upgrade TiVo

ufo4sale · 07-23-2012, 02:04 PM

I have a 45 hour TiVo Premiere and I wanted to know what the largest amount of gigs I can hook up to it externally is?

Eradik · 07-23-2012, 02:16 PM

Externally, 1 TB. Thats all that is available, and you have to buy the Western Digital My DVR Expander. Only one that will work. I got it on sale from Amazon for $99, but it seems to vary in price from that and $130.

lillevig · 07-23-2012, 03:24 PM

Forget external and buy a big internal drive. You can get it cheaper and not have to worry about losing everything if either of the two drives fails.

MeInDallas · 07-23-2012, 03:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lillevig

Forget external and buy a big internal drive. You can get it cheaper and not have to worry about losing everything if either of the two drives fails.

I agree. You can get 2TB internal and its so easy to do. I did 2 Premieres and with the JMFS software its very easy and much cheaper for the size you get.

Quake97 · 07-23-2012, 04:06 PM

Just to note, upgrading the internal drive voids your warranty and will keep you out of the TiVo beta programs, if that's something you're into.

Joe

Teeps · 07-23-2012, 04:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Quake97

Just to note, upgrading the internal drive voids your warranty and will keep you out of the TiVo beta programs, if that's something you're into.

Joe

Good to know.
I can live with both "cons" for 318 HD hours of space.

johnd01 · 07-23-2012, 08:45 PM

Has anyone upgraded to a 3TB drive and been able to use all the space?

lessd · 07-23-2012, 09:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by johnd01

Has anyone upgraded to a 3TB drive and been able to use all the space?

Yes! and the TiVo would not boot, even if i just made a copy without expansion, any drive over 2.2Tb has a different format system that is not compatible with TiVo at this time. (its not compatible with Windows 7 and a normal BIOS, Windows 7 has some workarounds and some of the drive mfg have some special software that can be used to make the full drive (2.5Tb and up) bootable with a normal BIOS.)

mattack · 07-24-2012, 09:33 PM

In my day, we couldn't use a drive over 137 GB in a Tivo...

stcaudle12 · 07-25-2012, 01:55 PM

Can you put two drives in a premier and "marry" them?

steve614 · 07-25-2012, 05:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stcaudle12

Can you put two drives in a premier and "marry" them?

I don't think so, but why would you want to do that? One drive fails, the whole system is borked anyway.

Not only that, only so much space is recognized (IIRC 2.2TB), so it only makes sense to just use one 2TB hard drive to upgrade the Premiere.

mattack · 07-25-2012, 09:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by steve614

I don't think so, but why would you want to do that? One drive fails, the whole system is borked anyway.

Not only that, only so much space is recognized (IIRC 2.2TB), so it only makes sense to just use one 2TB hard drive to upgrade the Premiere.

Actually, I think that limit is PER DRIVE. Check the upgrade FAQ for sure.

unitron · 07-26-2012, 05:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mattack

Actually, I think that limit is PER DRIVE. Check the upgrade FAQ for sure.

Probably so, but the catch is that unlike the S1 and S2 IDE master and slave setup, the second SATA connection on an S3 HD and up board is only going to work with that very small handful of WD model numbers of the drive inside the enclosure.

jrtroo · 07-26-2012, 08:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stcaudle12

Can you put two drives in a premier and "marry" them?

For the Premiere we (users) cannot, but third party vendors can. None of the Community developed tools have this ability (to my knowledge).

mattack · 07-26-2012, 09:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by unitron

Probably so, but the catch is that unlike the S1 and S2 IDE master and slave setup, the second SATA connection on an S3 HD and up board is only going to work with that very small handful of WD model numbers of the drive inside the enclosure.

Well, I thought the OLED S3 could use other drives externally, and I *thought* that there were hacks to use a 2nd drive even on newer ones -- maybe even hooked to the SATA inside rather than via the normal external port, but maybe I'm totally wrong on that part.

unitron · 07-26-2012, 10:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mattack

Well, I thought the OLED S3 could use other drives externally, and I *thought* that there were hacks to use a 2nd drive even on newer ones -- maybe even hooked to the SATA inside rather than via the normal external port, but maybe I'm totally wrong on that part.

Yeah, the original S3 can use an "unapproved" external, but the eSATA port is attached to the motherboard so is only easily accessible from outside on the back panel.

(The S3 HD has a regular SATA header and a short jumper to an eSATA socket mounted in the back panel)

Originally someone discovered that Kickstart 62, previously undocumented, would let you add an external to an original S3.

(Software version 9.2 disabled KS 62, but you can still add an external, see below.)

This news got out before TiVo wanted it to, because they really didn't yet have all of their ducks in a row at the time.

