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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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#1,218 ·
#1,219 ·
I have sucessfully used a WD Purple 8TB in a Roamio. Has anyone else had any positive or negitive experiences with this WD family of drives?
I am using a 3TB Purple drive in my Roamio OTA
It is working fine and is about 1.5yr old now. These drives are made for 24hr/7day use and multiple stream recording. They look like a cousin to the RED drives. May just be a firmware difference.
 
#1,224 ·
MFSR can be used up to an 8TB drive. I do not know what it would do if it was presented with a 10TB drive.
 
#1,228 ·
Thanks I just picked up a 5TB Seagate backup plus on sale at Costco for $75!! installed in Bolt without a problem and running cool. The backup plus comes with a SATA to USB3.0 converter and cable that you can use to connect to your PC, then save for other tinkering! Cheers
Have you read about the issues with SMR drives and Bolts? They have been known to have early "failures" with Bolts.

Scott
 
#1,229 ·
I would also like to know how this has worked on Tivo Bolt OTA. They are offering a deal if you trade in your Tivo Roamio OTA for like a $200 discount toward Tivo Bolt OTA. I would like to put an 8tb hard drive into the Tivo Bolt OTa if I traded it in. But people have mentioned (like the previous post) that there are drive failures if you do this? Is this correct? Would this work on Tivo Bolt OTA with an 8tb harddrive? And would you recommend trading in for the new Tivo Bolt OTA over the Roamio? The 4k part intrigues me. But I am unsure. Thank you in advance to anyone who can help answer my questions!
 
#1,230 ·
IMO, The Bolt is an inferior product and should be avoided.

Upgrading the Bolt drive to 8TB is more difficult since they use 2.5" laptop drives not PC drives. The largest 2.5" is about 5TB. 3.5" PC drives do not really fit in a Bolt.
 
#1,233 ·
Thank you for replying! I am very tempted to trade it in because I keep reading how the "4k tv switch is coming around the corner". But at the same time I watch a lot of old shows that really wont effect that I don't think. But I am worried that they are really trying to phase out Roamio and push the Bolt so I fear certain support (maybe the Channel guide?) or any issues that arise will have them being like you need to upgrade as my only solution. But mainly I am on the fence because so many people say that swapping out the harddrive to like 8tb makes this thing fail quick. OR maybe not even possible like Thabto mentioned. That would void the warranty and leave me with a very expensive paper weight lol. Godey if it isn't too much trouble could you post an update sometime down the line and mention if you have any trouble with it? I wish this had been around a little longer so I could read more feedback on peoples experiences doing this.

-Thank you all again!
 
#1,234 ·
Thank you for replying! I am very tempted to trade it in because I keep reading how the "4k tv switch is coming around the corner". But at the same time I watch a lot of old shows that really wont effect that I don't think. But I am worried that they are really trying to phase out Roamio and push the Bolt so I fear certain support (maybe the Channel guide?) or any issues that arise will have them being like you need to upgrade as my only solution. But mainly I am on the fence because so many people say that swapping out the harddrive to like 8tb makes this thing fail quick. OR maybe not even possible like Thabto mentioned. That would void the warranty and leave me with a very expensive paper weight lol. Godey if it isn't too much trouble could you post an update sometime down the line and mention if you have any trouble with it? I wish this had been around a little longer so I could read more feedback on peoples experiences doing this.

-Thank you all again!
A few people have used those 5TB Seagate backup drives, but I don't expect them to last very long. Using SMR drives in a TiVo is a really bad idea. In the 2.5" drive world that includes some 2TB drives, most 3TB drives, and everything over 3TB.
 
#1,235 ·
A few people have used those 5TB Seagate backup drives, but I don't expect them to last very long. Using SMR drives in a TiVo is a really bad idea. In the 2.5" drive world that includes some 2TB drives, most 3TB drives, and everything over 3TB.
That is what worries me and making me lean toward just staying with the Roamio OTA. It sounds like I could use more storage on it (8TB) and it will last longer without the same trouble. Unless people have experienced any sort of trouble upgrading their Roamio OTA to 8TB? I haven't heard anything though about that. Have you?
 
#1,237 ·
More on the broken 2tb drive...

So I bought a Bolt, 1gb. I bought a WD Blue 2tb drive. I put the 2tb in and booted the Bolt. It went through the setup screen, downloaded an update, and then asked me to reboot. Once I rebooted, it says "Starting Up" but just sits there. I can't seem to get the 2tb drive to get past "Starting Up".

