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MFS Reformatter (mfsr)

320K views 2K replies 258 participants last post by  ggieseke 
#1 · (Edited)
WARNING

1. This software is provided "as is" with absolutely no warranty of any kind.

2. It is copyrighted and may NOT be used commercially.

3. Opening your TiVo will void the manufacturer's warranty.

4. While every effort has been made to prevent data loss, the ultimate responsibility is yours.

OVERVIEW:

This is a Windows program designed to reformat large (4TB - 6TB) Roamio drives. I call it a reformatter because it depends on some variables from the original auto-format process even though it throws most of them out the window. It can run on XPSP3, but I have only tested it on Windows 7 and 8.1 so far.

Edit: Support for Bolts and drives up to 8TB has been added. See post #2 for the latest version.

THE BASICS:

Your Roamio must running 20.4.6 or later. Earlier versions go into an endless boot loop trying to format anything over 3TB.

1. Put the drive in your Roamio and power it on. It will take about four minutes to auto-format the drive. When it gets to the first Guided Setup screen, power it off. The resulting drive will only use a fraction of the total capacity, but we will fix that in the next steps.

2. Download mfsr and unzip it to somewhere on your computer.

3. Connect the drive to your computer. USB 2.0 adapters will work, but are much slower than USB 3.0 or a SATA direct connection.

4. Run mfsr with an account that's a member of the Administrators group or right-click it and choose Run as Administrator. Follow the instructions from there to reformat the drive to use its full capacity.

5. Put the drive back in the TiVo and enjoy.

NOTES:

If you run this program on an existing drive you will lose all of your settings and recordings.

It aligns the MFS file (application) and inode "zones" correctly for Advanced Format (4K) drives. That should improve performance and reduce wear & tear on the drive. This is something that I don't think has ever been addressed before.

It works on 3TB drives as well. It will not run on 2TB or smaller drives. If there's enough interest in creating smaller drives that are fully AF aligned that can be addressed later.

It only works on Roamios. If there is enough interest in a version for Premieres that can also be addressed in a later version.

SPECIAL THANKS GO TO...

jmbach, telemark, nooneuknow, and the original pioneers of MFS like Spike and comer.

FINAL NOTE:

It took over 400 hours of development time, a new WD 6TB Red drive, and a new copy of Visual Studio 2013 Pro to get this far. If you save a few hundred dollars by using this program instead of buying a prepared drive, PLEASE donate to the cause.



Edit: Roamios running 20.5.6 or later should use version 1.0.0.2 from post #2.
 

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#832 ·
I've got nothing like that laying about. I might have a 1.5 TB available, but that is less than the factory 3TB.

There was recent software update, could that be interfering with the auto-format?
I doubt it. When a new version of software comes out, I let my Roamio Plus auto format an 8TB drive to see if TiVo fixed the 64 bit bug in their OS that prevents people from using drives larger than 3TB. I just tested 20.6.3 and the drive auto formatted and booted just fine. However the 64 bit bug has not been fixed yet.
Have you run WD diagnostics long test on the drive yet?
 
#834 · (Edited)
I have had some drives that failed at the full erase test but passed the other tests.

If you want to make sure it is not an auto format issue, use MFSTools 3.2 to copy the original drive to the 8TB with the command mfstool copy /dev/sdX /dev/sdY. It should only take a few minutes and then you can put the 8TB in. If it boots up then it may be something with auto format. Since the 64 bit bug was not fixed, if you check the recording space on that drive it should be a little over 200 hours of recording time. If that is the case, then run MFSR on that 8TB drive. It should create a 8TB drive with 8TB of recording space.

If the 8TB did not boot, then consider to run a test with the drive hooked to the TiVo but powered by an external power supply. If that doesn't work. Time to think and scratch head more.
 
#835 ·
I haven't had time to test 20.6.3 yet, but if jmbach says it works I believe him. You could also try pulling the drive right after the green screen and see if mfsr recognizes it. The typical time for the auto-format to complete is just over 3 minutes on a Roamio, and if it makes it far enough into that process there should be enough of a file system to work with.
 
