# Tivo HD Finally Upgraded



## spike2k5

It's upgraded using WinMFS.

*(New - Includes Tivo HD upgraded to 2.5 TB)*
Screenshots are *here*.

Beta Guide is *here*.

Support and download can be found *here*.


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## joneSi

Let me be the first to say "You=Rockstar"

I'm sure more info to follow in the next few days, looking forward to it.

joneSi


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## bkdtv

Has this been tested under Windows Vista?

Is an updated version of MFSLive in the works too?


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## jmpage2

So basically put the original drive as well as the new, larger one, into a SATA equipped PC and off to the races.

I would also need to know if this runs under Vista since unfortunately that's what my one SATA equipped PC is running.

//EDIT

Nevermind, this looks to be a CD bootable application, so no install worried at all.

750GB drives from several manufacturers are going for around $210 shipped. Is there a particular one that's recommended?


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## jmpage2

Looks like they say that Tivo HD is supported in the tools, but then there's another update indicating that the Alpha version 2 will support Tivo HD and is not out yet.


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## spike2k5

jmpage2 said:


> Looks like they say that Tivo HD is supported in the tools, but then there's another update indicating that the Alpha version 2 will support Tivo HD and is not out yet.


It's not out yet. Bootable CD is a linux version which does not contain this support.


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## spike2k5

bkdtv said:


> Has this been tested under Windows Vista?


I will test it on Vista soon. I don't see why it wouldn't work on it.



bkdtv said:


> Is an updated version of MFSLive in the works too?


I don't think I will be updating Mfstools included in MFSLive Linux Bootable CD. It would require almost complete rewrite to make it work so I don't have time to do so but if I do, it will be much later.


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## mchips

Thanks for the thread... I wasn't going to get a TiVo HD until I knew I could upgrade it myself...

I want to be able to upgrade as well as re-image the drive myself, especially when necessary if the drive begins having problems after continued use... often it isn't necessary to buy a new drive when it starts having problems, as a reimage of the drive can resolve many of its problems...

I had always been a supporter of Weeknees, as they had always provided instructions for self-upgrades, as well as provided a service to those who were unable or did not want to do the upgrade themselves, until recently... now they're withholding what they know in what appears to be an attempt to force more to rely on them... not cool... unless someone knows something I don't with respect to this...

In any case, my thanks to the OP and MFSLive... :up:


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## jmpage2

spike2k5 said:


> It's not out yet. Bootable CD is a linux version which does not contain this support.


Anyone have any idea of when this will be made available as a beta or otherwise? Would the CLI Series 3 instructions work for the HD Tivo?


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## ZeoTiVo

mchips said:


> now they're withholding what they know in what appears to be an attempt to force more to rely on them... not cool... unless someone knows something I don't with respect to this...


all they might be withholding is how they themsleves figured out to do the upgrades. What they post in their instructions is what is known in the wild. basically compiling all the info into one concise, best practice document. Plus they never gavea promise to keep it updated in a timely manner anyway. Why begrudge them the chance to sell some upgrades when the market is hot? I personally would also do my own upgrades and know the how of it so I can deal with any troubleshooting of my TiVo but there are plenty of people figuring out how to upgrade the TiVo HD as more or less a public service that allows a commercial venture to just sell the upgrades and not have to give the knowhow directly.


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## ZeoTiVo

spike2k5 said:


> I will test it on Vista soon. I don't see why it wouldn't work on it.
> 
> I don't think I will be updating Mfstools included in MFSLive Linux Bootable CD. It would require almost complete rewrite to make it work so I don't have time to do so but if I do, it will be much later.


I think us casual upgraders who just upgrade our own systems as we get them will like a windows version very much.  Thanks :up:


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## dvr4me

I have updated the information regarding this on [post=5351201]the TiVo HD FAQ.[/post]

Thanks for your work spike2k5.


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## spike2k5

mchips said:


> I had always been a supporter of Weeknees, as they had always provided instructions for self-upgrades, as well as provided a service to those who were unable or did not want to do the upgrade themselves, until recently... now they're withholding what they know in what appears to be an attempt to force more to rely on them... not cool... unless someone knows something I don't with respect to this...


Tivo Inc made some changes in MFS so none of the previous upgrade tools will work. I think any upgrading company using mfstools won't be able to upgrade.

Tivo HD was released last week and many including myself assumed that mfstools will work. I got it last friday and took me all weekend to make it work. So I'm sure many upgrading companies just found out as well and are scrambling to make it work. If you want to find out, you can order one from them and see if they'll send you one right away. I'm pretty sure they can't.


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## jmpage2

spike2k5 said:


> Tivo Inc made some changes in MFS so none of the previous upgrade tools will work. I think any upgrading company using mfstools won't be able to upgrade.
> 
> Tivo HD was released last week and many including myself assumed that mfstools will work. I got it last friday and took me all weekend to make it work. So I'm sure many upgrading companies just found out as well and are scrambling to make it work. If you want to find out, you can order one from them and see if they'll send you one right away. I'm pretty sure they can't.


Are we looking at a matter of weeks or months before the new software is released to the eager consumers out there?


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## spike2k5

jmpage2 said:


> Are we looking at a matter of weeks or months before the new software is released to the eager consumers out there?


Will be available for alpha testers in few days.


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## mchips

spike2k5 said:


> Tivo Inc made some changes in MFS so none of the previous upgrade tools will work. I think any upgrading company using mfstools won't be able to upgrade.
> 
> Tivo HD was released last week and many including myself assumed that mfstools will work. I got it last friday and took me all weekend to make it work. So I'm sure many upgrading companies just found out as well and are scrambling to make it work. If you want to find out, you can order one from them and see if they'll send you one right away. I'm pretty sure they can't.


That makes me feel a little better about Weaknees... I had just lost a little respect for them when I read they increased their prices overnight, with people assuming they knew how to do it while no one else did (with speculation they may be getting help directly from TiVo)... it just appeared greedy to me... much like when people would take advantage of people who just experienced a natural disaster, like a hurricane, earthquake, etc., by gouging the prices of necessities like water (which is now thankfully illegal)...

I still see that they provide a good service for those who can't or don't want to upgrade themselves, and I had hoped there was more to the story than what I'd read thus far, which is why I said "unless someone knows something I don't with respect to this."

Hopefully, there will always be someone out there willing to share what they know or find out...


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## WeBoat

Incredible. What an effort!


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## jmpage2

spike2k5 said:


> Will be available for alpha testers in few days.


That's awesome! Will the alpha support just single drive to single drive upgrades or will it support doing upgrades to a pair of drives, etc?

I'm contemplating getting a pair of smaller SATA drives as opposed to shelling out the bucks for a 750GB or 1TB model.


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## bkdtv

jmpage2 said:


> 750GB drives from several manufacturers are going for around $210 shipped. Is there a particular one that's recommended?


See FAQ #30 of the Series3 eSATA Drive Expansion FAQ. The same drive recommendations apply for internal use.


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## jmpage2

bkdtv said:


> See FAQ #30 of the Series3 eSATA Drive Expansion FAQ. The same drive recommendations apply for internal use.


Those drive recommendations are for drives used with eSATA enclosures. It's a good place to start though. I'm familiar with the difference between desktop and server class hard drives but I was not familiar with drives that are 'certified' for 24/7 use.


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## bkdtv

jmpage2 said:


> Those drive recommendations are for drives used with eSATA enclosures. It's a good place to start though. I'm familiar with the difference between desktop and server class hard drives but I was not familiar with drives that are 'certified' for 24/7 use.


The FAQ is about eSATA but the drives themselves are the same. The only difference is that external (eSATA) use requires an enclosure.


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## SCSIRAID

spike2k5 said:


> Tivo Inc made some changes in MFS so none of the previous upgrade tools will work. I think any upgrading company using mfstools won't be able to upgrade.
> 
> Tivo HD was released last week and many including myself assumed that mfstools will work. I got it last friday and took me all weekend to make it work. So I'm sure many upgrading companies just found out as well and are scrambling to make it work. If you want to find out, you can order one from them and see if they'll send you one right away. I'm pretty sure they can't.


This begs one question..... If they remerge the source tree and release new firmware for the original S3... will an S3 upgraded with MFStools stop working due to MFS changes in the the new firmware???


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## spike2k5

SCSIRAID said:


> This begs one question..... If they remerge the source tree and release new firmware for the original S3... will an S3 upgraded with MFStools stop working due to MFS changes in the the new firmware???


If they do merge the source tree, they would have to update MFS and that might not be easy. I have an idea as to how to do it. Maybe they figured it out already. Who knows.


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## rodalpho

Huh. Isn't this the first time they've changed the FS definitions in, like, forever? Why would they do that? Maybe it's required for MRV/TTG with cablelabs' blessing? That would kinda suck for the old S3 owners, if so.


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## spike2k5

rodalpho said:


> Huh. Isn't this the first time they've changed the FS definitions in, like, forever?


I haven't been around long enough to know there were any previous changes. My interested in Tivo dates back only to 2005, thus "2k5"



rodalpho said:


> Why would they do that? Maybe it's required for MRV/TTG with cablelabs' blessing? That would kinda suck for the old S3 owners, if so.


Changes are due to 64bit addressing schema for hard drive access in MFS.
Looks like it's designed to lift 2TiB limit on the total hard drive storage space but I'm not sure it did. Like I said, maybe they figured it out for old S3.


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## rodalpho

Ahhhhh OK. Good news, then.


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## megazone

I had an email exchange with Lou Jacob of DVRupgrade.com today and he told me that the pre-orders for the expanded TiVo HD were based on the expectation of the existing tools working. His best guess is that WeaKnees is in the same boat.

He also told me he's been in contact with Spike2k5 and is following the development of his tool, so they may be using that soon to process the orders. He said they're also open to commissioning someone to re-write MFSTools and they'd return the modified version to the community - maybe Spike2k5 can get a commission for the work and do it sooner rather than later?

They'll be contacting anyone who ordered an expanded HD to let them know the situation and people can wait or cancel their orders without any trouble. TiVo is not working with them.

So it looks like Spike2k5 is the first to get this working.


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## aaronwt

Will the Bumwine method work?


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## megazone

I doubt it since they just use MFSTools to do the expansion and that does not work on the new partitions.


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## GoldenTiger

Where can I download this? The link just has mfslive, not WinMFS ... I gather it's not publicly released yet, but is there anywhere I can grab it to see if it works for me? If not, it's not like I couldn't just re-image the drive from the original image . I'm running on Vista64, as well, and would like to see if it will even work with that. I have the cable guy coming with my cablecards on Thursday morning, so I want to have the TiVo HD prepped by then.


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## jmpage2

GoldenTiger said:


> Where can I download this? The link just has mfslive, not WinMFS ... I gather it's not publicly released yet, but is there anywhere I can grab it to see if it works for me? If not, it's not like I couldn't just re-image the drive from the original image . I'm running on Vista64, as well, and would like to see if it will even work with that. I have the cable guy coming with my cablecards on Thursday morning, so I want to have the TiVo HD prepped by then.


The *author* has stated in this very thread that it will be available in a few days for alpha testing.


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## GoldenTiger

Who is the author? Not everyone keeps up with the TiVo dev. scene ya know .


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## megazone

It is not yet available.


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## GoldenTiger

jmpage2 said:


> The *author* has stated in this very thread that it will be available in a few days for alpha testing.


Alpha testing, not publicly. I don't really care if it botches up my drive, I can just re-image it. I want to have something to try and if it works, great. I looked at his forums already and it is not available for signup even for testing. There's no need to be rude (implied) about it, jmpage2.



megazone said:


> It is not yet available.


If you had actually looked at your link, you'd see I had already posted in there . I am looking for more info/a download link.


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## mchips

GoldenTiger said:


> Who is the author? Not everyone keeps up with the TiVo dev. scene ya know .


See posts #1, #7, and #15 above...

I hadn't known he was the author until I had read all of those posts myself, specifically 7 and 15.


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## jmpage2

GoldenTiger said:


> Alpha testing, not publicly. I don't really care if it botches up my drive, I can just re-image it. I want to have something to try and if it works, great. I looked at his forums already and it is not available for signup even for testing. There's no need to be rude (implied) about it, jmpage2.
> 
> If you had actually looked at your link, you'd see I had already posted in there . I am looking for more info/a download link.


Spike is the author. You know, the guy that started up the thread and indicated things like "it will be ready for alpha soon" and "I will test it on Vista", etc.

I'm not being rude, you're just being a bit thick in not reading the thread. :up:


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## spike2k5

GoldenTiger said:


> Where can I download this? The link just has mfslive, not WinMFS ... I gather it's not publicly released yet, but is there anywhere I can grab it to see if it works for me? If not, it's not like I couldn't just re-image the drive from the original image . I'm running on Vista64, as well, and would like to see if it will even work with that. I have the cable guy coming with my cablecards on Thursday morning, so I want to have the TiVo HD prepped by then.


Patience my friend. 
I think you can upgrade it before the cable guy comes. It only takes 10 minutes.


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## jfh3

spike2k5 said:


> Patience my friend.
> I think you can upgrade it before the cable guy comes. It only takes 10 minutes.


It would also be easier to upgrade before the Cablecards are installed. Some folks had problems with upgrades on the S3 when doing so after a CC install (though I used the bumwine method and had no problems upgrading after my CC install)


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## aaronwt

I just upgraded one of my units from a 500GB drive to a 750GB drive with MFSLive. It's working fine with my cablecards.
And when I went from 250GB to 500GB I specifically waited until after my cablecards were installed so I would have the original drive that already had the cable card info so if I ever had problems with the larger drive I could just revert back to the original and not have any problems since it was already set up the cable cards installed before I copied it.


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## sfhub

jfh3 said:


> It would also be easier to upgrade before the Cablecards are installed. Some folks had problems with upgrades on the S3 when doing so after a CC install (though I used the bumwine method and had no problems upgrading after my CC install)


In my experience as long as you are using the original drive as the source image, it doesn't matter whether you pair before or after the CableCARD install. My cable system has enabled CPMS. Now if you plan to use a different image or have a pre-populated upgrade ordered from someone else, then it is less trouble to do the CableCARD install after installing the new drive.


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## rainwater

sfhub said:


> In my experience as long as you are using the original drive as the source image, it doesn't matter whether you pair before or after the CableCARD install. My cable system has enabled CPMS. Now if you plan to use a different image or have a pre-populated upgrade ordered from someone else, then it is less trouble to do the CableCARD install after installing the new drive.


In either case, a Clear & Delete Everything seemed to fix the pairing problem on the S3.


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## sfhub

rainwater said:


> In either case, a Clear & Delete Everything seemed to fix the pairing problem on the S3.


Nope, it actually triggers it. You might be thinking of a different problem.

At least on Motorola CableCARD systems, C&DE will cause the Data portion of the pairing information to be regenerated, breaking the pairing. One will only notice the broken pairing if their area has enabled CPMS and they are watching a channel with non-zero CCI.

Once you become unpaired you really need to call in the new #s and get them paired. This could be a 5 minute procedure or much longer depending on the experience of the person you get on the phone. It is supposed to be getting better, but if you can avoid re-pairing through simple re-sequencing of your actions, it is worth doing.


