Drive upgrades in a Premiere unit?

[TVCricket]

I won't ever need a cable card cause I'll be using this with my OTA antenna. Sounds like I may get one from dvr_dude.

[richsadams]

I won't ever need a cable card cause I'll be using this with my OTA antenna. Sounds like I may get one from dvr_dude.Good plan! :up:

[TVCricket]

Pulled the trigger on a Premiere and a 2TB HDD from dvr_dude. Should I get an extended warranty on the Premiere?

[t1voproof]

Opening the box to install the new hard drive will void the warranty. I think it's a waste money if you can replace a hard drive, the main point of failure.

[TVCricket]

So I take it that there's a seal sticker that you gotta break? Otherwise how would they know?

[lessd]

So I take it that there's a seal sticker that you gotta break? Otherwise how would they know?

They can tell the size of the drive, some people have put the original back in and TiVo has honored the warranty but if the TiVo works with the original drive than it would not be a TiVo problem, most TiVos, if they do fail, will have a problem with the hard drive, much less than 1/2% fail for another reason that a TiVo problem. Other problems are cable signal and/or Internet problems etc.

[richsadams]

Pulled the trigger on a Premiere and a 2TB HDD from dvr_dude. Should I get an extended warranty on the Premiere?As Les others have mentioned opening TiVo can void the warranty. TiVo is aware of drive upgrades if they view the logs that TiVo compiles every time it communicates with the "Mother Ship". That said there is no sticker, etc. to indicate the box has been opened like the old days. If something should go south you can slip the original hard drive back in and get warranty service, providing you don't have a need to confess everything you've ever done to the TiVo CSR. AFAIK there are two posted cases of TiVo denying warranty service in the last eight years or so. As long as the box was returned intact; original hard drive, no internal damage, etc. no one else has had any issues getting a replacement.

IIRC the extended warranty is fairly inexpensive, something like $29 for three years? That's a pretty good deal. As others have also mentioned hard drives are the prime fail point by an overwhelming percentage but other things can go south including power supplies, fans, tuners, ports, various chips, etc. Once TiVo is out of the one-year warranty period they charge $149 for a replacement. I'm not big on extended warranties at all, but since TiVo's cost was so little I opted for a three-year extended warranty on our Premiere XL. I think SquareTrade (http://www.squaretrade.com) charges $35 to $40 for the same thing. It's your call of course.

Either way, here is my strong recommendation: Get your TiVo completely set up initially and let it run for a good 30 days to be sure it's behaving properly. Generally if something is going to go wrong it will happen quickly. Once you're satisfied all is well, then go ahead with the upgrade.

[TVCricket]

Won't I then lose all my recordings from those 30 days?

[richsadams]

Won't I then lose all my recordings from those 30 days?http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=8143577#post8143577

[steve614]

Won't I then lose all my recordings from those 30 days?

Since your're going to be using OTA, you can network your Tivo and transfer the recordings you want to save to your computer, and then transfer them back to the Tivo after you install the DVR Dude hard drive.

[kettledrum]

Welcome to the forum. Since the WD20EURS is an AV dedicated drive the AAM default is already 128. Since the drive was manufactured after 09/15/10 you shouldn't have to tweak the Intellipark timeout setting. You should be good to go as is!


It's really easy to upgrade the internal drive. You just burn Comer's ISO file to a CD and get 2 SATA to USB cable/adapters if you don't have a desktop with SATA drives. I used these adapters and they've worked well: http://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-SATA-C35U-Serial-Converter-Adapter/dp/B000E6NGBU/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1291739697&sr=8-8

Then you just stick the CD in the drive, power down the computer (you might need to check your bios to make sure that the CD drive comes before your internal hard drive in the boot-up order but it's probably already set up that way), connect the 2 drives to the 2 adapters (or internally) and start up the computer. Just follow Comer's fairly simple prompts from then on. Really not that bad.

I'm looking at getting a WD20EARS to upgrade my premiere. Is there still a problem with running wdidle to disable intellipark when using SATA - USB adapters such as the ones listed above? But if the drive manufactured date is after 9/15/2010, then this is a moot point anyway?

[richsadams]

I'm looking at getting a WD20EARS to upgrade my premiere. Is there still a problem with running wdidle to disable intellipark when using SATA - USB adapters such as the ones listed above? But if the drive manufactured date is after 9/15/2010, then this is a moot point anyway?If the drive is manufactured after 09/15/10 it's very possible that there would be no need to adjust the Intellipark feature. However there was at least one user that ran into the issue with a drive manufactured mid-November, so there's no guarantee.

IF you need to run wdidle3.exe to adjust the Intellipark timeout it will need to be via a direct SATA connection; it won't work with a USB/SATA adapter.

[mrsean]

I just finished upgrading my TP with a new WD20EVDS that I bought new on EBay for $95 & free shipping.

Thanks, Bro. I just bought one off the same dude for $90 + FS.

[Idol]

Thanks, Bro. I just bought one off the same dude for $90 + FS.

No problem, glad to help. I wish I had bid a little lower myself, $90 is a great deal on this hard drive.

[RickNY]

I have a WD AV-GP WD10EVVS that I installed in my TivoHD about a year ago.. I just ordered a Premiere and will receive it Tuesday. I'd like to put the original TivoHD drive back in the TivoHD, and use the WD10EVVS in the Premiere unit. I do not expect to be able to retain any recordings, settings, etc.

Three questions:

1) If I just pop the original TivoHD drive in the TivoHD now, will it then automatically go back and update itself to the current version of the software?

2) Once I am back running with the original TivoHD drive, how should I prep the WD10EVVS that was previously in the TivoHD for the Premiere?

3) Should I perform the drive upgrade on the Premiere before even firing it up for the first time by imaging the 320GB drive using Comer's CD?

Thanks,
Rick

[richsadams]

1) If I just pop the original TivoHD drive in the TivoHD now, will it then automatically go back and update itself to the current version of the software? Yes, or If you want to receive the latest update ASAP you can try forcing a connection to TiVo to see if it will download. (It may take several connections before the update will appear.)

1. TiVo Central
2. Messages and settings
3. Settings
4. Phone and network
5. Connect to the TiVo service now

Once the download has finished and loaded look at the "Last Status (http://i18.tinypic.com/85w4qk8.jpg)" line on that screen or in System Information and if it says "Pending restart (http://i18.tinypic.com/89q0up2.jpg)" instead of a date your new software will automatically install at 2 a.m. your time. Or you can reboot TiVo and it will install the update immediately. You will see these two screens (http://i20.tinypic.com/mh5bw9.jpg) during the reboot process when it does.

You can reboot TiVo via the menu screens:

1. TiVo Central
2. Messages & Setup
3. Restart or reset system
4. Restart the TiVo DVR

Or you can simply unplug it, wait about 10 seconds for the hard drive to spin down and plug it back in.

2) Once I am back running with the original TivoHD drive, how should I prep the WD10EVVS that was previously in the TivoHD for the Premiere? No prep. Your drive will be reformatted when you run the program.

3) Should I perform the drive upgrade on the Premiere before even firing it up for the first time by imaging the 320GB drive using Comer's CD? IMO no. Based on years of posts about upgrades for all TiVo's it's best to be sure everything is working as it should first. Get your new TiVo fully set up and use it for 30 days or so then upgrade. The upgrade will keep your settings, etc.

Enjoy!

[txporter]

1) If I just pop the original TivoHD drive in the TivoHD now, will it then automatically go back and update itself to the current version of the software?

I agree with what Rich mentioned above. Also, I think* you can use winMFS to make a backup of your current drive and restore that to your original drive to keep all of your CC pairing info and retain the latest software.

*there is the potential that you will not be able to restore to your original drive from the 1TB since it is smaller....not sure, it's been a while since I have done that.

[SUOrangeman]

Finally able to power up my neutered Premiere XL (was sold as-is without hard drive). dvr_dude imaged a WD20EURS I provided him for $50. I'm just now hitting the $200 investment mark for the entire experience (haven't activated service, though.) Not bad, considering everything was essentially done via eBay.

-SUO

[richsadams]

Finally able to power up my neutered Premiere XL (was sold as-is without hard drive). dvr_dude imaged a WD20EURS I provided him for $50. I'm just now hitting the $200 investment mark for the entire experience (haven't activated service, though.) Not bad, considering everything was essentially done via eBay.

-SUOTiVoStein. ;)

[moyekj]

Last night for my Premiere I replaced factory drive with 1TB backup drive that I had imaged a couple of months ago from original drive using comer's excellent util. Booted up fine and of course listings were out of date so I did net connect. After a couple of hours the guide would show listings but nothing at all in To Do list. So I just left it overnight but this morning same problem even after a reboot and another net connect - guide showed listings for 12 days out but nothing in To Do list. Also search would return nothing at all for anything. I would also get warnings when bringing up To Do List there was no guide data even though there was. So I tried a guided setup which took a long, long time (2 hours or so most of it sitting waiting on the "Obtaining Info" screen) and that finally did the trick - though it reverted to HDUI for some reason even though I had SDUI selected before.
So is it normal to have to redo guided setup with a months old backup drive to get TiVo to start recording season passes & wishlists again?

[kettledrum]

If the drive is manufactured after 09/15/10 it's very possible that there would be no need to adjust the Intellipark feature. However there was at least one user that ran into the issue with a drive manufactured mid-November, so there's no guarantee.

IF you need to run wdidle3.exe to adjust the Intellipark timeout it will need to be via a direct SATA connection; it won't work with a USB/SATA adapter.

Thanks, Rich. Can you or anyone recommend a SATA PCI card? My desktop (Dell Dimension 4550) is so old it has no SATA ports. I see several cards for sale at Amazon, but they seem to have middling reviews, at best.

While it's true I may not need wdidle at all, it seems I'd be spending about the same $$ to get a PCI card versus two USB-SATA adapters, so I figured I might as well go for the card.

[gamo62]

If the drive is manufactured after 09/15/10 it's very possible that there would be no need to adjust the Intellipark feature. However there was at least one user that ran into the issue with a drive manufactured mid-November, so there's no guarantee.

IF you need to run wdidle3.exe to adjust the Intellipark timeout it will need to be via a direct SATA connection; it won't work with a USB/SATA adapter.

So, how do you know if you might be affected? What are the symptoms?

[kettledrum]

So, how do you know if you might be affected? What are the symptoms?

The TiVo will get stuck on the "Welcome! Powering up..." screen after a software update. You will then need to cold boot the TiVo. (pull the power plug).

[richsadams]

So, how do you know if you might be affected? What are the symptoms?If WD's Intellipark feature is an issue with a hard drive one of two things can happen. After upgrading TiVo may hang at the "Welcome! Powering up..." screen. In that case nothing can be done to resolve things except to run wdidle3.exe to extend the Intellipark timeout. Or TiVo may boot up properly but will not reboot from a menu restart. That's not as big a deal of course because as kettledrum mentions you can power cycle TiVo (pull the plug and plug it back in) to get it to boot up. However that also means that when TiVo pushes an update the unit will hang when it tries to reboot so some recordings could be missed until TiVo is power cycled.

[richsadams]

Thanks, Rich. Can you or anyone recommend a SATA PCI card? My desktop (Dell Dimension 4550) is so old it has no SATA ports. I see several cards for sale at Amazon, but they seem to have middling reviews, at best.

While it's true I may not need wdidle at all, it seems I'd be spending about the same $$ to get a PCI card versus two USB-SATA adapters, so I figured I might as well go for the card.Here's a PCI SATA Controller Card I'd consider:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132013

It has four internal SATA ports as well as 2 external eSATA ports which might come in handy later. It also comes with some SATA and Molex/SATA power cables as well.

I've never used that particular card, but I have some other Rosewill products and they have all been quite good.

[bdspilot]

thanks

[bdspilot]

bds

[CamDLux]

I purchased a 1.5TB drive from DVR_Dude on eBay. Great directions, and works perfectly! $109 shipped. I am pleased and I would recommend the service!

[RickNY]

I just wanted to say thanks to Comer for releasing a great product. I just purchased a Premier, and had bought a 1 TB WD AVVS drive for my TivoHD several months back. I imaged the virgin Premiere drive onto the 1 TB drive after moving everything on the HD back to the stock HD drive, then removing the format with WinMFS, and the activation and everything worked flawlessly. Thanks again!

[TrackZ]

Hello. I'm in the process of copying data from my stock Premiere HD to an extra Seagate LP 1.5TB that I had available. Everything is going well so far following the instructions on the rosswalker.co.uk guide.

One question I had though is that in the latter steps, they talk about setting your drive to use aggressive power management and maximum acoustic silencing. The guide is very Western Digital-centric though and I'm using a Seagate drive.

I'm just wondering if the hdparm command and the arguments it takes are a WD-only thing or if I can and should run them on the Seagate drive? Could I possibly do something bad to the drive if it is an unsupported command?

Thanks!

[richsadams]

Hello. I'm in the process of copying data from my stock Premiere HD to an extra Seagate LP 1.5TB that I had available. Everything is going well so far following the instructions on the rosswalker.co.uk guide.

One question I had though is that in the latter steps, they talk about setting your drive to use aggressive power management and maximum acoustic silencing. The guide is very Western Digital-centric though and I'm using a Seagate drive.

I'm just wondering if the hdparm command and the arguments it takes are a WD-only thing or if I can and should run them on the Seagate drive? Could I possibly do something bad to the drive if it is an unsupported command?

Thanks!Unfortunately you can't adjust the acoustics (AAM) on any Seagate drive so it is what it is. Not sure about adjusting "power management". If they are referring to adjusting the Intellipark feature, that only applies to Western Digital drives, nothing to do with Seagate or any other brand. So you can probably ignore both of those items.