#837 ·
Ok, tried seeing if MFS Reformatter would work -- unfortunately in this case it doesn't. Here's what I see:

"Series5 5589.03 GB WDC WD60 EFRX-68L0BN1 found.

Click File -> Reformat TiVo Drive to continue."

(Click File -> Reformat)

Final warning pop-up

(Click OK)

Error window pops-up. "MFS volume header not found"

(Click OK)

Error window pops-up. "Line 337, Error 0xFFFFFFFF (4294967295)" etc.

Next test: using an external power supply for the 6TB drive.
 
#836 ·
If you want to make sure it is not am auto format issue, use MFSTools 3.2 to copy the original drive to the 8TB with the command mfstool copy /dev/sdX /dev/sdY. It should only take a few minutes and then you can put the 8TB in. If it boots up then it may be something with auto format.
I've only got a single external HDD Dock, so t.This sounds like I'll need to open up the computer to have both connected at the same time.
 
#838 ·
External power supply does not help. The green screen still lasts 1~2 seconds before rebooting. My assumption is that something is interfering with the auto-formatting -- maybe with this particular type of drive? It gets far enough into the process so that MFSR recognizes it as a TiVo drive, but can't do anything with it...
 
#839 ·
Run a quick erase on it and see if it will boot up in the TiVo.
Is this a normal red or one out of an external enclosure.
 
#840 · (Edited)
BTW, is the Roamio is updated to the latest OS. We did see that behavior with earlier OSes
 
#844 ·
So I upgraded my Roamio Pro with the WD 8TB Red NAS drive.
After running mfsr, I restarted mfsr and it shows:
Series5 7452.04 GB found
5399.79GB allocated for recordings.
Is this correct?
I'm about to unplug and let it boot, but wanted to confirm before I start migrating all my shows from the Roamio.
 
#845 ·
You just found a display bug in 1.0.0.4. :oops: The correct number should be 7447.79 GB allocated for recordings, but it's still ready to plug in and you should see over 1280 hours in the System Information screen on your Roamio.

At the end of the program it goes back through the partition table and adds up the ones specifically tagged as media partitions, but on drives over 6TB I had to put a 4th media zone in the application partition that it's not taking into account. Sorry for the confusion.
 
#847 ·
About to upgrade a Roamio Pro to 6TB using WD Red WD60EFRX. Is there any reason to keep the original pro 3TB drive around or is it safe to repurpose into a Roamio OTA? Used to keep old S3 drives around for a copy of original image, but from what I understand on Roamio, the drives are initially blank and the images are kept somewhere else.

In the past whenever there were hard drive problems, there were some early symptoms and which allowed some time to to dd_rescue onto a similar size drive and fortunately the errors were in media areas, not critical data.
 
#848 ·
The only reason to keep it around is if there a must have recording that it would be devastating to you if you lost it. Otherwise go ahead and re-purpose the drive. I would do a quick erase on the drive first with WD Diagnostic before putting it in the new machine.

The OS on the Roamio and Bolt models reside on a flash drive on the motherboard.
 
