Super fast question: External hard drives on new HD Tivos

If I buy this...

And I want more hard drive space...

Must I buy one of these?

Or will any SATA hard disk with an E-SATA plug do?

(It just so happens I snagged a 1tb SATA drive a little bit ago... thanks to a tip here on the bbs... you might remember the thread... and I ended up not hooking it up to my file server yet. Can I just get an E-SATA connector cable for the thing and then just plug it in and it's all done?

Your googlefu fails. The short answer is yes. You need the special DVR expander. If you want to use something else then you need to hack the TiVo and void the warranty.

FANTASTIC link. It answers all of my questions. I might see about using that 1tb drive as an internal upgrade. Thank you very much.

I know it's outside the scope of the question, but if you got a Series3 instead of an HDTiVo, you could attach any external SATA drive you want.

It is easy to upgrade the hard drive inside the TiVo HD itself, but as Trevor said you will void the warranty. WinMFS is a simple and easy way to upgrade to any SATA drive of your choice. I replaced my TiVo HD drive with a 750 just over a year ago and it's been running great with ton's of storage space. And I still have the original drive if I need.

Edit: Doh! Should have read Trevor's link before posting WinMFS which is mentioned in his link. Of course it's way down on the post before he mentions it.

Dammit. They're back to offering lifetime subscriptions. For ⅓ more than the 3-year subscription. Which I got only because there was no lifetime subscription.

I hear ya... They offered it about 2 months after I activated my TiVo HD a few years ago. I could always get a second one with Lifetime, but I still need to finish the contract on my current one.

SInce TiVo stopped innovating years ago and thanks to their various deals with other companies (such as their exclusive with WD for HD expansion), I wouldn't touch one again even if it included a lifetime sub at the base retail price.

Unfortunately it seems they're turning into a bit of a patent troll to boot.

At least they actually make and sell products embodying the patents in question. That puts them about one fiery and squalid circle of hell above the actual patent trolls, IMO.

Peter

I have a Series 3 model, which was the first to support external drives, and did so before there even was a Tivo-branded drive. So I went to the Tivo forums and bought the most popular drive people were using (a 750GB Seagate) and the most popular enclosure (a very nice Antec model with great, quiet cooling.

This solution has worked flawlessly for about two years, aside from the annoyance that when the TV was off and it was silent in the room, it was quite easy to hear the hard disk, even when nothing was recording.

But then there's last month. Our Tivo started freezing quite a bit and rebooting. I posted this and several other symptoms to the Tivo forums, and they correctly diagnosed it as hard disk failure on the external drive. I removed the drive, which wipes out all of the recordings, and everything is fine now, aside from having an annoyingly small amount of HD recording space (I have to be super vigilant or we lose a lot of recordings).

Eventually I plan on getting a new external drive, but I think I'll go with the Tivo-branded one this time, despite the higher cost. I know that Western Digital's MyBooks are seriously quiet (I have two on my desk right now and they're silent), and I think these would be more suited to the task of being used on a DVR.

So my suggestion is to replace the drive (not easy) or get the Tivo external drive (easy, but not entirely inexpensive).

On father's day they were offering the Tivo and the lifetime sub for $100 off of each. Not bad.

I don't really care that much if they're innovative. I want it to just work, and have a reasonable UI that doesn't look like shit, which makes it pretty much the only game in town.

Not to far off topic, has there been any update on their new DirecTV box?

When I go to http://www.tivo.com and click on the "Tivo DVRs" link, that's all they give me: Tivo Series 2, Tivo HD, and Tivo HD XL. There's no mention of a Series 3. I thought I *was* buying a series 3 since the Series *2* is the only one called out separately.

Where's the Series 3 sold if not at Tivo.com?

Aha, answered my own question, from their FAQ:



Yeah, the only thing I'd want out of that list is the bigger hard disk, and I'm already solving that problem at the lower cost (hopefully).

I have a Pioneer-branded TiVo, not sure what series but it is single tuner and not HD, that SWMBO bought used at a pretty reasonable price. She bought it because it had a lifetime subscription, and also a built-in DVD player/recorder. It is exhibiting the symptoms you describe: random reboots and lockups. It is most likely to reboot or lock up when playing back a previous recording at the same time it is recording a new one. I always make sure that I have it paused in playback mode before turning it off and this helps, but I still average one or two reboots/lockups per day.

There is no external hard drive on this TiVo, but could my trouble be caused by an internal hard drive problem? And if so, just how daunting a task is it to replace the hard drive? I think it is a pretty small hard drive, it only holds 30 hours at the next-to-best recording quality.

tanstaafl.

The glow remote is much better than the standard squishy button one. I bought one for my series 2 when it's remote died. I was pleasantly surprised I wasn't expecting it to work any better. Not that it's worth getting a different DVR for.

