DirecTV HD DVR HR10-250 Upgrade Thread

[weaknees]

The good news is: the HD TiVo seems to be upgradeable. We have successfully backed up and restored the software, expanded it, and added second drives.

PLEASE NOTE: We haven’t yet filled up these drives with HD content. Once we’ve had a chance to try many other tests in these units (we’ve got a pretty big list) we’ll try this. So for now, we’re relying on what we see in System Information. Until we have successfully loaded the drive with content, take all this with a grain of salt.

Here are the details:

We used our standard backup string:

mfsbackup –f 9999 –1so /image.bak /dev/hdc

The resulting image is 1486 MB.

We restored to our 300 GB Maxtor QuickView drive as:

mfsrestore –xzpi /image.bak /dev/hdc

and in the TiVo we see 37 hours in HD and 248 in SD.

We have blessed drives in “noswap” and added them to the factory drive, and those drives are recognized by the system. Adding a 300 GB drive to the stock 250 GB drive creates 70 hours in HD and 470 hours in SD.

So far, we can’t get a dual 300 setup to work reliably, but we’re still working on it.

So in short, we can get mfsadd to work with one drive, and we have successfully added a second drive to a stock “A” drive with BlessTiVo, but we have not yet successfully used mfsadd (or the –x switch in mfsrestore) across two drives, with the first being >250GB.

The challenge here is to safely hold the second drive in the unit. Our TwinBreeze bracket won’t work in its current configuration and we have begun the process of engineering a new bracket for this unit. Quality components take some time to engineer, test, tool, and manufacture. The power supply in the HD box is 85W so we don’t see any reason to add the PowerTrip to this box at present.

More details as they come.

Michael

EDIT: 9/28/04

We have updated our D-I-Y upgrade site to support this model:

http://www.upgrade-instructions.com

We have a CD with large kernel support, and full instructions for using two large drives for this model.

[bkdtv]

weaknees,

How long would you guess it wll take you to engineer and mass produce a bracket for the HD Tivo? Are we talking weeks or months?

[dswallow]

Good luck Michael; I know I'm anxious to hear/see/buy the final results!

[turls]

Oh boy! I'm really surprised. I guess this is a reason to get a unit sooner rather than later. Not that I think DirecTV is quick enough on their feet to re-engineer hardware or software to prevent this any time soon, but it will probably be on their todo list.

Also, isn't the Maxtor drive much quieter than the stock WD drive?

[Darin]

WooHoo! :)

[MrBigglesworth]

Awesome news!

[Darin]

Originally posted by turls
Not that I think DirecTV is quick enough on their feet to re-engineer hardware or software to prevent this any time soon, but it will probably be on their todo list.
They've never done that in the past, have they?

[turls]

Originally posted by Darin
They've never done that in the past, have they?

No, but the design was done on the originals before they "took over" from Tivo. And of course, being an HD box, any hackability will be doubly discouraged by MPAA and other DirecTV "partners".

Not FUD at all. I'm being quite reasonable.

[Paperboy2003]

How soon is it typically before we get an idea on costs as well as time to get the add on done?

Doug

[Paperboy2003]

also, since doing this add on voids the warrantee, does weaknees (or anyone else) offer some kind of warrantee to protect those that work with them?

Doug

[Darin]

Originally posted by turls
Not FUD at all. I'm being quite reasonable. I'm not suggesting you're being unreasonable, just making sure there's not precedent that I'm not aware of. The good news is, software-wise, weaknees was able to use their existing tools and command lines... they didn't have to hack to make it work. I would THINK that if DirecTV really wanted to prevent it (it's not like they don't know it's going on now), they could have easily thrown in a speed bump before they reached final design.

[Darin]

Originally posted by Paperboy2003
also, since doing this add on voids the warrantee, does weaknees (or anyone else) offer some kind of warrantee to protect those that work with them?
What incentive would there be for them to warranty your $1000 box, taking responsibility for your mod work, just for selling you a $20 part?

That's just the risk you take when doing this kind of stuff.

[bcc]

The maxtor 300gb is 5400rpm, right? Fast enough to keep up when the tivo is recording two HD shows and replaying a 3rd? How about noise/heat? Quieter than the built-in wd2500?

[ljg]

Michael:

What would be the maximum # of added drives weakness could do as a modification, of course assuming it goes well with one additional drive is there any way weakness could add additional drives outside of the Tivo box?

Lon

[litzdog911]

Originally posted by ljg
Michael:

What would be the maximum # of added drives weakness could do as a modification, of course assuming it goes well with one additional drive is there any way weakness could add additional drives outside of the Tivo box?

Lon

My understanding is that without MAJOR modifications Tivo only supports two IDE devices, that is, two hard drives.

Some have speculated that maybe external USB drives could be supported, but really bad things would happen if one of these drives got disconnected because of how Tivo's file system "marries" hard drives together.

[Graphics]

Nice going Michael..its upgradeable! its upgradeable! FANTASTIC!
Now another 250 gig is very affordable.

400gig x 2 is what I would most likely love to see.
Again Great News. Keep tinkering you guys...

[weaknees]

Originally posted by bkdtv
weaknees,

How long would you guess it wll take you to engineer and mass produce a bracket for the HD Tivo? Are we talking weeks or months?

We just don't know at this point. We intend to make something that builds on the quality of the TwinBreeze - not something quick and dirty that will result in increased vibration, noise, and heat. We recognize that these boxes are expensive and prized, and we don't intend to take any shortcuts in producing an add-on part for them. We certainly don't want to risk a $1000 machine by engineering a bracket just to get it fast to market.

More info when we have it - we're both professionally and personally eager as well.

Michael

[weaknees]

Originally posted by turls
Also, isn't the Maxtor drive much quieter than the stock WD drive?

This just hasn't been our priority so far - we haven't tested the two side by side in a quiet room.

Our experience at the 40 GB hard drive level shows that the Maxtor QuickViews are much quieter than the WDs, but at this size, we just don't yet know.

Michael

[weaknees]

Originally posted by Paperboy2003
How soon is it typically before we get an idea on costs as well as time to get the add on done?

Doug

It's just too early to know at this point. As soon as we're confident in our testing, we'll begin to get some options out there.

Michael

[tivoupgrade]

For those interested in upgrades for their HD TiVo units, we have a mailing list signup here (http://www.ptvupgrade.com/subscribe.html).

We will be making infrequent announcements to the list when brackets, kits, and professional services become available. We have been working on a prototype bracket for the new HD units for awhile and should have something in low volumes in the coming weeks. We tend not to rush these things, and don't release products without the proper testing and documentation, but we'll make an announcement here when the time is right.

Thanks,
Lou

[weaknees]

Originally posted by litzdog911
My understanding is that without MAJOR modifications Tivo only supports two IDE devices, that is, two hard drives.

Two IDE devices per bus (that's the way the spec works), so potentially you could have four devices in a Pioneer or Toshiba since they have dual buses, but that's a whole different issue.

For now, we don't envision a way to go beyond the standard max of two drives.

Michael

[oosik77]

Due to heat issues I'd be interested in a possible external housing for both drives. Would need to take power up/down into account but that might be an interesting thing to look into as well.

[jayerndl]

Originally posted by oosik77
Due to heat issues I'd be interested in a possible external housing for both drives. Would need to take power up/down into account but that might be an interesting thing to look into as well. You could take this idea one step further and have mutiple external 2 disk "sets" that you could switch between with the proper IDE switcher. This would allow some form of archive capability.

Jay

[oosik77]

I'd think that would mess up the program guide and probably cause corruption issues. Unless you mean complete bootable married pairs of drives.

[Paperboy2003]

Originally posted by Darin
What incentive would there be for them to warranty your $1000 box, taking responsibility for your mod work, just for selling you a $20 part?

That's just the risk you take when doing this kind of stuff. \\

I'm new at this...I was thinking that you send your new HD Tivo to weaknees and they do the work and send it back. If they just send you a kit then I certainly understand that there wouldn't be any kind of warrantee.

Doug

[Darin]

Originally posted by Paperboy2003
I was thinking that you send your new HD Tivo to weaknees and they do the work and send it back.
Well, I believe they have generally offered upgraded TiVos (as in you buy the entire thing from them, already upgraded), and they may carry a warranty. I don't know if you can send yours in & have it upgraded. But whether or not they are willing to take the risk on parts that aren't related to their product is probably going to depend on how much you are spending.

[PJO1966]

I don't know if it has been mentioned, but there doesn't seem to be any way of telling if a box had been opened. There's no sticker or anything else. I assume one could always put the original drive back in if there was a warranty issue.

[jayerndl]

Originally posted by oosik77
I'd think that would mess up the program guide and probably cause corruption issues. Unless you mean complete bootable married pairs of drives. Yes I was referring to "complete bootable married pairs of drives". All you would need to do is re-boot and select the desired drive pair with the IDE switch. Not a terribly elegant solution, but certainly workable and reasonably priced.

Jay

[weaknees]

Switching drives has certainly been discussed at lenght on these forums, but we really don't believe it's workable. Would you keep all of your Season Passes on each set of drives? Would you have to reboot while you are watching something to be sure that the other set of drives caught something in its To Do list?

You really start to lose the convenience of TiVo and you end up with a digital VCR.

Michael

[WanMan]

How long for you to add an Ethernet port? :D

[jlin]

and firewire output?

From an angry DISH 921 PVR user.

[rogo]

There is almost zero chance that a Firewire port could ever be added. Integration of chips would be the enemy of anyone trying to do that.

Also, I guess I'm not persuaded that "we can't get 300 x 2 working" means the unit is upgradeable. So far, it isn't really.

That said, I see no incentive for DirecTV to care about whether or not you upgrade and not a shred of evidence they will shut this down now anymore than they have in the past.

I would note that if they chose to support USB 2.0 drives, there are many ways they can have the software changed to make the drive "marriage" issue go away. I still see tech-support headaches, but solutions nevertheless.

