Drive Expansion and Drive Upgrade FAQ

[Soapm]

Originally Posted by lpwcomp

Current drive prices being what they are, adding space in any manner is a bit expensive. Unfortunately, the latest word is that it will likely remain that way at least through this year.

It's a shame too, I'm to the point where my RIAD5 could use another 2TB.

[ThAbtO]

Originally Posted by lpwcomp

Current drive prices being what they are, adding space in any manner is a bit expensive. Unfortunately, the latest word is that it will likely remain that way at least through this year.

They are seemingly coming down in prices @amazon.com:

WD20EARX $119.99
WD10EARX $99.99
Seagate ST2000DM001 $109.99

[slowbiscuit]

As I said recently in this thread, there are cheaper ways to add a terabyte or so - namely, getting a deal on a USB expansion drive and removing it from the case. I got a Seagate Green 1.5TB drive for less than $70 total a month ago (pulled from a Freeagent GoFlex Desk) and it works fine in my Premiere. Very quiet drive, model # is ST1500DL001.

[Flappjakk]

Tivo made my choice quite easy. After less than a week, the Tivo in my bedroom with the loud drive started soft rebooting. I put the original drive back in, now it's both quiet and stable again. I'm considering using this drive to upgrade a Series 3 that is not in anyone's bedroom so the extra noise wouldn't be that big of a deal.

What typically causes reboots and other similar problems after an internal drive upgrade? Is it usually the result of a bad copy or something else going wrong in the process? The drive is fairly new so I doubt it's failing, but I guess it's not impossible. Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks again to all who reply.

[steve614]

First, get the diagnostic software from the hard drive manufacturer, and test the drive.
Hard drive failure is unpredictable. Some last 10+ years, and some don't.

Another problem could be that the upgraded hard drive puts more current demand on the power supply. If the power supply is getting weak due to failing capacitors, that could be a cause for reboots and other weird symptoms.

[Tallshark]

Originally Posted by unitron

So he came here to ask a bunch of questions to which he already knew the answers?

Kinda, I do know that a second drive doubles chance of failure and that data is split between drives so one failure means (for the most part) all shows are lost. I was just asking if a second internal was possible. Sounds like there might not be any physical room? At one point it was no room, other time it was a heat issue. Sounds possible anyways, but not plugNplay.

After reading all this and taking it all in, my decision is (drum roll please), to go through the hassle of replacing internal with a bigger drive. Cuz I really don't want an external drive, and with not being able to just plug-in and go, I might as well just replace. Copying isn't THAT much of a hassle. I'll schedule it between outside spring clean-up, painting 3 rooms, knocking down the pool, ....

unitron and lpwcomp, THANKS!!! so much for your lively discussion.

[lpwcomp]

Originally Posted by Tallshark

Kinda,

After reading all this and taking it all in, my decision is (drum roll please), to go through the hassle of replacing internal with a bigger drive. Cuz I really don't want an external drive, and with not being able to just plug-in and go, I might as well just replace. Copying isn't THAT much of a hassle. I'll schedule it between outside spring clean-up, painting 3 rooms, knocking down the pool, ....

To be fair(?), I don't believe it was ever possible to take a drive off the shelf and drop it in as a second internal drive. It had to be prepared(BlessTiVo).

[unitron]

Originally Posted by lpwcomp

To be fair(?), I don't believe it was ever possible to take a drive off the shelf and drop it in as a second internal drive. It had to be prepared(BlessTiVo).

Yeah, whether S1 and S2 PATA/IDE controller Master and Slave without the shows each being split, or the S3 and S4 SATA and eSATA internal and external scheme, the additional drive always has to be "married" to the first in order to work and be recognized.

[Flappjakk]

Thanks for the reply steve614, sometimes the most obvious troubleshooting steps are the easiest to forget. I downloaded the Seagate diagnostic iso and the long test is running now. I'll check the results in the morning.

