TiVo Community Forums Archives - Add B drive to series 2 question

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Add B drive to series 2 question
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Posted by: joenivek

Hi,
I am considering adding a larger B drive to my Series 2 and I am a little confused. Hinsdale and others on this form tell you the following:

"If you are simply adding a new large B drive to your existing (unmodified or expanded) TiVo A drive from your single drive unit, then your season passes, setup, and recordings will be preserved. After creating and testing your Mfs Tools backup image, all that is remaining to do for this upgrade configuration is to run Mfsadd to make your existing A drive aware of the added space provided by your new large upgrade B drive "

If this is the case then how do WeaKnees and others offer a B drive you can throw in without touching a computer or your A drive?

Thanks,
joenivek

Posted by: Robert S

They use BlessTiVo. BlessTiVo is not easy to use with Series 2 TiVoes because of byteswapping issues. MFS Tools 2.0 also gives you a better upgrade and is safer.

Posted by: Booka

WeaKnees says about adding a driver to a series-2:

"The ADD kits use an older version of the TiVo upgrade software. Some claim that this method of upgrading can cause some performance slowdown in very large capacity TiVos. In our view, the jury is still out."

What does this mean? Does software on the second disk replace software on the original disk? Wouldn't the "upgrade software" itself be upgraded during normal software updates?

Posted by: Robert S

BlessTiVo triggers an upgrade mechanism in the TiVo software (I believe TiVo sold upgrade drives themselves for a short time). Although this mechanism still works, it is unchanged from the original version.

MFS Tools 2.0 creates partitions with a larger block size (4Mb by default, 16Mb if you ask for it, compared to 1Mb for the original partitions and those created by BlessTiVo).

This appears to make for a faster TiVo, but it's very difficult to measure objectively.

There is no software at all on the second disk, just a 'signature' that triggers the upgrade module.

Posted by: joenivek

Thanks for the responses! Now I understand the difference.

It sounds like the MFS Tools route is the way I will probably go.

-joenivek