapters I did not even have to open the case of my PC.


if you are replyng to me, the Elite comes with e 2 TB drive. But i want more. I'm afraid that with 4 tuners it might not be enough.


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

P42 said:


> ...
> 
> MichaelK, the external drives that work with the regular Premiers _should_ work with the Elite. But be aware of the disadvantage of using an external drive.
> Weakness does offer a 2TB external for $449


looks like there's not a single NEW WD "official" drive on the net- every single retailer on the WD where to buy page is out of stock, nothing on amazon, nothing on google shopoing. Just a few used ones around.

Thanks for the pointer for the weakness service but one would have to send the elite to weakness so they aren't doing a "normal" external drive.

I actually have one of the 'official' WD expanders on one of my S3's- so I was wondering if there's any way to "spoof" that drives name/model/serial/whatever onto a generic drive?

(I'll probably pull the "official" one from the S3 and add it to the elite if my experience shows i need to- but at this point it's years old so I'd prefer to use a brand new drive somehow.)


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

btw, I see the price has dropped to $140 + free shipping. I just now burned the ISO file to a CD so I've got that ready. I guess I'll go ask my wife if she's ready right now for me to order the HD for upgrade. (She'll probably say "jawohl!")

I'm hoping there was nothing special for me to do with the ISO file other than simply burn that file to a CD and close the session (which makes it usable by any computer, though to be honest, this is the same computer I'll be using it on anyhow). I'm assuming that since the file was listed on the site as being an ISO file that that means the CD is now a bootable CD.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

I'm upgrading right now but having problems. It says something like "no boot file received" and that the CD isn't bootable. I'm searching TCF right now for hints on what to do next.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Oh, I think my ISO CD isn't really bootable. I found in the middle of that long premier upgrade thread linked to early in this thread a guy who did the same thing I did, and he was coached through a solution. I'm now following that same advice, and hopefully will have success soon.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Darn... I downloaded a program that will burn an ISO file to a bootable CD, and I ran it, but it's still not bootable.  Still trying to figure out how to do this.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

timckelley said:


> I'm upgrading right now but having problems. It says something like "no boot file received" and that the CD isn't bootable. I'm searching TCF right now for hints on what to do next.


Are you talking about the jmfs 1.04 .iso image?

You know it has to be burned as an image, right?


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Oh, it looks like I accidentally burned the zipped version instead of the unzipped. (I did originally do the unzipped one, but that wasn't made bootable. I also apparently wasted a CD because I formatted it first. My ISO burning freeware program apparently wants an unformatted CD.

Will after about 4 CDs, I got one that works. I am now running JMFS as we speak.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

The copy is now in progress. I noticed there are three options: copy, expand, supersize. I assume since I'm copying the old drive to a new bigger (2 TB) drive, I do copy, and there's no need to subsequently do expand or supersize.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

timckelley said:


> The copy is now in progress. I noticed there are three options: copy, expand, supersize. I assume since I'm copying the old drive to a new bigger (2 TB) drive, I do copy, and there's no need to subsequently do expand or supersize.


After the copy finishes, you'll need to invoke the expand option if you want more of that new drive used than the size of the old one.

TiVo drives "expand" by adding partitions, not by expanding existing ones. Copy only copies over the existing partitions.

Supersize assigns some space otherwise reserved for storing "advertising" to storing shows you record.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Oh, thanks for those tips. Since this is a major increase in HD space, then I better do the expand like you say. As for supersize, out of curiosity, do you know if this advertising takes any significant amount of space?


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

timckelley said:


> Oh, thanks for those tips. Since this is a major increase in HD space, then I better do the expand like you say. As for supersize, out of curiosity, do you know if this advertising takes any significant amount of space?


I vaguely remember reading or noticing that it's somewhere around 1% or thereabouts.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Okay; by the way, this copy is taking longer than I thought. But I have no complaints, as the reward will likely be worth the wait.

By the way, two other snags I ran into today:

1) I have about 4 or 5 different size torex bits for my screwdriver, but the TiVo Premier requires a torex-10 screwdriver, one of the only sizes I don't have. So I went to Lowes today to get one. They had a bunch of sizes, but the only way to get T-10 was to buy an assortment pack of 5, so that cost me over $5 to buy that pack.

2) After dinner when I started doing the work, I realized I was going to need another sata cable. I had assumed I could use the one in my computer (since I wasn't going to need to boot to the hard drive anyhow during all this), and the one in the TiVo. (I need two during this process.) But the TiVo sata cable is a weird looking one where you can't separate the power supply from the data cable. I didn't see any way of borrowing it to my computer.

By now it was about 9:15 pm, so logged on to Walmart and see they sell them for $7-$8. I drove over there, and they have none. The lady says those are only available online at walmart.com, not in the actual store.

Nearby there was a Best Buy, which was still open (by now it was past 9:30 pm). They had one, but it was $20!  I didn't like that, but I grudgingly bought it, because I already had my computer and TiVo opened up with the drives moved around, and my wife has shows tomorrow she wants to record, and I have work I need to do soon on my computer, so I forked out the $20. The guy at Best Buy said that's the price of getting it right away, and I guess he's right about that.


