# Tivo Bolt Formats New Hard Drive Even w/Old Content - Why?



## tivobw (Oct 26, 2002)

Hi Everyone,

Back in January I upgraded my 500GB Tivo to a 4TB SuperTivo using the Seagate STDR4000100. It seemed to work fine at first but then I kept seeing lockups and freezes.. to fix this you would just have to reboot the tivo, but then 8 months later (about a couple of weeks ago), I tried rebooting it for 20 straight minutes, many times, and I would get the flashing lights on the front of the Tivo, basically advising that the Tivo couldn't find the drive/there was an issue with the drive.

Once that happened I popped in the original Tivo drive and the Tivo booted right up. I then had to call Comcast and have them update the cable card pairing, as each new Hard Drive is a new "device ID" and the pairing has to be fixed. So the fact that this original drive works tells me the Seagate wasn't happy... My wife continued to use this Tivo for a couple of days, recording some shows and so on.

After reviewing all the very informative posts, and discovering there is no apparent reliable 4TB 2.5" option out there (none seems to exist yet - just the Seagate I already tried...), I decided to try a sector-by-sector copy from the Seagate to a new 3.5" 4TB drive. I decided on the 3.5", 4TB WD RED. I chose this drive as it is rated for 24x7 use for NAS systems, so should be good for DVR use, and several folks have used them without issues. Following Ross Walker's guide to fixing a broken Tivo, I tried a sector-by-sector copy using a Linux boot drive (usb thumb drive) and ddrescue. After about 14 hours of waiting, the copy finished with 8277kb/18 errors.

I then connected the WD RED drive to my Tivo using the same components as outlined in this thread by mark1958 (nice work Mark!): http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb...d.php?t=540001. Upon first bootup, the Tivo went to the splash screen, then rebooted again to the splash screen. The Tivo booted up but when I went to "My Recordings," there was nothing there. My recordings were gone. I tried the kickstart 57 trick but after the green recovery screen and several minutes later, Tivo booted up with no recordings.

So, my recordings are gone. I have no idea where they went.. did the original Seagate have corruption in the recording area of the drive table? I have no idea. Alas, the ddrescue trick didn't work for me, and all the recordings are lost.

I had to go on a business trip so I popped the original Tivo hard drive back in. Recall that my wife had been using the Tivo with the original hard drive for a few days before I had the chance to put the WD RED drive in, and had recorded some shows on it. Well, surprise.. same damn thing happened as when I booted up the WD RED: Went to Tivo boot screen, then rebooted again and 2nd time at Tivo boot screen it finally went to the Tivo main screen. I checked recordings... AND THEY WERE ALL GONE! What the heck? Did Tivo release some sort of firmware update, including a feature to wipe the hard drive every time a new one is connected? I have no idea what happened here. Very, very frustrating.

Went on a business trip and now that I'm back, need to plan a time to replace the original Tivo HD with the WD RED 4TB in the enclosure. I wanted to plan this work to occur while I'm in town, in case the tivo craps out...

In the old days you could disconnect a Tivo hard drive, do a sector-by-sector copy to another drive (and then have a backup), then pop the original back in the Tivo and continue using it. Now, it looks like that option is out the window. It seems if you disconnect a hard drive and connect another, Tivo formats it like a new drive. NOT cool.

Anyway, long story short, I plan to connect the WD RED 3.5" 4TB drive soon using an external enclosure, so that I have a 4TB Tivo again. At least the sector-by-sector copy preserved the data format and the Tivo sees all the free space (shows up as 639 HD recording hours). Hopefully this one is more reliable than the Segate 2.5" 4TB. I am really sad about losing the integrated design - loved having the 2.5" drive self-contained within the Tivo - but it's simply not worth the hassle and flakiness (not to mention eventual failure!).

Has anyone else had this experience, where the Tivo initializes the hard drive every time a new one is connected (even if it is a backup from another drive)? Is my Tivo possessed? Am I doing something wrong? Ugh!


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## ggieseke (May 30, 2008)

I swapped drives on my Roamios dozens of times while writing MFS Reformatter, and when the original drive went back in it was always exactly the same. If you want to maintain the CableCARD pairing you have to be careful to keep it out of the TiVo until the original drive goes back in, but that was the only issue.

