# Hard Drive Expansion Question



## vette1998 (Oct 22, 2006)

Don't you guys love it when a newbie hits the forum and asked a lot of dumb questions  Anyway from what I've read about adding an external hard drive for expansion it becomes married to the TiVo and if specific procedures are not followed when powering down you lose all your recordings. Hence my question what happens in a power outage both the TiVo and the expansion drive lose power at the same time... then power comes back on and they both power up the same time?


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## jakerock (Dec 9, 2002)

Generally that shouldn't be a problem. The pair should survive a power outage and recover just fine.

However, many people - myself included, would recommend NOT using an external expander but instead to just replace the internal drive with a larger unit. It's not very difficult and seems a lot more reliable. There have been lots of problems with the external units (though perhaps they are now more reliable?) and pretty much any problem you have on EITHER drive is going to mean that you lose everything.

With two drives (even assuming the externals are as reliable as the internal ones) you have twice the chances for failure and a failure in any place is a complete failure and you lose everything.


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

Adding an expansion drive to a Roamio? As noted, there are much better options.

If you must do that, it must be a Tivo approved WD drive. They come up from outages just fine, but you should use a UPS anyhow to protect it.


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## vette1998 (Oct 22, 2006)

jakerock said:


> Generally that shouldn't be a problem. The pair should survive a power outage and recover just fine.
> 
> However, many people - myself included, would recommend NOT using an external expander but instead to just replace the internal drive with a larger unit. It's not very difficult and seems a lot more reliable. There have been lots of problems with the external units (though perhaps they are now more reliable?) and pretty much any problem you have on EITHER drive is going to mean that you lose everything.
> 
> With two drives (even assuming the externals are as reliable as the internal ones) you have twice the chances for failure and a failure in any place is a complete failure and you lose everything.


If you decide to do a hard drive upgrade I understand you can preserve all your season passes but can you move your copy protected recordings to the new drive ?


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## ramiss (Jan 30, 2014)

You cannot transfer encrypted files, which is the method to backup and then restore them to a new drive. So, no, encrypted files are lost with a drive replacement.

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk


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## 1985BearsFan (Sep 15, 2013)

jakerock said:


> However, many people - myself included, would recommend NOT using an external expander but instead to just replace the internal drive with a larger unit. It's not very difficult and seems a lot more reliable. There have been lots of problems with the external units (though perhaps they are now more reliable?) and pretty much any problem you have on EITHER drive is going to mean that you lose everything.


Does replacing the internal hard drive void the warranty?


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

1985BearsFan said:


> Does replacing the internal hard drive void the warranty?


Technically, yes. (But do keep in mind, the shortness of the warranty.) Having said that, the last time I had read through comments, TiVo seemed to honor the warranty more often than not--when it did not, the consumer seems to have raised an issue causing TiVo "to pounce." TiVo's attitude seems to have been one of, look the other way . . . . (Note: some consumers will save the old drive, for replacement in the box if the box needs to be returned for repair. Regardless, though, TiVo's electronic records will seem to note that there had been a hard drive replacement, if TiVo wants to go there.)


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

Amazing to me that in the 2 months since I last had looked at putting a larger hard drive into a Roamio, the price of the drives has come down such that for the price of an often-recommended WD *2*TB drive then, one now can purchase an often-recommended WD *3*TB drive. Nice.  Although, as someone mentioned earlier, when are you going to find time to watch all of that stuff?


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## jonw747 (Aug 2, 2015)

If the internal hard drive was to get full, could we swap it out for a new one, then at a later date swap it out for the old one and would all the old programming still be there?

Would the cable card need to be re-paired each time?

I realize I could also start archiving non-protected shows to a disk connected on my PC, but the ability to swap drives would be a lot quicker.


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## DocNo (Oct 10, 2001)

jonw747 said:


> If the internal hard drive was to get full, could we swap it out for a new one, then at a later date swap it out for the old one and would all the old programming still be there?


Yes - at least with the Premier and below you can put an old hard drive in and all the shows on it will show back up. Shows are encrypted, essentially, with the serial number of the motherboard that the hard drive was attached to.



> Would the cable card need to be re-paired each time?


