# Using TiVo as a NAS?



## shaunH (Jun 1, 2002)

I watch about 8hrs of TV a week, and my networked TiVo has (up until now) been running 24/7.

Since it's not ideal for me to turn it off daily, I wondered if it could be used for an additional purpose.

Would it be possible to, say, allocate 30 GB on the TiVo for use as file storage, which I could use for backing up my PC Data over the network?

I've never seen any mention of this before - has anyone any thoughts on this??

Ta,

ShaunH


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

Yes, but "allocating 30GB for file storage" would have to be done at drive re-imaging stage, you can't use the area reserved for video(MFS) as a filesytem.

As for the software, NFS is relatively easy, Samba (windows filesharing) is more difficult.


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

I already have a TiVo in my garage that I use for exactly this purpose - but it doesn't record TV any more 

Theoretically you could make it do both but as Mike says it would require messing with the partitions when configuring the drive if you want to do it with the main (single) drive. 

However, you could add a 2nd drive to an existing single-drive TiVo and dedicate that entirely to non-tivo files if you formatted it under linux first. It would then just appear as /dev/hdb and any linux partitions could be mounted as normal via the bash prompt. Once the partitions are mounted you can access them via a dedicated FTP client (or even Windows explorer as long as you make sure you only open one folder at once as tivoftpd doesn't support multiple connections very well).

Cheers
Steve


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## cwaring (Feb 12, 2002)

shaunH said:


> Since it's not ideal for me to turn it off daily...


Huh? Mine's never been switched off (except for essential maintainance) since I bought it in 2002Okay, I watch it more than you do, but still..


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## shaunH (Jun 1, 2002)

mikerr said:


> Yes, but "allocating 30GB for file storage" would have to be done at drive re-imaging stage, you can't use the area reserved for video(MFS) as a filesytem.
> 
> As for the software, NFS is relatively easy, Samba (windows filesharing) is more difficult.


thanks - it's so long since I messed about with my Tivo Hard disk, I have forgotten what that it would probably need to be be re-imaged...sounds like a bit of hassle 
If I did this, I'd probably go the NFS route: as you say, it sounds easier than SAMBA.

Cheers,

ShaunH


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## shaunH (Jun 1, 2002)

blindlemon said:


> I already have a TiVo in my garage that I use for exactly this purpose - but it doesn't record TV any more
> 
> Theoretically you could make it do both but as Mike says it would require messing with the partitions when configuring the drive if you want to do it with the main (single) drive.
> 
> ...


Sounds like adding the second disk might be the easier option, but it would be good to use the existing hardware (looking at my tivo , I'm only using about 40GB of my 120GB Drive for TV programes at the moment)

Thanks,

ShaunH


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## shaunH (Jun 1, 2002)

cwaring said:


> Huh? Mine's never been switched off (except for essential maintainance) since I bought it in 2002Okay, I watch it more than you do, but still..


I've got one of those new smart Electric Meters and have only realised recently that the TiVo is the most wasteful devices I run... :-(
It's been running 168 hrs/week, when it's actually only needed for 16.

It's a shame that they never developed a sleep mode for it...

Of late, I've been turning it off, if there are no recording coming up soon - have to be careful to remember to switch it on before it's needed though....


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## beastman (May 26, 2002)

If anyone can an idiots guide for this I'd appreciate it!


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

shaunH said:


> It's been running 168 hrs/week, when it's actually only needed for 16.
> 
> It's a shame that they never developed a sleep mode for it...


Why not put it on a timer and only have it running daily from say 7pm to 1am daily if you use it as relatively little as you say you do? Although the daily calls would be thrown out a bit the Tivo would tend to eventually only start making the calls at the times of day when the Tivo is up and running.


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## shaunH (Jun 1, 2002)

Pete77 said:


> Why not put it on a timer and only have it running daily from say 7pm to 1am daily if you use it as relatively little as you say you do? Although the daily calls would be thrown out a bit the Tivo would tend to eventually only start making the calls at the times of day when the Tivo is up and running.


Yes, I'm thinking of doing that. I've got a 24hr timeswitch, but my needs are different at the weekends.

Incidently, I've noticed that some timeswitches consume more electricity than I thought.
I know someone who uses a timeswitch to turn off a lamp in his lounge & 'save' electricity, but the Timeswitch consumes as much as the bulb (It would save money to run the bulb on its own 24/7!!)

I was wondering if it would be possible to compile the Linux shutdown executable for TiVo, then we could halt the TiVo on a cron job or a tcl script...


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

shaunH said:


> Incidently, I've noticed that some timeswitches consume more electricity than I thought.
> 
> I know someone who uses a timeswitch to turn off a lamp in his lounge & 'save' electricity, but the Timeswitch consumes as much as the bulb (It would save money to run the bulb on its own 24/7!!)


