# Roamio hard drive upgrade questions



## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Hello, my wife is really leaning on me to upgrade our roamio. In System informaton, it says it has a capacity of 75 HD hours, or something like 506 SD hours if I remember correctly. Can anybody tell me what this translates to in GB terms?

She also wants me to preserve her shows, and I see that MFS tools 3.2 will do that. If I read that thread correctly, the procedures get trickier when the hard drive is really big, but for smaller ones, it's a simple copy command. I think for 3TB, it's that simple command. What about 4TB? are the instructions the same for that as for 3TB? (I assume that for, say, 6TB, the procedure gets more complicated.)

If the procedure is simple for 4TB, and if that is a substantial increase beyond 75 HD hours, I'm leaning on buying a 4TB drive. Assuming so, are there recommendations on what brand I should be getting? I'm not sure how standardized the physical dimensions of HDs are, so I want to make sure I get the right kind that will fit in the Roamio. Or things like power consumption, etc... what all should be I looking out for when choosing a hard drive?

BTW, I think I read that it's possible to put two drives in there, but from photos I've seen it looks to me like there's not enough physical space for that. (Not to mention heat build up problems, and power demands on the power supply). Can that really be done? I'd prefer to stick with one drive, but my wife did ask me if I install a 4 TB drive, and if down the road it gets filled up, is it possible to put a second 4 TB drive in there (for a total of 8 TB)? I'm curious what the answer to that is, but I hope she never asks me to beef it up beyond 4 TB.


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## ThAbtO (Apr 6, 2000)

500 GB for that 75 HD hrs.

I suggest you copy all your non-protected shows to your PC, external HD, etc for storage,using KMTTG or PyTivo, Desktop. (Copy back afterwards, using Desktop, PyTivo) This also serves as a backup on your shows.

WD Red drives are great. WD40EFRX, WD50EFRX, WD60EFRX, etc. 

If I remember, you are using a MAC, so MSFR is out of the equation. That leaves MFSTools 3.2.


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## idksmy (Jul 16, 2016)

ThAbtO said:


> If I remember, you are using a MAC, so MSFR is out of the equation. That leaves MFSTools 3.2.


Unless you have software like Parallels on your Mac which allows you to run Windows, which is what I did...After reading many good posts on this forum, I upgraded my Roamio Basic hard drive for the second time. The first time was right after I bought it. I used the pytivo, kmttg and msfr combo.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Actually I use Windows, not a Mac. Thanks for these answers though. This will be the first time for me to install a SATA drive in a TiVo (I assume that's what Roamios use), so maybe I'll use my Dell Optiplex to run MFS Tools 3.2.

Fortunately I do have pyTiVo installed and I do have more than 500 GB storage available on my NAS's, but I think quite a few shows are copy protected by Time Warner, preventing pyTiVo transfers. Hopefully MFS Tools can successfully transfer all the shows, so that pyTiVo backups won't need to be relied on. I assume you're only suggesting the pyTiVo backups in case MFS tools 3.2 doesn't work correctly?


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## ggieseke (May 30, 2008)

MFSTools 3.2 should be able to copy your existing drive to a new one up to 4TB and keep all of your recordings.

If you want to go over 4TB, the only choice right now is to start over from scratch with MFSR, which means losing almost everything if you're on TW due to their copy protection on everything but the locals.

If you take it up to 4TB (approx 638 hours of HD vs 75), you'll probably get lucky tonight, and by the time you use that up I should have a program to copy & expand up to 8TB.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Good deal; thank you for this useful information. BTW my wife likes to record SD (which I personally detest) so even our 500 GB drive will hold quite a bit when you're talking SD. Nevertheless she has maxed it out, and I think her opinion is that I get however much space I can. She won't promise that she'll never max out the 8-fold jump 4TB will get her, but she's totally happy with the strategy of doing 4TB now and having the theoretical option of increasing more down the road.

I intend to record my shows in HD though.


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## ThAbtO (Apr 6, 2000)

I have a WD40EFRX Red drive in my Roamio Basic.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

That's exactly what I wound up ordering.


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## mrfixit454 (Feb 9, 2004)

Any news on the 8TB usage yet that was mentioned?

Thank you


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## ggieseke (May 30, 2008)

mrfixit454 said:


> Any news on the 8TB usage yet that was mentioned?
> 
> Thank you


I've been buried at work since August, so no progress on the "copy and expand up to 8TB" program. MFS Reformatter will let you create a new 8TB drive, but that's it right now. If you want to copy an existing drive the limit is still 4TB using MFSTools 3.2.


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