[HomeUser]

You can make a "binary" backup using Ghost, DriveImage or Acronis. These programs are not able to read the TiVo partitions so they can only make a binary sector by sector backup. The backup includes every byte used or unused on the drive and because video does not compress very much the resulting backup file will be almost the same size as the TiVo's drive.

Here is your chance to try the new WinMFS TiVo backup software that runs on Windows.

 

[HomeUser]

I have Acronis True Image Home V10. Make and boot from the CD click the check box next to the drive then next.

Using Acronis and the binary backup is not the recommended or best way to backup you might as well just mirror the drive instead of storing 80G of backup image files. With the mirrored drive backup the drive is ready to plug in if needed.

What I did for my TiVos was use the free MFSTools (now MFSLive) and copied the original TiVo drive to a new (much larger) drive using the MFSTools expand option now I have 320 hours of recording space on my 40 hr Series2 TiVo. The original 40G drive is safely stored away. I also made several small (without saving the recordings less then 200M) backup images that I burned to a CD.

 

[HomeUser]

So what would be the drive size limit for doing this in order for the Tivo to actually use the added space?

Some say the limit for the Series2 is about 2 TeraBytes. 1TB EIDE drives are way out of my budget so the max size is what you can afford. The sweet spot was 500G that may of changed I have see some really good deals on 750G drives lately. For the Series2 TiVo be sure the drive is an EIDE (PATA) type drive the spindle speed (RPM) or the cache size is not important when it is used in the TiVo.

 

[HomeUser]

So from my bit of reading around here, am I correct in that I can't tell Acronis that I'm installing a new larger drive and let it just proportionally enlarge the partitions and end up with any more program storage?

(in the case where I'd double or so the physical HD size)

George

You are correct, Acronis TI can only make a 1:1 binary copy.

MFSTools is what you need for backup, copying and/or changing the size of TiVo drives. MFSLive is a new version of MFSTools with several fixes and some extras. There is an Interactive Command Generator for MFSLive that can help if you use the command line version boot CD. There is an even newer Windows version that I linked to before I have not had the opportunity to use the Windows version yet.

 

[HomeUser]

TiVo uses several partitions the un-hacked TiVo has 11 of them a combo of EXT2, Linux Swap and Modified Apple MFS partitions. Another problem is depending on the model of TiVo if it is one using a non Intel processor then the hard drive is written byte reversed. Acronis can not do what you want the Linux tools will.