Bolt hard drive upgrade?

I have the 500 GB Bolt too and will be swapping the drive out at some point. From what I have read here on the forum you can swap the drive out with a 3TB drive without any special files loaded. I think the problem is that anything larger than 3 TB won't be accessible for recording.

 

3TB or less is a simple drive swap (although the case is a PITA to open/close). For 4TB drives you need to pre-condition the drive as described here -- http://www.rosswalker.co.uk/tivo_upgrade/#BOLT

This video was also helpful-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcH8NyRDRCU

 

Or just use MFS Reformatter (mfsr). Much quicker and better.

http://tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=528428

Plus it

 

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Has anyone tried cloning the drive with Acronis to maintain all shows/settings on the larger drive? I can see potential problems, but if it worked it'd be a huge time/effort saver.

 

What would using Acronis get you that just "Xeroxing" it with

dd


or


ddrescue


or


dd_rescue


wouldn't?

Either way, you're going to need something else to expand into the extra space aren't you?

 

Not sure about anybody else, but I've found it virtually impossible to find a 3TB drive.

 

I've had no problem finding them. I can do a search for the Toshiba 3TB model number and several places to purchase it from will pop up. But they are not the usual suspects. And the prices are 50% higher than the 4TB drive from the external enclosure.

So you either go with the 2TB drive, or pay only 25% more and get the 4TB drive.

 

Did that and only a couple places are "selling" it. And by that I mean they have none in stock. Care to send me a PM with other sites offering it that actually have it in stock? Thanks.

 

I see it here
http://www.serversupply.com/product...2t5pLwFsFxaXyIYmlRUVwekfvoWGk8FQ-txoCfuTw_wcB

and here

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Toshiba/MQ03ABB300/

and here

https://www.redcorp.com/en/toshiba/...00/product-details/5730t277.aspx#.VrIOTPkrJnI

but I have no idea if they are in stock.

EDIT: Here is an Amazon Japan site
http://www.amazon.co.jp/Toshiba-MQ03ABB300-高さ：15mm-2-5インチ-並行輸入品/dp/B015SP8D5K

 

Yeah, those are the ones I've found and contacted. None have it in stock. Thanks though.

 

From my experience, the PC will not even see the Tivo drive (except as a new drive that it wants to initialize and format), so that a program like Acronis will not work to clone.

 

Was finally able to find a pair of the Toshiba drives in stock. Hopefully the upgrade process goes smoothly.

 

There don't seem to be any good solutions, right now, outside of getting it from Weaknees but they keep the crappy 2.5" internal drive and the box will die killing all recorded content a lot sooner than you'd like - Current 2.5" drives are either small or unreliable (not much point in filling up 3 to 4 TB only to have it die in a year, wiping all of your shows).
There isn't a known way to add an external drive (WDs product is both too small and has been discontinued) for the DIY crowd. You can replace the internal drive with a large, good quality SSD, but that's really expensive even if you don't increase it much.
Getting a good quality 3.5" drive, putting it in an external enclosure and drilling holes in the case to run it off the internal SATA port seems to be the best bet. I've been having issues with MFS Reformat giving an error when trying to expand past 2tb (on a 6tb drive). Error is "Invalid Bolt Drive Format" Line 325 Error 0x00000000D 13).
If I attach that drive to the Tivo (Internal) port it starts right up, so the Bolt thinks the drive is just fine.
Unless / Until Greg Gieseke gets a chance to update mfsr, you may want to hold off, let Weaknees do it for you, or get a roamio.

 

Why exactly do you think it'll "die within a year?" We have a pair of MacBooks using the same 2.5" HDs they came with in 2010. They work perfectly fine. Is this just speculation?

 

I can't put words in his mouth, but reading here on the forum and from my own PC and Laptop repair experience, the 2.5 inch drives are normally not run in a 24/7 environment. Even if you leave your laptop on 24/7 the drive is normally in power saving mode. In the TiVo it's rarely if ever in standby mode. There is a thread or two talking about the 4TB drives seeming to die prematurely. It could be just a batch of bad ones or something like that, but it's something that will be interesting to follow. Time will tell.

 

This issue is discussed here...http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=536782

 

Upgraded two Bolts with the Toshiba 3 TB drives today and it couldn't have gone any smoother. This was also the first time I transferred a lot of content from one Bolt to another Bolt, in preparation for the HD upgrades, and I have to say, the transfer speed was amazing.

 

I've hit around 500Mb/s transfer rates between my Bolts with 4TB drives in them. If I remember correctly, this was in standby with no tuners buffering.

 

Didn't measure the speed, but it was very, very fast.