The following is a step by step guide to upgrading your TiVo Series 3, TiVo HD PVR or TiVo Series 2 Digital Video Recorder to a larger capacity hard drive. This is similar to the old Hinsdale method, but includes a description of updated tools that allow you to upgrade Tivo Series 3 and Tivo HD systems to larger 500GB+ drives and this method preserves all your recordings and settings.

Unlike a number of sites that discuss upgrades I have personally tried these methods myself without problems on both my series 2 and my new and "awesome" Tivo HD.

It is assumed that you have a basic knowledge of PC computer hardware and that you are comfortable plugging in hard drives, cdrom drives. You should be comfortable executing a few simple command line instructions in Linux (or Windows if you choose to use the optional Windows method discussed below) although all commands will be given to you so no knowledge of Linux itself is required. If you aren't happy making your own hard drive upgrade a number of companies sell preconfigured drives. Several of them are probably featured on the banner ads on this site.

The two procedures here have been tested by myself or others on the following list of TiVo hardware, although in principle should work with any TiVo series 2 or newer:

I set mine up on Time Warner Cable with two single stream cable cards. Some people have mentioned problems with cable card installations on the web but mine went completely smoothly, once I pointed out to the installer where the cable card slots were and showed him the nice installation flow chart Tivo provide.

When the box arrived I set it up without the cable cards, tested both an antenna and the standard cable and both worked fine. Tivo tuned in all the unscrambled channels even some HD ones. Over the air HD also worked great for the local channels (ABC, CBS, NBC, KPBS etc.) and you can record two HD shows at once while watching a third. Once I verified things were working I went ahead and upgraded the Tivo HD using the Series 3/HD method below to a 1TB hard disk (the excellent, quiet and power efficient WD10EACS). Once I verified this was all working I then phoned Time Warner cable to obtain two cable cards so I could get all the cable channels.

Time Warner told me it was $30 installation (you can't collect them which is a bit of a pain), but they could do any day the following week, and then $1.75 a month for each card (which beats the $8.00 a month for a cable box). The installation was a breeze, took the engineer all of 10 minutes and I was up and running.

Add to this the fact that apparently sometime in 2008 Tivo will be providing a USB dongle for the Tivo HD that will ensure Tivo works with new switched digital video (SDV) HD channels and possibly allow you to access both on-demand and pay per view services and you will never need to look at an awful Scientific Atlanta Cable Box again. (Thanks to David Conway for the heads up on the SDV discussion).

What you need before you get started

Tivo HD / Tivo Series 3

1) A Torx T-10 screwdriver. You can find these at Home Depot for about a buck or two or you can order online from Amazon.

2) A PC with SATA capability, at least 500MB of ram, and a CDROM/DVD drive. (CDROM/DVD drive not necessarily required for the Windows Method)

3) A suitable Hard Disk to use to upgrade your TiVo. (see below)

4) Linux Boot CD Method: A copy of the MFSLive Boot CD ISO. (thanks to www.mfslive.org for this awesome software)
    Download the ISO and burn it to CD. (MFSLive v1.3b ISO [7.3 MB]) [Remember to choose Burn Image]

    Windows Method: A copy of WinMFS [118 Kb]
    Download the zip file and then uncompress the winmfs.exe file to your desktop.

Replacement Hard Disk

In a TiVo HD the original hard disk is 160GB for around 20 hours of HD video. In a Series 3 it is 250GB for around 25-35 hours of HD video. Hence you will need something bigger than this. At the time of writing, Nov 2007, the best hard drives for upgrading an HD compatible TiVo are the Western Digital SATA drives including:

I highly recommend the 1TB Western Digital WD10EACS drive. This is what I used in my Tivo HD and it works perfectly. The great thing about this drive is that it is optimized for low power consumption and low noise. It automatically slows to 5400 rpm when it is not being used flat out. While not necessarily optimum for a desktop PC for a Tivo these properties are perfect since Tivo never really stresses the drives performance. The reduced power usage cuts your power bill. My Tivo HD with this drive uses about 50% of the power my dual drive Tivo Series 2 did. This equates to a saving of about 1.2KWHr per day which at 15c per KWHr equates to a saving of $65 a year. Plus this drive is so quiet, especially with the acoustic management turned on as explained below, you cannot hear the Tivo at all.

Note: If you are upgrading a TiVo series 2 single or dual tuner model then you need a Parallel ATA Drive (UDMA 133 is best although UDMA 100 drives should also work).

Once you have everything you need you are ready to begin the upgrade process and unlock the true power of your TiVo.

Upgrade Instructions (MFSLive Boot CD Method):

1) Use the Torx T-10 Screwdriver to open up your TiVo and then remove the hard drive that is inside. Be careful not to touch the power supply.

2) Check the BIOS settings of your PC to make sure it is configured to boot from the CDROM drive then power off your PC and open the case.

