# Anybody get a SSD drive to work in a TiVo?



## buscuitboy (Aug 8, 2005)

I have a Series 3 (OLED) TiVo that has a dead hard drive and it needs to be replaced. This unit is not heavily used & basically just in a basement rec room for when guests/family are using the area. 

I am looking at some 250GB & 500GB SATA replacements, but was also contemplating maybe getting a SSD drive and maybe experiment with it in this S3 unit. If I get it and it doesn't work, I would plan to just stick this SSD drive in a custom PC so no biggie. I also realize its probably not cost effective at all to go with a SSD vs a SATA, but am willing to take the hit & try it out if it maybe helps speed up performance. 

Has anyone had any success with these in TiVos? I have used WinMFS before to put an image on a previous S3 drive and did it successfully. Can the same be done here? Or is it maybe more involved and trickier?


----------



## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

Several long threads. Search the term SSD. The consensus was no benefit and not the best application for the use case.


----------



## buscuitboy (Aug 8, 2005)

I did a search for SSD, but I would rather just post the question again and get a much quicker & straight forward answer instead of SIFTING through pages of posts. MUCH quicker and easier  Thanks for the answer though.


----------



## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

SSDs are better suited for installing an OS or apps where you need faster access times. Constant read/writes will shorten the life of an SSD so they're not well suited for DVR use. There is absolutely no benefit to using an SSD uin a Tivo other than potentially faster boot times. The cost vs. benefit simply doesn't justify it. You can get a much larger capacity drive for a lot less than what you'd pay for an SSD.


----------



## poppagene (Dec 29, 2001)

mr.unnatural said:


> There is absolutely no benefit to using an SSD uin a Tivo other than potentially faster boot times.


I would have thought the benefit of using an ssd in tivo would be less noise, less heat, and a bit less power consumption which could possibly allow more dvr usage days prior to the inevitable power supply failure from bad capacitors.


----------



## billbillw (Aug 15, 2005)

An SSD would die early due to the constant write/erase of the buffer. Low rpm single platter drives are very cool/quiet and probably would only use about 10-15 more watts than the SSD. I can't even hear the drive in my Tivo HD (a single platter 500GB Seagate Pipeline).


----------



## rainwater (Sep 21, 2004)

poppagene said:


> I would have thought the benefit of using an ssd in tivo would be less noise, less heat, and a bit less power consumption which could possibly allow more dvr usage days prior to the inevitable power supply failure from bad capacitors.


I've never had a TiVo power supply go bad in 8 years. But putting a SSD in one would cause the hard drive to fail for sure with 24/7 constant writing. So I still see zero benefit.


----------



## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Does TiVo have a minimum hard drive size? I wonder if you could add a small SSD just for the OS, fill it with some sort of fake recording set to KUID, then attach a large eSATA drive for all your shows. Then you'd get the benifit of the SSD for faster boots and faster indexing, but wouldn't have to worry about constant writes from recordings shortening it's life. 

Dan


----------



## rainwater (Sep 21, 2004)

Dan203 said:


> Does TiVo have a minimum hard drive size? I wonder if you could add a small SSD just for the OS, fill it with some sort of fake recording set to KUID, then attach a large eSATA drive for all your shows. Then you'd get the benifit of the SSD for faster boots and faster indexing, but wouldn't have to worry about constant writes from recordings shortening it's life.
> 
> Dan


The problem is live tv buffer is always on the OS partition is it not? Plus, even using eSATA, it will stripe all recordings across both drives thanks to CableLabs.


----------



## poppagene (Dec 29, 2001)

rainwater said:


> I've never had a TiVo power supply go bad in 8 years. But putting a SSD in one would cause the hard drive to fail for sure with 24/7 constant writing. So I still see zero benefit.


I didn't say that the benefits of lower noise, lower power consumption, and less heat outweigh the costs and problems -- just that a faster boot time isn't the only potential benefit.

That being said, if you have a series 3 OLED like the OP, it's only a matter of time before the capacitor plague hits your power supply. You could be doing yourself a favor by opening the box and look for bulging capacitors.


----------



## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

rainwater said:


> The problem is live tv buffer is always on the OS partition is it not? Plus, even using eSATA, it will stripe all recordings across both drives thanks to CableLabs.


If the primary drive is full it will not stripe the recordings across the drives until the space is freed, which is why I said to fill it before attaching the eSATA drive. However the live TV buffer could be a problem. I don't know if it's always on the OS partition, but if it is then it would ruin the drive quickly.

Dan


----------



## billbillw (Aug 15, 2005)

I don't really think faster drive speeds would help boot time or indexing. I have Tivos with 7200rpm drives as well as some with slower AV-GP drives. There is no difference in the time they take to boot/etc. Tivos are just slow! 10-15 minutes to completely boot is inexcusable IMO, but that's another rant...