[Yuterald]

Ok - it seems my post got 'lost' in the discussion on the prior page (or ignored or no one had an answer but just in case..) I'm posting it again: Is it that it's been 'that' long since Tivo HD users have had to upgrade their HDs? I ask since the first page has only a handful of 1TB drives to use and the prices for those are outrageous. Anyone try a 'newer' 1TB drive and have success? At this point I've had some issues (I think it's the external WD Book) so I think I'll get a 1TB drive 'just in case'.

[lpwcomp]

Originally Posted by Yuterald

Ok - it seems my post got 'lost' in the discussion on the prior page (or ignored or no one had an answer but just in case..) I'm posting it again: Is it that it's been 'that' long since Tivo HD users have had to upgrade their HDs? I ask since the first page has only a handful of 1TB drives to use and the prices for those are outrageous. Anyone try a 'newer' 1TB drive and have success? At this point I've had some issues (I think it's the external WD Book) so I think I'll get a 1TB drive 'just in case'.

The prices for all drives are currently outrageous.

[Yuterald]

Originally Posted by lpwcomp

The prices for all drives are currently outrageous.

While the prices have gone way up and then have come down some - my question was regarding model numbers. Thanks!

[Flappjakk]

Originally Posted by Flappjakk

Thanks for the reply steve614, sometimes the most obvious troubleshooting steps are the easiest to forget. I downloaded the Seagate diagnostic iso and the long test is running now. I'll check the results in the morning.

The Long test completed this morning without errors. I also ran the Short Test, which seems to be a subset of the Long Test, and it too passed. There is another test called acoustic test, which just idles the drive, then brings it back, it did what it says it does and passed. I guess I can assume the drive is ok? The drive is a Seagate 750GB model number ST3750640AS.

[steve614]

Originally Posted by Flappjakk

The Long test completed this morning without errors. I also ran the Short Test, which seems to be a subset of the Long Test, and it too passed. There is another test called acoustic test, which just idles the drive, then brings it back, it did what it says it does and passed. I guess I can assume the drive is ok? The drive is a Seagate 750GB model number ST3750640AS.

If the drive passed the manufacturer diagnostics, I would probably assume it was okay.

The next thing you should do is to check the Tivo it used to be in. Visually inspect the power supply (unplug the Tivo, of course).
If you see any bulging capacitors, that could be why it started randomly rebooting.
Putting the original hard drive back in may have seemed to fix it, but that could be because it puts less demand on the power supply.
If the power supply is going bad it will only get worse, and the original drive may start randomly rebooting as well.

[S3-2501]

I had a WD10EVDS in my Tivo HD die on me back on the 6th (would no longer power on/spin up) almost exactly two years after I first installed it. Thankfully, the drive came with a three year warranty. I was able to perform the entire RMA process online from WD's site, including purchasing a prepaid UPS label to send the drive to them. I dropped it off with UPS on the 9th, and I received my replacement drive yesterday, the 17th.

Instead of another WD10EVDS, they upgraded me to a WD20EVDS! Though the drive I got is re-certified and not new, the date (presumably of the re-certification) on the drive label is only from a few weeks ago.

I followed the steps outlined here to migrate the Tivo's original drive to the 2TB replacement using JMFS and then supersized with WinMFS. The process went smoothly, and it passed the cold boot/soft reboot test without having to muck around with WDIDLE.

My only concern is that a re-certified drive may be less reliable, but it only cost me the price of shipping the dead drive to them (less than $10) and my recording space is now double what it was.

I hope this information will be of use to anyone who has upgraded (or is planning to upgrade) using a Western Digital AV drive, or another drive with a longer warranty.

A big thanks to everyone here in these forums who has provided the tools, instructions and first-hand experience that make maintaining and upgrading a Tivo a real possibility for anyone willing to give it a try!

