How-To Upgrade your TiVo

[hinsdale]

I Want a Large TiVo with Lots of Recording Time
Here is a recording capacity upgrade How-To for relative newbies that incorporates the newest utilites for hopefully a quick and painless TiVo upgrade experience (includes Boot Cd and floppy instructions).

http://www.newreleasesvideo.com/hinsdale-how-to/

Following the above guide you should wind up with a large TiVo (60 - 330 hrs) in around an hour or so. The instructions function for all U.S. and U.K. makes/models of standalone TiVo's and DirecTV/TiVo combo units (referred to as DirecTiVo's for this document). Remember, however, that you are hacking your TiVo and there are no guarantees of the utilities or instruction provided.

Most common upgrade questions should be covered within the How-To, so read carefully and if still in need of assistance then post requests in the underground forum.

[George42]

Hinsdale,

Thanks a bunch to you and the many other people who contribute to this fourm. With your instructions, a bracket from 9th Tee, and a low-cost Maxtor 5400 rpm 80G drive from newegg, I (and college student son) easily bumped our 30G Sony SA Tivo to 30G+80G.


Thanks!

George

[dwight]

Just wanted to post a quick note thanking you for developing such a comprehensive and complete guide to upgrading a Tivo unit. With no prior Linux experience, I was able to follow your instructions and increase my 30-hr SA Tivo to 145 hours via a 120Gb Maxtor hard drive.

The upgrade when without a hitch. I did encounter one unusual thing, though. When I attempted to use the version of TivoMad for "merged" 2-drive units, it asked me to insert floppy disk #2. Since I didn't have any floppies, I used the standard TivoMad utility (I had a married unit anyway), and everything went fine from that point forward.

Thanks again!

[Eric Cottrell]

Hello,

I got my Philips HR-112 over a year ago. I found
it useful but of limited capacity. I could not
watch Basic quality but the 8 hour medium quality
was okay. I have a pretty full schedule and can
go for a number of days before watching the TiVO.
I turned off the background recording and only
have a few season passes. I was also following
the upgrade threads but put off upgrading because
of the limitations. When I checked last week
after a few months, WOW! :p Thanks to everyone for
their work. I also like the feature of being able
to upgrade again in the future easily!

I went to a computer show planning to get a
100/120 gig drive but ended up getting two Maxtor
536DX (4W060H4) 60 Gig drives for $105 apiece.
The drives on offer over 60 Gig were all 7200 RPM
drives and cost more per gig.

I found the instructions useful and complete but I
am not a new computer user. One suggestion is
when a user has multiple operating systems that
the C: partition might not be on /dev/hda1. I run
three OSes and hda1 is Boot Manager on my machine.
I used the fdisk program to find the right one
(hda2).

The only problem in burning the CD-R was the
readme had the wrong filename for the iso file.
I used linux to burn the CD-R. I backed up my old
TiVO A drive using MFStools for a just-in-case
backup and used DD to copy to my new A drive.
I used a SCSI CD-Rom drive without any problems
and it allowed me to put the TiVO B drive on
/dev/hdd.

I was suprised to start the DD copy and have it
complete by the time I finished supper. Having a
fast machine (1 GHZ P3) really helps. All tests
went okay. The Maxtor drives are quiet with some
low volume clicking sounds. A review said they do
not generate excessive heat.

Thanks also for the suggestion to use tiewraps for
the B drive. I am planning to get a bracket soon.
I now have 145 hours of (unwatchable) Basic and 85
hours of (watchable) Medium. I bumped up my
preference to the 64 hour high quality setting and
will be doing more reprograming to take advantage
of the space.:D One thing on my wishlist is a way
to backup the unit without taking out the
harddrive.

Thanks again and 73,
Eric Cottrell

[Kash76]

Last night I went and picked up a WD 100 gig drive and hadn't really done much reading on upgrading. I printed your 20 page upgrade instructions and 2 1/2 hours later....

Walla!! I have a 126 hour DSR6k.

Many thanks to Hinsdale and his thorough instructions!!

[Rik]

Thanks much. I upgraded my Philips DirecTivo unit to 126 hours a couple of months ago. Unfortunately ... I just got a severe error last night and the unit has been unable to repair itself. Are there any step by step instructions for fixing this myself (after identifying which hard drive is the culprit)?

[rsawic]

What is the difference between a Quantum Drive and
a regular harddrive? Also where can I find MFS tools?

Thanks,
Robert

[kroddy]

Quantum is (was) a manufacturer of hard-drives.

You will find a link to MFS Tools in the above mentioned how-to

[Steavis]

A big THANK YOU to Hinsdale and all those who put in time and energy to create the TiVo upgrading tools. Thanks to all you guys (and a great deal on a Maxtor 120GB HD at Comp-U-Plus), my HDR212 now sports a whopping 174 hrs.

Couldn't have asked for a smoother experience--everything fell into place without a hitch. Contrast that to the 5-day headache I had while trying to upgrade my PC's hard drive and re-install Win98 back in September.

Anyway, you guys are appreciated. I applaud your genius!

--Steavis

[tharpertx]

Never mind...Site is up.

I appreciate your help and feedback,

TIM

[Rik]

Anybody know why my signature ... which appeared correctly under the previous forum ... now shows up as the code I typed in to create it?

[Nihilator]

Originally posted by hinsdale
I Want a Large TiVo with Lots of Recording Time
Here is a recording capacity upgrade How-To for relative newbies that incorporates the newest utilites for hopefully a quick and painless TiVo upgrade experience (includes Boot Cd and floppy instructions).


I just finished upgrading my Sony SVR2000 from 30 hours to 101 hours by adding a 60GB Western Digital drive that I had sitting around. Now I can bump up the recording quality for most all of my shows, and not have to worry about transferring West Wing to tape so quickly. Hinsdale's instructions made it easy...thanks so much!

Here's a suggestion for future revisions of the How-To doc: As soon as you pull your TiVo's A-drive, get on the web, go to the drive manufacturer's website (Quantum owners, go to Maxtor), and pull down a copy of the jumper spec sheet. My Sony uses a Quantum LS15 drive with a somewhat confusing jumper sticker, and this would have been a little hardship if I didn't have a second computer on the network available for just this task.

By the way, my brother and I purchased a Hughes DirecTV with TiVo unit for my mother (in the West Virginia wilderness) for Christmas. As soon as the wrinkles are ironed out of the upgrade process for these apparently tricky units, I'll give that one a try.

Thanks again, Hinsdale, and of course a huge thanks to all of the wicked smart people (Dylan, TiVoMad, Tiger, and Kazymyr) who laid the groundwork.

-Nihilator

[cactus46]

And yet another thanks, Hindsdale.

Using your How-to it was a almost painless process replacing my 30 GB A drive with a 100 GB Western Digital WD1000 7200 RPM drive (the price was right :)).

My SA HDR31202 seems to be doing fine with the new drive. I don't notice any excessive noice. Basic recording space is reported as 115 hours now.

It was a bit of a challenge to get the older computer to boot with the 100 GB drive. Finally adjusting the bios setting to a fictional user setup worked and the Linux recognized the proper drive.

Thanks for your detailed instructions on performing this upgrade!

John

[HTH]

The download for the altered larger version of Kazymyr's Boot Cd image v2.6g containing DTiVoMad 4.0 and all necessary utilities is being served as "text/plain" instead of "application/octet-stream". The host serving that file needs to be taught that .iso files require binary transfer and not to assume they are text files, otherwise downloads may become corrupted as CRLF conversions are performed.

[foo]

Just a note of thanks.. a couple of weeks ago I did a DTiVo upgrade to 2 80gb drives for a total of 149 hrs.

foo

[Bush_Pilot]

Warning!

Tivo will try to take away your 800 number privilages when you reset under ver 2.5-01-1-011.

I reset just before trying to back up. Then, dummy me, I realized I had not written down the software version number. Tivo made me go thru all the setup screens before I could get to the sys info screen. In the phone setup section, they tried to make me use a long distance number even though I live in the sticks at a ski resort. This was completley different than the procedures with the older ver software.

Another thing they did not warn me about was just how long a sys reset takes. Mine took over an hour and was totally unnecessary for me to do. Shame on rookies like me.

[tivobernd]

A word of thanks!

The upgrade HowTo document is great! Upgraded my DirectTivo to 230 hours today in less than 2 hours total. And it is running like a charm!

Thanks again for the great document and links!!!

[daveo4tivo]

thanks to Hinsdale and the wonderful instructions.

1 TiVo down (68 hour SAT-T60)
2 TiVo's to go ;)

[dsmith48]

Hinsdale:

I see the "last updated" section of your how-to has recently changed. Is there a section in which I can find what exactly has been updated. I am not sure if I should print out another copy, I am days short of an upgrade and my current printed copy is covered with my notes.

Thanks in advance,

[HTH]

Originally posted by HTH
The download for the altered larger version of Kazymyr's Boot Cd image v2.6g containing DTiVoMad 4.0 and all necessary utilities is being served as "text/plain" instead of "application/octet-stream". The host serving that file needs to be taught that .iso files require binary transfer and not to assume they are text files, otherwise downloads may become corrupted as CRLF conversions are performed.

BTW, according to the HTTP standard, the browser must adhere to the Content-Type supplied by the server, and therefore must treat this .iso file as text/plain as declared by the server. Clicking on the link to that file will cause it to appear in the browser rather than the user being prompted to save the file to disk, as well as conversions of line end sequences to CR, LF, or CRLF as appropriate for the platform.

Therefore, downloads may be possible using Internet Explorer which is infamous for ignoring this requirement in the HTTP standard by ignoring the Content-Type header and instead sniffing the downloaded content to determine the type for itself, resulting in more broken server configurations like this.
Still, the trevor server must be reconfigured to not serve .iso files as text/plain, or zip the file, or an alternative server set up for this file that is properly configured.

Does anyone know who to contact directly for problems with that server? There's no identifying information on its root index, and I can't find reference in the Hinsdale FAQ to who runs it.

[Steavis]

dsmith48:

Noticed in your sig that you're not sure whether to shelve your TiVo's 20 GB drive or use your Maxtor 120 GB 5400 rpm as a B drive.

Thought you'd like to hear about my recent upgrade experience, since I used the exact same hardware (HDR 212 with Maxtor 120/5400 drive). I installed the Maxtor as my B drive without a hitch, adding about 154 hours to my 20 hr. TiVo. That was a week ago today and everything's still working great. If you prefer Medium quality to Basic as I do, keeping your original hard drive will mean about 101 hours total assuming your experience mirrors mine.

More space is always better than less since you will inevitably find ways to fill it up. The only reason I would consider removing the 20 GB drive is if I had a computer that needed it more. (Actually, I'm considering swapping my 20 from the TiVo with my computer's 40 GB drive).

Anyway, whatever you decide to do, good luck with your upgrade!

--Steavis

[dsmith48]

Steavis:

Thanks for your input. :)

I too agree more is better, however the 20hr drive truly doesn't give all that much more space. I myself cannot stand the look of basic and currently use medium as well at about 12 hours. Upon upgrading, my current intentions are that of using high.

Ultimately I wish to have 120GB + 120GB, simply buying them both at the same time right now is not possible. I am thinking of using the 120GB now as A: then adding an additional B: of 120Gb in the future, this is what I will do.

*** My question though, is what is more work. Is adding a large drive as B: then upgrading drive A: at a later time more work? If so I would only want to replace my factory A: drive with a large drive and then add a large B: later on in time.

The loss of any recorded material during any upgrade is not a concern to be, simply I would suck it up and move on only to yet again fill the drive.

I too have a 40GB drive in my home PC in which I do not fill and thought about removing that to use as a B: drive 120GB + 40GB. And using the 22GB TiVo drive in the PC. For some reason that makes me feel like a compulsive gambler doing what ever necessary to feed the addiction, haha.

Can anyone answer the asterisk question above?

[Steavis]

dan--

My limited understanding of the upgrade process tells me that the difference wouldn't amount to more than a few minutes of extra work, especially if you don't care about losing your recordings. There are plenty of people on this board that can answer that question more knowledgeably than I, however.

Ultimately though, if you're going to be utilizing High quality, the extra couple hours probably won't be worth it--easiest thing to do would be to use one large A drive for now. When you get a second large drive, just run BlessTiVo on it and put it in. You won't lose any recordings, and your 22 GB drive could be a backup.

[thtv01]

hinsdale: I have a question about the link in your How-To. It's regarding the link for the updated boot CD (nuboot6.iso). I burned the CD and it has a text file for TIVOMAD and it says version 3.1. Do you know if the text file is wrong? How can I tell if this boot cd has the updated version of DTiVoMad 4.0?
I guess I can boot up using the CD and test it by typing 'maddtb4/setupcd.sh ' to see if it starts the script.

[thtv01]

Never mind...I guess I answered this myself. I booted up the CD and entered the command for DTivoMad 4.0 and it works fine.
I guess I should have done this before posting my question.....
Thanks!

[KFL]

I too wish to thank all those that did the hard work setting up these utilities and getting the cd & instructions together. I found them easier to follow upgrading my DSR6K to 2 160 GIG Maxtor 5400 drives this weekend than when I added a 60 GIG drive to my standalone last year. I now have up to 259 hours of recording time. I'm still using the original fan and my temperature has stabilized at 48C in a 70 degree room.

Thanks once more for an outstanding job!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Breacagan]

I ran across several bumps in my upgrade, but every contingency was covered by the HOW-TO. The tools were easy to use. Well done, everyone!

Thank you,
byron

[RAINSUX]

This is my first post to the forum. I would like to express my thanks to Hinsdale, Tiger, and any others who I didn't see your name (sorry). Yesterday I upgraded my 30 hour Phillips Tivo by adding a 100 GB WD drive. The upgrade went flawlessly and I now have a 154+ hour Tivo! I can only imagine the time and effort that went into the development of this process. How generous of you guys to share it all with us. THANK YOU!

Sam Sharp
Albuquerque, NM

[tivoboy]

to complete the upgrade?

[Steve O]

I'm about to do the upgrade deed, but I had a couple of questions before I got started (better to get them answered now rather than post a "help!" message after it's too late).

My primary master drive in my PC is a 60 G drive that's broken up into 3 partitions. C: is 5 Gig, D: is 10 Gig, and E: is 45 Gig. I'd have to check fdisk, but I think it's a primary partition and 2 extended partitions.

Next, I think those are FAT16 partitions.

Are either of those issues likely to give me any problems when doing the backup and/or blessing portions of the upgrade? Will hda, hdb, etc. be different because of the extra partitions already on the Primary Master drive?

-Steve

[wookie]

I would like to thank Hinsdale for the great upgrade instructions. I ran into a couple snags, one due to flaky hardware:mad: , and the other:confused: - maybe something I missed in the upgrade instructions, or maybe a place to add a little note to the upgrade guide??

I was doing a "new A" + a "new B" on a new system(2 maxtor 80GB hds from Dell per another discussion thread).

I ran into troubles at the last step (10 option#2) when I was trying to boot and do the mad/setup.sh step. I had the new A connected to Sec Master, CDROM to SecSlave, and the new B connected to PriSlave... The A drive was being recognized, but the B drive was not.

It took me a few minutes to remember that I have to have _something_ hooked up to PriMaster in order for the bios to recognize that the slave... (could be an issue of older BIOS? or just the fact that I'm used to using SCSI :)...

After connecting another HD as PriMaster, and replacing a flakey CDROM all went smooth as silk. The CDROM problem was a strange one. I was using Kazymyr's boot disk, and it worked fine when I copied the original A to the new A... but failed when I tried to boot with 2 disks in the system. After the Kernel finished loading (..........) it displayed "Ready." and would hang. Confusion rained for a little while as I tried to determine if my second HD was bad, etc... but I finally realized that the CD was bad when I tried booting from another bootCD I have with some diagnostic utilities and found the CDROM spining up and down multiple times before finally booting.

Soo, it took me about 4-5 hours to do the setup (I did a dd copy of the original A drive as I wanted to save the programs which took quite a while - and the flaky CDROM had me going in circles for a couple hours).

I haven't actually re-installed the HDs into the system yet, as I brought the HD's to work and left the unit at home, but I'm confident it's going to work :)

Thanks again!

[joedog]

One thing to watch out for: Not all x-gigabyte drives are the same size, so if you attempt to restore an image from a larger drive to one that is slightly smaller, you might not be able to easily.

