# 3 TB TiVo external drives



## mumpower (Jul 24, 2003)

Is there a recommended 3 TB drive I can use an expander without fear of failure/performance issues? We have a pair of the TiVo-approved drives, but they are only 1 TB each. That means I'm only using 2 out of a maximum 4 TBs of space. I'd like to double the storage on our units. TiVo doesn't seem to be in a hurry to manufacture a storage device for power users, which is understandable since I know I'm in the minority about my space needs. I'm just curious how other power users are handling this these days. 

The similar threads suggestions for this are from circa 2007-2009, so they're not applicable here. Thanks in advance for your suggestions/advice.


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## Brent W (Apr 6, 2010)

Tivo's can't handle more then a total of 2tb's


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## [email protected] (Jan 8, 2008)

Would TiVo need to migrate to 64 bit version of Linux to break this barrier?


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## mumpower (Jul 24, 2003)

Brent W said:


> Tivo's can't handle more then a total of 2tb's


I was under the impression that the Premiere is no longer constrained by this. Since Weaknees is selling a 4 TB unit, I have a great deal of confidence this is the case.


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## Quake97 (Apr 24, 2006)

It's a matter of what's supported, not what will work. The largest expander drive is 2TB. 

Joe


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## KenVa (Aug 31, 2005)

mumpower said:


> I was under the impression that the Premiere is no longer constrained by this. Since Weaknees is selling a 4 TB unit, I have a great deal of confidence this is the case.


That is with a 2TB internal and a 2TB external.


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## mumpower (Jul 24, 2003)

KenVa said:


> That is with a 2TB internal and a 2TB external.


I realize this but with the register issue addressed, 4 TB is now the limit. This means that from the system perspective, 1 TB internal + 3 TB external should work unless there is another issue at hand. The reason there hadn't been anything beyond 2 TB add-ons prior to now is that there hadn't been 3 TB drives. Since there are, this should change the status of the subject.

I don't frequent the boards much these days, so if I'm talking blind on this, I apologize. Based on what I understood the register issue to be, we should now be able to tether larger drives to the base drive in the unit. Has this been attempted and failed or are we all parsing around the same outdated information? I had assumed someone would have tried a MyBook with their TiVo at some point. I'm trying to find out if they did and what the result was for this attempt.


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## TWinbrook46636 (Feb 9, 2008)

Quake97 said:


> It's a matter of what's supported, not what will work. The largest expander drive is 2TB.
> 
> Joe


It doesn't even seem like that one will work:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=467441

Why would they market a 2TB DVR Expander with TiVo compatibility logo if it doesn't work with the TiVo?

Have there been any very recent changes that allow 3TB total (1TB internal + 2TB external) or 4TB total (1TB internal + 3TB external)?


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## HellFish (Jan 28, 2007)

^^
http://www.weaknees.com/tivo-premiere-hd-dvr-series4.php
Weaknees markets a 4TB solution for the Premiere & the XL, so clearly they can go over 3TB. This leads to the thread starter's original question. Is it possible to use a 3TB drive with a Premiere?


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## caddyroger (Mar 15, 2005)

HellFish said:


> ^^
> http://www.weaknees.com/tivo-premiere-hd-dvr-series4.php
> Weaknees markets a 4TB solution for the Premiere & the XL, so clearly they can go over 3TB. This leads to the thread starter's original question. Is it possible to use a 3TB drive with a Premiere?


Read the Weaknees ad again. It mentions it is a 2Tb internal drive and a 2TB for 4TB total there no 3TB drive mention. The op wants a 3TB expander drive.


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## P42 (Jan 7, 2003)

2+2 != 1+3
Just because both 2+2 and 1+3 equal 4 does not mean that both can be done.
It is possible that the TiVo filesystem or OS can at most address a 2TB disk.


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## HellFish (Jan 28, 2007)

Err, I'm aware Weaknees is only using only 2TB drives. I thought my ^^ made it clear I was addressing the poster immediately above me, TWinbrook46636, that asked 


> Have there been any very recent changes that allow 3TB total (1TB internal + 2TB external) or 4TB total (1TB internal + 3TB external)?


Sorry if I suggested anything else in my post. TWinbrook46636 wasn't aware 2TB drives would work at all.

The OP was under the impression that 4TB is the limit for the Premiere, so he's inquiring about reaching 4TB via a 1TB & 3TB solution (3+1=4).



mumpower said:


> *I realize this but with the register issue addressed, 4 TB is now the limit.* This means that from the system perspective, 1 TB internal + 3 TB external should work unless there is another issue at hand. The reason there hadn't been anything beyond 2 TB add-ons prior to now is that there hadn't been 3 TB drives. Since there are, this should change the status of the subject.