----------



## ThAbtO (Apr 6, 2000)

The main problem is how to mount the drive into the Tivo case since they use a different method from a PC.

You can now get a 1 Tb SATA for $75.


----------



## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

Dan203 said:


> Does TiVo have a minimum hard drive size?


Well, yeah. I mean, the OS (of an S3) is about 90M, and it requires about 128M of swap space, so the drive has to be at least 1/4 G or so, but that leaves zero room for recordings.



Dan203 said:


> I wonder if you could add a small SSD just for the OS, fill it with some sort of fake recording set to KUID


I don't know what you mean. No recordings are stored on the OS partitions.



Dan203 said:


> then attach a large eSATA drive for all your shows. Then you'd get the benifit of the SSD for faster boots and faster indexing, but wouldn't have to worry about constant writes from recordings shortening it's life.


Uh-uh. Disk access time is trivial for booting. An SSD would only shorten boot time by a few seconds - 10 or 20 at most. Indexing is not done on the OS partitions. All the OS partitions are read-only, except for /var, and the only thing going on in /var for the most part is temporary files, logs, and slices. The total content of /var is usually much less than 50 Megs, and could be dumped from the drive in-toto in a matter of 10 seconds or so. The daily file writes to /var are trifling.


----------



## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

billbillw said:


> Tivos are just slow! 10-15 minutes to completely boot is inexcusable IMO, but that's another rant...


Actually, they are not.

First of all, no TiVo requires anything like 10 minutes, let alone 15, to boot up. An original S3 requires about 5 minutes. A THD requires just a bit over 6 minutes.

The machine at which I sit right now has six cores running at 2.8 GHz with 4G of RAM. It takes roughly the same amount of time to fully boot to the same capability as a TiVo running Windows XP 64. Booting to Linux takes a bit less time, but we are still talking about roughly 4 minutes.


----------



## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

rainwater said:


> The problem is live tv buffer is always on the OS partition is it not?


It is not. First of all, there is no single OS partition. The boot partition on an S3 is 2 Megabytes in size. (That's right, 2 Megabytes.) There are two of them, one active and one inactive. The root partitions on a stock S3, IIRC, are 128M (mine are 256M). Again, there are two of them, one active and one inactive. Depending on the TiVo's upgrade and maintenance history, the inactive boot and root partitions may be completely empty. The boot partitions have no file system, and the root partitions are mounted read-only, so neither of them could host any video data, even if there were room for more than 12 seconds worth of video - which there isn't. The inactive partitions are neither read or written - indeed they are not mounted at all, except during an OS upgrade or possibly a GSOD, depending on the cause of the GSOD.

The only read-write partition on the TiVo is /var, and it isn't any larger than /, IIRC. Again, mine are all 256M, but if I recall properly, stock TiVos have 128M /var partitions. Even if it were 256M and completely empty, that's only about 2 minutes of video.

No, except for purely OS - related data, all reading and especially all writing on the TiVo is done in the MFS areas.



rainwater said:


> Plus, even using eSATA, it will stripe all recordings across both drives thanks to CableLabs.


I'm not certain, but I don't think that is true. First of all, I don't think the recordings are striped across both drives, per se. The allocation tables are on the first drive, I believe, and key index adn MFS information concerning every recording, but I think often the video data for many recordings may reside entirely on the second drive. I could be wrong on this point, however.


----------



## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

ThAbtO said:


> The main problem is how to mount the drive into the Tivo case since they use a different method from a PC.
> 
> You can now get a 1 Tb SATA for $75.


You can use a standard 2.5" to 3.5" drive adapter. Tivo just uses a funky bracket to mount the drive to the case. If you use the drive adapter it will mount in the Tivo drive bracket just like any other drive.


----------



## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

billbillw said:


> I don't really think faster drive speeds would help boot time or indexing. I have Tivos with 7200rpm drives as well as some with slower AV-GP drives. There is no difference in the time they take to boot/etc. Tivos are just slow! 10-15 minutes to completely boot is inexcusable IMO, but that's another rant...


Tivos are extremely slow compared to a PC, but nowhere near as slow as you make them out to be. OTOH, I installed Windows 8 on one of my PCs and it boots in less than 30 seconds with an SSD for the OS. My latest PC build to replace my primary PC uses Windows 7 and a SATA III SSD and it's almost as fast.