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## ShinySteelRobot (Apr 2, 2010)

timckelley said:


> 1) I have about 4 or 5 different size torex bits for my screwdriver, but the TiVo Premier requires a torex-10 screwdriver, one of the only sizes I don't have. So I went to Lowes today to get one. They had a bunch of sizes, but the only way to get T-10 was to buy an assortment pack of 5, so that cost me over $5 to buy that pack.


Last time I went to Sears' hardware department they had pretty much every size of Torx screwdriver and you could buy them individually. So anyone who needs Torx and has Sears nearby may want to try there first.


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## ShinySteelRobot (Apr 2, 2010)

timckelley said:


> Okay; by the way, this copy is taking longer than I thought.


TiVo Premiere should take about 3 hours to copy the 320 GB. TiVo Premiere XL should take about 15 hours to copy the 1 TB. If you're using USB instead of SATA it will probably take much longer for either.


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## Rkkeller (May 13, 2004)

I am thinking of adding addiitonal storage but my problem is, the newer WD drive is $130 on Amazon but for $30-$40 more I can get one premade on Ebay and it comes with the tools needed. Not sure if doing all this and waiting hours and hours is worth saving a few $.


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## P42 (Jan 7, 2003)

Rkkeller, if you have shows you want to save, or want to easily migrate existing Season Passes (there are other means of doing this with pyTivo), or avoid re-pairing cable cards.

The hard drives we're ~$80, so it use to be cheaper to roll your own. I'm surprised the ebay sellers have not raised their prices to match. Feel free to take the route which works best for you.

Tim, I hope things went well over night.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Success! I checked this morning, and it was done, and so I did the expand option next, which ran almost instantly. I put everything back together, and rebooted the TiVo:

I now have 291 HD hours of space, or 2552 hours of SD space, and all her shows and SPs are still there, playable, and live TV works as normal and everything. 

Thank you to the several people in this thread that gave me tips and help on getting all this to work.

I guess I'll keep my JMFS CD in case I ever need it again, though I don't know if I will. Whoever developed that CD and distributed it free did lots of people a big favor.


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## P42 (Jan 7, 2003)

Nice work Tim, I sure your wife will be delighted.

The Supersize option would bring the recordable HD hours to 317. I think this is done by altering the amount of space reserved for Tivo Showcases, which apparently by default is a percentage of all space, and changes it to a fixed 10GB. But 291 is a huge leap over the 40 you previously had.


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## ShinySteelRobot (Apr 2, 2010)

Merely a thought, for what it's worth, there is a donation link in his post by the guy who put together the JMFS tools.
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=8143047#post8143047
Just a gentle suggestion, in case anyone feels their lives were improved by getting a much better TiVo by using the free software.


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## consumedsoul (Jan 13, 2013)

Anyone know if the following drive is compatible (newer version of the WD Green HD listed earlier in this thread) w/ my Tivo Premier 4?

WD Green 2 TB Desktop Hard Drive: 3.5 Inch, SATA III, 64 MB Cache - WD20EZRX


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

consumedsoul said:


> Anyone know if the following drive is compatible (newer version of the WD Green HD listed earlier in this thread) w/ my Tivo Premier 4?
> 
> WD Green 2 TB Desktop Hard Drive: 3.5 Inch, SATA III, 64 MB Cache - WD20EZRX


If you can use it in a computer or external enclosure with a computer as extra storage space for shows copied from the TiVo, then if the price is good get it and try it in the TiVo and use it in or with the computer if it doesn't work out and get a WD20EURS to use in the TiVo.

Or if your hard drive buying budget is a bit more constrained, like mine, play it safe and try to find the EURS for about $100 somewhere.

Where did you see that ZRX and what're they asking for it?

Somewhere I saw where someone had tried one of those newer WDs with a Z or an X in the model number and it didn't work out. I don't remember if it was a 1TB or 2TB or which TiVo (might have been an S2 or S3 instead of an S4), but I remember the "it didn't work out" part.

Please note that I was not, repeat, not talking about using an external drive of any kind attached to the TiVo.


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## L David Matheny (Jan 29, 2011)

unitron said:


> Somewhere I saw where someone had tried one of those newer WDs with a Z or an X in the model number and it didn't work out. I don't remember if it was a 1TB or 2TB or which TiVo (might have been an S2 or S3 instead of an S4), but I remember the "it didn't work out" part.


I tried a WD20EFRX (WD Red drive designed for NAS) as reported here. It seemed to work fine for the few hours I had it in my 2-tuner Premiere. The "X" at the end indicates interface type and speed, which should be backward-compatible with earlier SATA models. "R" indicates a 5400-rpm drive with 64MB cache. The second letter is the most interesting. "V" and "U" have been used for WD AV drives, "F" indicates a NAS-optimized drive, and "Z" appears to be the advanced-format equivalent of the older "A" series. See this WD model number format document.


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