3) Disconnect all of the hard drives in your PC but leave the CDROM drive attached. For this process the only hard drives you will need connected to your PC are the original TiVo hard disk and the disk you plan to upgrade to. We will be booting off of a CDROM so you don't need your PC's own operating system.

4) Check that the jumper settings on your new drive (if applicable) are set to 3.0 Gb/sec and NOT 1.5 Gb/sec. Then attach the original TiVo drive to the first SATA port and the new drive to the second SATA port. Also connect the power to these drives.

5) Power on your PC, insert the MFSLive boot cd in the drive and allow your machine to boot from it. If you are prompted with a boot menu during the boot process simply press enter to boot with the default options.

6) For me this brought up the text based terminal (even though I just let it boot the graphic mode by default). If you find yourself in some weird graphics interface then try rebooting and selecting text mode (option 3).

8) Next we need to identify the names of the two hard drives, your TiVo original drive and your new 'upgrade' drive.
To do this type 'cat /proc/partitions' and hit enter. You should see a screen similar to that below:

Make a note of the name of each drive. Make sure you get this part correct because if you mix the two up you could end up blanking your original TiVo drive and preventing your TiVo from working. In this case the 250GB drive, the TiVo original, is drive sda while the upgrade drive (a 500GB drive in this example) is sdb. (If this is a series 2 tivo with UDMA drives then you will be looking for hda and hdb or hdc.)

9) The next step is to copy over the contents of the original TiVo drive to the new drive and expand the Tivo partitions to fill the new drive. At the prompt this type the command (for 500GB and smaller drives):

backup -qTao - /dev/sda | restore -s 128 -xzpi - /dev/sdb

Or for >500GB drives:

backup -qTao - /dev/sda | restore -s 128 -r 4 -xzpi - /dev/sdb

where the first /dev entry points to your source drive, the original tivo drive, in this case sda and the second /dev entry points to the destination drive, your upgrade drive, in this case sdb. This step can take upwards of an hour on a dual core 2.4GHz AMD machine. On older machines it can take 4+ hours to compete.

The options specified above are as follows:

-qTao = Sets the backup command to preserve all your settings and recordings.
/dev/sda = Tivo Source Disk (Original)
| = the pipe symbol (normally shift->backslash) means redirect the output of the backup command to input for the restore command.
-s 128 = Sets the new Tivo disk to contain 128 MB of swap (more than enough)
-r 4 = Sets minimum block size to 32768 sectors (16MB) - needed for the new larger disks.
-xzpi = Sets the restore command to restore all your settings and recordings and then expand the free space to fill the new disk.
/dev/sdb = Tivo Destination Disk (New)

WARNING: Make sure you have the source drive and destination drive after in the correct order. If you copy from the blank drive to the original drive you will wreck your TiVo. (although I believe the above command will give you an error if you do this - but I have never been brave enough (or foolish enough?) to try it.)

If you don't want to wait several hours and don't mind loosing all your current recordings then you can use the following command which will take only a few minutes:

backup -f 9999 -qso - /dev/sda | restore -s 128 -xzpi - /dev/sdb

10) At this point you are done as far as the update goes although I highly recommend you carry out the next (optional) step which will set your drive to use aggressive power management (saving you money) and maximum acoustic silencing to keep your Tivo as quiet as possible. In my experience this command has no negatives as does not appear to impact Tivo's performance in any way. Issue the command:

hdparm -k 1 -B 1 -M 128 /dev/sdb

where /dev/sdb is the new Tivo drive. The options here have the following effect:

-k 1 = keep settings after drive is powered off.
-B 1 = set most aggressive power management mode.
-M 128 = set acoustic management to as quiet as possible.

Note you may get one or more errors from this command if the new drive you have selected does not support power management or acoustic management. In either case you can safely ignore such warnings.

11) With that you are done with the upgrade. Press and hold the power button of your PC so that it powers off. Typically you need to hold it in for 4+ seconds or the PC will simply reboot. Then disconnect the old Tivo hard disk and put it somewhere safe in case you ever need to put it back in for a warranty call. Then take the new Tivo hard disk and mount it in your Tivo. Screw the cover back on, plug it all in and power it up. Once it starts simply go to the settings -> System Information menu and you should see the new increased capacity of your Tivo.

(Tivo HD with 1TB disk and supersized with WinMFS. Default capacity from the procedure above will be about 136 HD hours or so)

12) Finally if you found this how to useful then please as a token of your gratitude please enter ross@rosswalker.co.uk as the referral email address when registering your TiVo. Alternatively please consider a small donation via paypal to help cover my server hardware and bandwidth costs - even a dollar can help. Or next time you buy something from Amazon (maybe a new HD TiVo even!) follow the link below to get to amazon.com before adding items to your shopping cart.

Finally if you have any comments, suggestions, come across any problems or have any questions please feel free to contact me at the email address above. Good luck and enjoy your new Tivo.

Upgrade Instructions (Windows WinMFS option):

Coming soon.