TiVo Community Forums Archives - Please suggest an upgrade strategy

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Please suggest an upgrade strategy
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Posted by: jsmeeker

I don't ever post in the upgrade forum, as I have yet to hack my SVR-2000. But that will change Saturday.

I am adding more capacity. I have already obtained a 120 GB Seagate drive. I wan't the process to go easily and quickly and without uneeded expense. My inital thought was to bless the 120 GB drive and drop it in as a second drive. But other peopel are suggesting I make the 120 GB my primary drive and make the exisiting drive the secondary drive. Another suggestino was to yank to exisiting drive and simply hang onto it and replace it with another drive. I don't like that optino, as it requires speding even more money.

One thing.. I need to keep the exisiting shows that are on my TiVo.. I'll have been out of town for 2 weeks by the time I hack it on Satuday, so there will be a lot of stuff I need to watch, and there is no way I can get caught up in time.

Posted by: Robert S

If that's an April 2001 vintage hard drive in there, you might not want to continue using it.

The first thing to do is make a compressed backup, once you've got that, if anything goes wrong, you can at least recover your TiVo.

Hinsdale explains how to copy your recordings to the new drive using MFS Tools. This will take a few hours (hopefully not more than 4).

If you really want 150Gb, you could have got a 160Gb drive for about the same cost as the 120. With a bit of extra effort, you can replace the TiVo's kernel and use the full capacity of that drive.

Posted by: jsmeeker

quote:
Originally posted by Robert S
If that's an April 2001 vintage hard drive in there, you might not want to continue using it.

The first thing to do is make a compressed backup, once you've got that, if anything goes wrong, you can at least recover your TiVo.

Hinsdale explains how to copy your recordings to the new drive using MFS Tools. This will take a few hours (hopefully not more than 4).

If you really want 150Gb, you could have got a 160Gb drive for about the same cost as the 120. With a bit of extra effort, you can replace the TiVo's kernel and use the full capacity of that drive.

Are you saying that I simply use the 120 GB hard drive and no other hard drive in the TiVo? It's been running flawlessly since I bought it back in April 2001.

Posted by: ThreeSoFar

Agreed--do not continue to use the old drive. Shelve it as another backup (along with your compressed backup).

I've done upgrades without even bothering with saving a backup image, though with images harder to come by online, I'd recommend against that.

Make the backup image (tivo.bak file).

Then use the "mfsbackup -Tao .... | mfsrestore -s 127 ....." option to dupe the TiVo software AND your recordings onto the new drive.

Quite easy, actually.

Posted by: Robert S

Well, the problem is that if /either/ drive of a two-drive set dies, you lose the lot. All you can do is reimage the good drive from a backup. Therefore, when you run in a two-drive configuration, you double the chances of losing everything to a drive failure (cf a computer where you only the data on the drive that fails).

My local computer shop no longer sells 30Gb drives, and 40Gb drives are 45 UK pounds. The old A drive is not a valuable item any more and I'd say you've more than got your money's worth out of it.

Like I said, if you really want more than 120Gb (and 120Gb is 12 pages of recordings on my TiVo), buy a bigger drive and patch the kernel (installing patched kernels is pretty painless these days).

Posted by: dkroboth

I just faced the same decision, although my drive was a lot newer (Feb '03). I wasn't totally sure about the swap space thing (-s127) switch, but I wanted to keep my old recordings. So, I backed up my original 80 hour drive image and saved that to CD in case I ever have to go back. I figure next time I want to upgrade the box (if ever) the TiVo-To-Go might be around. Or maybe they will support bigger hard drives without a kernel patch.

Next I did the mfsbackup old A - | mfsrestore - new A thing. And then mfsadd newA old A.

So, I need up with a 120 gig new drive for the A drive with the swap space thing and the old 80 gig A drive is now my B drive.

Posted by: jsmeeker

intersting... Thanks for the tips, guys.. Going from a 20 GB drive to a 120 GB drive will more or less quadruple my recording space.. That ought to be enough.