I took a look at that UK site...didn't see anything about TiVo though I didn't look at everything. Here's the link to everything you need to upgrade your Premiere...

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=455968

Happy upgrading!

[marspinball]

Can't seem to find the instructions on how to upgrade a THD to 317 hours. I thought it was in this post.

Thanks for any help, Martin.

[richsadams]

Can't seem to find the instructions on how to upgrade a THD to 317 hours. I thought it was in this post.

Thanks for any help, Martin.The 2TB upgrade instructions are for the TiVo Premiere but seem to be working successfully with TiVo HD's as well (although not for the original Series3).

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=455968

Happy upgrading!

[jbell73]

I think I know the answer to this already, but figured I would ask in case there have been any advancements in the area of re-upgrading the TiVo Premieres.

I had upgraded Premiere to 1TB a while back, and am now interested in going to 2TB. Is there any way to upgrade and maintain all of the recordings/settings? This is NOT an XL, so the 1TB already has been expanded from the factory 320GB drive.

[marspinball]

The 2TB upgrade instructions are for the TiVo Premiere but seem to be working successfully with TiVo HD's as well (although not for the original Series3).

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=455968

Happy upgrading!

With this method does the supersize option to make it 317 hours work on the THD??

[richsadams]

With this method does the supersize option to make it 317 hours work on the THD??Yes.

[moyekj]

FYI, I got tired of the excessive noise of Hitachi Deskstar (see thread starting here (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=8207274#post8207274) for details) in my Premiere. Amazon has the WD10EVDS for $75 shipped which is not a great price but good enough to prompt me to get it as a replacement for the noisy Hitachi which I will re-purpose as PC drive for backups.
Question I have now is if I wanted to start from copy of 1 TB Hitachi to the 1 TB WD unless the WD turns out to be slightly larger than the Hitachi I won't be able to use comer's method right? Any suggestions on how to accomplish that if WD indeed turns out to be slightly smaller? (I do have the original 320GB Premiere drive which I could start from as a backup plan, but that would mean several season passes would have to be re-done).

[richsadams]

FYI, I got tired of the excessive noise of Hitachi Deskstar (see thread starting here (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=8207274#post8207274) for details) in my Premiere. Amazon has the WD10EVDS for $75 shipped which is not a great price but good enough to prompt me to get it as a replacement for the noisy Hitachi which I will re-purpose as PC drive for backups.
Question I have now is if I wanted to start from copy of 1 TB Hitachi to the 1 TB WD unless the WD turns out to be slightly larger than the Hitachi I won't be able to use comer's method right? Any suggestions on how to accomplish that if WD indeed turns out to be slightly smaller? (I do have the original 320GB Premiere drive which I could start from as a backup plan, but that would mean several season passes would have to be re-done).Hmmm...I guess I'd try it the normal way first and see what happens. Otherwise, couldn't you just use dd to clone it (http://www.ehow.com/how_4924091_clone-hard-drive-linux.html) (or could there be a partition difference between the two drives? :confused:)

As far as the SP's, you can manage those on line now:

http://www.tivo.com/mytivo/howto/gettivoanywhere/howto_seasonpass-manager.html

[moyekj]

Hmmm...I guess I'd try it the normal way first and see what happens. Otherwise, couldn't you just use dd to clone it (http://www.ehow.com/how_4924091_clone-hard-drive-linux.html) (or could there be a partition difference between the two drives? :confused:)

As far as the SP's, you can manage those on line now:

http://www.tivo.com/mytivo/howto/gettivoanywhere/howto_seasonpass-manager.html Thanks Rich. Yes the concern is the cloning part using dd (which comer's util uses) won't work if the destination drive is even slightly smaller than the source. i.e. Not all 1 TB drives give you exactly 1 TB of space - they differ by a few Kbytes usually.

Last time I tried online SP manager it didn't work very well if making more than 1 change at a time.

[BlackBetty]

Whats the best 2TB drive for upgrading a premier?

[richsadams]

Whats the best 2TB drive for upgrading a premier?http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=8263939#post8263939

In addition several folks are happy with the WD20EURS:

http://www.amazon.com/WD-AV-GP-WD20EURS-internal-SATA-300/dp/B0042AG9V8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1294019319&sr=8-1

[aaronwt]

What happened to DVR_Dude on ebay? I was looking for a 1.5TB Premiere upgrade drive for one of my TiVos but I did not see any more auctions listed. The last ones I saw were from last month for only $110 which was a cost I would have gone with.

[richsadams]

What happened to DVR_Dude on ebay? I was looking for a 1.5TB Premiere upgrade drive for one of my TiVos but I did not see any more auctions listed. The last ones I saw were from last month for only $110 which was a cost I would have gone with.No idea about dvrdude, but using Comer's 2TB DIY (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=8143047#post8143047) is about as simple as it gets.

[Idol]

Strange that DVR Dude has no active sales on Ebay. He had the 1Tb and the 2Tb Premiere drives for sale just a couple days ago. The 1.5 Tb was kind of rare for him, but did have a good price.

[moyekj]

Thanks Rich. Yes the concern is the cloning part using dd (which comer's util uses) won't work if the destination drive is even slightly smaller than the source. i.e. Not all 1 TB drives give you exactly 1 TB of space - they differ by a few Kbytes usually.

Last time I tried online SP manager it didn't work very well if making more than 1 change at a time. Got the WD yesterday and cloned it using comer's utility to copy disk -> disk (took 19 hours since I'm using USB-SATA adapters!) When I tried running the expand partition step it failed, likely because partition was already fully expanded. At any rate the WD is in the Premiere and appears to be functioning properly and MUCH, MUCH quieter than the Hitachi Deskstar - glad to get that noisy sucker out of the Premiere.

[richsadams]

Got the WD yesterday and cloned it using comer's utility to copy disk -> disk (took 19 hours since I'm using USB-SATA adapters!) When I tried running the expand partition step it failed, likely because partition was already fully expanded. At any rate the WD is in the Premiere and appears to be functioning properly and MUCH, MUCH quieter than the Hitachi Deskstar - glad to get that noisy sucker out of the Premiere.Excellent! I saw someone had the Hitachi on sale today for about $60...it's really too bad it doesn't qualify for TiVo use anymore, but that's the way it goes.

Enjoy!

[aaronwt]

Got the WD yesterday and cloned it using comer's utility to copy disk -> disk (took 19 hours since I'm using USB-SATA adapters!) When I tried running the expand partition step it failed, likely because partition was already fully expanded. At any rate the WD is in the Premiere and appears to be functioning properly and MUCH, MUCH quieter than the Hitachi Deskstar - glad to get that noisy sucker out of the Premiere.

Did you enable the acoustic management on the Hitachi? I had several of them in my S3/TiVoHDs and with the Acoustic management set at 128 it was just as loud/quiet as the WD drives.

[richsadams]

Did you enable the acoustic management on the Hitachi? I had several of them in my S3/TiVoHDs and with the Acoustic management set at 128 it was just as loud/quiet as the WD drives.Although the earlier editions of the Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.c series of HDD's were very quiet out of the box and the AAM could be adjusted to make them even more quiet, the latest models are noisier and the AAM can no longer be adjusted (using hddscan or any version of the Hitachi Feature Tool, new or old). It looks like both events occurred with the drives manufactured after September 1 or possibly earlier.

The drives were a good option (I have a couple that have been flawless for more than a year) but there are a number of folks that ran into these issues recently and posted their experiences here...including moyekj. As mentioned earlier, it's too bad because they were a viable alternative.

[aaronwt]

Any idea why AM can no longer be adjusted?

[richsadams]

Any idea why AM can no longer be adjusted?None. Seems to have been a firmware change. :(

[Dr_Diablo]

just activated my Premiere

quwation is should I will the drive before adding an exteral drive?

[richsadams]

just activated my Premiere

quwation is should I will the drive before adding an exteral drive?Your call I guess. It wouldn't make any difference either way unless the external drive failed for some reason. If that happened all of the recordings made from the day the external drive was connected would be lost.

You might want to consider upgrading your Premiere to a 2TB internal drive instead. The cost would be equal to or probably lower than buying a WD DVR Expander. Everything you need to know can be found here...

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=455968

As DIY upgrades go it's very simple and having just one drive reduces the number of failure points. Just a thought.

[kettledrum]

I'm having trouble getting HDDscan or the Hitachi feature tool to recognize my new drive (WD20EARS) to set AAM.

In HDDscan, my drive appears as a SCSI drive when I go to the features menu...the "IDE features" choice is greyed out and not selectable.

Using the Hitachi tool, the drive is not recognized at all.

I bought the Rosewill RC-212 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132009&Tpk=rosewill%20rc212) PCI SATA card since my computer is ancient. Everything worked flawlessly using comer's instructions and then using wdidle3. The SATA drives on the new cards were recognized with no problems.

I've looked at the BIOS for a setting to change and nothing popped out at me as something to change. I also looked at the setup tool at startup for the SATA card, and there was nothing there for me to adjust. Any suggestions as for what to try next?

Edit: I found this (http://en.rlab.ru/forum/index.php?topic=16.0) on the HDDscan forum. It's an old post, but it doesn't look promising.

Oh, Rich, I should also note that my drive, which came from Dell, is dated in October 2010 (can't remember the exact date and the drive is in the computer right now) and it *did* indeed need wdidle applied. It showed as 8 seconds when I ran the tool.

[supersnoop]

I'm having trouble getting HDDscan or the Hitachi feature tool to recognize my new drive (WD20EARS) to set AAM.

In HDDscan, my drive appears as a SCSI drive when I go to the features menu...the "IDE features" choice is greyed out and not selectable.

Using the Hitachi tool, the drive is not recognized at all.

I bought the Rosewill RC-212 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132009&Tpk=rosewill%20rc212) PCI SATA card since my computer is ancient. Everything worked flawlessly using comer's instructions and then using wdidle3. The SATA drives on the new cards were recognized with no problems.

I've looked at the BIOS for a setting to change and nothing popped out at me as something to change. I also looked at the setup tool at startup for the SATA card, and there was nothing there for me to adjust. Any suggestions as for what to try next?

Edit: I found this (http://en.rlab.ru/forum/index.php?topic=16.0) on the HDDscan forum. It's an old post, but it doesn't look promising.

Oh, Rich, I should also note that my drive, which came from Dell, is dated in October 2010 (can't remember the exact date and the drive is in the computer right now) and it *did* indeed need wdidle applied. It showed as 8 seconds when I ran the tool.

Search for an older version of HDDScan. 3.0, 3.1, and 3.2 should all work. For some reason, I couldn't get 3.3 to work for me, either.

[wesbc]

I'm having trouble getting HDDscan or the Hitachi feature tool to recognize my new drive (WD20EARS) to set AAM.

In HDDscan, my drive appears as a SCSI drive when I go to the features menu...the "IDE features" choice is greyed out and not selectable.

I had the same problem and it turns out to be my Thermaltake BlacX external dock and this is only for my WD drives. If I connect directly to the MB it sees it fine.

My issue is HDDscan shows the drive currently already set to 254 for AAM with 128 being recommended. It's currently showing AAM as disable and I'm not sure how to enable it. If I click on set for the AAM at 254 it states parameter is invalid.

[richsadams]

I had the same problem and it turns out to be my Thermaltake BlacX external dock and this is only for my WD drives. If I connect directly to the MB it sees it fine.

My issue is HDDscan shows the drive currently already set to 254 for AAM with 128 being recommended. It's currently showing AAM as disable and I'm not sure how to enable it. If I click on set for the AAM at 254 it states parameter is invalid.Hmmm...I just ran the current version of hddscan using a Thermaltake BlackX dock connected to an 8 year-old Dell PC with a WD10EARS HDD and and it worked fine.

Keep in mind the program will only recognize one drive slot if it is a dual drive dock.

Here's how you adjust/enable AAM:

http://i53.tinypic.com/a1mgd2.jpg

[richsadams]

I'm having trouble getting HDDscan or the Hitachi feature tool to recognize my new drive (WD20EARS) to set AAM.

In HDDscan, my drive appears as a SCSI drive when I go to the features menu...the "IDE features" choice is greyed out and not selectable.

Using the Hitachi tool, the drive is not recognized at all.

I bought the Rosewill RC-212 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132009&Tpk=rosewill%20rc212) PCI SATA card since my computer is ancient. Everything worked flawlessly using comer's instructions and then using wdidle3. The SATA drives on the new cards were recognized with no problems.

I've looked at the BIOS for a setting to change and nothing popped out at me as something to change. I also looked at the setup tool at startup for the SATA card, and there was nothing there for me to adjust. Any suggestions as for what to try next?

Edit: I found this (http://en.rlab.ru/forum/index.php?topic=16.0) on the HDDscan forum. It's an old post, but it doesn't look promising.

Oh, Rich, I should also note that my drive, which came from Dell, is dated in October 2010 (can't remember the exact date and the drive is in the computer right now) and it *did* indeed need wdidle applied. It showed as 8 seconds when I ran the tool.I have no idea why your WD20EARS would appear as an SCSI drive. :confused: I don't have one so unfortunately I can't test it. I know others have successfully adjusted the AAM on a WD20EARS, but I don't recall how they were attached, via a SATA port or using a USB adapter or drive dock (both of which will work w/hddscan BTW).

Regarding wdidle3.exe, did you try booting the drive up before you ran the program? Even though the newer drives still have the Intellipark timeout set to 8 seconds by default, apparently WD changed something else in the firmware so the timeout no longer needs to be adjusted.

I don't know why it would make a difference but you might try a USB adapter or dock to see if you can adjust the AAM.

[kettledrum]

Search for an older version of HDDScan. 3.0, 3.1, and 3.2 should all work. For some reason, I couldn't get 3.3 to work for me, either.