P42, with your wording, it appears you concede that a 3TB drive might work. Until someone bites the bullet, we'll never know. This once again leads to the thread starter's original question. Is it possible to use a 3TB drive with a Premiere? Do we know for sure a 3TB drive won't work? Tivo will say it won't since there aren't any official 3TB expanders yet.


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## jterwelp (Apr 27, 2004)

HellFish said:


> P42, with your wording, it appears you concede that a 3TB drive might work. Until someone bites the bullet, we'll never know. This once again leads to the thread starter's original question. Is it possible to use a 3TB drive with a Premiere? Do we know for sure a 3TB drive won't work? Tivo will say it won't since there aren't any official 3TB expanders yet.


A 3TB drive has been tried in a Premiere and found not to work. The current TiVo file system cannot address a single 3TB disk (its limit is 2.19TB per disk). This information comes straight from Comer, who developed the only self-upgrade tool available for the Premiere: JMFS. Clearly, he understands the TiVo file system better than most. Links to his 3TB test result and subsequent explanations for the failure are listed below.

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=8186764#post8186764
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=8204408#post8204408
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=8246354#post8246354


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## P42 (Jan 7, 2003)

HellFish said:


> P42, with your wording, it appears you concede that a 3TB drive might work.


Nope, that was not the opinion I was trying to convey. Sorry for any confusion.


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## mumpower (Jul 24, 2003)

I certainly did not intend to create further confusion on this topic. HellFish correctly interpreted my line of reasoning and I sincerely appreciate that. Thanks to everyone in the thread for linking pertinent details about the matter. I had not expected a different type of register issue to crop up, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised. 

I am disappointed to hear that TiVo continues to arbitrarily limit the amount of storage space its users can have on their devices. It's a frustration for me as a power user yet I know mine is a rare concern. We've got 20 TB worth of TiVo files stored on external drives I'd like to be able to access instantly. I fear it will have to be another device that allows me to do this.


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## mortax (Jan 15, 2007)

jterwelp said:


> A 3TB drive has been tried in a Premiere and found not to work. The current TiVo file system cannot address a single 3TB disk (its limit is 2.19TB per disk). This information comes straight from Comer, who developed the only self-upgrade tool available for the Premiere: JMFS. Clearly, he understands the TiVo file system better than most. Links to his 3TB test result and subsequent explanations for the failure are listed below.
> 
> http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=8186764#post8186764
> http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=8204408#post8204408
> http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=8246354#post8246354


one last question: does the statement that a 3tb drive has been 'found not to work' mean that a machine with a 3tb drive will not work at all (how it sounds) or just that one cannot reference more than 2.19tb of space (what i hope)? if the latter interpretation were true, then i could put a 3tb wd drive in my box and hope that it will be addressable some day. a long shot, but i thought i'd ask.


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## jterwelp (Apr 27, 2004)

jterwelp said:


> A 3TB drive has been tried in a Premiere and found not to work. The current TiVo file system cannot address a single 3TB disk (its limit is 2.19TB per disk). This information comes straight from Comer, who developed the only self-upgrade tool available for the Premiere: JMFS. Clearly, he understands the TiVo file system better than most. Links to his 3TB test result and subsequent explanations for the failure are listed below.
> 
> http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=8186764#post8186764
> http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=8204408#post8204408
> http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=8246354#post8246354





mortax said:


> one last question: does the statement that a 3tb drive has been 'found not to work' mean that a machine with a 3tb drive will not work at all (how it sounds) or just that one cannot reference more than 2.19tb of space (what i hope)? if the latter interpretation were true, then i could put a 3tb wd drive in my box and hope that it will be addressable some day. a long shot, but i thought i'd ask.


From the first link I provided:



comer said:


> Perhaps you would be interested to know that all of your donations - thank you very much - (and my birthday money) went into acquiring a 3TB seagate drive mentioned here earlier (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148580&cm_re=goflex-_-22-148-580-_-Product). I guess that was a good news. The bad news is that it *can not* be used in Tivo. Neither as an internal nor as an external drive (the upcoming version of jmfs has an ability to add any drive as external - ala "bless"). I tried straight image of a stock 320G on it as an internal, without any expasion tricks - Tivo goes into boot-waitaminute-boot-waitaminute loop. If used externally Tivo does not recognize it - "your external storage has been disconnected, press CLEAR to remove". It feels very much like BIOS or hardware limitation or incompatibility. Linux on a PC sees the whole 3T capacity without a problem connected through SATA directly. W7 sees the drive as ~700G only connected through generic SATA-USB. However, through Seagate's stock USB dock the drive is seen correctly as 2794G on the same Winodws.
> So, again, looks like Tivo Premiere is hard-limited to 2TB total storage


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## retiredqwest (Sep 7, 2010)

mortax said:


> one last question: does the statement that a 3tb drive has been 'found not to work' mean that a machine with a 3tb drive will not work at all (how it sounds) or just that one cannot reference more than 2.19tb of space (what i hope)? if the latter interpretation were true, then i could put a 3tb wd drive in my box and hope that it will be addressable some day. a long shot, but i thought i'd ask.