So you guys with series 3 family Tivos, how do you get charged for cable cards ? do you end up paying more than the cable box was ?

You can replace the hard drive yourself with any old hard drive, but it's kind of a pain in the ass to properly initialize it. There are companies that will sell you a pre-initialized drive so that all you have to do is physically replace it.

I would say that the trouble your having is a hard drive problem. Replacing the internal drive is simple. Here is an older FAQ more relivant to your TiVo but I would use the newer WinMFS tool to copy your current drive to the replacement drive. If you don't have a SATA/IDE to USB adapter get one in will make all of this even easier.

Edit:
After reading a bit more the it seems you might have a locked drive and would need to use the MFSLive CD to run diskutil -u 2 on the drive. I don't know if the MFSLive CD has USB drive support, this will require to open your PC and connect the drive via the ide cable.

Also when using WinMFS if you plan on expanding the drive space you might need to enable the MfsSuperSize option as the size of your drive might also be locked.

I can't really say for sure, but it certainly sounds like the same symptoms I had. The good news is that, as Bitt mentioned, there are sites that will make the hard disk replacement process as painless as possible for you. The classic site IMO is Weaknees, which will sell you a drive kit specifically designed for your model, and give you everything you need to do the swap, right down the the Torx keys.

The other good news is that I'd be surprised if you could even buy a hard disk as small as the drive you'll be replacing. For instance, it looks like the smallest recording time you'll be able to order from that site is 180 hours


Agreed. The glow remote is fantastic. My three favorite features: the lighted buttons (obviously), the quality of the buttons (not to hard/soft, with a satisfying click when pressed), and most importantly - on the back of the remote, the battery compartment is ridged. That might not seem important, but in my experience it eliminates the only complaint I've ever had about the peanut remotes: that I always pick it up backwards

You're my hero!

Products ordered:
SKU: rs300pio8
Product: Pioneer 810H TiVo Upgrade Kit: Replace with one 320gb hard drive
Quantity: 1
Item price: $ 139.00

This quadruples my recording time from 90 hours (at base rate) to 350 hours; at the quality level I record at I should get about 120 hours, far more than I will ever need. More importantly, it should fix the reboot/lockup problem, but no guarantees. About 80% likelihood is my guess.

Thank you for that link.

tanstaafl.

No problem! Glad I could help. I very much hope that is the issue

Aha! I just found the post I made about this on the Tivo Community Forums. Were you getting incomplete and/or garbled recordings?

I find that the lighted buttons wear out the batteries too fast, probably especially because I use rechargeables, so I've turned that off. I find that I notice the weight distribution is more significant to me as far as picking it up backwards goes.

Yes... and no. The big problem is random reboots in the middle of recording or playback, most frequently when watching a previously recorded program at the same time as recording another. Sometimes it will reboot while recording when I am not otherwise using it, this shows up as a single program split into two sessions with eight minutes of programming missing at the time of the split. Other times (less frequently) the picture will just freeze, all controls unresponsive, and my only choice is to pull the power and force a reboot. Still other times (even less frequently) the entire TV screen turns into a garbled green pattern of tight zig-zags and then freezes, again forcing a power-off reboot. One or another of these problems occurs on average once or twice a day, although I have had three spontaneous reboots occur in a single hour.

If the new hard drive doesn't fix it, then the site you linked to has a flat-rate $99 repair service (if the problem is not the DVD player/burner) so that is another avenue open to me.

Of course by the time I get through all this I may well have spent more money than a new TiVo would cost... except that this TiVo has a lifetime subscription which makes it pretty valuable to me.

tanstaafl.

As you're doing a quick drive swap remember to write down all your season passes! Nothing worse than having to swap drives again to get them all.

I've upgraded the internal HD on two different Tivos, including a Tivo HD. You can copy everything over from the old disk to the new one which will bring all season passes, network settings, and recorded programs and everything else.

It's super easy to change the disk and the program I used was really simple to use. I wouldn't hesitate to just replace the internal hard disk with a bigger one. I went to a 1000GB drive.

FWIW,

Jim

This Tivo HD will be the third DVR in my posession. What I really wish is that there was a way to transfer the old recordings from the old DVRs over to the new Tivo.

I have to give up one of the two old DVRs since it's a non-Tivo DirecTV lease box and I'm moving away from DirecTV. I'm still hanging on to my really old DirecTivo with the old recordings, but I don't suppose there's an easy way I can go about grabbing the old recordings off of either box and putting them on the new Tivo HD?

There's not an easy way, but you *can* do it. You change the setting on your online account to enable sharing between Tivos, then put both on a network. You can then browse the old unit from the UI on the new unit and transfer the recordings over. You can queue them up, but you've got to mark them for transfer individually. There are other ways to do it, but none of them are worth the hassle, IMHO.

