pulling a tivo drive to access the recorded shows

[EVizzle]

Hello,

I have an upgraded S3 Tivo with a 1TB drive. It is full and instead of transferring all the shows via my network, I was thinking of pulling the drive and transferring via SATA or USB 3.0. Are the recordings simply accessible as .tivo files that can be played back on my computer via the Tivo desktop?

Thanks!

[ThAbtO]

No, the drive is encrypted.

[stevel]

And the recordings are not files.

[unitron]

Originally Posted by EVizzle

Hello,

I have an upgraded S3 Tivo with a 1TB drive. It is full and instead of transferring all the shows via my network, I was thinking of pulling the drive and transferring via SATA or USB 3.0. Are the recordings simply accessible as .tivo files that can be played back on my computer via the Tivo desktop?

Thanks!

Once you've transferred them via the TiVo and Tivo Desktop to a computer running Tivo Desktop you can watch them on that computer, but you need the Tivo in order to have something that can read the file system(s) on the TiVo drive.

Just buy your TiVo it's own computer with a 2TB drive or two all as one NT partition, and store your shows there.

And figure out how to connect your TiVo and the computer running TiVo Desktop together over CAT5 instead of wireless to speed up transfer times.

[EVizzle]

thanks, my Tivo is wired not wireless now, but the hassles of pulling so many files via Tivo Desktop has me annoyed. Looks like that is what I will have to do though.

[unitron]

Originally Posted by EVizzle

thanks, my Tivo is wired not wireless now, but the hassles of pulling so many files via Tivo Desktop has me annoyed. Looks like that is what I will have to do though.

You can check off multiple boxes on the selection sheet and it'll do one right after the other without you having to be involved.

[orangeboy]

Originally Posted by EVizzle

thanks, my Tivo is wired not wireless now, but the hassles of pulling so many files via Tivo Desktop has me annoyed. Looks like that is what I will have to do though.

Get kmttg. You can setup a filter (.*) to transfer all recordings automatically, or pick & choose only selected recordings. There is a bunch more kmttg can do, if you want.

[mattack]

Whenever I've asked a question like this, I hear rumblings of "extraction", but apparently that talk doesn't go on here.. and I've not bothered to go into a huge search to figure out how involved it is.

[unitron]

Originally Posted by mattack

Whenever I've asked a question like this, I hear rumblings of "extraction", but apparently that talk doesn't go on here.. and I've not bothered to go into a huge search to figure out how involved it is.

Well, if you can "deal" with having to search through a "database" at "The Site Which Must Not Be Named Here", you can probably find a lot more information about "certain subjects", but if you don't have a bunch of stuff recorded on a Series 1, it'll probably be a lot more involved than you'll want to get.

If you just want to be able to record on the TiVo and watch on the computer, TiVo Desktop (the free version) is the easiest way to go of which I know.

You can install it on more than one computer on your network, let the "least busy/most spare hard drive space" one copy from the Tivo (you can set up to automatically copy a series whenever a new episode gets Tivo'ed, sort of a Season Pass for a Season Pass), and then copy over your home network from one computer's "My TiVo Recordings" folder to another one's.

[pmiranda]

I think even the other site shies away from trying to grab shows off the HD. It's more hassle than just queuing up a bunch of transfers and letting them go, anyway. In fact, it probably wouldn't take as long as getting an answer to this question :-)

[mattack]

I dunno, with an hour long show taking like 20 minutes to transfer, and being sometimes flaky (even over wired connection), even dealing with the 5+ minute reboot of a S3 or TivoHD might be worth it if they can 'easily' be extracted along with the metadata.