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Hard Drive Upgrade Info

832K views 3K replies 437 participants last post by  austinsho 
#1 ·
Upgrade your Roamio with a new drive. No discs needed.

What you need:
T8 Screw driver
T10 Screw Driver
New Hard Drive

 
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#3,299 ·
TiVos only use SATA I (150MBps), so speed really isn't an issue with any drive made in the last 15 years or so. On Roamios & Bolts the OS is already in flash memory, so the only place that you might see a microscopic improvement in performance with an SSD is when it accesses the MFS application partitions.

The Reds and Greens are basically identical in terms of RPMs, noise, heat and power consumption. That's what you need to look for in a TiVo drive.
 
#3,300 ·
Im new to Tivo. Not ready to update my new Roamio's 1tb drive yet. It actually may be enough for me since I only subscribe to limited basic cable and HBO we only record network shows most of the time. I will keep those drives in mind when Is time to update.
 
#3,144 ·
I apologize, but I'm going to ask the questions that have been asked dozens of times, and all are lost in this remarkable but 100+ page thread. But I'll do it in the form of a mini-guide, and hopefully aggregate the info for others' benefit :)

1) How do I backup my TiVo shows before upgrading my hard drive?
I have a Mac, so I'll use cTivo (or Archivo) and download all my shows (in unencrypted TiVo format, with no re-encoding) to my hard drive. Presumably, I could run Windows 10 in Parallels and use KMTTG.

2) How do I upgrade the Hard Drive in my Roamio Plus?
Buy a WD 3TB AV-GP drive. Then follow directions in 1st post of this thread to remove original hard drive and install new hard drive. No other manipulations are needed for 3TB or smaller drives; the TiVo will auto-format the drive.

If I wanted a 4TB or larger drive, I'd have to use MSF Reformatter and do the process described a few posts earlier:
Go through Guided Setup with the current drive so it can download software updates. Then install the 4TB drive, let the TiVo install its software, and then when it gets to Guided Setup; turn the TiVo off, put the drive into your PC and run the 'MFSR' software (found in the TiVo Underground forum here) to re-format the drive, and then put it back in the Roamio Pro.

2b) Can I use a Seagate Video hard drive instead of WD?
TBD

3) How do I preserve / restore my OnePass info?
Is it restored automatically from the online.tivo.com 'cloud' service?
TBD

4) How do I preserve / restore ... (ratings? Thumbs? What else?)
TBD
 
#3,253 ·
Should a clean drive be partitioned and formatted before installing it in a Roamio? If so, what format?
It should not be formatted/partitioned in any way. Roamio has that ability, up to 3TB. More than that, it needs a little help, on a PC with MSFR.
 
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#3,277 ·
I ended up trying the 3TB in my old deactivated OTA Roamio (the one I bought when they first came out in 2014) and it just seemed noisy. So with some Amazon gift cards I got at X-Mas bought one of the 3TB red drives and put that in the OTA w/lifetime and its very quiet (alot quieter than the other 3TB drive I had...supposedly same model)
 
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#3,298 ·
SSD drives arent really good for storage drives that are written to, deleted and over written over and over. Putiing one in a dvr many not be the best idea for reason that all the over writing wears them out. I bet it had fast read and write times though.
In the WD line the gree drives are supposed to be low power drives for desktops and storage. The red drives are for Network attached Storage devices, they have some of the low power properties and are made for more constant read and write cycles. Either are good for the good if they come in under the tivo's power limits.
 
#4 ·
gotcha, so the process to upgrade the premiere's won't work (for now at least)?
Maybe? We will honestly find out tomorrow when normal people start getting and tinkering with them. It's possible they didn't change anything and the existing tools will just work?

Although my gut tells me that *some* changes were required to support drives greater than 2TB. And some forum member alluded to TiVo moving the OS to some onboard flash storage, which would change how the OS is structured and likely break existing upgrade tools.
 
#6 ·
oh ok cool, well hopefully we can use this thread to keep track of the status. I know with directv's THR22 the OS was on the board like all other D boxes so just replacing the drive made it reload the OS on first boot. Would be sweet if it was that easy but like you said we will wait and see.
 
#14 ·
#16 ·
If that earlier rumor about the OS being on Flash is correct it's possible you just need to stick a new drive in and that's it. Now it's unlikely that it works this way but it's certainly possible.

If you look at weaknees, they're only marking up the Plus $100 for 2TB and $170 for 3TB. They charge $200 for a simple premiere 2TB upgrade drive. Maybe they're charging less because the upgrade is so simple.
 
#17 ·
If that earlier rumor about the OS being on Flash is correct it's possible you just need to stick a new drive in and that's it. Now it's unlikely that it works this way but it's certainly possible.

If you look at weaknees, they're only marking up the Plus $100 for 2TB and $170 for 3TB. They charge $200 for a simple premiere 2TB upgrade drive. Maybe they're charging less because the upgrade is so simple.
Huh? My math on the 3TB is $449 - $199 (base) = $250 difference (not $170).
 
#18 ·
If that earlier rumor about the OS being on Flash is correct it's possible you just need to stick a new drive in and that's it. Now it's unlikely that it works this way but it's certainly possible.

If you look at weaknees, they're only marking up the Plus $100 for 2TB and $170 for 3TB. They charge $200 for a simple premiere 2TB upgrade drive. Maybe they're charging less because the upgrade is so simple.
Don't they also keep the original drive? That would account for the price difference. Since when you buy a standalone drive, you are keeping the drive you are replacing.
 
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