This one drove me crazy until I saw that MFS Tool could backup an image without the /var directory. My source drive (40 GB Quantum 5400 RPM-was the orignal drive on my "30 GB" SVR-2000) was 10 MB larger than my destination drive (40 GB Quantum 7200 RPM - Fry's was out of 5400 40 GB Quantum/Maxtors). So I restored the image and told MFS Tool to make /var 118 MB instead of 128 MB. Might not be the best way.

[harvscar]

I too want to say thanks to all the people who made my easy upgrade possible. Except for dealing with my pain-in-the-a** PC case and a coaster I burned of Kaz's BootCD, everything was great. I wish I had the funds to upgrade my other unit :(

[Jim Long]

Thanks to TiVoMad, Kazymyr, Tiger and Hinsdale for putting together a nice package.

The expanded boot cd from Kazymyr worked flawlessly. TiVoMad's version 4 beta worked like a charm and all was very straight forward.

I did a safety backup. Did a DD of my Tivo A drive to a new 120GB Maxstor, and then added another 120GB for a B drive. Didn't need to qunlock any drive. And haven't use amset /quiet yet.

Having a DSR6000 DirecTivo I found it an easy exercise to remove the case and unscrew the bracket. Putting it back together was just as easy. And there you go a nice 230hr Tivo with lots of new season passes now being added.

Cheers!

Jim

[joevivona]

Agree with everyone above. Upgraded this week to dual 80GB. Bought them from newegg based upon people's recommendations. Used Hinsdale's instructions and Kazymr's boot disk. Everything was great with just one small bump for me...


We're a heavy Win2K and WinXP house so all my drives are formatted NTFS. You can't mfstool backup onto a NTFS drive because the ability to mount a NTFS drive RW has been removed (from the provided Boot Disk - as per another thread in this forum). After a little searching in this forum of course I found the answer, but could we please, please add it to the FAQ ??

Other than that you guys are great and everything worked wonderful. My Tivo is web enabled, getting updates over the internet and I am a happy camper....

This and my brand new 64inch 16x9 TV and I never have to leave my house....

[hinsdale]

Originally posted by joevivona
We're a heavy Win2K and WinXP house so all my drives are formatted NTFS. You can't mfstool backup onto a NTFS drive because the ability to mount a NTFS drive RW has been removed (from the provided Boot Disk - as per another thread in this forum). After a little searching in this forum of course I found the answer, but could we please, please add it to the FAQ ??


FROM THE HOW-TO:
It is geared for users of common IDE Bus PC's running Windows 95b, 98, or Me (see note at end for Windows NT/2000/XP users).

I have Windows NT/2000/XP:

Do not boot into Windows NT/2000/XP with your original TiVo drives attached as a signature can be attached to the drive that will create problems. You will need to have/create a primary or extended fat32 partition on your primary boot drive connected as primary master and know the partition table (run fdisk -l to dispay partitions). Then you can follow these upgrade instructions replacing (if applicable) the /dev/hda1 with the appropriate fat32 partition designation (example /dev/hda5 if first extended partition, /dev/hda6 if second extended partition, etc). Programs like Partition Magic or the free trial of Bootit (link provided) should allow for simple creation of the necessary fat32 partition. However, the easiest method is to simply use/purchase a small 1-2GB (or even smaller) hard drive and format it as fat32.

[eskin]

Thanks for the upgrade info! I successfully added an 80 gig Maxtor 5400 RPM drive to my Sony 30 hour box this morning. From start to finish, the whole process took about an hour.

One thing that I found was that on my PC, I have a PCI fast hard disk controller, with the DVD-ROM and ZIP drive on the secondary internal IDE bus. I unplugged the ZIP drive from the cable and plugged in the new drive after setting the jumpers for slave. The drive came up as hdd in linux, glad I read the instructions to page up and confirm the drive ids before doing the BlessTiVo.

Cheers and thanks,

Michael Eskin

[farjo08]

Thanks for the great upgrade guide!

I just purchased two WD 120 GB hard drives and upgraded my Sony SVR-2000 and now have:

Recording Capacity: 81 hrs, 55 min (Best Quality)
298 hrs, 47 min (Basic Quality)

My only suggestions to anyone else who might be doing an upgrade is to be aware of the following:

If you are running a Windows Operating System with your primary drive/partition formatted as NTFS, the boot cd will be able to mount the drive, but not write to it, which is necessary to create your initial backup.

If you are running a Linux Operating System with your primary drive/partition formatted as ext3, the boot cd will not be able to mount the drive.

Fortunately I had a ghost backup of my XP machine so I just reformatted the drive so I could mount it and write the backup, then restored the ghost image when I was finished.

As for the actual instructions, they were very easy to follow and worked perfectly!

[Yuterald]

upgrading the new at&t one? is there a way to do that?:(

[grahamc]

As a UK Tivo user my box is a Thomson Scenium, and gives only 12 hours @max quality.
I want to upgrade it by adding a 2nd drive, leaving the existing drive alone(I'm assuming there's only 1 - haven't opened it up yet).
I've read the very detailed hinsdale-how-to, and it seems to me (I know unix/linux) that all I need do is obtain a new drive and run BlessTiVo on it, then install the 2nd drive in the Tivo unit.
Presumably at boot, the tivo software will recognise the extra disk and incorporate it. Nothing I can find in the howto modifies the Tivo A drive, all the other stuff in the howto is concerned with backing up the A drive prior to replacing it, but since I'm not touching it, there is no need for this (apart from peace-of-mind).
Am I correct or have I missed something? Like modifying the fstab file to include the new disk?

[hinsdale]

You are correct. All you need to do is run BlessTiVo on the new B drive and install (also may need to pull the A drive to change the jumper to master).

However, you need to realize that if something doesnt work or either drive crashes or the OS runs into any corruption - you will have a door stop without a backup. The backup part only takes 20 minutes or so and is definetly worth the effort.

[jayster]

Instruction #7, option 3 explains how to copy from one drive to another. The instruction states to hook Tivo to hdb and the blank to hdc. Then it says to type dd if=/dev/hdc of=/dev/hdb bs=32k. This is in fact backwards...and will copy the blank to your tivo!!! I did two VERY boneheaded things. Not being extremely familiar with Linux, I did not confirm the order. Second, being confident in the ease of how the upgrade appeared to be...I didn't create a backup. A VERY STUPID NEWBIE THING TO DO. And I'm not even a newbie to computers. Of course, it would be illegal to use another's backup...but I really don't want to buy another TIVO...so I'm willing to ask. What makes me really mad is the fact I even followed the directions carefully (except for the most important part, the backup...ARGH) I have a Philips TIVO that I was going to swap the 30 Gig for a 100 Gig. PLEASE HELP ME...

[hinsdale]

Originally posted by jayster
Instruction #7, option 3 explains how to copy from one drive to another. The instruction states to hook Tivo to hdb and the blank to hdc. Then it says to type dd if=/dev/hdc of=/dev/hdb bs=32k. This is in fact backwards...and will copy the blank to your tivo!!! I did two VERY boneheaded things. Not being extremely familiar with Linux, I did not confirm the order. Second, being confident in the ease of how the upgrade appeared to be...I didn't create a backup. A VERY STUPID NEWBIE THING TO DO. And I'm not even a newbie to computers. Of course, it would be illegal to use another's backup...but I really don't want to buy another TIVO...so I'm willing to ask. What makes me really mad is the fact I even followed the directions carefully (except for the most important part, the backup...ARGH) I have a Philips TIVO that I was going to swap the 30 Gig for a 100 Gig. PLEASE HELP ME...

From the How-To instructions Step #7, Option #3

Connect your original TiVo A drive to the Secondary Master IDE connector on your PC (make sure the red/black edge stripe on the IDE cable is closest to the power connector and make sure the power connector is inserted fully. Connect your new upgrade drive to be used as your new TiVo A drive to the Primary Slave IDE connector on your PC.

[jayster]

OK...three mistakes. Since I used hda and hdb, I merely used your document for reference. Upon glancing at it, I saw the original Tivo drive first, so I logically figured that the Tivo goes to hdb. I'm humbled for not reading the words carefully. For someone scared to work on computers, the instructions are well written. For an Engineer (more aptly bonehead) like me...who doesn't carefully read instructions, disaster is imminent. Good news though, I've decided to brush up on my Linux syntax now. Hinsdale is all wise.

[cyberjef28]

I am afraid the MFSTools are not always able to divorce the 2 drives in the Thomson Scenium TiVo UK units.

There are lots of posts about the UK TiVo backup images that, when restored to a new drive put the TiVo into a continual booting loop.

This happenned to me and I have noticed that quite a few other UK upgraders have experienced this fault. Yet there is nothing in the guide to warn about this possible problem. In the end I had to source a working TiVo back-up image from someone else.

Might be worth mentioning this as its a little annoying when you've paid almost £200 ($300) on a new hard drive to find that you cannot use it to upgrade your TiVo using the tools specified here.

Jeff.

[Larry63]

I'm getting ready to expand my new virgin DSR6000R01. I haven't even opened it yet!

I work for a small computer reseller and have access to a hard drive programmer.

I was wondering if anyone has any experience using such a device to make backups and larger original disks for Tivo units?

The following link is the disk duplicators web site, the model we have is the D-105.

http://www.greystoneds.com/

I have no doubt that your instructions will work fine, I just wanted to know if our disk duplicator will work with identical drives for back-up, and with larger drives for the upgrade.

It would save time, and I could help out some friends with their units.

Currently for example, if someone were to bring to me a 3.2G HDD with W-98 on it and asked me to give them an upgrade to a larger drive, I say no problem, I take the original 3.2G and copy it to a lets say 40G drive. They take the 40G drive and plug it in to their PC and everything boots up the same, the only difference is they have a larger drive without the headaches, of playing around with software and they still have their old drive as backup.

Any tips before I start on my Philips DSR6000????

thanks

[jldesq]

OK. I did it. My DirecTivo (Philips) started crashing a few weeks ago. It started with constant freezes. Then, the other day, I awoke to the "powering up" and a frozen screen. I was able to reset it by unpluging the power. Did this for 3 days. Then, I wasn't able to reset it at all. All I heard was the sound of a pingpong ball in the harddrive when I powered up. I had to act. I printed out Hinsdale's 18 page guide (someone said 22 pages - did I skip a few steps? ;) I purchased two 80 Gig HDs from CompUSA - over spent by some 50-60 dollars I bet. But, time was of the essence! :D My biggest fear was that the HD was so far gone, I wouldn't be able to get the software (ver. 2.05.01) from it. I know Win2k. I know DOS. I don't know Linux (don't even know how to say it). (That is a testament to how good Hinsdale's guide is). :) :) I broke open the computer case. Broke open Tivo. After a few false starts having to do with my CD ROM Drive not reading my boot CD (made on another computer), (I kept getting "failure to decompress" errors) I swapped out the CD ROM drive and I was able to back up the software from the bad drive. From there, it was easy street. I followed Hinsdale's guide to the letter. Now, I have 143 approx hours and it works too. Thanks Hinsdale. Thanks for everything.

[DaMightyJ]

Please help. I have the 30hr single drive SA. I put the original drive in as Secondary Master, with the intended new A drive (Maxtor 80G 5400) as the Secondary Slave. I ran dd if=/dev/hdc of=/dev/hdd bs=32k and after some time, it seemed to complete with no errors. After swapping the new A to Sec Master, and the other 80G as Sec Slave, I went to run TiVoMAD and I dont remember the error, but it was number 32, and it said it couldnt find some stuff and reverted back to the original partition.

It gets better.

I put the new A drive in the unit, just to see, and it sits at the initial screen for a long time. I tried rebooted a few times, giving atleast 10 minutes between each reboot, and have now put the original 30G drive back in, which is doing the same thing. I have replaced the new A back in, and am trying to run the mfs tools to see if I can get a backup, and restore that to the new A, but when i attempt to mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/dos it tells me I have to specify the filesystem. hda1 is simply a 6.4G disk I partitioned and formatted hoping to dump the 150~300MB there for now.

If anyone can give me advice at this point, I would really appreciate it.

Also, I want one of those TurboNet cards..

Thanks
Josh

[Agent86]

Has hinsdale's FAQ been updated with AT&T Broadband (Series2) TiVo information yet?

I have my AT&T Broadband TiVo and an expansion drive on the way and am looking for a good "one stop" resource to follow step by step, troubleshoot from, etc.

It's quite the comprehensive document. Keep up the great work!

- Agent 86

[siddhartha]

i want to thanks tivomad, hinsdale and tiger for all of their excellent tools, guide and help.

[hinsdale]

In response to many requests, for a limited time I will perform recording capacity upgrades for those of you whom do not wish to or are not comfortable using the How-To provided here. You can either request an upgrade kit or ship me your TiVo unit (Chicago area locals can drop off) and for a minimal fee plus shipping costs (if applicable) I will perform the complete upgrade. This is a service not a business (and therefore $100-$300 less than regular commercial upgraders) and is for those intimidated by the how-to but not wanting to spend so much upgrading. I wont be able to do this for ever and hope that most will attempt using the provided How-To (your cost 0.00).

Details on the drive upgrade kits and upgrade service can be found in the how-to:

http://www.newreleasesvideo.com/hinsdale-how-to/



Note: To those at&Tivo upgraders - i will be upgrading the How-To shortly with specifics for this new hardware.

[Agent86]

Wow - thats mighty generous of you hinsdale. That's really going "above and beyond" to support the community.

In the meantime, I'm waiting with baited breath for your update for AT&TiVos. I have my AT&TiVo coming in on Thursday, with the expansion hard drive showing up on Wednesday.

With a little luck, I can get it going just in time for the "Best of Super Bowl Comericals" show and the Super Bowl itself!

Rock on hinsdale, and thanks again for all your help.

Thanks for all the hackers out there that figured this stuff out as well!

- Agent 86

[hinsdale]

Originally posted by Agent86
Wow - thats mighty generous of you hinsdale. That's really going "above and beyond" to support the community.

Well i would hardly say that. Its not free, and although I am charging less than commercial upgraders would charge, is priced so as to not be burdensome to those legitimately overwhelmed by the process but also not encourage too many to give up in using the How-To (which is free).



In regards to the AT&Tivo update to the How-To, hopefully I will get to that today.

[Agent86]

Well i would hardly say that. Its not free, and although I am charging less than commercial upgraders would charge, is priced so as to not be burdensome to those legitimately overwhelmed by the process but also not encourage too many to give up in using the How-To (which is free).

I agree. I've been working with computer hardware for years now, so its all like walking to me now, but I remember I was terrified of breaking something when I first started. However, once I got going, I realized it really wasn't so bad if you took your time and followed directions.

In regards to the AT&Tivo update to the How-To, hopefully I will get to that today.

Awesome. I'll try to take some pictures of the process. I know most of it is software based - which is not very conducive to photographs - but wherever I see a good photo op, I'll take some.

- Agent 86

[SDV]

Hi,

I've just upgraded a single 40gb quantum drive UK Thomson TiVo to a 40Gb + 120Gb Maxtor TiVo. Many thanks to hinsdale, TiVoMad, Tiger, Kazymyr and others for all their hard work, making this one easy upgrade! :)

[DaMightyJ]

Finally, after some confusion with byteswapping, etc, everything is good to go. Special shouts to jdm5 and Stan! Thanks!!

HDR312 -> Upped to 193hrs worst quality 50-something bestest true-to-TiVo quality, dual 80G 5400 Maxtors provided for my viewing pleasure.. next stop: the bash. :D

[spideymac]

kroddy:

I have just obtained 2 Hughes DirecTV receivers + Tivo @ $79 each and a WD 100GB HD from Best Buy @ $199 and I'm ready to begin my upgrade hack. I have a bracket from 9th Tee (in case I ended up with a two HD unit) . I am currently using a Mits 73905 with SR-HD500 (Home Theater) and I would like to know the following if you can assist:

1. How are you utilizing/connecting your SR-HD500 with your Tivo, if it is also a combined unit?

2. These Hughes Tivos are only supposed to have one HD in them. Can I leave the original in and add the WD100GB or do I have to replace the original with the WD100GB?

3. Can I use Power Quest's "Drive Copy" to format and copy the Tivo software to the new drive, if I have to replace the original HD?

4. Will there be any problem re: "Drive Copy" introducing any extraneous/proprietary software on to the new HD?


5. Will the Tivo unit then recognize the entire drive capacity?

These are just a few of my major concerns before I start hacking away. I've already dnldd the very nice road map for making the change and I'll begain as soon as I can get my above concerns answered. The use of Drive Copy was an after thought possiblity to copy the Tivo software to the new HD.

