# TCD649080 upgrade



## epikos (Sep 15, 2006)

I haven't bought tivo yet, I'm still trying to decide which box I want. 

The series 3 looks great, but 799 is WAY too much. 
The reason I'm looking at the Series2 dual tuner is that it sounds like I can upgrade the drive space with nice big drives from newegg or frys. 

Before I buy I just wanted to make sure that this tivo can be upgraded and that there aren't any size limitations like it won't see a 500gig drive or something. 

The tivo website says the Series2 DT DvR is a TCD649080. Its an 80gig and I'd likely want to buy one or two 500gig drives and just beef it up. 

I found the upgrade-instructions website which seemed to have very good instructions. Just want to make sure someone else has done this with this particular device and if I should look out for anything tweaky or known issues with upgrading like this. I'll probably keep the OEM tivo drive just as a backup incase I make something go boom. 

Some specific questions: 
I heard that if you copy the drive image from the oem drive to a new drive, the tivo only addresses the space from the OEM drive? Do the instructions I linked to above resovle that issue? 

I also heard that doing this wrong can make the tivo never boot and be broken forever. Is this something easy to do that I should look out for? or are the instructions pretty fool proof? I looked over them, I just don't know how temperamental this whole process is. 

And most importantly, can the device actually utilize a 500+ gig drive? and if I put 2 drives in and they're wed, will the tivo actually use 1000+ gigs of drive space? or is there some limit that I shouldn't waste my money going over? 

Thanks!!! 
Epikos 
Soon to be Tivo owner (hopefully)


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## mick66 (Oct 15, 2004)

Just follow the instructions and use whatever size hd (or hd's) you want and everything should work out just fine for you.

btw - if you do screw it up, your Tivo will not be broken forever


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## epikos (Sep 15, 2006)

cool so it will recognize any size drive I put in it? 

Does anyone have experience using a dual tuner Series2 with digital cable from Comcast? I think i read that I'd need two CableCards, one for each tuner? would I still have access to Ondemand and stuff? 

Thanks!


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## mick66 (Oct 15, 2004)

Series 2 Tivos do not use cablecard. You need to use a set top box, but that will only give you one tuner to record digital cable, the other tuner can record any analog cable that isn't scrambled from a direct connection to the rf (coax) input.

Perhaps you need to do a little more research before you buy something that doesn't do what you want it to do.


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## vipa (Sep 18, 2006)

HELLO

um 1st time doing these forums and been long time tivo user myself and upgraded a couple and repaird a couple tivos in the last 4 yrs

well my main tivo it just stopped working think it is the board it self i replaced the drive and it went poff when i got the 2nd screen to pop up just a few min loading. and restateted the power up screen with nothing more.

so the other day i went out looked at the new tivo's and bought the dule 80 hr tivo and went out and bought 2 500 gig drives. well got home cracked it open and noticed one drive bracket so il just stick with the sinlge 500 gig.

well after a few trys using the new mfs tools for drives over 137 gig. 

well heres the problem im havin with it

i got tivo over to the 500 gig drive and mfs tools sees it as 500+ hr drive wich is awsome. then i replaced the 500 gig into tivo and booted it up well needelss to say its not working ring just get that green screen

i then looked to see what more i can do notice the stuff about swap file needed to be greater then 127 for these larger drives. well after all mrning racking my brain on these forums to find the answer and an easy instructional way to work around wich ive not found here yet

i did redo the drive copeying and added heres the command line i used

mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hdc | mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi - /dev/hda 

then i modified it with this line

mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hdc | mfsrestore -s 300 -xzpi - /dev/hda 


um well thats where im at now kinda frustrated and lost now any ideals and how to work the 500gig drives in tivo's


an advide tivoer

VIPA


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## mick66 (Oct 15, 2004)

Unless you also ran TPIP, you don't have any swap file right now. Many people believe that a larger swap is necessary and many of us have decided thatit's not.
I'd stick with the 127mb.

Try mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hdc | mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -xzpi - /dev/hda

The -r 4 is necessary on the larger drives.


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