I have two 80 hour TiVo's, a Series 2 single tuner and a Series 2 dual tuner. I would like to know if it's possible to add a secondary larger drive and what the pros and cons are? Or would it be more advisable to replace the original drive with a larger drive and what the pros and cons are? Any info would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
? re: adding second drive to Series 2
1 - 6 of 6 Posts
You would be better served with a single large drive. In two drive TiVos, the drives are married and will not work without the other. If one fails, your TiVo fails. You also have less heat and less load on the power supply which are all good. Large drives are generally cheap, so go for one large drive unless you cannot live without a terabyte TiVo.
Ok I have a Series 2 tivo that is about 3 yrs old (single tuner) and actually just found another on the local craigslist for really cheap to add to the bedroom. Since we do most of our recording out in the living room I was thinking of doing an HDD upgrade but was wondering about the difficulty and complexity of doing so. Now I have my degree in IT and have been working with electronics for about 10yrs now so pulling the sucker apart and playing with it is not something that I am concerned about.
However, before I "dive in" I would like to know what I am getting into. I am thinking of upgrading both with larger drives so that we do not have to play the, well do we want to get rid of this or save it dance.
Anyways, is there any sort of technical manual that I can use as a guideline;
-will both Tivo Standalone Series 2 take a PATA or SATA drive (the new one apparently was bought a few weeks ago but never used and the person is moving and never set it up)
-is there one particular drive brand that seems to "play better" with these? I have always been a Western Digital guy and hear bad things about acoustic noise with the new 1TB Seagates but then again I dont think I will be upgrading that much thus far.
-is there anything that I need to be wary of? Specific connectors etc. I did see the post on the white connector warning for the Series 2s and Hughes HDRs
-can I just use a utility like Nortons Ghost to ghost my image over to the larger drive and enable the expanded space?
-on that note is one drive better than two (seen some mixed reviews)
I have done some searching through the forums but, as I said, found some mixed reviews. I am thinking of just upgrading to one large drive, say 500GB, so approximately how many SD shows will that hold? Do we have an easy conversion showing XX amount of data is allocated to one 30min show.
Thanks for the help....
However, before I "dive in" I would like to know what I am getting into. I am thinking of upgrading both with larger drives so that we do not have to play the, well do we want to get rid of this or save it dance.
Anyways, is there any sort of technical manual that I can use as a guideline;
-will both Tivo Standalone Series 2 take a PATA or SATA drive (the new one apparently was bought a few weeks ago but never used and the person is moving and never set it up)
-is there one particular drive brand that seems to "play better" with these? I have always been a Western Digital guy and hear bad things about acoustic noise with the new 1TB Seagates but then again I dont think I will be upgrading that much thus far.
-is there anything that I need to be wary of? Specific connectors etc. I did see the post on the white connector warning for the Series 2s and Hughes HDRs
-can I just use a utility like Nortons Ghost to ghost my image over to the larger drive and enable the expanded space?
-on that note is one drive better than two (seen some mixed reviews)
I have done some searching through the forums but, as I said, found some mixed reviews. I am thinking of just upgrading to one large drive, say 500GB, so approximately how many SD shows will that hold? Do we have an easy conversion showing XX amount of data is allocated to one 30min show.
Thanks for the help....
DKERR24 STATED
To give you an idea of how many recording hours you'll get from any hard drive:
Hard Drive size in GB * .88
My 300gb drive reports 265 hours of recording time.
I strongly recommend you don't add a second hard drive, but go with a single large hard drive for several reasons. 1) single drive unit runs cooler 2) Less power draw on power supply only designed for one 3) lower failure rate 4) No trying to figure out which drive is bad when one fails 5) Less noise.
To give you an idea of how many recording hours you'll get from any hard drive:
Hard Drive size in GB * .88
My 300gb drive reports 265 hours of recording time.
I strongly recommend you don't add a second hard drive, but go with a single large hard drive for several reasons. 1) single drive unit runs cooler 2) Less power draw on power supply only designed for one 3) lower failure rate 4) No trying to figure out which drive is bad when one fails 5) Less noise.
Joined
·
3,480 Posts
actually you want to divide #GB / .88 and it's not all that accurate, but does give a very rough idea of the capacity.rbtravis said:
You must have done something wrong when you upgraded or you only have a 250GB hard drive. You should have more hours (at basic quality) than GBs. Unless you have a D*Tivo.
My 500GB Tivo has 571 hours. 500 / .88 = 568. By your method I should only have 440hrs.
my 164GB has 199hrs
my 250GB has 271hrs
edit
I see you do have D*Tivos. Those are different than SA Tivos when it comes to capacity.
1 - 6 of 6 Posts