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## morac

sfhub said:


> Once you become unpaired you really need to call in the new #s and get them paired. This could be a 5 minute procedure or much longer depending on the experience of the person you get on the phone. It is supposed to be getting better, but if you can avoid re-pairing through simple re-sequencing of your actions, it is worth doing.


In my case with Comcast it took 3 calls and over two hour's worth of time. The first two calls I made I was told it was not possible to pair the cards over the phone (the 2nd time by a supervisor). On the third call I was also told that it was not possible, but after being adamant the person finally re-paired my CCs, but would only do so once I verified my identity by providing the last 4 digits of my social security number. I don't know why this was required since I'm not aware of any way to hack CCs, but I'm just letting you know that it isn't as simple a procedure as one would think it should be.

So I would avoid having to re-pair the cards at all costs.


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## jfh3

morac said:


> In my case with Comcast it took 3 calls and over two hour's worth of time. The first two calls I made I was told it was not possible to pair the cards over the phone (the 2nd time by a supervisor). On the third call I was also told that it was not possible, but after being adamant the person finally re-paired my CCs, but would only do so once I verified my identity by providing the last 4 digits of my social security number. I don't know why this was required since I'm not aware of any way to hack CCs, but I'm just letting you know that it isn't as simple a procedure as one would think it should be.
> 
> So I would avoid having to re-pair the cards at all costs.


You got a bad call center. I've repaired the cards in one of my S3s a few times over the phone in about 10 minutes.


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## GoldenTiger

Just a report... tested the Alpha with a TiVoHD drive with a few recordings on it. I successfully copied the entire contents and then expanded the partition using WinMFS to make it work with the extra capacity to a 500gb Maxtor drive. It shows the proper amount of space, and works 100% perfectly with High-Def content. I ran it under Windows Vista 64-bit Edition at that !


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## tivoupgrade

GoldenTiger said:


> Just a report... tested the Alpha with a TiVoHD drive with a few recordings on it. I successfully copied the entire contents and then expanded the partition using WinMFS to make it work with the extra capacity to a 500gb Maxtor drive. It shows the proper amount of space, and works 100% perfectly with High-Def content. I ran it under Windows Vista 64-bit Edition at that !


I've done a few initial tests, as well. Successfully backed up and restored, then expanded to a larger drive, too (using WinXP SP2). Definitely more testing is in order, but its good to see so much progress so early on. Thx Spike.


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## aaronwt

So can you boot into Vista with the TiVoHD drive and it won't muck it up? Or do you run WinMFS and hook the TiVO drive up to the USB with and external case after strating WinMFS? I had a PC set up just for copying the TiVO drives, but it was for booting from a CD and it uses an old 1Ghz P3 cpu.


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## bkdtv

aaronwt said:


> So can you boot into Vista with the TiVoHD drive and it won't muck it up?


Yes. Windows Vista and Windows XP2 will not attempt to mount the drive on their own. Hence, you can boot into Vista and Windows XP SP2 with the TivoHD drive attached without messing anything up. Just do not not attempt to mount it using Windows' Disk Management .

Windows 2000 and earlier versions of Windows will "muck it up."


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## joneSi

In the excitement of this, I have purchased a new 750gb WD SATA drive from newegg. I'd be happy to help out testing if necessary, though, I won't be able to do it until middle of August. Not afraid to lose recordings and settings if the 750 replacement doesn't take kindly to the upgrade. I

I plan to keep the 250 drive as a backup in case the whole thing comes down. Let me know if I can help. 

joneSi


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## jhoak

Is there some manner of mailing list or notification list that I can register with to be notified when the upgrade procedure goes "live"?


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## nocturne1

My 750GB drive arrived yesterday, and my Tivo HD today. Cablecards will be installed on tuesday. Now all I need is this....


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## spike2k5

jhoak said:


> Is there some manner of mailing list or notification list that I can register with to be notified when the upgrade procedure goes "live"?


Upgrade procedure is being tested by few right now. You can signup on my forum if you want to blaze a trail.


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## b3ar

spike2k5 said:


> Upgrade procedure is being tested by few right now. You can signup on my forum if you want to blaze a trail.


I've got a torch ready.


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## spike2k5

Made some minor adjustments and things look good so follow the link on the first post if you want to give it a try.


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## jmpage2

spike2k5 said:


> Made some minor adjustments and things look good so follow the link on the first post if you want to give it a try.


Thanks for all of your hard work on this for the rest of us slackers. We just need to register to get the latest Beta that supports this or is there a different link to this Alpha build?


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## spike2k5

jmpage2 said:


> Thanks for all of your hard work on this for the rest of us slackers. We just need to register to get the latest Beta that supports this or is there a different link to this Alpha build?


If you go to top of the post (1st post) there is a link for guide & download.


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## AbMagFab

WinMFS is great. Works in Vista, and you can backup/restore any connected SATA drive (I connected directly to my SATA ports on the MB).

No need for the mfs boot disks anymore.

Great stuff Spike!


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## Beantownbeanie

Seagate 750GB Internal Serial ATA Hard Drive 

Model: ST3750640AS-RK


IS this OK???? I can't find the one locally that is the Seagate 750GB Internal Serial ATA Hard Drive 

Model: ST3750640NS like the post....this one ends in NS and the the local model ends in AS


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## bkdtv

Beantownbeanie said:


> Seagate 750GB Internal Serial ATA Hard Drive
> 
> Model: ST3750640AS-RK
> 
> IS this OK???? I can't find the one locally that is the Seagate 750GB Internal Serial ATA Hard Drive
> 
> Model: ST3750640NS like the post....this one ends in NS and the the local model ends in AS


That drive is not certified for 24/7 operation. It may work just fine, or it may die on you in six months. I don't know about you, but I would rather not risk hundreds of gigabytes of HDTV recordings just to save a few bucks.

If long-term reliability is a concern, and you want a 750Gb drive, then I would opt for the Seagate DB35. You can buy the 750Gb DB35 (ST3750840SCE) for $265 + shipping from TheNerds.net. They also sell the 500Gb version (ST3500830SCE) for ~$150, but they are currently out of stock.

Note you support spike2k5's efforts by using that link.


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## Beantownbeanie

bkdtv said:


> That drive is not certified for 24/7 operation. It may work just fine, or it may die on you in six months. I don't know about you, but I would rather not risk hundreds of gigabytes of HDTV recordings just to save a few bucks.
> 
> If long-term reliability is a concern, and you want a 750Gb drive, then I would opt for the Seagate DB35. You can buy the 750Gb DB35 (ST3750840SCE) for $265 + shipping from TheNerds.net. They also sell the 500Gb version (ST3500830SCE) for ~$150, but they are currently out of stock.
> 
> Note you support spike2k5's efforts by using that link.


THanks BK...its not the money. I have to buy it locally. I can't do online. My choices are limited to whatever is sold at BB or CC. They are the 2 places closest to me.


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## rainwater

bkdtv said:


> That drive is not certified for 24/7 operation. It may work just fine, or it may die on you in six months. I don't know about you, but I would rather not risk hundreds of gigabytes of HDTV recordings just to save a few bucks.
> 
> If long-term reliability is a concern, and you want a 750Gb drive, then I would opt for the Seagate DB35. You can buy the 750Gb DB35 (ST3750840SCE) for $265 + shipping from TheNerds.net. They also sell the 500Gb version (ST3500830SCE) for ~$150, but they are currently out of stock.
> 
> Note you support spike2k5's efforts by using that link.


I've used Western Digital drives in my TiVos for years and they weren't designed for "24/7 use". However, I have yet to have one die on me. I have not seen any data that says that the DB35 drives actually have a lower failure rate than other drives. Frankly, I am more concerned with balancing low sound levels with a good price.


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## tivoupgrade

rainwater said:


> I've used Western Digital drives in my TiVos for years and they weren't designed for "24/7 use". However, I have yet to have one die on me. I have not seen any data that says that the DB35 drives actually have a lower failure rate than other drives. Frankly, I am more concerned with balancing low sound levels with a good price.


That's because none exists... And the mechanicals of the DB35 are the same as any other current Seagate drive; its the firmware that is slightly different.

The reality of the situation is that the reliability of the drive you put in will be based upon two factors (assuming you are purchasing a high quality brand)

1) randomness; a certain percentage of all drives will fail, no matter what you do 
2) handling; if you drop or mishandle a drive, it will have a shorter life

With that in mind, buying locally is certainly not a bad idea, especially if its in retail packaging (very protected during the shipping process). And buying mail order is not a problem either as long as the drive is properly packaged and not drop kicked in the process.

You should really just do what you are most comfortable with, when it comes to those two choices and you will be fine.


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## jmpage2

tivoupgrade said:


> That's because none exists... And the mechanicals of the DB35 are the same as any other current Seagate drive; its the firmware that is slightly different.
> 
> The reality of the situation is that the reliability of the drive you put in will be based upon two factors (assuming you are purchasing a high quality brand)
> 
> 1) randomness; a certain percentage of all drives will fail, no matter what you do
> 2) handling; if you drop or mishandle a drive, it will have a shorter life
> 
> With that in mind, buying locally is certainly not a bad idea, especially if its in retail packaging (very protected during the shipping process). And buying mail order is not a problem either as long as the drive is properly packaged and not drop kicked in the process.
> 
> You should really just do what you are most comfortable with, when it comes to those two choices and you will be fine.


Is there any capability to load new FW to a Seagate drive to make the 7200.10 drive behave with DB35 profile for acoustics, etc?

I just bought what I thought would be a 7200.9 500GB Seagate drive from CC ($105 after coupon) and opened up the box to find a7200.10 drive in the package.

I know that the 7200.10 is a tank of a drive but it has a reputation for being noisy. If there was a way to load it with DB35 FW that would be great.


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## tivoupgrade

jmpage2 said:


> Is there any capability to load new FW to a Seagate drive to make the 7200.10 drive behave with DB35 profile for acoustics, etc?
> 
> I just bought what I thought would be a 7200.9 500GB Seagate drive from CC ($105 after coupon) and opened up the box to find a7200.10 drive in the package.
> 
> I know that the 7200.10 is a tank of a drive but it has a reputation for being noisy. If there was a way to load it with DB35 FW that would be great.


There is no way you'll be able to do that, unfortunately. Even if its possible, with that particular drive, its tightly controlled by Seagate. The reason they offer the DB35 drives is for the very reason you speak of, however.


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## jmpage2

tivoupgrade said:


> There is no way you'll be able to do that, unfortunately. Even if its possible, with that particular drive, its tightly controlled by Seagate. The reason they offer the DB35 drives is for the very reason you speak of, however.


OK, fair enough. I know that there are some tools for the IBM/HP drives that do similar things so I thought I'd ask.


----------



## bkdtv

Thanks to spike2k5's work, my TivoHD now has a 750Gb drive.

Screenshot below.


----------



## Beantownbeanie

DITTO...big time. Thanks Spike...

I had to get BB to price match a drive at CC so I now have a 500GB with 64 hours on my Tivo HD. It only cost me 109 to do the upgrade. It was AMAZINGLY simple. Thanks again....whooo hooo.


----------



## jfh3

Beantownbeanie said:


> so I now have a 500GB with 64 hours on my Tivo HD. It only cost me 109 to do the upgrade. It was AMAZINGLY simple. Thanks again....whooo hooo.


So what drive did you end up getting? The 500GB WD on sale?


----------



## Beantownbeanie

jfh3 said:


> So what drive did you end up getting? The 500GB WD on sale?


ST3500641AS-RK 119 at CC price matched to BB and then I had some coupons to knock it down more. 
This was so easy I may go ahead and the next time I see a TB on sale go buy it online and then put the 500GB as an additional drive on my server.


----------



## ThreeSoFar

I upgraded my S3 myself when I first got it, been going fine ever since. That was before this came out. I think it was just using regular mfstools?



Is there some software update coming from TiVo that might break that?


----------



## bkdtv

ThreeSoFar said:


> I upgraded my S3 myself when I first got it, been going fine ever since. That was before this came out. I think it was just using regular mfstools?
> 
> Is there some software update coming from TiVo that might break that?


People have been upgrading the hard drives on their Tivos for _years_.

No Tivo update has ever broken a drive upgrade, as far as I know. I would still hang on to the original drive though, just in case.


----------



## jmpage2

Beantownbeanie said:


> ST3500641AS-RK 119 at CC price matched to BB and then I had some coupons to knock it down more.
> This was so easy I may go ahead and the next time I see a TB on sale go buy it online and then put the 500GB as an additional drive on my server.


That's the one I bought too, I think I ended up paying $105 + tax.

It does have a reputation for being very noisy with seeks though.


----------



## cr33p

What type of drive do I need for my TivoHD to upgrade? I know it has to be an SATA, is the connection called secure connect?


----------



## 1283

cr33p said:


> What type of drive do I need for my TivoHD to upgrade? I know it has to be an SATA, is the connection called secure connect?


Ignore "secure connect". Any SATA drive would work.


----------



## aaronwt

Although you can get a good deal on the Western Digital drives. You can pick up their 750GB perpendicular recording drive for $200 and their 500 GB drive is a little over $100 now. Both of those drives are very quiet, especially after enabling the acoustic management.


----------



## 1283

aaronwt said:


> Although you can get a good deal on the Western Digital drives. You can pick up their 750GB perpendicular recording drive for $200 and their 500 GB drive is a little over $100 now. Both of those drives are very quiet, especially after enabling the acoustic management.


Yes, WD would be my top choice. All of my TiVos have WD drives. The regular Seagates are too noisy (for TiVo usage), and the DB35 drives are too expensive.


----------



## ThreeSoFar

I've always used Samsung drives, been very pleased with their holding up well and being quiet.


----------



## cr33p

Thanks for all the info, I see newegg has 750 gb WD for 199 before shipping. So is everyone pretty comfortable that the new tools are working ok and so are the tivo's that have been upgraded so far? I just got a new TivoHD and want to pop in a new drive. What could be the potential problems?


----------



## KiddSupreme

I know this might be a dumb question (at least at this point in time), but can anyone explain why/why not it is/is not possible to utilize two internal hard drives in the TivoHD? I remember reading Megazone's opening of the TivoHD @ Tivolovers that there seems to be screwholes in place for a dual hard drive harness (ala weaknees dual drive upgrade for Series 1 & 2). 

Now I know obviously there isn't any harness created yet for the TivoHD (and maybe there never will be), but from a technical and software standpoint, would this be in the realm of possibility? I not really interested in an external sata drive setup. I much rather have everything inside to make it easier to move if need be.

Maybe even a setup such that the external SATA is activated, but the drive itself is internal to the machine. Something like that might work (might not). Anyways, just wanted to bounce some ideas off you guys and see what you might think.

Personally for me, my dream is to have a dual drive 2 TB drive setup in my TivoHD...  Maybe I'm dreaming?


----------



## bkdtv

KiddSupreme said:


> I know this might be a dumb question (at least at this point in time), but can anyone explain why/why not it is/is not possible to utilize two internal hard drives in the TivoHD? I remember reading Megazone's opening of the TivoHD @ Tivolovers that there seems to be screwholes in place for a dual hard drive harness (ala weaknees dual drive upgrade for Series 1 & 2).


