I thought other new owners of the 540040 (and other 540 series) might find this helpful...
I am new to Tivo as of Christmas, and of course am already a big fan. Even before we bought the Tivo, I knew from my online reading that I would upgrade the hard drive when I had the time and felt I had a good grasp of the procedure. I have built our last 3 computer systems, so I felt comfortable with the idea of working with hard drives and their mobo connections. IMO prior computer upgrade experience is not required, but if you don't have it you should spend a good amount of time reviewing the hardware hookup procedures.
After reading thru the several guides out there, I decided on using the instructions found at tivo.upgrade-instructions.com. That particular site makes it easy to choose between several upgrade options and customizes instructions based on the choices made.
From what I had read here and around the net the easiest upgrade to do today is to just upgrade to a bigger drive. Why bother to eek out an extra 40gb from the original drive when there are 2-300gb drives to be had for short money? Plus, no extra brackets required and you keep the original drive as a backup so you don't need to make a separate backup either. Anyway, my upgrade was to replace the original Tivo 40gb drive with a Seagate 200gb/8mb cache/7200 rpm HD. I chose to copy the entire contents of the Tivo HD (all my recorded programs) cause I don't like live tv anymore if Tivo can keep me away from it!
(3/22/05 - Since this thread seems to be getting many reads, wanted to ad that I suggest you hook up your tivo and get it running prior to doing an upgrade to ensure your unit works. I also highly recommend that you allow your unit to get the 7.1 (tivotogo) software upgrade PRIOR to doing the upgrade.)
How it went:
I bought one of those Torx screwdrivers at Home Depo for like $5.00. Came with multiple adapters which included the T-10 and T-15. You need both sizes on the 540040 model. The 540040 has 5 T-10 screws that hold the top on along the back panel. These came undone easily on my unit. The top slid back and lifted off without effort once the screws were out.
The first thing I did was look for that white/grey power wire that many posting around the net warn about; the one that if you boot up with it loose your remote won't work any more and other bad things. It was there, sticking out of a slot in the front panel (you could not see where that end connected) and running to a connection on the edge of the front of the mobo. Although on this unit the connection to the motherboard appears very solid, I was careful to do my best to avoid touching this at all and did check it before closing up just in case. Possibly the design of the connection has been improved since there were so many reported problems.
Next I removed the hard drive power wire and IDE cable, being careful to avoid the exposed power supply (I had the unit unplugged for about 2 hours to be safe, but still avoided the PS.). The Tivo hard drive in this unit is mounted on a bracket that is held down on the front side by 2 T-10 screws. After placing the power and IDE wires out of the way, I next removed the 2 T-10 screws that hold the front edge of the hard drive bracket in place. Once these screws are removed, the back edge of the bracket slides out of 2 retaining clips and the hard drive lifts out of the unit.
The hard drive is held on the bracket with 4 T-15 screw that came off easily, releasing the Tivo HD.
Now time to hook up the drives to a computer. I am lucky to have many spare parts around from my system builds, specifically spare IDE cables and a spare CD drive. (A new hard drive usually comes with an IDE cable, so even if you don't have a spare CD drive you will have an extra cable). Having the extra cable allows you to hook up your hard drives properly while outside the computer, which I found much easier.
As the instructions say you must set the HD jumpers correctly. The Tivo hard drive in my unit was set as cable select; there was a jumper diagram on the Tivo HD that showed how to set the jumper to master as called for in the instructions. The replacement HD is set to slave. After setting the jumpers, I connected the IDE cable to both (master is at the end of the cable and slave is in the middle, although I'm not sure this really matters as long as the jumpers are set correctly...) and set them aside. I then connected a second IDE cable to my spare CD drive, which was set and jumpered as slave. Using this method, you just need to disconnect the IDE cables in the computer you are using from the motherboard, move these Tivo drives close to the open computer (I had to prop them set up on a shoe box next to the open side panel close enough for the IDE and power plugs to reach), and then connect the ends of the IDE cables from the Tivo drives and the cd drive to the proper IDE channels on the computer mobo (in my instructions the cd drive connects to the primary IDE channel on the mobo and the hard drives connects to the secondary IDE channel). Then you need to find some spare (or unplug) power connectors in your computer and connect these to your hard drives and cd drive. (if you don't have a spare cd drive, I would recommend sliding your drive out of your system and working with it outside the system, then put it back when you are done. You are going to have to take it out to check/change the jumpers anyway, just keep it out then put it back the way it was when you are done.).