Last night I did find 3.2 and downloaded it and tried it, to no avail. I have not sought out earlier versions yet.

I have no idea why your WD20EARS would appear as an SCSI drive. :confused: I don't have one so unfortunately I can't test it. I know others have successfully adjusted the AAM on a WD20EARS, but I don't recall how they were attached, via a SATA port or using a USB adapter or drive dock (both of which will work w/hddscan BTW).

Regarding wdidle3.exe, did you try booting the drive up before you ran the program? Even though the newer drives still have the Intellipark timeout set to 8 seconds by default, apparently WD changed something else in the firmware so the timeout no longer needs to be adjusted.

I don't know why it would make a difference but you might try a USB adapter or dock to see if you can adjust the AAM.

I am fairly certain that it is not the WD20EARS drive that is causing the problem, it is the PCI SATA card that is the culprit. If I had a USB adapter or a dock I would try that, but unfortunately I don't.

Regarding Wdidle3.... The drive was never booted except for comer's CD, and as soon as I finished with the copy, expand, & supersize I shut down and immediately booted using the wdidle CD I created. I did not put the drive back into the TiVo to try it before running wdidle3. I hadn't heard that the newer drives still reported an 8 second timeout so I figured I might as well check the setting while I had it out of the TiVo. Good to know!

[txporter]

I have no idea why your WD20EARS would appear as an SCSI drive. :confused: I don't have one so unfortunately I can't test it. I know others have successfully adjusted the AAM on a WD20EARS, but I don't recall how they were attached, via a SATA port or using a USB adapter or drive dock (both of which will work w/hddscan BTW).

I adjusted the AAM on my WD20EARS with a USB adapter, for what it's worth.

[Bill McNeal]

Has anyone lost a CableCard channel after upgrading their drive? It happened to me (I lost Comedy Central HD, even though SD comes through OK), and I'm wondering if it's related to if the CableCard sees different hardware, or if it's the cable company's fault.

[gil sonnier]

i tried to run wdidle3 on my computer and my computer wouldn't recognize my cd drive.
what are my options?
i have a premier and a wd20ears

[richsadams]

i tried to run wdidle3 on my computer and my computer wouldn't recognize my cd drive.
what are my options?
i have a premier and a wd20earsSee Section V, #14 here:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5616160#post5616160

[mskvarenina]

What happened to DVR_Dude on ebay?

Interesting. That may explain why he hasn't answered my email. Last September I bought a 2TB WD20EARS from him. worked great for a while but last week my TiVo reverted back to the old interface (which I actually prefer because it's much faster) but then Friday I got the green screen of death. After letting it cycle through numerous restarts overnight I put back the original drive and everything is fine now.

So what should I do now? I wasn't sure if DVR_Dude would even replace the drive but if he's closed up shop, what's my next best alternative and should I resuse the drive elsewherer? I do have a NAS that needs a 2TB drive. In a RAID environment I could probably put it in and if it fails no big deal as I could just replac it then.

[richsadams]

Interesting. That may explain why he hasn't answered my email. Last September I bought a 2TB WD20EARS from him. worked great for a while but last week my TiVo reverted back to the old interface (which I actually prefer because it's much faster) but then Friday I got the green screen of death. After letting it cycle through numerous restarts overnight I put back the original drive and everything is fine now.

So what should I do now? I wasn't sure if DVR_Dude would even replace the drive but if he's closed up shop, what's my next best alternative and should I resuse the drive elsewherer? I do have a NAS that needs a 2TB drive. In a RAID environment I could probably put it in and if it fails no big deal as I could just replac it then.Bummer. I'd run Western Digital's Lifeguard (http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?lang=en) diagnostics to see if there's a drive problem (it sounds like there is). The "quick test" may give you an answer but the extended read/write/read test is about the only way to guarantee that things are good or not. The quick test/surface scan doesn't have any impact on the data, however the extended test writes all zeroes to the drive and of course that wipes out anything on it. However if you're considering repurposing the drive anyway that's not a big deal. (Be aware that you'll probably want to run the extended diagnostics overnight as it can take 12 hours or more to run.)

I've purchased things from ebay now and then but if it's critical that I have someone to contact for support I stick with known vendors, one's that will likely be there a year or ten from now. That's not to say anything bad about DVRDude, but there's always a risk an ebay seller will disappear even if they have perfect feedback. Hope he turns up to take care of you.

Going forward Comer's jfms DIY Premiere upgrade program (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=455968) is really a piece of cake if you're comfortable connecting a hard drive to a computer. (Up to 2TB upgrades.) Weaknees.com (http://weaknees.com) or DVRUpgrade.com (http://www.dvrupgrade.com) (one in the same company now) are good bets for pre-imaged drives like DVRDude was selling. They cost more but they've been in business for many years now.

FWIW your Western Digital drive has a three-year warranty. If it does have problems (bad sectors, etc.) you should still be able to get a replacement drive. You can process the exchange on your own by going to the Western Digital Product Replacement site (http://websupport.wdc.com/warranty/rmainfo.asp?custtype=end&lang=en) OR you can call Western Digital Customer Support at 1-800-ASK-WDC (275-4932) to have an agent process the exchange.

Hope that helps and best of luck!

[mskvarenina]

Thanks, I did find DVR DUDE still selling on eBay and his ads say that after 30 days he will work with you (me) on an RMA with WD then for up to a year re-image the drive for free. This sounds reasonable. In the past I did do my. Own hard drives using MFS Tools? But this time around there was something at the time (inn the September timeframe) that made it sound easier to just buy a pre-imaged drive. Since that time however it seems there are better tools out there for DIY'rs so maybe I'll just go to WD, get the drive replaced then use one of the tools you and others have recommended.

[crabbon]

Looks like weaknees is selling the 4TB Tivo Premiere's again:

http://www.weaknees.com/tivo-premiere-hd-dvr-series4.php

I know they stopped for some time. I wonder if the problem they had has been resolved.

[dshlyam]

Looks like weaknees is selling the 4TB Tivo Premiere's again:

http://www.weaknees.com/tivo-premiere-hd-dvr-series4.php

I know they stopped for some time. I wonder if the problem they had has been resolved.

Notice it's a single drive 4TB. I wonder if that's the key.

[gamo62]

Notice it's a single drive 4TB. I wonder if that's the key.

I don't think they have 4TB drives out yet. The 3TB drives are relatively new.

[dshlyam]

I don't think they have 4TB drives out yet. The 3TB drives are relatively new.

You're right. I didn't read past the "...Single Drive Premiere! (4 TB)"

[richsadams]

Looks like weaknees is selling the 4TB Tivo Premiere's again:

http://www.weaknees.com/tivo-premiere-hd-dvr-series4.php

I know they stopped for some time. I wonder if the problem they had has been resolved.

It would be interesting to see the partition structure of the internal drive. We'd just need to get our hands on one. Volunteers?

Notice it's a single drive 4TB. I wonder if that's the key.AFAIK no one is making a 4TB drive. Per the description:

Includes a 2TB internal drive and a 2TB external drive.

[orangeboy]

Samsung announces: http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/storage/display/20110308081634_Samsung_Shows_Off_Prototype_of_4TB_Hard_Disk_ Drive.html


Samsung Electronics has demonstrated the world's first hard disk drive (HDD) with 4TB capacity and 1TB platters. The storage solution was shown off at CeBIT trade show last week, but it is unclear when Samsung is in position to ship it commercially.

[richsadams]

Samsung announces: http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/storage/display/20110308081634_Samsung_Shows_Off_Prototype_of_4TB_Hard_Disk_ Drive.htmlHa! Wonder if the final product will be as cool as the prototype...or if they'll "mainstream" it like the car companies. It'll probably end up being a 3200 RPM 3.6TB drive by the time it hits the market. :p

[kmsarno]

I have looked over this and other threads and am confused by apparently conflicting advice.

After having an S3 for several years, I just got a premier XL which I am upgrading internally to 2 TB.

The Verizon tech was just here this morning to deliver and pair the M-card. That's all working fine. However, following advice on this forum, I waited to start the drive upgrade process (with comer's CD) until AFTER my system was completely set up (channels, cable card, other settings, deleting "tour" junk etc.).

Now, I have just read a later comment on this thread that says that upgrading my disk will invalidate the cable card pairing by creating an effectively new TiVO, and I will have to have the cable guy back again? Is this true? Did I goof by waiting? Is the drill to replace the drive before the cable card installation, or after?

Thanks.

[weaknees]

I have looked over this and other threads and am confused by apparently conflicting advice.

After having an S3 for several years, I just got a premier XL which I am upgrading internally to 2 TB.

The Verizon tech was just here this morning to deliver and pair the M-card. That's all working fine. However, following advice on this forum, I waited to start the drive upgrade process (with comer's CD) until AFTER my system was completely set up (channels, cable card, other settings, deleting "tour" junk etc.).

Now, I have just read a later comment on this thread that says that upgrading my disk will invalidate the cable card pairing by creating an effectively new TiVO, and I will have to have the cable guy back again? Is this true? Did I goof by waiting? Is the drill to replace the drive before the cable card installation, or after?

Thanks.

The settings that the CableCARD uses are on your current drive. If you copy that data over to the replacement, those setting go with it. So you should be fine.

[kmsarno]

The settings that the CableCARD uses are on your current drive. If you copy that data over to the replacement, those setting go with it. So you should be fine.

@Weaknees: great that's a relief. Thanks very much for your immediate and reassuring response.

--Ken S.

[richsadams]

@Weaknees: great that's a relief. Thanks very much for your immediate and reassuring response.

--Ken S.Plus AFAIK Verizon (FiOS) has not started pairing their cable cards to the DVR anyway, so no worries there either.

Happy upgrading!

[titsataki]

hi everybody,

I am considering doing a 2TB upgrade on my premiere.

I was looking for drives and this one seemed like a good condidate.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136783&cm_re=Western_Digital_AV-GP-_-22-136-783-_-Product

what do you guys think?

Any other notable suggestions for drives?

Thanks

Nick

[jonja]

hi everybody,

I am considering doing a 2TB upgrade on my premiere.

I was looking for drives and this one seemed like a good condidate.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136783&cm_re=Western_Digital_AV-GP-_-22-136-783-_-Product

what do you guys think?

Any other notable suggestions for drives?

Thanks

Nick

I used this drive and it worked well. It is an AV drive and already tuned perfectly for DVRs. Been using it for 3 or 4 months now.

[Stuxnet]

That's a fine drive... FWIW you can get the WD20EARS for 74.99 with code EMCKDKA26 through June 15.

[titsataki]

That's a fine drive... FWIW you can get the WD20EARS for 74.99 with code EMCKDKA26 through June 15.

Do I have to adjust the noise level and the park setting?
Does it really matter it is not an AV version?

thanks for your help.


Regards

Nick

[Stuxnet]

Do I have to adjust the noise level and the park setting?
Does it really matter it is not an AV version?

thanks for your help.


Regards

NickThe "noise level" was preset to the recommended level (128) on my WD20EARS, so no adjustment was necessary. [EDIT: I stand corrected ("senior moment"). The preset value is 254, so I changed mine to 128.] The "intellipark" setting doesn't need adjusting unless the drive "hangs" during a soft reboot. I was too lazy to consider having to pull the drive out if that happened, so I made the adjustment before I installed the drive.

You don't need an AV version... EARS and EADS are both recommended by many here.

[richsadams]

The "noise level" was preset to the recommended level (128) on my WD20EARS, so no adjustment was necessary. Interesting. The default setting for WD's EARS drives is 254...which is fairly quiet so adjusting it to 128 (the default of their dedicated A/V drives) may not be necessary.

[Stuxnet]

Interesting. The default setting for WD's EARS drives is 254...which is fairly quiet so adjusting it to 128 (the default of their dedicated A/V drives) may not be necessary.Rich, I just picked up a second EARS... after I finish the diagnostic run, I'll open up HDDScan and see what it tells me... I hadn't planned on resetting it since it's going inside a PC.

EDIT: I was curious so I stopped the diagnostic... Rich is correct. The default setting is 254. So... I must have changed the EARS I put in my Premiere... just don't recall doing so...

[titsataki]

yes checked as well. I decided to go ahead and set AAM to 128.
I do not think it matters much for me as it is in a cabinet behind glass doors.
I also went ahead and disabled and intelipark feature.

All is good.

Nick

PS: FYI the premier drive was a WD AV drive. (I am sure is well known)

[richsadams]

Rich, I just picked up a second EARS... after I finish the diagnostic run, I'll open up HDDScan and see what it tells me... I hadn't planned on resetting it since it's going inside a PC.

EDIT: I was curious so I stopped the diagnostic... Rich is correct. The default setting is 254. So... I must have changed the EARS I put in my Premiere... just don't recall doing so...Ha, after sleep walking through all of the steps it's very easy to lose some of those bread crumbs we drop along the way. ;)

[richsadams]

PS: FYI the premier drive was a WD AV drive. (I am sure is well known)Indeed...TiVo Premiere OEM hard drives:

TiVo Premiere: WD320AVVS

TiVo Premiere XL: WD10EVVS

[peasofcrap]

so i purchased this drive without doing enough reserach and i think i have to soft reboot problem.

is there some adjustment i can do to the drive to keep this from happening? i could not find any info on this drive for tivos.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004CCS266

[danjw1]

Has anyone tried the Western Digital 3TB EURS drive, WD30EURS?

[retiredqwest]

Has anyone tried the Western Digital 3TB EURS drive, WD30EURS?

Tivo doesn't recognize ANY 3TB HDD. 2TB max.