The TivoHD has one internal SATA connector and one external eSATA connector. The eSATA connection is not supported by the current software / driver.


----------



## KiddSupreme

oh yeah, i know. Something about a Kickstart 62, right?


----------



## sfhub

KiddSupreme said:


> oh yeah, i know. Something about a Kickstart 62, right?


No, I believe he is saying eSata is not supported on the TiVo HD at this time, period. Kickstart 62 included in that statement.


----------



## KiddSupreme

I guess I didn't make myself clear enough in the last post.

1) Yes, I know the eSATA is not activated
2) Yes, I know that the Kickstart 62 doesn't work for the TivoHD

My question was it in the real of possibility if/when it does occur to have "two hard drives internal to the TivoHD, even if one of those is the connector destined for the eSATA port."

That's it, nothing more, nothing less. If anyone can shed light on that question alone, i would appreciated it.


----------



## sfhub

There's a thread about routing the eSATA cable back into the S3 to create a 2 drive internal system. You can search for it if you want. Some of it is probably applicable to the THD.


----------



## KiddSupreme

sfhub said:


> There's a thread about routing the eSATA cable back into the S3 to create a 2 drive internal system. You can search for it if you want. Some of it is probably applicable to the THD.


Thanks sfhub. That's what I was looking for. I'll do a search.


----------



## sfhub

I went and tried to search for the thread but couldn't find anything. It is possible I'm confusing the earlier attempts to route the internal SATA cable to an external RAID box. In any event, the issues to look at would be where to route the eSATA cable and whether you need to drill holes or can use existing air vents, where to mount the drive, and where to splice the power. You also want to investigate whether the internal power supply has the juice to handle 2 drives.


----------



## KiddSupreme

Well the power requirement would probably be the thing. According to this picture @ tivolovers.com <Click Here> , the external sata port is connected to what seems to be a regular sata connector inside. My apologies if direct linking is frowned upon, I just wanted to point out what i saw.

Just wondering though if there would be a power problem. There wasn't one in the Series 1/2, why would there be in the Series 3? Does SATA draw more power than IDE drives? Just curious.


----------



## sfhub

It does look like you should be able to connect your internal SATA cable directly to the motherboard.

Regarding the power supply, it just depends on the ratings for the power supply they chose to use. It may have the amps to handle a second drive with no problem. Not saying it is a definite issue, just something to look at.

S1/S2 models had incarnations that had 2 internal drives. S3 / HD have always been single drive designs. It is within the realm of possibility that to cut costs, a more limited power supply would be considered if the design never intended for there to be 2 internal drives. There is nothing that says they have to do this either. Just depends on what they chose to use.


----------



## jlib

Beantownbeanie said:


> Seagate 750GB Internal Serial ATA Hard Drive
> 
> Model: ST3750640AS-RK
> 
> IS this OK???? I can't find the one locally that is the Seagate 750GB Internal Serial ATA Hard Drive
> 
> Model: ST3750640NS like the post....this one ends in NS and the the local model ends in AS


The enterprise drive (NS) only makes sense in a multi-drive server environment because you are paying for the unneeded anti rotational vibration compensation mechanism. The AS is a more appropriate drive and has a better published annualized failure rate than the NS but the default head seek acoustics are not appropriate for a DVR.

If you are interested in Seagate then the most appropriate drive as bkdtv sugessted is the DB35, which is essentially an AS with modified firmware including a detuned head seek. If you don't have purchase access to a DB35 or are not willing to pay the premium then a WD or Hitachi is a better route (because of the adjustable acoustics without needing to buy their DVR model.)


----------



## 1283

KiddSupreme said:


> Well the power requirement would probably be the thing. According to this picture @ tivolovers.com <Click Here> , the external sata port is connected to what seems to be a regular sata connector inside.


Yes, that internal SATA connector can be used, which is not available for the S3. Someone did route the S3 eSATA port back inside the S3, but that didn't look like a clean/permanent solution.


----------



## megazone

Once the second SATA port is enabled, there is no reason you couldn't mount a second drive internally. The only issue will be splitting the power connection for two drives.

I expect DVRupgrade.com and WeaKnees.com will offer brackets and kits.


----------



## spike2k5

WinMFS has been upgraded to Beta status Now.

Also, posted MFSLive Linux Boot CD Version 1.3-pre3.
This version has TivoHD support as well as fixes for mfstools restore -r 2 or mfsadd -r 2 for partitions greater than 274GB.


----------



## Justin Thyme

Spike- is there any change on the 1TB limit per volume?

I know there are a lot of other reasons Tivo would make changes to MFS operation, but I can always hope.


----------



## spike2k5

Justin Thyme said:


> Spike- is there any change on the 1TB limit per volume?
> 
> I know there are a lot of other reasons Tivo would make changes to MFS operation, but I can always hope.


I'm not sure at this point.

I'm about to do some testing so will let folks know.

Also, as far as going above 2TiB, Mac Partition table is still limited to 2TiB so I'm not sure Tivo truely fixed that problem.


----------



## holligl

aaronwt said:


> Although you can get a good deal on the Western Digital drives. You can pick up their 750GB perpendicular recording drive for $200 and their 500 GB drive is a little over $100 now. Both of those drives are very quiet, especially after enabling the acoustic management.


How do you enable the acoustic management?
What is the trade-off? (Does it slow the response?)


----------



## aaronwt

No difference in performance. Even with a 5400rpm drive you wouldn't notice a difference. Recording a few video streams doesn't come anywhere close to maximizing the bandwidth of the hard drive.

Hitachi has a program that you burn to CD. You can enable the AM on Hitachi and Western Digital drives with it. The program is the Hitachi Feature tool.
Here is the page http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

You can download the CD image and burn to disc. Ten just boot the PC from the CD. There is also a download for the users guide.


----------



## spike2k5

holligl said:


> How do you enable the acoustic management?
> What is the trade-off? (Does it slow the response?)


You can use MFSLive Linux Boot CD as well.

hdparm -M 128 -K 1 /dev/sda

128 is the quietest you can set.


----------



## TracerBullet

I'd like to do this (I'm comfortable with upgrading, etc.) but I've never done this to a TiVo before. I seem to be missing something- are you taking the information from the old TiVo HD drive and transferring it to a new drive using WinMFS? 

I was going to wait for ESATA but if this really is as easy as everyone says I see no reason to wait.

I have a cablecard appointment on Friday so if I could get this done tonight or tomorrow that would be ideal.


----------



## rainwater

TracerBullet said:


> I'd like to do this (I'm comfortable with upgrading, etc.) but I've never done this to a TiVo before. I seem to be missing something- are you taking the information from the old TiVo HD drive and transferring it to a new drive using WinMFS?
> 
> I was going to wait for ESATA but if this really is as easy as everyone says I see no reason to wait.
> 
> I have a cablecard appointment on Friday so if I could get this done tonight or tomorrow that would be ideal.


In WinMFS, you just load the original drive into WinMFS and do a truncated backup. This will save the original drive to a file on your windows partition. Then load your new drive in WinMFS and do a restore. Since the drive is bigger it will ask you to expand the drive once it is done (say yes of course). The whole process only takes a couple of minutes. However, you should make sure you have enough SATA headers on your motherboard to hook the drives up. If you only have one extra, you can just hook one drive up at a time and do each step. You just need to make sure you are using XP SP 1 or later or the drives get auto mounted and mess up the boot page.


----------



## TracerBullet

rainwater said:


> In WinMFS, you just load the original drive into WinMFS and do a truncated backup. This will save the original drive to a file on your windows partition. Then load your new drive in WinMFS and do a restore. Since the drive is bigger it will ask you to expand the drive once it is done (say yes of course). The whole process only takes a couple of minutes. However, you should make sure you have enough SATA headers on your motherboard to hook the drives up. If you only have one extra, you can just hook one drive up at a time and do each step.


Great, thank you so much. :up: Sounds very easy.

Could you use a USB enclosure as well, or will this only work through SATA?


----------



## jmpage2

If you are running Vista make sure you right click the WinMFS executable and choose "run as administrator". Even though my user account in Vista has administrator privelages when you run WinMFS it won't allow you to select a Tivo drive unless you run the executable expressly as the administrator account on the box.

Make sure you don't mount the discs in Windows, that would be bad and would destroy the boot partition on the Tivo drive (which there is a tool to recover).

I simply selected my Tivo drive as the "A" drive and did a direct copy to my other drive, no truncated backup. I copied all of my shows, etc, and it only took about 20 mins to complete. I also used the supersize option that Spike has created which has pushed me up to 70 hrs of HD recording on a 500GB drive. I just put the original Tivo drive in an anti-static bag and put it in my safe so I can use it again if I ever need to recover the original configuration. Takes up more physical space but I don't have to have to worry about losing the software backup.

I believe it's been reported that USB enclosures will work, it will just take longer to run the tool.

Definitely it's smart to get a drive like a Hitachi or WD that will allow you to turn on acoustic management. You just need to download the Hitachi Diagnostics ISO image and burn it to a disc or use the program Spike provides on the MFSLive bootable CD. I tested seek noise with acoustic management off and it was very noisy. With AM turned on to the 128 setting (maximum) you could barely tell the drive was running.

Keep in mind that most of the drives we would consider installing run much hotter than the stock drive. I observed that the stock drive only hit about 33C on the drive exterior when it ran copying for 20 mins. The new Hitachi 500GB drive hit 44C (and probably would have gotten hotter with AM turned off). Make sure your Tivo is in a well ventilated area if you will update the drive, one user already reported that the Seagate 750GB drive he installed ran so hot it actually caused problems with the Tivo and he had to put the stock drive back in.

Thanks again to Spike for providing such great tools!!!


----------



## TracerBullet

How do you avoid mounting the drive? I've never wanted to _not_ have a drive show up before. 

This would be XP.

Also, thanks for mentioning specific HDDs. I was looking at a 750GB Seagate but I think I'll stay away from it now.


----------



## jmpage2

TracerBullet said:


> How do you avoid mounting the drive? I've never wanted to _not_ have a drive show up before.
> 
> This would be XP.


Plug in the Tivo drive and your new hard drive and after booting the system do not go into disc management to "initialize" them or assign them a letter.

XP will still see them (you can verify this in disc management just don't assign them a letter or initialize them) so that WinMFS can work with them.


----------



## TracerBullet

jmpage2 said:


> Plug in the Tivo drive and your new hard drive and after booting the system do not go into disc management to "initialize" them or assign them a letter.
> 
> XP will still see them (you can verify this in disc management just don't assign them a letter or initialize them) so that WinMFS can work with them.


Thanks.


----------



## Zaph32

I don't guess these tools exist for MacOSX? Or maybe linux form that could be compiled for OSX?


----------



## jmpage2

Zaph32 said:


> I don't guess these tools exist for MacOSX? Or maybe linux form that could be compiled for OSX?


There is a Linux Boot disc and a configurator at mfslive.org that tells you what commands to run depending on drive sizes, etc. It will not be a simple GUI tool like the WinMFS tool.


----------



## TracerBullet

Not sure if this is the right thread for this, but since people reading it have obviously done this...

I unscrewed three of the screws on the TiVo hard drive mounting bracket fine, but the fourth screw refuses to come out. I can't get a grip on it with any tool. I used an Allen wrench to remove all the other screws.

At first I thought it was a different type of screw, but after examining it more closely that's not the case. So... basically, WTF?

Edit: Okay, so I figured out it's a star screw. What size screwdriver do I need to remove it?


----------



## jmpage2

TracerBullet said:


> Not sure if this is the right thread for this, but since people reading it have obviously done this...
> 
> I unscrewed three of the screws on the TiVo hard drive mounting bracket fine, but the fourth screw refuses to come out. I can't get a grip on it with any tool. I used an Allen wrench to remove all the other screws.
> 
> At first I thought it was a different type of screw, but after examining it more closely that's not the case. So... basically, WTF?
> 
> Edit: Okay, so I figured out it's a star screw. What size screwdriver do I need to remove it?


You need a T-10 (at least that's the tip currently on my multi-driver that I used to do my HD).

You can buy a full screwdriver kit with all the tips you need for these types of projects for under $20 at most computer specialty stores.


----------



## rainwater

jmpage2 said:


> You need a T-10 (at least that's the tip currently on my multi-driver that I used to do my HD).
> 
> You can buy a full screwdriver kit with all the tips you need for these types of projects for under $20 at most computer specialty stores.


Lowes or Home Depot also carry the torx bits as well.


----------



## TracerBullet

Nice, thanks to both of you.

I'm actually surprised I've never encountered this before, although all of my previous mucking around was only with my PC.


----------



## gespears

Just wanted to add another data point. I just upgraded my Tivo HD to a 500 gig WD using WinMFS. All went well. It's very easy. I did not change the parameters on the WD 500 Gig, because I wanted to see if it would help the pixelation problems and partly because I don't know how to change the parameters (until reading all of this thread  .) I did a backup of the original and saved it to my hard drive and then did a copy from the original drive to the new 500. I now have 70 hours of HD storage.

It took 30 minutes to do the copy with 39 % free space on the disk. So figure about an hour if the disk is full. I couldn't figure out how to really delete the programs in the trash folder. It tells me I don't need to delete them when I try to force their deletion, so I just copied them as well.

I also posted this on the WinMFS forum.

Gary


----------



## bkdtv

I've seen a few people asking about torx screwdrivers.

Advance Auto Parts has the perfect torx screwdriver for the TivoHD. It has a relatively long shaft, fits the screws tightly, and has a magnetic end. It's just $4.18.

I no longer have the packaging, but the receipt says:

Star Driver T10 Ampro 9014713
T3226056310


----------



## holligl

Somewhat off track - but would this software back up an NTFS drive as well, or is it specifically oriented to a Linux / TiVo format. I typically buy barebones drives for computers, don't have SATA image software.


----------



## aaronwt

gespears said:


> Just wanted to add another data point. I just upgraded my Tivo HD to a 500 gig WD using WinMFS. All went well. It's very easy. I did not change the parameters on the WD 500 Gig, because I wanted to see if it would help the pixelation problems and partly because I don't know how to change the parameters (until reading all of this thread  .) I did a backup of the original and saved it to my hard drive and then did a copy from the original drive to the new 500. I now have 70 hours of HD storage.
> 
> It took 30 minutes to do the copy with 39 % free space on the disk. So figure about an hour if the disk is full. I couldn't figure out how to really delete the programs in the trash folder. It tells me I don't need to delete them when I try to force their deletion, so I just copied them as well.
> 
> I also posted this on the WinMFS forum.
> 
> Gary


I see you used the SuperSize option. I just tried that last night. HAs there been any problems with that?


----------



## spike2k5

holligl said:


> Somewhat off track - but would this software back up an NTFS drive as well, or is it specifically oriented to a Linux / TiVo format. I typically buy barebones drives for computers, don't have SATA image software.


No WinMFS is disigned for Tivo only.


----------



## sfhub

What does the supersize option actually do? Does it change the calculation of free space available for display purposes, or does it affect how data is recorded or how the filesystem is organized to result in actual increase in recording time?


----------



## TerryTT

I used a 750 seagate and had nothing but issues; does anyone know which WD or Hitachi model I should buy? probably just a 500gb.