I tried my Hitachi 3TB with Comers JMFS. After it was done the TP would just loop through the power up routine. It never did boot up to a usable screen.

But take a look at the following info I grabbed from the 3TB:

Disk '/dev/sda'
------------------
1 : start= 1, size= 63 ( 31.50K), type='Apple_partition_map', name='Apple'
13: start= 64, size= 343828320 (163.95G), type='MFS' , name='MFS media region 2'
2 : start= 343828384, size= 1 (512.00b), type='Image' , name='Bootstrap 1'
3 : start= 343828385, size= 16384 ( 8.00M), type='Image' , name='Kernel 1'
4 : start= 343844769, size= 524288 (256.00M), type='Ext2' , name='Root 1'
5 : start= 344369057, size= 1 (512.00b), type='Image' , name='Bootstrap 2'
6 : start= 344369058, size= 16384 ( 8.00M), type='Image' , name='Kernel 2'
7 : start= 344385442, size= 524288 (256.00M), type='Ext2' , name='Root 2'
8 : start= 344909730, size= 262144 (128.00M), type='Swap' , name='Linux swap'
9 : start= 345171874, size= 1048576 (512.00M), type='Ext2' , name='/var'
14: start= 346220450, size= 6291456 ( 3.00G), type='Ext2' , name='SQLite'
10: start= 352511906, size= 1638400 (800.00M), type='MFS' , name='MFS application region'
12: start= 354150306, size= 1638400 (800.00M), type='MFS' , name='MFS application region 2'
11: start= 355788706, size= 269353742 (128.44G), type='MFS' , name='MFS media region'
15: start= 625142448, size=4294967295 ( 2.00T), type='MFS' , name='MFS media region 3'
------------------
Unallocated space: 481,496,793,600 (448.43G)

Zones Logical
------------------
[0] /dev/sda10 start= 1121, size= 1 (512.00b), end= 1121 NODE descriptor
[0] /dev/sda10 start= 1122, size= 524288 (256.00M), end= 525409 NODE data
[1] /dev/sda10 start= 525410, size= 10 ( 5.00K), end= 525419 MEDIA descriptor
[2] /dev/sda10 start= 525420, size= 130 ( 65.00K), end= 525549 APP descriptor
[2] /dev/sda10 start= 525550, size= 1112704 (543.31M), end= 1638253 APP data
[2] /dev/sda10 start= 1638258, size= 130 ( 65.00K), end= 1638387 APP descriptor backup
[1] /dev/sda10 start= 1638388, size= 10 ( 5.00K), end= 1638397 MEDIA descriptor backup
[0] /dev/sda10 start= 1638398, size= 1 (512.00b), end= 1638398 NODE descriptor backup
[1] /dev/sda11 start= 1638400, size= 269352960 (128.44G), end= 270991359 MEDIA data
[3] /dev/sda12 start= 270991360, size= 1 (512.00b), end= 270991360 NODE descriptor
[3] /dev/sda12 start= 270991361, size= 524288 (256.00M), end= 271515648 NODE data
[4] /dev/sda12 start= 271515649, size= 18 ( 9.00K), end= 271515666 MEDIA descriptor
[5] /dev/sda12 start= 271515667, size= 130 ( 65.00K), end= 271515796 APP descriptor
[5] /dev/sda12 start= 271515797, size= 1113808 (543.85M), end= 272629604 APP data
[5] /dev/sda12 start= 272629611, size= 130 ( 65.00K), end= 272629740 APP descriptor backup
[4] /dev/sda12 start= 272629741, size= 18 ( 9.00K), end= 272629758 MEDIA descriptor backup
[3] /dev/sda12 start= 272629759, size= 1 (512.00b), end= 272629759 NODE descriptor backup
[4] /dev/sda13 start= 272629760, size= 343818240 (163.95G), end= 616447999 MEDIA data
[6] /dev/sda15 start= 616457216, size= 130 ( 65.00K), end= 616457345 MEDIA descriptor
[6] /dev/sda15 start= 616457346, size= 130 ( 65.00K), end= 616457475 MEDIA descriptor backup
[6] /dev/sda15 start= 616458240, size=4294963200 ( 2.00T), end=4911421439 MEDIA data
------------------

