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add B drive
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Posted by: Ken Yeh

:confused:
I have AT&Tivo Series 2, and I'm planning to add B drive to expand recording time.

I print out 20 pages of How-to, and I'm little confuse on page 16. I'm not sure where to place drives in the PC for this configuration. my guess is follow:

hda Priary Master - Windows C: drive.
hdb Primary Slave -full size of your new large upgrade drive.
hdc Secondary Master -full size of your TiVo A drive
hdd Secondary Slave - cd-rom/cd-rw drive

if I want to do a backup of my TiVo A drive, is this mean I need to buy 2 new drive? one for backup and another for B drive?

I see there are 2 method of backup TiVo drive, one is using Dolly and other is Mfs Tools, which one is easier to use?

any help will be appreciated

Posted by: Rcrew

The intent here is for you to temporarily remove the original A drive from your TiVo, and connected to your PC as you showed. You will be making a backup copy from the original A drive to a file on your PC's C drive. The file will not be that large as it does not contain any of your recordings.

I can't advise you as to a difference between the two methods you mention, I'm only familar with Mfs Tools as shown in the Hinsdale guide.

Rob

Posted by: Ken Yeh

Once I got my new drive, do I need to format the drive? or I can just plug in to the pc and start the upgrade?

Posted by: stormsweeper

Nope, the BlessTivo program formats it for you. You might want to run a drive diagnostic on the drive (most retail drives have a floppy with these), though.

Remember that the How-To covers several configurations. Yours is the simplest.

The steps you need to look for are

- Backup your current Tivo A drive to your windows C: drive using MFSTools
- Restore the image to your new B drive using MFSTools
- Connect that drive to your Tivo as A and "test" the image. Essentially make sure it boots, play around in the screens, etc. You're recordings won't be there, but everything else should.
- Pull the drive back out and use BlessTiVo to bless the drive
- Put the original A drive back, and the new drive as B. Check your jumpers!
- Startup your Tivo and let it reboot a couple times until the Tivo Central menu comes up.

Posted by: Ken Yeh

thanks for the information, but I have question why I need to
restore image to B drive and then BlessTivo the B drive? I just want to add a another drive to Tivo

Posted by: Rcrew

Hi Ken, good question.

From what I understand, copying the backup onto your new B drive, then installing it into your TiVo as the single A drive accomplishes two things.

1) It validates that you have a 'good' backup.
2) It validates that the new drive is in working condition.

When you then BlessTiVo the new drive, it reformats it so it can be used as a TiVo B drive.

I'm just a user of all the upgrade information here, and an avid reader of this forum.

Many, Many people who upgrade skip the step of copying the backup to the B drive and installing for a test run. You're at most risking not knowing if your backup is good.

Everyone agrees it's a great idea to make the backup though.

You'll have to decide for yourself if you want to do the full test. I didn't do it when I did my upgrade last week.

Rob

Posted by: Ken Yeh

that make sense. I'm ready for upgrade

thanks all

Posted by: Rcrew

Be sure and let us all know how it goes!