Any set of instructions you find cautions to not boot into Windows XP with a TIVO drive connected or the drive will be ruined. With your original IDE cables unplugged your XP system drive is disconnected, unless like me your xp drive is a SATA drive! (Your system could also use a separate PCI IDE adapter card) BE SURE that your xp system drive is not connected when you boot up with the Tivo drive connected.
One last thing to do, gotta go into the computer bios and set the system to boot from the cd drive. Each system is different, so the system manual becomes your friend. The options are usually under a heading called Boot with sub-headings of boot order or similar names. I WISH I HAD DONE THIS PRIOR TO OPENING AND UNHOOKING MY SYSTEM, I suggest doing this before opening up the system, but it didn't matter in the end...
Once the system was set to boot from the cd drive, I powered on the system and got the drive door open, upgrade disc in (downloaded from the link in the instructions that were specific to my upgrade choices), and door closed before the system was done the boot sequence. You could also put the disc in prior to hooking it up or power on the system, put in the disc, power off, then reboot... Anyway, since nothing is ever completely without issues for me, my boot disc was not burned properly and did not boot. Fortunately, we have other systems in the house that I was able to download and burn a new disc with. If you can, check your disc first.
Anyway, that issue solved, the system booted from the disc with a welcome message and a statement to press enter when ready. I did, and numbers and data flashed by quickly for about 5-10 sec. When done, there was a "weaknees:" prompt. As the instructions direct, this is where you use the shift and page up keys to go back thru the data that flashed by and check to be sure that the software can see the actual size of both of your hard drives. This is also a good time to check and make note of the actual HD designator assigned to your hard drives by the software based on the drive location (master/slave, primary/secondary). They should be hdc=Original Tivo HD, hdd=New drive if you set them up as instructed. The software recognized both my drives (I'm guessing the "locked drive" issues may be something that might not happen on series 2 systems such as the 540 series, but you need to check and be ready in case...), so I was set to enter the copy command.
With my set-up, the command to back up the entire drive to the new drive was:
mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hdc | mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi - /dev/hdd
where hdc is the Tivo drive and hdd is the new replacement drive. Don't really know what it means but it works. I was very confused and unsure about what I was actually going to type at this point, but after I checked the data and hard drive sizes and saw the associated hdc/hdd designators in the data it became clear to me, your results may vary...
When I hit enter the software began to back up the original Tivo drive to the new drive. The software gives a running count of its progress as a percentage completed. The entire backup took just over 20 minutes on my system (a 3.06 P4 with 1gb ram, don't know if system specs matter or not as far as time to completion?). When done, I got a nice message that said: "New estimated standalone size 222 hours (182 more)". SWEET...
Time to put Tivo back together. First thing I noticed was both hard drives were warm, the original Tivo drive was actually hot. Anyway, the rest is rather easy. Jumper the new drive as master as per instructions, then put the new drive back in the bracket using the 4 T-15 screws, put the bracket back in the Tivo, screw the bracket in place with 2 T-10 screws, reconnect the IDE cable and power wire (be careful in all of this to stay clear of the dreaded "white/grey power cable issue"), then put the top back on (5 T-10 screws).
Reconnect the tivo to your tv/video system and power it on. I did get a scare here as the first static screen that Tivo displayed (something like welcome...) lasted about a minute. The next screen (something like "almost there, just a few more minutes") lasted about 90 seconds. I did notice that when I first plugged the Tivo into the system the front panel power light came on, even though I had shut it off under options on the previous drive. Toward the end of the second static screen, it went off.
All is well, Tivo reported the massive new capacity under system info. All the previously recorded shows were there. Only small bummer, the new hard drive does make an slightly audible "seek" sound where the original did not. Just sitting there doing nothing it is no more or less noisy than the original, with my limited use so far it appears the seek sound is happening moving thru some menu's or after deleting a program, etc, not playing a program. Our Tivo is in the open on a shelf under the TV, if it was in a case I am sure I would never have noticed the seek sound. I'm sure each brand of hard drive is different, but overall I would say the seek sound is a non-factor given the resulting increase in capacity.
I hope this helped some of you who may be on the fence about upgrading your Tivo. With the proper preparation and research the entire project can take under 2 hours. Do your homework, and you too will have a Tivo with a massive storage capacity!