----------



## billbillw (Aug 15, 2005)

lrhorer said:


> Actually, they are not.
> 
> First of all, no TiVo requires anything like 10 minutes, let alone 15, to boot up. An original S3 requires about 5 minutes. A THD requires just a bit over 6 minutes.
> 
> The machine at which I sit right now has six cores running at 2.8 GHz with 4G of RAM. It takes roughly the same amount of time to fully boot to the same capability as a TiVo running Windows XP 64. Booting to Linux takes a bit less time, but we are still talking about roughly 4 minutes.


My experience has obviously been different. I've had Tivo since 2006. Over the years, I've had plenty of failed recordings and lockups. If I have to pull the power cord, it takes 10+ minutes before it is able to resume the recording. That is with the old Hughes HR10-250, Series 3 HD, Tivo HD, S4 Premiere and now a Premiere 4. I've never seen a box boot completely in 5 minutes.

On the other hand, all of my Windows 7 machines (even one with a Celeron cpu) can all boot in 1-3 minutes. The ones I've switched to SSD do it in 30 secs or less.


----------



## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

lrhorer said:


> I don't know what you mean. No recordings are stored on the OS partitions.


My thought was that if you installed an SSD first, then filled the drive to 100% capacity using a random recording, and then set that recording to KUID then when you installed the eSATA drive all future recordings would be stored exclusively on the eSATA drive rather then being striped between the two drives, thus extending the life of the SSD. However if the live buffer is always reserved on the primary drive then that wouldn't work because the live buffer would still cause constant writes to the SSD shortening it's lifespan.

Dan


----------



## newsposter (Aug 18, 2002)

billbillw said:


> On the other hand, all of my Windows 7 machines (even one with a Celeron cpu) can all boot in 1-3 minutes. The ones I've switched to SSD do it in 30 secs or less.


my win 8 machine is 8...simply amazing


----------



## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

Dan203 said:


> My thought was that if you installed an SSD first, then filled the drive to 100% capacity using a random recording, and then set that recording to KUID then when you installed the eSATA drive all future recordings would be stored exclusively on the eSATA drive rather then being striped between the two drives, thus extending the life of the SSD. However if the live buffer is always reserved on the primary drive then that wouldn't work because the live buffer would still cause constant writes to the SSD shortening it's lifespan.
> 
> Dan


Hmm, I thought a vaugely remembered that none of the upgrade tools avalible knew how to shrink a partition, only how to add new media partitions. If that's still true you'd have to get a SSD at least as large as the stock drive of the TiVo you're putting it into (seems kind of a waste of space, and cash, if you're going to lock down all its capacity with a bunch of 'junk' KUID recordings)

But that said I guess this should work (and obviously work best for TiVos which started out with small stock drives and had never been previously upgraded).

Even so, in the original poster's place I'd just throw in a new terabyte (non-SSD) drive and enjoy the extra recording hours.


----------



## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

I didn't know that either. OK ignore my idea, it was stupid. 

Dan


----------



## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

lrhorer said:


> Actually, they are not.
> 
> First of all, no TiVo requires anything like 10 minutes, let alone 15, to boot up. An original S3 requires about 5 minutes. A THD requires just a bit over 6 minutes.


You're nitpicking the definition of "boot". Most people consider a computer "booted" when it is available to launch their programs (or even more, when it's completely finished RESTORING the previous apps that were running if the OS has that functionality).

Analogously, a Tivo isn't completely "booted" until it can be recording again. For the OLED S3, that IS at least 10 minutes, including getting the channel info. If you JUST want to access your Now Playing shows, it's a bit less, but still a RIDICULOUSLY long time, IMHO.

Yes, make the argument "you should never have to boot them". That is true, you shouldn't HAVE to. But sometimes you do (I rebooted my Premiere 4 today just to be able to delete an item in the Recently Deleted folder that WOULDN'T go away on its own or even if I manually deleted it -- and if I didn't reboot it, I could very easily have lost programs I DID want to keep).

Also, improving boot speed would improve the INITIAL experience of using a TiVo too. Haven't you read how much people enjoy opening an iPad or iPhone? Seems silly to concentrate on that maybe, but people notice.

Often people's reactions are based on how something (a device, a company) behaves in the *bad* times (e.g. customer service, or rebooting a Tivo), rather than when it's working normally.

Personally, I'm amazed at how fast a S1 boots(booted).


----------



## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

mattack said:


> You're nitpicking the definition of "boot". Most people consider a computer "booted" when it is available to launch their programs (or even more, when it's completely finished RESTORING the previous apps that were running if the OS has that functionality).
> 
> Analogously, a Tivo isn't completely "booted" until it can be recording again. For the OLED S3, that IS at least 10 minutes, including getting the channel info. If you JUST want to access your Now Playing shows, it's a bit less, but still a RIDICULOUSLY long time, IMHO.


