Moving Disk From One Roamio/OTA To Another

A Roamio will format and use drives up to 3TB automatically, but you have to run Clear & Delete Everything if you try to swap drives to a different box. The recordings are encrypted, and only the box that made them can play them.

Yes, a TiVo networked in your system can be designated as the "archive" unit. I have five Roamio units, all with 3TB drives, but only two cable cards. One TiVo saves current series that I watch during dry spells and the summer. One holds movies I get from the "clear" weekends from HBO, Cinemax and HDNet Movies.

What you can't do is use just a hard drive. The TiVo knows you have swapped drives and will format a drive that wasn't there when you power off the box even if it was made by that box. Also, programs with SM can become corrupted if moved to a TE4 TiVo. They only play until they reach the first skip point. They can be transferred to a TE3 box. I use Online to transfer programs without issues.

JoeKustra said:

I use Online to transfer programs without issues.

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What is this Online you speak of?

wizwor said:

What is this Online you speak of?

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TiVo Online (online.tivo.com). Manage > Transfer Recordings.

waterchange said:

TiVo Online (online.tivo.com). Manage > Transfer Recordings.

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Awesome. Thank you!

wizwor said:

Awesome. Thank you!

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Online simply sends the commands to the receiving TiVo's To Do List. After a few seconds you can see the programs queued in the TDL. Then you can check for duplicates, which happens a lot. It's a bug. Since everything else works, I'd prefer they don't mess with it.

So, I installed the new disk and used TiVo Online to move recordings from another TiVo (which will be upgraded once the files are moved). The transfer seems to be stalled with 240/375GB copied. Is this unusual? Is there a remedy other than restarting the remaining content? Is this how people end up with duplicates?

wizwor said:

So, I installed the new disk and used TiVo Online to move recordings from another TiVo (which will be upgraded once the files are moved). The transfer seems to be stalled with 240/375GB copied. Is this unusual? Is there a remedy other than restarting the remaining content? Is this how people end up with duplicates?

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IMHE, queueing more than a handful or 2 of shows at a time to be copied over can lead to stalls and duplicates. (I'm not sure how you did yours.) The solution would be to pick up where TiVo Online left off and do perhaps 10 at a time.

Thanks. I just selected everything and transferred the whole 375GB. I was hesitant to restart the process for the remaining files as I did not want the duplicates JoeKustra spoke of.

To be fair to TiVo (?!), transferring en masse with pyTivo Desktop also can cause issue--again, best with a few handfuls (I think that I typically would stop at around 20 max at a time). And then I would do some Q/A to make sure they all were there.

When I originally tried using TiVo Online, just too many issues.

Also have duplicates. What else do I have to do with this Caronavirus?

wizwor said:

Thanks. I just selected everything and transferred the whole 375GB. I was hesitant to restart the process for the remaining files as I did not want the duplicates JoeKustra spoke of.

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I transfer frequently. I find if I transfer only one program, I have a better chance of duplicates. This week I transferred 2GB of programs and movies from TE4 to TE3 and back with no duplicates. All done with basic Roamio units.

I'm not so lucky. Aside from the apprehension that I am deleting a 'real' program and leaving behind something less, I am fine with this exercise. Trying to transfer the whole disk, I believe the system stalled before completion. Doing one program at a time, it seems to finish -- albeit with duplicates. Glad not to lose all my recordings. Thanks for your thoughts.

I've upgraded two of my five Roamio/OTAs. Easy peasy. So easy, in fact, that I am thinking of upgrading the other three. At the time I purchased the first two disks, people were recommending the 3t WD Red disks. Are people using bigger disks?

DIY 10TB Roamio

-KP

Thanks. Should have been more specific. Looking for the largest, reliable disk that can go inside the box.

The variety of drives that size is still fairly limited...

-KP

wizwor said:

So, I installed the new disk and used TiVo Online to move recordings from another TiVo (which will be upgraded once the files are moved). The transfer seems to be stalled with 240/375GB copied. Is this unusual? Is there a remedy other than restarting the remaining content? Is this how people end up with duplicates?

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Are your Roamios running TE3 or TE4?

If TE3, the safest, most reliable transfer method is to go to the RECEIVING TiVo 'Devices' label, select the SENDING TiVo and tag ~10 shows at a time - I never had a problem this way. TE4, via online, seems to have a nasty habit of corrupting the transfer at ~10 minutes (or per @JoeKustra at the beginning of the first AutoSkip block).

wizwor said:

I've upgraded two of my five Roamio/OTAs. Easy peasy. So easy, in fact, that I am thinking of upgrading the other three. At the time I purchased the first two disks, people were recommending the 3t WD Red disks. Are people using bigger disks?

Click to expand...

wizwor said:

Thanks. Should have been more specific. Looking for the largest, reliable disk that can go inside the box.

Click to expand...

Keep in mind that all files residing on a specific TiVo unit are RENTED - i.e. you do not (yet) own them. You can view them as long as that specific TiVo unit remains alive (HDD and/or motherboard).

The larger the HDD you install in the TiVo, the more eggs you're putting into one TEMPORARY basket. If you want a large library of shows, with some insurance, get an inexpensive NAS and offload your shows with @Dan203 PyTiVo Desktop using Transport Stream (TS) File Transfer Format and retrying until you have zero errors. Then, decrypt / remove commercials / extract closed captions with kmttg and save the files on your NAS. To view, use Streambaby (on a TiVo) or Plex Client (on a capable client like the Nvidia Shield; you COULD use an Amazon Fire Stick but then you'd need to transcode all of your MPEG2 to MP4 either ahead of viewing (i.e. Optimize) or with a more power NAS CPU if in realtime).