# I'm new Tivo and definitely upgrading, guidance welcome...



## tivorepo (May 12, 2006)

Hi all. I just bought a brand new 40hr Tivo brand Tivo (540040). I want to *replace* the original with a 300GB (Seagate) drive that I have laying around but it's been booted into Window XP previously (one "logical" partition). It is my understanding that this puts some kind of "signature" on the boot area of the drive making it unusable in a Tivo.

My question is: What is the best way to make this drive bootable in Tivo?

Should I:
1. Use the Seagate original CD to "wipe clean" the drive back to it's original factory state thereby theoretically clearing the XP "signature".

2. Activate the original 40GB drive inside Tivo and then simply copy the 40GB drives contents to one of the bigger drives (again clearing this signature).

3. Use a program called "MakeTivoBootable" which I understand is floating around the internet. Supposedly this programs sole purpose is to "erase" this xp signature but it seems a little complicated and there's very little documentation.

*OR*

Is there some other easier way to prepare a drive for Tivo if I have no care about any Tivo settings? Does any generic Tivo drive image exist that can be use to just clean and prepare any drive all at once?

Also I haven't even turned on the Tivo yet (in fact I have never seen a Tivo screen in my life yet  ). Should I "back up" the 40GB drive before activating it or just _after_ activating it. Is it good to have a backup of a virginal drive. I don't even fully understand what a "backup" means yet but I am reading as much as I can and don't have a complete picture of all the possibilities yet. I do have a decent amount of experience inside PCs.

Thanks.


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## greg_burns (May 22, 2004)

Have you heard of instantcake?

http://www.instantcake.com

There are other free ways to get the job done, but for $20 it can't be beat.

I've used IC on a 160GB drive that I was using with XP for a long time. It apparently just overwrote the drive with the Tivo image no muss, no fuss. I believe MakeTivoBootable stuff is only necessary if you already have a Tivo disk prepped and XP writes to it. (Anybody know different?)

If you've held out this long without turning on the box, might as well download instantcake and bake the 300GB harddrive. Just put the 40gb off to the side as a virgin backup.

IC will require you to run through guided setup all over again, so don't bother doing it with your original drive if you go that route.


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## kschauwe (Sep 17, 2003)

Just download the free MFS tools w/ LBA48 from PTVupgrade.com, and do the standard mfsbackup | mfsrestore. It'll overwrite anything on that 300Gb HD.


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## mick66 (Oct 15, 2004)

greg_burns said:


> I believe MakeTivoBootable stuff is only necessary if you already have a Tivo disk prepped and XP writes to it. (Anybody know different?)


That is correct. You can't boot into XP with a Tivo drive attached. Well you can, but then you have to reimage or use 'make tivo bootable.' What's on the drive before it becomes a tivo drive is irrelevant.


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## mrtee42 (May 13, 2006)

I am little confused (also first time here).

Does IC add stuff such as the "zipper"?


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## tivorepo (May 12, 2006)

I am the original poster so thanks for all the input. I didn't understand instantcake before but I do now.

Also, I am very pleased to hear that "MakeTivoBootable" is only necessary for previously prepped "Tivo Drives" not *all   * drives previously used with XP. This makes things much more simple.

I think I will try to backup my original 40hr drive before prepping and installing my larger drive. I will first try to use one of the free boot CDs floating around the net to accomplish both of these tasks. If I crash and burn I will try instantcake. What is the difference between (or what's the best to use of):

- Boot CD image of MFSTool 2.0 with WeaKnees Large Kernel Support
- MFS tools w/ LBA48 from PTVupgrade site


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## greg_burns (May 22, 2004)

mrtee42 said:


> I am little confused (also first time here).
> 
> Does IC add stuff such as the "zipper"?


My turn to ask a question.  What's zipper? I've heard of it before, but not much else. Is that Series 1 or DirectTivo modding stuff?

Also, what is PTVnet software in comparison to IC? IC obviously just writes a vannila install of the Tivo Software to a drive. Does PTVnet add mods and such?


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## ForrestB (Apr 8, 2004)

The zipper is only for hacking series 2 DirecTivo's and the link here http://www.mastersav.com/tivo_zipper.html


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## greg_burns (May 22, 2004)

tivorepo said:


> I think I will try to backup my original 40hr drive before prepping and installing my larger drive. I will first try to use one of the free boot CDs floating around the net to accomplish both of these tasks. If I crash and burn I will try instantcake. What is the difference between (or what's the best to use of):
> 
> - Boot CD image of MFSTool 2.0 with WeaKnees Large Kernel Support
> - MFS tools w/ LBA48 from PTVupgrade site


I am not really sure the difference, but I find these instructions easier to follow:

http://tivo.upgrade-instructions.com/index.php

But I don't think the Weaknees CD has TPIP on it (see below)

Couple things to keep in mind. When you are done, don't forget to run some acoustic management tweaks on your drive. Really quiets them down. Look for the Hitcahci Feature Tool, it works across a lot of brands.

Also... swap space. MFSTools only handles up to 127MB. They say you need 1MB for every 2GB of disk size. So a 400GB drive needs 200MB swap, I believe. In order to accomplish this you need to specify 200 with the "-s" parameter and MFSTools, but you then *MUST* run a special command named TPIP. If you specify greater than 127 w/o later running TPIP you will have NO swap. I would search on that word for more guidance.

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=3825639&&#post3825639


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