Get a digital LCD timeswitch and not a mechanical one. Most digital timeswitches use under 1W per hour. But you need the timeswitch to be able to cope with devices with low current draw but a high surge when turned on and off like set top boxes or compact fluorescent lamps. Halfords used to sell a suitable Masterplug LCD timer with a 7 day cycle and numerous on/off setting possibilities for only £5. They may still stock it.



> I was wondering if it would be possible to compile the Linux shutdown executable for TiVo, then we could halt the TiVo on a cron job or a tcl script...


There is no Linux command that turns off the Tivo but only one that would put it in Standby mode. In Standby mode the Tivo hard drive still runs but the video output is turned off. This saves almost no power so isn't a road worth going down.


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## shaunH (Jun 1, 2002)

Pete77 said:


> Get a digital LCD timeswitch and not a mechanical one. Most digital timeswitches use under 1W per hour. But you need the timeswitch to be able to cope with devices with low current draw but a high surge when turned on and off like set top boxes or compact fluorescent lamps. Halfords used to sell a suitable Masterplug LCD timer with a 7 day cycle and numerous on/off setting possibilities for only £5. They may still stock it.
> 
> There is no Linux command that turns off the Tivo but only one that would put it in Standby mode. In Standby mode the Tivo hard drive still runs but the video output is turned off. This saves almost no power so isn't a road worth going down.


I've got a digital one which fluctuates between 7-9W! 
I've also got a 24hr mechanical timeswitch which uses <1W (although the meter probably isn't ttoo reliable with lower Power readings)

Thanks for the info on the halfords one - might have a look at that. I'd make the cost back in a few months.
It's a shame that there is no linux command that would do the job :-(


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

shaunH said:


> I've got a digital one which fluctuates between 7-9W!


I have three of the Masterplug digital timers that Halfords sell and none of them consume more than 1W (measured with the power meter I bought from Maplin that includes Power Factor). The only issue with the older ones was that the timekeeping was a bit poor and that they would gain up to 5 minutes over 6 months. The later unit I bought a year or so later keeps pretty accurate time, even though it physically looks the same as the other two.

By my reckoning my Tivo only uses about £37 per annum of electricity at 37W per hour so I guess that by leaving it off for 75% of the time you save £27 per annum. However you probably save 50% more than that if you have a Sky Digibox and can shut that off for the same period as they tend to use 17W per hour either in Standby or in full on mode (Sky Auto-Standby mode being a complete waste of time and a pure publicity stunt).


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## shaunH (Jun 1, 2002)

Pete77 said:


> I have three of the Masterplug digital timers that Halfords sell and none of them consume more than 1W (measured with the power meter I bought from Maplin that includes Power Factor). The only issue with the older ones was that the timekeeping was a bit poor and that they would gain up to 5 minutes over 6 months. The later unit I bought a year or so later keeps pretty accurate time, even though it physically looks the same as the other two.
> 
> By my reckoning my Tivo only uses about £37 per annum of electricity at 37W per hour so I guess that by leaving it off for 75% of the time you save £27 per annum. However you probably save 50% more than that if you have a Sky Digibox and can shut that off for the same period as they tend to use 17W per hour either in Standby or in full on mode (Sky Auto-Standby mode being a complete waste of time and a pure publicity stunt).


£27 per annum is good - and I can also turn off my virgin media cable box which uses 9W (it all helps )


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## Pugwash (May 23, 2003)

Scarily I have some 5TB+ of network storage available now. There are so many cheap 1TB USB drives out there you can hang off a NAS device, spare server, etc.


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## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

Pugwash said:


> Scarily I have some 5TB+ of network storage available now. There are so many cheap 1TB USB drives out there you can hang off a NAS device, spare server, etc.


Ditto. The hot setup isn't MAKING the TiVo a NAS, it's getting the TiVo to USE NAS.

I have content stored on a Time Capsule and a PC that I can see on my S3 through PyTivo, streaming and KMTTG on a Windows PC.


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

Actually you don't even need to go the NFS/Samba route really

you can use it with zero setup in XP using ftp -
just put the following in a windows explorer window

*ftp://192.168.1.200/var/*

(Or add that to network places)

If you want to add another drive into tivo (for files only - not video), then the commands would be something like:

on linux:

fdisk /dev/hdb
mkfs /dev/hdb1

on tivo:
mount /dev/hdb1 /nas


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

Bear in mind TiVo network access is slow, and if the CPU is distracted with FTP, it can impact on the menu usability.


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## cyril (Sep 5, 2001)

Maybe the TiVo could do some nightly network security monitoring tasks like ARPwatch.


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