Mark

[stephenC]

Mark - You got me thinking. Would it be possible to "adapt" a 1394 port on a D-VHS box to USB 2.0? Would it then be possible to connect the TiVo USB 2.0 port to the "adapted" D-VHS port? Then output USB 2.0 to USB 2.0 on the two devices? I really haven't researched this, but it was a thought that crossed my mind.

[unixadm]

Originally posted by weaknees
Switching drives has certainly been discussed at lenght on these forums, but we really don't believe it's workable. Would you keep all of your Season Passes on each set of drives? Would you have to reboot while you are watching something to be sure that the other set of drives caught something in its To Do list?

You really start to lose the convenience of TiVo and you end up with a digital VCR.

Michael

Michael.....it depends on your use of the TiVo...and how many you have.

I have 3 DirectTiVos connected up to my main TV......

TiVo 1: Season Pass TiVo (108 hours T60)
TiVo 2: Movie TiVo (228 hours T60),
TiVo 3: Kids Season Pass TiVo (35 Hours HDVR2)

I will eventually be replacing TiVo1 with an HDTV TiVo, possibily TiVo 2 as well.....I would envision that multiple drive sets would be great for our TiVo 2...the movie TiVo. It does not have any Season Passes, just wishlists (some autorecord)......I would be great to have multiple disk sets with different movies....maybe even group them......Kids movies on one disk set, Comedies on another, Action on a third set, etc....

Yes, it is a digital VCR at that point, but since I subscribe to the Premiere package, I want to get the most out of the channels I get....it works well in my setup considering the other TiVos do the Season Passes.

[WanMan]

rogo, 600GB is not enough. Sorry, but I'm a pig and came out of the closet a long time ago on that subject. If I cannot extract to optical then its boring.

[weldon]

Originally posted by unixadm
I will eventually be replacing TiVo1 with an HDTV TiVo, possibily TiVo 2 as well.....I would envision that multiple drive sets would be great for our TiVo 2...the movie TiVo. It does not have any Season Passes, just wishlists (some autorecord)......I would be great to have multiple disk sets with different movies....maybe even group them......Kids movies on one disk set, Comedies on another, Action on a third set, etc....
I must be missing something here. If you have different wishlists on each drive set, then only those movies that match the current drive's wishlists would be recorded. If you had a separate drive set (w/ corresponding wishlist) for kids, comedies, and action then the TiVo would only record one of those at a time (since the other drive sets' wishlists wouldn't be loaded).

Your other choice would be to duplicate the wishlists on a second drive set and "archive" the first set when it became full of recorded programs. Eventually, you'd have to keep a list of which movie was on which drive set and power down the TiVo and bring it back with that drive set to watch the movie. Might be better to get a DVD recorder and "archive" programs to DVD.

I'd like to see if someone can get 400GB+400GB drives working before I messed around with drive sets. I was also thinking, is there a device that can connect to an IDE controller and make a RAID set appear to be one volume to the TiVo?

[unixadm]

weldon,

You are correct.....it wouldn't be the perfect solution, but better than deleting movies I want to keep so I can record new movies I want to watch. My auto-record wishlists are for specific movie names that I want so it is rare that it really auto-record, so I would be willing to give them up and do manual wishlist searches if I had the setup to be able to swap between disk sets.

It would be much better if they would just go SCSI, then we could string a whole bunch of drives off of it....even be able to go RAID5 or RAID 0/1 so there would be drive failure protection. Of course I never expect that to happen, but it would be great if it would.

[dswallow]

Originally posted by unixadm
weldon,

You are correct.....it wouldn't be the perfect solution, but better than deleting movies I want to keep so I can record new movies I want to watch. My auto-record wishlists are for specific movie names that I want so it is rare that it really auto-record, so I would be willing to give them up and do manual wishlist searches if I had the setup to be able to swap between disk sets.

It would be much better if they would just go SCSI, then we could string a whole bunch of drives off of it....even be able to go RAID5 or RAID 0/1 so there would be drive failure protection. Of course I never expect that to happen, but it would be great if it would. I wonder just how small a market for a heavy duty version of the HD DVR would be practical to come out with a product for. If you take the existing design which could very well already have two IDE buses, and just make a cabinet and stick 4 400GB drives into it if that'd be minor enough they could actually do it and make a viable product from it.

There's probably a certain amount of tooling for the chassis and cabinet and front panel that has a relatively high fixed cost to start. But then there's so many micro-manufacturers that have niche markets for high end A/V products, it just wouldn't seem that it could be impractical to consider. There are people who'd drop $5,000 in something like that as there's obviously some people willing do drop $5,000 on the HD DVR as it is now.

[tivoupgrade]

Its interesting to see that the more things change, the more they stay the same. This very same dialog has actually taken place on this very same forum - in fact, it was so long ago, that I was unable to find an archive for it. I recall that before 160GB drives were readily available, people were discussing removable drive solutions and piggy-back racks for Series1 units as a way to break the 400-hour barrier. The funny thing is that the drive-densities keep going up, and the cost associated with just cramming a few big drives in vs all the tooling and engineering involved in a more exotic alternative still ends up in favor of waiting for the bigger drives.

Keeping in mind the design-center for products such as this, and all the bad things that happen when you put too much storage on a unit designed for 1/4 of what the 'bleeding edge' folks really want, it ends up being a difficult business model to seriously consider.

With that said, it will be interesting to see how far people can push the envelope with these new units -- clearly having lba48 support as part of the core OS really does offer a lot more alternatives than previous generation units, so at least there is less to be concerned with from the software perspective.

Lastly, a quick and dirty solution to something that might end up being just a huge sink of time and money --- how about two separate units, each collecting different shows, and the appropriate array of switchers and the ideal universal remote?

Cheers,
Lou

[paouelle]

I personally prefer having 2 receivers with 4 tuners then 1 receiver with 2 tuners and a hugue array of hard disks. Having 4 tuners allows me to better deal with scheduling conflicts and record more shows that runs at the same time.

Patrick

[Darin]

Originally posted by paouelle
I personally prefer having 2 receivers with 4 tuners then 1 receiver with 2 tuners and a hugue array of hard disks.
It's a mixed bag. Doubling the tuners can certainly be handy, but dealing with two separate sets of lists is a bit more tedious. HMO would certainly make it a little better.

That said, I'm going to be using two units too. My existing SD, and the new HD. I have over 200hrs on my main TiVo now, which is more than ample. If I can offload all SD to it, that should help the HD unit until an upgrade becomes practical. And when it does, I'll probably just add a 300GB or so drive to it. 70hrs of HD plus my SD storage should be plenty. I'm considering reducing my "channels I receive" list on the HD unit to just HD channels, just so it will only record HD suggestions. I wish we could put so hard limitations into what it suggests, in addition to it's own logic that it uses.

[weldon]

As cheap as DirecTiVo's are these days, I think two systems is perfectly reasonable. I just wish there was some way to coordinate scheduling to avoid conflicts across all four tuners and an integrated interface (which is somewhat possible with HMO).

I'm still waiting for the perfectly modular TiVo that allows for an unlimited number of tuners of different types (QAM, analog, DTV, ATSC, OpenCable, etc.) that record to a central storage server. All the programs would be accessible from an unlimited number of thin-client display heads that range from cheap RCA connectors only to HDMI-DVI & optical audio, in both wired and wireless versions. As pie-in-the-sky as that might sound, I think the only real hurdle left is the lack of a business environment that would allow a company to build tuners for multiple sources. OpenCable is promising though.

[wkozun]

Originally posted by WanMan
rogo, 600GB is not enough. Sorry, but I'm a pig and came out of the closet a long time ago on that subject. If I cannot extract to optical then its boring.

Even if you could extract to optical what would you do with it? DVDs can't play 1080i or 720p so what's the point unless you're going to watch it on a PC or HTPC connected up to your HDTV.

[paouelle]

Originally posted by Darin
It's a mixed bag. Doubling the tuners can certainly be handy, but dealing with two separate sets of lists is a bit more tedious. HMO would certainly make it a little better.

That said, I'm going to be using two units too. My existing SD, and the new HD. I have over 200hrs on my main TiVo now, which is more than ample. If I can offload all SD to it, that should help the HD unit until an upgrade becomes practical. And when it does, I'll probably just add a 300GB or so drive to it. 70hrs of HD plus my SD storage should be plenty. I'm considering reducing my "channels I receive" list on the HD unit to just HD channels, just so it will only record HD suggestions. I wish we could put so hard limitations into what it suggests, in addition to it's own logic that it uses.

I do agree that having HMO would definitely reduce the complexity in managing 2 receivers but there has been many times in the past for me that 2 tuners were not enough at a given time. Either it was due to multiple programs running at the same time (I know I am watching too much TV but that is what TiVos are for right? ;)) or just because I have to pad the time by a couple of minutes because of improper time synchronization between the various channels.

In my case, I will be recording all my SD programs including duplicates of HDs (to be on the safe side) on my SD TiVo receiver and use the 2 HD TiVo receivers for HD programming only.

I have been managing 2 lists for the last 2 years with my old ultimateTV and I am sure I can manage 3 receivers.

The one thing for sure, I can wait to get them here ...

Patrick

[dswallow]

Originally posted by paouelle
...there has been many times in the past for me that 2 tuners were not enough at a given time. While re-entering my season passes, I came across the one time I need 3 tuners... Angel, The O.C. and West Wing all are on at the same time. Fortunately I can catch The O.C. or West Wing from the west coast in HD I'm busy earlier, but still I have to watch it live. :(

[bcc]

Has anyone yet tried a maxtor maxline ii 300gb (non quickview)? It looks like the most cost effective and simple upgrade to wd2500 right now. But its latency is higher than the wd, and I'm afraid it might introduce glitches if the tivo is working on 3 HD streams at once. What if I configure it with 'amset /quiet'? Will that push it over the edge performance-wise?

