How to upgrade your TiVo HD with WinMFS
This left us with a choice -- go back to our original set of Gentoo instructions (which will work just fine with the TiVo HD), or look for an easier way to get the job done. We're not ones to shy away from the command line, but we took the opportunity to try out something that might have a... broader appeal. Enter WinMFS -- a Windows utility to upgrade your TiVo drive. It's still in Beta (currently build 8), but we decided to give it a whirl. With an eye towards quiet and cool operation, we ordered up a 750 GB Western Digital GreenPower drive, fired up our Windows computer and got underway.
Preparation
Here's a quick shot of showing our TiVo HD with the factory-original 160 GB drive, enough for a paltry 20 hours of HD content.
Extracting the original drive from the TiVo is straightforward: break out your Torx T10 bit, remove the six screws from the rear of the TiVo and then slide open the case. Once inside, disconnect the hard drive and remove the four Torx screws holding the drive sled in. The whole process is detailed in our previous TiVo upgrade how-to, so refer back to it if you need help.
We used a cheap PCI SATA card in our PC and it worked fine. Just plug the original and new drives in and boot up Windows -- there's no need to format the new drive.
Using WinMFS
Download the WinMFS program from here and run it. You're greeted by a pretty sparse UI. Go to File > Select Drive... and you should see entries for your two attached SATA drives. In our case, Drive 1 was our new 750 GB drive, and Drive 2 was our original 160 GB one. Highlight you original drive and press the "Select" button.
We're big on "belt and suspenders" level of precaution when using whole-disk utilities that are in beta, so we decided to back up our TiVo drive. Note that WinMFS does not back up your recorded shows, only the parts of the disk image necessary to get you up and running again should disaster strike. We used the File > Backup options to make copies of our basic TiVo files, the bootpage, and kernel right on our NTFS Windows drive.
Now comes the actual upgrade. Use the Tools > Mfscopy option to select the source and destination for the copy (hint: set your original drive as the source, the new drive as the target). Then just press the "Start" button and wait.
During the copy, we ran into one small niggle -- it looks like WinMFS is a single-threaded application that doesn't refresh the UI if you move another application to the front. During our copy, we switched apps and from then on out our WinMFS session was a blank window with no status indication. Patience is the key here, so just wait until the copy is finished. Once it's all done, WinMFS will ask if you want to make use of the added capacity of your new drive -- we assume you do.
That's it! Power down everything, put the new drive in your TiVo reassemble. "Smoke test" your TiVo by booting it up and seeing if you've got increased recording capacity.
Conclusion
We were really pleased with WinMFS. What's not to like? It's simple to use, the backups make it relatively safe, and it opens up DIY TiVo upgrades to a whole audience that would be scared away from a Linux command-line. For us, it just plain worked. Poking around, it looks to have a good amount of flexibility as well -- support for SATA-USB adapters, merging drives, splitting drives, etc. Of course, the utility isn't limited to TiVo HDs, either, so if you've been holding off on upgrading your (or a friend's) TiVo, no more excuses!
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
h0mi @ Apr 17th 2008 12:32PM
Point of order- I believe that doing this to the tivo HD makes your tivo unable to utilize the "My DVR" external SATA drive. Course, you'd be able to get bigger, cheaper units if you did such a hack.
brent @ Apr 17th 2008 12:53PM
now that the tivoHD supports external hard drives, is there much need to do something like this?
Steven Kim @ Apr 17th 2008 1:06PM
I really like having the one-box, one-plug solution. I'd agree that the price on eSATA drives isn't a big differential over bare drives, but the convenience of the internal drive is a win for me.
Dave Zatz @ Apr 17th 2008 1:29PM
Yes. Internet drives are cheaper, you have fewer drives to worry about failing, fewer power supplies to connect, and less things in your rack.
Ian @ Apr 17th 2008 1:49PM
One good reason to do this upgrade is that if you don't and your original 160GB HD dies suddenly you have a major problem.
If you upgrade the internal drive with a new one in the 750/500 GB range I would suggest that if you want an external HD also attached you buy a new one. This way you can keep the "old" 160GB HD as a back up. ie.e new 750 HD internal drive suddemnly dies after 2 years usage. Bingo yo can put back in the old 160 or use that to make up a new internal drive.
Sorta surprised that this how to doesn't go for this option????
My only issue with the TIVO HD is the expense of it all.
Basic TIVO HD $300.00
Lifetime subscription $399.00
750GB internal drive $175.00
Total cost $874.00.
I know it gives great performance but isn't there supposed to be a new model on the horizon within 6 months with 2 way CableCard technology built in? Versus the "dongle" or "resolver" promised for the HDTIVO.
otaking241 @ Apr 17th 2008 1:06PM
Anybody have a link to d/l this app without registering for the forum?
Pip @ Apr 17th 2008 2:13PM
Just a heads up, make sure the drive you're going to use is made specifically for AV. A lot of people were wondering why Tivo just didn't offer an empty drive enclosure of their approved external expansion, and it was because a lot of drive are not designed to be turned on and constantly used 24/7 and will prematurely die because of it. The drive in the official Tivo expansion is an AV drive which is designed to last longer.
I had no idea there were actual differences in drives for applications like this until recently. (tivo community forums explains this better than I can.)
harma41 @ Apr 17th 2008 4:32PM
This is freakin' awesome. Now if Cox would make it so my cable card would not lose my decoded channels once a week, the TiVo would finally completely win over my wife.
