Tivo HD Hard Drive Upgrade (via Virtual Machine)

on 01.20.09, 08:30pm in home theater, mac, media • share on facebook • comments (17)

Both my wife and I are really big fans of TiVo (since 2001, wow!).

The latest incarnation, the TiVo HD, is actually our third box – they certainly must be doing something right since we keep coming back for more. And, while I think some of the UI has lost a bit of it’s simplicity from earlier revisions (where’s amazon videos buried? how about some netflix queue management?), it still ranks incredibly high on the Wife-Acceptance-Factor (WAF) compared to most other devices.

One of the problems, however, is that we find that we quickly run out of space, especially when it comes to recording kids shows and HD content. Let’s face it – 160gb these days just won’t cut it.

In the past, I’ve performed other warranty-voiding surgeries on my TiVo’s such as my series 1 upgrade to integrate wireless and a larger drive in a series 2.

With each of the previous TiVo upgrades, I’ve simply pulled apart a PC, plugged in the drives, and have followed whatever steps I found online that were necessary to do the upgrade. This time, it would be a bit more difficult – I don’t even own a PC anymore.

So, after doing some research on Google, I came across this fantastic post about Upgrading TiVo With Your Mac and VMWare Fusion. While the article describes the process for Series 1 and Series 2 boxes, I tried it this afternoon with my Series 3, and am happy to report I’m now humming along with 1TB of storage. All thanks to using virtual machines.

First, the obligatory warning: This will void your warranty. If you even think about doing this on your own TiVo, it may melt, spontaneously combust or magically turn into a giant glob of cheese. I take no responsibility if you decide to embark on this journey and destroy your box.

That being said, here’s what I did (basically the same as the post suggested):

  1. I bought the Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB drive from Newegg.
  2. Waited 3 days for the drive to show up.
  3. Using a Torx #10, I disassembled the TiVo.
  4. Downloaded the MFS Live ISO to my macbook.
  5. Plugged each drive into it’s own USB / SATA external drive connection.
  6. Created a new VM and enabled the USB drives in the settings.
  7. Set the VM to boot the MFS Live disk.
  8. Determined that /dev/sdb was the TiVo drive, /dev/sda is the new 1TB.
  9. Ran the following command:
    backup -qTao – /dev/sdb | restore -s 128 -r 4 -xzpi – /dev/sda
  10. Waited 3 hours.
  11. Put the new drive into the TiVo.
  12. Screwed everything back together.
  13. Turned it on.

Boom. I now can store 142 hours of HD, 1241 hours of SD.

Now, if I could only stream my recordings to my iPhone while I’m roaming, I’d be all set.. ;)

17 Comments

    David Streamz (January 20, 2009 @ 9:13 pm)

    Mr. Goat -

    Why did you use Google and not Yahoo Search. Yahoo! makes a wonderful search engine located at http://search.yahoo.com.

    Also, Windows Live, a Microsoft product, also makes a fine search engine. If you haven’t used it, take a look. It is located at http://www.live.com

    smakofs (January 20, 2009 @ 9:39 pm)

    Google is a verb these days, no?

    Simon Fell (January 22, 2009 @ 2:58 pm)

    why didn’t you just plug in external esata drive?, trivially easy.

    smakofs (January 22, 2009 @ 3:46 pm)

    Because:

    1) I don’t want a box hanging off of it.
    2) I don’t want another cable to plug into the wall.
    3) I don’t want external enclosure fan noise.

    Basically, I wanted it all in a single box. Heck, if I could shove the TiVo into my TV set and get rid of any external boxes, I’d be happy. :)

    nick s (January 25, 2009 @ 2:04 pm)

    As for the ability to stream to the iPhone try a slingbox. The client isn’t out yet but it’s amazing how well the devices work.

    smakofs (January 26, 2009 @ 7:09 am)

    I’ve tried it. The Slingbox PRO-HD doesn’t yet support HD video to a Mac, so I returned it. I didn’t think the quality wasn’t that great for SD.

    mobilemind (January 26, 2009 @ 9:45 am)

    It is great to have you back blogging. I enjoy your posts and learn so much. Please consider doing posts like these (or whatever strikes you) now and then… even once a month or even once a quarter would be good for your ‘fans’. Thanks.

    Jason Tetterton (February 7, 2009 @ 12:50 am)

    Thanks for the great instructions… I just bought a 1.5tb sata drive for $129 at Microcenter and the copy from the original 160gb is working right now. Thanks again! The instructions worked perfectly!

    Wing Wong (February 21, 2009 @ 4:04 am)

    Hey, glad that my posting was of help!

    I’ve actually got a setup going that archives my Tivo programming, which I then recode for viewing later. Streaming to an iPhone wouldn’t be too hard at all, especially since the iPhone supports the H.264 encoding. :)

    In anycase, glad my post was of help!

    Wing.

    Slomo (April 18, 2009 @ 10:12 pm)

    How about a HAVA Titanium for streaming to the iPhone?

    Nomadicbear (May 21, 2009 @ 7:35 pm)

    Is it possible to do this using only one USB->sata adaptor? Such as redirecting the output of backup into a file:

    backup -args > tivodump.bin

    ..and then redirecting from file during the restore:

    restore -options sata kit, and hoping to avoid needing two.

    Many thanks

    Nomadicbear (May 21, 2009 @ 7:38 pm)

    Sorry, it seems the blog interface ate one of my less-than symbols.

    The end of that post should have read:

    restore -options (less-than symbol) tivodump.bin

    I guess the issue would be adding disk space to the MSLive VM such that it could hold your old tivo data within it.

    Does anyone know if this is possible? I’d like to know whether or not I need to buy a second USB-)sata kit, and hoping to avoid needing two.

    Many thanks

    PB (May 27, 2009 @ 12:07 am)

    Google is a verb these days, no?

    Chaz Mangus (July 17, 2009 @ 8:29 am)

    Thanks for this Post. great to know it works with VM ware i think I’m going to use a old PC box i have laying around. but i’ll be putting the 2TB in two Tivo HDs

    joefitz (July 30, 2009 @ 7:50 pm)

    Thanks for the post… I was considering getting an ExpressCard eSATA adapter for this kind of upgrade, but I’m happy to hear that SATA->USB cases work. I bet the ExpressCard would not be usable from the virtual machine anyway.

    V-Pills (September 3, 2009 @ 2:03 am)

    Thanks for this Post. great to know it works with VM ware i think I’m going to use a old PC box i have laying around. I guess the issue would be adding disk space to the MSLive VM such that it could hold your old tivo data within it.

    atod (September 8, 2009 @ 6:55 pm)

    How does the drive acoustics compare to the original OEM in the Tivo? Is it louder?

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