[Flappjakk]

Thanks again steve614. That drive was too loud for my bedroom, so I don't think I'm going to mess around with that Tivo anymore. I do have a Series 3 in my basement that I might upgrade with this drive instead. A little extra noise in my basement isn't going to be a big deal. When I have it open, I'll check the capacitors to see if any of them look like they are about to die. Thanks for your replies.

[KTinCA]

Hey Everyone,
This forum was a huge help, so just wanted to post my experience upgrading my Series 3 hard drive using a new Segate Pipeline.

Used winmfs on a Win 7 64bit system to image the original 250 MB drive onto a new Seagate Pipeline 1tb drive. Went flawlessly. Only issue was that the channel update got gummed up when it tried to update the channels (showed "failed" when it tried to update online). Problem was solved by doing the erase and restart (of just the channel and season pass info). No soft boot or hard boot issues with the drive.

The Seagate model is the ST1000VM002SP. One of their new single platter/64mb cache pipeline drives specifically meant for DVR applications. I have to say I'm very impressed so far, it is almost dead quite even when recording. I have to be within 2 feet of it to even tell it is on and then only is barely audible even when actively recording. It might be acceptable for a bedroom system is is so quite. Drive was also supersized and now says it has up to 143 HD hours available for recordings (which seems less than what others have reported, but I'm not complaining). Had just transferred all my recordings from the dying 250mb drive to my HP media server and then transferred them back after I gave the new drive a day or two to catch its breath... been running for 3 weeks now and all is still good.

Thanks to all the people who posted upgrade info.

[KTinCA]

Oh, in answer to YUTERALD's question from several days ago the 1tb Seagate Pipeline was about $110 which is more expensive than it was before the floods, but not really highway robbery for a specialized DVR/AV drive.

Note, to those who are debating using a specalized AV drive... Do it... Unless you have a free drive sitting around unused for some reason. These things are meant to run 24 hours a day and have a very specific error correction mode that is unique to them. Just realize if you ever cannibalize your TiVo at a later date you should *not* use the AV drive in a NAS/server or regular computer. The above mentioned error correction mode makes them pretty incompatible with regular computers and such...

[oldskoolboarder]

My Series 3 750GB finally bit the dust. I had to resort to 'Spindrive' it a few months ago and knew it was on it's last legs but had to wait until HDD prices dropped from the flood.

I've limited myself to using Instantcake because that's what I have, from a h/w and s/w standpoint. My house is OSX and I keep an OLD desktop with IDE (and a SATA adapter) just for Tivo repair.

I found some WD AV-GP drives and I saw both 1 TB and 2 TB. The price diff is quite small.

Can someone tell me what's the max HDD size I can use w/ Instantcake? IIRC, I saw mention of 1.2TB max (which is OK w/ me) but want to check here. If I can get >1TB, I can live w/ 'wasting' a bit of space on the HDD.

Thanks.

[unitron]

Originally Posted by oldskoolboarder

My Series 3 750GB finally bit the dust. I had to resort to 'Spindrive' it a few months ago and knew it was on it's last legs but had to wait until HDD prices dropped from the flood.

I've limited myself to using Instantcake because that's what I have, from a h/w and s/w standpoint. My house is OSX and I keep an OLD desktop with IDE (and a SATA adapter) just for Tivo repair.

I found some WD AV-GP drives and I saw both 1 TB and 2 TB. The price diff is quite small.

Can someone tell me what's the max HDD size I can use w/ Instantcake? IIRC, I saw mention of 1.2TB max (which is OK w/ me) but want to check here. If I can get >1TB, I can live w/ 'wasting' a bit of space on the HDD.

Thanks.

You might want to look at the sticker on the back of the TiVo and find the model number that starts with TCD and give us all of it so that we're sure we're talking about the same model.

And you can probably skip having to use Instant Cake, there are images available for the original S3, the S3 HD and the HD XL in the image begging thread, as well as some S1 and S2 images.

If you have Windows XP or newer on that old PC, you can use WinMFS to restore, or you can boot it from the MFS Live cd v1.4.