[richsadams]

so i purchased this drive without doing enough reserach and i think i have to soft reboot problem.

is there some adjustment i can do to the drive to keep this from happening? i could not find any info on this drive for tivos.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004CCS266

Seagate drives cannot be adjusted for anything. WD drives suffer from boot issues (sometimes) which can be resolved by making an adjustment to the Intellipark setting. If you're having a boot problem it's something different.

Let us know exactly what's happening and we can try to sort it out.

[peasofcrap]

Seagate drives cannot be adjusted for anything. WD drives suffer from boot issues (sometimes) which can be resolved by making an adjustment to the Intellipark setting. If you're having a boot problem it's something different.

Let us know exactly what's happening and we can try to sort it out.

About four times in the past month I find the tivo flashing red and blue every so often. When i turn on the TV, the tivo is not working.

i have to pull the plug and reset. it sometimes sits on the welcome screen or it boots normally with no problems.

i read on these boards that if i try a soft reboot from the menu and it hangs, its the Intellipark setting but i guess that is only on WDs.

i guess i have a faulty drive?

thanks for the help all!

[Stuxnet]

Did you run the Seagate HDD diagnostics before you installed? You can download a bootable diagnostic cd here. (http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=seatooldreg&vgnextoid=480bd20cacdec010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD)

You'll need to pull the drive and connect it to a SATA port on your pc, then boot up on the cd.

[peasofcrap]

Did you run the Seagate HDD diagnostics before you installed? You can download a bootable diagnostic cd here. (http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=seatooldreg&vgnextoid=480bd20cacdec010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD)

You'll need to pull the drive and connect it to a SATA port on your pc, then boot up on the cd.

Ok noob question. That cd will tell me if the drive is good or not?

[unitron]

Ok noob question. That cd will tell me if the drive is good or not?

That's what it's supposed to do, and possibly fix fixable problems, after running a long test program.

Never connect a TiVo drive to a GigaByte brand motherboard.

Google "gigabyte host protected area" to learn why.

[barcafan1990]

Hello everyone, I'm interested in upgrading my Premiere Hard Drive to a 1 TB drive. My sister and I live together and share one TiVo. Between our season passes - mostly heres - the HD is filling up and deleting our shows before we can watch them.

I'm sure the directions are in these forums, but I've spend almost an hour now perusing without finding anything.

Can someone please direct me to either a link or a thread that has directions to upgrade?
From what I understand I need some kind of software to clone the original HD to the new one, right?
I'm looking at the following HD on amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Caviar-Desktop-WD10EARS/dp/B002U1N95K/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1308885196&sr=8-5

Will that work with the Premiere?

Thank you in advance!

[unitron]

Hello everyone, I'm interested in upgrading my Premiere Hard Drive to a 1 TB drive. My sister and I live together and share one TiVo. Between our season passes - mostly heres - the HD is filling up and deleting our shows before we can watch them.

I'm sure the directions are in these forums, but I've spend almost an hour now perusing without finding anything.

Can someone please direct me to either a link or a thread that has directions to upgrade?
From what I understand I need some kind of software to clone the original HD to the new one, right?
I'm looking at the following HD on amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Caviar-Desktop-WD10EARS/dp/B002U1N95K/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1308885196&sr=8-5

Will that work with the Premiere?

Thank you in advance!

Two possible solutions to your problem other than replacing the internal drive are

1. Adding an external drive (has to be the particular Western Digital model(s) that are TiVo approved).

2. Getting a big, like 1 or 2 TB, internal drive, making it all one big NTFS partition, and putting it into a computer on which you run the free version of TiVo Desktop, and backing up shows over your home network from the TiVo to the computer until you have time to watch them, and then copying them back to the TiVo, or watching them on the computer.

I don't have a TiVo new enough to try the external drive trick on, but I lean toward agreeing with others that it doubles your chances of losing all of your recordings from hard drive failure.

The nice thing about option 2 is that if the TiVo conks out you can copy the backed up shows to any other TiVo on your account, Series 2 or newer.


As for the question which you actually asked, about the WD10EARS, I think others here have used that drive successfully, but you might as well go with a 2TB drive if you're going to be replacing the internal drive.

And don't do the work on a GigaByte brand motherboard.

The Drive Expansion and Drive Upgrade FAQ

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=370784

started out discussing Series 3 drive replacement, but sort of spread out to be a general "which drive in which TiVo" thread and contains much info and wisdom.

However, the Premiere uses somewhat different software than the Series 1, 2, and 3 for drive upgrading, so the

Premiere Drive Upgrade Instructions - with all-in-one jmfs Live CD

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=455968

are a must-read, although it probably wouldn't hurt to read the

Tivo HD Upgrade Instructions - using JMFS

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=462179

as well, bearing in mind that it's for the Series 3 platform and not the Series 4 (Premiere).

Before there was JMFS, there was MFS.

It wouldn't be a terrible idea to download the image file for the MFS Live cd v1.4 from mfslive.org and burn a copy just to have on hand.

You could even pick up a cheap (or free) used Series 2 on Craigslist to practice on with the MFS Live cd.

[Stuxnet]

Hello everyone, I'm interested in upgrading my Premiere Hard Drive to a 1 TB driveUse a 2TB drive. You can get a compatible HDD for less than $80 if you'll DIY.

[barcafan1990]

@unitron thanks for the quick reply and the links. I forgot to mention I only have a macbook and was wondering if the copy/cloning software would work...which I read in those threads that it does, but, my Mac only has two USB ports and I'm looking at these SATA/USB adapters:

http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=103&cp_id=10315&cs_id=1031501&p_id=5189&seq=1&format=2

Unfortunately, they each require two USB ports totaling 4 needed to do the hard drive copying. So I'll be using a friends PC with more USB ports or hopping on a PC in the campus computer lab.

@Stuxnet I really want that 2GB drive but with the cost of the adapters (mentioned above) that I also need to buy I'll have reached my budget. I think we'll be fine with more than twice the space we have now in buying the 1TB drive. I was looking at used 2TB drives but I'm skeptical buying Hard Drives used.

[unitron]

@unitron thanks for the quick reply and the links. I forgot to mention I only have a macbook and was wondering if the copy/cloning software would work...which I read in those threads that it does, but, my Mac only has two USB ports and I'm looking at these SATA/USB adapters:

http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=103&cp_id=10315&cs_id=1031501&p_id=5189&seq=1&format=2

Unfortunately, they each require two USB ports totaling 4 needed to do the hard drive copying. So I'll be using a friends PC with more USB ports or hopping on a PC in the campus computer lab.

@Stuxnet I really want that 2GB drive but with the cost of the adapters (mentioned above) that I also need to buy I'll have reached my budget. I think we'll be fine with more than twice the space we have now in buying the 1TB drive. I was looking at used 2TB drives but I'm skeptical buying Hard Drives used.

That wasn't a quick reply, I took some time and put some thought into it, which is something I fear you aren't going to do enough of in your eagerness to do the upgrade. Which is how people wind up with Premieres in which the original hard drive no longer works, either.

I'm guessing those adapters need 2 USB plugs in order to draw enough power to run the drive and the electronics, but the ad you linked to says they're for 2.5 inch drives, i.e., laptop drives. You'll be dealing with 3.5 inch "desktop" drives, which draw even more power.

The thought of doing this on a college computer lab computer really, really scares me, partially because I used to work as a computer lab monitor at a college computer lab.

If your friend's computer is a "desktop" model, and does not have a GigaByte brand motherboard, better to open it up and disconnect all drives except the cd/dvd to boot from, and hook up the TiVo drive and its intended replacement to the board's SATA ports and power supply plugs.

If that's the kind of thing which you've never done before, you need to learn how on something a little more "expendable".

One place where you're proceeding with the proper caution, though, used hard drives are a spin of the roulette wheel at best.

[myblubu]

Got another Premiere and looking at upgrading the drive to 2TB. I used the WD20EARS last time and adusted the AAM and intellipark and everything worked fine.

Was just looking at newegg and the WD20EARS is $79.99 but they have a WD20EARX for $10 more. the EARX is 6.0 GB/s vs 3.0 GB/s for the EARS. Will this make a difference in the Tivo???

Just wondering if it's worth the 10 extra bucks and if the EARX is a good option for a Tivo upgrade?

[unitron]

...Was just looking at newegg and the WD20EARS is $79.99 but they have a WD20EARX for $10 more. the EARX is 6.0 GB/s vs 3.0 GB/s for the EARS. Will this make a difference in the Tivo???
...

Yes, it will make the upgrade $10 more expensive.:)

Check the specs on the original drive. It's probably only 1.5 GB/s and only 8 or 16 MB of cache.

I know nothing about the EARX, but it seems the DOA rate on the EARS is increasing lately.

You could use an EADS, if you're lucky enoough to find one, or an EACS. I think they're both out of production now, so maybe they'd be from before WD's QC started to slip.

[myblubu]

Yes, it will make the upgrade $10 more expensive.:)



LOL - I read this 2-3 times before I got it! LOL

Do you know if the 6 GB/s will make a difference in performance in the Tivo?

[unitron]

...
Do you know if the 6 GB/s will make a difference in performance in the Tivo?

I think I'll leave that low hanging fruit for richsadams, I've got to get back to getting ready for my weekend with Irene.

[richsadams]

LOL - I read this 2-3 times before I got it! LOL

Do you know if the 6 GB/s will make a difference in performance in the Tivo?The long answer is "no". (We can be a bunch of wise guys here, get used to it. :) )

Don't hesitate to use the forum's search function...you'd be surprised what you might find! ;)

Here's what I found out about the EARX when someone else asked about it...

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=8672565#post8672565

FWIW here are the specs for the TiVo Series4 Premiere and Premiere XL OEM HDD's:

TiVo Premiere = WD3200AVVS (http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/AAG/ENG/2178-771131.pdf) SATA3, 8MB Cache

TiVo Premiere XL = WD10EVVS (http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-701250.pdf) SATA3, 8MB Cache

Happy upgrading!

[richsadams]

I think I'll leave that low hanging fruit for richsadams, I've got to get back to getting ready for my weekend with Irene.Leaving town I hope! Best of luck with Irene...I hear she's not happy and when momma ain't happy, ain't no one happy!

[Dr_Diablo]

Irene's been downgraded to a Cat 1 hurricane an has stalled just west of Hatterus winds gusting to 105 mph

[richsadams]

Irene's been downgraded to a Cat 1 hurricane an has stalled just west of Hatterus winds gusting to 105 mphStill no fun for those in the path of her wrath I'd suppose. Best of luck to all of our right coast friends!!

[unitron]

Leaving town I hope! Best of luck with Irene...I hear she's not happy and when momma ain't happy, ain't no one happy!

We're far enough from the coast and the river and in a brick home that survived Fran in '96, so stayed put. Came through reasonably well, and am currently grateful not to be hearing the constant sound of wind and generators.:)

[husky55]

We survived LOL !!! Lost power, but we expected it. Our backyard is looking like a war zone, branches, leaves, trees etc... but no windows flying off so we are very grateful. We are close to the long Island Sound, on the CT shore.

Tivo and Comcast are both out as of this moment. Thank God we got our power back. !!!

[unitron]

We survived LOL !!! Lost power, but we expected it. Our backyard is looking like a war zone, branches, leaves, trees etc... but no windows flying off so we are very grateful. We are close to the long Island Sound, on the CT shore.

Tivo and Comcast are both out as of this moment. Thank God we got our power back. !!!

If you've got power you can turn on the TV and catch up on all the stuff backlogged on your TiVo.:)

There's an actual Irene thread where hurricane talk is on-topic

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=474782

so I'll just say glad to hear you came out lightly, compared to others, and as for gratitude for power restoration, I feel ya, brother!

[richsadams]

Yes indeed, glad to hear that most everyone came out of the storm with their lives and most of their possessions!

[unitron]

Yes indeed, glad to hear that most everyone came out of the storm with their lives and most of their possessions!

Now if only the last few shreds of my sanity had survived.

Also lost, temper and patience.

But seriously, we (our house) got off light, it was just dark and hot and humid for couple of days.

[lessd]

Now if only the last few shreds of my sanity had survived.

Also lost, temper and patience.

But seriously, we (our house) got off light, it was just dark and hot and humid for couple of days.

AH! the beauty of a automatic whole home natural gas generator, except everybody within a street of me lost power, but I did not so my great generator never had to run, I think the power co. knows i have this big generator and makes sure I never have any power outages.

[L David Matheny]

AH! the beauty of a automatic whole home natural gas generator, except everybody within a street of me lost power, but I did not so my great generator never had to run, I think the power co. knows i have this big generator and makes sure I never have any power outages.

That's called Murphy Insurance (putting Murphy's Law to work for you). A good friend of mine bought a nice snowblower several years ago, and I don't think we've had a significant snow since.

[dkraft]

That's called Murphy Insurance (putting Murphy's Law to work for you). A good friend of mine bought a nice snowblower several years ago, and I don't think we've had a significant snow since.

Storm Shutters back in 2006, haven't used them once. Told the guy that sold them to me "I hope this is the biggest waste of money I will ever spend". So far it is. :)

[husky55]

A little update from Madison, CT.

On August 27, 2011, the night that Irene was supposed to reach Connecticut the next day Sunday, the now downgraded tropical storm hit us and we lost power, telephone ( land line and att cell), and of course comcast and tivo. In short everything was gone. Slowly however, we got things back to normal and we are really the lucky ones. There are many along the CT shore line who lost their homes and other things, some even lost their lives. As of today, some 30-40,000 people still do not have power, mostly in eastern CT.

So after a week, we got comcast back. Since we have a Comcast set top box we can see that all our channels are back. We still did not get our Tivos back. I had assumed that Tivo network was down. But after a chat with a Tivo CR, we were told that Tivo network was up and something was wrong with our Tivo boxes.