I'm saving the second Tivo and using it as-is with another in-house set-up until I can find out what I'm supposed to be doing.

Thanx, spideymac :confused:






Originally posted by kroddy
Quantum is (was) a manufacturer of hard-drives.

You will find a link to MFS Tools in the above mentioned how-to

[kstuart]

I'm using WindowsXP and my C: drive is already FAT32.

The "footnote" for NT/2000/XP seems to assume that you need to create a new FAT32 partition.

For those of us who already are using FAT32 under XP, what is going to be different than using FAT32 under, say, Windows ME?

[hinsdale]

It says you will need to have or create a Fat32 partition. You have one so can disregard furthur instructions for those whom need to create one.

[kstuart]

Thanks for your reply!

Do I still need to change the numbers as mentioned in the footnote ?, ie replacing (if applicable) the /dev/hda1 with the appropriate fat32 partition designation (example /dev/hda5 if first extended partition, /dev/hda6 if second extended partition, etc).

I want to be clear, because although I have written software for both Unix and PC, I'm still taking this as a recipe, rather than trying to understand why and how you are doing each part...

[hinsdale]

If its a single large primary partition on your drive then you will use hda1.. however if you have other partitions or the destination is other than the first primary partition on the drive then you will make adjustments. Run fdisk to display your partition table and then make adjustments as necessary based on the partition info.

[Agent86]

Hey everyone,

My AT&TiVo came in today and I am looking to upgrade it.

Can someone please tell me how to boot the floppy in "noswap" mode? I can't figure that part out.

Thanks!

- Agent 86

[kstuart]

Originally posted by hinsdale
If its a single large primary partition on your drive then you will use hda1.. however if you have other partitions or the destination is other than the first primary partition on the drive then you will make adjustments. Run fdisk to display your partition table and then make adjustments as necessary based on the partition info.

So, if "C:\" is the first partition on my hard drive (of 2 total partitions on the HD), and it is FAT32, then even though I am running WinXP, I should be able to follow the normal directions. Is that correct?

[Agent86]

kstuart: Yes. You're ready to roll! :)

I might be wrong, and you might want to wait up for someone else to answer. But as far as I know, the mounting commands will mount the first partition on the drive. In this case, yours is FAT32.

Since you are just backing up, if it doesn't work, you'll know. When you mount the drive per the instructions - just do the following

cd /mnt/dos
ls

If that looks like your C drive, you are all set!

- Agent 86

[uclamz]

Hi Out There...

I have already successfully backed-up, restored, blessed and upgraded my Sony Standalone using the Hinsdale guide by adding an 80gig.

Now, I am attempting to upgrade both of my DirectTivos ... One is the Sony the other a Philips.

Using the same exact process, as all of my units are factory single drive units, I have run the MFSTools 1.1 backup. Then I attempted to restore it and I am stuck in the endless "Powering Up" loop.

I've tried it with both DirecTivos and no dice! Same thing. I've tried it about 5 times each .. checking and double checking all cables, connections and jumpers .. with no success. I know I did everything right as I was able to upgrade the Sony stand alone without a problem.

Any ideas?

Thanks
-Mike

[SteveSD]

Hi everybody -

I've got a Philips HDR112 and a Maxtor 120 GIG 5400 RPM drive that I want to install as my "B" drive. The computer I'll use for the upgrade has only a SCSI CD-ROM which can boot from the CD (the IDE CD ROM is dead). Is there any reason why I can't run the programs from the SCSI CD reader? Do I need to copy the programs to floppy and boot from floppy?

My Tivo "A" drive and new "B" drive can still be connected using the IDE bus as master/slave.

Thanks all for your input - this forum is awesome!

[hinsdale]

You will most likely have problems with the SCSI cd-rom. If you look at Step 4 of the How-to you will find very simple floppy instructions to perform the upgrade of your standalone (almost as easy as using the Boot Cd).

[Agent86]

Just wanted to drop the forum a line to say that my AT&TiVo upgrade was successful. I added a 120GB drive.

I followed Hinsdale's instructions, with the changes PoopBeast posted, and it was easy as pie.

I did need to purchase a longer ATA66 cable.

- Agent 86

[disco]

I used the Hinsdale How-To, too (:)), and upgrading my 14 hr TiVo to a 94 hr, was easy. Thanks!

[jeremy Parsons]

Hi Thanks for an excellent piece of documentation I upgraded my
40GB system single drive to 2 x 120GB Maxtor Daimondmax Hard Drives giving me 84Hrs Best Quality and 299 basic.

A couple of points came to mind.

The computer was a P III and needed a BIOS upgrade to recognise the hard drives

The harddrives needed the utility downloading to disable the power monitoring

i experemented with the maxtor noise setting (downloaded util)quite settings and quite gave the best noise settings (you would expect it to) and tivo seemed happy with it.

I ordered the bracket from 9th tee and it arrived within 1 week

I was able to backup the disk to an image and copy the entire image to the new 120GB A Drive. This took about 1hr on my PIII 600MHZ with 640MB Ram

This version of the maxtor 540X requires the turbo option to be set to false.

The quantum drive that came with tivo has a confusing diagram for the jumper settings , downloading the pdf installaiton manual from www.maxtor.com/quantum helped a lot.

The only thing that I had a problem with was the turbo setting to false. I did not do this initially and the system did not power up , once I made this change everyting worked fine.

[puppypuppy]

If anyone decides to use a Sony Vaio for upgrading a TiVo ... beware.

I did an upgrade this past weekend and the only significant problem I had was with the enhanced keyboard on the Sony Vaio. The Linux boot cd just does not handle this keyboard properly. The first problem is that the "page up" keys (all three of them) didn't work so it was impossible to scroll back through the boot log to confirm disk sizes. After struggling for about 30 minutes total trying to figure out how I could be reading Hinsdale's instructions wrong, I decided to just run several boots and try to "catch" the data as it scrolled by :(.

So after about 10-15 boots (I lost count) I did finally get my disk size info so I proceeded on only to encounter my second problem. I logged in only to find that the some of the other minor keys like "delete" didn't work. So after trying to dredge up my rusty UNIX knowledge about how to remap the keys I was about to give up when, in a flash of brilliance, I finally tired a different keyboard thinking "it can't be that can it?!?!?" and "Viola!" all my problems went away.

Sony Vaio's may be nice machines with lots of slick features but ..... they do a lot of non-standard stuff that can bite one in the butt (even on WindoZZZZZ).

[TwinCityTVHound]

Just wanted to say "thanks" to Hinsdale and all the other contributors here. Thanks to your efforts, I'm now cruising into "sweeps month" with a 106 hr. DirecTiVo.

Upgrade was easier than easy; took a little longer than estimated, however (ca. 75 mins.).

Color me overjoyed. Thanks again!

[Junon]

Just wanted to say thanks to Hinsdale for his VERY helpful guide and special boot cd.

Just about everything went smoothly except that I was upgrading a 2 drive machine that I had upgraded previously to a one drive machine with a much larger A drive. As many people reported, my two drive backup image resulted in an endless reboot loop when I restored it to the new A drive. My solution of course, was to restore a virgin 14 hour A drive image to the new 80gb drive. I lost my season passes and such but I needed an excuse to clean everything up anyway. Once I did that, everything booted as it should.

I'll probably crack it open again soon so I can use that maxtor utility to quiet down the drive, anyone have any negative experiences with that? Reduces performance or anything?

Thanks again.

[JohnW]

I'm attempting to upgrade my UK 2 drive Tivo but have run into the problem mentioned earlier in this thread by cyberjef28.
After using MFSTools to backup and restore to a maxtor 120G drive, I experience a continual booting loop.
I have tried using MFSTools 1.1 to restore as suggested but still get the same problem.

Can anyone suggest where I go now??

[uclamz]

Good luck getting anyone to reply to your post. Mine has been up there for a week, and nothing.

I wish someone would just say, "Nope.. nothing can be done." But I have found this forum to be LEAN ... no, downright worthless ... on information from anyone other than Hinsdale.

Thanks Hinsdale for your input .. but most others just rehash what you have said.

This forum really isn't about solving problems, it seems more to be about people not fully understanding what Hinsdale VERY clearly wrote in his help-file.

[DaMightyJ]

I just wanted to say I have recieved help from quite a few people :)

[hinsdale]

Originally posted by uclamz
Good luck getting anyone to reply to your post. Mine has been up there for a week, and nothing.

I wish someone would just say, "Nope.. nothing can be done." But I have found this forum to be LEAN ... no, downright worthless ... on information from anyone other than Hinsdale.

Thanks Hinsdale for your input .. but most others just rehash what you have said.

This forum really isn't about solving problems, it seems more to be about people not fully understanding what Hinsdale VERY clearly wrote in his help-file.

This isnt really the thread to post a problem.. most experienced upgraders (who may assist you) have no need to check this thread. I would suggest posting a new thread in the fourm.

As far as your reboot problem. If Mfs tools 1.1 doesnt solve the problem, some DirecTiVo upgraders have used the System Reset and as it goes down, unplug to powerdown before attempting to create an Mfs Tools backup. This may help with the log files that could be the cause of such a reboot loop. Mfs Tools is not perfect , although I must admit that in my 100+ upgrades I have never run into the reboot loop so may be a PC hardware issue. Try performing the backup/restore without compression (leave the 6 out of the -6so) - you can always use winrar or winzip later to compress when you are ready to burn the image to CD. If all else fails.. Tiger's Mfs Tools has allowed for creation and storage of small backup images that are fairly easily exchanged. You will most likely get some positive results by requesting an image. This forum has some very generous and knowledgeable contributors.. although since the How-To has been posted there havent been nearly as many needing assistance and therefore the numbers of those providing assistance have dwindled also.

[uclamz]

Thanks Hinsdale ...

Perhaps it is a hardware issue, but I don't think so. I'm a QA Manager and have access to an entire lab of 40 different configurations of PCs. I've tried this, like I said in my post at least 10-15 different times in different systems to no avail.

As for trying the -6so without the 6 .. that was one of my first troubleshooting attempts as I know compression/decompression can screw things up from time to time .. no go.

The only thing I do notice is that my two DirecTivo systems were both produced in the last 3 months (Nov 2001) ... a friend of mine here who was able to back up their direcTivo has one that is almost a year older.

Also .. as for posting this as a separate problem ... tried that FIRST ... I put it up on the main forum and had over 150 views with ZERO replies. I'm sorry, but for the most part on this forum, you are about it when it comes to quality info. Like you said, most of those with any knowledge have left with those who needed knowledge.

Thanks .. and I'll keep pluggin' away...

[JohnW]

I have just tried the these suggestions (no -6) .

I still get the boot loop.

I have posted a new thread hopefully someone will reply with a solution

Thanks

[neonleon]

I did a back up of a two drive directivo. It has a 30 and a 15 gig in it. I did a restore of the tivo.bak file to an 80 gig quantum/maxtor using mfstool just to test the back up..Now the the drive is reported as a 30 gig drive. I've used qunlock, tried partition magic all to no avail.. I even did a low level format with powermax. How do i get my 80 back ????

[uTivo]

Did you update your PC's BIOS to recognize the 80GB drive..maybe it's still configured for a 30GB drive. Otherwise, your BIOS doesn't support large drives.

[dmbong]

Hey Mike! I had this with a Hughes DTiVo for about a day before I tried something else. It works fine now.

Originally I did not use MFSTools 1.1 for the backup, but in a retry, I used MFSTools 1.1 for the restore. Also, originally, I used the setup.sh in the mad/ directory rather than the TiVoMad4 stuff. It was all good once I corrected this by restoring with MFST 1.1 and using TM4.

-Brian
Originally posted by uclamz
Hi Out There...

I have already successfully backed-up, restored, blessed and upgraded my Sony Standalone using the Hinsdale guide by adding an 80gig.

Now, I am attempting to upgrade both of my DirectTivos ... One is the Sony the other a Philips.

Using the same exact process, as all of my units are factory single drive units, I have run the MFSTools 1.1 backup. Then I attempted to restore it and I am stuck in the endless "Powering Up" loop.

I've tried it with both DirecTivos and no dice! Same thing. I've tried it about 5 times each .. checking and double checking all cables, connections and jumpers .. with no success. I know I did everything right as I was able to upgrade the Sony stand alone without a problem.

Any ideas?

Thanks
-Mike

[neonleon]

Actually the bios saw one hd as an 80 but the other 80 as a 30...dunno what was going on...finally solved the prob by switching to my other box...it saw bot drives correctly. Thanks for the reply

[synthe]

In step 8 of your wonderful instructions, where we are restoring our tivo.bak file to our new A drive, is there any reason why we are putting the new A on the PC as primary slave rather than secondary master? I would think that putting it on as secondary master, and changing the command to restore the backup to:

mfstool restore -zi /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdc

would remove the need to change any jumpers on the drive after we had set it to master.

Needless to say, I haven't done this process yet, my two 120GB drives will be arriving tomorrow, but I have been reading and rereading the instructions to upgrade to make sure I follow how to do everything, and the original instructions kinda stuck out at me as a needless jumper change.

[hinsdale]

Originally posted by synthe
In step 8 of your wonderful instructions, where we are restoring our tivo.bak file to our new A drive, is there any reason why we are putting the new A on the PC as primary slave rather than secondary master? I would think that putting it on as secondary master, and changing the command to restore the backup to:

mfstool restore -zi /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdc

would remove the need to change any jumpers on the drive after we had set it to master.

Needless to say, I haven't done this process yet, my two 120GB drives will be arriving tomorrow, but I have been reading and rereading the instructions to upgrade to make sure I follow how to do everything, and the original instructions kinda stuck out at me as a needless jumper change.

hdc is secondary master.. and that is where you attach the drive.

[synthe]

Originally posted by hinsdale


hdc is secondary master.. and that is where you attach the drive.

From your article, in section #8 with the title "Restoring Mfstools backup image" after the indented section it states:

Whether or not you are replacing your original TiVo A drive, you will want to verify your new small Mfs Tools backup image by restoring to a new upgrade drive and placing in your TiVo to test. The restore command for either the two-drive or single drive backup above will be the same.

If you have just completed your Mfs Tools backup commands, and your new large upgrade drive is not yet currently connected to your PC, then first unmount your drives using the following command at the linux # prompt:

umount -f -a -r (umount not unmount)

Then power down your PC (press Ctrl-Alt-Del and wait for the 'No more processes ... ' message or the system starts to reboot, then power down.) and remove the original TiVo A (and B if applicable) drive(s) and connect your/(one of your) new large upgrade drive to the Primary Slave IDE connector. Then power up the PC and get back to the linux # prompt and re-mount your dos C: drive using the same commands as previously outlined in backup section 7 above.

Those backing up single drives will already have their new large upgrade drive attached to the Primary Slave IDE connector if following the instructions above.

Restore Mfs Tools backup image to your new large upgrade drive using ONE of the following commands:

(This is assuming you have connected your new large upgrade drive as Primary Slave)

mfstool restore -zi /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdb (Boot Cd users command)



(sorry about the long quote, but it didn't make sense out of context if I didn't include it all)
What I am suggesting is that if the person didn't already have their new large upgrade drive attached to primary slave, it would make sense to instead attach it to secondary master, and then do the restore to /dev/hdc, therefore not having to change jumpers around a couple times while moving things back and forth between computer and tivo. Does that make sense?

[SuperRob]

Hinsdale ...

Thanks for all the great information and help. You're a credit to the TiVo community.

I have a Series|2 due to show up Friday, and am contemplating your 120GB upgrade. Does it come with the necessary cables (IDE, Power) needed?

I know I can get a drive for about $200, but $290 for a painless upgrade is tough to beat. If it includes the cables, you may have a sale.

Shoot me an e-mail if you like.

Thanks again!

[hinsdale]

Originally posted by SuperRob
Hinsdale ...

Thanks for all the great information and help. You're a credit to the TiVo community.

I have a Series|2 due to show up Friday, and am contemplating your 120GB upgrade. Does it come with the necessary cables (IDE, Power) needed?

I know I can get a drive for about $200, but $290 for a painless upgrade is tough to beat. If it includes the cables, you may have a sale.

Shoot me an e-mail if you like.

Thanks again!