[Greg G]

Originally posted by dswallow
Fortunately I can catch The O.C. or West Wing from the west coast in HD I'm busy earlier, but still I have to watch it live. :(

How do you get the west coast in HD?

-Greg

[Plugplay]

Originally posted by Greg G
How do you get the west coast in HD?

-Greg

Either directv with Distant locals or a really big antenna! :)

[dswallow]

Originally posted by Greg G
How do you get the west coast in HD? Bell Expressvu subscription through a broker (www.canamsatellites.com) and their version of the Echostar 6000 piece-of-crap HD receiver. They have ABC/CBS/NBC/FOX/PBS in HD from Boston and from Seattle.

[pkscout]

Originally posted by weldon
As cheap as DirecTiVo's are these days, I think two systems is perfectly reasonable. I just wish there was some way to coordinate scheduling to avoid conflicts across all four tuners and an integrated interface (which is somewhat possible with HMO).


I wish HMO was an option too. Especially because adding an SD DTiVo (the HDTiVo is my first DirecTV TiVo) will require running two more lines to the living room, getting a multiswitch (I have a normal STB in the bedroom, so that would make 5 cables), finding a way to get another box in the wall (I need 7 ports on the plate, and I think the most I can get in one gang plate is 6)...

You get the point. If HMO was an option, I could just put the SD DTiVo in the bedroom and let it record stuff there, then move it to the living room later. Since that isn't an option, I'm hoping for a way to get another drive in my HDTiVo. Besides, over half of what I watch is in HD anyway.

[paouelle]

Originally posted by pkscout
I wish HMO was an option too. Especially because adding an SD DTiVo (the HDTiVo is my first DirecTV TiVo) will require running two more lines to the living room, getting a multiswitch (I have a normal STB in the bedroom, so that would make 5 cables), finding a way to get another box in the wall (I need 7 ports on the plate, and I think the most I can get in one gang plate is 6)...

You get the point. If HMO was an option, I could just put the SD DTiVo in the bedroom and let it record stuff there, then move it to the living room later. Since that isn't an option, I'm hoping for a way to get another drive in my HDTiVo. Besides, over half of what I watch is in HD anyway.

There are double gang plates where you can put either 8 connectors or 12 connectors; checkout www.smarthome.com/85523.HTML.

This is what I used in my living room where I brought in 8 coax cables, 1 phone line and 3 Ethernet connections just in case ;). I also have another plate next to it with 1 coax for the antenna and a rotor connection.

Patrick

[weaknees]

We've been getting a lot of emails and phone calls about availability of these upgrades. We want to stress again that these results are preliminary, and we won't be selling kits until we're sure that they're as stable as our current upgrade kits. In addtion, for add kits, we'll need new parts.

Michael

[turls]

Because they might not want to deal with the support calls? Maybe they don't care, but this is their baby from the beginning which makes a difference.

And I didn't say they have reason to care about this particular upgrade, what they may care about is the whole hacking concept that some MPAA types may say has been abused.

You really think the rights management crowd knows (or cares about) the difference between extraction and capacity upgrades?

Originally posted by rogo
That said, I see no incentive for DirecTV to care about whether or not you upgrade and not a shred of evidence they will shut this down now anymore than they have in the past.

[Toeside]

This is from a different thread:

Originally posted by weaknees

Basically, FlyingDiver has the right issue. You need a kernel that supports lba48 to see the entire drive - the mfstools boot CDs specifically use older kernels so that 160 GB drives can be used on older machines without problems.

You probably need kernel 2.4.20.

Michael

Does anyone have an ISO image available with the this newer kernel and LBA48 support?

I should have my HD TiVo next week, and I'm considering making a backup before powering it on.

Thanks!

Craig

[WanMan]

I want my HD TiVo to have this (http://neasia.nikkeibp.com/wcs/leaf?CID=onair/asabt/news/304266) optical drive installed in it. Maybe they can make a carosel version, too for spanning optical disks.

[weaknees]

More info is here:

http://www.courtesan.com/tivo/bigdisk.html

You *don't* need any of the kernel swapping info, you just need to boot in a newer kernel that can see the entire drive.

You can find a variety of OS installs here:

http://www.knoppix.org/

Michael

[Toeside]

Michael,

Thanks for the links!

Craig

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by Toeside
This is from a different thread:



Does anyone have an ISO image available with the this newer kernel and LBA48 support?

I should have my HD TiVo next week, and I'm considering making a backup before powering it on.

Thanks!

Craig

Here is a link to our LBA48 CD which contains all the utilities referenced in the LBA48 thread in the underground and in the courtesan how-to.

http://www.ptvupgrade.com/support/bigdisk/index.html

[Toeside]

Originally posted by tivoupgrade
Here is a link to our LBA48 CD which contains all the utilities referenced in the LBA48 thread in the underground and in the courtesan how-to.

http://www.ptvupgrade.com/support/bigdisk/index.html

Thanks. I grabbed the ISO earlier today from your site. I think I'm set.

Now, when my HR10-250 arrives, I'll just have to hope my wife isn't home so I don't have to explain why I'm opening up a $1k box immediately after getting it. :)

I think I found a good use for that old 4GB drive: temporary location for the HD TiVo backup!

Craig

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by Toeside
Thanks. I grabbed the ISO earlier today from your site. I think I'm set.

Now, when my HR10-250 arrives, I'll just have to hope my wife isn't home so I don't have to explain why I'm opening up a $1k box immediately after getting it. :)

I think I found a good use for that old 4GB drive: temporary location for the HD TiVo backup!

Craig

Good luck with it!

You can try explaining to the wife that in 18 months it will only be worth a 1/3 of what you paid for it, if you are lucky. I'm sure that will go over like a lead balloon. ;-)

In any case, do be careful, and if possible, test your backup on another drive to ensure you can recover from the worst possible scenario. I can tell you right now, its unlikely that a backup image will not fit on a single CD, so no "InstantCake" for this unit in the forseeable future.

[dvdude]

Originally posted by tivoupgrade
Good luck with it!

You can try explaining to the wife that in 18 months it will only be worth a 1/3 of what you paid for it, if you are lucky. I'm sure that will go over like a lead balloon. ;-)

In any case, do be careful, and if possible, test your backup on another drive to ensure you can recover from the worst possible scenario. I can tell you right now, its unlikely that a backup image will not fit on a single CD, so no "InstantCake" for this unit in the forseeable future.

Bet it'll go on a single DVD/R though eh??

:D :cool:

[dvdude]

Originally posted by paouelle
There are double gang plates where you can put either 8 connectors or 12 connectors; checkout www.smarthome.com/85523.HTML.

This is what I used in my living room where I brought in 8 coax cables, 1 phone line and 3 Ethernet connections just in case ;). I also have another plate next to it with 1 coax for the antenna and a rotor connection.

Patrick

I've been looking at these for a while (they're available in our local Home Depot/Lowes). Are they stil easy to put together when you've got 8 lines to 'em? I kinda put off buying afraid that I'd break them during install.

TIA

[weaknees]

Our test images using -1so show up at about 164 MB.

Michael

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by dvdude
Bet it'll go on a single DVD/R though eh??

:D :cool:


Been thinking about that... haven't played around much with the boot CD images and DVD drives; I have a feeling there will be a lot of compatibility issues. Another story for another thread, I suppose...

[paouelle]

Originally posted by dvdude
I've been looking at these for a while (they're available in our local Home Depot/Lowes). Are they stil easy to put together when you've got 8 lines to 'em? I kinda put off buying afraid that I'd break them during install.

TIA

The only hick I found with it is that one of the 2 sides has to be inverted. Not too much an issue for coax connectors but for cat5 connections, you end up having them upside down. Like I said, not too big of a deal.

The other issue was pushing all cables back in the wall. 8 RG6 cables are not easily bendable :)

But overall, no problem. You just have to be careful about it.

Patrick

[llogan]

This is what I'd envisioned....x number of Tivos...all Turbonet modified running TivoNet, using mySQL as the backend (hosted on a pc) and create logic and a front-end to support managing your recording list and tuners from one location. Would allow PocketPC/Palm based control of menus and their related functions.

The problem that does not solve is the distribution of video from Tivo 8 to a specific location and having individual Tivos independently controllable from any location within the house without possible conflicts of users in other rooms attempting to access the same unit. A problem that certainly has a solution, albeit an expensive one.

So above scenario would work in a setup where you don't need to have too many different Tivos independently supplying video to various locations around the house, i.e. you'd either

a) watch all of your tv in one or two places OR
b) you didn't care that what you're watching you'd be watching everywhere in the house

[oosik77]

Anything new on a dual 300 setup? Pardon me if I missed it!

Also can't wait to see about dual 400's.....

[hongcho]

So, has any tried the bracket from 9th Tee (http://www.9thtee.com/tivo-dthd.htm) yet? How does it hold up and would the lid close properly?

Hong.

[9thTee]

Originally posted by hongcho
So, has any tried the bracket from 9th Tee (http://www.9thtee.com/tivo-dthd.htm) yet? How does it hold up and would the lid close properly?

Hong.

I have, I have! Actually we shipped several yesterday and today so folks will be able to give some feedback pretty soon. Our solution gives a very sturdy platform to mount the hard drive to and I would not hesitate to ship the unit with the upgrade in place. It's not going anywhere. The cover closes just fine and gives room on the top for air circulation.

BTW, just put up a new page with lots of inside pictures of the HR10-250. Here it is: www.9thtee.com/insidehdtivo.htm

Mark
9thTee.com

[dswallow]

I was just coming here to mention my order for one of them has shipped. I won't, however, be using it right away. I'm not too worried over the summer season about having more space, and would rather await some feedback from others taking the dive, first. ;)

[Fletch]

How large is the swap on the factory drive? I noticed that Weaknees hasn't used the -s option to mfsrestore in their tests.