So what are the chances that 2 Tivos boxes with APC XS 1500 backup battery and surge protection would go bad at the same time? Never in a million years, yeah right. It happened to us.

Both Tivos ( 1 HD 1 Premiere) showed STARTING UP... A FEW MINUTES MORE and then BLACK SCREEN...

The Tivo CR told me that Tivo will send a replacement (refurbished) for my units probably at some costs if I had wanted them to do so. I know I have to call Comcast for service since comcast CR in CT cannot pair cable cards if I had chosen that option.

But being a member of this community for many years, I thought of a DIY project. Most probably it's a HD problem, then possibly a power supply problem. I had bought a Premier for parts when they are selling them for $99 the cost of a PS or a couple remote control.

I had saved the original Tivo HD so I copied that HD into the WD 20EARS taken from the Premiere which did not boot (stopped at a few minutes more..) but the copy was unsuccessful. ( drive was ruined by Irene, I assumed). So I had a Seagate 2 TB 5900 RPM I just got from Ewiz. Repeated the copy procedure again. Copy Successful. But Same old problem, seagate drive ends up with black screen.

At this point I thought of PS problem. Not enough voltage or ampere to boot up the HD. But I remembered something RICHADAMS said some time ago, something along the line he would use WD or Hitachi drives and not Seagate HD for Tivo.

So before I go charging into replacing the PS, I thought for the last time I will try again with another 2 TB Hitachi drive bought for my Synology 211J NAS. The Synology NAS people like Hitachi and Samsung HD.

So last night, after the 4th or 5th try, we finally succeeded. Everything is now back to normal. I have eliminated the details involved because they are really tedious!!!

So thanks again to richadams and this forum for your help and knowledge!!!

[richsadams]

Yikes! What a nightmare...upon a granted not so important nightmare, but a hassle non the less!

Glad things are back to normal (more or less)! :up:

[husky55]

Yikes! What a nightmare...upon a granted not so important nightmare, but a hassle non the less!

Glad things are back to normal (more or less)! :up:

You didn't know that you saved me, did you? LOL

Still don't know why the brand new Seagate 2 TB 5900 rpm did not boot. Copy, expand, supersize, all successful.

[Dr_Diablo]

waitin for a 3 TB drive for Tivo

[lessd]

You didn't know that you saved me, did you? LOL

Still don't know why the brand new Seagate 2 TB 5900 rpm did not boot. Copy, expand, supersize, all successful.

In my experience some drives that run at less than 7200RPM will not boot all the time, some work great but at this point I would only use a 7200RPM drive because I don't understand the boot problem that some drives with 5200RPM and 5900RPM have with booting. All TiVo OEM drives are 7200RPM and I would assume if a 5200RPM drive would work why would TiVo itself not use such a drive, even if it only saved TiVo $1 /drive as there would be less heat etc.

[dwit]

In my experience some drives that run at less than 7200RPM will not boot all the time, some work great but at this point I would only use a 7200RPM drive because I don't understand the boot problem that some drives with 5200RPM and 5900RPM have with booting. All TiVo OEM drives are 7200RPM and I would assume if a 5200RPM drive would work why would TiVo itself not use such a drive, even if it only saved TiVo $1 /drive as there would be less heat etc.

I'm pretty sure the Premiere ships with the WD3200AVVS, a Western Digital 5400rpm Green Power drive. I would assume the XL ships with a similar but larger capacity drive.

Being that these are the only units that Tivo is selling right now, don't see how they are going to fit in with your premise?

[husky55]

I'm pretty sure the Premiere ships with the WD3200AVVS, a Western Digital 5400rpm Green Power drive. I would assume the XL ships with a similar but larger capacity drive.

Being that these are the only units that Tivo is selling right now, don't see how they are going to fit in with your premise?

I just looked at my Premiere HD OEM used for back up and you are right on both counts, GREEN WD 320AVVS.

I do have a Hitachi 2 TB 7200 RPM which runs substantially hotter than the Hitachi 2 TB 5900. I had both of then running in the Synology 211J for testing and can monitor their temps. I hesitate to use the 7200 drive because of the heat they generate.

I looked at the Seagate again, at both 12V and 5V, the required currents (ampere) are less than the currents specified in the WD 320 Premiere OEM. So power supply was not the problem for the Seagate not booting.

[richsadams]

...All TiVo OEM drives are 7200RPM <snip> Hi Les! TiVo has been using WD A/V-GP Intellipower (5200RPM variable) hard drives since the Series3 TiVo HDXL. Many of us (including yours truly) have been successfully using WD GP (as well as other "green") hard drives in Series2 and Series3 TiVo's for many, many years. The only issue that's arisen is the on/off "challenge" WD's Intellipark feature presents for initial and/or soft reboots.

There are a number of folks also using Seagate, Samsung and Hitachi drives (both 7200 RPM as well as variable - 5200RPM+) drives in upgraded TiVo's.

I can't speak to the reason the OP's particular Seagate drive refused to boot up. I had a Sammy that did the same thing once. No idea why but AFAIK it had nothing to do with the drive's speed.

FWIW here's the lineup of OEM drives from the Original Series3 forward:

The original Series3 = WD2500BS 2MB Cache

TiVo HD = WD1600AVBS 2MB Cache

TiVo HDXL = WD10EVVS 8MB Cache

TiVo Premiere = WD3200AVVS 8MB Cache

TiVo Premiere XL = WD10EVVS 8MB Cache

[lessd]

Hi Les! TiVo has been using WD A/V-GP Intellipower (5200RPM variable) hard drives since the Series3 TiVo HDXL. Many of us (including yours truly) have been successfully using WD GP (as well as other "green") hard drives in Series2 and Series3 TiVo's for many, many years. The only issue that's arisen is the on/off "challenge" WD's Intellipark feature presents for initial and/or soft reboots.

There are a number of folks also using Seagate, Samsung and Hitachi drives (both 7200 RPM as well as variable - 5200RPM+) drives in upgraded TiVo's.

I can't speak to the reason the OP's particular Seagate drive refused to boot up. I had a Sammy that did the same thing once. No idea why but AFAIK it had nothing to do with the drive's speed.

FWIW here's the lineup of OEM drives from the Original Series3 forward:

The original Series3 = WD2500BS 2MB Cache

TiVo HD = WD1600AVBS 2MB Cache

TiVo HDXL = WD10EVVS 8MB Cache

TiVo Premiere = WD3200AVVS 8MB Cache

TiVo Premiere XL = WD10EVVS 8MB Cache

I was referring to the TiVo-HD and i was not using the WD green drives as this was over 2 years ago, I would find that a 5200RPM drive would boot fine in one TiVo-HD and not in another, I had 4 or 5 problems and decided to use only 7200RPM drives at the time and never had the boot problem again. I am not doing upgrades anymore in volume so today a 5200RPM drive may well work in TiVo, I just don't want to take any chances for the small price difference and the low number of upgrades I am now doing for friends.

[richsadams]

I was referring to the TiVo-HD and i was not using the WD green drives as this was over 2 years ago, I would find that a 5200RPM drive would boot fine in one TiVo-HD and not in another, I had 4 or 5 problems and decided to use only 7200RPM drives at the time and never had the boot problem again. I am not doing upgrades anymore in volume so today a 5200RPM drive may well work in TiVo, I just don't want to take any chances for the small price difference and the low number of upgrades I am now doing for friends.I recall those discussions. I think it ultimately ended up being the Intellipark issue before we really became aware of it. No one, not even TiVo knew about it until the early TiVo HDXL's suddenly started hanging on a reboot after an update. It took TiVo almost 60 days to issue an update to correct that. That issue is still alive and well (even if slightly sporadic with different drives at different times). :mad:

[husky55]

I tried again on a SECOND Premiere, but this drive would not boot either. Drive is brand new, just got it last week.

Seagate ST2000DL003 2TB SATA3 5900rpm 64MB NCQ Hard Drive.

Drive seems to work fine. Copy, expand, supersize all completed successfully. I did a quick smart test on it and it passed.

The Hitachi 2 TB 5900 rpm is working fine in the Premiere. I just bought the new WD 20EARS from the egg. Did not test it but copy the Tivo OEM on it and everything seems to be fine.

HD 2T|WD WD20EARS 64M wdidle3 applied.

[camera2000]

I'm going to maxi-mod 2 x 1.5TB my new-to-me Woot Series 3 at the get go and put lifetime on it. and I thinks that even if weakness is first, it won't be long before someone reverse-engineers one of their drives and makes the solution public.

[richsadams]

I'm going to maxi-mod 2 x 1.5TB my new-to-me Woot Series 3 at the get go <snip>I don't know about anyone else, but I would certainly be interested in hearing exactly how you plan on doing that.

[unitron]

I don't know about anyone else, but I would certainly be interested in hearing exactly how you plan on doing that.

Nice to see you're still lurking:)

Now I'll leave you alone.

[mattack]

woot series 3? Guess that was an old deal?

[dkraft]

I recall those discussions. I think it ultimately ended up being the Intellipark issue before we really became aware of it. No one, not even TiVo knew about it until the early TiVo HDXL's suddenly started hanging on a reboot after an update. It took TiVo almost 60 days to issue an update to correct that. That issue is still alive and well (even if slightly sporadic with different drives at different times). :mad:

Getting ready to upgrade with the WD20EARS. Do I need to turn off Intellipark or something to avoid this problem? If so does the JMFS have the tools for that?

[steve614]

Getting ready to upgrade with the WD20EARS. Do I need to turn off Intellipark or something to avoid this problem? If so does the JMFS have the tools for that?

Yes, you need to adjust the intellipark feature. It is separate from the JMFS software.

You need to download this (http://api.viglink.com/api/click?format=go&drKey=1147&loc=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tivocommunity.com%2Ftivo-vb%2Fshowthread.php%3Fp%3D5616160%23post5616160&v=1&libid=1315957574533&out=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sendspace.com%2Ffile%2Fkccixj&ref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tivocommunity.com%2Ftivo-vb%2Fshowthread.php%3Ft%3D462179&title=Drive%20Expansion%20and%20Drive%20Upgrade%20FAQ%20-%20TiVo%20Community&txt=this%20bootable%20CD&jsonp=vglnk_jsonp_13159576269751) and burn it to a CD.
Boot from the above CD - hit "Enter" within 15 seconds to boot to DOS and then run "wdidle3 /S300".

A message should indicate "Idle3 Timer is enabled and set to 300 seconds (5 minutes)." That means you were successful.

[dwit]

Getting ready to upgrade with the WD20EARS. Do I need to turn off Intellipark or something to avoid this problem? If so does the JMFS have the tools for that?

Yes, it's probably wise to just disable intellipark, while you still have the drive connected to the computer, after upgrading. Otherwise, if you install the drive in the Tivo, you may very well find that you have to remove the drive again.

[unitron]

Yes, it's probably wise to just disable intellipark, while you still have the drive connected to the computer, after upgrading. Otherwise, if you install the drive in the Tivo, you may very well find that you have to remove the drive again.

I'd say get the WD diagnostics cd iso, run the long test, then run wdidle3, then do the upgrade.

[dkraft]

I'd say get the WD diagnostics cd iso, run the long test, then run wdidle3, then do the upgrade.

That's my plan!

[dkraft]

Yes, it's probably wise to just disable intellipark, while you still have the drive connected to the computer, after upgrading. Otherwise, if you install the drive in the Tivo, you may very well find that you have to remove the drive again.

Thanks

[dkraft]

Yes, you need to adjust the intellipark feature. It is separate from the JMFS software.

You need to download this (http://api.viglink.com/api/click?format=go&drKey=1147&loc=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tivocommunity.com%2Ftivo-vb%2Fshowthread.php%3Fp%3D5616160%23post5616160&v=1&libid=1315957574533&out=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sendspace.com%2Ffile%2Fkccixj&ref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tivocommunity.com%2Ftivo-vb%2Fshowthread.php%3Ft%3D462179&title=Drive%20Expansion%20and%20Drive%20Upgrade%20FAQ%20-%20TiVo%20Community&txt=this%20bootable%20CD&jsonp=vglnk_jsonp_13159576269751) and burn it to a CD.
Boot from the above CD - hit "Enter" within 15 seconds to boot to DOS and then run "wdidle3 /S300".

A message should indicate "Idle3 Timer is enabled and set to 300 seconds (5 minutes)." That means you were successful.

Ran into a problem. Booted from the ISO. Was give a C:> command, typed in the above command, returned and error with Copywrite, Model, Serial Number and a comment stating "This is not a WD disk drive".

Based on the returned information wdidle3 is trying to preform the command on the internal drive. I have the WD connected to a SATA cable. So i have both my Boot Drive and the WD connected.

Not a geek. Is there a way I can change the drive wdidle3 is trying to preform the command on?

Any ideas?

[steve614]

Maybe try disconnecting all your hard drives except the one you want to run wdidle on?

[dkraft]

Maybe try disconnecting all your hard drives except the one you want to run wdidle on?

I unplugged the boot drive and only had the 2TB WD plugged into a SATA connection. BIOS shows the 2TB WD. The wdidle3 now gives an error no hard driver or drivers not installed.

[dwit]

I unplugged the boot drive and only had the 2TB WD plugged into a SATA connection. BIOS shows the 2TB WD. The wdidle3 now gives an error no hard driver or drivers not installed.

Maybe try switching the connection to another port on the motherboard.

If you have not seen it, here is a video of the process in a Premiere upgrade. the wdidle step is right at the start of the "part II" video. Doesn't really help with your immediate issue now, but when you get it to recognize the drive, maybe then it can help:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136514

Another wdidle video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqY5zlCXQmU&feature=related

Good luck.

[dkraft]

Maybe try switching the connection to another port on the motherboard.