Yes the upgrade kit includes the dual port IDE cable and power Y connector when required. However, even though the upgrade kits will function perfectly with the new TiVo Series 2 DVR's - I have not yet gotten my hands on one of these in order to generate a generic virgin backup image. I do have backup images for the Series 2 AT&TiVo and have performed upgrades and shipped upgrade kits for these (and every other Series 1 model of DirecTiVo and Standalone ) but not the new Series 2 DVR. And without a backup image to send along with the upgrade kit, I am not comfortable providing these yet. Hopefully I will be getting one soon, or perhaps one of the many TiVos currently in route for upgrade will be a series 2 and I can generate a generic virgin backup. Should be very shortly, but until then I can only provide the full upgrade option (shipped to me for complete upgrade) and not the upgrade kit for the Series 2 DVR. I will post in the How-To as soon as I get an image.

[SuperRob]

Please do! And could you send me an e-mail as well? You'll have a sale as soon as you can provide the service! :)

[hinsdale]

Originally posted by SuperRob
Please do! And could you send me an e-mail as well? You'll have a sale as soon as you can provide the service! :)

I was just about to go purchase a couple of the new Series 2 DVRs to have on hand and went to the TiVo website and they were out. They are expecting them in on Feb 14, so should have them shortly and can create a generic backup. Once I have the backup, I will also provide the same upgrade kits for the new TiVo Series 2 DVR that I am providing to everyone for all the other model standalones and DirecTiVos - with CD backup image included for safety.


How-To Update note: I have upgraded the How-To with added instruction for the TiVo Series 2 and AT&TiVos for all the do-it-yourselfers wanting to get their hands wet in their new fancy TiVos.

[chesterdad]

Well,

I tried my best to do the Hinsdale upgrade myself (from a single drive Phillips 112 to a 120GB Maxtor 540x). I have had a number of problems, many of which may have contributed to my present state. Here is some history:

1) I initially burned the CD as instructed and attempted to use that on my system but when I tried to do the mfstool backup step, I received a message about tivo.bak being "read only". I followed some threads that had been contributed, and mentioned that SCSI based CD-ROM's might cause problems, so I started over with the floppy methods as instructed.

My C drive is multipartioned with the first partion being NTFS, the second FAT32, and so on. I made sure I specified the second partition when issuing the mount command for the C: drive mount /dev/hda2 /mnt/dos

2) Unfortunately, I didn't STOP the script as instructed in the floppy directions (Stupid me) answering all of the questions. So, after that completed, I started over with the floppy backup process. This seemed to go well, as did the restore onto the Big Maxtor. When I installed the Big Maxtor in the Tivo to test it, I got past the startup to something like "A serious problem has occured" which was a green screen, recommending I connect the phoneline and wait for it to restore for 24 hours.

3) Figuring something was wrong, I tried the original Tivo Quantum drive and tested that in the Tivo and got the same screen.

What do I do from here? I was guessing if all else failed i would be able to go back to the original Tivo drive and it would work just fine. Did it somehow get corrupted by running the Tivomad script before doing the backup?

I don't want to restore the backup to the original Tivo drive if it is going to make things worse, since I don't know how to check the state of the backup. (The restore to the Big Maxtor completed successfully but gave me the Green screen highlighted above, remember.)

I would love to give this one more shot if I have a reasonable next step before I go to plan B - sending it in to Mr. Regnery. Any ideas?


My software rev is/was 2.5.1.1-01-1-000


Thanks,

jim

Mr. Regnery also CC'ed

[hinsdale]

Without snooping around in your partitions or seeing exactly what happened it is difficult to diagnose.

First thing to try is to let the Green Screen work. Its a repair utility and it may recover by itself.

If you have already booted the mistakenly TiVoMaddened A in your TiVo then trevor's backout program wil not work. You may need to get a new image.. posting a request on the forum often is successful.

Its more satisying fixing it yourself, but if you get desperate and just want to send the drives, I get these recovered and backout out same or next day.

[Tattva]

I successfully upgraded my Philips 20hr to 112hrs with an 80GB Maxtor 536DX second drive in about an hour via Kazymyr's boot CD, and I just wanted to say thanks to Hinsdale, Kazymyr, and everyone else involved in making this doable.

For $150 + tax for the unit at Walmart and $130 for the hard drive, this thing was darn cheap.

In my opinion, I have a more reliable TiVo now than before, because by far the most likely piece to break in a TiVo is the hard drive, and with my backup image I can quickly restore one of the hard drives if the other goes bad.

Thanks,

Dave

[edit]
One note, upon upgrade, the first thing I tried to do was go to the "Messages and Setup" menu, but every time I clicked on that option I was taken to "Now Showing". I did this a couple of times and then clicked on "Now Showing" and after backing out I could go to "Messages and Setup". Strange but apparently harmless.

[tal]

Originally posted by hinsdale
I Want a Large TiVo with Lots of Recording Time
Here is a recording capacity upgrade How-To for relative newbies that incorporates the newest utilites for hopefully a quick and painless TiVo upgrade experience (includes Boot Cd and floppy instructions).

http://www.newreleasesvideo.com/hinsdale-how-to/


[snip..snip]

I too wish to add my testimonial to hinsdale's great howto. The instructions were very clearly laid out.

Things sure have progressed since I first upgraded my 20hour TiVo earlier last year.

When I did my first upgrade back I wanted to back up my original 22G drive, so I got a 30G drive and did a diskcopy from the 22G to the 30G wasting 8G plus the cost of the 30G drive. Then for my second drive I had a 40G, making it a 60hour Tivo.

Thanks to this new howto, I was able to create a ~110M back up image, make the 40G my drive A (using all of this diskspace) and the I dropped in a 120G for my second drive.

Now I have a 193hour TiVo!


I do have a couple of insights to share:

1. All of the references keep referring to having a fat32 "primary Windows boot 'C:' drive on your PC and that this partition should have around 1G or so of free space.

I was afraid that maybe the software was hardcoded to this partition as my boot area was more like the equivalent of F: on the drive.

Fortunately this notation was really just to keep the instructions simple and clear. The exact location of the partition doesn't matter as long as you are aware of which one it is and know how to alter the command line instructions appropriately.


2. Boot Floppy versus Boot CD.
I was really fixated on trying to get the boot CD to work. Thinking I didn't want to have to make a bunch of floppys to do my install off of.

So I spent a couple of hours trying to get my machine to boot off of CD and finally gave up and had to boot with the floppy image instead.

Actually it wasn't too bad all I needed was to create 1 floppy which I used to boot up. The rest of the data was on my HD for me to access. If I had known the floppy install was going to be that painless, I might have just gone with that from the beginning.

Well, thanks again!

[MoneyMINTR]

How come I can't mount the floppy drive using the bootcd?

i.e.,

mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/foo

will not work. However Dylan's Boot disk was able to mount the floppy drive without any problems.


MM

[dmbong]

Originally posted by MoneyMINTR
How come I can't mount the floppy drive using the bootcd?

i.e.,

mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/foo

will not work. However Dylan's Boot disk was able to mount the floppy drive without any problems.
It works for me.

What's the error you get?

Does /mnt/foo exist (ie: did you create it?)?

-Brian

[bonscott87]

Just got my 120 GB drive today in the mail. Took me all of 20 minutes to install and half of that was getting the stupid 3rd screw off near the power supply! 149 hours rules!!!!!

Get Hinsdale's upgrade kits. Well worth it.

[DavidS]

Just posting to say thank you to the authors of the instructions and the utilities. Put an 80 gig as a new drive B in my 2 drive D-TiVo, went without a hitch, thanks to the great instructions. I was a complete novice.

[Will Robinson]

Thanks Hinsdale, Tiger, Kazymyr and those who post here - I upgraded my GCXBOT to 106 hours last night, and it went without a hitch.

[netg0d]

hi all .
i have done a few upgrades but now one has me bumped..
i did a dd from an original 40gb hard disk to a 60gb and was planning on madtivoing the rest of the space ..but i cant get the new 60 gb disk to go past "welcome . powering up" ..
how long should that take usually .. i have never done a dtivo upgrade before ..

please let me know what i can try.

[chefmitch]

Just wanted to thank Hinsdale and everyone else who helped my upgrade (HDR212) goes smoothly. I added an 80GB hard drive and the TiVo is now Fat and Happy!

Cheers!

Mitch

[flynxx]

A friend and I decided to upgrade our T-60's, so we attacked it last weekend. Since I'm a Mac person, he was nice enought to drag his PC with him.

We popped the top off his first. (The two hands on top, push back works great.) After a few false starts, we managed to copy his 40GB drive to an 80GB Maxtor and bless another 80GB Maxtor. Everything went fine. One down, one to go.

When I popped the top off mine, I discovered it was a two drive TiVo. I resigned myself to 'loosing' my recorded shows, and we proceeded to following Hinsdale's instructions to upgrade a two drive.

Flawless. I copied the image to a 80GB Maxtor, expanded the drive and blessed a 120GB Maxtor.

Now it reports up to 190 hours.

I was so happy, that I changed to a Lifetime sub.

Thanks to all that made this so easy to do.

[Babylon5]

Hinsdale, Thanks for your good directions.

Question for you guys.

I Upgraded my Sony 30hr TiVo about a week ago with two WD 80GB drives. They are 7200 but that is what we have (read I have access to). The system temp seems fine with these in there, and runs at around 33C. Aside from temp do the 5400rpm run more reliably?

I did this about a week ago and one HD is going bad already. Yesterday the TiVo paused a few times on the video and at the same time started with a clicking noise. I know that sound. So one HD must be going bad already. Since I just did this last week it is not a huge deal to replace the drive. I have a spare. The TiVo really beats the hell out of HD’s :)

My question is I have not pulled the cover yet to see if it is the Master (A) or Slave(B) drive.
What are my options?

If it is the A drive do I just restore from my backup image to it then put it back in.? What about the data already on the B drive? Do I need to re-bless it? That is fine but will it just work like when I first upgraded? Will the data on the B drive simply be ignored and overwritten?

Then if it is the B drive that is going bad do I just put a new drive in? I guess just bless it first? Will the original A drive be confused with a new drive slapped in. With the new drive all the programming would be all messed up right and confuse it right?

What is the best way to recover from this? Do I need to get two brand new drives and start from scratch first?

I wish the TiVo had a way to shut off the live TV recording for times when you really don’t need it to be running like overnight. It would give the read/write heads a break. Keep it spinning of course 8o)

Thanks in advance.

-Jace

[bbalfour]

:D Just wanted to thank Hinsdale and everyone. I borrowed a friends PC (I'm a Mac guy) and we upgraded my 20 hr unit in about an hour today. No I've got a 65hr TiVo and I'm happy as a clam.

[Adam_M]

Thank you Hinsdale, tivocommunity.com and everyone else that made this possible! I replaced my 14 hour drive with a 80gig Maxtor and it’s now reporting 91 hours basic!

Adam

[hinsdale]

For those that asked me to post when available:

The upgrade kits are now also offered for the new Series 2 TiVo DVR and AT&TiVo as well as all standard Philips, Sony, and Hughes model standalones and DirecTiVos and will include appropriate CD backup image for your model.

Those with Hughes GXCEBOT, AT&TiVo, and TiVo Series 2 DVR will also receive the required dual IDE (ATA100) cable and Y power adapter with their upgrade kit.

[Babylon5]

Hey Guys,
Let me re-ask it this way. If I need to start over can I just restore the image back to the A drive (if A is bad) then tell it I have a B drive and let it re-bless (if B is bad) it? Will the data currently on them both simply be written over? Does TiVo during this process over write any data and just re-use the drive?

It really has not clicked lately at all since that night. Maybe it was just a fluke but I need to know for the time it does go bad. It has to at some point :)

[tgmii]

I just upgraded my vintage tivo (14 hours) with an 80 gig drive! Couldn't be more painless....

Thanks to hinsdale and all the good advice in this forum.

I'll be ordering the second drive bay kit, for the next time Compusa-Bestbuy-staples-officemax has a big sale on drives.

My favorite part was TivoMaddening the drives. :D

Tom Madden

[bsnelson]

Looks like this thread lost it's "stickyness". Could a kind modulator, er, uh, moderator please "stick it"? :D

Brad

[hinsdale]

Originally posted by bsnelson
Looks like this thread lost it's "stickyness". Could a kind modulator, er, uh, moderator please "stick it"? :D

Brad

David has a new sponsor and the temporary upgrade offer mentioned in the How-To apparently ruffled some feathers so it has been set-free.

The How-To may not be sticky anymore.. but will continue to be up-to-date and hopefully thorough.. just have to search alittle harder to locate.

[toolkit]

Originally posted by hinsdale


David has a new sponsor... Well that kind of sucks.

I'm glad we have sponsors. This is a valuable forum, and without sponsors, it would die. But I would think that the sponsors wouldn't want to exert any editorial influence. What's next, give them a delete button so they can just delete what they don't like?

[hinsdale]

I would do the same thing in Davids position. He is not saying that the How-To can't be used, just wouldnt be prudent to have competition (small as it may be) highlighted/stickied in the face of paid advertisers.

[Darin]

There are ways to help keep hinsdale's great work visible, even if this thread falls, that don't jeopardize David's relationships with his sponsors.
;)

[Chris Williams]

I bought a Sony T60 from an AV dealership I deal with on a regular basis. The only unit they had was an open box, but they insisted that it had been opened just to show the unit to someone. I get it home, set it up. The first few times, it doesn't complete booting, finally it boots. I let it do everything, and it upgrades to 2.5 (I believe). My wife and I use it all through the Olympics. After they are over, I decide to upgrade. I get the Hinsdale How-To. It doesn't cover my specific configuration - I want to put in two new drives. But I figure that it is just a matter of doing a single drive replacement, then adding the second one later.

I get the CD ISO from the link in the How-To, make the CD. Everything boots, the drive is correctly identified as a 80 gig drive, the original Tivo drive was a 40 gig.

But here is the nasty part. After I open the drive, I discover that the unit had been opened before. Two of the pins of the IDE connector on the drive had been bent over (the two pins closest to the jumpers) and the plastic barrier had been broken. Some idiot had jammed it it there. I straighten the pins before connecting it to the PC.

I do a back-up to a freshly FAT32 formatted drive, and everything goes well. The backup is 1.3 gigs. But I want to save the two shows on the disk, so I do the dd step as well.

When I put the disk (set as Master) in the Tivo, it does not boot. I get an unstable black screen with white dashes at the top (in the vertical blanking interval). I try my original disk. Exact same results. I've tried restoring to another, fresh 80 gig Maxtor disk with the same result.

Did I wind up with a corrupt backup? I cannot return the unit, as the dealer is in another city.

Are there any Tivo experts in the city of Chicago (CTA accessible, as I don't own a car) who would be willing to help test this disk? in another unit?

[Chris Williams]

I managed to get a 2.5 image, and restored that to one of my new drives and installed that in the T60 configured as Master. No luck. The same black screen.

[Darin]

I'm sorry, I don't know WHAT your problem is, but I do know that on a DTiVo, you can't use a 2.5 image from another unit. Beginning with version 2.5, the data on the hard drive is "married" to the serial on the unit, so if you want to restore an image to your unit, it either needs to be a 2.5 image from YOUR unit, or a pre-2.5 from someone else. In each case, it needs to be from the Sony.

However, I thought that you normally got an error, not just a black screen, so that may not be THE issue, but it is AN issue.

[Chris Williams]

I'm getting a virgin 2.0 from the same location, specifically for the Sony T60. I hope this works, but I have no idea why I'm not getting an error either.

[Chris Williams]

I used mfstools to restore the virgin 2.0 to a drive. Still no luck. Black screen, no text. I'm baffled! What am I doing wrong? I've tried the drive on both Master and Cable Select.

[Rev]

I am trying to better understand upgrading my Series 2. When you say you cannot make a larger A drive does that mean you can create a replacement A drive but it is the same size as the old one?? If not then why, during an upgrade do you make a backup of the A when you cannot replace it??


Another simple question. I have had my series 2 for a month now and have not yet subscribed and It seems to be working fine. Why do I subscribe?? Is it about to stop downloading the guide??

Final question: I am moving soon to another state and want to know if I will have a local number to download the guide? Can I find a list of the local numbers somewhere?

Thanks for tolerating a new TIVOManiac!

[hinsdale]

Originally posted by Rev
I am trying to better understand upgrading my Series 2. When you say you cannot make a larger A drive does that mean you can create a replacement A drive but it is the same size as the old one?? If not then why, during an upgrade do you make a backup of the A when you cannot replace it??


Another simple question. I have had my series 2 for a month now and have not yet subscribed and It seems to be working fine. Why do I subscribe?? Is it about to stop downloading the guide??