[weaknees]

Well, Mark beat us to the punch on shipping a bracket, but we have one in the works. More info is here:

http://www.weaknees.com/hd_tivo_twinbreeze.php

As far as swap, we think the existing swap is sufficient for the extra 50 GB on a 300 GB drive.

And we still don't recommend any upgrade, but we're getting closer to some answers.

Michael

[tomr]

Originally posted by 9thTee
I have, I have! Actually we shipped several yesterday and today so folks will be able to give some feedback pretty soon. Our solution gives a very sturdy platform to mount the hard drive to and I would not hesitate to ship the unit with the upgrade in place. It's not going anywhere. The cover closes just fine and gives room on the top for air circulation.

BTW, just put up a new page with lots of inside pictures of the HR10-250. Here it is: www.9thtee.com/insidehdtivo.htm

Mark
9thTee.com

I purchased one and would simply like to add another 250gig drive. I was going to make a back up of the original and then add the second drive. Has this upgrade been successful?

[weaknees]

Originally posted by tomr
I purchased one and would simply like to add another 250gig drive. I was going to make a back up of the original and then add the second drive. Has this upgrade been successful?

You can make the hours show, but we haven't yet seen stability with the resulting upgrade, so we don't recommend it yet.

Michael

[9thTee]

Originally posted by tomr
I purchased one and would simply like to add another 250gig drive. I was going to make a back up of the original and then add the second drive. Has this upgrade been successful?

You have to realize that since we are dealing with such large hard drives, it takes a long time to fill them up and make sure things are stable. And then more time to give it a good workout to make sure nothing odd happens. I would imagine that in a few more days we will have some good news...:)

Mark
9thTee.com

See HR10-250 pictures at www.9thtee.com/insidehdtivo.htm

[dswallow]

Originally posted by 9thTee
You have to realize that since we are dealing with such large hard drives, it takes a long time to fill them up and make sure things are stable. And then more time to give it a good workout to make sure nothing odd happens. I would imagine that in a few more days we will have some good news...:)
It may not even hurt to let an upgrade from DirecTV/TiVo come through firstbefore declaring it truly compatible. ;)

[tomr]

Originally posted by 9thTee
You have to realize that since we are dealing with such large hard drives, it takes a long time to fill them up and make sure things are stable. And then more time to give it a good workout to make sure nothing odd happens. I would imagine that in a few more days we will have some good news...:)

Mark
9thTee.com

See HR10-250 pictures at www.9thtee.com/insidehdtivo.htm

OK, thanks. I'll be ready :D

[tomr]

Originally posted by dswallow
It may not even hurt to let an upgrade from DirecTV/TiVo come through firstbefore declaring it truly compatible. ;)

It could be months or more before we see an upgrade from DirecTV:(

[dswallow]

Originally posted by tomr
It could be months or more before we see an upgrade from DirecTV:( I think it'll probabaly be sooner.

[PJO1966]

Originally posted by dswallow
I think it'll probabaly be sooner.

do you have inside info?

[litzdog911]

Originally posted by dswallow
I think it'll probabaly be sooner.

Hopefully at least enough of an upgrade to roll out channel logos to units built before April 27. Perhaps Weaknees or PTVUpgrade will be able to provide an image file that includes the logos for folks looking to upgrade, when they can prove it's stable.

[edrock200]

Originally posted by dswallow
I think it'll probabaly be sooner.

There goes Doug teasing us again... ;)

[dswallow]

Originally posted by PJO1966
do you have inside info?
There's a version 3.1.5.V1-01-2-3F7 being tested right now.

[PJO1966]

Originally posted by dswallow
There's a version 3.1.5.V1-01-2-3F7 being tested right now.

Are there any hints as to what might be covered in that?

[dswallow]

Originally posted by PJO1966
Are there any hints as to what might be covered in that? That, I have no idea about.

[MichaelK]

you have that version on your box doug?

if not - where did you see that posted (if you did)?

Or is this another mystery inbox thing?

[dswallow]

Originally posted by MichaelK
you have that version on your box doug?

if not - where did you see that posted (if you did)?

Or is this another mystery inbox thing?
It's probably not on my unit, since if it were, I'd probably be under an NDA and would be violating it by saying that. And if I were under an NDA, I wouldn't violate it. But since I'm not, it's a free-for-all. ;)

[aaronwt]

How much does the temperature increase with the 9thTee bracket without any additional cooling?

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by aaronwt
How much does the temperature increase with the 9thTee bracket without any additional cooling?

We'll have more specifics on that in the coming weeks; right now, the cover is off...

Please see my post here (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=1930328#post1930328) regarding temperature and airflow as there are many factors that should be considered.

Lou

[MichaelK]

Originally posted by dswallow
It's probably not on my unit, since if it were, I'd probably be under an NDA and would be violating it by saying that. And if I were under an NDA, I wouldn't violate it. But since I'm not, it's a free-for-all. ;)

i thought maybe it was in the wild and you had it. I remember some letter versions bouncing around in the gerneral public when the hdvr2 came out.

With all the other stuff you seem to have going on, I wonder what the hec else winds up in your email box?

[jmhays]

Originally posted by weaknees
Well, Mark beat us to the punch on shipping a bracket, but we have one in the works. More info is here:

http://www.weaknees.com/hd_tivo_twinbreeze.php

As far as swap, we think the existing swap is sufficient for the extra 50 GB on a 300 GB drive.

And we still don't recommend any upgrade, but we're getting closer to some answers.

Michael

Michael,
If your new design is anything like your previous twinbreeze (it sure looks like it in the pictures and description!) design, I will wait for your new version instead of buying anything else.

When I ugraded my regular DirecTivo with one of your kits, I think it took me longer to read the instructions than it took to complete the entire upgrade. Completely painless and exteremely easy to do. Much, much easier than when I upgraded my SA Tivo by hand years ago...

[lbroadfield]

Originally posted by weldon
As cheap as DirecTiVo's are these days, I think two systems is perfectly reasonable. I just wish there was some way to coordinate scheduling to avoid conflicts across all four tuners and an integrated interface (which is somewhat possible with HMO).

I'm still waiting for the perfectly modular TiVo that allows for an unlimited number of tuners of different types (QAM, analog, DTV, ATSC, OpenCable, etc.) that record to a central storage server. All the programs would be accessible from an unlimited number of thin-client display heads that range from cheap RCA connectors only to HDMI-DVI & optical audio, in both wired and wireless versions. As pie-in-the-sky as that might sound, I think the only real hurdle left is the lack of a business environment that would allow a company to build tuners for multiple sources. OpenCable is promising though.

The bummer is, this is essentially available today, with a relatively straightforward change: support (as you pointed out) coordination of scheduling. Add coordinated scheduling to HMO, and you essentially have TiVo clustering, and a massive incentive to buy more TiVos.

[stephenC]

Aren't you really just describing VOD? The only difference is the placement of the storage (our homes or a central repository).

[borghe]

so has anyone done this with status to report? not begging either of the main ones here for additional info, just wondering if any of the non-pros here have done it.. my unit should be here tonight or tomorrow (depending on UPS) and I was thinking of heading out to Circuit City for one of those $160 250GB drives they have on sale this week...

I will probably do it no matter what (after a backup of course) but just wondering if there is anyone else here who was so bold.. also, with adding another 250GB, how large would you pros recommend making the swap?

[dswallow]

Originally posted by borghe
so has anyone done this with status to report? not begging either of the main ones here for additional info, just wondering if any of the non-pros here have done it.. my unit should be here tonight or tomorrow (depending on UPS) and I was thinking of heading out to Circuit City for one of those $160 250GB drives they have on sale this week...

I will probably do it no matter what (after a backup of course) but just wondering if there is anyone else here who was so bold.. also, with adding another 250GB, how large would you pros recommend making the swap?
I got my drive bracket today.

I'm in no rush to do this though. I'll probably just wait around until there's a few more reports and keep an eye out on rebate deals on drives.

[weaknees]

We're still working on the stability of the "add" upgrades.

Meanwhile, we've verified that single-drive replacements work, and for people wanting the extra 50 GB, we are selling 300 GB replacement drives.

Michael

[mattdb]

Originally posted by borghe
I was thinking of heading out to Circuit City for one of those $160 250GB drives they have on sale this week...

I don't see any sign of this drive with this price on the CC website.

Mattman

[btwyx]

Originally posted by weaknees
We're still working on the stability of the "add" upgrades.

Meanwhile, we've verified that single-drive replacements work, and for people wanting the extra 50 GB, we are selling 300 GB replacement drives. I've been wondering what the price on an "add" upgrade is going to be (say 250 or 300GB), and are you going to be selling the 400GB drives which have been announced (are available?) any idea on price. That's all assuming the upgrades actually work. Also how quiet are these drives compared to the stock ones. (One of the reasons I swap upgraded my HDVR2 was to get rid of the noisy drive, the stock 250GB is reasonably quiet, I don't want to end up with a whiny TiVo.)

On a different point, I seem to have developed a noisy fan, any suitable replacements? (Or should i try to get this fixed under warranty?)

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by borghe
so has anyone done this with status to report? not begging either of the main ones here for additional info, just wondering if any of the non-pros here have done it.. my unit should be here tonight or tomorrow (depending on UPS) and I was thinking of heading out to Circuit City for one of those $160 250GB drives they have on sale this week...

I will probably do it no matter what (after a backup of course) but just wondering if there is anyone else here who was so bold.. also, with adding another 250GB, how large would you pros recommend making the swap?

Current status is that there are no known issues with adding 250 or 300GB drives using standard BlessTiVo techniques. FYI, adding 300 will give you 70 hours HD, and 470 SD. We have an upgraded system happily recording everything it can, and another on the bench where we are messing around with replacement drives and add-on drives.