If you have not seen it, here is a video of the process in a Premiere upgrade. the wdidle step is right at the start of the "part II" video. Doesn't really help with your immediate issue now, but when you get it to recognize the drive, maybe then it can help:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136514

Another wdidle video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqY5zlCXQmU&feature=related

Good luck.

Thanks, I will look into your information.

Maybe wdidle3 does not find the HD because it is not supported? Check out this page about what wdidle3 is compatible with.

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=609&sid=113

I moved on today and am doing the cloning of the drive. I can always loop back around and do the wdidle3 later once I get it sorted out.

[dkraft]

Maybe try switching the connection to another port on the motherboard.

If you have not seen it, here is a video of the process in a Premiere upgrade. the wdidle step is right at the start of the "part II" video. Doesn't really help with your immediate issue now, but when you get it to recognize the drive, maybe then it can help:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136514

Another wdidle video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqY5zlCXQmU&feature=related

Good luck.

I had no luck at all. I tried disconnecting the internal hard drive. I tried using a SATA USB docking station. No luck. Tried different computer using the SATA USB docking station still now luck.

I got done doing the cloning and install the WD 2TB HD into the Tivo and it booted just fine.

What exactly is going to happen without the wdidle3 command set on the HD? Will my kids be deformed :0

I have read everything from it is ok with the latest drives manufactured after a certain date to the HD parking head only has 300,000 parks over the life of the HD.

Need a drink on this project.

Thanks :)

[dwit]

I had no luck at all. I tried disconnecting the internal hard drive. I tried using a SATA USB docking station. No luck. Tried different computer using the SATA USB docking station still now luck.

I got done doing the cloning and install the WD 2TB HD into the Tivo and it booted just fine.

What exactly is going to happen without the wdidle3 command set on the HD? Will my kids be deformed :0

I have read everything from it is ok with the latest drives manufactured after a certain date to the HD parking head only has 300,000 parks over the life of the HD.

Need a drink on this project.

Thanks :)

Hopefully you are able to do this with no docks, adapters, etc. involved. Reportedly, the bare drive must be directly connected to the motherboard with an sata cable. However, somewhere here, I believe I read of someone using an esata port, but have no idea what the total set up was.

If you do not disable with wdidle3, and you're lucky, the Tivo will work totally as it should. Otherwise, if not disabled, whenever the Tivo needs to do a "soft restart"(via the menu, service update, etc), it will just "hang" at the "Welcome, Powering Up" screen(or it could be the "Just a Few Minutes More screen). Regardless which of those powering up screens it hangs on, the Tivo will fail to boot up completely.

I kind of get the feeling that the factory default for the WD "Green" drives is "enabled", and needs to be disabled for the Tivo.

If you cannot disable the idle timer, you can test it anyway. Just install it in the Tivo, and after it boots completely, go to the "Setting Menu", navigate to, and select "Restart the Tivo". If, during the restart, the Tivo hangs in powering up, the idle timer needs to be disabled.

I have not read back to double check what drive you are using, but hope you realize that all of the wdidle3 stuff is only for WD "Green" drives.

Good luck

[unitron]

Hopefully you are able to do this with no docks, adapters, etc. involved. Reportedly, the bare drive must be directly connected to the motherboard with an sata cable. However, somewhere here, I believe I read of someone using an esata port, but have no idea what the total set up was.

If you do not disable with wdidle3, and you're lucky, the Tivo will work totally as it should. Otherwise, if not disabled, whenever the Tivo needs to do a "soft restart"(via the menu, service update, etc), it will just "hang" at the "Welcome, Powering Up" screen(or it could be the "Just a Few Minutes More screen). Regardless which of those powering up screens it hangs on, the Tivo will fail to boot up completely.

I kind of get the feeling that the factory default for the WD "Green" drives is "enabled", and needs to be disabled for the Tivo.

If you cannot disable the idle timer, you can test it anyway. Just install it in the Tivo, and after it boots completely, go to the "Setting Menu", navigate to, and select "Restart the Tivo". If, during the restart, the Tivo hangs in powering up, the idle timer needs to be disabled.

I have not read back to double check what drive you are using, but hope you realize that all of the wdidle3 stuff is only for WD "Green" drives.

Good luck

I ran it successfully on a WD10EACS connected to an IDE header via a JMicron chipset (or maybe a Marvell chipset) SATA to IDE adapter and it worked fine, so apparently as long as it's hooked to the motherboard without having to go through the USB bus...

Might be something to do with which interrupts get used.

[dkraft]

I went into HELP-Restart Tivo and restarted about 4 times. Tivo has booted fine all 4 times. Everything is working fine without the wdidle3 step.

I have 14.8c and the WD20EARS.

I ran the extended test on the HD. Cloned the HD. Installed HD into Tivo.
It's all good for now. :)

Thanks for the help!

[dkraft]

I ran it successfully on a WD10EACS connected to an IDE header via a JMicron chipset (or maybe a Marvell chipset) SATA to IDE adapter and it worked fine, so apparently as long as it's hooked to the motherboard without having to go through the USB bus...

Might be something to do with which interrupts get used.

My problem was I only have a laptop with an external SATA connector. I had removed the internal drive hoping that would have help the external SATA connection work with wdidle3, but it did not.

At this point the HD is working fine with out the wdidle3. If I begin to have issues I think I will try to hunt down a cable that will attach to the laptop's mother board HD connection.

[tlrowley]

Thanks for such an informative thread - I am now running a Premiere with 317 hours of HD recording capacity.

I do have a quick question, though. I upgraded with a WD20EURS. I did not run wdidle3. I tested with a soft reboot, and everything was fine, does this mean I don't have to worry about skipping the wdidle3 step?

[dwit]

Thanks for such an informative thread - I am now running a Premiere with 317 hours of HD recording capacity.

I do have a quick question, though. I upgraded with a WD20EURS. I did not run wdidle3. I tested with a soft reboot, and everything was fine, does this mean I don't have to worry about skipping the wdidle3 step?

Theoretically, yes. You should not have to worry about it.

Maybe try it once or twice more. Make sure you are doing a soft reboot, and not a hard reboot(where the power is cut and restored, typically by pulling the power cord).

[tlrowley]

Thanks, I'll try it a couple more times. I'm definitely doing a soft reboot.

[dkraft]

Now my new 2TB sounds like it is doing Morse Code. Tick, Tick, Tick.

[richsadams]

Now my new 2TB sounds like it is doing Morse Code. Tick, Tick, Tick.

Failing Hard Drive Sounds (http://datacent.com/hard_drive_sounds.php)

[unitron]

Now my new 2TB sounds like it is doing Morse Code. Tick, Tick, Tick.

Probably has a lot more to do with WD's QC on the 20EARS these days than with whether you ran wdidle or not.

Hope there wasn't anything ireplaceable on it.

[dkraft]

Probably has a lot more to do with WD's QC on the 20EARS these days than with whether you ran wdidle or not.

Hope there wasn't anything irreplaceable on it.

4 days and it still is working fine. Recording, playback etc.

I ran the extended test on the drive before I cloned it. Everything was fine.

The sound is real low. It is not that grinding noise. My desktop backup drive makes far more noise than the Tivo HD.

[aretoo]

I am in the process of upgrading my Tivo to WD 2Tb EURS drive. I used wdidle and disabled the intellipark feature. I also used WD tools to to a quick scan, full scan of the new drive with no problems. I hooked them up to my computer and ran Comers program on them. My problem is it is only rescuing about 93MB of data and I get a single error about 237GB in size. It then goes into trimming the error block. It has been running overnight with no change in the trimming function so i can not look at the error log. Does anyone have any ideas what could be the problem?

[gweempose]

Hey guys! Been away for a while. Wow, do I feel out of the loop! Today is the first time I am even hearing about the new Elite. Anyway, the original drive in one of my Premiere XL's is starting to go, and I want to swap it with a new 2TB drive. What's the general consensus on the best brand/model drive to use for the upgrade?

[jfh3]

Hey guys! Been away for a while. Wow, do I feel out of the loop! Today is the first time I am even hearing about the new Elite. Anyway, the original drive in one of my Premiere XL's is starting to go, and I want to swap it with a new 2TB drive. What's the general consensus on the best brand/model drive to use for the upgrade?

Most use WD green drives. An AV model will save a step over using a non- AV model, but a TiVo won't use any other AV specific features, so just buy based on price

[husky55]

I am in the process of upgrading my Tivo to WD 2Tb EURS drive. I used wdidle and disabled the intellipark feature. I also used WD tools to to a quick scan, full scan of the new drive with no problems. I hooked them up to my computer and ran Comers program on them. My problem is it is only rescuing about 93MB of data and I get a single error about 237GB in size. It then goes into trimming the error block. It has been running overnight with no change in the trimming function so i can not look at the error log. Does anyone have any ideas what could be the problem?

The WD20EURS is an AV drive so it should work. I would check the pc connections ( assuming sata ). I usually disconnect all other drives including windows boot drive and have only the source and target drive connected.

Your conner's program might be corrupted. Check the file integrity. It should work perfectly unless your source drive is defective. Use the original drive as a source drive might help.

[ducker]

I have my new 2TB drive just waiting to be installed. I've started my premiere on 9/9/2011 - I know a lot of people say wait 2 months before upgrading, but I don't know if I can wait that long when a 1 hour HD show sucks up 5% of the storage space!!!

What things would other upgraders suggest to test prior to upgrading the drive to insure that they do in fact work properly.

I've been using this as my primary DVR - so been doing a lot of recording and browsing; some youtube usage, and really that's about it.

If I must I'll wait until November to do the HD upgrade, but I'd really prefer to do it around 9/8 or before!!

[husky55]

I never waited before upgrading so I really don't even know the reason for the wait.

I have upgraded both my HD and Premiere to various 1 and 2 TB of various manufacturers with no problem. I did lose my Tivo during Irene and had to replace all my HD.

[ducker]

I never waited before upgrading so I really don't even know the reason for the wait.

I have upgraded both my HD and Premiere to various 1 and 2 TB of various manufacturers with no problem. I did lose my Tivo during Irene and had to replace all my HD.

now that sucks.

the reason for the wait, if there are any issues with my unit where it may have to go back for service for example.

[husky55]

If you have any problem with your unit then just put the OEM HD back in and send it back for repair. But if your unit is OK to begin with then what's the problem? There is nothing that I know of that voids your warranty and/or shows that your unit was opened.

PS I do not want to rush you to upgrade. Please wait if it's more comfortable for you. I only said what I did.

[ducker]

If you have any problem with your unit then just put the OEM HD back in and send it back for repair. But if your unit is OK to begin with then what's the problem? There is nothing that I know of that voids your warranty and/or shows that your unit was opened.

PS I do not want to rush you to upgrade. Please wait if it's more comfortable for you. I only said what I did.

Na... I'm itching to do it. Hell, I bought the hard drive even before I got the unit, so I've been dieing to do the upgrade/swap. And now that I see % capacity, and I see it drop by 5% after I delete a single HD 1 hour show, it makes me miss my 300+ hours on my older S2.

We tend to record a bunch of stuff, some of which we get to much later then others. That large hard drive lets us easily wait on different shows for a later time.

Maybe this weekend then :D

Thx

[L David Matheny]

I have my new 2TB drive just waiting to be installed. I've started my premiere on 9/9/2011 - I know a lot of people say wait 2 months before upgrading, but I don't know if I can wait that long when a 1 hour HD show sucks up 5% of the storage space!!!

What things would other upgraders suggest to test prior to upgrading the drive to insure that they do in fact work properly.

I've been using this as my primary DVR - so been doing a lot of recording and browsing; some youtube usage, and really that's about it.

If I must I'll wait until November to do the HD upgrade, but I'd really prefer to do it around 9/8 or before!!

The wait is really just to insure against "infant mortality" in the electronics (or the original HDD, I guess). You've waited long enough for that. If your cable card pairings work and your software is up-to-date and you've recorded two shows at once sometimes (to insure that both tuners work), you've probably tested most of the hardware by now. It would be a good idea to run the long diagnostic test on your new 2TB drive before installing it, just to make sure it's 100 pct OK.

[ducker]

The wait is really just to insure against "infant mortality" in the electronics (or the original HDD, I guess). You've waited long enough for that. If your cable card pairings work and your software is up-to-date and you've recorded two shows at once sometimes (to insure that both tuners work), you've probably tested most of the hardware by now. It would be a good idea to run the long diagnostic test on your new 2TB drive before installing it, just to make sure it's 100 pct OK.

ugh to the long diagnostic. Yea. I can, I'll have to look in to what I'll need to do to do it (I'm sure it's in this thread, or another one)

Thanks -

[steve614]

There is nothing that I know of that voids your warranty and/or shows that your unit was opened.

Technically, opening the box voids the warranty. TiVo can tell in their logs when someone upgrades their hard drive and since you have to open the box to change the hard drive...
There have been at least 2 reported cases here where TiVo has refused warranty work because of upgraded hard drives.
If you have problems, you may be able to get away with putting the OEM drive back in before you call TiVo, but odds are they will still know if they look in the logs.

I would at least wait to do the upgrade after the 90 day full exchange warranty is over.

[ducker]

Technically, opening the box voids the warranty. TiVo can tell in their logs when someone upgrades their hard drive and since you have to open the box to change the hard drive...
There have been at least 2 reported cases here where TiVo has refused warranty work because of upgraded hard drives.
If you have problems, you may be able to get away with putting the OEM drive back in before you call TiVo, but odds are they will still know if they look in the logs.

I would at least wait to do the upgrade after the 90 day full exchange warranty is over.

and that's kinda why I was thinking of waiting. The cases where I've seen them refuse was because the member openly discussed the fact that his unit was modified with the rep on the phone.