Final question: I am moving soon to another state and want to know if I will have a local number to download the guide? Can I find a list of the local numbers somewhere?

Thanks for tolerating a new TIVOManiac!

1)If after upgrading with a new large B drive, either of your two drives then develops any problem, your TiVo will no longer function and without backup you will have no remedy. Having a backup allows you to recover from software corruptions, bad blocks, failing hard drives (unit freezes often) or complete disk failures.

2) You get a free trial period of what used to be about two weeks, and then your guide data is propogated about two weeks out from there so you most likely will be running out of guide data shortly.

3)Running though the Phone Setup and entering in the new area code will then generate a call to tivo which will subsequently list all the local phone numbers for that area code.

[Rev]

Thank you for the fast response...but I still am curious about one thing...
Can I replace the A drive if it fails?? Or does this have to be done by TIVO?? Do you expect this to change anytime in the near future??

Thanks again

[Babylon5]

Did I ask something that has been covered already? I re-read the FAQ and hinsdale instructions and this is not really covered.

I am sorry if it is a lame question but I just need to know this one thing. Everything else went fine.

Do I smell? I took a shower :)

Can someone just tell me yes or no that no matter what drive it is that I need to replace, I just start from scratch and put the good one in with the replacement. I guess that is it. I will just start from my original image then and if it is the A drive just re-image it and slap the B in and tell TiVo it is there. If it is the B I will (I assume) just start over again re-imagine to the new A drive even though it is still good then add a new B.

Sorry but I thought it was better to ask in this thread than to start a new one for a simple question.

I apologize if this has been covered and I missed it. :D


Originally posted by Babylon5
Hey Guys,
Let me re-ask it this way. If I need to start over can I just restore the image back to the A drive (if A is bad) then tell it I have a B drive and let it re-bless (if B is bad) it? Will the data currently on them both simply be written over? Does TiVo during this process over write any data and just re-use the drive?

It really has not clicked lately at all since that night. Maybe it was just a fluke but I need to know for the time it does go bad. It has to at some point :)

[hinsdale]

Originally posted by Rev
Thank you for the fast response...but I still am curious about one thing...
Can I replace the A drive if it fails?? Or does this have to be done by TIVO?? Do you expect this to change anytime in the near future??

Thanks again

Yes you can replace the A drive (no use using a larger drive, but can replace with an equal size drive). That's what the backup is for, it allows you to recover from either failing/failed drives.

[hinsdale]

Originally posted by Babylon5
Did I ask something that has been covered already? I re-read the FAQ and hinsdale instructions and this is not really covered.

I am sorry if it is a lame question but I just need to know this one thing. Everything else went fine.

Do I smell? I took a shower :)

Can someone just tell me yes or no that no matter what drive it is that I need to replace, I just start from scratch and put the good one in with the replacement. I guess that is it. I will just start from my original image then and if it is the A drive just re-image it and slap the B in and tell TiVo it is there. If it is the B I will (I assume) just start over again re-imagine to the new A drive even though it is still good then add a new B.

Sorry but I thought it was better to ask in this thread than to start a new one for a simple question.

I apologize if this has been covered and I missed it. :D




Im not sure Im understanding your question (why would your restore to A if A is bad?) but if you mean can you restore/bless over existing tivo drives.. the answer is yes. The tivo utilities overwrite the drives (might want to use the -z option when using mfs tools to be sure to zero out the existing partitions).

[Babylon5]

Hey man, thanks for helping me here. As I said in my original post I upgraded with two new 80GB drives. The other week I heard some clicking and the video paused etc.. So one drive, though new, may be a bad one. it has been okay lately but *IF* it does it again I want to replace it to be sure.

So I was just wondering what my options were for each drive since I cannot tell if it was the A or B drive that was clicking. So I meant to restore to A (A new drive) if the current A is the one clicking.

So far it has been okay. Maybe a fluke if I am lucky but I know that sound is usually bad on PC's. Usually the start of problems.

I may even re-image my A drive. if I do can I use the current A drive, if it is good, to create a new A image? No I guess not as it is now married to the new B and only the ogiginal would work. Answered my own question :)

Just would have been nice to re-back up the all the season passes I have made in the last few weeks etc...

Thanks!

Originally posted by hinsdale


Im not sure Im understanding your question (why would your restore to A if A is bad?) but if you mean can you restore/bless over existing tivo drives.. the answer is yes. The tivo utilities overwrite the drives (might want to use the -z option when using mfs tools to be sure to zero out the existing partitions).

[NFuqua777]

Hinsdale,
Thanks to you and everyone else who contributed to simplifying the upgrade process! It took me about 20 minutes last night to install the 120GB pre-blessed drive I bought from you. (Most of that time was taken up by assembling the 9th Tee bracket that I bought, attaching the drive to it, and melting a hole in the connector of the data cable I also bought from them.) I went from 14 hours to 163 hours, in plenty of time to record "24". I have also changed all my season passes to use Medium Quality. Why did I wait so long?
Thanks again!

Norma

[DaveLessnau]

Why doesn't this thread stay stuck at the top of the forum anymore?

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by DaveLessnau
Why doesn't this thread stay stuck at the top of the forum anymore?

I think because Hinsdale is now officially in the upgrade business. I believe that it was the 'how-to' that gave it the stickiness in the first place. To use the 'how-to' stickiness to draw views to the business offering doesn't really seem ethical to me (especially as a competitor who has been around significantly longer than the how-to has even existed) [i'm not suggesting that this was a calculated move, btw], so I'm assuming that may have something to do with the lack of stickiness... I suspect advertisers may have had some opinions as well.

At least that is what I'm inferring. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Lou

[Darin]

Just go up a few posts (ok, a little more than a few), he explains why.

[David Bott]

This thread is not to be stuck at the top any longer for the reason stated in above posts. Let me say it though so their is not any misunderstanding.

The How Too FAQ guide is great for the members and hinsdale has been a very helpful members. We have other Hack FAQ's that are also available and also a sponsor like The 9th Tee offer a FAQ. The issue came up when he made a ad for his upgrade service in the FAQ that a lot of people visit based it it's placement.

I was approached by two sponsors and several forum member about the ad (not the members we not upset, just letting me know about the ad and thus the issues with the rules). Even in our other member run FAQ's we do not allow ads other than the ones that run on the site. This one should be no different. Even the other sponsors are helpful on the site but do not push services. (Not that hinsdale is pushing a service.)

I offered ad service to hinsdale, but that still would not allow his upgrade outline to be made in his FAQ. It is just not right and not fair to the others that have also been helpful on the site. The offer was declined based on the fact I asked for his ad to be removed.

I could have gone as far as removing the URL from the forum itself so it is blocked, but he has been very helpful and thus did not do that. You know that if any other user was doing such a thing, posting links his/her site that sells services, it would be removed and banned for it is not allowed per our rules. But as mentioned, he has helped a lot of people.

I still ask that he remove his ad from the FAQ if the FAQ is to remain for the long hall. The suggestion I offered is that he make mention in the re-turn e-mail to people that he helps that he offers this service. After all, they are e-mail him for help, he gives it freely, thus the person should have no problem with him letting them know he offers a service.

Hope this helps.

[HTH]

Does this mean we can't bump it up?

(The worst homonyms are those that are obscure and are in commonly spoken but rarely typed phrases, like "long haul". Don't you agree? (I can't believe I initially misspelled that myself as "hawl"! :o))

[David Bott]

HTH you bring up a good point...so I guess I will say if this goes out of control with bump vs actual posts...Action will need to be taken. Sorry all that disagree with the action. But my reasons I feel are more then justified.

Again...I mean no disrespect to the help given.

[hinsdale]

Ahh.. adrift again in the open ocean.. wonder if this old bucket is seaworthy?


How-To notes: Floppy instructions have been added for the Series 2 Models (Boot CD instructions already present). I have not had a chance to test the Series 2 floppy instructions (floppy drive has cobwebs), although sound on paper, still appreciate feedback for real-world verification.

[HarryD]

Just a quick word of thanks to all for the instructions. Took my 40 gig'er out of my now dissed-DishPlayer and it's now the better half of my Philips 14 hr. Total of 63 hours at basic quality.

Good stuff... next up.. My Sony UTV :D

[Flogduh]

Took the plunge last night around 10 pm. Upgraded a DTiVo Sat T60 with an additional 80 GB Maxtor hard drive and a new fan. Armed with the fabulous assistance of Hinsdale's How-to and a sleeping wife and daughter, it was smooth sailing with the back up image and bless tivo until I returned the original drive and new drive back into the TiVo.

Got stuck on the "Welcome, powering up" message, so I pulled it apart. Checked the power and IDE cables and all were fine. Figured it must have been the A drive so I checked the master jumper setting on the Quantum, and the slave setting on the Maxtor and all looked A-OK. Still stuck on the powering up. Pulled it apart again and checked the jumpers once more just to be sure. Damned if it looked like I had 'em set correctly. Remembered Hinsdale's suggestion that the jumper diagrams sometimes are from an opposite perspective to what you may think you're seeing. Swapped the right side jumper to the other end and held my breath (man I didn't want my wife to wake up the next morning with a TiVo that wasn't working, I'd never hear the end of it!).

Hit the power and viola, SUCCESS!!! 108 hours of space and it still wasn't midnight yet, but it did take me a half hour to get it back into my home entertainment set up.

Thanks to all who give others encouragement. IT really wasn't all that tough, just a bit suspenseful at times. Oh, yes, thanks to all the guys, TiVoMad, Kazymyr, Tiger. If I could pull this off, most anyone else could.

[SilverCresent]

Just wanted to drop you a note and say thank you for your "How To" on upgrading a Tivo.:)

[GaryD9]

Well, I ordered an AT&TiVo tonight, and they claim I should get it by Friday... Of course, I'll have a new 120GB HDD, rounded ATA100 cable, and power splitter waiting when the unit arrives. I suppose I'll actually use it for 5 minutes or so before I start voiding my warantee :D

However, I'm a bit confused about a couple of things in the Hinsdale HOWTO:

1) When using Win2k/XP, why would a seperate FAT/FAT32 boot drive partition be needed? It seems to me that every step of the upgrade requires booting the machine via the boot floppy or boot CD, thereby completely ignoring whatever OS might be installed on the boot drive. If Win2k/XP never boots with the TiVo drive installed, then it wouldn't put a Win32 drive signature on the drive, would it? (I'm not being sarcastic... I just feel like I'm missing something...)

2) While its obviously a good idea to make a backup (and verify it), I almost have the impression from the HOWTO that a second, newly restored HDD must be used as the A drive. If thats not the case, might I suggest noting in the FAQ that steps 8 and 9 aren't "required" when only adding a new B drive (though they might be a good idea no matter what.) As well, step 9 should specifically mention the issue of drive size on Series2 A drives can't (yet) be changed... (So people don't restore on to a 120 GB drive and freak when they test the restore.)

Thanks in advance for any help

[dmbong]

Originally posted by GaryD9:
> 1) When using Win2k/XP, why would a seperate FAT/FAT32
> boot drive partition be needed? It seems to me that every
> step of the upgrade requires booting the machine via the boot
> floppy or boot CD, thereby completely ignoring whatever OS
> might be installed on the boot drive. If Win2k/XP never boots
> with the TiVo drive installed, then it wouldn't put a Win32 drive
> signature on the drive, would it? (I'm not being sarcastic... I
> just feel like I'm missing something...)

I wouldn't say it's required, UNLESS you want to do a backup of the original TiVo drive. I'd also say that what is in the HOW-TO is written in order to be SIMPLE based on the rest of the instructions (which of course, could be even simpler :D). It's also not true that it needs to be a boot drive, but for simplicity, it's easiest. You could also likely use some sort of UNIX or linux partition that the boot cd/floppy will understand.

Cheers!

-Brian
.

[hinsdale]

Originally posted by GaryD9
Well, I ordered an AT&TiVo tonight, and they claim I should get it by Friday... Of course, I'll have a new 120GB HDD, rounded ATA100 cable, and power splitter waiting when the unit arrives. I suppose I'll actually use it for 5 minutes or so before I start voiding my warantee :D

However, I'm a bit confused about a couple of things in the Hinsdale HOWTO:

1) When using Win2k/XP, why would a seperate FAT/FAT32 boot drive partition be needed? It seems to me that every step of the upgrade requires booting the machine via the boot floppy or boot CD, thereby completely ignoring whatever OS might be installed on the boot drive. If Win2k/XP never boots with the TiVo drive installed, then it wouldn't put a Win32 drive signature on the drive, would it? (I'm not being sarcastic... I just feel like I'm missing something...)

2) While its obviously a good idea to make a backup (and verify it), I almost have the impression from the HOWTO that a second, newly restored HDD must be used as the A drive. If thats not the case, might I suggest noting in the FAQ that steps 8 and 9 aren't "required" when only adding a new B drive (though they might be a good idea no matter what.) As well, step 9 should specifically mention the issue of drive size on Series2 A drives can't (yet) be changed... (So people don't restore on to a 120 GB drive and freak when they test the restore.)

Thanks in advance for any help

1) The Fat32 partition is needed to store the backup image you will create, not to boot from.

2) Nothing is required. Steps 8 and 9 are an important part of verifying the function of the backup image you create even when just adding a B drive. If you choose to skip then that's your decision.

The How-To already states that the image is restored to the new HDD for testing. It goes on to state that when just adding a B drive- that after testing your backup image, you will overwrite your test image when blessing the HDD for B drive install.

Im not sure why anyone would "freak" when they test the restore, perhaps you missed reading step 9?

Step 9 of the How-To:
You should now briefly utilize your TiVo to verify that it's working properly. If you check your system information screen, do not expect the TiVo to recognize the full capacity of the drive. You will find that your recording capacity is identical to the recording capacity of your original TiVo A drive (or A+B drive in true dual drive units). This is normal.

[GaryD9]

Originally posted by hinsdale


2) Nothing is required. Steps 8 and 9 are an important part of verifying the function of the backup image you create even when just adding a B drive. If you choose to skip then that's your decision.

The How-To already states that the image is restored to the new HDD for testing. It goes on to state that when just adding a B drive- that after testing your backup image, you will overwrite your test image when blessing the HDD for B drive install.

Im not sure why anyone would "freak" when they test the restore, perhaps you missed reading step 9?

Step 9 of the How-To:
You should now briefly utilize your TiVo to verify that it's working properly. If you check your system information screen, do not expect the TiVo to recognize the full capacity of the drive. You will find that your recording capacity is identical to the recording capacity of your original TiVo A drive (or A+B drive in true dual drive units). This is normal.


Duh, I guess I missed that part while reading through it. That's what I get for trying to read a HOWTO at 2am, and before actually having the hardware in hand.

So, the general idea is to buy a 120GB drive, backup the original A, restore A on the 120GB just to validate a good backup image (and test the 120GB as a drive A), put the 120 back into the PC, bless it, and stick it, along with the original A, into the TiVo?

I'll probably end up burning the backup image and newer mfstools on to a CDR and storing it with the boot CD... just in case.

Sounds easy enough... thanks for the pointer to the lines I missed..

[sbonds]

First off, thanks to everyone who has spent the time and energy not only to reverse engineer the TiVo disk layouts, but for taking the time to make the BlessTivo and/or TivoMad utilities so simple to use!

My Sony 30GB upgrade was a complete success on the first try. I used a Maxtor 160GB 5400RPM drive (DiamondMax D540X, part number 4G16ØJ8), since those seemed to be the preferred drive in these forums and for resale on TiVo upgrade sites.

In short, I replaced the original 30GB drive with the 160GB drive so I could save the original as the backup and also keep a bay open for a future monster-size TiVo upgrade.

Rather than belabor the exact procedure I used (hey, it's the same one listed in the upgrade FAQ, the Hacking the TiVo FAQ, and the TivoMad README!) here are some areas where I was unsure at the time, and how they all worked out for the best:

A) Backing up the original drive

I could not unlock my drive with the Western Digital utility. Each time after a warm boot, my BIOS came back with 9GB as the size. I also tried the 9thtee.com unlock utility and after a warm boot came back with the same size. After a brief moment of dispair, I cold booted and the drive came up as 30GB. Whew!

The 160GB Maxtor could not be detected (at all) by my motherboard BIOS. Although Linux does not use the BIOS, I wanted the warm fuzzy feeling that the drive was there so I flashed my BIOS with the latest revision and voila! 137GB.

I knew about the 137GB "limit" on ATA100, so I wasn't too surprised. From all I had read the TiVo itself doesn't support over 137GB drives so the rest would just be wasted.