Rick
NH, USA
I am new to Tivo as of Christmas, and of course am already a big fan. Even before we bought the Tivo, I knew from my online reading that I would upgrade the hard drive when I had the time and felt I had a good grasp of the procedure. I have built our last 3 computer systems, so I felt comfortable with the idea of working with hard drives and their mobo connections. IMO prior computer upgrade experience is not required, but if you don't have it you should spend a good amount of time reviewing the hardware hookup procedures.
After reading thru the several guides out there, I decided on using the instructions found at tivo.upgrade-instructions.com. That particular site makes it easy to choose between several upgrade options and customizes instructions based on the choices made.
From what I had read here and around the net the easiest upgrade to do today is to just upgrade to a bigger drive. Why bother to eek out an extra 40gb from the original drive when there are 2-300gb drives to be had for short money? Plus, no extra brackets required and you keep the original drive as a backup so you don't need to make a separate backup either. Anyway, my upgrade was to replace the original Tivo 40gb drive with a Seagate 200gb/8mb cache/7200 rpm HD. I chose to copy the entire contents of the Tivo HD (all my recorded programs) cause I don't like live tv anymore if Tivo can keep me away from it!
(3/22/05 - Since this thread seems to be getting many reads, wanted to ad that I suggest you hook up your tivo and get it running prior to doing an upgrade to ensure your unit works. I also highly recommend that you allow your unit to get the 7.1 (tivotogo) software upgrade PRIOR to doing the upgrade.)
How it went:
I bought one of those Torx screwdrivers at Home Depo for like $5.00. Came with multiple adapters which included the T-10 and T-15. You need both sizes on the 540040 model. The 540040 has 5 T-10 screws that hold the top on along the back panel. These came undone easily on my unit. The top slid back and lifted off without effort once the screws were out.
The first thing I did was look for that white/grey power wire that many posting around the net warn about; the one that if you boot up with it loose your remote won't work any more and other bad things. It was there, sticking out of a slot in the front panel (you could not see where that end connected) and running to a connection on the edge of the front of the mobo. Although on this unit the connection to the motherboard appears very solid, I was careful to do my best to avoid touching this at all and did check it before closing up just in case. Possibly the design of the connection has been improved since there were so many reported problems.
Next I removed the hard drive power wire and IDE cable, being careful to avoid the exposed power supply (I had the unit unplugged for about 2 hours to be safe, but still avoided the PS.). The Tivo hard drive in this unit is mounted on a bracket that is held down on the front side by 2 T-10 screws. After placing the power and IDE wires out of the way, I next removed the 2 T-10 screws that hold the front edge of the hard drive bracket in place. Once these screws are removed, the back edge of the bracket slides out of 2 retaining clips and the hard drive lifts out of the unit.
The hard drive is held on the bracket with 4 T-15 screw that came off easily, releasing the Tivo HD.
Now time to hook up the drives to a computer. I am lucky to have many spare parts around from my system builds, specifically spare IDE cables and a spare CD drive. (A new hard drive usually comes with an IDE cable, so even if you don't have a spare CD drive you will have an extra cable). Having the extra cable allows you to hook up your hard drives properly while outside the computer, which I found much easier.
As the instructions say you must set the HD jumpers correctly. The Tivo hard drive in my unit was set as cable select; there was a jumper diagram on the Tivo HD that showed how to set the jumper to master as called for in the instructions. The replacement HD is set to slave. After setting the jumpers, I connected the IDE cable to both (master is at the end of the cable and slave is in the middle, although I'm not sure this really matters as long as the jumpers are set correctly...) and set them aside. I then connected a second IDE cable to my spare CD drive, which was set and jumpered as slave. Using this method, you just need to disconnect the IDE cables in the computer you are using from the motherboard, move these Tivo drives close to the open computer (I had to prop them set up on a shoe box next to the open side panel close enough for the IDE and power plugs to reach), and then connect the ends of the IDE cables from the Tivo drives and the cd drive to the proper IDE channels on the computer mobo (in my instructions the cd drive connects to the primary IDE channel on the mobo and the hard drives connects to the secondary IDE channel). Then you need to find some spare (or unplug) power connectors in your computer and connect these to your hard drives and cd drive. (if you don't have a spare cd drive, I would recommend sliding your drive out of your system and working with it outside the system, then put it back when you are done. You are going to have to take it out to check/change the jumpers anyway, just keep it out then put it back the way it was when you are done.).
