Original Tivo HD Drive + WD Expander to New Internal Drive

[kingmob]

Hi, all.

I have a stock Tivo HD with the original 160GB drive and a 500GB WD DVR Expander. I believe that the Expander is failing. I'd like to save my recordings and replace the internal and external drives with a single larger internal drive. I've looked at the guides and the forums and still have a few questions.

I would be doing this with a Mac Pro, so if I used WinMFS, I would do it XP SP2 running in VMWare Fusion. I could also create a Boot Camp partition, but I haven't had any need to previously. If there's a problem using Fusion and WinMFS, please let me know.

It's possible that I would connect at least one of the three drives involved using USB or Firewire drive dock (maybe two drives, if I have to take the Expander drive out of its case; see question below).

1. Can this be done at all? According to option 3.20 of the MFSLive guide, it is possible, but it also recommends trying WinMFS. Having looked through the forums, it seems that there's some confusion about being able to do this, however. If it can be done, is it better to do it using MFSLive or WinMFS?

2. If I add an eSATA port to my computer, can I connect the Expander that way, or should I pull the drive out of the case and connect it another way?

3. I understand that there's a limit of 1.1TB plus the size of the original drive, so in my case, ~1.25TB. If I can get everything copied to a new drive that's listed as 1.5TB, do I just run mfsadd and install it in the Tivo, or do I need to take some other action to limit the size of the partition?

Thanks!

[robomeister]

It depends on how you added the external drive to the TiVo.

If you did it using the Plug and Play method (unplug power to both Tivo and external drive, connect them, then turn on the external drive, then the Tivo, Tivo detects a new drive and you instruct the Tivo to use it via the menus), then NO, you can't go from 2 drives to 1 drive. At least not with the standard tools. There is a thread on the mfslive.org/forums that describes a very complicated method that some people have gotten to work, but you have to use both WinMFS and the MFSLive Boot CD.

(This is the way I added my drives, so I'm stuck with my 250GB + 500GB. I want to go to 1TB internal only, but I couldn't get it to work.)

If you used WinMFS or the MFSLive Boot CD to add the external drive, then you can use WinMFS to combine the 2 drives into one. Follow the instructions on the mfslive.org site.

Now, the Mac complication is something I don't know about. Also, I don't know if WinMFS will work with FireWire on a PC, much less a Mac.

I would add an eSATA port to the computer. That is the way I have dealt with expanding drives for my Series3s.

Good luck and report back your results.
robomeister

[kingmob]

Thanks for responding.

The external drive is the Tivo-authorized Western Digital My DVR Expander, so I attached it using the plug and play method.

I'll take a look at the MFSLive forum for that thread and see if it's something that I can do.