It's like a don't ask don't tell policy with them it seems.

[Resist]

So what's the verdict on which 2TB drive to upgrade the Premiere with? If it's already been mentioned I missed it, sorry.

[Agent86]

Lots of drives can be used, I've used WD EARS drives with much success. Just don't forget to use wdidle to disable the head parking.

This (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=455968) thread is your friend :).

[Resist]

This (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=455968) thread is your friend :).This thread is very long and I've looked through most of it, but I'm not seeing any one drive stick out more than others. There must be one that works out better, is quiet and uses less energy.

[avediswolf]

If I get one of these WD 2TB Green (EARS) drives, but do the copy without changing the wdidle3 intellipark setting, will it cause any other issues other than just the soft reboot hanging?

I do not have a PC where I can hook the drive up directly to a mainboard to change the setting.

Or is there a different drive thats recommended that doesn't have the issue?

Thanks!

[jaredmwright]

I just recently purchased a Hitachi Deskstar 2TB Coolspin 5400 RPM drive w/3 year warranty at my local Fry's for $69.99. It works great, no issues and you don't have to mess with wdidle settings.

[Resist]

I think I'd prefer to buy a new pre Tivo formatted drive on ebay. I had good luck in the past buying on ebay from a forum member, when I upgraded to a 1TB drive for my Series 3 drive.

I'm leaning towards the WD20EURS or WD20EVDS.

[VideoGrabber]

I know a lot of people say wait 2 months before upgrading, but I don't know if I can wait that long when a 1 hour HD show sucks up 5% of the storage space!!!

I'm not sure exactly what you're seeing, but there are no 1 hour HD shows that use 5% of the storage space on a Premiere. :confused: Maybe a 2-hour show, but not 1.

TiVo claims "up to 45 hours of HD programming", but if you're like most people, where their cable co. compresses and statmuxes their content, or their OTA broadcasters have multicasted the crap out of their bandwidth allocation, you'll only be using 5-6 GB/hour for HD, for most (or less).

If you're reaching 7 GB/hour, then you've got some pretty darn good source material. My local FOX-HD, which is 720p like all FOX content, drops as low as 4 GB/hour sometimes (since they're running 2 other subchannels).

And when I had cable, it averaged 5 GB/hour (and was still dropping), though years ago (when they were doing straight passthrough) I did get 7 GB/hr from quite a few HD channels, and 8 GB/hour from the HDNet channels. But that's ancient history.

From my experience, most people will get 50+ hours of HD on a stock Premiere. FAR from the 20 hours you were indicating with your 5% observation.

[tonestert]

I'm getting ready to upgrade my drive in a few minutes with a WD20EARS drive and keep seeing widdle mentioned in this thread. What is exactly is widdle ? Is there anything I need to do ? I'm going to follow this Thread (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=455968) but I did not see anything about widdle.
Thanks

[Idol]

I used this thread, along with Comer's instructions, when I upgraded my hard drive:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=8165515#post8165515

It was a good step by step guide, including opening the TIVO box, using wdidle, etc.

[unitron]

I'm getting ready to upgrade my drive in a few minutes with a WD20EARS drive and keep seeing widdle mentioned in this thread. What is exactly is widdle ? Is there anything I need to do ? I'm going to follow this Thread (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=455968) but I did not see anything about widdle.
Thanks

Search this thread

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=370784

for "intellipark"

Basically the Western Digital Caviar Green drives have a feature that parks the heads after a period of drive inactivity. A rather short period.

The TiVo does a soft re-boot (power not disconnected). During that time it's not writing to or reading from the drive. The drive senses that lack of activity and parks the heads. The TiVo gets to the point in the boot process where it goes to read the hard drive and transfer the operating system into memory, just like any other computer. The drive isn't able to respond as quickly as the TiVo is expecting it to, because there's nothing in the TiVo's firmware about "tap the drive on the shoulder and wait for it to wake up". So the TiVo stalls at the welcome screen, which is on the firmware chip, not the drive, or keeps rebooting, which creates a period of drive inactivity that puts the drive back to sleep.

The cure is to disable intellipark or increase the time period of inactivity before it decides to go to sleep. If you increase that time period enough that's pretty much the same as disabling it.

wdidle (western digital idle) is the utility for adjusting that time period.

[tonestert]

thanks Idol. I wish I would have seen that before. And thanks Uniton for the info.

Can I run the widdle program after I have copied and expanded my new drive ?

[unitron]

thanks Idol. I wish I would have seen that before. And thanks Uniton for the info.

Can I run the widdle program after I have copied and expanded my new drive ?

wdidle (or wdidle3) makes changes to the drive's firmware, not to the data written to the platters, so you can run it anytime you please.

[KeithB]

So, here's a dumb question. How do most of you run the wdidle3 utility, since it's DOS-based? I tried the Ultimate Boot CD's version of FreeDOS, but cannot access the USB stick where the wdidle3.exe file resides. :(

[unitron]

So, here's a dumb question. How do most of you run the wdidle3 utility, since it's DOS-based? I tried the Ultimate Boot CD's version of FreeDOS, but cannot access the USB stick where the wdidle3.exe file resides. :(

The version I downloaded was a bootable cd iso.

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=7652412#post7652412

[KeithB]

Many thanks, kind sir. I've copied the original TiVo WD 320GB A/V drive to a new WD15EARS 1.5TB Advanced Format (yeah, I know) drive, expanded and supersized it. Running WDIDLE3 is the last thing I have to do before re-installing the new drive. Your post saved me tons of time searching, or worse yet, attempting to build a bootable DOS .iso file with WDIDLE3.EXE included in it.

Note: WDIDLE3 won't work with USB-connected drives. I'm going to have to resurrect an older desktop system to try this, and it wasn't particularly cooperating last night. Today I wound up using a laptop with USB/SATA adapters to run Comer's JMFS utilities to copy, expand, and supersize the drive. Fun times...

[tonestert]

yep thanks guys everything went smoothly no more worrying about space at least for the time being.

[marcomm]

I have three Premieres' and am looking to play...What would you do?
I have % series II w/lifetime in the house and really hate to see these go to waste.

[unitron]

I have three Premieres' and am looking to play...What would you do?
I have % series II w/lifetime in the house and really hate to see these go to waste.

Are you talking about taking the hard drive out of a Premiere and putting into a Series 2?

I'd recommend against it. Never re-use a TiVo drive. Take it out, make a backup image from it, and then put it on the shelf as a known quantity to test the TiVo with in the future if it develops problems.

Each model TiVo has software specific to that model on its drive, and you can't just take a drive out of one model and drop it into a different model.

See the adapter thread

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=416883

to use a 1TB SATA drive in a Series 1 or 2.

You do know that S2s use IDE/PATA drives and S3 and S4 (Premieres) TiVos use SATA drives, right?

[KeithB]

Finally got the motherboard configuration worked out, and used that ISO to boot MS-DOS and run WDIDLE3. Put the drive back in, connected it all, and fired it up. It took longer after the initial splash screen before the "few minutes more" screen came up, and a lot longer after that before the TiVo animation started. I figured it was re-checking all the new disk space, doing whatever cleanup/shakeout the TiVo TCL needs to do. Everything was retained, everything worked properly, and I've been enjoying an afternoon of shows originally captured onto the old drive.

Many thanks to Comer for developing JMFS with Slax and Java, it made the work as easy as it could possibly be. Huge thanks to unitron :up: for pointing me to an MS-DOS image with wdidle3 built in.

[unitron]

Finally got the motherboard configuration worked out, and used that ISO to boot MS-DOS and run WDIDLE3. Put the drive back in, connected it all, and fired it up. It took longer after the initial splash screen before the "few minutes more" screen came up, and a lot longer after that before the TiVo animation started. I figured it was re-checking all the new disk space, doing whatever cleanup/shakeout the TiVo TCL needs to do. Everything was retained, everything worked properly, and I've been enjoying an afternoon of shows originally captured onto the old drive.

Many thanks to Comer for developing JMFS with Slax and Java, it made the work as easy as it could possibly be. Huge thanks to unitron :up: for pointing me to an MS-DOS image with wdidle3 built in.

Glad to hear it all worked out.:)

[Resist]

I have found two ebay sellers that I am considering buying my drive upgrades from, DVRDude and stephan790. The thing is that DVRDude wants $170 and stephan790 wants $98.88 for the same tivo formatted drives, at least I think they are the same drives. Both have great feedback. Any suggestions?

[ducker]

I'm not sure exactly what you're seeing, but there are no 1 hour HD shows that use 5% of the storage space on a Premiere. :confused: Maybe a 2-hour show, but not 1.

TiVo claims "up to 45 hours of HD programming", but if you're like most people, where their cable co. compresses and statmuxes their content, or their OTA broadcasters have multicasted the crap out of their bandwidth allocation, you'll only be using 5-6 GB/hour for HD, for most (or less).

If you're reaching 7 GB/hour, then you've got some pretty darn good source material. My local FOX-HD, which is 720p like all FOX content, drops as low as 4 GB/hour sometimes (since they're running 2 other subchannels).

And when I had cable, it averaged 5 GB/hour (and was still dropping), though years ago (when they were doing straight passthrough) I did get 7 GB/hr from quite a few HD channels, and 8 GB/hour from the HDNet channels. But that's ancient history.

From my experience, most people will get 50+ hours of HD on a stock Premiere. FAR from the 20 hours you were indicating with your 5% observation.

I've watched again more closely. And not all 1 hour HD shows are equal - I guess that's outlined in your message above. I forget the network it was on, if I come across it again I'll mention it. Do any networks broadcast in 1080i?

[dkraft]

Finally got the motherboard configuration worked out, and used that ISO to boot MS-DOS and run WDIDLE3. Put the drive back in, connected it all, and fired it up. It took longer after the initial splash screen before the "few minutes more" screen came up, and a lot longer after that before the TiVo animation started. I figured it was re-checking all the new disk space, doing whatever cleanup/shakeout the TiVo TCL needs to do. Everything was retained, everything worked properly, and I've been enjoying an afternoon of shows originally captured onto the old drive.

Many thanks to Comer for developing JMFS with Slax and Java, it made the work as easy as it could possibly be. Huge thanks to unitron :up: for pointing me to an MS-DOS image with wdidle3 built in.

I was unable to run the widdle3 on my WD20EARS because of access to a SATA connection. I have had no problems at all. Tested many times by rebooting system from Help, restart.

I had a SATA external connection on a Laptop but you need the HD connected directly to the mother board. Widdle3 would not work with out the direct connection.

[whompus60]

I've watched again more closely. And not all 1 hour HD shows are equal - I guess that's outlined in your message above. I forget the network it was on, if I come across it again I'll mention it. Do any networks broadcast in 1080i?

Reading you guys post's made me want to know also. I get 38 hd channels. I just checked them all, and 35 of them are showing 1080i, The 3 that are showing 720p are fox, fox news, and fox business. I can not say for sure fox only shows 720p like the other poster, but tend to think he/she may be right with all 3 fox channels showing 720p at the same time.


I was unable to run the widdle3 on my WD20EARS because of access to a SATA connection. I have had no problems at all. Tested many times by rebooting system from Help, restart.

I had a SATA external connection on a Laptop but you need the HD connected directly to the mother board. Widdle3 would not work with out the direct connection.

I don't remember running widdle3 either. Doesn't mean I didn't because I followed the guide I found here to the letter. If it was in the guide then I did and just can't remember it. Nonetheless I have had no problems what so ever for the 6 months I have had 2 premieres.

[GmanTiVo]

I have found two ebay sellers that I am considering buying my drive upgrades from, DVRDude and stephan790. The thing is that DVRDude wants $170 and stephan790 wants $98.88 for the same tivo formatted drives, at least I think they are the same drives. Both have great feedback. Any suggestions?

I have recently purchased a 2TB Western Digital AV-GP "green drive" (Model WD20EURS) for my S3 from Stephan and aside the overnight long "clear & delete everything" the install was a piece of cake and the price was, much less than DVRDude's (who also has a great reputation btw).

[Resist]

aside the overnight long "clear & delete everything" the install was a piece of cakeWhy would you have to "clear & delete"?

[steve614]

Why would you have to "clear & delete"?

Most likely the seller used a software image from another Tivo.

[Guy Kuo]

Had a spectacular drive failure of my original Premiere XL drive when it was pulled for a drive upgrade. I have never seen anything this severe previously. Despite an absolutely jar free, powered down removal, the drive failed to spin up properly. It just buzzed. Then when it did spin up on the 4th power up attempt, a sickening high pitched scratching sound was heard. (Obvious head crash noise).

On postmortem, I found all four drive heads dislodged from their mounting armatures and massive scratching of all four platter surfaces.

It looks like the WD drive did NOT park its heads during power down. Then had head stiction and when it did break free, all four drive heads were ripped loose.

Until now the (original) drive had been working perfectly 24/7 for over a year.

[johnd01]

Has anyone made a 3TB drive work?

[jfh3]

Why would you have to "clear & delete"?

Because the drive needs to be "married" with the Tivo. Unless the source drive was from YOUR Tivo, the C&D process is required to marry the new drive after you have completed the drive swap.

[lonewoolf47]

Because the drive needs to be "married" with the Tivo. Unless the source drive was from YOUR Tivo, the C&D process is required to marry the new drive after you have completed the drive swap.

So how do remarry the drive?

[jfh3]

So how do remarry the drive?

Run "Clear and Delete".

[lonewoolf47]

Did and done that! Now cannot receive any comcast premium channels. Called comcast and they did what they do to no avail. So now they will have to send a truck roll. The last truck roll was because they said my new cable card was bad. Tech came and without touching my TiVo just made a phone call and guess what! The tech said you have to know who do call.

