# Bolt faq ?



## rtoledo (Feb 18, 2008)

Hello fellow Tivo lovers. I recently bought 2 new Bolts , and already got some great advise from a few members. I bought 2 drives but have not had the time to do anything due to a family member going into hospital and still in intensive. 

Anyways was just wondering if there's a FAQ for the BOLt. specially what is the " safe " size for a Internal drive swap in the 2.5" size , I remember reading that 2 TB was "safe" for future updates? not loosing data would be a great for my wife's Tivo. 


and what to do about a external one and formatting it & marring it? 


thank you for helping a newbie in advance.


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## ThAbtO (Apr 6, 2000)

To start, an external is never recommended for use with an internal drive..


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## ggieseke (May 30, 2008)

Internal drives are tricky because most 2.5" drives over 1-2TB are crap "archive" drives.

If you go the external 3.5" route, you can go up to 4TB with the WD EURX line, which is what TiVo uses. After that you have to use the Red drives (WD60EFRX for 6TB or WD80EFZX for 8TB).

Anything over 3TB will require MFS Reformatter.


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## rtoledo (Feb 18, 2008)

ggieseke said:


> Internal drives are tricky because most 2.5" drives over 1-2TB are crap "archive" drives.
> 
> If you go the external 3.5" route, you can go up to 4TB with the WD EURX line, which is what TiVo uses. After that you have to use the Red drives (WD60EFRX for 6TB or WD80EFZX for 8TB).
> 
> Anything over 3TB will require MFS Reformatter.


I agree, and hope WD creates 2.5" AV drives with more platters in them.

After I posted this thread yesterday, I went ahead and took apart my BOLT and took out the drive , and then hooked up the external enclosure holding a used WD AV drive to provide power for the drive only , and used a regular sata cable to hook up to the Bolt MB. it all worked like a charm , it formatted it , never even told me so , went through the guide setup and I now show 317HD or 2177SD hours. need to make a new enclosure with a 120mm fan to blow on top of the Tivo and enclose it all (lots of holes and bottom legs to let it all flow.

@ggieseke , IF I take out the 2 TB drive and put in my new 4TB WD AV drive , will the BOLT attempt to reformat the drive ? I read somewhere that it does , but only 2.2 TB show ? ( re-read the first post and got my answer for the roamio http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=528428 )

I downloaded all the MFSR apps including 1004 . or do I have to do this from the get go on a drive without sticking it in the Tivo first? cause so far it says no drives found, so it must be looking for a file system?

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7iFnN9xUsfqSWQ4aUZyLWh1U28


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## ggieseke (May 30, 2008)

rtoledo said:


> @ggieseke , IF I take out the 2 TB drive and put in my new 4TB WD AV drive , will the BOLT attempt to reformat the drive ? I read somewhere that it does , but only 2.2 TB show ? ( re-read the first post and got my answer for the roamio http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=528428 )
> 
> I downloaded all the MFSR apps including 1004 . or do I have to do this from the get go on a drive without sticking it in the Tivo first? cause so far it says no drives found, so it must be looking for a file system?


You need to put the 4TB drive in the TiVo first. Once it gets to the first Guided Setup screen where it asks which country you're in, you can pull the power plug and run MFSR 1.0.0.4.

I could probably format a blank drive, but initializing it first lets me detect the correct model (Roamio or Bolt) and acts as a safety measure to identify which drive to format. You wouldn't like me if it wiped out your C: drive.


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## rtoledo (Feb 18, 2008)

ggieseke said:


> You need to put the 4TB drive in the TiVo first. Once it gets to the first Guided Setup screen where it asks which country you're in, you can pull the power plug and run MFSR 1.0.0.4.
> 
> I could probably format a blank drive, but initializing it first lets me detect the correct model (Roamio or Bolt) and acts as a safety measure to identify which drive to format. You wouldn't like me if it wiped out your C: drive.


will do. funny you should say that about wiping a drive. just had a incident with 2 computers. luckily all was backed up first time in 20 years .


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