I left the Maxtor set to the "quiet" acoustic setting (it was that way by default). I also left the Maxtor in its default "write verification for the first 10 power-ups" mode. I heard that this can cause skipping sometimes, but if Maxtor doesn't trust their drives to write correctly, why should I?

With the write verification on, the initial copy took a very long time. I just let it run overnight.

Once that was done, the 30GB drive went into a static bag for posterity. I hope I never need it.

B) TiVoMad

This ran just as I expected. The only thing even slightly out of the ordinary I noticed is the boot hangs if there is not a TiVo disk connected to the system. Not a big deal.

I went ahead and answered "yes" to the "will this TiVo ever be over 140GB" on the theory that it's better to have some unused swap than too little.

C) In the TiVo

After the expected reboot during the first power-up, the TiVo came back up quickly and everything seems fine.

Imagine my surprise when basic quality showed 165 hours! I was expecting 120-130ish because of the 137GB limitation. I don't know if my 18-month-old TiVo magically supports ATA-133 addressing or if TiVo upgraded the BIOS for me at some point, or if that 165 hours is just a complete BS number. Time will tell.

The TiVo records fine with no skipping, even at "Best" quality. Write verification should still be enabled. With the Maxtor set to "quiet", I hear no head seeks from my sitting position 12-15 feet away.

So this was a resounding success! My only question is how I managed to get more than 137 hours on a single drive. (Not that I'm complaining!)

-- Steve

[hinsdale]

The ratio to calculate hours in a standalone is about 1.2hrs/per GB.

137x1.2 = 164 hours basic

[tivoupgrade]

More specifically, when added to a 14-hour unit, a 160GB drive yields the following increase in basic quality:

167 hrs 49 min

and when added to a 30-hour unit, the following:

171 hrs 02 min

why the yields are different, I do not know, however all drives vary in their yield, depending upon the initial size of the unit.

Lou

[HTH]

Originally posted by tivoupgrade
More specifically, when added to a 14-hour unit, a 160GB drive yields the following increase in basic quality:

167 hrs 49 min

and when added to a 30-hour unit, the following:

171 hrs 02 min

why the yields are different, I do not know

Because a 14hr unit initially has no reserve space, while a 30hr has some?

[tivoupgrade]

Not sure... on the 20-hour units, the yields are also different. I don't have the 160GB numbers for the HDR212, however, the 81.9GB drive yield, as follows (again, basic quality) on these units:

HDR112 94 hrs 37 min
HDR212 96 hrs 41 min
HDR3120x 98 hrs 09 min

the differences are similar for 100GB and 120GB drives. Whether this has to do with the 'reserve' space or not, I do not know.

[HTH]

Originally posted by Otto
Okay, final time, here's the data you need to figure out how much space you lose. All hr's listed are in BASIC quality.

First, realize that if you started with a 30 hr or a 20 hr single drive unit, you ALREADY had 4 hrs reserved. So if the list below tells you you will have 12 total reserved with 2.0, you'll lose 8 hours , because 12-4=8. Get it? Also remember nothing is final, nothing is settled, and that we figured this out mostly by guesswork. It may not be entirely true.

Total capacity - Total reserved with 2.0
-----------------------------------------------------
Less than 20 hrs - no reserve
20 or more hours - 4 hours
40 or more hours - 8 hours
60 or more hours - 12 hours

The chart is for ALL units, not just hacked ones. However, every non-hacked box already has the reserve taken right now, so it won't lose any at all.
Exception to the rule: Phillips 312's (2 drive 30 hr units) have no reserved space.

So, three examples to help you understand:
Example 1: You take a Phillips 112 14 hr box, add a 30 gig drive, and get a 52 hr box. 2.0 Upgrade occurs. You lose: 8 hrs, because it had no reserve originally, and now needs 8 hrs according to the chart.

Example 2: You take a Phillips 31201 30 hr box, add a 60 gig drive, and get a 110 (I think) hr box. 2.0 Upgrade occurs. You lose: 8 hrs, because it had 4 hrs reserved originally, and now needs 12 hrs according to the chart. 12 - 4 = 8.

Example 3: You take a Phillips 112 14 hr box, add a 60 gig drive, and get a 94 hr box. 2.0 Upgrade occurs. You lose: 12 hrs, because it had no reserve originally, and now needs 12 hrs according to the chart.

For crying out loud, someone put this in the FAQ as "tentative".

The taking of the extra space occurs when the extra space is added to the system. Running with 14hrs under 2.5.1 doesn't mean you already have reserve space. The reserve space will be taken out of the new configuration when you upgrade.

The 4 hour discrepancy in storage increase between a drive added to a 14hr and 30hr is because of the 4 hour discrepancy in the reserve space each already had (30hr has 4hrs reserved, 14hr has 0hrs reserved, both end up with 12hrs of reserve). Variation in this figure is due to the reduction of Basic Quality bitrate as of 2.x.

[edrock200]

Just wanted to say thanks for the great instructions...threw a 80GB 7200 RPM ($125 at BB this week, not as good as the $99 5400 RPM at CompUSA, but more available.) Within an hour I had a 106 hour Hughes DTivo. The temp jumped from 46 to 54, threw a VHS tape under the unit to prop it up and the temp dropped down to 49. Everything's running great, and the sound is the same! Thanks again!
-Ed

[hinsdale]

The 7200RPM drives do tend to generate more heat, noise and vibration than the 5400RPM drives, but if you keep the unit well ventilated you should have no troubles.

[edrock200]

Originally posted by hinsdale
The 7200RPM drives do tend to generate more heat, noise and vibration than the 5400RPM drives, but if you keep the unit well ventilated you should have no troubles.

Yeah, I read all the pro's and cons...I've also been over to a friends house who has a 5400 in...in all honesty, the case temp and noise are identical...I did enable the amset /quiet...so maybe that helped.

[tivoupgrade]

Proper ventilation for the DirecTiVo units is critical, even for non-upgraded dual-drive units. Propping your unit up so that the bottom vents are exposed was the right thing to do. In my opinion, putting a 7200RPM drive in there is definitely risky, but if you are watching it closely, and can keep it well-ventilated, it should be fine. Keep in mind that if it does overheat, the unit will shut down automatically, so chances are, you won't do damage. With that said, I don't know if its really worth it.

Lou

PS Hinsdale - how long are you planning on extending your temporary offer to upgrade folks who don't want to do it themselves? Since your how-to was once considered to be an objective source of information, have you considered listing other businesses in there as well? There are a few vendors out there who are in it for long-haul, I'm sure some folks would want to know about alternatives from folks who are dedicated to offering the service.

[edrock200]

Originally posted by tivoupgrade
Proper ventilation for the DirecTiVo units is critical, even for non-upgraded dual-drive units. Propping your unit up so that the bottom vents are exposed was the right thing to do. In my opinion, putting a 7200RPM drive in there is definitely risky, but if you are watching it closely, and can keep it well-ventilated, it should be fine. Keep in mind that if it does overheat, the unit will shut down automatically, so chances are, you won't do damage. With that said, I don't know if its really worth it.

Lou

PS Hinsdale - how long are you planning on extending your temporary offer to upgrade folks who don't want to do it themselves? Since your how-to was once considered to be an objective source of information, have you considered listing other businesses in there as well? There are a few vendors out there who are in it for long-haul, I'm sure some folks would want to know about alternatives from folks who are dedicated to offering the service.

I wouldn't go so far as to call it "risky." Tons of people on these forums have used a 7200...but I agree with you, ventilation is key...I'll probably pop in a better fan IF the units temp ever rises over 55 which I doubt it will....the other advantage here is when 120GB drop in price I will pop a few of those in the Tivo and I'll have a high performance 7200 left over for my PC. :)

[HTH]

Originally posted by edrock200
Just wanted to say thanks for the great instructions...threw a 80GB 7200 RPM ($125 at BB this week,

Make? I'm suspecting problems with my 80 GB WD and would like to mirror it to a Maxtor.

[edrock200]

Originally posted by HTH


Make? I'm suspecting problems with my 80 GB WD and would like to mirror it to a Maxtor.

Western Digital

[twehrle]

Just wanted to post a reply and say thanks to Hinsdale. I ordered one of his 120Gb upgrade kits, for a reasonable price, and upgraded my AT&Tivo last night. I see he has even dropped his previous prices a few dollars. It took me all of about 45 minutes. I now have a 197 hr (Worst) / 55 hr (Best) Tivo.

Just a question though on cable management. With the power splitter cable and the new, longer IDE cable, the fit of the HD cage was tight. Why not rotate the HD's so the connectors face the back of the machine? There seemed enough overhead room for the IDE and power splitter cable to route over the HD's and plug in on the back side, where there was ample open space.

[GaryD9]

I managed last night to add a 120GB 5400 maxtor drive to my AT&TiVo using Hinsdale's HowTo... but not without issues...

First, my computer has a total of 4 IDE channels... Two on the M/B (hda - hdd), and two more on a highpoint RAID (HT370) chip (hde - hdh). The linux boot CD recognized the HT370 controller just fine, and would allow me to mount the drives attached. This was good, as my "FAT32" partition was located on one of those drives....

The "TiVo" original A drive was on hdc and the new 120GB was on hdd.

Running the backup to /dev/hdg1 mounted seemed to work fine, and restoring seemed to work fine as well. However, the restored backup would NOT get past the "powering up" screen. All jumpers/cables/etc were correct. Only after completely ripping apart my computers HDD cofiguration, putting all the drives on hda through hdd, and disabling the HT370 did things work...

I'm not sure if this is an issue with linux's HT370 kernel driver, or something to do with the kernel only byte swapping hdb through hdd.

While trying to figure that out, however, I mounted one of my Win32 NTFS drives by accident, and was surprised to find out that linux mounts WinXP (NTFS5) drives for both read AND write. Unfortunatly, I was already getting annoyed by the HT370 follies, so didn't check and see if I could have just made the backup file on the NTFS partition... However, if thats possible, it could save some people some time if all they started with were NTFS partitions... (such as myself.)

Perhaps when someone figures out how to expand "A" drives on Series2 units (and I need to do another backup), I'll experiment with it...

Finally, are the various linux filesystem utils on the boot CD? I can't remember the names of them at the moment, but the ones for partitioning drives, creating a file system (mkfs?), etc. They are small, and would have allowed me to partition/format my "spare" drive (the one I put the backup file on) under better conditions then doing it under WinXP...

[hinsdale]

I have deleted the ban thread I started, was meant to be informational only but digressed. Thanks to all those that participated in the thread with helpful suggestions and support for the forum and the how-to. I regreted deleting the thread after doing it, just seemed messy and unneccessary at the time

How-To Notes:

I will be updating the How-To this weekend (my day was shot answering emails) and expect to have changes/additions in place by Sunday.

I will be adding a note for those wishing upgrade service, so any companies that wish to be included besides 9thTee, Ptvupgrade, Digitalrecorder.tv can simply send me an email or PM with the webaddress for inclusion.

[HTH]

Originally posted by hinsdale
I have deleted the ban thread I started, was meant to be informational only but digressed.

Waah! I didn't get to see an answer to my "Will Hack TiVo For Food" question! :(

[hinsdale]

120GB upgrade kit (Price:20lb Honey Baked Ham, 4 sides mashed potato) - drop-off upgrades have to do the dishes.

Would include a link to Honey Baked.com but want to be fair to other potential Ham providers.

[feldon23]

A thread starter deleting a thread is very rude, in my opinion.

I left another forum completely because someone did this.

[hinsdale]

Originally posted by feldon23
A thread starter deleting a thread is very rude, in my opinion.

I left another forum completely because someone did this.

feldon,

I agree with you and I think I already stated that I regretted doing it afterward. My apologies to all.

[Pushwall]

Originally posted by HTH


Waah! I didn't get to see an answer to my "Will Hack TiVo For Food" question! :(

It was a great answer too! :D

[hinsdale]

How-to has been updated:

For those upgraders with March 6 previous version, there was no change to content requiring re-print, only form was changed in regards to upgrade offer.

[alexcue]

Originally posted by feldon23
A thread starter deleting a thread is very rude, in my opinion.

I left another forum completely because someone did this.

Cmon, feldon23, he already said he regretted deleting it. I don't see the harm.

If it was taking a wrong turn it was his decision to make.

edit: dang, forgot why i originally wanted to post! ;)

Many thanks Hinsdale. Your how-to has been extremely helpful
Also, thanks to all that contributed to it by actually performing, by trial and error, all that work.

[HTH]

Originally posted by feldon23
A thread starter deleting a thread is very rude, in my opinion.

Would be nice if they had the option to lock their threads instead of deleting them.

[Runch Machine]

First, thanks for the great instructions and making all the software easily available. About a month ago I added an 80 Gig B drive to my Sony T-60 Direct tivo and got 105 hours. As nice as this is, I'd now like to replace the A drive with another 80 Gig Drive. I backed up the 40 gig A drive prior to adding the B drive. Reading page 2 paragraph one about previously upgraded Tivos, I am not sure how to best proceed. I would like to back up the current A drive since I have added some season passes and then restore this to the new 80 Gig A drive. However, I am unclear if this will work. My question is, can I backup the A drive and restore it to the new 80 Gig B drive even though it has been used with a B drive, or do I need to restore the previous backup of the A drive that was made prior to adding a B drive. After restoring a backup to the new 80 Gig A drive, I still want to connect the recently installed 80 Gig B drive so I will have a total of 160 Gigs. Do I need to Bless the existing B drive again?

A review of the instructions makes it sound like if I backup the current A drive, which is used to working with the B drive, then when I do a restore, the restore will only restore to a 120 gig drive, since the A drive image is set to work on 80+40 (120). Or, do I need to do a two drive backup, even though I don't want to save my recorded programs?

[hinsdale]

Download and burn nuboot6.iso (found at step 4)

You will need to connect both drives and use the instruction at Step 7) Option #2 - to create a divorced image

Restore this image to one of the 80GB drives - Step 8)

Test the restored image - Step 9)

Run DTiVoMad 4 to expand A and rebless B - instructions at
Step 10) Upgrade configuration #2


all done.

[Michael R]

Hinsdale performed his wonderful magic on my 40 hour stand alone machine. Now I have a 184.5 hour TiVo through the addition of a discount Gateway [Maxtor] 120 gig drive. Hinsdale calmed me down when I thought that UPS had lost my TiVo in transit because there was [no] activity during the week logged in the UPS tracking log. Fortunately all turned out OK. Well sort of OK. Despite my fragile, electronics inside warning stickers all over the shipping box UPS managed to poke a good sized hole in one side of the shipping box. Through all of this I know that it is perfectly OK to love your TiVo and Hinsdale's talents and hate UPS.

[dbunin]

Help!

About six months ago, I upgraded my Philips 30 hour TiVo unit by adding a 100GByte Maxtor hard drive. This was part of a kit that I purchased from 9thTee. As suggested, I backed up the tiVo's original 30GByte prior to installing the second drive. The install was completely successful, and I have been enjoying the increased capacity since then.

Unfortunately, I have been experiencing a problem with my TiVo losing sound and video sporadically (see the "No sound - until restart" thread in the TiVo Help Center). The problem has gotten so bad that I finally contacted TiVo and received authorization to return the unit for repair or replacement.

Yesterday, I removed the second hard drive and attempted to restore the backed up image onto the original hard drive so that I could send in my TiVo back in it's original state. Here is where my trouble is.

When I attemped to restore the image to Drive A, I received a message that there was insufficient room on the drive. So I decided to format the drive under windows and try again - big mistake! The Original drive is a Maxtor (Quantum) Fireball LCT 15 and Windows will only format it as a 9.4Gbyte drive!! I tried every bios setting that I could think of, but still could not get windows to see the drive as having a 30GByte capacity.

My backed up image is still intact on my backup drive, but I need help in transferring it back to the original TiVo drive.

Can anyone out there offer a suggestion? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

David Bunin

[anolin]

have you tried the quonlock utility on the original drive yet?
(see Hinsdale's How-To)

these sound like the "locked drive" symptoms found in many previous posts.

[dbunin]

Originally posted by anolin
have you tried the quonlock utility on the original drive yet?

Thank you! I will try this as soon as I get home from work tonight!

David Bunin

[HTH]

Originally posted by hinsdale
How-to has been updated:

For those upgraders with March 6 previous version, there was no change to content requiring re-print, only form was changed in regards to upgrade offer.