I wanted to try to start over with the drive...but can't seem to find a way around it.

The original drive starts the configuration wizard and gets by the "Starting Up" screen.

Any thoughts?
 
#1,238 ·
With the latest TE4 (Hydra/Mira) interface update, there are several drives that are stuck in the starting up screen. Most of the reported drives are the 4 TB WD40NPZZ, but there are other smaller drives that have been reported as well. No one is sure why one drive works or the other does not. If you downgrade the Bolt interference to TE3 (Encore), the drive should work. In order to do that, you will need to boot the drive that works in the bolt and follow directions on this forum found elsewhere.
 
#1,244 ·
Hi, I could use some help...I purchased a Weaknees refurb Tivo Roamio Plus last month, with a 1 TB WD-AV drive in it. I tried replacing it with a WD Red 3TB drive that I pulled from a NAS and reformatted, but the Roamio would spontaneously shut off about when boot-up was completed.

Last week I purchased a new WD Red 4TB drive, hoping to get past the spontaneous shut off. Following the instructions in the top post, I put the 4TB drive in the Roamio until the first screen came up, at which point I removed the drive. I put it in a USB3 hard drive dock connected to a PC running Windows Pro 10.0.17134.

I downloaded and installed MFSR 1.0.0.4 and ran it as administrator. After OK'ing the T&C's screen, the next screen reports an error, malloc (Line 684, Error 0x00000008).

I found one other mention of malloc in this thread, which involved rebooting, but that didn't help in my case.

If it matters, I am also running disk pooling software, called DriveBender, on this PC. The boot disk is a 128GB SSD, but there are six pooled drives besides that.

Can you help me?
 
#1,245 ·
That error is basically "out of memory". It can happen any time the software tries to allocate memory, but I've never seen it happen before if you got to the first screen in Guided Setup.

It's happening during my initial scan of all the drives, but at a point where it's just trying to get the Vendor ID like "Western Digital" or "Seagate". I've never heard of DriveBender, but a bug somewhere in that software would be my first guess. Do you have access to a generic Windows PC without 3rd-party drive pooling software?
 
#1,246 ·
I also tried it on my laptop, a MacBook Pro 2015 with a BootCamp partition running Windows10. I got a different error there, something about partitioning, but as that is a work computer, I don't wanna fool around with it.

That brings me back to the home PC. What I can do is make a Ghost image type of backup of the running system and reset Windows back to factory settings (i.e., no Drive Bender) and try again. Or I can see if that PC in the corner gathering dust is bootable... :)
 
#1,247 ·
I also tried it on my laptop, a MacBook Pro 2015 with a BootCamp partition running Windows10. I got a different error there, something about partitioning, but as that is a work computer, I don't wanna fool around with it.

That brings me back to the home PC. What I can do is make a Ghost image type of backup of the running system and reset Windows back to factory settings (i.e., no Drive Bender) and try again. Or I can see if that PC in the corner gathering dust is bootable... :)
That PC gathering dust in the corner IS dust. Won't boot. Throwing it out.

Connected my USB dock with Roamio-formatted Red drive to a work PC. Ran mfsr and got this error: "Invalid Apple partition format."

I think I will have to zero out this disk (will Data Lifeguard do this?) and stick it in the Roamio again for re-formatting.

I think mfsr is choking on the way this drive is formatted.

Agreed?
 
#1,249 ·
I tried replacing it with a WD Red 3TB drive that I pulled from a NAS and reformatted, but the Roamio would spontaneously shut off about when boot-up was completed.
You reformatted this drive to what? It should be blank with no partitions.
 
#1,254 ·
Did you put it into the Roamio first and get it initalized, before MSFR?

WinMFS does not work with anything Premiere and newer.

Seagate does not label drives Red, or Blue or any color.
 
#1,258 ·
I cleaned the disk, put it back into the Roamio to reinitialize the disk. MFSR is now sees the disk but errors at Line 1059: 0x00000002: with message ReadFile. I'm assuming this is some kind of stack error. The windows event log shows Event ID 153 / Disk / The IO operation at logical block address xxx for Disk 1 was retried.
 
#1,266 ·
That's a file not found error, and the 'file' in this case is the entire physical drive. I've never seen this error in MFSR. If it can identify the drive at all it shouldn't lose it during the reformat.

