HDVR2 upgrade help?

[qprhooligan]

I have never done an upgrade on a tivo before so I have some questions. I have a Directv HDVR2 unit with the stock 30 hour drive. I bought a Segate 250GB drive to use for the upgrade. I plan to remove the old drive and just use the single 250 gb drive. I'm not sure where to download the software and instructions to set up my drive.

Also everything I have read talks about using IDE CD drives set to master or slave on primary or secondar etc... Anyway my computer uses SCSI cd drives, will that be a problem for me? I can boot from my SCSI drive, but there is no settings of slave or master with them of course. I can still set the HD to secondary master.

Thanks for any help.

[litzdog911]

Step-by-step instructions for using your own Tivo's image files and a new hard drive are available here ....
http://tivo.upgrade-instructions.com/

Or you can use this InstantCake utility to automate the whole process ....
http://www.ptvupgrade.com/products/instantcake/

[wscannell]

You should be able to boot from the SCSI drive. However, you do need IDE connections to connect the old and new drive to.

[rock_doctor]

I responded to your PM, below is a further comment on this post...

As long as you can boot to the cd then you should be ok but as said, you need to have the tivo and seagate drives on the eide bus.

I would assume you have an eide bus on the motherboard and am using a scsi card for the other drives. I am surprised i didn't think anybody used scsi drives anymore, short of a server. Is this a gaming or video editing machine? If you have no eide bus on the motherboard you may consider checking out a few garage sales or check out a few friends who may let you use their computers.

Any Pentium system build since 2000 will work just fine, just make sure the bios is new enough to boot to a cd and can see a drive larger then 134 gig. If none of these work out then ask at work they probably have a ton of old systems sitting in the corner. If not then you should be able to get a ide card (promise or highpoint) that will work in your current system, should cost less then $30.

let us know how you make out.

good luck,
mark

[qprhooligan]

Thanks for eveyone who has given me advice so far. My computer has SCSI because at the time it was the fastest option I could get. It is an old machine I haven't used for a long time and just wanted to use it to upgrade my Tivo drive. Anyway I pluged that sucker in and it is dead. So, I guess I'll usemy home PC to do the upgrade. I think I got it all figured out. I'll let eveyone know how it goes.

This is what I think I need to type to do the upgrade once I boot the software I download from weaknees.

hda=my drive I remove from my tivo hooked to pc primay master.
hdd=my new segate 250 gb drive hooked to pc secondary slave.

mfsbackup -f 9999 -so - /dev/hda | mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -xzpi - /dev/hdd

Hows this look?

Thanks.

[wscannell]

Looks ok to me.

[qprhooligan]

One last question. Is the software I downloaded from weaknees at this link...
tivo(.)upgrade-instructions(.)com

Able to upgrade a drive larger than 137MB? Or do I need to download the lba48 software from ptvupgrade(.)com. And if I do need the software from ptvupgrade(.)com do I type the same command string when I do the upgrade?

Thanks again, and sorry if this is a dumb question.

[rock_doctor]

You are golden with the link I gave you. Your unit should be running 6.2 which already has the proper kernel for large drives.

The disc image you downloaded does nothing more then boot your system into linux and provide the necessary software to copy the TiVo OS off the old drive onto the new drive. If you were upgrading a series 1 unit or have a software version in the 3's (or 4's i can't remember the version sequence) on your HDVR2 then you would need the lba48 software. Otherwise you are in good shape.

Good luck, have fun let us know how you make out.

mark

[sk33t3r]

How did this upgrade pan out?

[qprhooligan]

How did this upgrade pan out?

Not very well. My HD in my tivo died before I could get the information off it I needed. SO I had to buy a copy of instantcake. Used that and it worked fine, and my TIVO has 235 hours of record time. But a new problem came up. My cooling fan is now making a lot of noise and I have to replace it because it is keeping me up at night.

I have heard a standard 60x60x25mm fan. Does anyone know where I can pick up a nice quiet fan for my tivo?

Thanks.

[rock_doctor]

Any 60mm case fan will work, so drop by a local computer store and pick one up. Should be less then $15 or you can order one off the net for about the same including shipping. If you are in a rush radio shack has one but it is very expensive $20 plus tax and you will have to solder on the old power connector (p/n 273-0239).

Good luck,
mark