TomR @ Apr 17th 2008 4:44PM
This WinMFS tool is just dang simple. I've done the old command line method several times; but it can be rather tedious. This new software utility lets you do all of this from just a couple of mouse clicks after Windows boots up. I've used this on 3 Tivo HD boxes, replacing the factory drive with a 750 gig on each. I didn't even boot up the Tivo's; I just removed the factory drive; connected to a PC with a bunch of SATA ports, and away you go. Under an hour for each. I've also used this tool on 2 Series2 boxes, and even an older DirecTVtivo with zero issues. The software detects which flavor of tivo box the original drive was from. Now while you can't use the external sata port after this upgrade - because you can't upgrade/expand an already expanded Tivo drive; you could get a bit clever and connect 3 hard drives up to your PC. The windows drive, the factory Tivo HD drive, then your Two new hard drives. Do the WinMFS tools telling the software that you have an 'A' and a 'B' drive. Then, when you are all done and the Tivo HD box is back together, when you boot it up - first connect the 'B' drive via the external eSata port - and now you have a ginormous Tivo. And, yes there are AV types of hard drives verses regular data drives; but the data drives will still work just fine. I've done many upgrades on tivos over the years... and they just work. Keeping the factory drive does make it very simple to "do it all over again" if a driver ever dies... This is SO EASY TO DO!
TomR @ Apr 17th 2008 4:50PM
This WinMFS tool is just dang simple. I've done the old command line method several times; but it can be rather tedious. This new software utility lets you do all of this from just a couple of mouse clicks after Windows boots up. I've used this on 3 Tivo HD boxes, replacing the factory drive with a 750 gig on each. I didn't even boot up the Tivo's; I just removed the factory drive; connected to a PC with a bunch of SATA ports, and away you go. Under an hour for each. I've also used this tool on 2 Series2 boxes, and even an older DirecTVtivo with zero issues. The software detects which flavor of tivo box the original drive was from.
Now while you can't use the external sata port after this upgrade - because you can't upgrade/expand an already expanded Tivo drive; you could get a bit clever and connect 3 hard drives up to your PC. The windows drive, the factory Tivo HD drive, then your Two new hard drives. Do the WinMFS tools telling the software that you have an 'A' and a 'B' drive. Then, when you are all done and the Tivo HD box is back together, when you boot it up - first connect the 'B' drive via the external eSata port - and now you have a ginormous Tivo.
And, yes there are AV types of hard drives verses regular data drives; but the data drives will still work just fine. I've done many upgrades on tivos over the years... and they just work. Keeping the factory drive does make it very simple to "do
it all over again" if a drive ever dies... This is SO EASY TO DO!
Ian @ Apr 17th 2008 5:35PM
The March 2008 edition of Popular Science (it's also online) explains how you can similarly use WinMFS program (mfslive.org) and use a new internal 750GB HD and in tandem another 750GB external drive via the external E-SATA port. They too stress the need to use HDs designed for DVR usage.
WiFiSpy @ Apr 17th 2008 4:58PM
I wonder if using a 10k RPM Raptor would speed up the damn guide software :)
TomR @ Apr 17th 2008 7:10PM
This WinMFS tool is just dang simple. I've done the old command line method several times; but it can be rather tedious. This new software utility lets you do all of this from just a couple of mouse clicks after Windows boots up. I've used this on 3 Tivo HD boxes, replacing the factory drive with a 750 gig on each. I didn't even boot up the Tivo's; I just removed the factory drive; connected to a PC with a bunch of SATA ports, and away you go. Under an hour for each. I've also used this tool on 2 Series2 boxes, and even an older DirecTVtivo with zero issues. The software detects which flavor of tivo box the original drive was from.
Now while you can't use the external sata port after this upgrade - because you can't upgrade/expand an already expanded Tivo drive; you could get a bit clever and connect 3 hard drives up to your PC. The windows drive, the factory Tivo HD drive, then your Two new hard drives. Do the WinMFS tools telling the software that you have an 'A' and a 'B' drive. Then, when you are all done and the Tivo HD box is back together, when you boot it up - first connect the 'B' drive via the external eSata port - and now you have a ginormous Tivo.
And, yes there are AV types of hard drives verses regular data drives; but the data drives will still work just fine. I've done many upgrades on tivos over the years... and they just work. Keeping the factory drive does make it very simple to "do
it all over again" if a drive ever dies... This is SO EASY TO DO!
GM @ Apr 17th 2008 11:10PM
About AV hard drives... I've hacked 3 Tivos and added larger drives, the first one being nearly 4 years ago. I've used regular drives in every one, and have not had a single failure. Possibly I've been lucky, but for the initial cost difference, and the constantly reducing prices for storage, I don't see a need to go AV. If it fails, I'll just buy another for 1/2 the cost, (plus it still might be under warranty). Not sure if this has mattered, but I think they have all been western digital drives.
Bodyshots @ Apr 19th 2008 3:18PM
Uhm... in my experience the cost of the av or enterprise (24/7) drive is Maybe $10 more than the normal drives.
I Always buy enterprise drives, as they have MUCH better MTBF and are optimized for constant use.
Thomas @ Apr 18th 2008 9:31PM
I just did this upgrade on my Tivo HD two days ago with a Samsung F1 1TB drive. I only had one SATA adapter on my computer so I had to do a "Backup", swap drives, then "Restore" as opposed to having both HDD's hooked up at the same time. You lose your saved shows that way but all of your settings get transferred over just fine. Save the image file to a CD when you are done for a nice backup in case your new drive dies.
It might also be important to note that WinMFS also has a "supersize" option that you can run after the backup/restore process. Supersize frees up even more space on your new drive. With my 1TB drive, I had 131 HD hours after the restore and 144 HD hours after the supersize.
I couldn't be happier and the whole process was under an hour.