Default swap space on the factory shipped drive is 128MB. You aren't likely to have any success making a larger swap space with mkswap or tpip (in fact, if you try, you are likely to end up with none). No reason to have a larger swap space; the entire effort associated with enlarging swap spaces and all the algebra behind really has no benefits to anyone. I've yet to see it be a problem in any normal circumstance, you should just have a good backup because if you do get a green screen, its going to be because you have a bad drive.

[ljg]

Tivoupgrade:

Do you see any future possibility of adding more than 2 hd's possibly ext., possibly via USB, 70 hours is good but not great

Lon

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by ljg
Tivoupgrade:

Do you see any future possibility of adding more than 2 hd's possibly ext., possibly via USB, 70 hours is good but not great

Lon

I really don't. These units are not designed to do I/O through USB and no modifications have been made, to date, which allow kernel hacks to exist on any Series2. There are so many reasons why reverse engineering a solution to do this would be extremely difficult, time consuming and expensive. Not to mention that the design center for these systems is clearly more along the lines of a few hundred GB, not a TB and there would be all sorts of performance issues.

I understand why 70 hours sounds "good" but not "great" but when you think about it - HDTV with TiVo / dual-tuner with even only 30 hours for $1000 is amazing, even in this day and age.

Obviously, we'll continue to push-the-envelope around here, but remember, its reverse engineering and modification that we are doing - there is no 50 million dollar R&D budget behind our products...

Cheers,
Lou

[tivoupgrade]

... to those of you fiddling around:

After four years of mucking around in these units, I've finally done the one thing I haven't yet done, and what we constantly warn our customers about:

I managed to completely ZAP myself by touching the heatsink / ground just above the system hard drive at the same time as touching the hard drive. I have no intention of touching it again, at least not while the unit is plugged in; so please don't ask me what happens when you touch it along with anything else, or alone for that matter.

Save yourself the trouble and don't do it either!!!

[borghe]

Originally posted by mattdb
I don't see any sign of this drive with this price on the CC website.

Mattman
doh.. meant compusa.. not circuit city... my bad.

it's a 250GB maxtor drive for $209 with $50 instant rebate...

I will try to get this drive tomorrow.. if not I iwill wait until another one goes on sale (if I can't work it into the budget). I can't justify going with the 300GB drive just because of price (50% more cost for 20% more space).

so if I don't report back here tomorrow or saturday it means that I am waiting til next week.. but by then at the latest I am going to upgrade...

thanks for the info on the swap... I still wonder if the 127MB is large enough.. kind of like how 2x120GB is fine with the series 1 and 2 default swap, unless you get a serious crash and it doesn't have enough to recover... but I guess only time will tell....

[oosik77]

Originally posted by tivoupgrade
Current status is that there are no known issues with adding 250 or 300GB drives using standard BlessTiVo techniques. FYI, adding 300 will give you 70 hours HD, and 470 SD. We have an upgraded system happily recording everything it can, and another on the bench where we are messing around with replacement drives and add-on drives.


Anything good to report with dual 300's? What would be the rough storage for that?

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by oosik77
Anything good to report with dual 300's? What would be the rough storage for that?

Nothing to report on that right now; out of the box, mfstools won't handle it. Its likely to be doable through some hand manipulating of the partition tables (see the lba48 thread there are some sub-discussions on this) however for the additional 7 hours of time I'm not making it a high-priority relative to productizing add-on kits, finishing up bracket design etc.

[pmaddock]

Originally posted by weaknees
We're still working on the stability of the "add" upgrades.

Meanwhile, we've verified that single-drive replacements work, and for people wanting the extra 50 GB, we are selling 300 GB replacement drives.

Michael


Can you elaborate a little about the stability issues you mention? 9th Tee's post makes it sound like the usual add a drive works fine. Is the stability issue you mention a situation where you boosted from 250 to 300 and then added a drive or is something bad happening with just adding a drive to the factory 250?

[dswallow]

Originally posted by tivoupgrade
there is no 50 million dollar R&D budget behind our products...
I hear you can fund your R&D by selling HR10-250's with a markup... :p

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by dswallow
I hear you can fund your R&D by selling HR10-250's with a markup... :p

Don't think that I haven't considered selling my unit on Ebay where they are commanding a pretty penny.

I've got one in my entertainment center, and one on the bench, and that is where they will stay (until I get my VE pre-order and maybe that goes on Ebay to pay for the R&D)

FYI, my upgraded test unit is less than 12 hours away from being completely full; I see no reason folks shouldn't consider adding a drive whenever they feel like it (as long as you have a backup and know how to use it), heck I'd recommend that. BUT, we aren't going to sell anything until we have everything in place, including documentation and some other goodies we'll be bundling (hint hint).

[aejanis]

Will a MFS backup image restore to a Maxtor 250GB disk without problems (will it fit)?

I am wanting to add a another 300 to my box, but I also want to put the original WD Drive aside. I can get a good deal on the Maxtor 250, but want to make sure that the image from the WD drive will fit on the Maxtor 250.

Basically I want to:

Make a backup image of the WD 250 Drive

Restore the backup to a new Maxtor 250 (7Y250P0)

Add an additional drive...new Maxtor 300 (5A300J0)

Shelf the WD 250 until I know that things are stable...I will then use it to expand my second HDTiVo (when I get it).


It has been a while since I have done the restore thing, and the reason I am asking is that....I recall that you need to restore the backup image to a disk that is at least the same size as the disk that the backup image was created from. So the real question I guess is....Is the Maxtor 250 drive as big or bigger then the WD 250 Drive

[weaknees]

aejanis-

You have the issue exactly right. We are testing with Maxtor 300 GB drives, so we just don't know the answer. You can certainly go to a larger drive without expansion if you want to take the safe route. But our tests show that a larger A drive works fine, so if you want to just get a larger drive, it'll work fine.

Michael

[aejanis]

Anyone have the exact model # of the WD Drive that is in the unit from the factory?

Maybe I will just buy a exact WD250 and a Maxtor300.

Basically I want to ride out a software upgrade or two before I commit to relying on a MFS Backup image. With this being the first DVR that appears to be controlled by Directv I want to be extra safe.

[JEbbesen]

How much of a slow down in menu speed can be expected with the doubling (or more) of the HD capacity? That was a major factor when my 2x120gb DTivo was full, it was so slow as to be almost unbearable.

[borghe]

I will no for sure today as that is very similar to what I am doing. :)

as far as I remember my hard drives correctly, the issue is never going from something else to a Maxtor... It is going from a Maxtor to something else (even another Maxtor possibly).

Maxtor for a while now has done drives on odd platter side counts... what they will sometimes do (who knows why) is use an even platter side count.. so to roughly sum it up (not real numbers mind you) a 250GB drive will have 3 platters in it. they will have have both sides formatted out on two platters, but only one side formatted out on the third platter.. on some drives. on other drives, they will have both sides formatted out giving you (not really but for example only) 300GB on the drive.

This is why on some Tivos (a friends series 2 for example) which come with Maxtor drives, if you try restoring that 40GB drive to another 40GB drive, it won't fit.. because the original maxtor drive is actually slightly bigger than 40GB...

as for going from a western digital to a maxtor both of the same size, I wouldn't even give it another worry.. there will more than likely be no problem.. I would only be worried in going from say a Maxtor to a Western Digital.

Anywyay, I also picked up the 250GB drive from CompUSA and will do the following today.. speak now if I am an idiot

a) open the box up before turning anything on
b) backup the original A drive
c) restore the backup to the new 250GB drive
d) powerup the new drive and go through setup
e) provided D goes fine, replace the original A drive and power up
f) go through setup for real. get service going on the box. stare in awe.
g) bless and add the second 250GB drive.

does that sound about right? this will give me 500GB of storage which should be enough for now (man I wish they would hurry up with development of 500GB+ drives).

[tomr]

I just got my bracket from 9th Tee today. I'm going to purchase a WD250 meg drive and then I'll be ready for the procedure once it has been done by someone else :D .

When PTV has the procedure down I'm going to upgrade. Before I backup the original I need to delete all my recordings correct? I haven't upgraded a Tivo in quite a while so I cant remember if the recordings do or do not get backed up. I'm assuming they would so I wouldn't want any on the drive.

[dswallow]

Originally posted by tomr
I just got my bracket from 9th Tee today. I'm going to purchase a WD250 meg drive and then I'll be ready for the procedure once it has been done by someone else :D .

When PTV has the procedure down I'm going to upgrade. Before I backup the original I need to delete all my recordings correct? I haven't upgraded a Tivo in quite a while so I cant remember if the recordings do or do not get backed up. I'm assuming they would so I wouldn't want any on the drive.
You don't need to delete the recordings to do a backup; they're not part of the backup. And if you just bless the second drive and add it, your recordings will remain. Though a better thing to do would be to retry the backup you make using the new drive, and if it works, put the original drive back in, and bless the new drive and add it as the second. That way you've confirmed you have good backup and you'll retain your recordings.

[weaknees]

Originally posted by aejanis
Anyone have the exact model # of the WD Drive that is in the unit from the factory?

Maybe I will just buy a exact WD250 and a Maxtor300.

Basically I want to ride out a software upgrade or two before I commit to relying on a MFS Backup image. With this being the first DVR that appears to be controlled by Directv I want to be extra safe.

It's a WD2500LB-55EDA0.

[tomr]

Originally posted by dswallow
You don't need to delete the recordings to do a backup; they're not part of the backup. And if you just bless the second drive and add it, your recordings will remain. Though a better thing to do would be to retry the backup you make using the new drive, and if it works, put the original drive back in, and bless the new drive and add it as the second. That way you've confirmed you have good backup and you'll retain your recordings.

Thanks, I plan to try the backup on the new drive first. I don't mind opening and setting this up for two drives while under warranty, I just want to be able to put it back just in case.

[tomr]

Originally posted by weaknees
It's a WD2500LB-55EDA0.