So, how long 'til it becomes sticky again?

[tornado]

Today I built a swing set for my toddler (http://corymichael.com/index.html) and upgraded a stock DTiVo to 106 hours (WD 80gb). Both projects went flawlessly.

<insert Tim Allen "Home Improvement" grunt here>

My thanks to Hinsdale, TiVoMad, Tiger, Kazmyr, and my father-in-law (he helped with the swing set).

Tom

[ddhawk]

Well I thought I had convinced myself to just buy the upgrade kit and be done with it. But yesterday I spent most of my free time reading the How-To guide to make sure that I knew what to do if I was going to tackle the upgrade myself.

After reading, it sounded simple enough if everything worked and I decided to try it.

On my way home I stopped at CompUSA and picked up a Maxtor 80 GB 536X DiamondMax drive and was ready to take the plunge. From the prices I saw online, I didn't think $139 was too bad and I am Mr. impatient, once I make a decision I want it NOW.

Everything went smoothly after I figured out the cryptic jumper diagram on the Quantum 40 GB drive that came with my receiver (DSR6000). I now have a new B drive giving me a total of 108 hrs.

I know my way around the computer pretty well and was a software engineer using UNIX in a past life (10 yrs ago) so I could follow the directions easily. but I can see that they are very well thought out and useful for the novice user as well, great job.

Many thanks to hinsdale, et al. Great How-to guide!!!

Maybe in the future if I find 108 hours too little, I'll try to upgrade the A drive also.

[TivoChuckster]

THANK YOU!

I am so grateful to all those people who put it the hard work so that we don't have to! My sincere thanks goes to each and everyone of you who hacked all night instead of sleeping, who knew it could be done and who did it!

A special huge thanks goes to hinsdale for such a great document. Wouldn't have upgraded with out it!

[phxbruzer]

Thanks Hinsdale, your doc is EXCELLENT. I had a little issue because fat partition was a couple steps deep but once I figured out with hd* to use, everything went flawlessly. :D :D :D

Thanks Kazymyr for getting all the tools on a bootable CD iso, and making it available for all.:D :D :D

[Runch Machine]

First a big Thanks to Hinsdale for the very clear instructions and the quick answer to the question I posted recently. I have now upgraded my Sony T-60 twice. First I installed an 80 Gig B drive, then today I installed an 80 Gig A drive for a total of 160 Gigs and (up to) 140 hours of storage. I followed Hinsdale's instructions and everything worked perfectly the first time. Now I am wondering about the original 40 Gig A Drive, which was used with the 80 Gig B drive. If I were to remove the 80 Gig A drive and re-connect the 40 Gig A drive along with the 80 Gig B drive, would the Tivo work and show 105 hours as it did previously? Would it matter if the B drive that is now in the Tivo was not connected to the original 40 Gig A drive? I took the B drive that was in the Tivo and restored the backup to it and it is now being used as the A drive. The new 80 Gig drive that arrived today is being used as the B drive.

[Hemi]

So, how long 'til it becomes sticky again? Otto?

[Kyle]

I'll just echo my thanks to everyone who put together instructions, hints, and software tools. My Hughes GXCEBOT now has the original 40GB disk plus a second 80MB disk. I will share two hints with everyone:

1. Be careful of metal edges inside the case! I got a nice 1/2" slash on my index finger while I was pulling out the power cable from the hard drive. (Not the first time I've been cut by computer hardware... the old Zeos PCs from the early 90s were especially vicious if you weren't careful.)

2. DON'T FORGET TO REATTACH THE POWER WIRES FOR THE COOLING FAN! :eek: I forgot, and everything looked great, and my wife & I went out about an hour later and left the kids with a babysitter, and when we came home there was a blue screen saying it had closed down because the maximum internal operating temperature had been reached.

[Steven Krieser]

My thanks to everyone who worked on this as well, esp. Hinsdale. And I second the reminder about re-connecting the fan. I watched the upgraded machine as it nudged up to 50C, then 55C, then 61C, and on to 71C. At that point, I shut it down, supposing I had forgotten to hook up the fan, and I was right. Stable now at 52C, just 3 degreesz above its unmodified operating temp.

Thanks everyone!

[Runch Machine]

I upgraded my Sony T-60 Directv Tivo on Tuesday afternoon March 19, 2002. The upgrade consisted of backing up the A and B drive using MFS Tools 1.1 restoring to the new drive and using the appropriate version of TivoMad to expand the A drive and re-bless the B drive. I had previously added an 80 Gig B drive and now replaced the original 40 gig A drive with a another 80 gig drive. Both Drives are Maxtor drives. I noticed on Thursday the Tivo Showcase for the Francis Ford Coppola interview. When I selected the interview, the time bar comes up on the bottom of the screen, showing 0 on the left side and 5 on the right side, but it doesn't play. After a few seconds the time bar goes away and nothing happens. It appears to me that the Tivo can't find this file. Could it be that the file was received before the upgrade and is not included in the limited backup? Does anyone know when the video file was sent? Is there some reason that Tivo Showcase files don't work after replacing the A drive in a Tivo? If this is a problem cause by the upgrade, does anyone have any suggestions as to how to fix what ever the problem may be? The Tivo works great otherwise and shows that it now has up to 140 hours of storage. I do notice that the fan, which I previously replaced with a quieter one from 1 cool PC seems to be running faster as it is a little louder than it was before. The temperature has stayed the same at 48c.

UPDATED Information. As of Sunday morning there are new show case clips and then all show and work properly. Problem must have not had anything to do with the upgrade. I assume that the original clip must have been received before I changed the orignal A drive.


Last edited by Runch Machine on Yesterday at 01:51 PM

[TTop]

So I was 99% of the way through upgrading my Sony SVR-2000 with two new 60GB maxtor drives when I hit a snag. I was following Step 10 Upgrade Configuration #2 of the helpful Hinsdale How-to, when I saw the "Note for Sony Standalone". It was kind of lucky I saw this because I was literally at the final yes/no question of the upgrade script.

Anyway, it implies that I need a special 11 partition backup image in order to expand my 'A' drive. And it says I can get that around here -- does someone have a link or something? Or am I just overlooking it?

Also, it says to "simply restore this image to your new large upgrade A drive." Does this mean that I lose all my recorded programs and season passes, etc (which I so dutifully copied with the 'dd' command)?

Obviously I want to know this answer before I continue, because my currently recorded programs are rather important to me. Unfortunately the HOWTO isn't 100% clear on this, and this is the only place I can find reference to this issue.

A note to Hinsdale: If you could move this "Sony Standalone" note up to the top of the HOWTO where all the other system-specific notes are, that would be helpful.

Also, I highly recommend that anyone install Maxtor drives download the spec sheet from their web site in order to get the proper configuration of jumpers. Most unfortunately, the sticker on my Maxtor drives described the jumper configuration incorrectly (an egregious error) and it took me a long time and much experimentation to figure out why the drives weren't being properly recognized.

Cheers,

TTop

[welovetoseeyousmile]

Thanks Hinsdale.

You made the TiVo upgrade possible for the non-techie.

I've upgrade two units so far and am contemplating an "upgraded upgrade"

May your generosity to this community go handsomely rewarded.

[oneman]

Thankyou...

14 hrs to 306 hrs...

[georgemoe]

Just upgraded our Philips HDR212 tonight with a Maxtor 5400 rpm 160GB "B" drive. Absolutely no problems what so ever. Thanks must go to Hinsdale, TiVoMad, Tiger, and Kazymyr for the How-to and tools. The bracket from 9th Tee was great as well.

Best: 53 hr, 14 min
Basic: 193 hr, 44 min !!!

Season passes here I come!

[zaknafein]

So, what sponsor dropped to allow this thread to be restickyed?

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by zaknafein
So, what sponsor dropped to allow this thread to be restickyed?

I don't think it was an issue of a sponsor dropping. In fact, the forum has one more sponsor now, me. I think it was an issue of a non-sponsor with a sticky-thread that led to a business which is in direct competition of several sponsors. The issue was partially resolved by placing the 'temporary upgrade offer' at the end of the how-to, instead of at the beginning, AND links to alternative sources, some sponsors, and some not sponsors.

At least that is my interpretation of it - definitely subject to correction/clarification.

[Geoff Stott]

My Thomson Tivo just turned 12 months old, so as a treat I've done the decent thing and upgraded him to 2 x 120gig drives. Everything went to plan 84Hrs Best 293Hrs Basic. Many thanks to Hinsdale for the How-to guide, TiVoMad, Tiger, and Kazymyr for the tools, that made it all possible. Looking forward to installing the Air Tivo and the extra 16Mb of ram.;)

[HTH]

Originally posted by zaknafein
So, what sponsor dropped to allow this thread to be restickyed?
Probably because it had gone 5 days without a posting and someone with the power to make it sticky finally realized it had gone missing from not only the first page of responses but his default display of 5 days worth of messages.

Or it's just an April Fool's Day gag and it'll be unsticky again tomorrow.

[Mykeys]

Just completed my second upgrade on my Sony SA. Thanks to Hinsdale and all others for making it so darn easy.

[schmegs]

I just spent part of the day upgrading the dying drive on my TiVo to a new 120GB...

Thanks to Hinsdale, TiVoMad, Kazymyr, and Tiger for all the tools!! You've saved my TV-watching from utter destruction! :)

[Adamfield]

I have just saved this to acrobat and MS reader so that I can use this on the move (My TiVo is nowher near my PC)

I can post them up if hinsdale has no objections?

-Adam

[hinsdale]

No objections .. except frequent changes are made to the how-to so you might mention in your post to check the last modification date at the top of the online How-To to make sure you have the latest copy.

[buzzard]

Thank you Hinsdale! I have my Philips DSR6000 all hooked up and it now shows ~149 hours. All in an afternoon's work.:D

[gbeer]

I have come across a refurbished Sony SVR-2000 that was loaded with 1.3.0 and has 13 partitions.

Note for Sony Standalones: The most recent production model Sony Standalone units released with v2.5.1 OS pre-installed and some older refurbished Sony Standalone units that are running or have run v2.0.2 TiVo OS are not currently able to use TiVoMad to expand A drives (contain non-standard 13 partition structure - can review TiVo drive partition table for verification by using the shift+pageup on boot disk startup).

Based on this part of the faq, I assumed, (there's that word) Sony's that initially reported 1.3.0 couldn't have 13 partitions. After 2 days of messing around with dd, tivomad, alternating with searches the upgrade forum, re-reading the various readmes on K's boot disk... I finally looked at the linux boot messages and saw that my original A disk has an unlucky number of partitions.

I suppose my refurb. Sony could have had 2.0.2 loaded on it sometime in its life. Though there's just no way to know for sure.

So I'm in the market for an 11 partition backup image.

Glenn

[argv]

All references to upgrades on this site all refer to recording capacity, not the actual OS. All the useful features (backdoor) that I want are on version 2.5. My _brand new_ tivo has version 2.0. How can I upgrade just the software? and why doesn't this happen automatically?

[dmbong]

Originally posted by argv
All references to upgrades on this site all refer to recording capacity, not the actual OS. All the useful features (backdoor) that I want are on version 2.5. My _brand new_ tivo has version 2.0. How can I upgrade just the software? and why doesn't this happen automatically?
If you wait a little bit, it will. It will get the new version during one of its call-ins. I waited about 2 days on my most recent install, but it came!

You didn't say how "new" it is, like how long you've actually been running it.

-Brian

[argv]

I got my TiVo about 2 months ago. Seems that if it was going to upgrade the OS, it'd have happened by now.

Is there any way to force the upgrade? How about contacting TiVo to request it directly?

[budgetcomputers]

WOW. So simple. Had 14hr added 80 giger for $100 from www.pricewatch.com and now have 109hr unit! Thanks so much!

[geoffb1974]

Went through the update last night. All went well. Went from a dead 30 HR svr-2000 to a very alive 91 hour. Thanks all of your who helped

[green]

One more thank you to Hinsdale, et al. Upgraded my Philips DSR6000, replacing the 15G B-drive with a 120G. Tivo says I've got ~139 hours! Wahoo!

[Xiidaen]

Hi folks,

I went through the upgrade process, but every drive other than my original A: drive hangs at the "Please Wait" boot screen. No errors are reported.

I am running on a XP system, is it possible the drive was marked by the XP system as described at the bottom of the FAQ?

I've checked the connections, and tried different cable placements (mid connector vs end connector).

I've tried 4 drives, trying to get a functional A drive: 2 WD 60GB, 1 Maxtor 60GB and the original A: drive

Once I restored my original image to the A drive, it works fine. Every other drive hangs on the "Please Wait" screen. So, I don't think it's the cable at all, and with three different drives, I can't easily see it as a drive issue, either.

I even tried using the tools to expand one of the 60GB drives to full size before testing, with no change in results.

I'm ready to try a new image if I can get one (especially if the smaller MAD images are transferrable) but I wanted to put out one last plea for help.

HELP!

Thanks,

Xiidaen

[stormsweeper]

Xiidaen: Did you boot up into XP with the new drive attached?

[hinsdale]

What version software is on the unit? If its 2.0 or lower you need to edit your bootparms when restoring to a non-quantum drive - see the note at the end of Step 8 if applicable.

[Xiidaen]

I'll check the software version, I don't remember what it had when I got it refurb'd about a year ago. But I can boot up the original A drive and check the version from there.



It is possible the system may have booted in XP, but I doubt it, certainly not a full boot. (I've got a friend working on this with me, so I can't speak for the whole time period).

[Xiidaen]

Ok, I think the bootparms did it, I got the green screen first, but it appears to work now.

Thanks for your help!

[Alan Hobson]

I have attempted an upgrade on a UK TiVo with 2 120Gb Maxor D540x drives.

each step has been sucessful up until step 10 upgrade configuration #2

mad/setup.sh fails

I've tried both single and dual disk expansion.


Can You Help

[nikkit]

Many Thanks Trevor for a pretty painless upgrade.
Nikki 80+40Gb

[pedxing]

See this thread http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=56122 for my AT&T Series 2 success story.

Suggestions for the Upgrade FAQ:
*) Moving the original drive in the bracket, using the IDE cable "backwards" and setting the jumpers. Noted in http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=45645

*) Setting the PC BIOS to NONE if it's too old to talk to a drive bigger than 36GB. Also note that doing this keeps WVSET, AMSET, and probably QUNLOCK from working... To make these work, the "AC" jumper can be set on the drive which limits the reported size to 36GB. But the AC jumper would probably make BlessTiVo bless it as a 36GB drive! So use AC, detect the drive in the BIOS, and to your WVSET and AMSET work. Then unjumper AC, set the BIOS to NONE for that drive, and bless the drive.

[Richard Casto]

Upgraded my HUGHES DirecTiVo this weekend. It went pretty well. My only problem was that when I put my new 80GB drive in my PC I miss read my BIOS autodetect settings for the drive. I was so used to seeing XXXXX MB that when it reported XX GB I thought I had a drive problem (I was expecting the value to be in MB not GB).

My C: drive is only 6 GB and I thought it was reporting that the new drive was only 80 MB and not GB. It was not until after I had flashed my BIOS (I thought maybe my BIOS was out of date) that I realized what was going on.

Everything went smoothly after than. I even have an updated BIOS in my PC now ;)

[nichols_eric]

I just ordered a 120GB Maxtor and Torx screwdrivers and a mounting kit. Hopefully, I'll be upgrading by this weekend! Anybody have any undocumented (from the Hinsdale guide) advice/extras for me?

[budgetcomputers]

be sure to have a compressed air can ( you can get them anywhere - stapels, office max etc ) to blow the dust of of the inside of your unit and especaialy the fan as adding the 2nd drive means more heat!

[Redhaze]

A minor blooper which kept me scratching my head for a longer time than I care to admit - make sure your CD drive is not set as a master. Mine was and I couldn't figure out for the life of me why I wasn't seeing the TIVO "A" drive when I booted up. Once I changed the CD to slave everything went smoothly.

Ok, not totally smoothly as I didn't do the last step to expand the drive and had to go back to do that.

I've found you have to be able to read and follow instructions to do a smooth upgrade. I was perhaps less than adequate at both requirements. Good luck to you.

Aloha

[nichols_eric]

Originally posted by budgetcomputers
be sure to have a compressed air can ( you can get them anywhere - stapels, office max etc ) to blow the dust of of the inside of your unit and especaialy the fan as adding the 2nd drive means more heat!

I'll be sure to do that. Thanks.