No. Cable cards are paired to a device ID that part of the motherboard and not tied to the hard drive.



> I realize I could also start archiving non-protected shows to a disk connected on my PC, but the ability to swap drives would be a lot quicker.


It's really not. Pull them off the Tivo to your computer. You can always push them up to your new hard drive in y our Tivo if you want once you put a bigger drive in.

Frankly I'm surprised we can archive as much stuff as we can (well, unless you subscribe with Comcast that copy protects the major networks  )


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## ggieseke (May 30, 2008)

jonw747 said:


> Would the cable card need to be re-paired each time?


Yes.


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## vette1998 (Oct 22, 2006)

If you clone your 1TB drive to upgrade to a 3TB drive in a roamio plus will that preserve your copy protected recordings ?


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## jonw747 (Aug 2, 2015)

DocNo said:


> It's really not. Pull them off the Tivo to your computer. You can always push them up to your new hard drive in y our Tivo if you want once you put a bigger drive in.


Transferring 6TB at 75Mb/sec would take 7.4 days!

There are plenty of benefits to archiving and I'm already setup to do it, but a swap could be useful and I just wanted to make sure I wouldn't lose everything on my disk if I decided to do it.

The need to re-pair the cable card each time would add a level of hassle, though.


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## HarperVision (May 14, 2007)

jonw747 said:


> If the internal hard drive was to get full, could we swap it out for a new one, then at a later date swap it out for the old one and would all the old programming still be there? Would the cable card need to be re-paired each time? I realize I could also start archiving non-protected shows to a disk connected on my PC, but the ability to swap drives would be a lot quicker.





DocNo said:


> Yes - at least with the Premier and below you can put an old hard drive in and all the shows on it will show back up. Shows are encrypted, essentially, with the serial number of the motherboard that the hard drive was attached to. No. Cable cards are paired to a device ID that part of the motherboard and not tied to the hard drive. It's really not. Pull them off the Tivo to your computer. You can always push them up to your new hard drive in y our Tivo if you want once you put a bigger drive in. Frankly I'm surprised we can archive as much stuff as we can (well, unless you subscribe with Comcast that copy protects the major networks  )


DocNo, you got just about all of that wrong for the Roamio line.

You can NOT put the old HDD back in a Roamio and preserve any recordings that were on it, even if put back in the same Roamio.

As ggieseke said, yes, the cablecards DO have to be re-paired to work again, at least work fully in some MSO's cases like comcast.

Comcast actually has pretty lax copy protection from what I hear (only HBO and maybe 1 or 2 more), compared to Time Warner that is, who copy protects almost every channel except the big four local networks. I think you're confusing "copy protection" with "encryption", which Comcast does on all channels now so they don't offer any clear QAM channels that can be picked up without a decryption device such as a cable box or cablecard.


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## ggieseke (May 30, 2008)

HarperVision said:


> You can NOT put the old HDD back in a Roamio and preserve any recordings that were on it, even if put back in the same Roamio.


That much should work, but if TiVo makes any database structural changes during an update it would probably throw up on the floor when you put the old drive back in.

I had the drive and CableCARD out of my Pro dozens of times while I was writing mfsr (I also removed the Comcast cable). As long as I shut it down and made dang sure the CableCARD and the drive came out or back in at the same time I was able to experiment with other drives to my heart's content without losing any recordings, settings or the CC pairing.


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## HarperVision (May 14, 2007)

ggieseke said:


> That much should work, but if TiVo makes any database structural changes during an update it would probably throw up on the floor when you put the old drive back in. I had the drive and CableCARD out of my Pro dozens of times while I was writing mfsr (I also removed the Comcast cable). As long as I shut it down and made dang sure the CableCARD and the drive came out or back in at the same time I was able to experiment with other drives to my heart's content without losing any recordings, settings or the CC pairing.


Wow, good to know, thanks! I thought I had tried this about a year ago and it broke the relationships? Maybe there was some other factor involved?


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## ggieseke (May 30, 2008)

I dunno. Removing the coax too may have been unnecessary but I didn't want Comcast to see anything but a few hours when it was powered down.


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## ramiss (Jan 30, 2014)

vette1998 said:


> If you clone your 1TB drive to upgrade to a 3TB drive in a roamio plus will that preserve your copy protected recordings ?


