TiVo Community Forums Archives - Removable IDE drives

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Removable IDE drives
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Posted by: maxie

I will be living in switzerland for about two years and would like to set up the following: Two TiVo's with IDE cabling running to external IDE boxes set up with removable drives. One of these boxes is in the US recording all the programs I would like to see. When the disks get full I would like to remove the drives and ship them to Switzerland and insert them in my other Tivo unit at the same time inserting a new set of drives in the US unit. I would round trip these drives back and forth.

My questions are: 1) Has any one set up a Tivo with external drives? 2) Is this possible with Identical Tivo models? 3) With different Tivo models (doubt this)?

Posted by: stevel

I don't see why this wouldn't work, as long as you used the same model TiVos (and they were standalone models.) Different models (for example, Philips and Sony, or Series 1 and Series 2).

Posted by: stormsweeper

As long as you shipped BOTH drives, not just one of them.

Posted by: maxie

So, it should be as easy as powing the system down, replacing the drives, and powing up?

Posted by: zaknafein

quote:
Originally posted by maxie
So, it should be as easy as powing the system down, replacing the drives, and powing up?

The software needs to be on both A drives obviously, but I see no reason why this wouldn't work.

Posted by: dd9

Doesn't the software need to be 2.0 or lower for this to work? 2.5 and up checks the serial number (that is now stored on the drive as well) and won't let you do anything other than a full system reset (which deletes everything) if the unit serial doesn't match the one stored on disk.

Worth verifying before you go to all this trouble.....

Posted by: stevel

It's only the DirecTiVos where the serial number is stored on the disk and checked. I assumed that a user in Switzerland would have a standalone.

Posted by: papabrody

I hesitate to say this, but if you haven't already spent the money on the TIVOs and have broadband connection available in both countries, you could much more easily set up two Replay TVs and share the shows via the internet. I don't know all the details, but I would look into this.

Posted by: Dan203

quote:
Originally posted by papabrody
you could much more easily set up two Replay TVs and share the shows via the internet.

Even with broadband a ReplayTV can take up to 24 hours to transmit a show from one unit to another. So it wouldn't be real pratical for what he's trying to do.

One thing that may cause a problem is the PAL/NTSC thing. There is a hack that can make a SA TiVo work with PAL, but I'm not sure how easy it will be to use in this situation. You should really read up on it down in the underground just to make sure.

Another thing I would be concerned about is stress on the drives. Getting shipped half way around the world every few weeks may be too much for them to handle.

Dan

Posted by: papabrody

quote:
Originally posted by Dan203

Even with broadband a ReplayTV can take up to 24 hours to transmit a show from one unit to another. So it wouldn't be real pratical for what he's trying to do.

Dan

That is up to 24 hours. I have seen some figures in as little as 8 hours. If he had broadband capacity that was essentially not being used for several hours a day, he could bring down a show or two a day. This is a better turn around time and possibly signifigantly cheaper than shipping drives back and forth. Also under his plan, a third set of drives would really be pereerrable so that he would always ahve something to watch and it would always be recording.

BTW Maxie,
Is there something in particular you want to capture on TIVO? I haven't been overseas for about 6 years, but it seemed to me you could get first run network TV via satellite and cable in many countries.
Also, I believe the RePlayTV option would give you some rudimentary ability to program your US PVR via the Web instead of being dependent upon someone programming it stateside for you.

Posted by: stevel

First of all, broadband upload speed is considerably less than download speed, at least for most of us. Second, I don't want to think about what the bandwidth would be for a connection between the US and Switzerland!

Posted by: maxie

Broadband is my emergency option. It takes 12-18 hours to send 1GB and this is with me paying extra for faster upload speeds in the US. I will use this option for sporting events that I don't want to wait for.

The PAL/NTSC issue. I'm aware of it and plan on buying a TV that does both PAL and NTSC. If I'm unable to find one I just have to have 2 TVs.

Even with the disk drives packed in original shipping containers, is there still a good chance of shipping damage?

Posted by: scooby_doo

I have a SA TiVo with 2 external removable drives.
The drives are in an enclosure I got on eBay. Had to look a long time to find exactly what I needed. The enclosure is flat - the drives are next to each other - and was used for 2 CD drives, so it's open in the front.
I mounted some Mobile Drive Trays in them so I can switch between different sets of drives. It's under the TiVo and I use a 36 inch IDE cable that exits the side of the TiVo (same with power, I use the TiVo to power the drives)
I use this TiVo only for recordings I want to keep and I have different drive sets. On one set I only store comedy shows, on another one stuff I record from my camcorder (manual). I have TurboNet installed and can change titles, etc.
That system works reliable and well.
I tried a Replay 4k and sold it because in my opinion the quality is way inferior to TiVo, sound constantly out of sync with manual recordings, - and it crashes.