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#849 · (Edited)
Hello - thanks for this excellent resource and
ggieseke and Jmbach et. al. for your help and guidance.
  1. I have a Tivo Roamio Plus that I upsized to 4TB with Telemark's guide in early 2015.
  2. I would now like to go to 8TB from 4TB with a WD Red 8TB drive.
  3. If I want to save any recordings from my current drive I will need to transfer them to a PC first using kmttg/tivo desktop and then transfer them back with pytivo or pulling from the Tivo "devices" menu after the new drive is in.
  4. I will use posts #1 and #2 of this thread and since my Tivo Roamio software is 20.6.3 I'm good to go and will use MSFR 1.004 for the 8TB size.
  5. I don't have to do anything special or get to skip anything since I already did something similar to upgrade to the 4TB lastyear? I pop the fresh drive in the Tivo briefly to the guided setup (country) before pulling it and putting it into my Win 7 machine for the MSFR format. (it formats but retains a section with the Tivo formatting that it received by booting it up in the roamio briefly?)
  6. There is no direct copy/clone/disk to disk copy procedure I can do to retain my shows more quckly - and I'll have to use the transfer shows/push back to get them back on my new drive?
  7. (just thought of this) could I add a used 2nd roamio to my system and use it just for storage/transfer during this upgrade? Would it need its own cable card and Tivo subscription if it was just to store shows already recorded on my main Roamio?)
  8. And is there any need for a power-brick/transformer upgrade for my roamio plus when i go to the WD 8TB 5400rpm drive?
THanks for any further info/clarification. Sorry for redundancies. I plan to donate as I did before.
 
#850 ·
(just thought of this) could I add a used 2nd roamio to my system and use it just for storage/transfer during this upgrade? Would it need its own cable card and Tivo subscription if it was just to store shows already recorded on my main Roamio?)
Each Tivo requires its own service subscription to operate.
It also is not a good device for long term storage of shows.
Cable card is used just for access to record off cable and once recording is finished, its not required anymore.

You can download shows and store them on a large (can be a NAS) hard drive as .MPG, or MPEG4. Some NAS system even has the ability of PyTivo service so transfers back to Tivo are possible.
 
#851 ·
1-5 Correct.
6. I have a program in the very early development stages to do just that, but stuff got crazy at work back in late July and I haven't touched it since then and probably won't be able to get back to it this year. Had to work the 4-day Thanksgiving weekend and Christmas/New Years is looking sketchy.
7. It would have to have an active subscription, but not a CableCARD.
8. The internal power supply in a Plus should be fine - it was designed for 3.5" drives. I've been running my Basic with a 4TB Red for more than a year with the wimpy external factory power supply, and I used it for the 8TB development because it was already open and my Pro was harder to get to.
 
#855 ·
Thanks delgadobb - unfortunately i'm on the east coast - and don't have access to that sale. that mycloud looks like it is about $300. I'm looking at the 8tb mybook that is listed around $229 and may or may not have the 8tb WD Red clone (EZZX) in it.
any chance these enclosures can be opened - and if it isn't the desired drive- they could be put back together so they are in new/returnable condition?
 
#856 · (Edited)
Just some information for the community.

I was going to do this on an old WinXP box but ran into the 2TB limitation. Even though my motherboard BIOS supports full 48-bit LBA (so theoretically it should support 128PB), effectively this is being limited to 32-bit LBA (2TB) due to WinXP OS-level drivers. The drivers tend to overlow the bits and the drive size you see is just the amount that is over a multiple of 2TB, for example 6TB (around 5.5TB) shows up as 1496GB.

If you have (I believe) Intel ICH7 or newer IO chip, you can obtain newer Intel RST drivers to address the OS issue. I think the last version which both fixed the 32-bit OS limitation and works on WinXP is 10.1.0.1008.

Search downloads

Now, my board uses ICH5R i/o chipset and none of the Intel RST packages that fixed the 32-bit limitation would install on ICH5R boards. I tried forcing it and my system wouldn't boot (if you play with this stuff, make sure you have ability to get to previous known working driver set up). I suspect if you have older (but not ancient board like mine), you can get this working just by installing the aforementioned Intel RST drivers.

Incidentally I know this is just a higher level (relatively) driver issue, because Western Digital Data Lifeguard does see my drive as 6TB and it can write zeros and run extended tests on it, however Windows Disk Management does the 32-bit overflow thing. Theoretically I think MFSR could work on these older boards if it bypassed some windows functions but I am sure it isn't worth the effort. The way these older systems work with 48-bit LBA is they push the LBA address twice in the 32-bit registers, so access is slower but it works. This wouldn't fix the issue with WinXP and larger than 2TB obviously, but MFSR doesn't really need to deal with OS high-level limitations since the drive is never intended to live on the WinXP box. It just needs to get the proper data written out, which I believe should be possible since WD Data Lifeguard can do it.

