# Success - Upgrade 200GB to 1TB with recordings



## lloyd (Feb 15, 2003)

After spending a couple of weeks trying to upgrade from 200GB to 1TB, I thought I'd document the process to assist anyone else who might want to do this. There is a wealth of information on this and other forums, but often buried deep in threads, so I'm creating this as a new thread to make it easier to find.

Upgrade was from a Seagate 200GB IDE drive to a WD10EADS (1TB Green Caviar SATA). The supplier initially substituted a WD10EARS, but as this uses 4K sectors instead of the traditional 512, I decided to not even try.

With the WD10EADS, you need a IDE/SATA converter. Initially I purchased a cheap one from ebay. On installing in the Tivo with the new disk, I simply got a black screen. Purchasing an alternative from one of the Tivo specialists that can be found on this forum, and the disk would reach the 'powering up..' stage. It is worth noting that this message comes from the BIOS; seeing the first powering up message does not mean you have anything readable on your disk.

Trying to restore the Tivo and keep recordings was difficult. In the end I used the following method.

Download and burn MFSLive 1.4 to a CD

Disconnect any Windows drives and attach the drives:

Primary Master -
Primary Slave - New Disk
Secondary Master - Old Disk
Secondary Slave - CD

I ignored Primary master as there are issues with byte swapping that I'm not even going to pretend to understand.

Boot into MFSLive and select option 2.

I then copied everything over with the following command. This will step will keep everything, and keep recording capacity the same as the original drive.

*backup -qTao - /dev/hdc | restore -s500 -i - /dev/hdb*

This took a little over 3 hours to run, and will of course depend on how many recordings you have on your original disk.

Note the absence of the usual -xzp options on the restore line. What I found was that including those options resulted in the partitions be reorganised, and the system partitions (e.g. var, root etc.) being put at the end of the disk. The resulting disk would not boot, and I can only presume that the boot loader in the Tivo cannot access these partitions due to their large addresses.

I then enabled the 500G swap (recommended for 1TB drive):

*tpip -s /dev/hdb*

And finally increased the recording capacity

*mfsadd -r 4 -x /dev/hdb*

I was not sure if -r 4 is required - in my mind this is the only question I could not get to the bottom of.

Note that I did not need to run copykern, as my 200GB drive already had the LBA48 kernel installed.

The result. A 1TB disk that boots, which probably runs quieter and cooler than the Seagate drive, with all my recordings kept, and very happy wife.

Good luck to anyone else who goes down this road.

Lloyd


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## tonywalk (Sep 10, 2002)

Thanks Lloyd. Should lessen the pain for those of us who will have to go through this exercise in the future.

Cheers,
Tony.


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## mrtickle (Aug 26, 2001)

That -r4 used to be required because of a (long-standing) bug. It creates bigger block sizes, so much more disc is wasted at the end of each recording.

http://www.mfslive.org/softwareguide.htm#series1dtod says
"With MFSLive Linux Boot CD 1.3 or higher, -r 4 is optional as the bug is found and fixed. Read all about r value."

That links to http://www.mfslive.org/tivofaq.htm#rvalue which says:


> What is "r" value when doing restore or mfsadd?
> While performing restore or mfsadd you can set r value to control the minimum allocation size. This is used only when creating new media zones (where all the recorded shows are stored) using -x options.
> What it means is the smallest block of data that TiVo file system(mfs) can access is the r value.
> r 0 = 2048 sectors or (1MB blocks) (TiVo and blesstivo default)
> ...


Ever since MFStools 2, which was a very long time ago  , we've been using the -r 4 workaround. But it sounds as if there's no need to any more.

HTH


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## dashforth (Mar 8, 2005)

As I have spare 1Tb SATA drive (form NAS upgrade) I am tempted to put it into my TiVo. Which SATA/IDE adaptor did not work for you and which one did you finally use. I am tempted to use SKU 12537 from dealextreme.com as it is costs less than £3 and might work.


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## lloyd (Feb 15, 2003)

I tried the cheap route, and failed. There are so many of these devices out that, many of which are poorly made, that I think it is complete pot luck. I'd recommend buying one from one of the sites that specialise in Tivo, who will guarantee that it will work.


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## dashforth (Mar 8, 2005)

The adaptor that is sure to work is the StarTech (IDE2SAT) hxxp://uk.startech.cxm/product/IDE2SAT-25in-and-35in-40-Pin-Male-IDE-to-SATA-Adapter-Converter but that costs &#163;20 delivered. It is very tempting to try a cheaper one - especially as I have got several TiVos to upgrade.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

For the benefit of future searchers, the only SATA drive to IDE controller adapters with which the Series 1 TiVos will reliably function seem to be the ones based on the Marvell 88SA8040 chipset or the apparently more recent Marvell 88SA8052 chipset.

S1s don't seem to like the JMicron chipset based adapters that work just fine in S2s (here in the U.S.) 

Other chipset brands don't seem to work reliably in either series.

And S1s don't seem to care at all for SATA or PATA/IDE Western Digital Caviar Blues, although success has been had with other WD products.


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## drgeoff (Nov 10, 2005)

lloyd said:


> I then enabled the 500G swap (recommended for 1TB drive):


I guess you meant 500 *M*byte swap.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Is there any chance anyone could document what the exact command lines would be for going from two existing IDE Tivo hard drives (each 250GB in size) to a single 1TB drive or larger (eg 1.5TB)?

Or is that impossible due to having too many partitions on the existing two drives?


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## spitfires (Dec 19, 2006)

It all depends on whether you want to keep your recordings and on exactly how they are connected in to the PC (i.e. which disc is master/slave etc). The Hinsdale guide although old is still accurate and covers this in detail.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

Pete77 said:


> Is there any chance anyone could document what the exact command lines would be for going from two existing IDE Tivo hard drives (each 250GB in size) to a single 1TB drive or larger (eg 1.5TB)?
> 
> Or is that impossible due to having too many partitions on the existing two drives?


Probably, but it depends on how many partitions you have on each drive.


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