[nichols_eric]

Oh I read in another thread something about forcing UDMA/33 operation only... I don't believe that is documented. Is it really important?

[Avenger]

A Cautionary Tale on Backups

I upgraded my father-in-law's Hughes DirecTivo this last weekend by adding a second 40GB hard disk (from Fujitsu.)

24 hours after the successful upgrade, the Tivo began to make an awful knocking noise, and we got the GSOD. Turns out that the new drive was going T.U. I hadn't backed it up, but I had planned ahead, having downloaded a virgin 2.0 disk image for his unit in advance of the upgrade. I had to pull the new drive and re-image his existing drive. This worked like a million bucks. Of course, we had to repeat the whole blasted setup process again, but the machine was up and running again after a few hours.

Be sure to back them up before upgrading them, or at least have a virgin image on hand. Even if everything goes smoothly at the get-go, you never know if that new drive will die after a day or two of service and leave you stranded.

Many thanks to Hinsdale for the instructions, and to everyone who had a hand in devising the boot disk, TivoMad, BlessTiVo, and the other fabulous utilities that saved me from having to send my father-in-law's Tivo away to Hughes for service for God-only-knows how long! :-)

[CaptainTiVO]

I have a DSR6000 single drive DTIVO unit. I removed the original 40GB drive, backed it up, restored it to a new 80GB drive and used TiVOMad to expand to fill the 80 gigs. I saved the original drive as a backup-backup in case the 80 gig died (I've had 3 Maxtors die on me!!). After 6 months, I trust the new drive so I would now like to use the 40 gig drive.
What I would like to do is this: either add the 40 gig as a B drive or, failing that, replace the 40 gig as the A drive and move the 80 gig to B drive. BUT.. I want to keep the existing recordings!

After reading Hinsdale's HOWTO, I have these questions:
1. Quoth Hinsdale:
"Note for previously upgraded TiVo's using TiVoMad or BlessTiVo - standalone or DirecTiVo: Even those who originally upgraded without backup can now use Mfs Tools to quickly create a very small usable single drive backup image (effectively divorcing blessed drives and/or unexpanding TiVoMaddened drives) that can then be used to revert your TiVo back to a single drive unit or expand recording capacity even further using larger drives. You are able to combine any two drive sizes you wish in your new larger configuration as long as your A drive is at least as large as your original A drive. Remember that once you boot an expanded A drive or expanded A+B drive in your TiVo, you will need to restore from backup, or create a new Mfs Tools backup and restore it, in order to further upgrade recording capacity."

And:
"Preserving Recordings:
....
Note 3: Those adding a new B drive to an existing single TiVoMad expanded A drive configuration may also be able to preserve their existing recordings (this does not apply to existing two-drive configurations). After creating your Mfs Tools single drive unexpanded image using the commands above and testing this image on your new upgrade drive, you should then restore this backup image directly back to the originating A drive. This will result in your A drive being un-TiVoMad expanded (and thus capable of further upgrade) and may retain all or some of your existing recordings because Mfs Tools only overwrites the included partitions (your mileage may vary - swap file changes and other factors may effect your results). Finally treat your now unexpanded original A drive as your "new" A drive and follow the instructions at Step 10) Upgrade Configuration #2: New A Drive with New B Drive in order to re-TiVoMad expand your original A drive and Bless your new B drive.

Hmmm. Obviously, there is a lot about this that I dont understand. If I "Un-TIVOMad" the 80 gig disk, doesn't that make it think that it is only 40 gig? What happens to the pointers to recordings in the second half of the disk? Does this only work for backups from disks that are as big as the new disk? That would seem to defeat the purpose.

Can someone tell me if I can do what I want or do I just have to trash the recordings? Thanks.

Hunter

[jackal]

Hello,
Wanted to add my testimonial as the latest in a long string of upgraders grateful to Hinsdale and the community at large. I've been involved in computer engineering for several years, but I never thought I'd try this until Best Buy's recent sale on WD 120s with a rebate ($299 - 100). With a little arm twisting, they did a price match for $199 netting 2 drives for $200 plus tax. Keep your eyes open for such deals! Now boasting a HUGE DirecTivo of 225 hours! Wife is very satisfied!! Now waiting for TurboNet to arrive...

[sker99]

At the risk of being yet another "me too", I'll say the Hinsdale instructions were great. I just did a simple upgrade to a larger A drive (got a new Maxtor 120GB) and left the old Quantum on a shelf. Took about an hour, including the dd copy time (and saved all the old recordings to boot).

As a linux sysadmin, the instructions were a breeze. Ain't "dd" wonderful.

Thanks Again Hinsdale and everyone else who made this all possible ... :)

[mlipshaw]

WOW! It really works :D

Hinsdale and gang - you guys are great. Upgraded my Tivo from 30 hours to 184 hours (50 best). The whole thing took a couple of hours, and most of it was just re-reading and re-reading the instructions, so I wouldn't screw anything up.

The only 'trouble' I ran in to was my PC was having trouble auto-sensing the original Tivo A drive. I later realized that my PC doesn't need to auto-sense the settings - the Boot CD saw everything just fine and the process was flawless.

Thanks Again!!!

-mark

[llogan]

took me all day at work (problems with my PC) but my failing 35 hour DirecTivo is now sporting 225 hours of recording pleasure, thanks hinsdale for all of the help!

[buzzard]

I didn't have the time or desire to find a suitable hard drive, open up my PC and my DTiVo, and follow all the info in Hinsdale's instructions even though I have performed many PC motherboard and drive replacements. Instead, I drove over to Hinsdale and he did it for me. I would suggest that anyone who doesn't want the time, hassle or risk of doing their own upgrade, find a reputable upgrader to do it for them. Especially if there is one within minutes of where you live.

Thanks Hinsdale!

[Fezmid]

Well, I just added a 120G Maxtor drive (the one Dell was selling a few weeks ago). The install went flawlessly, and I now have "up to 149 hours" of recording time! WOOHOO! And it only took about 3.5 hours (and that included taking apart my PC to make room for the extra drives, and then putting it back together). Thanks Hinsdale! :) :) :) :)
CW

[wchittenden]

Thanks for the excellent tools. Everything went smoothly installing an 80 MB drive my Philips HDR312. It went from 30 hours to 130 hours. I am in Tivo heaven.

Thanks again to all who contributed!

[mankypro]

Purchased the 120GB Maxtors from Dell at $143.00US each and dropped them in last night. Followed Hinsdale's EXCELLENT how-to, and only messed up once (reversed A&B drives in the TiVo). Other than that I experienced some chopiness last night but I think it was a satellite issue. Wow, what will I do with all this space :).

[philhu]

Hi

Instructions are great!

One clarification, when you do the backup of your current a/b drives, the BACKUP IMAGE is divorced.

The original drives are just read and no changes are made to them.....

I was a bit leery to do the quick backup to expand my a/b 30/60 to a 120/120 until that was verified to me. I want to put the old 3060 drives in another tivo just to clear off/watch the programs stored there......

The new 120/120 will have my season passes, etc, but no programs

[pauly666]

Thank you Hinsdale, for the great instructions (hitch free!).
Thank you TiVoMad and Tiger for great tools.
Thank you TiVo for making it so we can do upgrades!!

My 20 hr SA is now a 171 hr unit! Now I can really watch TV my way, instead of having to watch programs every day to make room for tomorrow's recordings!!

Thank you!

[mankypro]

gotta love it, the entertainment indistry is losing their marbles b/c there is the chance that people might FF thru the commercials. Sounds like RIAA to me!

[netuser00]

Last Friday night, I upgraded my Philip HDR-112R from 14 GB (7.5 hours high quality) to 80 GB (45 hours high quality) in less than 2 hours.

I am so happy about the increased storage space. Thanks for the tools and instruction.

[hinsdale]

Originally posted by philhu
Hi

Instructions are great!

One clarification, when you do the backup of your current a/b drives, the BACKUP IMAGE is divorced.

The original drives are just read and no changes are made to them.....

I was a bit leery to do the quick backup to expand my a/b 30/60 to a 120/120 until that was verified to me. I want to put the old 3060 drives in another tivo just to clear off/watch the programs stored there......

The new 120/120 will have my season passes, etc, but no programs

From the How-To Step 7 Backup instructions - 3rd sentence:

Mfs Tools opens your source TiVo drive(s) in read only so your original data/recordings should be unaffected.

[nichols_eric]

Originally posted by nichols_eric
I just ordered a 120GB Maxtor and Torx screwdrivers and a mounting kit. Hopefully, I'll be upgrading by this weekend! Anybody have any undocumented (from the Hinsdale guide) advice/extras for me?

I got the dreaded call from Dell yesterday (the day it was supposed to be delivered :( ), hard drive is delayed until 5/30. I got my 9th Tee parts though. Oh well, patience is a virtue. I guess.

[Francesco]

Wanted to chime in as well!

As an utter newbie in anything other than Windows applications (yikes!), I was planning on using my two SAs as mules to expand my knowledge and practice for future projects. Both have blown modems; one is a dual-drive. Lots of project possibilities!

Then, it happened: the ubiquitous reboot loop started on my GXCEB0T after a blackout.

So, I got to learn all sorts of new things over the last couple of days, and I successfully got a new image onto a new 40G drive using all the wonderful tools. Now my confidence is boosted so that when my TurboNet arrives soon (I hope! Mark?), I'll have no fear about getting started!

Thanks Tiger, TiVoMad, Kazymyr and W. in Hinsdale, and of course TiVo!

[dgilbert]

Hi All,
First off, thanks Hinsdale for a problem free upgrade!!! It took over 5 hours, but that includes cooking and eating dinner (burgers on the grill), and a mad dash to two Radio Shack's (before they closed for the night) to find a longer IDE cable.

One suggestion for anyone adding a second drive to a Hughes DirectTiVo: Step 3 mentions that the new IDE cable may need to be shredded or reversed. That's because the distance between the Slave (middle) and Master (end) connector is too short to reach between the drives. The cable that Radio Shack sells (24 inches long) will work fine as long as you reverse the position of the primary and slave drive on the bracket. Put the primary (original) drive on the right, and the slave (new) drive on the left (next to the fan).

Thanks again Hinsdale!

[UncaAndoo]

My Philips DSR6000 is now at 240 hours! My hangups were as follows:

--Three failed BootCD coasters. The fourth time, I dropped the speed down to 4x and it worked.

--MfsTools 1.1 was necessary to restore my image, I had the boot loop error.

Thanks a lot all! Time to change the Sig!

[llogan]

mine's got 225 hours, what results in the difference in final size? I was using two Western Digital 5400RPM 120 GB drives in my DSR6000...

[UncaAndoo]

Originally posted by llogan
mine's got 225 hours, what results in the difference in final size? I was using two Western Digital 5400RPM 120 GB drives in my DSR6000... First of all, I made a mistake -- it's 230 hours, as stated in my signature. Secondly, a Gig is not necessarily a Gig. One company may have their 120 GB drives be slightly larger/smaller than another. Thirdly, and this is just a guess, some sectors may be bad, or the software may not recognize them. Notice how the instructions give a range for the capacity after TivoMadding.

[llogan]

i know that, let me be more specific, what drives did you use?

[UncaAndoo]

Originally posted by llogan
i know that, let me be more specific, what drives did you use? 120GB

__________________
Philips 14-hour SA
Philips 230-hour Combo Unit









Just kidding...they were the Maxtors from Dell. I'll check the model number when I get home.

[Rcrew]

This seems to be the place to sing the praises of Hinsdale and Tiger!

Took one of my Hughes ~35 hour DTiVos to the 'upgrade bench' today. Kept the Quantum 40GB drive as the primary, added an 80GB Seagate. End result ~106 hours!

I work in a computer center, so there was lots of help. Actually I didn't get to do anything but crack the case. Lots of helping hands, and another TiVo owner doing the connections and linux commands.

Looks like we'll be upgrading most of the TiVos owned by people in the center over the next few weeks!

Rob

[ivanh]

Hi,

How can a new drive A with v2.5.5 software be expanded? TivoMad gets it wrong without reporting errors, it appears...

Thanks

Ivan

[BrianRTS]

I am trying to upgrade a Sony SVR2000.. my old computer (233) is seeing the tivo drive as 9meg.. I know I need to unlock it.. however the new drive is a 120gb drive.. the bios is only seeing it as 65535meg. Is this normal for the large drives? I have to check if LBA is on.

Thanks

[hinsdale]

Originally posted by BrianRTS
I am trying to upgrade a Sony SVR2000.. my old computer (233) is seeing the tivo drive as 9meg.. I know I need to unlock it.. however the new drive is a 120gb drive.. the bios is only seeing it as 65535meg. Is this normal for the large drives? I have to check if LBA is on.

Thanks

You will need to unlock the TiVo drive as you mentioned.

Dont worry about the BIOS recognizing the 120GB drive.. the linux Boot CD should recognize the full size of the drive - check the readouts when booting up the linux disc to verify the size is reported correctly.

[BrianRTS]

Hmm ok.. booted off a dos floppy.. ran qunlock 2.. got a response back of "Unlock command send, power cycle the machine and check capacity"

rebooted server and the tivo drive still reads 9MB.


Ill poke around thre bios to see if there are settings there that could be doing it.,

[BrianRTS]

woohoo.. never mind.. had to run the command twice for some reason... now on to the rest of the procedure.. thanks for the help hinsdale

[BrianRTS]

Ok... blessed my 120 gb drive... blesstivo sees it as 111GB.. is this around what everyone else is getting?

[BrianRTS]

woohoo.. thanks again for all the help guys... I now have a sony svr2000 w/ 49 hours at best qual and 180 at basic! Process went smoothly once I got my own hardware issues banged out. Here is a question tho.. I now have a 30gb "A" and 120 "B". Is it possible to at some time in the future add another 120 gb as the A drive and keep the shows?

[ParadiseDave]

Originally posted by BrianRTS
Ok... blessed my 120 gb drive... blesstivo sees it as 111GB.. is this around what everyone else is getting?

That's exactly what I got on my 120Gig that was installed yesterday. I also have a 180 hour standalone (Philips) now!

Dave

[NathanJr]

TiVo Mad, Tiger, Kazymyr, and Hinsdale, especially: THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!!

I have been lurking around this forum for a long time, wondering if I had what it takes to do one of these upgrades. Your instructions are excellent, detailed, and easy to follow, but I was worried that I could screw up my baby (DSR6K) and be TiVo-less.

You see, I just spent like three weeks with no TiVo while Phillips was swapping mine out. The withdrawals were horrible (first denial, then realization with lots of tears, then deep depression, and finally the anger stage). While it was gone, I discovered this little corner of the forum and decided that I would take steps on my own to prevent another separation, i.e. upgrade and BACKUP!

My problem is that I barely qualify to do this kind of thing. I understand most of the BIOS stuff and HD installation, but when it came to the code entries and Linux in general, I was CLUELESS. I can follow directions, but what if something unexpected happened? Luckily, nothing did, and with Hinsdale's instructions in hand and the Upgrade Forum as a fallback, I felt confident that I could have tackled any unforeseen snags.

The upshot is: I now have a 106hr DSR6k (w/ backup image) AND the gratification of having made it so myself (with your help, of course). Also, I am no longer dependent on the good (but slooooow) people at Philips should I have another HD failure.

You guys are kings-among-men and I thank you again.

Mike a.k.a. NathanJr

[Semore]

Long story short I successfully upgraded my Hughes with a second 80 GB HD and now want to upgrade the original 40GB HD to a 120GB and upgrade the 80 GB B-Drive to 120GB as well.
I used Mfstools to backup (divorce) the drives, but when I restore the backup to the 120GB A-Drive and reinstall it sticks on the powering-up screen.
If I connect the original 80GB B-Drive the system boots fine. I then removed the drives and ran the Mfstools script to expand the A-Drive and Bless the B-Drive and it continues to stick on the Almost There Screen. I am assuming I need to start with a virgin Hughes A-Drive to re-upgrade. Can someone either tell me how to fix the above problem or tell me where I can download a Hughes Drive Image.

[llogan]

Is there any reason whatsoever to save my old hard drives so long as I have the backup image? (i.e. I'm going to reformat them and use them elsewhere)

[hinsdale]

Originally posted by llogan
Is there any reason whatsoever to save my old hard drives so long as I have the backup image? (i.e. I'm going to reformat them and use them elsewhere)

Some people go under the "belt and suspenders" theory of having a CD backup and hard drive backup, but I hate to see perfectly good drives sitting on the shelf if you have a verified backup image already.