I was gifted one of those really inexpensive win10 laptops (I think less than $100) which don't even come with hard drive ports anymore, instead opting for onboard 32GB eMMC memory. I thought it was a useless unit (I need to do a lot of work just to get the monthly all-in-one win10 updates to install on a 32GB drive, and most people can't even get the updates to install), especially after I found out it didn't have a SATA port so I couldn't upgrade to decent SSD, but it turns out to be perfect for almost one-time use to do the TiVo partition readjustment. Since it didn't have any drive ports I decided to go with a SATA-to-USB adapter that supported greater than 2TB.

I wanted something I could pick up locally which basically means Frys. If someone wants a unit that is known to work with larger drives:
Vantec IDE/SATA TO USB 3.0 Adapter It is around $19.99 but I am sure it goes on sale eventually at frys. I could probably get something in the $10-$12 range if I tried, but it wouldn't be local and I would have to wait.

Plugged it into the drive and into the win10 laptop, immediately Windows Disk Management could see the full 6TB size, far less effort, especially since I had this useless laptop lying around. Incidentally I am amazed they can get a PC with 14" display, USB3 port, and decent battery life down below the $100 price point. The previous version of the same laptop (same price) actually came with SATA port so you could put in Samsung SSD and have a usable laptop.

I also was under the impression these Roamios just came with blank drives and the OS formatted whatever it saw. That apparently isn't the case. There is TiVo partition info on the drive even before first turning on the unit. You won't have issues putting a blank drive in (the OS is kept separately and will format the drive), just the original drive isn't blank, in case you are the cautious type and want to save off what was originally there before doing any modifications.

As an aside, even if your WinXP can't recognized larger than 2TB on its own, I believe you can effectively use up to 16TB as a non-boot windows drive without additional drivers. The way this is done is to format the drive on a different PC as NTFS using 4KB blocks.

The 2TB limit we are talking about is on the LBA (logical block address). With 512byte block size, that means 2TB. If you increase the block size to 4KB (8x larger) then the limit is 2TB*8=16TB. However you can't do the format on the PC in question because the tools won't recognize the full drive, doing the 2TB 32-bit overflow thing.

Now I'm being hit with a stupid TiVo bug. I got the Roamio because Comcast all of a sudden started charging "outlet fees" on each of my S3 OLED cablecards (4 total). I was paying $1.50 each which is what is on the rate sheet, but now they were charging something like $14.99 per card with some credits for customer equipment. They wanted to charge me something like $50/mo for CableCards which have been in my TiVo for a decade and most likely listed as "worthless/obsolete" in their inventory. I have long ago paid for their full value in rental fees.

I complained left and right, escalated, multiple levels, complained to local franchise authority and eventually a few weeks later got a letter from corporate apologizing and reinstating my previous rate.

I knew the writing was on the wall though so got the Roamio so I could get back down to a single cablecard where I wouldn't have these stupid outlet fee issues. I am sure Comcast will do this to me every few months to wear me down.

So I picked up the Roamio and wanted to offload the S3 shows onto the Roamio. Now I get hit with the 2.6.3.RC7 bug where S3s can access the Roamio but the Roamio (and Bolt, Premier) cannot access the S3s (C423 error). Big good it would do to offload my shows back onto the S3s I am trying to retire. Who knows when TiVo will fix this problem. There are claims they are working on it, but I am not confident it will happen soon. I haven't been back here in a while and didn't realize after the Rovi purchase it seems software bugs are being introduced more often than bugs being fixed. I am sure I'm affected by the HDMI audio DD/PCM bug that is also in this software version, but right now I am watching stuff through Slingbox so don't really care.