To my knowledge nobody has been successful cloning to a larger drive AND growing the partition to utilize the extra space. At least on the Roamio.

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

DocNo said:


> No. Cable cards are paired to a device ID that part of the motherboard and not tied to the hard drive.
> )


Not true, change the drive you must re-pair the cable card for full operation. Sometimes even a C&D all will cause you to have to re-pair the cable card.


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## HerronScott (Jan 1, 2002)

DocNo said:


> Frankly I'm surprised we can archive as much stuff as we can (well, unless you subscribe with Comcast that copy protects the major networks  )


As HarperVision said, Comcast here in Staunton, VA only applies CCI to the movie channels (HBO, Showtime, Cinemax and interestingly Encore)

Scott


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## Rustwood (Sep 6, 2015)

FWIW, I have used the My DVR Expander for 5 years and never had a problem with it. With that said, I completely agree that there is twice the chance of a drive failure. In my case I wouldn't be crushed if I lost my recorded shows, but I can understand why many would prefer to minimize that possibility. I have been tempted to put the 5 year old drive on my new Roamio Pro, but I don't want to press my luck.


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## dianebrat (Jul 6, 2002)

HarperVision said:


> You can NOT put the old HDD back in a Roamio and preserve any recordings that were on it, even if put back in the same Roamio.


Not true, you can indeed put a drive removed from a Roamio back into that same Roamio at a later date and both watch anything on it, and transfer anything off it, I know since I did it about a month ago.

I had thought about upgrading my Plus from 1TB to 2TB and transferred what I wanted off it (supposedly) and then pulled the 1TB, put it on the shelf and placed a blank 2TB in the machine.
After about a month I noticed several of the movies I thought I'd transferred had not done so correctly, so I put the old drive back in and have been using it ever since.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

Thanks for the clarification--


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## oscarfish (Mar 2, 2009)

Is there a way to tell what the current capacity of the HD in my Romio is, without opening the cover? I mean in terms of bytes of storage, I can see how many hours of HD programming it says it can store. I don't remember seeing that in any of the diagnostic screens I looked through when it was new.


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## HarperVision (May 14, 2007)

dianebrat said:


> Not true, you can indeed put a drive removed from a Roamio back into that same Roamio at a later date and both watch anything on it, and transfer anything off it, I know since I did it about a month ago. I had thought about upgrading my Plus from 1TB to 2TB and transferred what I wanted off it (supposedly) and then pulled the 1TB, put it on the shelf and placed a blank 2TB in the machine. After about a month I noticed several of the movies I thought I'd transferred had not done so correctly, so I put the old drive back in and have been using it ever since.


Yeah, ggieseke already corrected my misinformation. Sorry about that and thanks for clearing it all up so others know in the future! You learn something new everyday! 



ggieseke said:


> That much should work, but if TiVo makes any database structural changes during an update it would probably throw up on the floor when you put the old drive back in. I had the drive and CableCARD out of my Pro dozens of times while I was writing mfsr (I also removed the Comcast cable). As long as I shut it down and made dang sure the CableCARD and the drive came out or back in at the same time I was able to experiment with other drives to my heart's content without losing any recordings, settings or the CC pairing.





HarperVision said:


> Wow, good to know, thanks! I thought I had tried this about a year ago and it broke the relationships? Maybe there was some other factor involved?


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## ggieseke (May 30, 2008)

oscarfish said:


> Is there a way to tell what the current capacity of the HD in my Romio is, without opening the cover? I mean in terms of bytes of storage, I can see how many hours of HD programming it says it can store. I don't remember seeing that in any of the diagnostic screens I looked through when it was new.


What model is it, and have you upgraded the drive?

The base model comes with a 500GB drive, the Plus comes with 1TB, and the Pro is 3TB. 6,241,181,696 bytes are used by various partitions, and there are always some unused sectors due to the drive layout and the cluster sizes of the partitions.

Additionally, a small portion of the available recording space is reserved by the system for Teleworld recordings that are broken up into ads.

You can take the drive size, subtract about 15-20GB, and subtract an additional 2-3GB per tuner for the 30-minute live TV buffers. That should get you in the ballpark.


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