----------



## jmpage2

sfhub said:


> What does the supersize option actually do? Does it change the calculation of free space available for display purposes, or does it affect how data is recorded or how the filesystem is organized to result in actual increase in recording time?


Spike might be able to answer that question if he's monitoring this thread.


----------



## jmpage2

TerryTT said:


> I used a 750 seagate and had nothing but issues; does anyone know which WD or Hitachi model I should buy? probably just a 500gb.


What kind of issues? I think that Spike said that there were initially some problems with drive sizes over 500GB but I think that's been fixed.

Were the problems immediate or happen after you got more storage on the drive?

Certainly temperature considerations are something people need to take seriously when considering a larger drive. The Samsung Spinpoint drives are known to run much quieter and cooler than most other drives. Also drives that make use of perpendicular recording or that can have acoustic management, etc, turned on might run a little cooler.

There is an entire thread about drives that are recommended specifically for DVRs, drives like the Hitachi Cinemastar and Seagate DB35 series drives.

Finally if you are going to put a big hot drive in the Tivo you should consider how well ventilated the area you are going to put the unit in is.


----------



## rainwater

Seagate SATA drives are usually optimized for performance. And since Seagates don't support acoustic management, you are going to have a loud drive unless you are using one of the DB35 drives. I definitely wouldn't use a Seagate unless it was a DB35 drive. Most of the newer TiVos comes with WD drives and I have found those to be quite stable but everyone's experience varies.


----------



## gespears

aaronwt said:


> I see you used the SuperSize option. I just tried that last night. HAs there been any problems with that?


Not for me. It's working as advertised but only for two whole days. I'll tell you this, Spike is a great asset to the Tivo community.

Thanks again Spike.

Gary


----------



## TerryTT

jmpage2 said:


> What kind of issues? I think that Spike said that there were initially some problems with drive sizes over 500GB but I think that's been fixed.
> 
> Were the problems immediate or happen after you got more storage on the drive?
> 
> Certainly temperature considerations are something people need to take seriously when considering a larger drive. The Samsung Spinpoint drives are known to run much quieter and cooler than most other drives. Also drives that make use of perpendicular recording or that can have acoustic management, etc, turned on might run a little cooler.
> 
> There is an entire thread about drives that are recommended specifically for DVRs, drives like the Hitachi Cinemastar and Seagate DB35 series drives.
> 
> Finally if you are going to put a big hot drive in the Tivo you should consider how well ventilated the area you are going to put the unit in is.


It wasnt a db35 and it was quite noisey on seek but nothing major. The problems i had were system slowness and lockups... the picture would also jerk like the disk couldnt keep up.

What were the known issues?


----------



## jmpage2

TerryTT said:


> It wasnt a db35 and it was quite noisey on seek but nothing major. The problems i had were system slowness and lockups... the picture would also jerk like the disk couldnt keep up.
> 
> What were the known issues?


Overheating. The 7200.10 series drive is one of the warmer ones out there.


----------



## TracerBullet

It worked! Thank you so much Spike and everyone else that gave me help.

Two questions, though- I couldn't get the last screw in that holds down the HDD plate- my tool was not long enough. Is it going to be okay to leave it like that until I get a longer screwdriver?

Also, what should I do with my original HDD? Keep it as a backup?

Oh, and one problem- I tried to use the SuperSize option, but it crashed WinMFS. Not a big deal, but I thought Spike would like to know.


----------



## jmpage2

You want all the bracket screws in to cut down on vibration as that will possibly extend the lifespan of the drive, etc.

I'm sure running it without it for a while won't hurt anything, I've left drives hanging out of server cases, running, for weeks.

You definitely should keep the original HDD in a static free, vibration controlled environment in the event you ever have to "recover" your Tivo from that original drive.

Alternatively you could make a truncated backup of the original drive and as long as you were confident that the backup was good you could junk the original. I put the original drive in a static bag in a hard drive shipping clamshell and placed it in my safe.


----------



## jfh3

TracerBullet said:


> Two questions, though- I couldn't get the last screw in that holds down the HDD plate- my tool was not long enough. Is it going to be okay to leave it like that until I get a longer screwdriver?


Yes, as long as the other 3 are tight enough to avoid significant vibration. But don't forget about it.



> Also, what should I do with my original HDD? Keep it as a backup?


That's what I am doing. 160GB isn't large enough to bother moving to a computer.


----------



## jfh3

jmpage2 said:


> I put the original drive in a static bag in a hard drive shipping clamshell and placed it in my safe.


Wow. I thought I valued my Tivos highly, but putting the hard drive in a safe? You win.


----------



## TerryTT

jmpage2 said:


> Overheating. The 7200.10 series drive is one of the warmer ones out there.


I thought that but system temp never went above normal... so not sure...


----------



## TerryTT

jmpage2 said:


> Overheating. The 7200.10 series drive is one of the warmer ones out there.


I meant from this quote: Originally Posted by jmpage2
What kind of issues? I think that Spike said that there were initially some problems with drive sizes over 500GB but I think that's been fixed

Befor I plump for a new drive I just want to verify my 750gb seagate isnt junk and whether it was a software issue?


----------



## BankZ

I just have a laptop, am I SOL? Could I just buy two external USB cases?


----------



## jmpage2

BankZ said:


> I just have a laptop, am I SOL? Could I just buy two external USB cases?


You could probably just get a single USB enclosure with SATA support. Put the Tivo drive in it, hook it up to your laptop and backup your drive to the hard drive of the laptop (or make a truncated backup if you don't have enough storage on the laptop).

Then put the new blank drive in the same enclosure and restore to it. I can't think of a good reason why this would not work.


----------



## aaronwt

jmpage2 said:


> You could probably just get a single USB enclosure with SATA support. Put the Tivo drive in it, hook it up to your laptop and backup your drive to the hard drive of the laptop (or make a truncated backup if you don't have enough storage on the laptop).
> 
> Then put the new blank drive in the same enclosure and restore to it. I can't think of a good reason why this would not work.


I thought you couldn't make a full backup of a drive, just the truncated? And only copy the entire contents from one drive to another. If you can that would have saved me some time. I could just copy all my TiVo drives and restore them to another drive. I have several Terabytes of drives sitting around so at least I could put them to some good use.


----------



## b3ar

aaronwt said:


> I thought you couldn't make a full backup of a drive, just the truncated? And only copy the entire contents from one drive to another. If you can that would have saved me some time. I could just copy all my TiVo drives and restore them to another drive. I have several Terabytes of drives sitting around so at least I could put them to some good use.


It copied my entire drive for me (had about 27% free). This was phenomenally easy.

Bill


----------



## rainwater

aaronwt said:


> I thought you couldn't make a full backup of a drive, just the truncated? And only copy the entire contents from one drive to another. If you can that would have saved me some time. I could just copy all my TiVo drives and restore them to another drive. I have several Terabytes of drives sitting around so at least I could put them to some good use.


If you use the MFSLive Linux boot cd, you can make full backups of drives (and full restores).


----------



## aaronwt

rainwater said:


> If you use the MFSLive Linux boot cd, you can make full backups of drives (and full restores).


So when you say full backup, are you still able to store other material on the drive along with the TiVo drive backup? All I've done so far is copy one drive to another and the copy can only be used in the TiVo.


----------



## BankZ

Two questions, from windows Vista can I make a full image (tivo software, settings and all shows) or do I need to use the linux boot cd? How much space do I need free on my computer? Is it something like 1gig + size of shows? or is it 160gig?


----------



## bkdtv

BankZ said:


> Two questions, from windows Vista can I make a full image (tivo software, settings and all shows) or do I need to use the linux boot cd? How much space do I need free on my computer? Is it something like 1gig + size of shows? or is it 160gig?


You need to use the WinMFS upgrade program or the new Linux boot CD on MFSLive.org.

WinMFS works fine under Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows Vista64. Do not use it under Windows 9x or Windows 2000.

The Tivo software itself consumes about 371Mb.


----------



## cr33p

spike2k5 said:


> You can use MFSLive Linux Boot CD as well.
> 
> hdparm -M 128 -K 1 /dev/sda
> 
> 128 is the quietest you can set.


I tried using this last nite on a brand new WD 750 gb Sata drive and it kept throwing errors at me about not being able to set the keep settings and acoustic settings. Will this utility only work with a specific set of WD drives? I even tried testing it on an older 250 gig IDE from a hr10-250 and got the same exact results.

Thanks


----------



## spike2k5

cr33p said:


> I tried using this last nite on a brand new WD 750 gb Sata drive and it kept throwing errors at me about not being able to set the keep settings and acoustic settings. Will this utility only work with a specific set of WD drives? I even tried testing it on an older 250 gig IDE from a hr10-250 and got the same exact results.
> 
> Thanks


try w/o -K 1 and see if that make any difference.
It should work for all drive w/ aam feature enabled in S.M.A.R.T.

FYI, non of Seagate drives have this feature. It's set at the factory at quiet mode for DB35 drives and fastest mode for desktop drives.


----------



## cr33p

spike2k5 said:


> try w/o -K 1 and see if that make any difference.
> It should work for all drive w/ aam feature enabled in S.M.A.R.T.
> 
> FYI, non of Seagate drives have this feature. It's set at the factory at quiet mode for DB35 drives and fastest mode for desktop drives.


Would it make any difference if I am trying this from a usb to sata connector rather then off my mbd? Also SMART is turned off in my BIOS

Thanks


----------



## jfh3

cr33p said:


> Would it make any difference if I am trying this from a usb to sata connector rather then off my mbd? Also SMART is turned off in my BIOS
> 
> Thanks


I don't think AAM can be enabled over a USB connection.


----------



## cr33p

jfh3 said:


> I don't think AAM can be enabled over a USB connection.


Well I am betting thats my problem then  I will have to retest at a later date. Thanks


----------



## spike2k5

Looks like 1TB per drive limit has been lifted on Tivo HD.

[edit] I ran some more test and I don't think there is a 1TB limit per drive for either S3 or TivoHD.

I was able to do 2TB on S3 as well with raid.

*Here* is a screenshot of 2TB Tivo HD.


----------



## wizzy

Successfully upgrade to a 750 gig WD drive. Hardest part was finding an extra sata cable (thought I had ordered a retail kit, but it was OEM). I had a copy of Ultimate Boot CD laying around, and it had the Hitachi acoustic management software on it. I could definitely tell a difference when I moved it down to 128 (there is a "test" option). I'm another one with only 3 screws in place...I'm not worrying about it too much, I have been a screw short in my series 1 for years.

Thanks, spike!


----------



## jmpage2

spike2k5 said:


> Looks like 1TB per drive limit has been lifted on Tivo HD.
> 
> *Here* is a screenshot of 2TB Tivo HD.


Spike, did you actually find a way to shoe horn the two drives into the Tivo HD?


----------



## spike2k5

jmpage2 said:


> Spike, did you actually find a way to shoe horn the two drives into the Tivo HD?


I used hardware raid 0. Four 500GB SATA drives.

eSATA port is not enabled yet on Tivo HD.


----------



## jmpage2

spike2k5 said:


> I used hardware raid 0. Four 500GB SATA drives.
> 
> eSATA port is not enabled yet on Tivo HD.


Ah, Frankenstein box. Gotcha!


----------



## BankZ

I upgraded my TiVo HD to a 500 gig WD harddrive. It was simple and fast. Thanks everyone


----------



## jlib

spike2k5 said:


> ...I ran some more test and I don't think there is a 1TB limit per drive for either S3 or TivoHD.
> 
> I was able to do 2TB on S3 as well with raid.


Wow, do you ever slow down? If I remember correctly it wasn't so much an absolute limit at 1TB but the manifestation of some signed integer bugs that reveal themselves at that point. I can't remember the exact details right now. I just remember putting in my notes to not go there when trying to get my RAID up and running.

Ok, here is the post from JamieP I originally referenced in my notes. Looking at the example of the _display problems_ from that post I now notice that it was on a HD DirecTiVo. So, maybe this "limitation" that has been floating around is actually obsolete. Your testing appears to reveal that.


----------



## mazman

rainwater said:


> In WinMFS, you just load the original drive into WinMFS and do a truncated backup. This will save the original drive to a file on your windows partition. Then load your new drive in WinMFS and do a restore. Since the drive is bigger it will ask you to expand the drive once it is done (say yes of course). The whole process only takes a couple of minutes. However, you should make sure you have enough SATA headers on your motherboard to hook the drives up. If you only have one extra, you can just hook one drive up at a time and do each step. You just need to make sure you are using XP SP 1 or later or the drives get auto mounted and mess up the boot page.


I have a pc with 2 SATA connectors. Are these the correct steps to upgrade the drive:
1. Download WinMFS
2. Shut down Windows & attach original TiVo drive
3. Boot to Vista, run WinMFS and backup original TiVo drive to the Windows (c:\) drive
4. Shut down & attach New Larger Drive.
5. Boot to Vista, run WinMFS and restore TiVo image on Windows (c:\) drive to New Larger Drive.

Done.?


----------



## bkdtv

mazman said:


> I have a pc with 2 SATA connectors. Are these the correct steps to upgrade the drive:
> 1. Download WinMFS
> 2. Shut down Windows & attach original TiVo drive
> 3. Boot to Vista, run WinMFS and backup original TiVo drive to the Windows (c:\) drive
> 4. Shut down & attach New Larger Drive.
> 5. Boot to Vista, run WinMFS and restore TiVo image on Windows (c:\) drive to New Larger Drive.
> 
> Done.?


Yes.

Note that won't backup your existing recordings. The "Backup" option in WinMFS just backs up the Tivo software and your configuration, not the recordings. If you want to backup your recordings, then I believe you need to choose the MFSCopy option.


----------



## spike2k5

jlib said:


> Wow, do you ever slow down?


I work on Tivo 24x7. 



> If I remember correctly it wasn't so much an absolute limit at 1TB but the manifestation of some signed integer bugs that reveal themselves at that point. I can't remember the exact details right now. I just remember putting in my notes to not go there when trying to get my RAID up and running.


That's older Series 2 Tivo.

For S3, I recall people trying to use RAID to push it above 1TiB and not being able to boot. This was before the discovery of eSATA port being activated.

I think my test shows that it's not 1TiB limit per drive but a bug in mfstools. Mainly zone size calculation was slight off. BTW, this bug is fixed in the latest MFSLive Linux Boot CD 1.3a.

For those of you familiar with restore -r 2 not being able to boot after 274GB, this is the bug I'm talking about. Apparently, restore -r 4 does not work either above 1 TiB I guess due to this bug.

I've used WinMFS for this test which does not use r values like mfstools does but fixed min. allocation size of 20480 like Tivo S3 and HD.

So it appears that it's working for 2TB. I'm going to push it to S3 limit of 2 TiB or (2.2 TB) and see if it takes it.

Tivo HD uses 64bit address for accessing drives so supposedly we can push it above 2 TiB but I'm not sure it's possible yet. I will report if I find a way.


----------



## 1283

spike2k5 said:


> Tivo HD uses 64bit address for accessing drives so supposedly we can push it above 2 TiB .....


Who wants to be the first to build a TiVo with 2^48 bytes of storage?


