TiVo Community Forums Archives - 120GB + 120GB = 240GB = 275 (basic quality) 75 (best quality)?

TiVoCommunity.com
(c)opyright 1995-2005 All rights reserved
indexcheckTC
This area is a static history of posts in the TiVo Community Forum Archive.
This archive history was made for the simple indexing of search sites like Google.

Pages:1

120GB + 120GB = 240GB = 275 (basic quality) 75 (best quality)?
(Click here to view the original thread with full colors/images)

Posted by: NERVOUS

First of all, I just finished upgrading my Sony SVR-2000 with 2 x 120GB drives and I would like to say a huge thank you to hinsdale and anyone else who contributed to his How-To. :D

However, I'm not sure if a problem occurred during my upgrade because my storage numbers seem a little lower than most other people with similar upgrades. According to the System Information I only got 275 hours of basic quality and 75 hours of best quality from a total of 240GB of storage. To be honest, with 240GB of storage I was expecting to break the 300-hour plateau. :D

Do these numbers sound correct? Is there a good chance that something went wrong during the upgrade to yield these somewhat sub-par results? Could the fact that I’m running TiVo version 3.0 as opposed to a lower version have anything to do with my results?

Any and all feedback would be greatly appreciated! :D

Thanks in advance!

Note: I used Tiger’s Mfs Tools 2.0 Boot Floppy to implement Upgrade Configuration #3 (From: Any single drive TiVo, To: New A and New B Drive).

Posted by: Zirak

2x120 gives me 84/306 on a phillips SA.

Posted by: NERVOUS

quote:
Originally posted by Zirak
2x120 gives me 84/306 on a phillips SA.

Zirak,

Could you give me some more detail on your setup? What version of TiVo are you running? What tools did you use to do the upgrade? What type of upgrade did you do? Did you do anything out of the ordinary to get 9/31 more hours of recording than I did?

I’m not trying to break any records or anything, but I would really like to break the 300-hour plateau. :D

Posted by: dwight

My 2x120 drives in a SA Philips also gave me 84/306. I used Maxtor drives - what type of drives are you using that has yielded less time?

I don't think that the software version makes any significant difference, but I'm using 3.0...

Posted by: NERVOUS

quote:
Originally posted by dwight
My 2x120 drives in a SA Philips also gave me 84/306. I used Maxtor drives - what type of drives are you using that has yielded less time?

I don't think that the software version makes any significant difference, but I'm using 3.0...

I used two Maxtor 5,400 RPM 120GB hard drives. :confused:

Posted by: Zirak

Mine sounds exactly the same as dwight, including Maxtor D-540X-4Gs. Hate to say it, but I don't know what was used to do the upgrade, cuz a friend did it. I just bought the thing, burned it in for a couple of weeks and took it to work where he upgraded it. I tried to follow along and got the gist of it, but no idea what boot CD he used.

The problem I have is I'm a mac kind of guy. No PC at home. If it dies, I'm either going to have to buy a cheap-o PC or bug a friend. Probably sooner than later. One of the drives has a bad spot on it that hangs the machine, with a loud, nasty CLICK CLICK CLICK.

Posted by: NERVOUS

Any and all advice is more than welcome. I will be receiving my 9th Tee secondary hard disk drive mounting bracket early next week and would like to make an attempt at extracting those 31 additional hours of basic recording at the same time that I install the bracket! :D

As always, thanks in advance for any/all advice! :D

Posted by: NERVOUS

Recently one of my Maxtor 120GB hard drives (4G120J6) went bad on me... So, I went through Maxtor's diagnostic procedure (PowerMax) and ended up getting an RMA replacement. Anyhow, I re-modified my SVR-2000 and again ended up with the same 275 hours (basic quality) / 75 hours (best quality) I had before. I’m very curious as to why other 240GB setups are netting 300+ hours (basic quality) while I’m stuck at 275 hours for the second time around now.

Any all feedback would be greatly appreciated – Thank in advance! :D

By the way, here is the procedure I used:
I followed the “Hinsdale How-To TiVo Upgrade” using MFS Tools 2.0
Made a backup image of the OEM hard drive using – mfsbackup -6so
Restored the backup image to one of the 120GB hard drives using – mfsrestore –s 127 –zpi
Expanded the recording capacity using – mfsadd -x

Posted by: ellingsj

I upped my 20Gig SA Phillips to 120Gigs a good year or so ago. I just upped it again to dual 120Gig and have 84:00 best and 306:24 basic capacity.

Original 20 Gig drive was a Quantum Lct

First 120 Gig drive was a Maxtor DX540 5400 RPM 2 Meg cache drive.

That was replaced by two Maxtor DiamondMax 9 7200 RPM 8Meg Cache drives.

Setup:
hda=dos drive
hdb=none
hdc=original 120 Gig
hdd=cdrom

When I did the mfsbackup I did it without compression (no "-6")...
mfsbackup -so /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdc

rebooted and changed things to:

Setup:
hda=dos drive
hdb=new 120 Gig drive
hdc=new 120 Gig drive
hdd=cdrom

When I did the restore on to the two new drives, I did not use the mfsadd. Instead I went straight to this:
mfsrestore -s 127 -xpi /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdb /dev/hdc

Everything works great.

(Truth be told, my drive letters - hda, hdb, hdc, etc - were different due to a second ide controller i was using, but I didn't want to complicate it for you... these letters would have been what I used if my PC would've allowed me to hook 120Gig drives to its built in IDE controller. Find my other post if you are interested in that whole debackle)

Posted by: weaknees

NERVOUS -

The number you get is exactly what you should be getting on an SVR-3000. I know this is a long shot for various reasons - but is it possible you have the wrong model number in your posts?

Michael

Posted by: rsnaider

Those numbers are correct. Look at my sig, and you will see the Sony comes out about the same.

TiVo - 2x120 (WD,7200,8meg)
Sony - 2x120 (Seagate,7200,2meg)

Posted by: NERVOUS

Thank you all for the feedback...

weakness - I double checked the model number, I've got an SVR-2000.

Posted by: gbeer

FWIW

One thing that can impact storage is the size of the swap partition.

Posted by: Robert S

quote:
Originally posted by gbeer
FWIW

One thing that can impact storage is the size of the swap partition.

By 30 Hours of Basic? Man, that's a LOT of swap!

Posted by: gbeer

It might also have a full load of software on the
B drive, same as the a.

Posted by: gbeer

Ok, 24G is a bit much for swap.

What might cause that much space to get lost.

BTW, What size was the original drive? 30G? How are they split? 24Gvideo/4Gsoftware?

Posted by: Robert S

Well, you've got 2 128Mb kernel partitions, a 128Mb var partition and a 64Mb swap partition plus a 1 Gb MFS Application partition for the Guide DB. However there is a good chunk of the recording space reserved for TCP's - 10% sounds about right for that.

There's no software or Guide data on the B drive, just recordings.

Posted by: gbeer

So is it possible that NERVOUS lost an existing video partition somewhere during drive manipulations?

Posted by: Brie

I just upgraded my parents Tivo Sony SVR-2000, yes 2000, using the Hindsdale Guide today.

Using 2 x 120GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 8 meg cache

I got 275 hours basic and 75 best as well