Zones Physical
------------------
[4] /dev/sda13 start= 64, size= 343818240 (163.95G), end= 343818303 MEDIA data
[0] /dev/sda10 start= 352513027, size= 1 (512.00b), end= 352513027 NODE descriptor
[0] /dev/sda10 start= 352513028, size= 524288 (256.00M), end= 353037315 NODE data
[1] /dev/sda10 start= 353037316, size= 10 ( 5.00K), end= 353037325 MEDIA descriptor
[2] /dev/sda10 start= 353037326, size= 130 ( 65.00K), end= 353037455 APP descriptor
[2] /dev/sda10 start= 353037456, size= 1112704 (543.31M), end= 354150159 APP data
[2] /dev/sda10 start= 354150164, size= 130 ( 65.00K), end= 354150293 APP descriptor backup
[1] /dev/sda10 start= 354150294, size= 10 ( 5.00K), end= 354150303 MEDIA descriptor backup
[0] /dev/sda10 start= 354150304, size= 1 (512.00b), end= 354150304 NODE descriptor backup
[3] /dev/sda12 start= 354150306, size= 1 (512.00b), end= 354150306 NODE descriptor
[3] /dev/sda12 start= 354150307, size= 524288 (256.00M), end= 354674594 NODE data
[4] /dev/sda12 start= 354674595, size= 18 ( 9.00K), end= 354674612 MEDIA descriptor
[5] /dev/sda12 start= 354674613, size= 130 ( 65.00K), end= 354674742 APP descriptor
[5] /dev/sda12 start= 354674743, size= 1113808 (543.85M), end= 355788550 APP data
[5] /dev/sda12 start= 355788557, size= 130 ( 65.00K), end= 355788686 APP descriptor backup
[4] /dev/sda12 start= 355788687, size= 18 ( 9.00K), end= 355788704 MEDIA descriptor backup
[3] /dev/sda12 start= 355788705, size= 1 (512.00b), end= 355788705 NODE descriptor backup
[1] /dev/sda11 start= 355788706, size= 269352960 (128.44G), end= 625141665 MEDIA data
[6] /dev/sda15 start= 625142448, size= 130 ( 65.00K), end= 625142577 MEDIA descriptor
[6] /dev/sda15 start= 625142578, size= 130 ( 65.00K), end= 625142707 MEDIA descriptor backup
[6] /dev/sda15 start= 625143472, size=4294963200 ( 2.00T), end=4920106671 MEDIA data
------------------

Size of zones:
Used:	543568792 (259.19G)
Free:	4367840696 (2.03T)
Total:	4911409488 (2.29T)

Recordable space reported by Tivo: 4911423488 (2.29T), approximately 362 HD hours

MfsLayout: done

JMFS does not utilize the entire 2.8TB available on the drive. I don't know if this is a limitation of MFSADD or the Linux being used. That is why it shows 2 TB total size available on the drive for recording which = 362 Hrs HD. EVEN if it did work, the extra 44 Hrs HD is hardly worth the cost of the drive.


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## socrplyr (Jul 19, 2006)

The standard value for the sector size in the MBR (master boot record) of a harddrive is 512 bytes. The Tivo is mostly likely set up as a 32-bit machine (software and hardware), so that is 512*2^32 ~= 2.19TB. The common workaround is to change the size to be 4096, which would give an upper limit of >16TB. These types of changes are not super difficult, but require significant testing and what not for Tivo. My guess is that it is not at the top of their to do list to make a few do-it-yourselfers happy.

Edit: Just as a note, what I wrote above isn't quite right. However, it is along the same lines. The partition type is most likely some variant of ext2, which has the same limit with a 1K blocksize.


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## retiredqwest (Sep 7, 2010)

socrplyr said:


> The standard value for the sector size in the MBR (master boot record) of a harddrive is 512 bytes. The Tivo is mostly likely set up as a 32-bit machine (software and hardware), so that is 512*2^32 ~= 2.19TB. The common workaround is to change the size to be 4096, which would give an upper limit of >16TB. These types of changes are not super difficult, but require significant testing and what not for Tivo. My guess is that it is not at the top of their to do list to make a few do-it-yourselfers happy.
> 
> Edit: Just as a note, what I wrote above isn't quite right. However, it is along the same lines. The partition type is most likely some variant of ext2, which has the same limit with a 1K blocksize.


I just tried doing a straight copy only w/o expanding the 3TB. TP refuses to get past the power up screen.


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