----------



## gespears

Spike, how did you get the Raid 0 to function with the Tivo? Do you have a raid unit that can output to a single SATA connector and do it that way?

Thanks,

Gary


----------



## spike2k5

gespears said:


> Spike, how did you get the Raid 0 to function with the Tivo? Do you have a raid unit that can output to a single SATA connector and do it that way?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Gary


Yes I currently have 4 500GB sata -> hardware RAID 0 -> to single sata connector out.

It's noisy, bulky and only good for experimenting.


----------



## spike2k5

Tivo HD is upgraded to 2.5 TB.

*Link*

It's possible to go much bigger.

Anyone got five 1TB drives?


----------



## jfh3

spike2k5 said:


> Tivo HD is upgraded to 2.5 TB.
> 
> *Link*
> 
> It's possible to go much bigger.
> 
> Anyone got five 1TB drives?


Cool - have you actually recorded over 300 hours to prove it? (Not that I don't trust you, just curious)


----------



## b3ar

bkdtv said:


> Note that won't backup your existing recordings. The "Backup" option in WinMFS just backs up the Tivo software and your configuration, not the recordings. If you want to backup your recordings, then I believe you need to choose the MFSCopy option.


Worked like a champ for me. I did about 120GB from my original drive over to my new 750GB drive overnight. Easy as pie. 

Folks who keep advocating the DB35 should check the reviews on the WD drives (www.storagereview.com). I'd be surprised if a DB35 actually beat the WD drive for noise, power consumption (non-startup) and heat. It's also a lot cheaper. (Off the soapbox, now). 

Bill


----------



## Idolwild

What do you guys think of this one? Should have the AM on it and keep fairly quiet, reasonable price too...

Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD7500AAKS 750GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

$199 on Newegg


----------



## spike2k5

Idolwild said:


> What do you guys think of this one? Should have the AM on it and keep fairly quiet, reasonable price too...
> 
> Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD7500AAKS 750GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
> 
> $199 on Newegg


Tune AAM to 128 and it should work nicely.


----------



## aaronwt

Idolwild said:


> What do you guys think of this one? Should have the AM on it and keep fairly quiet, reasonable price too...
> 
> Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD7500AAKS 750GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
> 
> $199 on Newegg


I had two of those from NEwEgg crap out on me. I just received the replacement for one of them today from newegg. Hopefully I'll get the second replacement by next week.


----------



## joneSi

aaronwt said:


> I had two of those from NEwEgg crap out on me. I just received the replacement for one of them today from newegg. Hopefully I'll get the second replacement by next week.


Could have been bad production. I have this exact drive in my TiVo HD right now, and happily recording.

May I ask how long it took to crap out?

joneSi


----------



## jlib

b3ar said:


> Folks who keep advocating the DB35 should check the reviews on the WD drives (www.storagereview.com). I'd be surprised if a DB35 actually beat the WD drive for noise, power consumption (non-startup) and heat. It's also a lot cheaper...


 The new WD Caviar GP drive has some intriguing specs. From what I can make out, when idle (not just standby) the heads unload and the RPM drops to 5400. I'm not sure that is a win for the TiVo since it will never be idle. That notwithstanding, it should still be quieter and cooler than the same sized Hitachi DeskStar (and most likely the Seagate DB35, too). I am most interested in seeing what the new density champion, the upcoming 1TB Samsung SpinPoint F1 (3 platters instead of 5), is like. What an abundance of riches for hard drive enthusiasts!


----------



## 1283

jlib said:


> The new WD Caviar GP drive has some intriguing specs.


The low seek noise is what I'm interested in:

WD GP (1TB): *25 dBA*
WD SE16 (750GB): 29 dBA
Seagate DB35 (750GB): 30 dBA
Hitachi CinemaStar (1TB): 30 dBA


----------



## aaronwt

joneSi said:


> Could have been bad production. I have this exact drive in my TiVo HD right now, and happily recording.
> 
> May I ask how long it took to crap out?
> 
> joneSi


The first one was bad from the start. It wouldn't always spin up. The second one worked fine for a week or two before it started to have problems.


----------



## aaronwt

c3 said:


> The low seek noise is what I'm interested in:
> 
> WD GP (1TB): *25 dBA*
> WD SE16 (750GB): 29 dBA
> Seagate DB35 (750GB): 30 dBA
> Hitachi CinemaStar (1TB): 30 dBA


If that is the loudness of the Hitachi then the WD GP should be nearly silent. I can't hear the Hitachi with AM set at 192 unless I'm within a couple feet of it and then it is still extremely quiet.


----------



## jlib

aaronwt said:


> If that is the loudness of the Hitachi then the WD GP should be nearly silent. I can't hear the Hitachi with AM set at 192 unless I'm within a couple feet of it and then it is still extremely quiet.


It is odd that the silent seek acoustic rating is the same as the idle rating on the WD Caviar GP. They are basically saying that the seeks are not discernible at all above the ambient sound of the drive spinning. It would be good if there was an industry standard method of measuring sound level. I don't think specs can be directly compared except within a manufacuturer's own line. I guess we'll have to wait for the first independent reviews but the WD Caviar GP looks to be the new silence champ.


----------



## TXTivoUser

So I had a question about HD's this seems like a place to stick it since I'm looking to upgrade my THD.

Do the AM settings work on all HD's? I found a Maxtor something or other 500g for 105 at Frys, whereas I can find the Segate DB35 500g for somewhere around 150 online.

Is one going to be significantly (read: ~50 dollars) better than the other?

I'm looking to spend between 100 and 150 on this, and it appears that could be the difference between a 500g and a 750 depending on the brand.

I'm also looking for reliability and heat (or lack of) as well as drive acoustics.

Should I give up on the pipe dream of just using an off the shelf HD and pony up for the really good HD's mentioned here or is there *THAT* much of a difference?

Just want to get this upgraded and ready to go for the upcoming fall season.


----------



## 1283

TXTivoUser said:


> Do the AM settings work on all HD's?


No, not Seagates and Maxtor-labeled Seagates.


----------



## raiden256

Idolwild said:


> What do you guys think of this one? Should have the AM on it and keep fairly quiet, reasonable price too...
> 
> Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD7500AAKS 750GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
> 
> $199 on Newegg


What's the waaranty on that guy?


----------



## aaronwt

raiden256 said:


> What's the waaranty on that guy?


I registered my replacement with WD yesterday. It shows the warranty expires in September 2010. So I guess it's a 3 year warranty.
The RE2 drives have a 5 year warranty. I don't think the 750GB RE2 drives are out yet.


----------



## normychas

Hello all, 
I had a quick question 
I purchased a Seagate Internal 3.5-inch HD,SATA NCQ,750GB (st3750640as-rk) thinking along with a nice external hard drive casing intending very much to use it with a series 3 but than later decided to get a tivo hd. I have read enough of the forums to know that it would be a very unwise idea to put this drive into my tivo hd as they are built for performance and not for heat. I dont care about noise too much but i do care about risking drive failure. My question is if I am correct in assuming it would be stupid to put this drive into my tivo hd is there a good place to sell my hard drive so i can get some cash back for a seagate db35 or a western digital. I would do craigslist but was wondering if there was a decent place to try and trade hard drives with say somebody who was looking to upgrade their series 3. Thanks for the help i am new to these forums and really appreciate all the info from them.


----------



## jlib

If you don't care about seek noise then it will be a fine upgrade drive. That is really its only shortcoming. There is not much of a market for used hard drives since they are such a relatively cheap commodity now and that particular model is not regularly used for TiVo upgrades. Best bet if you can afford it is to use it as a backup for any PCs you have. By using it you will also be able to tell if the noise level is acceptable to you or not and maybe you could use it in the TiVo after all.


----------



## normychas

is there not a higher risk of drive failure? I dont want a 200 dollar brick sitting him tivo hd. I also am worried about heat since my tv setup is somewhat enclosed though this could be remedied. I would be delighted if this were the only risk though i dont want my tivo to sound extremely loud but my bigger concern is simply that it not fail. Thanks for the quick response though. Has anybody heard about sweeping issues with the hard drives failing otherwise the upgrade goes on as scheduled tonight woot


----------



## jlib

I don't have a TiVo HD so I am not familiar with the fan used on it. There would be no problem on the S3 with that drive from the heat perspective.


----------



## 1283

aaronwt said:


> I don't think the 750GB RE2 drives are out yet.


It's out, but at around $300, that's way too much.


----------



## b3ar

c3 said:


> The low seek noise is what I'm interested in:
> 
> WD GP (1TB): *25 dBA*
> WD SE16 (750GB): 29 dBA
> Seagate DB35 (750GB): 30 dBA
> Hitachi CinemaStar (1TB): 30 dBA


The specs are nice, but I'd prefer actual field measurements. Unfortunately, StorageReview only measures idle, not seek, noise. If you compare that and power consumption during seeks versus the top competitors, the 750GB drive is really pretty well-suited for use in DVRs:

http://www.storagereview.com/WD7500AAKS.sr?page=0,5

For those wondering why I point out the seek power consumption, it is because, as has been noted previously, these things don't sit idle for very long. The more power (amps) a drive consumes, the more heat it will need to dissipate. Have a 3 - 5W advantage over the competition means that the drive _should_ last longer and put less of a load on the Tivo's fan.

That being said, I'm also curious about the upcoming GP and the Samsung F1. However, both of those are set to launch at around $400 list prices, so I'll wait a bit before upgrading my 750GB drive.

Bill


----------



## aaronwt

c3 said:


> It's out, but at around $300, that's way too much.


Ouch. That's more than I paid for the Hitachi terabyte drive.


----------



## drew00001

I finally upgraded my HD . . . to a 750GB DB35. Like others, I speant way too much time thinking about this, when it turned out to be a very easy project. 

The increase speed of the menus was a pleasant suprise. Will they slow down when I fill the drive?


----------



## joneSi

drew00001 said:


> I finally upgraded my HD . . . to a 750GB DB35. Like others, I speant way too much time thinking about this, when it turned out to be a very easy project.
> 
> The increase speed of the menus was a pleasant suprise. Will they slow down when I fill the drive?


<Scratches head> Increase in menu speed? I've replaced my drive, and although it wasn't with a DB35 drive or anything made for DVR's specifically...

For the record, it has been my experience that with my 4 TiVo's I have normal WD drives that work just fine with heat and everything but the s2's are noisy, the TiVo HD with the 750gb WD drive is SILENT). Tivo HD tells me that my temps are 'normal'


----------



## aaronwt

Did they red flag your box like they said they did mine after I upgraded the drive? I had to exchange it for another unit that hadn't been upgraded just to get them to talk about the mono from analog channel problem the TiVoHD has. Of course they probably still haven't figured out the difference between a mono signal and a stereo signal.


----------



## drew00001

joneSi said:


> <Scratches head> Increase in menu speed? I've replaced my drive, and although it wasn't with a DB35 drive or anything made for DVR's specifically...
> 
> For the record, it has been my experience that with my 4 TiVo's I have normal WD drives that work just fine with heat and everything but the s2's are noisy, the TiVo HD with the 750gb WD drive is SILENT). Tivo HD tells me that my temps are 'normal'


I actually upgraded an S3, which shouldn't matter. In any case, maybe the increased speed means my original drive was dying. Pre-upgrade, the menus did not seem excessively slow, but my screen had been freezing with increased frequency.


----------



## drew00001

aaronwt said:


> Did they red flag your box like they said they did mine after I upgraded the drive? I had to exchange it for another unit that hadn't been upgraded just to get them to talk about the mono from analog channel problem the TiVoHD has. Of course they probably still haven't figured out the difference between a mono signal and a stereo signal.


huh?


----------



## aaronwt

drew00001 said:


> huh?


When you change the hard drive they know it. The info is sent to them. They know you don't have the original capacity. They told me since I had opened up my unit that they couldn't do anything about the mono sound from the analog channel problem. SO of course I exchange it for a virgin box and they still can't figure out what the difference between mono and stereo.
They had offered to exchange my box for a $100+ fee since I opened it. I took it back to CC and exchanged it there and got rid a of perfectly good box because they don't seem to know what they are doing. At least that's what it seems like from my conversations with them.
And then one of them made the crack about the TiVoHD not being THX certified so what do you expect. My conversations with them have really pissed me off and come across as them being incompetent.


----------



## rainwater

aaronwt said:


> When you change the hard drive they know it. The info is sent to them. They know you don't have the original capacity. They told me since I had opened up my unit that they couldn't do anything about the mono sound from the analog channel problem. SO of course I exchange it for a virgin box and they still can't figure out what the difference between mono and stereo.
> They had offered to exchange my box for a $100+ fee since I opened it. I took it back to CC and exchanged it there and got rid a of perfectly good box because they don't seem to know what they are doing. At least that's what it seems like from my conversations with them.
> And then one of them made the crack about the TiVoHD not being THX certified so what do you expect. My conversations with them have really pissed me off and come across as them being incompetent.


This is why you keep the original drive. Just put it in, make a connection, and all will be well.


----------



## aaronwt

rainwater said:


> This is why you keep the original drive. Just put it in, make a connection, and all will be well.


Once you replace the drive they already have the data that shows the storage capacity has changed. I keep all my original drives. I put it back in when I exchanged it at Circuit City. But my second TiVoHD is finicky if it gets too strong a signal for the analog channels. The first one had no problem with my signal strength. I had to attenuate the cable signal so it wouldn't have problems with the analog channels. Which is a separate problem from the mono output from the analog channels. If I have the pixelation problem when I connect FIOS I will take it back for another exchange from CC. I got the 4 year extended warranty from them for around $50 and I plan to use it if I need to.


----------



## drew00001

aaronwt said:


> When you change the hard drive they know it. The info is sent to them. They know you don't have the original capacity. They told me since I had opened up my unit that they couldn't do anything about the mono sound from the analog channel problem. SO of course I exchange it for a virgin box and they still can't figure out what the difference between mono and stereo.
> They had offered to exchange my box for a $100+ fee since I opened it. I took it back to CC and exchanged it there and got rid a of perfectly good box because they don't seem to know what they are doing. At least that's what it seems like from my conversations with them.
> And then one of them made the crack about the TiVoHD not being THX certified so what do you expect. My conversations with them have really pissed me off and come across as them being incompetent.


Thanks for the heads up. My box is an S3, and I haven't called TiVO since I purchased such 1 year ago. (knock on wood).


----------



## CCourtney

spike2k5 said:


> Yes I currently have 4 500GB sata -> hardware RAID 0 -> to single sata connector out.
> 
> It's noisy, bulky and only good for experimenting.


Spike,

Just to confirm, you're running the connecting up to the Internal SATA connector.

You say it's noisy, is that because seeks or just plan noisy and is this being done with acoustic management to limit the seek noise?

Have you found this to be reliable?

What enclosure are you using?

Have you tried Supersize w/ a RAID setup?

Are you going to post these details on the Mfslive website?

CCourtney


----------



## normychas

dont know about details but screenshots of spikes 2.5 terabyte setup are on mfslive. I am purely curious from a how is it done stand point as i am not going to go out and snag another 2 terabytes of data on my budget. Very cool stuff though


----------



## jlib

CCourtney said:


> You say it's noisy, is that because seeks or just plan noisy and is this being done with acoustic management to limit the seek noise?