Interesting. With my TiVo HD the couple times over the years it happened to reboot mid-recording there was only about 5, maybe 6 minutes missing between the two partial recordings.

Still an agonizingly long time, but certainly not 10 or 15 minutes. I wonder why your S3 (which I though were suppose to be faster than the HDs) took so much longer to get back to the point it could record. And I didn't notice any significant delay between when the HD showed the menus and when the recording light kicked back on.

Now my original DirecTV TiVo units _would_ take a significant amount of time reading channel info from the satellites, and you _could_ jump into the Now Playing menu and watch pre-recorded material while that progress slowly completed. Those satellite units couldn't resume recording until they'd gotten all the info from the satellite stream. But again I never noticed a delay like that on the standalone TiVo HD or Elite.

Oh and while I haven't timed my Elite, it _does_ seems to boot noticeably faster; but still a long way from instant.


----------



## newsposter (Aug 18, 2002)

Dan203 said:


> I didn't know that either. OK ignore my idea, it was stupid.
> 
> Dan


we need bigger signature boxes


----------



## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

I have a Premiere 4, and yes, it is a LOT faster, but still seemingly agonizingly slow compared to S1. (I had a 'bum' first Premiere 4.. it would hang/reboot a lot. The replacement has only rebooted a few of times, mostly purposely by me, once to get it out of a weird black screen issue I mentioned elsewhere, and once or twice to be able to delete something 'stuck' in recently deleted that was causing other recordings to go away sooner.)


----------



## Elryzor (Oct 7, 2004)

billbillw said:


> My experience has obviously been different. I've had Tivo since 2006. Over the years, I've had plenty of failed recordings and lockups. If I have to pull the power cord, it takes 10+ minutes before it is able to resume the recording. That is with the old Hughes HR10-250, Series 3 HD, Tivo HD, S4 Premiere and now a Premiere 4. I've never seen a box boot completely in 5 minutes.
> 
> On the other hand, all of my Windows 7 machines (even one with a Celeron cpu) can all boot in 1-3 minutes. The ones I've switched to SSD do it in 30 secs or less.


I have to agree with billbillw. My four TiVos all take at least 10 to 15 minutes to fully boot. I have two Series 3 HD TiVos that are about 2.5 years old and the whole family dreads rebooting them because they can take several attempts to fully boot. Even if they boot right on the first attempt it is easily 15 minutes.

Our TiVo Premier units are a little better. But still I don't recall ever being surprised by them booting quickly. Even the XL4 TiVo easily takes 10 minutes to boot.


----------



## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

Elryzor said:


> I have to agree with billbillw. My four TiVos all take at least 10 to 15 minutes to fully boot. I have two Series 3 HD TiVos that are about 2.5 years old and the whole family dreads rebooting them because they can take several attempts to fully boot. Even if they boot right on the first attempt it is easily 15 minutes.
> 
> Our TiVo Premier units are a little better. But still I don't recall ever being surprised by them booting quickly. Even the XL4 TiVo easily takes 10 minutes to boot.


The TP-4 only takes less than 6 minutes to boot, seems like better hardware as the RJ45 port is now 1000Gb/s.


----------



## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Premiere 4 is WAY faster than Tivo HD which is itself significantly (but not WAY) faster than OLED S3 to boot.. and by "boot" I really mean "boot all the way until it can record again". Each of them can save a bit of time if you're really only counting getting to play already recorded shows.. But the OLED S3 is still slow as dirt in that case.


----------



## wmcbrine (Aug 2, 2003)

The TiVos are slow to boot primarily because of the anti-tampering verification process they do.

Or not.


----------



## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

it's been a real long time- but years back- wasn't it possible to futz with partitiions with some apple disk utility? 

I can't remember for sure but i thought you could manually edit the partitions 'table' (or whatever it was called) so that you could futz with certain partition sizes (was it var?) or perhaps move them around between drives. 

If (big if) my memory is correct- it MIGHT be possible to put the "right" partitions on the SSD and move the other ones to a regular drive.


----------



## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

I dug in the archives but couldn't find any clear information about what they could do (as far as moving partitions form one drive to another)- but the apps i was thinking about were called tivopart and pdisk.

Seems you could fiddle with sizes of partitions for sure and perhaps create "extra partitions" (that tivo wouldn't use but one could use for hacking when that was possible...). But i dont know if you could move partitions from one drive to another with them.