Here's info on it I hadn't noticed before

http://www.mfslive.org/kickstart62.htm

http://www.mfslive.org/tivos3_esata.htm

Bear in mind, you can only add external to an original S3 if it's still using the original 250GB internal drive.

If you've replaced it with a bigger internal, you're out of luck.

And of course it puts part of each recording on both drives so you lose them all if anything goes wrong.

Also, unlike the S1s, which were designed for being able to take two IDE drives and therefore came with 2 Molex power connectors, and the S2s which still had an IDE header and a Molex you could easily plug a Y adapter into, the S3s have an internal combo data/power SATA plug that means no easy Y'ing of power and the power supply's probably not big enough to be running 2 drives anyway.

Teeps · 07-27-2012, 10:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by unitron

And of course it puts part of each recording on both drives so you lose them all if anything goes wrong.

Depending on the failure, the above is true.

I had the internal drive on my OLED S3 start to fail.
Before it failed to operate at all, I removed it and did a bit copy to a Seagate drive of same size (250GB.)

Installed the new Seagate drive into TiVo; booted it up with the non approved external Esata 1TB (green drive.)
TiVo worked as though noting had changed...

ufo4sale · 07-28-2012, 02:48 PM

How much world a formatted 2TB Hard drive cost me and where can I get one? I don't' have a computer to format it so I would have to buy it from a third party.

aaronwt · 07-28-2012, 03:39 PM

three places you can get can get them from are

http://www.weaknees.com/

http://www.ebay.com/sch/dvr_dude/m.html

http://www.dvrupgrade.com

Over the years I've used drives from them and never had any issues with them. I would have no problem getting a drive them in the future if I needed one.

alyssa · 07-28-2012, 04:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by unitron

Bear in mind, you can only add external to an original S3 if it's still using the original 250GB internal drive.

If you've replaced it with a bigger internal, you're out of luck.

i don't think this is true. I seem to remember having an upgraded S3 *and* an unsanctioned external.

unitron · 07-28-2012, 05:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by alyssa

i don't think this is true. I seem to remember having an upgraded S3 *and* an unsanctioned external.

Not yet having gotten one with which to experiment, I was going by what spike said.

You know, the guy responsible for turning MFS Tools into MFS Live and for creating WinMFS?

alyssa · 07-28-2012, 07:11 PM

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb...d.php?t=350510

section # 7 leads to here
http://www.mfslive.org/softwareguidep5.htm

blast from the past

unitron · 07-28-2012, 07:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by alyssa

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb...d.php?t=350510

section # 7 leads to here
http://www.mfslive.org/softwareguidep5.htm

blast from the past

Okay, now I see what's going on.

If you want the TiVo to do the work, previously via KS 62, and now with 9.2, you have to be running the original 250.

Anything else requires a computer and mfsadd

But as far as I know, shows are still striped across both drives, even if you shoehorn the second one into the TiVo case.

alyssa · 07-28-2012, 08:18 PM

I have no idea abt software vs. 9.2 or later. IIRC, the last time i added an external to an S3 was in 2010...but i could be off on the date.

Now if a way could be leaked to us modders so we could add an unsanctioned external to our premieres. <grin>

unitron · 07-28-2012, 08:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by alyssa

I have no idea abt software vs. 9.2 or later. IIRC, the last time i added an external to an S3 was in 2010...but i could be off on the date.

Now if a way could be leaked to us modders so we could add an unsanctioned external to our premieres. <grin>

Due to unforseen (by them) circumstances, the original S3 apparently doesn't use the very short list of WD drive model numbers, but everything more recent does.

So what you need is an external capable of lying to the TiVo about the model number of the drive inside.

As to whether the part of the algorithm that calls that list also cross checks capacity against it...

alyssa · 07-28-2012, 09:07 PM

DVR_Dude recently married an WD hdd to the stock drive in an XL4 for me...for all i know that was how he did it. the turn around time was fast tho, so it couldn't have taken a lot of time.

unitron · 07-28-2012, 10:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by alyssa

DVR_Dude recently married an WD hdd to the stock drive in an XL4 for me...for all i know that was how he did it. the turn around time was fast tho, so it couldn't have taken a lot of time.

Did you have to mail him the internal (or the whole TiVo)?

alyssa · 07-29-2012, 07:32 AM

I sent him the two HDD's, the internal xl4 and a blank one only. it cost $60, (50 for the process & 10 for shipping)
he listed a couple of options, he'll supply the external hdd and the antec external case if you want (for more money of course).

you could send him the entire box, but then it'd be more for shipping

eta; I didn't ask him if another hdd could be used, i stuck with the WD model