TiVo Community Forums Archives - When should I upgrade my TiVo

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When should I upgrade my TiVo
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Posted by: Guardius

Okay. I have a new Sony Tivo box (yeah!) but I haven't even opened it up yet. I do want to upgrade it with a 80GB Maxtor drive but was wondering when the correct time to do this was. Should I perform the upgrade before starting the TiVo for the first time or does it matter?

Can a TiVo be upgraded at an arbitrary time or is the time when it can be upgraded fixed?

Thanks,

Posted by: pschum

The first thing you should do is connect everything but a video source, run guided setup completely, THEN consider when to upgrade. You may not have modem problems, but some have, and it's a shame to lose your warranty (by performing the upgrade) when you don't even know if your Sony is good.

If you plan to back up your "A" drive to CD-R(W) then you may be able to reduce the backup size by doing it before you've recorded any video. If you plan to back it up using a second drive (putting the original "on a shelf") then it really doesn't matter when you do the backup and upgrade.

The reason for the backup is to be able to "divorce" your drive(s) should one of them fail.

------------------
Paul Schumann
"Share and Enjoy"

Posted by: Guardius

Okay, so I should be able to actually let my Tivo go into actual use and then perform the backup of the A drive and then plop in Maxtor Diamond Max 80 later (like this weekend)? I wanted to kinda burn it in first and make sure it was all okay.

Also, I would not be doing a drive -to- drive copy but instead a backup to an image file which I could restore later.

Posted by: Guardius

I guess my real question is, can a Tivo actually be in production use for a while and then be upgraded or does it need to happen before really using the Tivo unit. Can I use the Tivo for a month or so (not the plan, but just the idea) and then decide "hey there are some 100GB drives out there and I don't have a second drive in mine yet" and go ahead and add that second drive?

The FAQs weren't totally clear on that point.
When is upgrading a Tivo no longer possible (other than being screwed by getting a two drive unit HDR512 by default - glad I read the FAQ and took that one back before I opened it).

Posted by: Worf

Yes. You can perform the upgrade on a single drive unit at any time, as long as the TiVo is still functional.

So you can back it up, then a year later decide to do the upgrade. It should work (depending if a software update prevents upgrades or not). But as long as that's not the case (software updates breaking upgrades), it'll work.

Posted by: helpdeskdan

Personally, I didn't plug my tivo in till I had made a backup of the drive. Why? To obtain the smallest backup possible. It took 5 cd's - I would hate to think how much it would take up now! I certainly wouldn't have been able to back up the compressed images to my ol' 4 gig!

Not a proceedure for total newbies - you can seriously botch things up (not to mention voiding the warranty), but not hard either. A backup is not necessary - most people never use theirs. However, the peace of mind may be worth it.

Note: I would reccomend the proceedure in the faq's for verifying the modem before doing a backup.

Posted by: Guardius

Okay, so now I think I understand (and I feel stupid because I am a computer programming professional). The TiVo software itself doesn't 'lock itself' to whatever the drive size it is when it starts. It will just start at some point in the future and say "hey there is some extra drive space that you can use". What I was assuming was that I starts up and says "okay I'm a Tivo with 30 hour capacity" and then just assume that that's all that it can do. The whole drive backup part should be a piece of cake - its the 'custom proprietary software' behavior that I was more concerned about. I'm actually surprised there aren't some people doing 'unauthorized' TiVo repairs for people who screw their TiVos when trying to upgrade them. Honestly I think the only real issue is not shocking yourself when you open it - the rest should be a breeze.

Posted by: Jolest

Actually Guardius, in some ways you were closer to right than you knew. http://www.avsforum.com/ubbtivo/smile.gif

The A drive (the one in your box when you bought it) -is- a fixed size configuration.

BUT: If you add a second disk that has been properly "blessed", then the first and second drives become "married" and the space on the 2nd drive can be used as well.

The problem is, that once the two drives are married, we don't currently have any way to "divorce" them. So, what most people do is create a copy of an unmarried A drive so they can "divorce" the two drives (by restoring the backup) if one of them should die. (Without the backup, if either drive dies, you essentialy have a trashed TiVo with no way to recover...)

Oh yeah... To answer the implied question in your last post, "no". The TiVo disk-image -is- configured to be a specific size. If you do a raw-copy of a 15gig TiVo system to a 60gig drive and boot it up, you'll have a 15gig TiVo box with 45gig of wasted, unuseable space on the disk. (Some THG's (TiVo Hacking Ghods) are working on or claim to already have a way around this, but it's not ready for mortal hackers yet...)

Is that clearer? http://www.avsforum.com/ubbtivo/smile.gif