----------



## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

seems if you can get the right partitions at the "front end" of the drive with pdisk and/or tivopart that this thing might just let you put certain partitions on a properly sized SSD with the rest (and a mirror of the ssd) on a regular drive:

http://www.amazon.com/SilverStone-D...60803343&sr=8-1&keywords=silverstone+hddboost

but no idea if it would be worth all the trouble or not...

actually i think such a combination would MAYBE be similar to the old tivo cachecard for series 1's.... http://www.9thtee.com/tivocachecard.htm . But i forget if the cachecard was just caching a particular region/partition of the drive or if it used drivers loaded on the tivo to 'pick out' the right data to cache. I seem to recall it was at a lower level than drivers on the device but could be wrong.


----------



## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

All this to get a faster boot time on a TiVo that is designed to run 24/7 !!


----------



## Nargg (May 25, 2012)

billbillw said:


> An SSD would die early due to the constant write/erase of the buffer. Low rpm single platter drives are very cool/quiet and probably would only use about 10-15 more watts than the SSD. I can't even hear the drive in my Tivo HD (a single platter 500GB Seagate Pipeline).


Wrong. SSD drives do have an expected read/write lifetime. But you have to realize that expected lifetime is usually MUCH LONGER than the MTBF for a standard hard drive. And SSD should actually last much longer than a normal hard drive under any use.


----------



## newsposter (Aug 18, 2002)

Nargg said:


> Wrong. SSD drives do have an expected read/write lifetime. But you have to realize that expected lifetime is usually MUCH LONGER than the MTBF for a standard hard drive. And SSD should actually last much longer than a normal hard drive under any use.


i hope that life is more than 3 months...came home to find the laptop screen black and locked up and had to pull the battery :down:


----------



## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

Nargg said:


> Wrong. SSD drives do have an expected read/write lifetime. But you have to realize that expected lifetime is usually MUCH LONGER than the MTBF for a standard hard drive. And SSD should actually last much longer than a normal hard drive under any use.


The read is no problem but the write sure is, research SSD for big data base use. Windows 7 also disables disk optimize on SSD drives because of the extra non needed writes and it does good anyways.


----------



## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

lessd said:


> All this to get a faster boot time on a TiVo that is designed to run 24/7 !!


Tivos have bugs, there are power outages, etc.. Making Tivo faster to boot is a worthwhile pursuit.


----------



## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

mattack said:


> Tivos have bugs, there are power outages, etc.. Making Tivo faster to boot is a worthwhile pursuit.


We should take a poll of how much the average TiVo owner has a re-boot that not part of a software upgrade, on the 4 TPs I have it's about 3-4 per year and power outage add another 4 every two years for me, and a UPS could solve that. I think the SSD is much to do about nothing, but good luck getting one into a TiVo.


----------



## steve614 (May 1, 2006)

Also remember that boot time isn't just 'load and go' with a Tivo.


----------



## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

SSDs will be the boot drives for virtually every computer and tablet fairly soon, but certain applications just make no sense... like a TiVo.


----------



## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

lessd said:


> We should take a poll of how much the average TiVo owner has a re-boot that not part of a software upgrade, on the 4 TPs I have it's about 3-4 per year and power outage add another 4 every two years for me, and a UPS could solve that. I think the SSD is much to do about nothing, but good luck getting one into a TiVo.


Well, on my Premiere 4, I had to reboot again the other day to be able to actually delete a show from the recently deleted. (The ONLY reason I deleted it was that it was "sticking" there, and causing suggestions, then my recorded shows, to go away)


----------



## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

wmcbrine said:


> The TiVos are slow to boot primarily because of the anti-tampering verification process they do.


That is simply not true. Three of my TiVos have those processes disabled completely, and they do not boot appreciably faster than one which does not have those processes removed. Indeed, the anti-tampering processes only require a few seconds to complete right at the beginning of the boot process. The process is a bit more sophisticated on the Premiere systems, but on both S3 and S4 TiVos, the BIOS checks that the kernel is signed, which insures that it will not allow alien software to run. Then, the BIOS transfers control to the kernel, which like most modern kernels then loads an init RAM Disk but unlike most kernels transfers control to it only if it is signed properly. The initrd in turn runs a checksum on certain key files and checks certain key directories to make sure they only contain the expected files. If any alien file is in any of the directories or if any of the extant files fail the checksum, the kernel spawns a GSOD. Otherwise, the initrd loads the root file system and transfers control to the files in that file system. Again, this process is all completed by the time the "Only a few more minutes" splash comes up, and no more security checking is done after that time. At that point, it begins running a group of more than 180 scripts, all of which are involved with initializing the various hardware and software on the TiVo. Finally, control is transferred to tivoapp, which ultimately controls most of the processes on the TiVo.


----------



## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

mattack said:


> Tivos have bugs, there are power outages, etc.. Making Tivo faster to boot is a worthwhile pursuit.