So Premiere's can work around the bug by switching to SD menus. I get the feeling HD menus is something like a whole different implementation of TiVo living side-by-side with the more solid older implementation in the SD menus. Any change in the HD menus seems to break everything else. Perhaps nobody is around that even understands the SD menus and the people doing HD menu implementation are just operating blind.

I am sure a bunch of people are annoyed with the recent CyberMonday/Whitesale where they picked up a 4 or 6 tuner Roamio with the intention of retiring their older units and finding out just a few days after they purchased their unit, a software/OS update comes that breaks the ability to access their older S3/HDs. I think TiVo/Rovi has this backwards. Usually you disable access to force people to buy a newer unit. You don't sell them the unit first, then disable access. I am being facetious here, obviously this is a bug, not a feature created by marketing.

Also as an aside, I went with the 6TB vs the 8TB WD Red because the 8TB seemed to run warmer and had clicking noises. Also it seemed more people were complaining about reliabilty even though theoretically the helium drives should have less wear and tear. I think the problems weren't with the platters but with the motors and head. I am sure many of the drives are fine and all drives have isolated reliability issues. With the clicking noise and the slightly more heat on the Hitachi/WD Helium 8TB, I just went with the tried and true 6TB "old" technology drives.

Hope someone finds this info useful.
 
#857 ·
Good info.

I'm still not sure what some of the 8TB WD drives in those enclosures really are under the hood. Maybe the HGST 7200RPM version? The WD80EFZX that I bought straight from WD when it came out is actually slightly quieter than the WD60EFRX drives that I've grown to trust & love. Mine peaked out at about 117F after 3 days of continuous stress tests.

Technically XP can handle drives over 2TB except for the boot drive, but after 40+ pages in this thread I realize that the odds of finding the right combination of chipsets and drivers on a box that old are slim to none. That applies to a lot of older USB docks too. For the record, if Disk Manager can't see the full capacity mfsr won't see it either.
 
#858 · (Edited)
Good info.

I'm still not sure what some of the 8TB WD drives in those enclosures really are under the hood. Maybe the HGST 7200RPM version? The WD80EFZX that I bought straight from WD when it came out is actually slightly quieter than the WD60EFRX drives that I've grown to trust & love. Mine peaked out at about 117F after 3 days of continuous stress tests.
I think the 5400RPM WD80EFZX is quieter than the WD60EFRX in general but there is some clicking noise I have heard on a few them. Maybe it is some thermal recalibration the drive does. I think it runs slightly hotter than WD60EFRX though, just a small amount. The specs say it uses more power so that isn't surprising.

Technically XP can handle drives over 2TB except for the boot drive, but after 40+ pages in this thread I realize that the odds of finding the right combination of chipsets and drivers on a box that old are slim to none. That applies to a lot of older USB docks too. For the record, if Disk Manager can't see the full capacity mfsr won't see it either.
At the low level WinXP handles larger than 2TB drive, but somewhere above that there is a 2TB 32-bit limitation on stock WinXP SP3. I could not try the fixed drivers because the 10.1 Intel RST (storage) drivers don't support my older chipset (ICH5R is from 2002 days), but supposedly ICH7 and higher is supported (which is probably around 2005 days), so if someone wanted to try something real quick, here is the link for the 10.1.0.1008 driver: Search downloads
It should work for any motherboard using Intel IO chipset, which is most, if not all, boards using Intel CPU.

Here is an example of someone getting a 3TB drive recognized with 10.1.0.1008 so theoretically if you can get that done, MFSR should work fine with it.
How to solve a 3TB hard drive showing up as 746gb
 
#859 ·
I also was under the impression these Roamios just came with blank drives and the OS formatted whatever it saw. That apparently isn't the case. There is TiVo partition info on the drive even before first turning on the unit. You won't have issues putting a blank drive in (the OS is kept separately and will format the drive), just the original drive isn't blank, in case you are the cautious type and want to save off what was originally there before doing any modifications.
Just to clarify, the refurb Roamio 500GB OTA came with tivo partition info on the drive. The brand new June 2016 built Roamio Pro came with blank drive. Perhaps they turn on the refurbs to test them and that is why they come with TiVo partition on the drive.