Both are available free at mfslive.org (you'll have to burn the cd yourself).

As far as I know, the original S3 is limited to 1.2TB, and can use a 1.5TB drive for it, but may not be able to even recognize a 2TB no matter how much or little of it is used.

The S3 HD and HD XL can use a 2TB drive, but that involves downloading and burning a copy of jmfs v1.04, and maybe a couple of other tricks first.

So tell us your model number.

[oldskoolboarder]

Originally Posted by unitron

So tell us your model number.

TCD648250B

Also, interested in some opinions. I have the original, untouched 250GB HDD from this S3 that I pulled when I upped the drive to 750GB. I can put that in to get it running. THEN, I have 2 WD MyDVR expander 'housings' that can populate with a new 1TB drive. The reason that I have these is that my inlaws used 2 of them on their Tivos and both of them DIED. I can use it w/ my 250GB internal to probably get more than 1TB of space. HOWEVER, my biggest concern is the there would be 2 points of failure, which is likely since both of these things died in their previous life. Do you folks think it's worth it to go w/ the expander or just use a single internal 1TB? I'm leaning towards 1TB internal for reliability, but I'm open to hearing opinions.

[steve614]

My opinion?
Use the biggest internal that the Tivo will recognize.
Do not use an external.

[bareyb]

Originally Posted by steve614

My opinion?
Use the biggest internal that the Tivo will recognize.
Do not use an external.

Agreed. If you have the skilz, go internal. External drives just add one more point of failure.

[ThreeSoFar]

Originally Posted by bareyb

Agreed. If you have the skilz, go internal. External drives just add one more point of failure.

Several points of failure....

• power supply of external enclosure
• jack on either side of the cable leading to the enclosure
• drive inside the enclosure
• the cable itself

[bareyb]

One more thing to troubleshoot.

[dbong1021]

So my Tivo S3 drive is starting to pixelate and lock up. Rebooting will get it back up but it will eventually lock up again. I went and bought a WD10EARS from Amazon last night and will be using winMFS to clone the drive.

Question though on cloning a bad drive like my existing one is turning into. Is that going to copy over any negative aspects and therefore cause issues with my new drive? Or is the bad drive theoretically fine but physical issues causing it to pixelate, lock up, etc?

[drhankz]

Originally Posted by dbong1021

So my Tivo S3 drive is starting to pixelate and lock up. Rebooting will get it back up but it will eventually lock up again. I went and bought a WD10EARS from Amazon last night and will be using winMFS to clone the drive.

Question though on cloning a bad drive like my existing one is turning into. Is that going to copy over any negative aspects and therefore cause issues with my new drive? Or is the bad drive theoretically fine but physical issues causing it to pixelate, lock up, etc?

Cloning any drive that is having problems is a BIGGER problem

[dbong1021]

Originally Posted by drhankz

Cloning any drive that is having problems is a BIGGER problem

that's my fear so I'm glad I asked. Any details on why this is? And also what is my best route if I really want to preserve my recordings and season passes?

[drhankz]

Originally Posted by dbong1021

that's my fear so I'm glad I asked. Any details on why this is? And also what is my best route if I really want to preserve my recordings and season passes?

Just write them DOWN and START from Scratch.

As an Electrical Engineer - we always had a saying.

"Garbage In Equals Garbage Out"

[blacknoi]

So I might have to replace my Tivo S3 (original with the OLEDs on the front) drive.

What 1TB drives these days are compatible still with the original S3?

Will a Western Digital WD10EADS work?

It's been years since I had to research it and the thread doesn't make it too obvious as to which are good in the HD vs the orignal S3.

Any help is appreciated.

Should have bought a 2nd backup drive years ago.....

EDIT: Grabbed a 1TB from dvr_dude on ebay. Will see what model it is once I get it. Hopefully I can recover the system info from the current drive. Would hate to redo my season passes. I can live with the lost recordings...