# Roamio with multiple harddrives



## pwlcheng (Dec 6, 2007)

I am wondering if Roamio can work with multiple harddrives, one at a time? If it does, then it means unlimited recording space... wow, wouldn't it be nice?
Can someone test this out...
Step 1 - HardDrive#1 with some recording in it already.
Step 2 - Swap out HardDrive#1 with HardDrive#2 and record some programs in HardDrive#2
Step 3 - Put HardDrive#1 back in the Roamio and see if it plays the recording that was in it.
Step 4 - Put HardDrive#2 back in and see if it plays those recording that was in it.
If it works, then we can have 2, 5, 10 and more harddrives and never run out of recording space.
Or I might be just dreaming....


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

Sounds like more trouble than it's worth. I would rather pay for another Roamio than have to switch back and forth between drives. But I'm pretty sure someone did it with the S3 or S4 models. 

Although twenty years ago I probably would have been all over it. I'm just getting so lazy with those types of things now. I don't seem to want to deal with alot of the DIY stuff like I used to.


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## bradleys (Oct 31, 2007)

I wouldn't do it, but it shouldn't be too hard to rig a hard drive dock to make it easier to do the swap. Then you would just have to power down, slip in a new drive and power back up.

With a 3TB drive, I think you have pretty much all the space you need - but it isn't a terrible idea especially if you want to archive a bunch of full length HD movies.


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## larrs (May 2, 2005)

bradleys said:


> I wouldn't do it, but it shouldn't be too hard to rig a hard drive dock to make it easier to do the swap. Then you would just have to power down, slip in a new drive and power back up.
> 
> With a 3TB drive, I think you have pretty much all the space you need - but it isn't a terrible idea especially if you want to archive a bunch of full length HD movies.


Still too much trouble setting up a program to remember what is on which drive. At 3TB, there is going to be a ton of crap on each drive.


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## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

larrs said:


> Still too much trouble setting up a program to remember what is on which drive. At 3TB, there is going to be a ton of crap on each drive.


Not to mention having to keep season passes in sync across the drives.
"Opps, your new show didn't record because I swapped to the other drive and didn't realize you'd added a season pass"

And every time you did a switch the TiVo would act like a new one, with respect to the 28 day rule, and try to record all the reairings of shows from up to a month ago (even if you'd already watched them with the previous drive).

It might work, and I'd be interested to know if it does, but it doesn't seem all _that_ useful.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

You can already add a 3TB internal drive AND a 1TB DVR external drive. With 4TB of space you're looking at 600+ hours of HD. Unless you're building a movie server, or are just a huge digital hoarder, I can't imagine you'd ever really need more space then that. At 5 hours a day you'd have 4 months worth of TV to watch. Even if you watched TV every waking minute you'd have a months worth. At some point it has to be enough.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

And Even more storage with h.264. I noticed that FiOS has switched a few more channels from mpeg2 to h.264. The more channels that switch the more recordings that can be made because h.264 will take up less space.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

I wonder if TiVo fixed the problem where you can't Stream H.264 shows to an iPad? Now that the Stream is built in and some cable companies are moving channels over to H.264 this seems like a much more pressing issue.

Anyone with a Plus/Pro and a FIOS want to see if it works on an H.264 channel?


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

pwlcheng said:


> I am wondering if Roamio can work with multiple harddrives, one at a time? If it does, then it means unlimited recording space... wow, wouldn't it be nice?
> Can someone test this out...
> Step 1 - HardDrive#1 with some recording in it already.
> Step 2 - Swap out HardDrive#1 with HardDrive#2 and record some programs in HardDrive#2
> ...


Will work except the cable card will un-pair for each drive change, at least in Comcast land.


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## ShayL (Jul 18, 2007)

aaronwt said:


> I noticed that FiOS has switched a few more channels from mpeg2 to h.264.


Which channels besides the infamous .TV and the Be sports?


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

lessd said:


> Will work except the cable card will un-pair for each drive change, at least in Comcast land.


Though I thought if you re-paired it with the second drive, it would still be paired when you went back to the first drive.. i.e. I thought the pairing was stored on the hard drive.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Pairing does something at the head end too. I once was trying to fix a CableCARD issue so I removed the CableCARD from one TiVo and tried using it in another. It didn't work so I tried putting it back in the original TiVo and it still didn't work. As soon as I put it in that other TiVo the pairing was lost.