So on a new Roamio Pro, there is literally no information of value on the drive until first boot.
 
#860 ·
Curious, is this expected behavior?

On the original 3TB drive, the Free space is less than Capacity

On the new MFSR 6TB drive, the Free space is MORE than Capacity.

I am going by screenshots, so I don't think my eyes are playing tricks on me.

This is with 20.6.3.RC7 on Roamio Pro.

Original 3TB WD30EURX drive
3TB - 476 HD or 3270 SD Capacity
3TB - 473 HD or 3267 SD Free

New 6TB WD60EFRX
6TB - 959 HD or 6606 SD Capacity
6TB - 964 HD or 6653 SD Free
 
#861 ·
If I am not mistaken it is due to empty buffers. Once it starts getting video in the buffers, it will fix itself.
 
#863 ·
Good point. I know it fixes itself after being on for awhile. Noticed that same issue when's expanding my Premiere. A discussion at that time seem to point to the video buffers. Perhaps is it downloaded content that fills in the gap.
 
#864 ·
As you mentioned, it did fix itself.

I still don't have CableCARDs installed so the buffer shouldn't be filling up, but after some connects to the mothership and reboots, it did fix itself. I noticed before the last reboot, I still had a green line item under My Shows for TiVo Suggestions, even though I had disabled TiVo Suggestions under Settings. After the last reboot, the TiVo Suggestions line item was gone and the free space looks appropriate.

Thanks for your help.

WD60EFRX
Cap 6TB - 959 HD or 6606 SD (initial)
Free 6TB - 964 HD or 6653 SD

Cap 6TB - 959 HD or 6606 SD (steady state)
Free 6TB - 956 HD or 6603 SD
 
#866 ·
I used mfs on a 4tb WD purple drive, everything seemed fine, Roamio booted up but during set up I always get an N11 error when it is connecting. It worked on the stock drive, I've changed between wired/wireless (I normally use wired only), removed switches, restarted over and over, etc. Could this be related to mfs or is it something unrelated? There is very little recent info about N11 errors that I've found, and none that had to do with upgrading a drive.

If I put the old drive back in everything works as expected...
 
#868 ·
I used mfs on a 4tb WD purple drive, everything seemed fine, Roamio booted up but during set up I always get an N11 error when it is connecting. It worked on the stock drive, I've changed between wired/wireless (I normally use wired only), removed switches, restarted over and over, etc. Could this be related to mfs or is it something unrelated? There is very little recent info about N11 errors that I've found, and none that had to do with upgrading a drive.

If I put the old drive back in everything works as expected...
Hrm... This randomly started working after I posted this. Perhaps it was an issue with Tivo's infrastructure?
 
#870 ·
My 3TB SMR drive just failed after over a year of use in Dec. I put in a standard 2TB seagate 2.5 drive (no prep) and it was running fine until today (lasted about a month). Same flashing 4 light failure.

Question: has mfsr been updated to allign 2TB drives (in the first post it mentions this might be desirable?).

I don't want to put in another 2TB and have it fail (the whole reason I went 2 TB was that I wanted cheap, internal and not fail like the SMR drive)

Anything else I might do to make this thing last longer?
 
#872 · (Edited)
*** (problem with 4TB previous roamio plus drive put into a roamio OTA after MFSR - I couldn't get it co complete guided setup.... original down below.....)***
UPDATE
SOLVED...
- got it to complete guided setup, loaded guide data, channel scan and I am up and running - OTA with 4TB is running well. (636 hrs of HD available).
I did a couple things - not sure what solved it (or if it was just tivo server/rovi guide issues that finally resolved on tivos server end?...)