Curious they used the 2meg version of the WD250. I also wonder if these drives utilize the "Fluid Dynamic Bearing (FDB) technology, perfect for noise-sensitive computing environments." quote from WDC.

[PJO1966]

I have questions regarding upgrades. I'm not the most technically savvy guy in the world, but I have a functioning brain. Realistically, how difficult is it to either upgrade the hard drive or add an additional drive (or both). I've been reading here about backing up drives and what-not, and I don't know how to do that. What are my options if I don't want to spend an arm and a leg?

I had a friend upgrade the drive in my Series 1 and the unit ran hot ever since. The HD TiVo hasn't been upgraded yet and is already running hot. Is this going to be an issue after upgrading?

[aejanis]

Originally posted by PJO1966
I have questions regarding upgrades. I'm not the most technically savvy guy in the world, but I have a functioning brain. Realistically, how difficult is it to either upgrade the hard drive or add an additional drive (or both). I've been reading here about backing up drives and what-not, and I don't know how to do that. What are my options if I don't want to spend an arm and a leg?

I had a friend upgrade the drive in my Series 1 and the unit ran hot ever since. The HD TiVo hasn't been upgraded yet and is already running hot. Is this going to be an issue after upgrading?

If you havea PC that can boot off of a CD, and has 4 IDE connectors it is pretty easy. Just read and type the commands very carefully. Flipping a letter or number around can wipe a drive out completely.

If you understand Primary Master/Slave, and Secondary Master/Slave and how to set the jumpers on hard drives...well then you should be okay.

[leftcoastdave]

Originally posted by PJO1966
I have questions regarding upgrades. I'm not the most technically savvy guy in the world, but I have a functioning brain. Realistically, how difficult is it to either upgrade the hard drive or add an additional drive (or both). I've been reading here about backing up drives and what-not, and I don't know how to do that. What are my options if I don't want to spend an arm and a leg?

I had a friend upgrade the drive in my Series 1 and the unit ran hot ever since. The HD TiVo hasn't been upgraded yet and is already running hot. Is this going to be an issue after upgrading?

Or you could hire a third party to do it for you if you are uncomfortable mucking around inside your equipment. People like www.weaknees.com are pretty proficient I am told.

[rttrek]

Originally posted by tomr
Curious they used the 2meg version of the WD250. I also wonder if these drives utilize the "Fluid Dynamic Bearing (FDB) technology, perfect for noise-sensitive computing environments." quote from WDC.
I believe the LB in WD2500LB means yes.

[Fletch]

Originally posted by weaknees
It's a WD2500LB-55EDA0.
Originally posted by tomr
Curious they used the 2meg version of the WD250. I also wonder if these drives utilize the "Fluid Dynamic Bearing (FDB) technology, perfect for noise-sensitive computing environments." quote from WDC.
Hmm. According to this post (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?postid=1851399#post1851399) , it's the 8MB version.

According to the WD website:
WD2500BB = 2MB
WD2500JB = 8MB
I can't even find the WD2500LB listed. Can anyone clarify this?

[rttrek]

According to WD's spec sheet, it (the WD2500LB) is 2MB:

http://www.wdc.com/en/library/eide/2879-001021.pdf

A search of PriceWatch shows two sources for it, and calls them "WD2500LB QUIET DRIVE ". They go for about $260.

[weldon]

Help me out here. Is the current state of the art that we can

1) add a second drive ( <256GB MFS partition limit) or
2) upgrade a single drive (300GB w/ <256GB MFS partition)

but we can't

3) upgrade the A drive and add a large B drive

Did I get that right?

[weaknees]

Originally posted by weldon
Help me out here. Is the current state of the art that we can

1) add a second drive ( <256GB MFS partition limit) or
2) upgrade a single drive (300GB w/ <256GB MFS partition)

but we can't

3) upgrade the A drive and add a large B drive

Did I get that right?

We can confirm #2 - all of our tests show this to be the case.

#1 is very likely, but we just aren't absolutely certain yet.

Michael

[tomr]

Originally posted by rttrek
I believe the LB in WD2500LB means yes.


No, the LB is the 2meg version. On both the 2meg and 8meg version FDB is listed as a "special order item".

[tomr]

Originally posted by Fletch
Hmm. According to this post (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?postid=1851399#post1851399) , it's the 8MB version.

According to the WD website:
WD2500BB = 2MB
WD2500JB = 8MB
I can't even find the WD2500LB listed. Can anyone clarify this?

look here (http://www.wdc.com/en/library/eide/2879-001021.pdf)

[borghe]

ok, got the drive in...

backup worked fine. restore to the new drive worked fine. blessing the new drive worked fine.

final numbers: 63 hours HD, 427 hours SD.

[Toeside]

Originally posted by borghe
ok, got the drive in...

backup worked fine. restore to the new drive worked fine. blessing the new drive worked fine.

final numbers: 63 hours HD, 427 hours SD.



Someone stepped up (besides the Pros)! Let us know how it goes. Get 63 hours of HD on there, hurry!

Craig

[dswallow]

Originally posted by borghe
ok, got the drive in...

backup worked fine. restore to the new drive worked fine. blessing the new drive worked fine.

final numbers: 63 hours HD, 427 hours SD.
Make sure after 3 to 4 weeks of recording suggestions you give us a good report about the number of pages in your Now Playing list and how responsive it may be; that was the big failing on my 240GB SAT-T60... once that Now Playing list had more than about 160-170 entries, the thing crawled to a stop.

Good luck!

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by dswallow
Make sure after 3 to 4 weeks of recording suggestions you give us a good report about the number of pages in your Now Playing list and how responsive it may be; that was the big failing on my 240GB SAT-T60... once that Now Playing list had more than about 160-170 entries, the thing crawled to a stop.

Good luck!

We've got a unit that is completely full - mostly HD stuff, a little bit of SD stuff. The unit is very responsive, but I suspect if we fill it completely with SD stuff, its going to slow down quite a bit. I don't think it will be as extreme as with your T60 (BTW, you do have a CacheCard in that T60, don't you? ;-)) Haven't done much testing of season pass sorts and how it affects interactivity, however.

[Nomarian]

Okay,

I ordered my bracket from 9thTee and installed it. I also picked up two Maxtor Maxline Plus II 250GB drives that have the 8MB caches. The Western Digital with the 2MB cache seems so small for all the recording it will have to do with 2 drives. I have used the tools to copy the original image from the WD to the Maxtor and then will add the 2nd drive. I plan to keep the WD as my backup.

I will keep you posted on my results.

[pbolya]

Originally posted by tivoupgrade
(BTW, you do have a CacheCard in that T60, don't you? ;-)) Tivoupgrade,
I have a Sony SAT-T60 which is very very slow since I finaly filled up all the 242h. My HR10-250 is comming soon and I most certainly will upgrade it as soon as you guys finished testing. Until than: How much a CacheCard improves performance (especially pulling up the Now Playing list)? How much it cost ? And where can I get it ?

Thanks,
Peter

[9thTee]

Originally posted by pbolya
Tivoupgrade,
I have a Sony SAT-T60 which is very very slow since I finaly filled up all the 242h. My HR10-250 is comming soon and I most certainly will upgrade it as soon as you guys finished testing. Until than: How much a CacheCard improves performance (especially pulling up the Now Playing list)? How much it cost ? And where can I get it ?

Thanks,
Peter

www.9thtee.com/tivocachecard.htm

[dswallow]

Originally posted by tivoupgrade
We've got a unit that is completely full - mostly HD stuff, a little bit of SD stuff. The unit is very responsive, but I suspect if we fill it completely with SD stuff, its going to slow down quite a bit. I don't think it will be as extreme as with your T60 (BTW, you do have a CacheCard in that T60, don't you? ;-)) Haven't done much testing of season pass sorts and how it affects interactivity, however. I have a Cache Card in there with 512MB of RAM that's never worked... well, before v2.2 it worked with up to 16MB DIMMs, -- but with v2.2 not even networking works anymore, and I've been round and round with Nick over it, but haven't pushed much knowing I'm getting rid of it... I was mostly waiting for the HD unit so I could send him the whole T-60 at this point so he could see it first hand and do whatever he needs to do to explore why it's happening.

Left on its own, suggestions are going to be very heavily slanted towards SD material if you don't have a lot of HD material recorded and saved. So I'm more anxious to see what really happens with the drives loaded with a lot of SD material. In the meantime, I just bought more H10-250's and have solved my 3-shows-on-at-once conflict and given me more space. ;)

And even better, this gives me a 3rd HR10-250 to play with upgrades and such stuff so I don't interfere with everything else.

[dr_mal]

My SAT-T60 has 2x80GB drives. After installing the CacheCard, performance feels like new. Maybe even a little better. Well worth it if you've upgraded the capacity on a Series 1.

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by pbolya
Tivoupgrade,
I have a Sony SAT-T60 which is very very slow since I finaly filled up all the 242h. My HR10-250 is comming soon and I most certainly will upgrade it as soon as you guys finished testing. Until than: How much a CacheCard improves performance (especially pulling up the Now Playing list)? How much it cost ? And where can I get it ?

Thanks,
Peter

note 9thtee's previous response for getting a cachecard (9thtee.com)

as for performance improvements, it will vary depending upon how you use your unit, however on my own unit with 2x120GB drives, it used to take up to 30 seconds to display the now playing list, now it takes about 4 seconds. sorting season passes takes about 1/10 of the time (used to be minutes, now its seconds...)

Lou

[pbolya]

Doug,
looks like it works for some and doesn't for others. I would also love to have an easy solution where I can do the following from my computer:

1. Check how much space available (I do not have suggestions turned on).
2. Copy the my playing list to excel so I can sort/print/analyze. I could for instance write a program that picks out the show titles that both my wife and I watch and prints it out weekly. Than we could just mark it off the list when one of us saw the show so the other one knows he/she can delete it (I could alternately download the list to her PDA).
3. Transfer season pass data to excel (than to my Sony Clie).
4. Change the title and other header data on shows I recorded to my standalone.