Now in this case it's the same device with just a different drive, so I'm not exactly sure if that would reset the pairing or not. Feel free to try it out and let us know.


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

mattack said:


> Though I thought if you re-paired it with the second drive, it would still be paired when you went back to the first drive.. i.e. I thought the pairing was stored on the hard drive.


The data on the cable card changes when you put in a new hard drive, as far as the cable card knows the original looks like a new drive and the cable card changes the data, the data is done on the cable card than put into the hard drive, if you move a paired cable card to another TiVo than put it back into the original TiVo you will have to pair the card again. This is from Comcast land with Moto cards, other systems may be different.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

lessd said:


> The data on the cable card changes when you put in a new hard drive, as far as the cable card knows the original looks like a new drive and the cable card changes the data, the data is done on the cable card than put into the hard drive, if you move a paired cable card to another TiVo than put it back into the original TiVo you will have to pair the card again. This is from Comcast land with Moto cards, other systems may be different.


But we're not talking about moving the card to another TiVo, we're talking about swapping the drive in the same TiVo. I guess it boils down to what the card is paired to. Is it paired to some chip in the TiVo? Or is paired to some key stored on the hard drive? If it's the later then you would need to re-pair it if you swapped drives. If it's the former then you wouldn't.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

ShayL said:


> Which channels besides the infamous .TV and the Be sports?


Last week FiOS switched these HD channels from MPEG2 to H.264

Ch. 571: ESPN Goal Line/Buzzer Beater HD
Ch. 597: World Fishing Network HD
Ch. 744: MGM HD
Ch. 1002: ESPN 3D


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

Dan203 said:


> But we're not talking about moving the card to another TiVo, we're talking about swapping the drive in the same TiVo. I guess it boils down to what the card is paired to. Is it paired to some chip in the TiVo? Or is paired to some key stored on the hard drive? If it's the later then you would need to re-pair it if you swapped drives. If it's the former then you wouldn't.


I tried this out on my new Roamio plus, and each drive change will change the data on the cable card IE drive A has Data A and drive B has Data B, when I put drive A back in, the data goes to C not back to Data A. Again this is for Comcast land Hartford CT YMMV.


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## bradleys (Oct 31, 2007)

Just to be clear Les, based on the cable card implementation, with a drive "change" you would need to re-pair the cable cards. Even if that "change" is back to an earlier drive.

Correct?


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## ShayL (Jul 18, 2007)

aaronwt said:


> Last week FiOS switched these HD channels from MPEG2 to H.264
> 
> Ch. 571: ESPN Goal Line/Buzzer Beater HD
> Ch. 597: World Fishing Network HD
> ...


Thank you Aaron, none of those channels on the Extreme level.


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

bradleys said:


> Just to be clear Les, based on the cable card implementation, with a drive "change" you would need to re-pair the cable cards. Even if that "change" is back to an earlier drive.
> 
> Correct?


*Yes*, as I tried this and the cable card data changed even when I went back to the original drive I did not get the original cable card data.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

I thought it's a random number? I would be like me taking out a cable card and putting in a different card. And then putting the first card back in again. In that instance the cable card data will be different too.

It changes when I put a different card in . And once it changes, the data does not go back to what it was previously.


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## bdspilot (Dec 10, 2010)

I thought this was a thread about 2 hard drives in the Roamio at the same time. I guess that is not possible?


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

bdspilot said:


> I thought this was a thread about 2 hard drives in the Roamio at the same time. I guess that is not possible?


That is not what the original post was asking about. However given you can add an external drive I am sure there is away to use 2 internal drives - at least in the Roamio Plus & Pro - I don't really think there is enough room in the basic Roamio.


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

aaronwt said:


> I thought it's a random number? I would be like me taking out a cable card and putting in a different card. And then putting the first card back in again. In that instance the cable card data will be different too.
> 
> It changes when I put a different card in . And once it changes, the data does not go back to what it was previously.


The data is on the cable card is in flash that can be re-written, when the card is inserted to whatever, it looks for a matching data number, if it find a match all is ok, but if it does not find a match it generates a new random data number for both the host and cable card each time.


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