It isn't going to be accomplished with an SSD. With a perfectly ordinary SATA drive, the entire OS and all its files can be loaded in a matter of a few seconds. Once again, the OS of the TiVo is just not very large, at all:


```
Guest:/# pdisk -l /dev/hda

stat: mode = 060660, type=Block
size = 0, blocks = 0
HDIO_GETGEO: heads=255, sectors=63, cylinders=46593, start=0,  total=748516545
Partition map (with 512 byte blocks) on '/dev/hda'
 #:                type name                              length   base       ( size )
 1: Apple_partition_map Apple                                 63 @ 1          (  31.5K)
 2:                Ext2 Hack 1                            524288 @ 64         ( 256.0M)
 3:               Image Kernel 1                            4096 @ 524352     (   2.0M)
 4:                Ext2 Root 1                            524288 @ 528448     ( 256.0M)
 5:                Ext2 Hack 2                            524288 @ 1052736    ( 256.0M)
 6:               Image Kernel 2                            4096 @ 1577024    (   2.0M)
 7:                Ext2 Root 2                            524288 @ 1581120    ( 256.0M)
 8:                Swap Linux swap                        262144 @ 2105408    ( 128.0M)
 9:                Ext2 /var                              524288 @ 2367552    ( 256.0M)
10:                 MFS MFS application region            589824 @ 2891840    ( 288.0M)
11:                 MFS MFS media region               216747008 @ 3481664    ( 103.3G)
12:                 MFS Second MFS application region     589824 @ 220228672  ( 288.0M)
13:                 MFS Second MFS media region        268617728 @ 220818496  ( 128.0G)
14:                 MFS New MFS Application                 1024 @ 489436224  ( 512.0K)
15:                 MFS New MFS Media                 1465647104 @ 489437248  ( 698.8G)
16:          Apple_Free Extra                         1951944816 @ 1955084352 ( 930.7G)

Guest:/# df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used  Avail  Capacity Mounted on
/dev/hda7             248M   97M   138M     41%   /
/dev/hda9             248M   26M   209M     11%   /var
/dev/hda2             248M  104M   131M     44%   /var/hack
```
On a stock TiVo, the partitions are even smaller. I manually increased the sizes of /dev/hda2 and /dev/hda5 from 64 bytes to 256M, and I increased the size of /dev/hda4, /dev/hda7, and /dev/hda9 from 128M each to 256M. /var/hack does not exist on a stock TiVo, and the total size of the OS is somewhat smaller than the 123M found on this system. Any modern SATA drive can easily load 123M in less than 30 seconds.


----------



## wmcbrine (Aug 2, 2003)

lrhorer said:


> That is simply not true.


Such is my recollection from the distant days when I ran hacked TiVos.



> _Three of my TiVos have those processes disabled completely, and they do not boot appreciably faster than one which does not have those processes removed._


Are you comparing like with like? My impression is that your Series 3's are hacked, and your Premiere isn't -- yes? And you're saying that the S3s boot only a little faster than the Premiere? If so, that proves the point -- because a Premiere boots _much, much_ faster than an unhacked S3. If you've reduced the boot time of an S3 to less than that of a Premiere, that's a huge reduction.


----------



## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

wmcbrine said:


> Are you comparing like with like? My impression is that your Series 3's are hacked, and your Premiere isn't -- yes? And you're saying that the S3s boot only a little faster than the Premiere?


No, I'm saying a hacked S3 TiVo only boots just a bit faster than an unhacked S3 Tivo. It's been quite a long time since I have run the tests, but IIRC, the unhacked S3 booted in something like 05:30, while a hacked S3 TiVo booted in around 5:15. For quite some years, two of my TiVos were hacked and one was not.



wmcbrine said:


> If so, that proves the point -- because a Premiere boots _much, much_ faster than an unhacked S3. If you've reduced the boot time of an S3 to less than that of a Premiere, that's a huge reduction.


Honestly, I wouldn't know. I don't believe I have ever sat around waiting for the Premiere to boot, and I have certainly neve measured it. I would not be in the least surprised, however. The Premiere has a much faster, dual core CPU, and there is a huge amount of processing going on, there. A faster CPU makes for shorter processing times.

In any case, no matter what the processing time, a faster storage system isn't going to do much.


----------



## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

I just had to replace a hard drive on one of my S3 TiVos, so while the unit was unhacked, I did a little testing. Here are the results prior to hacking and afterwards, the difference being the lack of the directory scan which verifies the contents of key directories and the signatures of certain key files:


```
Boot	Kickstart	Ready
Unhacked	1:08	1:27		5:37
Hacked		0:47	1:05		5:16
```
As one can see, the difference is about 20 seconds. The "Boot" time starts when the unit is plugged in. The "Kickstart" time starts after the kickstart test is complete, very early in the boot process after control has passed from files in the RAM Disk to files on the hard drive. While I had the stopwatch out, I also measured the boot time for a Premiere:


```
Boot	Kickstart	Ready
	0:40	0:51		4:07
```
So the bottom line is eliminating Chain of Trust checking on an original S3 reduces the boot time by about 21 seconds. That is significant, but not a huge difference, and at 6%, certainly not the primary time consumer in the boot cycle. Adding a faster processor drops the time by more than a full minute, or nearly 26% of the boot time.


