TiVo Community Forums Archives - Tivo with External swappable HDD??

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Tivo with External swappable HDD??
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Posted by: redddevil

Has anyone tried using an external HDD bay (via a bit of hacking) with a Tivo and thus having swappable HDDs?
With HDDs as cheap as they are now and Tivo not recognizing the bigger ones this would seem a reasonable solution to extra storage (and presumable keep the insides cool as well.
Am I being daft or would it work?

Posted by: maharg18

The problem with that is that the Tivo file system is setup in such a way that the drives are "married" to each other. You remove one drive, and the other one is rendered useless. To do what you suggest would require a major redo of the file system and the Tivo software itself.

Posted by: weaknees

People bring this up all the time - the key problem is programming. You set drive 1 with a season pass of "The Simpsons" but drive 7 is in when "The Simpsons" airs.

And even if you have the same SPs on all drives (tons of work) how would you know where to find the shows?

Basically, if you do this, you are back to the complexity of a VCR. And I think 200 to 300 hours turns out to be plenty for most situations.

Michael

Posted by: Robert S

Actually, as you've got a Series 1 TiVo (the UK model) you can use large drives. See page 5 onwards of the 160Gb thread in the Underground. That means you can have 2 300Gb drives in there. Is that enough?

Posted by: redddevil

Yeah I guess the combination of the programming problem vs swapping a B drive does make it a bit lame.
Am I bound to have series 1 Tivo because it's UK? Iwas surprised when I opened them (I have 2) that one had a straight 40Gb HDD whereas the other had a 30Gb + a 15Gb. Does that point to them being different models or just older/newer versions of the same one?
TFYH

Posted by: Robert S

The first few batches of UK TiVoes shipped with a mixture of single and twin-drive configurations. Presumably they preferred the single-drive type because the later batches were exclusively single-drive. As long as you can make a 'divorce' backup from a twin, then it's not really an issue, and you get a free drive bracket!

Apart from that trivial difference, all UK TiVoes are identical.