I heard that networking is not working anymore with 3.1 and 4.0.

By the way my standalone has the same amount of recordings as my series 1 DirecTV (they both have around 240gb close to filled up) and my standalone haven't slow down a bit while my SAT-T60 is a slug (of course DirecTV is only a series 1, and has dual tuner).

Also I probably would have paid $100 a year ago to speed things up (it was nowhere as bad as today otherwise I would have done something about it by now) but now that I am within a week of receiving my HR10-250 (93 people ahead of me at GG) it seems pretty expensive unless I can solve all of the above. Otherwise I will just move all my important season passes (HD or not) to the new machine and watch the slug only when the HR10-250 is empty.

I ordered the bracket from 9th Tee earlier today and I will buy a Maxtor 250 ($160) this weekend. I will upgrade mine as soon as I set it up (I will set up all the season passes before the upgrade so I will have them on my backup).

[oosik77]

Originally posted by aejanis
Will a MFS backup image restore to a Maxtor 250GB disk without problems (will it fit)?

I am wanting to add a another 300 to my box, but I also want to put the original WD Drive aside. I can get a good deal on the Maxtor 250, but want to make sure that the image from the WD drive will fit on the Maxtor 250.

Basically I want to:

Make a backup image of the WD 250 Drive

Restore the backup to a new Maxtor 250 (7Y250P0)

Add an additional drive...new Maxtor 300 (5A300J0)

Shelf the WD 250 until I know that things are stable...I will then use it to expand my second HDTiVo (when I get it).


It has been a while since I have done the restore thing, and the reason I am asking is that....I recall that you need to restore the backup image to a disk that is at least the same size as the disk that the backup image was created from. So the real question I guess is....Is the Maxtor 250 drive as big or bigger then the WD 250 Drive

Why not restore the 250 image to the 300? Then "expand" it and then marry the other 250 to it?

[aejanis]

Originally posted by oosik77
Why not restore the 250 image to the 300? Then "expand" it and then marry the other 250 to it?
Because I can buy 250GB Drives for 159.99. The cost of 300GB drives is not very cost effective at this point.

I just bought 2 Maxtor 250's last night. I am going to give my unit a little longer to break in before I open it up...but I am ready once I am more comfortable with there not being anything wrong with it.

[borghe]

well, I have about 34 hours of material recorded on it.. all HD at this point (can't even being to think about filling it up with SD material at 427 hours)

obviously that's not what you guys are looking for in responsiveness, so I won't even go into that.. I will say that this thing is LIGHTNING compared to my SAT-T60 or Hughes series 1. My wife was floored when it took like 4 seconds total to schedule a recording from the guide (on our series 1s it could take 20 seconds to even a minute).

so far haven't found any problems.

[Greg G]

I have 200gb of disk in my Philips DirectTivo and it's full of sd shows and I find the speed very acceptable. I am keeping it hooked up for my sd recording as I plan to only record HD on my HD Tivo. To help make that happen I reduced the channels I receive to only the HD ones so the sugestions only record off of hd channels. Of course some SD stuff slips in but but so far so good. It would be great if they added a feature to only record HD sugestions.

I will be upgrading my HD Tivo when I get some time and after it has had time to prove that it is defect free. I also want to see what weakness comes up with. I was very tempted to go for it right away so I don't have to give up any programs (I plan to replace both drives and keep my orig one as a backup) but I really don't have the time right now. Big thanks to all you pioneers!

-Greg

[borghe]

ok, I am definitely on the second drive now.... 44 hours of material (roughly).. no problems....

[aejanis]

What is the exact command line that you used when backing up your A drive?

I am thinking about making myself a backup image and getting a new replacement A disk up and running in my unit.

I have never done a backup on a drive of this size, and am wondering if anything besides the large drive support version of the utils CD is needed. (like is there a flag I need to issue to maintain whatever larger swap file might be in place).

Thanks...

[Joe Q]

Originally posted by tivoupgrade
We've got a unit that is completely full - mostly HD stuff, a little bit of SD stuff.

Are you doing any investigating in regards to a firewire upgrade and I don't mean for expanding capacity by adding external firewire disks ?

D-VHS


Thanks,
Joe

[weaknees]

To backup the A drive, boot in kernel 2.4.18 or newer and run:

mfsbackup -f 9999 -1so /dev/hdc /hd_tivo.bak

Michael

[borghe]

firewire is very unlikely... almost everything is integrated onto the broadcom chip meaning it would be extremely difficult to manufacture a solution.

your best bet is to hope for "another means" of "grabbing" the video.

[aejanis]

Originally posted by weaknees
To backup the A drive, boot in kernel 2.4.18 or newer and run:

mfsbackup -f 9999 -1so /dev/hdc /hd_tivo.bak

Michael

I think you ment:

mfsbackup -f 9999 -1so /mnt/??? /dev/hd?

Well...anyway...I crossed my fingers and took the top off of my unit and tried to make a backup.

I tried:

mfsbackup -f 9999 -1so ..... and the backup was a success, but the restore failed with a decompression error.

So I tried the backup without compression, and then the backup fails @ 96%.

It is late and time for bed...good news is that the orignal disk is intact and working without a problem...just can't get a good backup->restore.

[weaknees]

Sorry - that's right - it should have been:

mfsbackup -f 9999 -1so /hd_tivo.bak /dev/hdc

/mnt is may necessary in your situation - it just depends on where you want the image to land.

Are you sure you're booting in the right kernel?

Michael

[aejanis]

Originally posted by weaknees
Sorry - that's right - it should have been:

mfsbackup -f 9999 -1so /hd_tivo.bak /dev/hdc

/mnt is may necessary in your situation - it just depends on where you want the image to land.

Are you sure you're booting in the right kernel?

Michael

Yes...I have a good boot disk w/mfstools (2.4.4 kernel).

I am going to try on another computer. I had a similar problem on a Samsung 4040R. I was able to get it to work on the Samsung without compression.....but that didn't reflect the same on the HR10-250. I have done backup/restores on SD-DVR40's with no problems on this system, but it seems to have this decompression issue with some other model images (don't know how that would make any sense, but it seems to be the case).

The computer that i am using is a rather old Pentium Celeron 433Mhz. I am starting to wonder if there might be something that just isn't agreeing with the older computer system. I will take down one of my webservers later today and see if that helps.

[dr_mal]

Does your computer's BIOS support drives >137GB? My old P2-400 which I've used to upgrade numerous TiVos in the past, won't be able to upgrade my HR10-250 since it can't support big hard drives.

[borghe]

about 62 hours

that was my final count... that's not including two half hour buffers..

unit responded fine.. no hiccups or lockups... not even any audio dropouts...

for what it's worth, the space upgrade gets my seal of approval.

though if your system dies I won't pay for it. ;)

can answer some questions but I have since blown away the system and am working on getting a bash prompt. wish me luck (and even give some help if you are able)

enjoy.

[weaknees]

Originally posted by dr_mal
Does your computer's BIOS support drives >137GB? My old P2-400 which I've used to upgrade numerous TiVos in the past, won't be able to upgrade my HR10-250 since it can't support big hard drives.

Generally Linux will work fine without having the BIOS recognize the drive. Have you tried just setting your BIOS to ignore that IDE designation?

Michael

[pbolya]

Originally posted by weaknees
Generally Linux will work fine without having the BIOS recognize the drive. Have you tried just setting your BIOS to ignore that IDE designation?

Michael Michael,
Didn't you say that you need kernal 2.4.18 or newer and aejanis has 2.4.4? Isn't 4 is lower than 18 or 18 is really 1.8 and thus it is in reality lower than 4 ?

Can't wait to upgrade mine (I just don't have it yet).

Regards,
Peter

[aaronwt]

I see someone is selling an upgraded HD-TiVo on EBay. It has been upgraded to 500GB.

[flapbreaker]

Originally posted by aaronwt
I see someone is selling an upgraded HD-TiVo on EBay. It has been upgraded to 500GB.


There was someone who posted somwhere on this forum that they upgraded to 500GB. I bet it's him.

[borghe]

no, I can assure you my tivo is not for sale.... unless you are talking about someone else, though I don't remember anyone else saying they have done it besides weaknees and ptvupgrade.

[aejanis]

Originally posted by aejanis
I think you ment:

mfsbackup -f 9999 -1so /mnt/??? /dev/hd?

Well...anyway...I crossed my fingers and took the top off of my unit and tried to make a backup.

I tried:

mfsbackup -f 9999 -1so ..... and the backup was a success, but the restore failed with a decompression error.

So I tried the backup without compression, and then the backup fails @ 96%.

It is late and time for bed...good news is that the orignal disk is intact and working without a problem...just can't get a good backup->restore.

Well...looks like my computer was the problem. Did the backup/restore on a newer machine and it worked fine.

[weaknees]

Sounds good - how big was the backup?

Michael

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by aaronwt
I see someone is selling an upgraded HD-TiVo on EBay. It has been upgraded to 500GB.

Not me either; mine is 550GB, BTW. :-)

[aejanis]

Originally posted by weaknees
Sounds good - how big was the backup?

Michael


914MB, with "-1so".

[weaknees]

Originally posted by aejanis
914MB, with "-1so".

Hmm . . . I'll look tomorrow, but that sounds a lot bigger than mine. Was it virgin?

Michael

[aejanis]

Originally posted by weaknees
Hmm . . . I'll look tomorrow, but that sounds a lot bigger than mine. Was it virgin?

Michael

No it was not...it had been up and running for about 4 days before I finally got a good backup.