Those type of enclosures are just plain noisy mainly because of very noisy fans that are usually tied to an RPM sensing alarm that makes it difficult to modify the fan noise. Additionally, you now have four drives instead of one. That doesn't make it 4 times as loud but it does contribute to the total. Most manufacturers assume such devices are going to be used in a commercial environment not your living room so the designers don't really appreciate home theater use.


----------



## 1283

CCourtney said:


> Have you found this to be reliable?


When any one of those four drives dies, you have a dead TiVo.


----------



## CCourtney

normychas said:


> dont know about details but screenshots of spikes 2.5 terabyte setup are on mfslive. I am purely curious from a how is it done stand point as i am not going to go out and snag another 2 terabytes of data on my budget. Very cool stuff though


The screenshots w/ the 2 and 2.5 TB appear to be w/o supersize when looking at the numbers. I'd like to know if he's tried it w/ supersize on a RAID 0 setup yet.



jlib said:


> Those type of enclosures are just plain noisy mainly because of very noisy fans that are usually tied to an RPM sensing alarm that makes it difficult to modify the fan noise. Additionally, you now have four drives instead of one. That doesn't make it 4 times as loud but it does contribute to the total. Most manufacturers assume such devices are going to be used in a commercial environment not your living room so the designers don't really appreciate home theater use.


Yes, I know but I want to know if his comments were because of the enclosure and fan (which I can modify) or it's because of the drives even w/ AAM usage. This is a valuable point to me.



c3 said:


> When any one of those four drives dies, you have a dead TiVo.


Of course, if one of the drives dies then you've lost your HDD setup. I wouldn't call that a dead TiVo but lost data. I'd slap the original 160GB back in and be back up in a matter of minutes.

That said, that is not the only point of failure in such a system. The RAID controller is built into the enclosure and can be a point of failure, random data corruption pr failure of the RAID controller itself.

I've had a few dozen drives over the years w/ heavy usage and have only had one laptop drive fail and one desktop drive fail on me (both work computers that were backed up nightly thankfully - both drives known to have had issues in the industry) but I have had controllers fail on me (going back to my 286 days when the IDE controller was an ISA card) including one in my laptop, and two desktop motherboards as well as the ISA card mentioned.

I've had 3 DVR drives in continuous operation for the past several years w/o issue as well. So I'm not too worried about HDD failure but I am worried about the RAID controller.

CCourtney


----------



## spike2k5

CCourtney said:


> The screenshots w/ the 2 and 2.5 TB appear to be w/o supersize when looking at the numbers. I'd like to know if he's tried it w/ supersize on a RAID 0 setup yet.


No I have not.



CCourtney said:


> Yes, I know but I want to know if his comments were because of the enclosure and fan (which I can modify) or it's because of the drives even w/ AAM usage. This is a valuable point to me.


Drives are quiet w/ AAM set to 128 but fans are loud.


----------



## icatar

I dont have any SATA ports on my PC. Has anyone used a SATA to USB cable such as this one  to connect the Tivo HDD?

Thanks in advance!


----------



## spike2k5

icatar said:


> I dont have any SATA ports on my PC. Has anyone used a SATA to USB cable such as this one  to connect the Tivo HDD?
> 
> Thanks in advance!


Yes. Check newegg.com. It's lot cheaper.


----------



## danator

I have the Seagate 750gb Db35 coming for internal drive upgrade (original 250GB), i have question for anyone with similar situation. 

I read 2 opinions on you may or may not lost Cablecard pairing information. For those who has done it. Using disk copy, did you lose prior pairing information or everything went smooth.  ?? I'll be using WinMFS and CC are coming from TWC.

Thanks


----------



## SCSIRAID

danator said:


> I have the Seagate 750gb Db35 coming for internal drive upgrade (original 250GB), i have question for anyone with similar situation.
> 
> I read 2 opinions on you may or may not lost Cablecard pairing information. For those who has done it. Using disk copy, did you lose prior pairing information or everything went smooth.  ?? I'll be using WinMFS and CC are coming from TWC.
> 
> Thanks


When I took a working Tivo with the original 250 and used the Bumwine method to upgrade to a 500G Seagate, I did NOT lose the pairing information. YMMV.

However, I saved the 250 and about 6 months later got a 1G Hitachi and again Bumwined from the 250, upon replacing the 500 in the tivo with the 1G, I DID lose pairing.


----------



## danator

Interesting,

Pairing worked for whatever existing current drive you have now but not with previous disk. That included original. Thanks



SCSIRAID said:


> When I took a working Tivo with the original 250 and used the Bumwine method to upgrade to a 500G Seagate, I did NOT lose the pairing information. YMMV.
> 
> However, I saved the 250 and about 6 months later got a 1G Hitachi and again Bumwined from the 250, upon replacing the 500 in the tivo with the 1G, I DID lose pairing.


----------



## jmpage2

danator said:


> I have the Seagate 750gb Db35 coming for internal drive upgrade (original 250GB), i have question for anyone with similar situation.
> 
> I read 2 opinions on you may or may not lost Cablecard pairing information. For those who has done it. Using disk copy, did you lose prior pairing information or everything went smooth.  ?? I'll be using WinMFS and CC are coming from TWC.
> 
> Thanks


If you do a disc copy you should not lose pairing or any other info. I certainly didn't when I upgraded the internal drive to 500GB.


----------



## gespears

Hey guys and gals, I found this deal:

http://www.resellerratings.com/forum/t129410.html

It's the calvary 750 gig eSATA enclosure. I called Calvary's tech support and they said it's a WD drive with 16 meg and 3 gig transfer rate. I paid 188 shipped for it and am going to remove the 750 and put it in my Tivo HD and take the 500 from the Tivo HD and put it in this enclosure. I don't think the deal will last long though so act quick.

Gary


----------



## jmpage2

gespears said:


> Hey guys and gals, I found this deal:
> 
> http://www.resellerratings.com/forum/t129410.html
> 
> It's the calvary 750 gig eSATA enclosure. I called Calvary's tech support and they said it's a WD drive with 16 meg and 3 gig transfer rate. I paid 188 shipped for it and am going to remove the 750 and put it in my Tivo HD and take the 500 from the Tivo HD and put it in this enclosure. I don't think the deal will last long though so act quick.
> 
> Gary


In my experience you can never be 100% sure of what drive you are going to get in an external enclosure. Manufacturers usually reserve the right to make substitutions, etc.

You can order the 750GB WD drive from several retailers for $188 as a bare drive.


----------



## cr33p

I was at BB today and they have the 1TB Hitachi enclosure on sale for 299.00


----------



## gespears

jmpage2 said:


> In my experience you can never be 100% sure of what drive you are going to get in an external enclosure. Manufacturers usually reserve the right to make substitutions, etc.
> 
> You can order the 750GB WD drive from several retailers for $188 as a bare drive.


Well he SAID they were ALL WD but you know how that goes. As for the 188 for the bare drive, then I wouldn't get the enclosure with the cool eSATA function! ;->

If it turns out to be some other drive. I'll return it immediately. I don't trust any other brand to run 24/7.


----------



## Warhawks

Hi,

Just purchased my Tivo HD tonight, with my Charter guy coming to my house on Friday to put the cards in. I plan on hooking it up on Wednesday to do updates...*what is the most current software update that I should be looking for to know I have it all good to go before Friday night when Charter comes?*

Thanks!


----------



## jmpage2

Warhawks said:


> Hi,
> 
> Just purchased my Tivo HD tonight, with my Charter guy coming to my house on Friday to put the cards in. I plan on hooking it up on Wednesday to do updates...*what is the most current software update that I should be looking for to know I have it all good to go before Friday night when Charter comes?*
> 
> Thanks!


The Tivo updates automatically, you don't need to do anything. You can force a software update by going in and forcing a connection.

Oh ya, this thread is about upgrading the hard drive in the Tivo, you might get more responses if you put this question in its own thread or simply do a forum search as this has been asked and answered quite a few times.


----------



## jebbbz

One problem with buying an all-in-one HD with enclosure is that typically they come with a shorter warranty than you can get buying the HD seperately. I have a WD enclosure with a 250GB drive and it came with only a one year warranty whereas had I purchased an enclosure and added an HD I could have gotten a three to five year warranty on the drive.


----------



## richsadams

gespears said:


> Hey guys and gals, I found this deal:
> 
> http://www.resellerratings.com/forum/t129410.html
> 
> It's the calvary 750 gig eSATA enclosure. I called Calvary's tech support and they said it's a WD drive with 16 meg and 3 gig transfer rate. I paid 188 shipped for it and am going to remove the 750 and put it in my Tivo HD and take the 500 from the Tivo HD and put it in this enclosure. I don't think the deal will last long though so act quick.
> 
> Gary


It's been noted here (see #35) that Calvary drives/enclosures have not performed very well in the past. Just a heads up.


----------



## jlib

gespears said:


> ... I don't trust any other brand to run 24/7.


Don't worry, all modern drives run 24/7.


----------



## richsadams

jlib said:


> Don't worry, all modern drives run 24/7.


FWIW most all modern drives, with the exception of the DVR dedicated drives, have a spin down program that idles the drive after a period of non use don't they?


----------



## SCSIRAID

richsadams said:


> FWIW most all modern drives, with the exception of the DVR dedicated drives, have a spin down program that idles the drive after a period of non use don't they?


On PC's, that is typically done by the OS's Power Management facilities.

However, The HDD industry is introducing several power management capabilities that can be enabled. These include powering off the servo, reducing spindle speed etc etc.


----------



## richsadams

SCSIRAID said:


> On PC's, that is typically done by the OS's Power Management facilities.
> 
> However, The HDD industry is introducing several power management capabilities that can be enabled. These include powering off the servo, reducing spindle speed etc etc.


Okay. I remember reading some posts that indicated that people were changing the programming that was actually included on the HDD to prevent them from spinning down...similar to those that reduce the noise level though.


----------



## rainwater

SCSIRAID said:


> On PC's, that is typically done by the OS's Power Management facilities.
> 
> However, The HDD industry is introducing several power management capabilities that can be enabled. These include powering off the servo, reducing spindle speed etc etc.


Of course most of that doesn't apply to a drive in a TiVo that is constantly writing 2 streams to disk 24/7.


----------



## jlib

richsadams said:


> FWIW most all modern drives, with the exception of the DVR dedicated drives, have a spin down program that idles the drive after a period of non use don't they?


All current "DVR dedicated drives," including the Seagate DB35 series, have a spin down suspend mode. Seagate even specifies how long it takes to come out of suspend: 16 seconds. Whether spindown suspend is on or off by default is a non-issue on the S3/HD. The drive is never given a chance to even start the suspend timer because, as rainwater pointed out, the two buffers are constantly being recorded (even when TiVo is on standby).


----------



## jlib

And speaking of the DB35, interested parties will be pleased to know the fourth generation of that model (DB35.4) which includes a 1TB capacity version is soon at hand.


----------



## gespears

richsadams said:


> FWIW most all modern drives, with the exception of the DVR dedicated drives, have a spin down program that idles the drive after a period of non use don't they?


Yea, but for how long?!?


----------



## gespears

And judging by another post the eSATA port can now be used by the Tivo HD?  I'll have to go check it out on spike's site. He'll know, he knows everything


----------



## spike2k5

gespears said:


> And judging by another post the eSATA port can now be used by the Tivo HD?  I'll have to go check it out on spike's site. He'll know, he knows everything


I wish.

eSATA port on TivoHD can be enabled but no plug & play method is available yet.

You will need a good quality eSATA II cable as the port seems to be very sensitive.


----------



## 1283

The WD "green" 1TB drive WD10EACS is now available for around $350.


----------



## jfh3

c3 said:


> The WD "green" 1TB drive WD10EACS is now available for around $350.


Who actually has them in stock?


----------



## 1283

jfh3 said:


> Who actually has them in stock?


3 stores from pricegrabber.com and 1 guy on eBay.


----------



## gespears

gespears said:


> Well he SAID they were ALL WD but you know how that goes. As for the 188 for the bare drive, then I wouldn't get the enclosure with the cool eSATA function! ;->
> 
> If it turns out to be some other drive. I'll return it immediately. I don't trust any other brand to run 24/7.


Great news! It is a WD7500AAKS. Not so great news. It had been opened already. I tried the USB interface and it worked correctly so the drive is okay but I haven't had a chance to check the eSATA connection yet. The device seems to be pretty good quality. It has a little fan that does move air. It's a robust enclosure with a positive on and off switch. So far so good.


----------



## 1283

gespears said:


> It is a WD7500AAKS.


Is there any warranty from WD on the drive? You can check it here: http://websupport.wdc.com/warranty/serialinput.asp?custtype=end&requesttype=warranty&lang=en


----------



## aaronwt

I know my bare WD 750GB drives and the My Book 750GB drive I have all have 3 year warranties from WD.
I just realized I forgot to enable AM on the 750GB drive I installed in my TiVoHD. It's not really that loud but it is louder than it should be. I'll have to open it up again. I guess I'll do that when I upgrade my other TiVoHD with an Hitachi Terabyte drive I have.


----------



## cr33p

Just upgraded my Tivo HD wednesday nite with a Seagate 7200.10 750 gb drive, I know I know they arent the best to choose from, thats ok with me. I got it for a super good deal. Does anyone have much experiance with the sata version of this drive, overall its quite but sometimes when it seeks it makes almost screeching noises, nothing I have ever heard come from a hard drive. It seems to be performing quite well and is not making the unit any hotter so thats good, Im just worried that maybe something is wrong with the drive.


----------



## jlib

cr33p said:


> Just upgraded my Tivo HD wednesday nite with a Seagate 7200.10 750 gb drive, I know I know they arent the best to choose from, thats ok with me. I got it for a super good deal. Does anyone have much experiance with the sata version of this drive, overall its quite but sometimes when it seeks it makes almost screeching noises, nothing I have ever heard come from a hard drive. It seems to be performing quite well and is not making the unit any hotter so thats good, Im just worried that maybe something is wrong with the drive.


There is nothing wrong with it. The noisy seeks are why it is not normally used to upgrade.


----------



## gespears

c3 said:


> Is there any warranty from WD on the drive? You can check it here: http://websupport.wdc.com/warranty/serialinput.asp?custtype=end&requesttype=warranty&lang=en


Yep, 3 year.


----------



## 1283

gespears said:


> Yep, 3 year.


Thanks, I just ordered one. I will put the drive in my TiVo and use the enclosure for something else.


----------



## Jeshimon

SCSIRAID said:


> When I took a working Tivo with the original 250 and used the Bumwine method to upgrade to a 500G Seagate, I did NOT lose the pairing information. YMMV.
> 
> However, I saved the 250 and about 6 months later got a 1G Hitachi and again Bumwined from the 250, upon replacing the 500 in the tivo with the 1G, I DID lose pairing.


Did you try it from the 500?


----------



## Jeshimon

cr33p said:


> I was at BB today and they have the 1TB Hitachi enclosure on sale for 299.00


and did you walk out empty handed?


----------



## SCSIRAID

Jeshimon said:


> Did you try it from the 500?


I dont believe that would be possible. The 500 had been 'expanded' once and I dont believe it could be 're-expanded' again.


