What is the best DIY upgrade guide right now?

[gooseduck]

I upgraded my 2 Tivos 3 years ago and the process was fairly simple using mfstools 2.0 and the Hinsdale's guide.

A friend needs to upgrade his series 2 machine so I have a couple of questions to avoid steering him to wrong path:

1. Is mfstools still the 'best' tool for upgrading or is there better free software now?

2. Is the Hinsdale's guide still the one to use?


Thanks.

[robomeister]

Check out www.mfslive.org. This site has the most up to date tools and instructions. There is a bootable CD and a Windows version, both work great.

robomeister

[jporter12]

It's been a while since I did an upgrade, until right now! As I type this, I'm using my other windows box with WinMFS. So far, so good! WinMFS can be had from MFSLive.org as posted in the previous reply.

[zdude1]

How about for an HD-TiVo (HR10-250)? Can anyone point me down the best path for doing the upgrade?

I've upgraded to larger drives in Series1 units about 3-4 years ago, but haven't messed with them again. I've never done a 1 drive to 2 drive upgrade, so I'm a little concerned about beginning. :confused:

My HR10-250 seems to be rebooting about every 45 minutes :mad:, so I'm thinking that it isn't long before it's toast, assuming the drive, or a sector, is going bad. I have many recordings which I haven't yet watched, since it recorded a bunch while I was away for 5 days over the Thanksgiving holiday.

I have a WD2500JB and a Maxtor 500GB that I was hoping would be suitable for use. I'd like to save the image (small file, no recordings), copy the 250 to the new 250 with recordings (shelf the old drive just in case) and then add the 500 to the new 250.

I'd also like to get the networking part of it working, but that's very secondary right now to just getting the thing stable and increased capacity.

I used the Hinsdale guide and MFSTools back when I did the Series1 upgrades. Since I am somewhat familiar with those, is that my best bet?

Thanks,
zdude1

[nethead12]

The WinMFS tool should do you well.

I have been using the other tools/guides for years now. Tested out WinMFS this past Saturday and it was the easiest upgrade tool I've used for far in 8yrs of upgrading tivo.

I upgrade a S1 Dtivo 300gb(expanded twice) to a new 500gb and it kept all my recordings.

[Bsteenson]

I'd like to second the comments on WinMFS. No more having to worry about booting into Linux, whether it's hdc, hdd, hdwhatthehell? or complicated command lines (is that a space? a hyphen? a slash).

Just plug in your TiVo disk, turn on computer, run WinMFS, select TiVo disk, make a truncated backup, turn off computer, plug in new disk, turn computer back on, run WinMFS, select new disk, restore TiVo, turn off computer, put new disk in TiVo, enjoy.

I haven't done it yet where I copied all the programs from one disk to another. If you just copy the software and your settings the whole process takes about 15 minutes. (The longest part is waiting for Windows to boot up each time.)

I've used it with SATA drives for an HD TiVo and PATA drives for a Series 2. Couldn't be simpler.

BS

[jerobi]

I have used several of the apps over the years. All of them work great, but after a recent upgrade I was impressed with the simplicity of WinMFS.