1. I took the 4TB drive out and re-did mfsr reformatting again - got a successful result - then put it back in and went through the whole thing again.
failed again. then I kept selecting to check network or try again, etc.
2.At one point the failure listed the firewall ports i needed to open - so i went into my verizon router and added them on my verizon fios router
...failed again...
3. then I found a thread where another Tivo user was having Tivo Desktop/PC - tivo - connection issues which I've also been having (so who knows if this did anything) and so for my tivo boxes - I went in and checked the box for "IGMP allowed" for each for each tivo box listed by their static ip addresses
Solved: Communication between wired and wireless network on actiontec MI424WR - Page 6 - Verizon Fios Community

direct link to the router page where you do this once you're logged in to your router (for verizon actiontec anyway)
http://192.168.1.1/index.cgi?active_page=6061

Then after all of these steps - I go through full guided setup again -
and it failed again, and then one more time - and it finally completed.

So in the words of Clark's cousin Eddie... "I don't know" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Thanks for the MFS Reformatter/procedure ggieseke, donation sent.
Put an 8TB WD liberated from a mybook (EZZX) in the Roamio Plus - now at 1281 hrs of HD capacity. wow.



-------detals of finally getting it to work. and original problem/question posted further below -------------
this a.m it went further at first (so maybe it was the tivo servers that I saw aluded to in another post as giving some problems last night - so maybe that was the 'connection' issue). - getting setup info (completed all), then on to channel scan, completed that then "connect to tivo service for program info - and it got through the end of that - but then after hitting select it got "connection error n11 again- and i had to start over.

So when it went through again it listed all the possible firewall ports that had to be unblocked - so i went into my fios actiontec router and added them.

then i did it all again - and at this point it froze - and i think it was because i had the cover off and the fan wasn't able to move the heat away from the hard drive, so i had to power cycle and start again with the top on.

then this time it finally completed

country select
guided setup
getting setup info - prepairing, connecting, getting info, disconnectin, loading info, done
then channel scan - done
then 'will now connect to the tivo service to get program info"
passed all steps same as above under getting setup info...
through loading and done, select to continue.
then a different result - a message like - 'there is enough guide data for the day to get you started" and then "press the tivo button to start using your new tivo.

hooray! persistence pays off
----------------- original problem below -------------------
Hello - Need help with an issue I'm having getting a 4TB to work in a Roamio OTA. hanging at guided setup - s03 or n11 error...

  1. pulled the stock 500gb drive on the ota after i set it up and everything was working fine with antenna/channels/recording/transferring, etc.
  2. powered down, and pulled the 500gb drive so i could put in a 4TB drive that came from a roamio plus (working fine) - a 4TB WD AV GP EURX from a former upgrade (telemark's procedure from spring of 2015) of that roamio plus. had never had any issues.
  3. i did not put it into the OTA and power up to Country screen like you would with a new drive - since it had been in a tivo roamio i assumed it had the tivo file system on it (that may not be the correct term). hope this isn't a big mistake.
  4. pulled one of my internal sata drives and placed the former roamio 4TB in my windows 7 64bit pc - powered up and ran MFSReformatter - which recognized a tivo drive with 3700 odd gb of space - and i hit file - format tivo drive.and it reported that it formatted it and it was ready for a tivo with 3722gb of space +/-.
  5. put it in the OTA - powered up - and it hung on guided setup at the end of getting and uploading guide data and gave me an "S03" error. (which searches tell me isn't great) - then i tried again - and it hung on the getting info/ 'downloading' stage (earlier) - and gave me a connection lost/connection interrupted error (n11?). check the network, etc. (i had used my fios router settings to assign static ip addresses to my tivos - is there any specific guidance on what address to assign? I just assigned the address as static that DHCP had already automatically assigned - and the tivos are like 192.168.1.17 and .18 or something. Does this naming/numbering determine anything - should I assign them .1 and .2 slots or space them out more,? does it matter?
  6. this drive had been fine in the roamio plus with cablecard - working fine up to the day before.
  7. did i need to do some sort of more extensive reformatting/1's/0's overwriting to make this used 4TB ready for MFSR and the OTA?

thanks for any thoughts and help.
 
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