The reason it uses ReadFile at all is that when you access a drive at this level in Windows it has to be done in aligned blocks of 4096 bytes. For example, if it needs to write 6000 bytes at offset 2000 it has to read the entire first block and the entire last block where that data is going to be written to fill in the surrounding data. Then it can write back the full aligned block of 8192 bytes.

I would take MFSR out of compatibility mode first (it's not necessary). If that still doesn't work, try jmbach's advice about looking for other programs that could be interfering or even trying a different computer altogether.
 
#1,265 ·
I'm using MSFR 1.0.0.4 is there a later rev?
That Revision should be fine. ggeseike would probably have better advise.

From what I gather from the error it is having a problem reading a file.

So make sure any antivirus program is disabled, run MFSR as administrator, no other program is trying to access the drive while MFSR is working on it.

Try another computer.
 
#1,260 ·
I'd try ignore the error and run it in Roamio, after GS, check System Information.
 
#1,261 ·
I know it's not completing the format, it runs for about 30 seconds and then throws the error. Then I have to clean the disk, put it back into the Roamio for initialization, then reconnect it to the laptop to attempt MFSR again. Needless to say, but it takes a lot of time to do this. Is there no other method, a boot disk tool, or some other method that would make it easier to complete this task?
 
#1,262 ·
Run the manufacturer's diagnostic on the drive. The full diagnostic both read and write.
 
#1,264 ·
What does MSFR say on the space? Should be around 3800. Ignore the error and put it back in the Tivo.
 
#1,267 ·
Sorry for the dumb questions. But I was wondering if someone could tell me how to properly check a hard drive to make sure it is running good and free of any errors or anything that is failing inside of it. I want to put an 8tb 5400 Rpm WD inside of the roamio OTA tivo following ggieseke MFSR format but I want to know the new drive is working properly beforehand. I googled it and found a program called Hard Disk Sentinel but I am not sure if it really works or if I really want to pay 30 bucks just to check it out. I am running windows 10 by the way. If anyone could let me know what to check for and how I should check my drive I would really appreciate it!

-Also If I purchased a WD hard drive on Amazon sold by Amazon. Does the warranty still hold up. Say it is two years and it fails within that would it still be covered and would I have to send it to Amazon or register it with WD once I get it from Amazon on WD website and send it to WD. Thanks for the help sorry for the question if its obvious.
 
#1,268 ·
I use Western Digital's Data Lifeguard Diagnostics to test drives. It's free, and I usually do a full zeros test followed by the long read test.

I would register the drive when you get it to lock in the purchase date. Warranty replacements are handled directly by WD.
 
#1,269 ·
I use Western Digital's Data Lifeguard Diagnostics to test drives. It's free, and I usually do a full zeros test followed by the long read test.

I would register the drive when you get it to lock in the purchase date. Warranty replacements are handled directly by WD.
Thank you so much for replying! I found the download for Western Digital's Data Lifeguard Diagnostics. Is the full zero test and long read test built into that program or is it a seperate test on the computer? Everything should say like zero bad sectors or healthy drive and I am good to go? Thanks again for your help!
 
#1,273 · (Edited)
Can you format multiple drives in advance and run mfsr on each? I want to know if I can keep some spare pre-mfsr'd drives or will the TiVo reformat the drive down to its basic state which then requires mfsr to be rerun again? (I want to do this because I've switched over to a Mac and my PC is on its last legs)

Is there a limit to the number of drives you can stick into a TiVo? I tried inserting 3 drives with the same configuration. The first drive formatted to the initial setup screen. However, all subsequent drives just seem to spin forever, never reaching the initial setup screen. I then put the first mfsr'd drive back in, but it too never reached the initial setup screen (after about 15 min). I'm just hoping the firmware does't count the number of drives it has formatted and then hangs after a certain count is reached.

This TiVo is currently on TE4.

Next steps I'll try. Inserting the original drive and if that works I'll try the new drive again. If that then fails, I'll try reverting back to TE3 on the original drive (assuming that will work). I expect if the original drive fails then my TiVo is dead. For now, I'm going to let the TiVo spin on the first mfsr'd drive overnight to see if it gets to the initial setup screen.
 
#1,274 ·
Can you format multiple drives in advance and run mfsr on each?
I don't think there's any limit, but I've seen several posts lately that make me think the latest version of TE4 has problems formatting some drives. Reverting to TE3 may be your best option. You could also try wiping the drive with the short write zeros test in WD's Data Lifeguard Diagnostics.

Is it a Roamio or a Bolt?
 
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