Any set of instructions you find cautions to not boot into Windows XP with a TIVO drive connected or the drive will be ruined. With your original IDE cables unplugged your XP system drive is disconnected, unless like me your xp drive is a SATA drive! (Your system could also use a separate PCI IDE adapter card) BE SURE that your xp system drive is not connected when you boot up with the Tivo drive connected.
One last thing to do, gotta go into the computer bios and set the system to boot from the cd drive. Each system is different, so the system manual becomes your friend. The options are usually under a heading called Boot with sub-headings of boot order or similar names. I WISH I HAD DONE THIS PRIOR TO OPENING AND UNHOOKING MY SYSTEM, I suggest doing this before opening up the system, but it didn't matter in the end...
Once the system was set to boot from the cd drive, I powered on the system and got the drive door open, upgrade disc in (downloaded from the link in the instructions that were specific to my upgrade choices), and door closed before the system was done the boot sequence. You could also put the disc in prior to hooking it up or power on the system, put in the disc, power off, then reboot... Anyway, since nothing is ever completely without issues for me, my boot disc was not burned properly and did not boot. Fortunately, we have other systems in the house that I was able to download and burn a new disc with. If you can, check your disc first.
Anyway, that issue solved, the system booted from the disc with a welcome message and a statement to press enter when ready. I did, and numbers and data flashed by quickly for about 5-10 sec. When done, there was a "weaknees:" prompt. As the instructions direct, this is where you use the shift and page up keys to go back thru the data that flashed by and check to be sure that the software can see the actual size of both of your hard drives. This is also a good time to check and make note of the actual HD designator assigned to your hard drives by the software based on the drive location (master/slave, primary/secondary). They should be hdc=Original Tivo HD, hdd=New drive if you set them up as instructed. The software recognized both my drives (I'm guessing the "locked drive" issues may be something that might not happen on series 2 systems such as the 540 series, but you need to check and be ready in case...), so I was set to enter the copy command.
With my set-up, the command to back up the entire drive to the new drive was:
mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hdc | mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi - /dev/hdd
where hdc is the Tivo drive and hdd is the new replacement drive. Don't really know what it means but it works. I was very confused and unsure about what I was actually going to type at this point, but after I checked the data and hard drive sizes and saw the associated hdc/hdd designators in the data it became clear to me, your results may vary...
When I hit enter the software began to back up the original Tivo drive to the new drive. The software gives a running count of its progress as a percentage completed. The entire backup took just over 20 minutes on my system (a 3.06 P4 with 1gb ram, don't know if system specs matter or not as far as time to completion?). When done, I got a nice message that said: "New estimated standalone size 222 hours (182 more)". SWEET...
Time to put Tivo back together. First thing I noticed was both hard drives were warm, the original Tivo drive was actually hot. Anyway, the rest is rather easy. Jumper the new drive as master as per instructions, then put the new drive back in the bracket using the 4 T-15 screws, put the bracket back in the Tivo, screw the bracket in place with 2 T-10 screws, reconnect the IDE cable and power wire (be careful in all of this to stay clear of the dreaded "white/grey power cable issue"), then put the top back on (5 T-10 screws).
Reconnect the tivo to your tv/video system and power it on. I did get a scare here as the first static screen that Tivo displayed (something like welcome...) lasted about a minute. The next screen (something like "almost there, just a few more minutes") lasted about 90 seconds. I did notice that when I first plugged the Tivo into the system the front panel power light came on, even though I had shut it off under options on the previous drive. Toward the end of the second static screen, it went off.
All is well, Tivo reported the massive new capacity under system info. All the previously recorded shows were there. Only small bummer, the new hard drive does make an slightly audible "seek" sound where the original did not. Just sitting there doing nothing it is no more or less noisy than the original, with my limited use so far it appears the seek sound is happening moving thru some menu's or after deleting a program, etc, not playing a program. Our Tivo is in the open on a shelf under the TV, if it was in a case I am sure I would never have noticed the seek sound. I'm sure each brand of hard drive is different, but overall I would say the seek sound is a non-factor given the resulting increase in capacity.
I hope this helped some of you who may be on the fence about upgrading your Tivo. With the proper preparation and research the entire project can take under 2 hours. Do your homework, and you too will have a Tivo with a massive storage capacity!
Rick
NH, USA
