Adding eSATA drive

[spike]

Currently, there are three ways to add an eSATA drive to

Tivo S3 (TCD648250B)

Method 1:
With Software 9.2, you can add an eSATA drive using Plug & Play Method. Guide is here.

software version 8.3.1 or earlier:
Kickstart 62

Method 2: here and here

Method 3: WinMfs
--


THD (TCD652160, TCD663160), THD XL (TCD658000)

Method 1:
With Software 9.2, you can add an eSATA using Plug & Play Method only if your eSATA drive is Western Digital My DVR Expander. Guide is here.
Software before 9.2, eSATA port is turned off.

Method 2: here and here

Method 3: WinMfs


If you are having problem with an eSATA drive, open up your Tivo S3 or THD and press inside of eSATA bracket as seen in the picture.

[davidahn]

My 1TB upgraded internal drive is chock full of high def goodness (thanks to MFS Tools!). When I was reading the instructions for MFSadd, I saw mention of the truncated backup which loses the recordings, correct? I'd like to keep all my recordings and add an extra terabyte of space. Is this possible, and if so, how do I do it?

David

[spike]

Follow the instruction for mfsadd.

truncated backup is for your protection just in case your drive fails so you don't have to do it of you don't want to.

[davidahn]

Thanks for the quick reply! I've been holding off on doing this for fear of losing my recordings. Thanks! I'll try this this weekend. You're the best, Spike!

[davidahn]

Thanks, Spike. I did it yesterday, the hardest part was disassembling and reassembling the TiVo and removing my Mac Pro's hard drives from the sleds, attaching the TiVo drives to the sleds, and reattaching the Mac Pro's hard drives. The actual MFSadd procedure took 1 minute. Now I have 2 TB of storage: 265 HD hours!

Thanks again.

David

[folly37]

Thanks Spike for all the work you've done. The upgrade was a success first try. The hardest part for me was going through all the pages of setup instructions to learn what I needed to do in my particular situation. I couldn't believe how fast the process went once the drives were installed in my computer and the MSFLiVe cd booted up. I did have a couple of scares: when I used pdisk to confirm which disk was which I got a "segmentation error". After making the upgrade to the new HDD (Hitachi 1TB) I tried the pdisk command again with and without the /dev/hdd; the display showed both drives with the correct information without using /dev/hdd but I got the "segmentation error" again. Then during the TiVo boot up process, with the new external eSata drive attached and powered up. I saw a flash of the GSOD. OMG, I thought, but the boot process continued and now the TiVo shows a recording capacity of 231 HD hours. All works fine! Thanks again.

[spike]

Thanks Spike for all the work you've done. The upgrade was a success first try. The hardest part for me was going through all the pages of setup instructions to learn what I needed to do in my particular situation. I couldn't believe how fast the process went once the drives were installed in my computer and the MSFLiVe cd booted up. I did have a couple of scares: when I used pdisk to confirm which disk was which I got a "segmentation error". After making the upgrade to the new HDD (Hitachi 1TB) I tried the pdisk command again with and without the /dev/hdd; the display showed both drives with the correct information without using /dev/hdd but I got the "segmentation error" again. Then during the TiVo boot up process, with the new external eSata drive attached and powered up. I saw a flash of the GSOD. OMG, I thought, but the boot process continued and now the TiVo shows a recording capacity of 231 HD hours. All works fine! Thanks again.

If you use wrong device for pdisk it will segmentfault.

So if you do pdiks -l /dev/hdd and your device is sdb then it will segmentfault.

[folly37]

Thanks for the prompt reply. I am confused by what you mean by your statement "using the wrong device for pdisk." Am I making the mistake of typing "hdd" instead of either "sda" or "sdb"? Is that what you mean by "using the wrong device for pdisk"? As a first time user of Linux I have no knowledge of what "device" I was using when I typed the pdisk command. Sorry if I am asking what may be such an elementary or basic question. Finally, my upgraded Series 3 TiVo seems to be working better than ever: no intermittent audio dropouts followed by image breakup pixelization so far. The 750 Gig drive in my TiVo (an upgrade I purchased) has the jumper block in place for the 1.5 Gig/sec limit. Should I leave it in place or remove it? Thanks again!

[spike]

Yes if you type sda instead of hdd you will get that error. so Don't worry about it if it work in your Tivo.

Leave the jump as it is and you should be fine. Either one work in Tivo.

[davidahn]

Folly, I know these are just estimated ballpark numbers, but my TiVo says 265, yours says 231. Maybe it's the brand of drive? Mine are WD Caviar, I think. I see you're using Hitachi drives. Interesting! Also, as an aside, these new WD Caviars are as fast as the 10K rpm Raptor drives in throughput!

Regardless, enjoy your new capacity. I know I am!

David

[spike]

Folly, I know these are just estimated ballpark numbers, but my TiVo says 265, yours says 231. Maybe it's the brand of drive? Mine are WD Caviar, I think. I see you're using Hitachi drives. Interesting! Also, as an aside, these new WD Caviars are as fast as the 10K rpm Raptor drives in throughput!

Regardless, enjoy your new capacity. I know I am!

David

Did you do the 1TB upgrade yourself or did you buy it WeaKnees?

[folly37]

Hi David: I see from a previous post your TiVo has a 1 TB internal drive. The internal drive in my TiVo is a Seagate 750 Gig drive, so I have 250 Gig less than you. However, if you figure about 7.5 Gig per hour for HD, then that accounts for the 34 hour difference. Perhaps I'll try the WD Caviar 1 TB drive for my next upgrade. I also have a SA8300HD with a 1 TB eSata drive - what an easy upgrade: Power down the box, plug in the drive, power up and play!

[davidahn]

I assumed since your total was so close to mine that it might be a difference between manufacturers. If you're at 1.75 TB, that makes sense.

The 1 TB WD Caviars are awesome, but to record 2 channels of compressed HD plus playback of 1 channel is only 6.4 MB/s max plus seek time between the 3 streams. This drive can do 54-97 MB/s, so it's extreme overkill; ANY hard drive will handle 3 simultaneous compressed HD streams!

On a desktop system, the Caviar would make a much bigger difference. I have 3 striped 750GB versions of this (WD7500AAKS) in my Mac Pro that does 272/282 MB/s read/write. Can you say "throw some uncompressed HD video at me (178 MB/s)?" (Not that I have any uncompressed HD source, but I figure the setup will come in handy for brisk Final Cut Pro HD editing!

David

[davidahn]

My bad; my 1TB drives are Hitachi Deskstars! Still, the WD Caviars in my Mac Pro are phenomenal. The Hitachis in my TiVo S3 actually outperform the Caviars in overall performance, but they lose out in maximum throughput. Plus, they're too expensive to buy 3 to stripe for my video scratch disk.

David

[folly37]

David, hello again. Thanks for the info re your setup. I don't do any video editing yet except eliminating commercials so I don't need RAID yet. Do you know of any hardware/software combination that would permit transferring 1080i output from a TiVo or cable box to a computer using either HDMI or component video connections? The SA8300HD has a USB port (and component and HDMI - no Firewire). Are there any video capture cards yet with component or HDMI inputs? Do you know of an RF video modulator that accepts HD via component or HDMI that outputs at a frequency compatible with an OTA tuner? WD has the specs for its 1 TB drive on its web site but it's not for sale anywhere (even in the WD store!)[quote][/quote]