----------



## wmcbrine (Aug 2, 2003)

Huh. I guess I was wrong, then. I'm tempted to wonder if it makes more of a difference on a Series 2 DirecTiVo (the only kind I ever hacked), but it doesn't seem likely, does it?


----------



## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

Well, yes, it rather does seem plausible to me. The "monte" chain of trust hack for the S2 was substantially different than that for the S3, and I suspect the S2's considerably lower CPU speed made the elimination of a chunk of CRC and signature checks have a greater impact on the boot time. That is partially conjecture on my part however, because although I know the details of the hacks employed on the S2, I have never actually personally hacked one or run any tests on one.


----------



## rodnig1 (Oct 31, 2007)

I just installed a crucial m500 960GB in my Directivo THR22-100 last night. the unit is in my bedroom, and the noise from the hard drive was sometimes bothering me while sleeping. I decided to wait until there was an affordable 750gb+ drive to test it with. 

Problem solved... its quiet now!! i don't think the fan is even running in it now(actually, i think i forgot to plug the fan in)

Ill keep you all posted as to how this turns out in the next couple of weeks


----------



## heyted (Mar 4, 2012)

rodnig1 said:


> i think i forgot to plug the fan in


That is not good. The hard drive is not the main source of heat. A fan is still needed.

A TiVo can be turned off at night if you do not mind not recording anything at night. Some people say this should not be done, but I never had a problem doing it.


----------



## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

rodnig1 said:


> I just installed a crucial m500 960GB in my Directivo THR22-100 last night. the unit is in my bedroom, and the noise from the hard drive was sometimes bothering me while sleeping. I decided to wait until there was an affordable 750gb+ drive to test it with.
> 
> Problem solved... its quiet now!! i don't think the fan is even running in it now(actually, i think i forgot to plug the fan in)
> 
> Ill keep you all posted as to how this turns out in the next couple of weeks


TiVo is using the drive 24/7 and that not good for any SSD, the only problem you may have is a shorter life on the drive.


----------



## rodnig1 (Oct 31, 2007)

im willing to sacrifice the ssd for good nights sleep lately. plus the drive is under a 3 year warranty. I use lots of crucial ssd drives in many of the computers for the company i work for, so i hope to have good results.

the only thing that i am noticing is that the menu is jumpy and flickers when going into it sometimes. kinda weird, but certainly not a deal breaker so far


----------



## rodnig1 (Oct 31, 2007)

heyted said:


> That is not good. The hard drive is not the main source of heat. A fan is still needed.
> 
> A TiVo can be turned off at night if you do not mind not recording anything at night. Some people say this should not be done, but I never had a problem doing it.


i was messing around with it today, and plugged the fan back in. still not a bit of sound coming from it.


----------



## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

rodnig1 said:


> i was messing around with it today, and plugged the fan back in. still not a bit of sound coming from it.


You need cable and a TiVo Mini or a Genie and a C31- Voila!- no hard drive!


----------



## trip1eX (Apr 2, 2005)

buscuitboy said:


> I did a search for SSD, but I would rather just post the question again and get a much quicker & straight forward answer instead of SIFTING through pages of posts. MUCH quicker and easier  Thanks for the answer though.


Much quicker and easier for everyone else if you just read what has already been discussed.


----------



## webcrawlr (Mar 4, 2004)

lessd said:


> TiVo is using the drive 24/7 and that not good for any SSD, the only problem you may have is a shorter life on the drive.


That's simply not the case anymore, at least to a point where it matters. Someone else mentioned it in this thread already but I figured I'd post a link to a torture test done to a modern SSD showing how much writing it can really handle.

As you can see from reading this article a new TLC SSD drive (considered inferior to MLC) can withstand over 700TB, that's terabytes, of data written to it before a single re-allocation occurs. That means you can write 490GB a day for 4 years before the first issue. I don't know exactly how much data the live buffers use a day but I doubt it's anywhere close to that.

http://us.hardware.info/reviews/417...-with-final-conclusion-final-update-20-6-2013


----------



## ggieseke (May 30, 2008)

Assuming roughly 5-6GB per hour for HD, the live buffers on a 6 tuner TiVo would write 700-850GB per day.