----------



## aaronwt

250 to 500 to 750 to 1000 works.
With my S3 I went from 250GB to 500GB with the Bumwine method. Then I used MFS to go from 500GB to 750GB and then later from 750GB to 1000GB.
I used to use the Bumwine method. MFS is much, much better.


----------



## cr33p

Jeshimon said:


> and did you walk out empty handed?


I sure did  I would love to have a 1tb in my Tivo HD but its a little out of the budget for now, and I did just install a 750 in to the unit, that should be enough room for a little while.


----------



## cr33p

jlib said:


> There is nothing wrong with it. The noisy seeks are why it is not normally used to upgrade.


 Ok cool, the only time I hear the noises are when I am sitting near the unit and the volume is down. If it where in my bedroom it would have to go. I see fry's has 750 WD drives on sale for 179.00 shipped for free this week. Might have to Ebay this Seagate and swap it for the WD with Acoustic set up.


----------



## gespears

aaronwt said:


> 250 to 500 to 750 to 1000 works.
> With my S3 I went from 250GB to 500GB with the Bumwine method. Then I used MFS to go from 500GB to 750GB and then later from 750GB to 1000GB.
> I used to use the Bumwine method. MFS is much, much better.


I noticed you did that and thought I would have the same luck, but nooooooo, when I copied my 500 to my 750 and it got to the point where it asked if I wanted to expand it, I said yes but it gave me an error and then crashed anytime I tried to run the add command. It was a bummer because I had a bunch of stuff I wanted to keep including the latest software.

So I had to copy from the original 160, expand that, supersize it as well, put it in the Tivo HD, download the latest software, download the latest programming guides, clean up and reprogram all my settings and season passes and of course reprogram the 30 second skip after all was said and done.

It was a lot of work but it probably came out cleaner that way.

But now I want the new green WDC 1 Ter. drive. 

As always, YMMV!

Gary


----------



## Hyrax

Do I need to jumper the Seagate drive for 3.0 or 1.5 GBps? I have to use 1.5 GBps on my computer, do I need to set it back to 3.0 GBps for the TivoHD?


----------



## spike2k5

Hyrax said:


> Do I need to jumper the Seagate drive for 3.0 or 1.5 GBps? I have to use 1.5 GBps on my computer, do I need to set it back to 3.0 GBps for the TivoHD?


Some people had problem w/ 1.5GB for TivoHD so put it on 3.0GB to get the best performance and compatibility.


----------



## Hyrax

Thanks, Spike.


----------



## Hyrax

I'm using Mfscopy now to create a larger disk for my TivoHD. I notice a slight bug that I hope is unimportant...It says the source drive contains 0 Gb, 0 sectors, but is formatted as TCD652160(8.17c2-01-2-652). It seems to have the info for destination drive OK, with the format as "Unkown or Blank", which makes sense since it is a new drive.

The copy seems to be working fine.
I'm running winmfs_beta5 on 32-bit Vista Home Premium.


----------



## aaronwt

I've never had my source drives show up as 0GB. Always the size of the disc. Although I had used other versions of WinMFS previously. My last two copies i did use WinMFS beta 5 for both my TiVoHD copies and it showed 160GB for each drive when I copied them.
At least it doesn't take very long to copy the 160GB drive.


----------



## Hyrax

After it finished the Mfscopy, I got the 'expand' dialog, to which I said 'yes', and almost instantly another dialog came up saying _MfsAdd_ had finished. Is that normal?

Then WinMFS beta 5 seemed to be permanently locked up in a minimized state. After half an hour of no activity, I finally used the task manager to kill it.

I'm going to mount the new drive in my Tivo, but I'm not too hopeful it will work. MfsInfo seems to have the correct % free space, at least.


----------



## aaronwt

I've had the earlier betas lock up on me but the two times I used the Beta5 I didn't have it lock up. I was using it on Vista Ultimate.
MFSAdd does finish immediately once you hit yes.
If the MSFinfo from the disc looks right I would think it will work.


----------



## Hyrax

Well ...it worked! I'm now have up to 70 hours of HD recording capacity, just in time for all the new shows. I was going to go bigger, but figure that 70 hours of HD really should be enough. 

Thanks for the help, Aaron, along the way, and thank you, Spike, for an amazing program.


----------



## littlelibo

c3 said:


> The WD "green" 1TB drive WD10EACS is now available for around $350.


Will this drive work? It goes on sale at best buy soon.


----------



## jmpage2

littlelibo said:


> Will this drive work? It goes on sale at best buy soon.


It's a SATA drive so it should work fine. You probably want to run the Hitachi Diagnostics on it though so that you can put it into "quiet" mode.


----------



## 1283

littlelibo said:


> Will this drive work? It goes on sale at best buy soon.


I can't think of any reason why it wouldn't work. Are you saying that Best Buy will have it next week? How much?


----------



## SMWinnie

I have a TiVoHD and 500GB Seagate DB35 arriving today.

I've burned the 1.3beta boot disc for MFS tools. I have a computer standing by with a CD-ROM drive, two open SATA ports and no drives. I've done single drive copies several times on Series 2s.

Here'e where my brain is locking up. I want to pull the 160GB drive, do a space-expanding copy to the 500GB drive and then shelve the 160GB drive. For the life of me, I haven't been able to read the MFS tools instructions and parse out the steps and command line to do that.

Sleep deprivation from the kids must *really* be getting to me.
[/dumb]

(If only it were that easy to turn off dumb...)


----------



## Hyrax

Actually, using the windows version is so easy, you may want to go that way instead. Here is what I did:
1. Attach two SATA drives.
2. Boot in windows.
3. Launch WinMFS.
4. File->Select Source Drive
5. File->Backup Tivo Drive, Bootpage, and Kernel
6. Tools->Mfscopy
7. Select Destination Drive
8. Click on Start Button
9. Wait ... (approx 30 minutes for me)
10. Click "Yes" when asked to expand the drive (almost instantaneous)
11. Switch to Destination Drive
12. Tools->Mfsinfo and check Destination Drive.
13. All Done! 


Ez Pz!


----------



## spike2k5

Hyrax said:


> Actually, using the windows version is so easy, you may want to go that way instead. Here is what I did:
> 1. Attach two SATA drives.
> 2. Boot in windows.
> 3. Launch WinMFS.
> 4. File->Select Source Drive
> 5. File->Backup Tivo Drive, Bootpage, and Kernel
> 6. Tools->Mfscopy
> 7. Select Destination Drive
> 8. Click on Start Button
> 9. Wait ... (approx 30 minutes for me)
> 10. Click "Yes" when asked to expand the drive (almost instantaneous)
> 11. Switch to Destination Drive
> 12. Tools->Mfsinfo and check Destination Drive.
> 13. All Done!
> 
> Ez Pz!


You don't have backup bootpage and kernel (step 5)

For Linux version, 
try http://www.mfslive.org/cgen.php
to generate a correct command.


----------



## SMWinnie

spike2k5 said:


> For Linux version, try http://www.mfslive.org/cgen.php
> to generate a correct command.


Thanks, I think that relieved the brainlock.

I get:
backup -f 9999 -qso - /dev/sda | restore -s 250 -xzpi - /dev/sdb

(I read that as a truncated backup, custom 250MB swap partition and expanded to full size.)

Thanks again for the pointer.


----------



## SMWinnie

spike2k5 said:


> For Linux version, try http://www.mfslive.org/cgen.php to generate a correct command.


Everything went smoothly. Well, almost everything. Everything _having to do with MFSTools_ went smoothly.

I didn't have a spare SATA cable. Trip to CompUSA for two SATA cables.
Opened up the computer to mount the drives. Then remembered that the power supply is a pre-SATA vintage. Trip to CompUSA for a Molex-SATA adapter two-pack.
Connected the drives, dropped the MFSTools CD-ROM in the drive. Booted neatly to the Linux CLI prompt...except no hard drives. Scratched head. Remembered that the old mobo has 1.5GB/s SATA1 controllers. Jumpered the new Seagate for SATA1.
Stock WD 160GB drive didn't indicate what to jumper in order to force SATA1. Surfed to WD support website, eventually found answer (jumper 5&6).
Meanwhile, my wife was dealing with our one- and six-year-olds. When I realized that I had to go *back* to CompUSA, I fully expected to get cracked over the head with something heavy and expendable. Nope - no reaction at all; maybe even a wan smile and a chuckle. I allowed as how I was a bit surprised that she wasn't angry, and she reminded me that it's not our first TiVo upgrade. She'd mentally edited me out for the evening once UPS dropped off the packages.

Says a lot about her mental stability and my planning ability. Well, at least I remembered the Torx bits...

We're loving the new box. OTA tuner is getting all the locals with a TV-top Silver Sensor. (No rotation, even.) We have a Moto6412 that we're keeping, so I think we're going OTA only for a little while. (Why keep the 6412? Well, I don't care about On Demand but if On Demand goes away, *you* can explain it to the aforementioned six-year-old.)


----------



## icatar

I ended up buying the WD 1 TB drive from BB and the Antec enclosure. On Sunday, I first tried adding the 1 TB drive via the enclosure, but after following all the WinMFS instructions and booting the Tivo, I would just get the error that the external storage was not connected. I ended up forcing the divorce Sunday night so that the Sunday night shows recorded.

I chalk up the error to the eSata cable and decided to just replace the internal drive with the 1 TB drive on Monday. Since I didn't get home until about 6:30 on Monday, I didn't have much time before the Monday series premieres started, so I quickly connected the drives to my PC and ran the mfscopy (I deleted some old shows before shutting down the Tivo.) After about 30 minutes, the copy was complete (about 7:30) and I installed the 1 TB drive into the Tivo.

I powered on the Tivo and got the "Powering up" screen, which was a good sign, and after a few minutes saw the opening movie. Fifteen minutes later, "Chuck" was recording and I was well on my way to enjoying the 2007 Fall Season!

Thanks, spike and everyone for all your input!


----------



## busyba

Just so I'm clear... on the "Setup Your Computer" page, where it tells you to disconnect your Windows Hard Drive from the system, that only applies to MFSLive and _not_ WinMFS (even though I got to that page from the WinMFS Quickstart page). Right?


----------



## Hyrax

Right!


----------



## busyba

Okay cool.... just upgraded to the Hitachi 1TB... 131 hours HD, 1241 hours SD. Yay! Spike rocks!!! :up: :up: :up:


----------



## comandercody

Hyrax said:


> Actually, using the windows version is so easy, you may want to go that way instead. Here is what I did:
> 1. Attach two SATA drives.
> 2. Boot in windows.
> 3. Launch WinMFS.
> 4. File->Select Source Drive
> 5. File->Backup Tivo Drive, Bootpage, and Kernel
> 6. Tools->Mfscopy
> 7. Select Destination Drive
> 8. Click on Start Button
> 9. Wait ... (approx 30 minutes for me)
> 10. Click "Yes" when asked to expand the drive (almost instantaneous)
> 11. Switch to Destination Drive
> 12. Tools->Mfsinfo and check Destination Drive.
> 13. All Done!
> 
> Ez Pz!


Did EXACTLY as described above, new Seagate 750gig, copied original 160gig to new one with WinMFS, took about 1 hour, new HD recording capacity is 96 hours. THANKS SPIKE, how can I make a donation?


----------



## Catul

> Here is what I did:
> 1. Attach original and new SATA drives.
> 2. Boot in windows.
> 3. Launch WinMFS.
> 4. File->Select Source Drive
> 5. Tools->Mfscopy
> 6. Select Destination Drive
> 7. Click on Start Button
> 8. Wait ... (approx 35 minutes for me)
> 9. Click "Yes" when asked to expand the drive (almost instantaneous)
> 10. All Done!


Modified quote above to remove unnecessary step (bootpage backup); I didn't use the SuperSize option when expanding; using a Seagate DB35 750Gb drive, my TiVo HD is now at 98 HD hours. This was way easy, thanks a ton Spike!!


----------



## richsadams

Catul said:


> Modified quote above to remove unnecessary step (bootpage backup); I didn't use the SuperSize option when expanding; using a Seagate DB35 750Gb drive, my TiVo HD is now at 98 HD hours. This was way easy, thanks a ton Spike!!


Congrats and enjoy the new real estate! :up:

It's interesting that you eliminated the SuperSize option. This post indicates that it may cause problems. Also no need for the bootpage backup step?

I'm getting ready to remove my eSATA drive and upgrade TiVo's "A" drive with a new WD 1TB Green drive as well but want to make sure I'm following the right steps.

*The correct "Ten Step Procedure"(?):*

1. Attach original and new SATA drives.
2. Boot in windows.
3. Launch WinMFS.
4. File->Select Source Drive
5. Tools->Mfscopy
6. Select Destination Drive
7. Click on Start Button
8. Wait 
9. Click "Yes" when asked to expand the drive (almost instantaneous)
10. Install new drive in TiVo​
Spike...thoughts? (And continued thanks for all of your help!)


----------



## spike2k5

Don't need to do bootpage backup.

I've been using MfsSupersize option for a while on both TivoHD and S3 and have no problems.


----------



## Hyrax

Spike-
I did the bootpage backup before writing anything to either drive because it seemed like the safe thing to do. What happens if you do accidentally overwrite the bootpage on your source drive before you do a MFSCopy? 

Tim


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## Hyrax

spike2k5 said:


> Don't need to do bootpage backup.
> 
> I've been using MfsSupersize option for a while on both TivoHD and S3 and have no problems.


Spike - 
Those who are having problems with the 9.1 upgrade seem to think MFSSupersize may be contributing to the problems. It seems that some of the problems occur when recording continuously and Supersize may be a problem in that situation. Does that make any sense to you?


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## richsadams

spike2k5 said:


> Don't need to do bootpage backup.
> 
> I've been using MfsSupersize option for a while on both TivoHD and S3 and have no problems.


Excellent. Many thanks!


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## cr33p

spike2k5 said:


> Don't need to do bootpage backup.
> 
> I've been using MfsSupersize option for a while on both TivoHD and S3 and have no problems.


x2, no problems here


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## houman

This is my upgrade link:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5583335&&#post5583335

I decided to give supersize another run (since I was going to screw the top box back, decided to give it another shot), so I turned it on... I did test it and it was fine, so I turned off the TV.

I came back in 2-3 hours the I got a black screen I was getting before, the weird thing is that the HD channels work on the local cable (no cable card), but the SD channels do not in either of the tuners. I'll let this go for another day and will note how many black screens I get on TV Turning on, and will revert back to supersize off to see if it goes away.

It could also be 9.1 related, or it could be a WD related issue... who knows.

Houman


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## aaronwt

I guess it's good I didn't supersize any of my boxes.


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## houman

since my box is open and I have a usb->sata cable, I can test this a bit further, a friend of mine who is a Tivo Guru had a good thought, he basically wonders about the locality of the 30 min buffers when the supersize flag is on. 

Again I get HD and not SD, next time it happens, as my friend pointed out, I'll test the HD for more than 30 minutes, to see if the buffer will run out or not.

what does the supersize do anyways ? 

Also are HD and SD buffers shared ?

Of course I can't blame the supersize, because too many variables changed in the past couple of days, and one of them being 9.1.