People have also used MFS Tools 3.2 to copy and expand Bolts without any loss of recordings. Normally you shouldn't lose anything. 20.6.1a.RC10 may have changed that, but I haven't heard any other reports.


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## tivobw (Oct 26, 2002)

Thanks; I'll give MFS Tools 3.2 a try. This thread looks helpful:

https://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=529148


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## tivobw (Oct 26, 2002)

Tried using MFSCopy from the Seagate ("broken" drive - /dev/sdb) to the new WD RED 4TB (/dev/sda). Got this error when trying mfstool copy -ai /dev/sdb /dev/sda

*Can not determine primary boot partition from boot sector.*

Looks like the boot sector is toast! Any ideas? Thanks.


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## ggieseke (May 30, 2008)

When you upgraded to 4TB in the first place, what software did you use?

It sounds like something chewed up the first sector on the drive, the partition table, or both. If the damage is confined to just those sectors we can probably recover it by recreating them with a hex editor like HxD.


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## tivobw (Oct 26, 2002)

I used your software, mfsr. 

Thanks for the reply; I've decided to just move on with a new 3.5 inch WD red 4tb. I've set it up and got it working, again using your software (which I submitted a donation for back in January). I can't spend any more time trying to salvage The old Seagate drive.


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## JerryK2 (Jan 4, 2017)

ggieseke & tivobw,

I am almost completely certain that the current version of the TiVo software is responsible for deleting your recordings on the Seagate 4TB drive.

I, too have had issues with reliability on the 4TB Seagate drive, but save many (countless??) reboots, all of my recordings were accessible and uncorrupted.

When I upgraded the Bolt from 500GB to 4TB, I used MFS reformatter, version 1.0.0.3, I believe. Yesterday, I received a WD Purple 8TB drive and went through the process with MFS 1.0.0.4 and all went perfectly. I completed guided setup to make sure all was good, then powered down and swapped in the old 4TB Seagate in order to initiate the lengthy process of backing up all of my recordings to a newly purchased external HDD via TiVo Desktop. When the Bolt powered up, however, there were no recordings whatsoever. I checked 'Recently Deleted,' and the folder was empty. I then went through TiVo Desktop, and this gave further confirmation that all of the recordings had been deleted - most likely by the TiVo during the boot process.

The boot didn't take much longer than usual, so I guess it could be possible that the file data is still there, but is being hidden in the software interface.

So, be advised: if you plan to upgrade a previously used drive due to reliability issues or a desire for more capacity, back up recordings and OnePass info PRIOR to formatting/installing the new TiVo drive.

ggieseke, if you have thoughts on recovering the lost shows, I am open to suggestions. Thanks for all of your work on the MFS software and in these threads; I sent a donation along last night


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

It's always been a good idea to back up any shows you want to keep before messing with any TiVo hard drive.

Just like you would back up a PC before messing with a hard drive. The Tivo is no different. It's always possible for something unexpected to happen. Which is the reason you back things up before messing with that stuff.


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## JerryK2 (Jan 4, 2017)

Of course - backing up a drive before working on a device is always a good practice, however, in this case, the only modification was changing the enclosure that the eSata cable was connected to.

I powered down the Bolt, connected the eSata cable to the new enclosure with the new drive, then after MFS & guided setup, powered down and connected the eSata cable to the enclosure with the 4TB Seagate drive. 

I can't think of any computer OS that completely erases content from a drive if a new system drive is temporarily used in place of the original one. Thus, the warning - it appears that it is no longer possible to swap out a drive without all content being erased on the first HD by the TiVo system software.

Of course, if there were shows I was really worried about losing, I would have backed them up first, however, I was too excited about not having to reboot my Bolt a few times every day...


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## sfhub (Jan 6, 2007)

So what are the details for this new "erase a drive if changed" feature?

If I clone (externally) WD Red 6TB #1 to same model WD Red 6TB #2, will TiVo then erase WD Red 6TB #2 when I stick it in? Once I put in #2, then put in #1, will it then erase #1?

Does #2 need to be different size drive for feature to be triggered?

Is this on Bolt only or also on Roamio?

Which software version did this start?


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