Posted by: scooby_doo

Forgot
With TurboNet and TiVoWeb installed you can control and schedule recordings on your US based TiVo from Switzerland with no problems. The only thing you need is someone shutting down and changing drive sets - and mailing them.

Posted by: GoldenTiger

quote:
Originally posted by maxie
Broadband is my emergency option. It takes 12-18 hours to send 1GB and this is with me paying extra for faster upload speeds in the US. I will use this option for sporting events that I don't want to wait for.

The PAL/NTSC issue. I'm aware of it and plan on buying a TV that does both PAL and NTSC. If I'm unable to find one I just have to have 2 TVs.

Even with the disk drives packed in original shipping containers, is there still a good chance of shipping damage?

I ship my hard drives a fair amount and have never had damage from them. So long as they're well-packed and have solid, well-packed antistatic foam around the box itself as well, there's no reason to worry.

Posted by: BrianHughes

quote:
Originally posted by maxie
...
The PAL/NTSC issue. I'm aware of it and plan on buying a TV that does both PAL and NTSC. If I'm unable to find one I just have to have 2 TVs.
...

Most modern TVs on this side of the pond will handle NTSC as well as PAL these days.

Posted by: dd9

quote:
Originally posted by GoldenTiger
I ship my hard drives a fair amount and have never had damage from them.

Short story here to try and relate why shipping drives on a regular basis is bad......

I worked for a company a while back where the MIS manager came up with a brainstorm like this and it caused us considerable grief. We had some Raid1 boxes (2 drives mirrored at the disk controller to look like 1 drive to the computer). To speed up backups, he would pull one of the drives from each set and replace them with a standby drive. The pulled drives would venture their way to our backup datacenter some 50 miles away via a company shuttlebus. We had failure after failure after failure and he continually beat up on the vendor of the Raid hardware. Eventually, he caved to everyone beating up on him and agreed not to touch the drives for a week. Guess what? Not a single failure that week.... :D Actually, not a single failure for almost a year after that IIRC.

Posted by: Mars

Don't forget about the electric power there is 220 volts @ 50 cycles. Make sure your tv's,TiVo's etc will run on that, or you will need a power converter.

Posted by: BrianHughes

quote:
Originally posted by Mars
Don't forget about the electric power there is 220 volts @ 50 cycles. Make sure your tv's,TiVo's etc will run on that, or you will need a power converter.

The switch mode PSUs on the US Tivos run OK on UK 240V 50Hz, several people are running them here, so that won't be a problem.

Posted by: DBCooper

quote:
Originally posted by Dan203
Even with broadband a ReplayTV can take up to 24 hours to transmit a show from one unit to another. So it wouldn't be real pratical for what he's trying to do.

He also needs to look into the cost of broadband in Europe. It's nothing like the good old USA over there. Telecom is tightly controlled by many governments and is one of their cash cows.

Frankly, the whole scheme looks impractical to me. If he can get a friend in the USA to spool the TiVo recordings off to S-VHS tape, it would be much more likely to be worth doing.

Posted by: DBordello

Sounds like a cool idea to me. Broadband in europe is normally slow and/or metered. I hope it works for you.

Posted by: BrianHughes

Well I can't speak for Switzerland but I have a 1 Meg cable modem link, no metering. (I don't know offhand what the uplink speed is). 512k ADSL would also be available to me if I wanted it. Northern Ireland is not exactly known as a very technically progressive part of the UK and we are always being told that the UK lags far behind our European cousins in availability of broadband.

Posted by: hutchca

Sounds like a huge hassle to me unless you're not dialing in and only scheduling manual recordings.
Everytime you swap the drives you'll have to download a week or two worth of program data and wait for indexing. Not to mention software upgrades.
I wouldn't think TiVo would like all the extra time on the dial-in.

Have you considered any of the PC based DVR software/hardware?
I think in this situation I'd set up a pair of PC based DVR's.
Less hassle to swap and archive programs, you choose the removable media.
And it's probably cheaper than 2 new TiVos.
There are many of these have TV out so you wouldn't have to watch on the PC screen.
Now that I think about it, unless your recording in Switzerland also you only need 1 PC based DVR in the US and in Switzerland you just need a PC with TV out.
EDIT: You could also remote control the US unit with PCAnywhere or WinXP Remote Desktop.

Posted by: DBordello

quote:
Sounds like a huge hassle to me unless you're not dialing in and only scheduling manual recordings.

I believe he has a tnet card, so this shouldn't be that big of an issue. All dialup stuff is done over the tnet card.

Posted by: hutchca

quote:
Originally posted by DBordello I believe he has a tnet card, so this shouldn't be that big of an issue. All dialup stuff is done over the tnet card.

Doh! Oh Yeah...:confused:
Well you still have to wait for indexing...