# Bigger Hard Drive - Same Storage Space?



## shadowfire (Jan 18, 2012)

I'm sure this is on here, but I'm in a rush and don't really have time to search.

I upgraded my series 2 dvd tivo (pioneer dvr810h) today. It currently has (new drive) a WD caviar blue 500gb drive in it. pata.

it boots up fine. seems to work. but when i check the recording space, it says "variable, up to 89 hours". that's what my original 80gb drive said too.

i followed the weaknees guide for my model, which used the MFStools boot cd.

The command i used (as instructed) was:

mfsbackup -f 9999 -so - /dev/hda | mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -xzpi - /dev/hdb

My original drive was hda, primary master
My new drive was hdb, primary slave

I know I had the jumpers set right. I also set the new drive to "cable select" when I put it back in the tivo... That's what the old one was set to when I removed it.

did i tell it to copy the partition and not expand it? if so, how can i tell it to expand, either by fixing it or redoing the whole procedure? any help would be appreciated.


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## lillevig (Dec 7, 2010)

shadowfire said:


> I'm sure this is on here, but I'm in a rush and don't really have time to search.
> 
> I upgraded my series 2 dvd tivo (pioneer dvr810h) today. It currently has (new drive) a WD caviar blue 500gb drive in it. pata.
> 
> ...


Seems like there is an MFSadd command that does the expansion. I mostly use WinMFS and at the end of the imaging cycle it asks if you want to expand recording space. If nothing else, get a copy of WinMFS and run it on the drive you already imaged. It should let you do the expansion without re-imaging.


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## shadowfire (Jan 18, 2012)

i figured it out. it turns out that the dvr-810h image has a capacity lock. i booted the drive using WinMFS. Under one of the drop-down menus, i chose "MFSsupersize", which expands partition space to the whole drive. This almost instantly popped up a window saying "MFSsupersize ON".

This was done with only the new drive connected after i created the image using the MFS boot cd from weaknees' guide.

Now the tivo shows recording capacity (500gb drive) as "variable, up to 671 hours".

The drive that i'm using also has a 16mb cache. This seems to speed up the menu loading times quite a bit. not bad for $40 on clearance at staples. i'm kind of surprised it worked at all, it seemed online that many people had troubles with the Western Digital Caviar Blue series drives.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

shadowfire said:


> i figured it out. it turns out that the dvr-810h image has a capacity lock. i booted the drive using WinMFS. Under one of the drop-down menus, i chose "MFSsupersize", which expands partition space to the whole drive. This almost instantly popped up a window saying "MFSsupersize ON".
> 
> This was done with only the new drive connected after i created the image using the MFS boot cd from weaknees' guide.
> 
> ...


The Caviar Blue problems were on Series 1 TiVos, which are very finicky.

But that's S1s. I used that same model in an S2 for about a year with no problems.

When one upgrades a Series 1, one should not use the -p option as this creates a different partition layout that only started being used with the Series 2s.

Since you have a Series 2, you should use the -p option.

When you used the -x option, it should have put another MFS pair on the target drive, but maybe it didn't.

The MFS Tools cd you used might have been old enough that it didn't do LBA48, and couldn't handle anything over 137GB.

Allow me to suggest that you go to mfslive.org and get the image for the MFS Live cd v1.4

Then do it all again

First do

pdisk -l /dev/hda

(That's a lowercase L)

and see how many MFS partitions you have on the 80GB drive.

Probably 4.

Then do

backup -Tao - /dev/hda |restore -s 250-xpi - /dev/hdb

This will transfer all of your recordings, and should expand by adding an additional MFS pair.

When it finishes, do

pdisk -l /dev/hdb

and see if the whole drive was used.

Since you started with an 80GB drive, the 500 should have a last MFS partition of nearly 420GB.

If that "capacity lock" thing prevents that from working, post back so the rest of us can learn something, then use WinMFS to copy the 80 to the 500.

It's got an option that'll let you make a full copy, including recordings, and you can use the Supersize thing to defeat the lock (not to be confused with the lock that Series 1s do that needs to be unlocked with diskutil)

Why not just use WinMFS to begin with?

Because you should have a copy of the MFS Live cd even it you don't own a TiVo, and because this way the rest of us can learn something. This is a two-way site, you give as well as get.

You made out like a freakin' bandit on that Caviar Blue. I don't know anywhere you can get a used one for that price right now.

My local Staples never does any closeouts that cool or with discounts that good.


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## Soapm (May 9, 2007)

shadowfire said:


> i figured it out. it turns out that the dvr-810h image has a capacity lock. i booted the drive using WinMFS. Under one of the drop-down menus, i chose "MFSsupersize", which expands partition space to the whole drive. This almost instantly popped up a window saying "MFSsupersize ON"..


Supersize doesn't expand the drive. Supersize lets you record in an area normally meant for something else. I think ads or something???


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

Soapm said:


> Supersize doesn't expand the drive. Supersize lets you record in an area normally meant for something else. I think ads or something???


Ads, or those 30 minute paid programs that have TiVo showcases in them and leave your TiVo tuned to the wrong channel the next morning.

That's what I thought, and it's true, but I went and checked the WinMFS instructions, having never heard of this capacity lock thing before (not to be confused with the drive locking that Series 1s do), and apparently Supersize can also handle that.

"MfsSupersize (New)
Use this tool to gain back more hours on S2 and S3 Tivo. It's new so report any problems if you encounter them. You can turn it on or off. Some Series 2 DVR with DVD, has hard drive capacity lock. This tool will unlock that. (Toshiba SD-H400, Pioneer 810H)"


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## robomeister (Feb 4, 2005)

The capacity lock started on the Toshiba SD-H400 DVD TiVo. Somehow, this capacity lock found its way to the Pioneer DVR-810H-S models. It is not on the Pioneer DVR-57H TiVo, however. There used to be a discreet program to unlock the drive after you did the restore. I think it was called unlock_sd-h400 or something like that. I ran into this capacity lock on some of my Pioneer 810s, but not all. It depended on the individual image.

One of the side benefits of the WinMFS Supersize functions is that it unlocks images that are locked. It also gives you a little extra recording space, because the TiVo software reserves a percentage of the drive for the extra features it downloads.

Seems you have stumbled on an older image for the Pioneer that has the capacity lock turned on.

Hope that helps clear things up.

robomeister


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

robomeister said:


> The capacity lock started on the Toshiba SD-H400 DVD TiVo. Somehow, this capacity lock found its way to the Pioneer DVR-810H-S models. It is not on the Pioneer DVR-57H TiVo, however. There used to be a discreet program to unlock the drive after you did the restore. I think it was called unlock_sd-h400 or something like that. I ran into this capacity lock on some of my Pioneer 810s, but not all. It depended on the individual image.
> 
> One of the side benefits of the WinMFS Supersize functions is that it unlocks images that are locked. It also gives you a little extra recording space, because the TiVo software reserves a percentage of the drive for the extra features it downloads.
> 
> ...


You didn't ever happen to stumble across an explanation of why they would have gone to the extra trouble of including that capacity lock, did you?


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## robomeister (Feb 4, 2005)

Nope, no idea why they put that kind of size lock onto the software. Maybe to slow down upgraders? 

Just another in a long list of things TiVo hasn't told the outside world on how their product works internally. If you think about it, it's amazing we are able to open up the device and change anything without destroying its functionality.

Happy upgrading,
robomeister


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