Posted by: Rcrew

So, Jeff, you're going with that option C, which you initially thought would cost more money...

Format and copy your current A drive to the new 120 gb drive, including your existing recordings.

Keep the original A drive, on a shelf, as a desparation backup.

Go with a single 120 gb A drive.

That really does sound like the best choice.

Posted by: jsmeeker

quote:
Originally posted by Rcrew
So, Jeff, you're going with that option C, which you initially thought would cost more money...

Format and copy your current A drive to the new 120 gb drive, including your existing recordings.

Keep the original A drive, on a shelf, as a desparation backup.

Go with a single 120 gb A drive.

That really does sound like the best choice.

I was under the impression that option C involved *replacing* the existing drive with a new drive *and* adding a new secondary drive.

Posted by: Rcrew

quote:
Originally posted by jsmeeker
I was under the impression that option C involved *replacing* the existing drive with a new drive *and* adding a new secondary drive.

Oh! :eek:

But you've got it all figured out now! Hey, when you do the copy, please post here with how long the copy takes. That's one upgrade function I've stayed away from. But I guess I should figure out how to do that too.

Posted by: StanSimmons

I'll be bringing a fast computer to the meet this saturday, so the copy of the drive shouldn't be too bad.

smeek, what we can do is put your original drive and the new drive on the fast computer and do a dd copy, when it is done we can then run mfstool to add the unused space on the 120GB to the system. This will leave you with a working original drive as a backup and a new ~108 hour TiVo with your recordings intact.

Are you going to add TurboNet or CacheCard to your machine?

Posted by: Rcrew

Stan, what's a 'really fast computer', and is it just CPU issues, or does memory play a roll in making the full copy?

Posted by: jsmeeker

quote:
Originally posted by StanSimmons
I'll be bringing a fast computer to the meet this saturday, so the copy of the drive shouldn't be too bad.

smeek, what we can do is put your original drive and the new drive on the fast computer and do a dd copy, when it is done we can then run mfstool to add the unused space on the 120GB to the system. This will leave you with a working original drive as a backup and a new ~108 hour TiVo with your recordings intact.

Are you going to add TurboNet or CacheCard to your machine?

Sounds like a plan.. I really did not plan on adding anything else, although I am intiqued by TurboNet, now that I have DSL.. Is there a way to make the TiVo net work with 802.11b??

Posted by: StanSimmons

2.4GHz P4 w/ 400MHz FSB and ATA133.

The CPU speed is a big part of it, but the DMA and ATA channel speed make a bigger difference. When doing the initial copy, we can turn off byte swapping and use DMA transfers. Then after the initial copy is done, we reboot and turn on byte swapping to do the expansion.

I don't know why, but the byte swapping turns off DMA transfers and that REALLY slows down the copy.

Posted by: StanSimmons

There is the airnet from Jafa ( http://www.9thtee.com/tivoairnet.htm ) but I prefer the TurboNet because of cost.

There are some people that are using 802.11b bridges attached to TurboNet cards....

Posted by: jsmeeker

quote:
Originally posted by StanSimmons
There is the airnet from Jafa ( http://www.9thtee.com/tivoairnet.htm ) but I prefer the TurboNet because of cost.

When you say you prefer this, you mean you prefer the a wired connection to a hub/switch on the home LAN?

Posted by: StanSimmons

Yes, I prefer the wired connection more than a wireless connection for TiVo's.

TurboNet = $70 + $5 for connectors/cables.

AirNet = $70 + ($20 to $70) for wireless card + ($40 to $60) for coax and external antenna if you want to close the case.

CacheCard = $100 + $60 for 512M RAM + $5 for connectors/cables. Added bonus... Much faster data transfers and VERY fast menus!!!

Edit: You can add a wireless bridge to the TurboNet or CacheCard

Posted by: jsmeeker

OK.. WIred would not work for me as the TiVo is in a sperate room from my network hub.