Houman


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## jlib

Houman are you saying that when you undid supersize on your original drive the problems went away and when you redid supersize they returned?

Spike2k5 do you have 9.1 yet on your two systems?


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## houman

No, my original drive was so messed up that I did another MFSBackup/Restore to fix it, so that does not count into testing.

Basically I tried the new restored tape w/o supersize with 9.1 and it did work for almost 24 hours (no BSOD).

Then I decided to supersize it (in the menu) -- I basically have the drive back on the Tivo, I just bring the whole unit to the PC and connect the sata -> usb cable (so I can do this often and for future) and brought it back to TV and tested and it was fine and the 131HD -> 144 HD in system screen, and I could record shows, etc. 

Next time I turned on TV, I got the BSOD (pitch black screen), but menus would work... SD was out, HD would work, but I did not do the 30 minute play test.

Again I am not blaming SuperSize, it could be that if I had tested the un-supersized drive for 24+ hours it woulda done the same thing, I wish I had two Tivo's and I could do this test, that's why I asked about HD/SD shared buffers locality on disk, WD issues, 9.1, who knows...

Houman


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## houman

Ok, just as an FYI, I have been BSOD free for the past 24+ hours, so that could have been a 9.1 fluke..., I'll let this run with supersize on, and if I have any problems in future, I'll post here.

Thanks Spike2k5!


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## jeffster

Is anyone having success using an external eSATA on a TivoHD with 9.1 yet?


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## Keith Mickunas

Well this rocks. I followed the instructions above and it was easy as could be. I put in a 500GB drive and after the tivo rebooted once or twice it came up ok. It might have been a bad idea to do this just after I had done the initial download while it was still indexing, but it appears to be ok.


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## Mephisto

I finally setup another 1 TB Hitachi Deskstar as a second internal drive in my TivoHD (my 1st 1 TB drive has already been filled up). The 2nd drive is a retail internal drive from Bestbuy. I changed the AAM setting from 254 (default) to 128, and paired it up with the 1st 1 TB (also a Deskstar) using spike's WinMFS tool. It shares power with the 1st drive using a 15 pin power extension Y-cable, and is internally connected to the 2nd SATA port (the one designed to work with eSATA) using the included internal SATA cable that came with the 2nd drive. 

The recording capacity is now at 292 HD hours (with supersize on). So far it has worked without any problem for 5 hours. I am keeping my fingures crossed hoping it won't develop issues like it had a few weeks ago, when I tried hooking up an eSATA drive (a DB35/MX-1 combo), right after eSATA was enabled on the TivoHD by the 8.1.7c2 update.

Thanks again, spike!

Update:

It has worked flawlessly for a day now. No hint of any impending problem.


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## jlib

Nice! Any pictures of the layout?


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## Mephisto

I have not taken any picture yet. I'll remember to do that the next time I open the box.

Update:

I do have a picture now, but have not yet figured out how to load it.


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## aaronwt

How was the second drive mounted internally?


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## Mephisto

The 2nd drive is mounted onto a drive bracket from an S2, and the bracket rests on a couple of internal components against the middle section of the back panel of the case.

The internal temperature has stayed at the same 48 degree (C) as before the 2nd drive was installed.

My TivoHD was purchased in late July. So I may have been lucky to have gotten one with the 'old' power supply (see post below). I do not sense any spin up difficulties with the two Hitachi drives.


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## clark_kent

Hello all,

To those of you looking at adding a second drive inside the THD, you might want to check the power supply in the unit:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5571957

The "new" power supply is listed as 79W and 12V is listed as 1.2A.

The standard WD160GB 12V is listed as 410mA and the 1TB Hitachi is 850mA...**two Hitachi drives will need 1.7A to spin up.

Not sure what the available power is on the "old" supply as it was not printed on the PCB.

Happy upgrading.


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## SCSIRAID

Im going to copy my THD 160 to a 500 tomorrow morning. Does the custom swap size option need to be messed with or just take the default? I copied my S3's original 250 onto the 500 just to get familiar with the process. Very Nice tool. Well done Spike.


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## jlib

clark_kent said:


> To those of you looking at adding a second drive inside the THD, you might want to check the power supply in the unit:
> 
> http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5571957
> 
> The "new" power supply is listed as 79W and 12V is listed as 1.2A.
> 
> The standard WD160GB 12V is listed as 410mA and the 1TB Hitachi is 850mA...**two Hitachi drives will need 1.7A to spin up.


Good point. This is probably a good use for a PowerTrip startup delay adapter. Once the two drives are running there should be no problem but at simultaneous startup you are seriously overloading the tiny power supply.

Edit: Might not work. Below, IBM = Hitachi. Not sure why brand of drive would make any difference, though.

"the PowerTrip has been tested with several brands of hard drives, and works with Maxtor, Western Digital, Quantum, Samsung and many others. The one known brand of drive that will NOT work with PowerTrip is IBM."​The good news is that the TiVo is rarely power cycled so any stresses on the power supply are minimized. Mine has been on non-stop for almost a year (with UPS). As long as it physically starts up without blowing the power supply fuse you should be OK. I would definitely recommend a UPS, though.


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## 1283

jlib said:


> "the PowerTrip has been tested with several brands of hard drives, and works with Maxtor, Western Digital, Quantum, Samsung and many others. The one known brand of drive that will NOT work with PowerTrip is IBM."​


That note may be related to IDE drives only when two drives share the same bus. Each SATA drive is on a separate channel.


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## WANUB

Hello all,

I want upgrade my THD but am a little nervous since a user in one of the previous messages stated that TiVo knows when you change the machine which I can see how they would but is this of any concern? Mine is only a couple of weeks old and I have it exactly where I would like it and aside from a little trouble with digital audio (which I am sure is my receiver), the THD works great.

Also, I am assuming that when I use MFS to copy the tivo factory drive, that I would need a FAT32 partition? Mine are all NTFS at the moment.

Thanks all,
AP


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## SCSIRAID

WANUB said:


> Hello all,
> 
> I want upgrade my THD but am a little nervous since a user in one of the previous messages stated that TiVo knows when you change the machine which I can see how they would but is this of any concern? Mine is only a couple of weeks old and I have it exactly where I would like it and aside from a little trouble with digital audio (which I am sure is my receiver), the THD works great.
> 
> Also, I am assuming that when I use MFS to copy the tivo factory drive, that I would need a FAT32 partition? Mine are all NTFS at the moment.
> 
> Thanks all,
> AP


Not sure I understand your question...

You need a working Windows system (xp sp2) with the winmfs executable. Connect the stock Tivo drive and the new drive. Run winmfs. select the tivo drive, select copy, select new drive as destination and go. Hit yes when it asks if you want to expand. put it back together and enjoy.


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## WANUB

Sorry... I missed some detail..

I have 2 SATA drives already taking up th 2 SATA ports on my Dell. I was going to use a USB to SATA adapter to do this. I assume that winmfs will put a copy some where on my PC and I was wondering if it is ok if the all my partitions are NTFS.

Thanks


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## AbMagFab

WANUB said:


> Hello all,
> 
> I want upgrade my THD but am a little nervous since a user in one of the previous messages stated that TiVo knows when you change the machine which I can see how they would but is this of any concern? Mine is only a couple of weeks old and I have it exactly where I would like it and aside from a little trouble with digital audio (which I am sure is my receiver), the THD works great.
> 
> Also, I am assuming that when I use MFS to copy the tivo factory drive, that I would need a FAT32 partition? Mine are all NTFS at the moment.
> 
> Thanks all,
> AP


That whole FAT32 thing is old-school. Not an issue any more.

XP SP2 or Vista work great. Either pop the drive into an external SATA enclosure, or connect it directly to a SATA port on your PC. Run WinMFS, backup to anywhere on your PC (NTFS is fine), then connect the destination drive, and restore.

If you want to keep recordings, you'll need both the original and the destination connected at the same time (or a lot of free disk space on your PC, and a lot of time).


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## AbMagFab

WANUB said:


> Sorry... I missed some detail..
> 
> I have 2 SATA drives already taking up th 2 SATA ports on my Dell. I was going to use a USB to SATA adapter to do this. I assume that winmfs will put a copy some where on my PC and I was wondering if it is ok if the all my partitions are NTFS.
> 
> Thanks


Yes it will. If you just want SP's, you can do a truncated backup, which takes only about 1.5GB (and about 5 minutes). If you want to keep all your recordings, you'll need to do a full backup, which will take up the space of the drive (160GB) (and about 2-4 hours for the backup and 2-4 for the restore, I think, I've always done a disk-to-disk copy).

Alternatively, if you can disconnect one of your PC drives, and connect the destination drive instead, you can do a copy from disk to disk, saving on your intirim backup space needs, and cutting the tiime almost in half.


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## WANUB

Can I copy off to a USB drive by having the Tivo drive on the SATA to USB and I have an external USB drive as well..

Thank you


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## AbMagFab

WANUB said:


> Can I copy off to a USB drive by having the Tivo drive on the SATA to USB and I have an external USB drive as well..
> 
> Thank you


Yup. You're in Windows, so any drive is accessible to you.

Why not put the destination drive in the other enclosure, and do a direct copy? Unless your other USB drive is pre-packaged, not an enclosure.


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## WANUB

My other enclosure is older and is IDE to USB only. The SATA to USB is an adapter kit and not an enclosure...

I am off to BestBuy to get the 1TB they have on sale for $279. From all I have read, this should be good since I can quiet it down with the Hitachi feature tool.

Thanks for your help


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## jlib

Or disconnect your second Windows drive (probably not needed for booting) and use its SATA connector and power for the other TiVo drive so both can be connected at once. Or disconnect both Windows drives and use the MFSLive boot CD with both TiVo drives on the internal SATA (no USB-SATA adapters needed then).


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## WANUB

Choices, choices.. 

Thanks folks


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## WANUB

Update......

I got the new WD 1TB drive in and I can't believe how easy this was. 15 minutes and I was done... I now have 144 hours of HD and something like 1300+ hrs of SD.. 

I was suprised that the WD drive is so quiet. I did not run the Hitachi tool yet. I was wondering if I can do that through SATA->USB or does the drive need to on my PCs SATA channel... My tivo is on the living room and not in a cabinet so it has plenty of ventilation so I am guessing the drive will stay cool..

If I do need to run the Acoustic utility, can do it without losing anything or will I have to redo the whole WinMFS process?


On a side note, a huge thank you to Spike25. Thanks for the awesome tools...

Thank you


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## jlib

Some users have reported that the hdparm Linux command method works across USB (from any Linux boot disk such as the MFSLive disk). The Feature Tool is DOS based and doesn't natively understand USB. Adjusting seek acoustics only affects the firmware of the drive and not the contents and can be done at any time. You can be the judge whether it is even important with your WD drive. Some have reported they can live with the default setting since it is already so quiet.


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## richsadams

WANUB said:


> Update......
> 
> I got the new WD 1TB drive in and I can't believe how easy this was. 15 minutes and I was done... I now have 144 hours of HD and something like 1300+ hrs of SD..
> 
> I was suprised that the WD drive is so quiet. I did not run the Hitachi tool yet. I was wondering if I can do that through SATA->USB or does the drive need to on my PCs SATA channel... My tivo is on the living room and not in a cabinet so it has plenty of ventilation so I am guessing the drive will stay cool..
> 
> If I do need to run the Acoustic utility, can do it without losing anything or will I have to redo the whole WinMFS process?
> 
> On a side note, a huge thank you to Spike25. Thanks for the awesome tools...
> 
> Thank you


That's great news and thanks for the feedback. :up: I have my WD 1TB "Green" drive sitting here waiting for an internal installation on our S3...as soon as we can catch up on the backlog of shows we want to watch before I disconnect the eSATA drive. 

I've already set the AAM to 128, but even as a bare drive I couldn't hear much of a difference from the factory settings. It is indeed a very quiet drive.


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## cr33p

I just recently purchased a WD 750 gb drive for my Tivo HD, I have come to the conclusion that I have a bad drive, will mfslive allow me to back up everything? Including cable card settings? I know that mfscopy will but Im trying to have the least amount of downtime, I will order the new replacement drive have this one backed up and ready to send back once the new one arrives.


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## richsadams

cr33p said:


> I just recently purchased a WD 750 gb drive for my Tivo HD, I have come to the conclusion that I have a bad drive, will mfslive allow me to back up everything? Including cable card settings? I know that mfscopy will but Im trying to have the least amount of downtime, I will order the new replacement drive have this one backed up and ready to send back once the new one arrives.


I'm almost certain that a truncated backup will save everything. However you probably ought to ask the expert, Spike, on his forum just to be sure.

MFSLiVe forum

Keep us posted! :up:


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## Morpheus101

What a breeze to make the upgrade to the Green 1TB drive. As usual I was worried more then I should have been. I usually find things much harder then what others are saying it is, but it certainly was not the case here. The only problem I had was that I did not turn off the screen saver before starting in XP and when I tried to deactivate it the Winmfs program stated it was not responding. I rebooted and disabled the screen saver and in about 45 minutes I was done.

I now have a series II upgrade if anyone is looking for one. 2 300GB Maxtor&#8217;s, weeknees bracket, fan and cables. Remove your drive, Plug in the IDE cable, bolt the bracket in, plug the power in and you now have 600GB of storage. You will need to do the necessary software transfer and adding the second drive.


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## richsadams

Morpheus101 said:


> What a breeze to make the upgrade to the Green 1TB drive. As usual I was worried more then I should have been. I usually find things much harder then what others are saying it is, but it certainly was not the case here. The only problem I had was that I did not turn off the screen saver before starting in XP and when I tried to deactivate it the Winmfs program stated it was not responding. I rebooted and disabled the screen saver and in about 45 minutes I was done.
> 
> I now have a series II upgrade if anyone is looking for one. 2 300GB Maxtors, weeknees bracket, fan and cables. Remove your drive, Plug in the IDE cable, bolt the bracket in, plug the power in and you now have 600GB of storage. You will need to do the necessary software transfer and adding the second drive.


Congrats! :up:


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## brettatk

Morpheus101 said:


> What a breeze to make the upgrade to the Green 1TB drive.


I couldnt agree more. I did mine last night:










Took about 30 minutes to do everything. I'll see how this does me before I start thinking about connecting a 1TB esata drive. I might wait till the prices come down and just transfer programs back and forth from my pc if I have a problem with space. The only problem I ran into is the the Hitachi Feature Tool would not detect my drive so I could not lower the AAM. The drive seems very quiet right out of the wrapping so I might not even worry about it now.


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## richsadams

brettatk said:


> I couldnt agree more. I did mine last night:
> Took about 30 minutes to do everything. I'll see how this does me before I start thinking about connecting a 1TB esata drive. I might wait till the prices come down and just transfer programs back and forth from my pc if I have a problem with space. The only problem I ran into is the the Hitachi Feature Tool would not detect my drive so I could not lower the AAM. The drive seems very quiet right out of the wrapping so I might not even worry about it now.


Nice. :up: Agreed about the drive's sound level/AAM. I adjusted ours down to 128 (from 256 IIRC) and really couldn't tell much difference...it's a _very _quiet drive, about on par with our Seagate DB35.


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