TiVo Community Forums Archives - Success story

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Success story - HDR312 + Seagate 80Gb
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Posted by: micsaund

Well, I finally decided to "take the plunge" and upgrade my old HDR312 with some increased storage and newer drive(s).

I have one of the first 30-hour units that came with two 13.6Gb (15hr) drives from the factory. The nice thing about this is that I have the IDE cable and both mounting brackets!

Anyway, I ordered one of the Seagate Barracuda IV 80Gb drives from Dell (with coupon and free overnight shipping, I paid ~$95) since I had heard that they were super-quiet.

I used the MFS Tools 2.0 from the ISO image to first create a divorced image of my dual-drive unit. The resulting image was reported as being 816Mb (without shows) and ended-up compressing on the disk to about 186Mb. This is an incredible improvement over the last time I "hacked" a Tivo and upgraded a friend's box and ended-up with a 4Gb backup image!

Next, I put that backup image onto the new Seagate just to verify that the image was done properly. No problems.

So, I hooked both Tivo drives and the Seagate up to my spare PC since I wanted to copy my recorded shows to the new drive. I started the MFS Tools copy, which was around 25Gb and took probably about an hour (I did not time it, unfortunately).

Once done, I popped the Seagate into the Tivo, closed everything back up, stored the old factory drives and headed upstairs to reinstall Tivo in my TV stand. Everything worked wonderfully -- all of my shows and other data was fully intact.

Here is some interesting data:

Old 30 hour Tivo now has 88 hours of Basic.

Old Tivo had 19 hours of Medium and new one has 52 hours :D This is the mode I use.

The Tivo is now totally inaudible. I came downstairs the next morning (keep in mind I was used to the slight motor whine from the factory drives) and almost had a panic attack because I thought it had crashed. Nope -- it was just TOTALLY silent. I cannot say enough praise about the noise level on those fluid bearing Barracuda IV drives!

Previously, my Tivo ran at about 31 degrees C. Now, even with a 7200 RPM drive installed, it runs from 27-28 degrees C. Granted I'm only running one drive now instead of two, but it shows that the 5400/7200 RPM issue is not huge with a proper drive.

All-in-all, I'm EXTREMELY pleased with the results, MFS Tools 2.0, and the Seagate drive. I'm actually considering ordering another drive just to "max-out" (as far as I'm concerned) my Tivo and then I resist the "upgrade itch"!

Anyway, I just thought that you all might enjoy hearing a success story and how the drive worked. I took pictures as I did the install and I can post those here (or somewhere if attachments are not allowed) if anyone is interested in seeing how it went.

Thanks to Hinsdale, the MFS Tools author (sorry, I don't remember your name :confused: ) and everyone else who made Tivo upgrades possible.

Mike