Upgrading from 1TB to 2TB TivoHD

Been reading on how to upgrade my TivoHD to a 2TB HD and just want to confirm that I can use WinMFS for the entire process or will I have to use JMFS then WinMFS to Supersize. My Tivo is at current software revision. I found these instructions for WinMFS:

Use WinMFS to mfscopy your current drive, shows, settings, and all, to the 20EURS.

When it finishes, it'll say something about extra space (unless your current drive is also a 2TB), and do you want to expand.

Tell it no.

I don't know why you need to do it that way, but that's the way that seems to work.

After you tell it no, select the new drive, the 20EURS, and click on mfsinfo just to make sure everything looks alright.

The partition map will probably show a large Apple Free partition at the end.

That's okay.

Close mfsinfo, and then click on mfsadd.

You should get the "do you want to use a partition bigger than 1.2TB" warning--tell it yes you do want to.

Been reading on how to upgrade my TivoHD to a 2TB HD and just want to confirm that I can use WinMFS for the entire process or will I have to use JMFS then WinMFS to Supersize. My Tivo is at current software revision. I found these instructions for WinMFS:

Click to expand...

And those instructions are based on me actually doing it that way.

Before TiVo upgraded the S3 platform software in a way that enabled it to use partitions larger than 1.2TB, it was discovered that jmfs, which comer wrote for copying and expanding Premieres--which had been changed enough from the S2/S3 drive structure that MFS Tools based stuff and WinMFS couldn't work with them--would also work on the HD (TCD652160) and HD XL (TCD658000) because of something that had been changed in them from the original S3 (TCD648250), although as I recall it was still necessary to supersize 652/658s with WinMFS as the process in jmfs intended for Premieres wouldn't work on S3s

However, once TiVo did upgrade the software for S3s (I think starting with 11.0h, but almost nobody noticed until 11.0k), it became possible to use all of a 2TB drive with just WinMFS on all three of the S3 platform models.

jmfs cannot be used on the original S3.

There's a further benefit of using WinMFS instead of jmfs for S3 platform upgrades.

If you've already done an upgrade with MFS Live or WinMFS to a drive larger than the original but smaller than 2TB, a third MFS pair will have been added to do the expansion and there might be a small unused space left at the end of the larger drive.

Because the Apple Partition Map will designate that unused space as yet another partition, an Apple Free Partition, that means the drive has hit the 16 partitions per drive limit which TiVos observe.

jmfs will see that Apple Free partition as a partition, and copy it right along with the other 15, and then the single MFS media partition which jmfs creates as the method by which it does expansion will be the 17th partition on the drive.

When you boot that drive up in an S3, it thinks that 17th partition is a screwed up external drive, which it will insist on divorcing, which will return the 2TB to the state it was in after copying but before expanding--3 MFS pairs no larger than the previously expanded drive from which you copied, and an Apple Free partition which can't be used for storage.

So you wind up with no more space than you had before.

WinMFS can take the 3rd MFS media partition and enlarge it (running right over and swallowing up any Apple Free partition unused space) to fill the rest of the 2TB drive, so that you wind up with only 15 partitions and the use of all of the drive's space.

And one other thing WinMFS will let you do that jmfs will not is increase the size of the swap partition on the target drive if you wish to.

So, either use WinMFS's

mfscopy

option to copy a drive to the 2TB, or use the

restore

option to restore to the 2TB from a .tbk image file

At the end of both/either, it'll tell you you have extra space and offer to expand into it for you.

Tell it no.

(I don't know exactly why letting it do the expansion then doesn't always work, I just know a foolproof way to avoid the problem--do the expansion later as a separate step).

Make sure the 2TB is the drive which is selected by WinMFS and then click on the

mfsinfo

option and make sure everything looks okay.

At that point it is my preference to put the drive in the TiVo and test it there, and if all is well, only then return it to the PC to do the expansion by selecting it and then clicking on the

mfsadd

option and telling it to exceed the 1.2TB per partition limit, however if you wish I suppose that after selecting the drive (or making sure it's the one selected) and clicking on

I have both drives hooked up to my computer but I can see the source drive but cannot see the destination drive when i go into mfscopy.

I do have a Gigabyte motherboard GA-A75MUD2H

Ant suggestions...Thanks

Click to expand...

You have to be running WinMFS as admin or with admin privileges.

But first, back out and shut down Windows and reboot and hit DEL or F1 or ESC or whatever your PC insists on to go into the BIOS/CMOS settings and see if both drives (in addition to the Windows drive) are being detected by the computer itself.

Thanks unitron for the response. I did run as Admin, I also could see 3 HD in BIOS. I went ahead and used JMFS instead. Would have been nice to use WinMFS but not a big deal. JMFS was just as easy to use, just the extra step to create a bootable USB. Thanks again for the help.

Thanks unitron for the response. I did run as Admin, I also could see 3 HD in BIOS. I went ahead and used JMFS instead. Would have been nice to use WinMFS but not a big deal. JMFS was just as easy to use, just the extra step to create a bootable USB. Thanks again for the help.

Click to expand...

Well, if it worked, that's what counts.

Although why didn't you just make a bootable cd from the jmfs v1.04 .iso, that's what it's for.

I just upgraded from my 160GB stock drive to a 2TB drive with only WinMFS on Windows 7 and it works great. With supersize I went from 20HR to 318HR.

Click to expand...

I didn't work on it so much as happen to notice that someone else figured out that an S3 platform software update enabled them to handle 2TB drives (or probably more accurately, enabled them to handle partitions larger than 1.2TB)

And then I talked about it a lot.

I just wish I had lots of extra money to throw around to see if recent S2 updates mean they can use a 2TB drive as well, because since S2s are IDE and not SATA, they can have 2 drives on the single ribbon cable, which theoretically means a 4TB S2. (with the proper IDE/SATA adapters).

I got one to boot a WD20EURS, but had to use that drive in an S3, and needed to return the S2 to recording duty, so I'm sort of mid-experiment.

- The mfscopy took about 11 hours mainly because I hooked up the WD10EACS via USB 2.0. The writes to the WD20EURX were over an eSATA connection. Easier to monitor the progress using Task Manager and watching the bytes IO

- The wdidle3 showed IntelliPark disabled on the WD20EURX so I left it at that

- My TivoHD now reports 318 HD hours possible. Yay!

Hope to get a long life out of this drive as well. I've certainly gotten great value from the lifetime subscription.