----------



## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

webcrawlr said:


> That's simply not the case anymore, at least to a point where it matters. Someone else mentioned it in this thread already but I figured I'd post a link to a torture test done to a modern SSD showing how much writing it can really handle.
> 
> As you can see from reading this article a new TLC SSD drive (considered inferior to MLC) can withstand over 700TB, that's terabytes, of data written to it before a single re-allocation occurs. That means you can write 490GB a day for 4 years before the first issue. I don't know exactly how much data the live buffers use a day but I doubt it's anywhere close to that.
> 
> http://us.hardware.info/reviews/417...-with-final-conclusion-final-update-20-6-2013


6 tuners on 6 different HD channels at about 6 Gb per hour, thats over 850Gb per day giving you somewhere in the 2 year range of SSD life using your data above.


----------



## webcrawlr (Mar 4, 2004)

lessd said:


> 6 tuners on 6 different HD channels at about 6 Gb per hour, thats over 850Gb per day giving you somewhere in the 2 year range of SSD life using your data above.


That's a fair point for a 6 tuner system but the OP is using a Series 3 which if I'm not mistaken is a 2 tuner system. In that case worst case scenario, leaving both tuners on HD channels all the time, gives the drive a life of nearly 7 years.


----------



## rodnig1 (Oct 31, 2007)

update on my directivo ssd upgrade

after 5 days, its running fine, except for that menu glitch every now and then. not seeing any reall improved performance, and that's pretty much what i expected. Im sure it will start quicker, but that hasn't been tested by me

the big thing is that its quiet!!!!! for my bedroom, that's all i really wanted!! im sleeping much better now


----------



## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

This is the stupidest thread. If you want something quieter, but a TiVo Mini or DirecTV C31 in the "quiet" room, and the HR44 or Roamio Pro/Plus in another room.


----------



## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

Bigg said:


> This is the stupidest thread. If you want something quieter, but a TiVo Mini or DirecTV C31 in the "quiet" room, and the HR44 or Roamio Pro/Plus in another room.


Especially when you condenser the cost of a large SSD drive.


----------



## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

lessd said:


> Especially when you condenser the cost of a large SSD drive.


Yup. I have a 500GB one in my laptop, but that's for a $2500 computer with limited internal space.


----------



## steve614 (May 1, 2006)

Bigg said:


> This is the stupidest thread..



Then why are you reading and posting in it?
Your suggestion was fine without the thread crap.


----------



## rodnig1 (Oct 31, 2007)

take a look at the cost of ssd drives lately, you can buy a crucial 480gb for about $250.... that certainly makes it worth installing an ssd now


----------



## mcf57 (Oct 19, 2012)

rodnig1 said:


> take a look at the cost of ssd drives lately, you can buy a crucial 480gb for about $250.... that certainly makes it worth installing an ssd now


Really? An 3TB WD drive is going for about $128 (2TB for about $95). With not much real improvement in performance, not sure its still worth it.


----------



## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

mcf57 said:


> Really? An 3TB WD drive is going for about $128 (2TB for about $95). With not much real improvement in performance, not sure its still worth it.


If one has super sensitive ears and needs a TiVo in the bedroom 450Mb at $250 may be a good trade off, this would not be for speed, just noise, the fan in my Roamio makes more noise than the drive, but with a SSD one may not even need a fan, or spend the $250 for a Mini for the bedroom, same money more record space and no noise.


----------



## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

lessd said:


> If one has super sensitive ears and needs a TiVo in the bedroom 450Mb at $250 may be a good trade off, this would not be for speed, just noise, the fan in my Roamio makes more noise than the drive, but with a SSD one may not even need a fan, or spend the $250 for a Mini for the bedroom, same money more record space and no noise.


Exactly. The Mini/C31 is always going to win.


----------



## replaytv (Feb 21, 2011)

lessd said:


> If one has super sensitive ears and needs a TiVo in the bedroom 450Mb at $250 may be a good trade off, this would not be for speed, just noise, the fan in my Roamio makes more noise than the drive, but with a SSD one may not even need a fan, or spend the $250 for a Mini for the bedroom, same money more record space and no noise.


I would think the power supply needs the cooling more than the drive. Or is the total power supply on a Roamio on the outside?


----------



## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

replaytv said:


> I would think the power supply needs the cooling more than the drive. Or is the total power supply on a Roamio on the outside?


It is on the basic model, but with switching type power supplies I not sure you need the fan, the hard drive takes up to 1/2 the power of the total unit, so with a SSD drive one would have to measure the internal temp to find out.
Also I don't know if you can format, in any model of the series 4, a drive smaller than the original drive, if you can't, even a 450Mb drive will not work.


----------