Assuming you think it's "super easy" to open your desktop computer, attach the new hard drive and the old hard drive, boot up off of a CDROM you burned using an image you downloaded from somewhere, and run the requisite programs that have apparently been documented by a 12-year-old Yanomami boy with ADHD.

I've done hard drive upgrades as you mentioned, but as Doug bought a "drop in" replacement drive that already has the TiVo software on it, I mentioned that to avoid realizing he forgot all his season passes after it's been swapped.

Can I do that with an old DirecTivo? That would be awesome. What about the DirecTV box that isn't a Tivo?

You had documentation? o.O

Not to worry! I have given a lot of consideration to that. I don't have a lot of wish lists, but the ones I have are highly customized, some of them with as many as a dozen title or keyword restrictions to keep from recording stuff I don't want. Additionally, I will have to write down all the channels I receive that I want TiVo to ignore, and take a few notes about what channels I do receive so that I can be sure to tell TiVo the correct cable lineup during setup. I'm not concerned about saving anything already recorded. With only 30 hours of recording time available, I don't hang onto a lot of programs!

tanstaafl.

I used Instantcake to upgrade my tivo. It was EXCELLENT. The time it saved me was well worth the extra $20 versus a free DIY. PLUS you don't need a valid image to begin with. I used this after my HDD just gave up, leaving me with no upgrade path.

Bit dubious that it doesn't require the original TiVo drive. They must be distributing the TiVo image which contains copyrighted TiVo stuff...

I really meant to mention that in my post. That is the only negative to the "glow" remote. I find I have to replace the AAA's about every few months, which is a lot for a remote.


I am almost positive that it's a bad hard disk. Those last two symptoms I am very familiar with

The critical items of activation, account numbers, and lifetime service, are stored in a chip on the motherboard. As long as you install an image meant for that specific unit, there is no problem.

But tivos have rigid drive mounting, and the drives are read/writing constantly. You do not never want to move a tivo when it's operating.

The S1 TiVos just had the machine ID in the EEPROM. Everything else was kept on the server side. No clue what they do in S2 and S3 TiVos.

Dubious as in distributing copyrighted software not as in risk of losing your sub. Unlikely that TiVo will do that much about it considering the image is pretty useless if you don't have the TiVo hardware. The main things that do annoy them is switching software images between different types of unit and stealing service.

Oh, totally agreed. But I don't have a problem imaging another drive if mine is toast. I even told tivo support on the phone that I had done this when I reactivated it and they didn't bat an eye. The tech just commented on how nice it must be to have that much space. -=shrug=-

Not sure, but if it runs Tivo software I'd be really surprised if it didn't work...

Apparently DirecTV have disabled networking. You can enable it if you hack it tho...

It does depend on which version of a TiVo you have. I know my buddy hacked his old DirecTiVo's to do show sharing, but it definitely isn't there by default. It's also not available on series 1 TiVo's.

Well, TiVo lives with the new hard drive. Installation was amazingly simple, well worth the premium over just buying a new hard drive, installing the software, etc. TiVo says that the new drive has a maximum recording time of "variable up to 422 hours". At highest quality (it's not HD) I'm guessing it will be about 120 hours.

We'll see if this fixes the problem.

tanstaafl.

I'm glad to hear it was so easy! That's what I've heard from others who have ordered from them. I really like that they give you everything you need to do the job.

My fingers will be crossed for you

No joy.

Three reboots and one lockup (that I can document, there may have been others that occurred when the TiVo wasn't recording) in the first 24 hours.



tanstaafl.

Damn! I'm so sorry to hear that. My apologies for leading you down the wrong path.

It just sounded like exactly what I was seeing...

Not your fault. I knew going in that it was about 80% likelihood to fix the problem (based on posts in various TiVo forums) and it looks like I lucked out and got the other 20%.

Weaknees wrote back to me and suggested that I disconnect the IDE cable to the DVD burner and see if that helps; and if not, then they recommend a small UPS that Amazon sells (~$30 incl. shipping) but I wonder if that isn't overkill. I already have a pretty good APC brand surge protecting power strip, and while I know that won't protect against under-voltage situations, in the 14 months I have lived here I have never seen a power failure, nor have the lights ever flickered or dimmed. Power seems to be pretty stable. I'll go ahead and disconnect the DVD and see if that helps, but I'll hold off on the UPS for now.

tanstaafl.

A UPS isn't going to help you here. The DVD burner disconnect might. But keep in mind that a Tivo is a small computer and all the things that might plague a small computer can plague the Tivo: Power supply. RAM. Bad capacitors on the main board. Dry solder joint. Blah blah blah.

Yes, My early Series 1 Sony had a failing power supply. They were easy to get on the surplus market. Not expensive to replace. YMMV

DVD disconnected, so far 22 hours with no reboots/freezes. I know it's too early to know, but initial symptoms (i.e., lack thereof) are at least promising.

tanstaafl.