[whompus60]

Because the drive needs to be "married" with the Tivo. Unless the source drive was from YOUR Tivo, the C&D process is required to marry the new drive after you have completed the drive swap.

Wait... So you are saying the source drive does not have to be the disk drive from the same tivo unit being upgraded? I was under the impression it did. So I have all my original premiere hdd's labeled from what system they came from and stored in case of hdd fail in the future.

[jfh3]

Wait... So you are saying the source drive does not have to be the disk drive from the same tivo unit being upgraded?

Correct. The source has to be from the same model, but not the same box.
If it is from the same box (e.g. same TSN), then you don't have to run C&D after a copy.

[KenVa]

Has anyone tried to upgrade a Premiere elite with a 3TB drive yet. It looks like the old Premieres are limited to 2TB but maybe the elite can be upgraded beyond that.

That would be my only real interest in getting an Elite. I've already upgraded my THD and Premiere to 2TB so an Elite wouldn't be any more space and I have 4 tuners between the two of them. If it could be upgraded to 3TB then I my interest might be peaked a bit.

[jfh3]

Has anyone tried to upgrade a Premiere elite with a 3TB drive yet. It looks like the old Premieres are limited to 2TB but maybe the elite can be upgraded beyond that.

That would be my only real interest in getting an Elite. I've already upgraded my THD and Premiere to 2TB so an Elite wouldn't be any more space and I have 4 tuners between the two of them. If it could be upgraded to 3TB then I my interest might be peaked a bit.

Did you read the first post of the Elite discussion thread?

[BlackBetty]

What's the best 2 TB drive to do an internal swap with? Is it the WD 20EARS? Goes for about $80 at Amazon.

[Resist]

What's the best 2 TB drive to do an internal swap with? Is it the WD 20EARS? Goes for about $80 at Amazon.From what I can gather either the WD20EARS or the WD20EURS The WDEURS being the most optimized for DVR use, yet it's a bit more expensive. I am currently undecided on which drive between the two to get.

[aaronwt]

The WD20EURS is what comes in the Elite.

[whompus60]

I think the eurs is a newer version of the ears. Maybe a bit more optimized if can be. I use wd20ears in both my premiers. Just got the second one last week from newegg. They have them listed for $69, I used coupon code newcustomer10 and got it for $59. The code worked even though I am not a new customer. I went with it because my first one has worked very well for the 6 or 8 months I have had it.

[unitron]

I think the eurs is a newer version of the ears. Maybe a bit more optimized if can be. I use wd20ears in both my premiers. Just got the second one last week from newegg. They have them listed for $69, I used coupon code newcustomer10 and got it for $59. The code worked even though I am not a new customer. I went with it because my first one has worked very well for the 6 or 8 months I have had it.

I'm pretty sure it's the AV version of the EARS.

Same 64MB cache, same advanced format 4K sectors, same 3.0Gb/s.

NewEgg shows them out of stock or discontinued under that model number, although they may still have it in a retail box with a different part number.

[whompus60]

I login to newegg and it shows them in stock but price now is $119. I guess they altered the deal. I just check my purchase history and there was nothing special about it except the promo code. Maybe I found an old link to the deal they have now removed or something.

[CoxInPHX]

Noticed the recent massive jump in price and shortage of WD HDDs

Massive Flooding in Thailand of the WD facility:
http://thisismynext.com/2011/10/22/world-hard-drive-shortage-predicted-floodi/

[unitron]

Noticed the recent massive jump in price and shortage of WD HDDs

Massive Flooding in Thailand of the WD facility:
http://thisismynext.com/2011/10/22/world-hard-drive-shortage-predicted-floodi/

I don't know if any drive maker other than WD is affected (although I think I read that some 70,000 factories of various sorts, some of which may be suppliers of parts to drive makers, were flooded), but the other brands will no doubt take advantage of the overall shortage of drives to make whatever price increases they can.

[mumpower]

Did you read the first post of the Elite discussion thread?

Has anyone confirmed that 3 TB (a 1 TB external addition and the 2 TB internal) is the maximum without Weaknees adjustments? I've seen people mention attempts to expand an internal drive but nothing about externals.

[jfh3]

Has anyone confirmed that 3 TB (a 1 TB external addition and the 2 TB internal) is the maximum without Weaknees adjustments? I've seen people mention attempts to expand an internal drive but nothing about externals.

Yes. I confirmed the 1TB external worked.

[mumpower]

I realize that. I am asking whether anyone has confirmed that larger external storage will not work.

[unitron]

I realize that. I am asking whether anyone has confirmed that larger external storage will not work.

As I understand it, only specific Western Digital external drives will work on anything newer than the original S3, and the biggest one available is a 1TB model.

[whompus60]

I suspect, be replacing the 1tb drive in the expander with a 2tb ears or eurs would work. I have not tested this though. I may in the future, but right now my expander is used with my bluray player for playing avchd.

[jfh3]

I suspect, be replacing the 1tb drive in the expander with a 2tb ears or eurs would work. I have not tested this though. I may in the future, but right now my expander is used with my bluray player for playing avchd.

No. Others have tried and failed. Tivo queries the firmware/model number in the drive. This will work on the original S3s, but nothing newer.

[mumpower]

No. Others have tried and failed.

For the Elite or for the basic Premiere? I've been monitoring the Elite discussions and haven't seen that thread. Can you link me?

[jfh3]

For the Elite or for the basic Premiere? I've been monitoring the Elite discussions and haven't seen that thread. Can you link me?

I was speaking specifically of the original Premiere.

However, I've tried both a 2TB and 3TB in an external enclosure on the Elite and no go. I tried the approved WD AV 1TB drive and it was recognized right away.

I did not try to marry the drives manually, which is what I suspect Weaknees does.

[whompus60]

When you try the 2 or 3 tb external, did you leave the drives as mbr scheme or did you convert them? I suspect they will need to be guid scheme instead of mbr scheme partition tables. Like I said before, I have not tested this but will get around to it at some point. Especially now that I have converted the expander to mbr so it works with my pc's and bluray players.

[jfh3]

I left them as mbr. don't think the Tivo bios supports anything else, but don't know for sure.

[whompus60]

I know the external was not mbr. We also know the system is proprietary file system mfs. It seems to use multiple partitions (kinda like a database) on the drive for application's and media. It also works with an external like it is the same drive, kinda like an extension. If I remember right, mbr is limited to 4 or less partitions. That leads me to suspect the system could be a modified version of an older apple type scheme.

[unitron]

I know the external was not mbr. We also know the system is proprietary file system mfs. It seems to use multiple partitions (kinda like a database) on the drive for application's and media. It also works with an external like it is the same drive, kinda like an extension. If I remember right, mbr is limited to 4 or less partitions. That leads me to suspect the system could be a modified version of an older apple type scheme.

MBR is limited to 4 primary partitions, one of which can be an extended which can contain logical partitions.

Tivos, however, have used a version of the Apple Partition Map.

The APM has a limit of 2 binary TB per drive, and, I've read, 64 partitions, one of which is the Map itself.

It also has the peculiarity of declaring any unpartitioned space as an "Apple Free" partition.

TiVo's software apparently only accomodates a maximum of 16 partitions per drive.

The way TiVo treats external drives is, if I'm not mistaken, somewhat different from the way it treated second internal drives on the Series 1 and Series 2 models, which, being IDE/PATA based, could easily use the Master/Slave setup.

[vhavard]

Took one of these drives out of an external esata case to try to use it in my Premier, but as previously reported by another user, it would boot erratically looking very much like the intellipark problem with not being able to boot after a soft reset.

Just an FYI, don't get this drive if you're trying to do an upgrade.

[unitron]

Took one of these drives out of an external esata case to try to use it in my Premier, but as previously reported by another user, it would boot erratically looking very much like the intellipark problem with not being able to boot after a soft reset.

Just an FYI, don't get this drive if you're trying to do an upgrade.

Apparently the newer Seagate drives just don't play well with S3 and S4 TiVos (and of course are too big for S2s and S1s).

[GoEagles]

I'm interested in using a Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB SATA 3.0Gbps 3.5" Desktop Internal Hard Drive. Can I use this for a TiVo Premiere or must I use a WD drive?

Thanks!

[unitron]

I'm interested in using a Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB SATA 3.0Gbps 3.5" Desktop Internal Hard Drive. Can I use this for a TiVo Premiere or must I use a WD drive?

Thanks!

You might be better off using that Seagate as one big NT partition in a computer running TiVo Desktop.

Seagates are getting mixed reviews in S3s and S4s lately.

What's the exact model number on the sticker, and if it was a boxed retail purchase, what's the exact model number on the box?

You might be better off using that Seagate as one big NT partition in a computer running TiVo Desktop.

[slowbiscuit]

Took one of these drives out of an external esata case to try to use it in my Premier, but as previously reported by another user, it would boot erratically looking very much like the intellipark problem with not being able to boot after a soft reset.

Just an FYI, don't get this drive if you're trying to do an upgrade.
I have an ST1500DL001 1.5TB that I pulled out of a Seagate FreeAgent external and it boots ok after a jmfs copy/expand/supersize from the original drive, haven't tried a soft reboot. This is a 2-year old Barracuda Green 5900rpm drive with (I think) advanced format and 64MB cache. It has what Seagate calls a 'SmartAlign' feature which is supposed to handle 512-to-4k sector mappings for OS' that don't support 4k sectors.

I really don't care if it hangs on soft reboot, personally, since it boots fast from a cold one and the only time if should soft reboot is after a software upgrade. The only question is how long the Seagate drive will last in a Tivo.

FWIW, I bought it from Staples for $70 net last week so it's a cheap way to get a 1.5TB drive if anyone is interested (buy the item from staples.com with a $25 off $75 coupon from e-junkie.com, then price match to Amazon at $90 after order is placed).

[GoEagles]

You might be better off using that Seagate as one big NT partition in a computer running TiVo Desktop.

Seagates are getting mixed reviews in S3s and S4s lately.

What's the exact model number on the sticker, and if it was a boxed retail purchase, what's the exact model number on the box?

You might be better off using that Seagate as one big NT partition in a computer running TiVo Desktop.

I am not sure, this is the item at MicroCenter I am interested in getting, for $70 or so for a 1.5TB drive, it's worth looking into:

http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0372925

[unitron]

I am not sure, this is the item at MicroCenter I am interested in getting, for $70 or so for a 1.5TB drive, it's worth looking into:

http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0372925

Refurbished, OEM, 90 day warranty?

I'd keep looking.

I don't know if this will work in a TiVo, but it's the same capacity, new, and cheaper

http://www.compusa.com/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?EdpNo=7331904&sku=TSD-1500AS3

I tried checking Amazon, but their search results are horribly polluted with drives of the wrong size and enclosures and other junk.

[GoEagles]

I have an ST1500DL001 1.5TB that I pulled out of a Seagate FreeAgent external and it boots ok after a jmfs copy/expand/supersize from the original drive, haven't tried a soft reboot. This is a 2-year old Barracuda Green 5900rpm drive with (I think) advanced format and 64MB cache. It has what Seagate calls a 'SmartAlign' feature which is supposed to handle 512-to-4k sector mappings for OS' that don't support 4k sectors.

I really don't care if it hangs on soft reboot, personally, since it boots fast from a cold one and the only time if should soft reboot is after a software upgrade. The only question is how long the Seagate drive will last in a Tivo.

FWIW, I bought it from Staples for $70 net last week so it's a cheap way to get a 1.5TB drive if anyone is interested (buy the item from staples.com with a $25 off $75 coupon from e-junkie.com, then price match to Amazon at $90 after order is placed).

I'm just made at myself because I saw a 2TB upgrade kit for $160 on eBay and didn't buy it now. $169 for a hard drive is pricey, but if the seagate can work, I want to try to use it.

[curiousgeorge]

Trying to see if the WD5000AADS I have laying around will work in a Premiere with JMFS, and also if the intellipark still has to be disabled with WDidle to make it work (if it works at all). Anyone have experence with this actual drive? I see a lot that are close, but not this one (except in a S3 post).

Thanks in advance!

[unitron]

Trying to see if the WD5000AADS I have laying around will work in a Premiere with JMFS, and also if the intellipark still has to be disabled with WDidle to make it work (if it works at all). Anyone have experence with this actual drive? I see a lot that are close, but not this one (except in a S3 post).

Thanks in advance!

You can run wdidle3 against it and see what happens.

I don't know of a reason why it won't work, and why jmfs can't add a partition, although if I were going to go to the trouble I'd go with a 2TB if budget permitted.

[curiousgeorge]

You can run wdidle3 against it and see what happens.

I don't know of a reason why it won't work, and why jmfs can't add a partition, although if I were going to go to the trouble I'd go with a 2TB if budget permitted.

500GB = free (I have it from a pull off a computer). 2TB = $$$ OOP.

The earlier green WD drives had intellipark that used to mess up TiVo and cause it not to boot. I was just trying to skip the wdidle step if it wasn't necessary anymore.

[unitron]

500GB = free (I have it from a pull off a computer). 2TB = $$$ OOP.

The earlier green WD drives had intellipark that used to mess up TiVo and cause it not to boot. I was just trying to skip the wdidle step if it wasn't necessary anymore.

http://www.ngohq.com/news/19805-critical-design-flaw-found-in-wd-caviar-green-hdds.html

[mobouser]

Hi just upgraded my TIVO using the method outlined here. I also used jzab.de/content/wdidle-bootcd. I went from 320g to 2TB WD20EARX. Everything running OK. A little trouble with the iso outlined here for copying. Had to install on an older computer SATA Drives. My latest build is an AMD based A6 CPU with internal graphics and northbridge. I dont know why but it did not work whereas the wdidle program ran OK in dos on that machine did that first. Thanks Paul D