[dave3]

So what are the commands after you boot a lb48 cd to add a second 250 or 300meg drive

1. backup:mfsbackup -f 9999 -1so /hd_tivo.bak /dev/hdc
2. marry?
3. expand?

thanks

[borghe]

the same as are in hinsdale's guide for series 2.

backup

restore (optional)

add

[weaknees]

To just add the extra space, you'd do:

mfsadd -x /dev/hdc /dev/hdd

but, as we posted in the first post here, that won't work properly. We're still testing a whole bunch of scenarios, but the safe answer is to wait. Those who have added a drive have, I suspect, used BlessTiVo booted in a noswap kernel.

Michael

[pmaddock]

Please forgive my ignorance but what's the difference between using MFS Add vs Blessing a drive and installing it?

[weaknees]

Basically, one works with this situation, and the other doesn't. We have some suspicions on the reasons and we're in the process of testing all of the variations.

Michael

[Fletch]

Does piping the output of mfsbackup into mfsrestore (dual drive) work with the HR10-250.

[borghe]

mfsadd did work with my 250GB drive.. haven't done anything with a 300GB drive so I will assume that is where you are having the problems with it....

[weaknees]

Right - the mfs file system support sizes up to 256 GB. So using mfsadd with a drive greater than that size chokes the system. Blessing the drive gives the initial impression of working, but probably doesn't work when the drive hits that point.

Michael

[pmaddock]

Originally posted by weaknees
Right - the mfs file system support sizes up to 256 GB. So using mfsadd with a drive greater than that size chokes the system. Blessing the drive gives the initial impression of working, but probably doesn't work when the drive hits that point.

Michael

So, if someone wants to upgrade now the safe route would be to add another 250GB drive? Conicidentally that's probably more cost effective as the premium from 250 to 300 GB gets a little steeper.

I'm also a little concerned that the most likely solution for a drive over 250GB would involve a software re-work (e.g. new MFSADD with a different partitioning scheme and/or a kernel modification). Would such a solution create a greater risk of being incompatible with future software updates?

[pbolya]

Originally posted by pmaddock
So, if someone wants to upgrade now the safe route would be to add another 250GB drive? Conicidentally that's probably more cost effective as the premium from 250 to 300 GB gets a little steeper.

I'm also a little concerned that the most likely solution for a drive over 250GB would involve a software re-work (e.g. new MFSADD with a different partitioning scheme and/or a kernel modification). Would such a solution create a greater risk of being incompatible with future software updates? Weaknees,
Does the HR10-250's kernel supports >256GB drives and the MFS CD's kernel image does not ? If so I am sure somebody sooner or later will get a new CD image that will. However if the HR10-250's kernel does not I would not even consider messing with that kernel and accept the horrifying idea that my TiVo will never have more than 500GB.

Ideally I would upgrade to 500GB for now (which I will as soon as I get it) and in about a year or 2 when the 500GB hard-rive become economically available (<$500) upgrade to 1 TB (wow it feels good even just to say it out loud).

I know that this is too early to ask these kind of questions but I ask anyway. If I upgrade to 250/250 now do you see any problems to upgrade that to 500/500 later ?

Thanks,
Peter

[weaknees]

We don't think it's specifically the kernel, but rather the mfs file system that is the limitation.

Hard to know about future upgrades to 500/500.

Michael

[weaknees]

Originally posted by pmaddock
I'm also a little concerned that the most likely solution for a drive over 250GB would involve a software re-work (e.g. new MFSADD with a different partitioning scheme and/or a kernel modification). Would such a solution create a greater risk of being incompatible with future software updates?

The way we look at it, it shouldn't be any worse than expanding another drive twice - just two sets of partitions.

Michael

[pmaddock]

WeaKnees,
I noticed you're selling "Quckview" Maxtor drives on your site. Looking at the specs it seems that they would be slower (5400 RPM and 2MB cache vs 7200 and 2 or 8MB caches) than regular HDs although they might run cooler.
Do you think they will perform better in an HD Tivo? If so, are you going to carry the 250GB version?

[borghe]

the Tivo's kernel, should be able to recognize partitions up to 2TB in size. The problem as I am reading it comes with the MFS filesystem limitations.

and yeah, more than likely this will be solved by just partitioning drives <256GB with multiple partitions.

[weaknees]

Originally posted by pmaddock
WeaKnees,
I noticed you're selling "Quckview" Maxtor drives on your site. Looking at the specs it seems that they would be slower (5400 RPM and 2MB cache vs 7200 and 2 or 8MB caches) than regular HDs although they might run cooler.
Do you think they will perform better in an HD Tivo? If so, are you going to carry the 250GB version?

They should be cooler. The speed doesn't really matter here - that's not the slow bottleneck. And in our testing there is no slowdown at all. We may get the 250s.

Michael

[dave3]

For those of you testing now with the 300 maxtors, how is the drive whine from these units? Are they quiet?

[HiDefHusker]

The QuickView specs (http://www.weaknees.com/quickview_404g.pdf) (from weaKnees) states that a QuickView can simultaneously stream (4) 6Mb/sec HD streams. That doesn't appear to be enough bandwidth to record two OTA HD streams and watch a third previously recorded OTA HD stream (at 19Mb/sec each). Is Maxtor just being overly cautious? Hmmm.

It's peculiar that the specs show 19Mb/sec for HD capacity, but they show 6Mb/sec for HD streaming performance.

[aaronwt]

Aren't they also fine tuned for video streaming?
I can stream froma regular Maxtor 5400 rpm drive, over my network, to my two HiPix cards, and also transfer a file to another PC. The HD coming over the network will play without glitches. the file transfer from another networked PC slows down a lot. Normally it would transfer at 150mbs but it slows down to under 50mbs when also streaming to my two HiPix cards simultaneously. I'll have to check it tonight to get exact transfer speeds.

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by dave3
For those of you testing now with the 300 maxtors, how is the drive whine from these units? Are they quiet?

No additional noise or whining.

[pmaddock]

Originally posted by 9thTee
I have, I have! Actually we shipped several yesterday and today so folks will be able to give some feedback pretty soon. Our solution gives a very sturdy platform to mount the hard drive to and I would not hesitate to ship the unit with the upgrade in place. It's not going anywhere. The cover closes just fine and gives room on the top for air circulation.

BTW, just put up a new page with lots of inside pictures of the HR10-250. Here it is: www.9thtee.com/insidehdtivo.htm

Mark
9thTee.com

Are you still planning on posting the actual assembly/install instructions? I'm a little fuzzy about how that 3rd leg goes in as I'm comparing to the Weaknees prototype.

[9thTee]

Originally posted by pmaddock
Are you still planning on posting the actual assembly/install instructions? I'm a little fuzzy about how that 3rd leg goes in as I'm comparing to the Weaknees prototype.

Certainly, we are finalizing the pictures and expect to have complete insturctions up later this week. Check www.9thtee.com/tivo-dthd.htm for the link later in the week and we will post here as well. Our mount provides a very sturdy platform to hold your hard drive while leaving room for good air flow.

Mark
9thTee.com - Proud & Very Most Special TiVo Community Sponsor

[HiDefHusker]

The following link (http://www.maxtor.com/_files/maxtor/en_us/documentation/white_papers/av_white_papers.pdf) indicates that a 5400 RPM Maxtor drive sports a sustained data rate of at least 142.4 Mb/sec. So it shouldn't have any problem with 3 X 19Mb/sec = 57Mb/sec....

[weaknees]

Originally posted by HiDefHusker
The following link (http://www.maxtor.com/_files/maxtor/en_us/documentation/white_papers/av_white_papers.pdf) indicates that a 5400 RPM Maxtor drive sports a sustained data rate of at least 142.4 Mb/sec. So it shouldn't have any problem with 3 X 19Mb/sec = 57Mb/sec....

I sent the question over to Maxtor for comment, but I haven't heard back. The first PDF (the one on our site) does seem to be a bit conservative, and they have told us on several occasions that the drives can easily handle more than three simultaneous HD streams. I'll post back if we get something interesting from them.

In the meantime, the confirmation you found looks pretty good.

Michael

[aaronwt]

And those are the older drives from 2 years ago. I would think the newer ones are even faster.

[btwyx]

Originally posted by HiDefHusker
The following link (http://www.maxtor.com/_files/maxtor/en_us/documentation/white_papers/av_white_papers.pdf) indicates that a 5400 RPM Maxtor drive sports a sustained data rate of at least 142.4 Mb/sec. So it shouldn't have any problem with 3 X 19Mb/sec = 57Mb/sec.... The problem with that is 3x19Mb/s is not a sustained data rate. Its read-seek-read-seek-read-seek. That's a lot different from read-read-read.

[HiDefHusker]

Originally posted by btwyx
The problem with that is 3x19Mb/s is not a sustained data rate. Its read-seek-read-seek-read-seek. That's a lot different from read-read-read.

Agreed. This will depend on the I/O behavior of the Tivo software.

[bfdhe]

Originally posted by tivoupgrade
Current status is that there are no known issues with adding 250 or 300GB drives using standard BlessTiVo techniques. FYI, adding 300 will give you 70 hours HD, and 470 SD. We have an upgraded system happily recording everything it can, and another on the bench where we are messing around with replacement drives and add-on drives.

.

I am trying to do this via mfsadd -x /dev/hdd /dev/hdc (hdd=new drive)

However I am getting an MFS read error?

What am I missing? I have the BootCD that recognizes large drives.

[weaknees]

The post you quoted uses BlessTiVo which is distinctly different in process than mfsadd, although results are often similar. mfsadd really doesn't work at this point with these units and drives. Just use BlessTiVo and you should be fine - at least with a drive of 250 GB or smaller.

Michael

[bfdhe]

Originally posted by weaknees
The post you quoted uses BlessTiVo which is distinctly different in process than mfsadd, although results are often similar. mfsadd really doesn't work at this point with these units and drives. Just use BlessTiVo and you should be fine - at least with a drive of 250 GB or smaller.

Michael

ahhh..... That makes sense. Could you point me to the proper version of BlessTivo?