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2. Backing up your TiVo before upgrading

2.1 What do I need before I start to upgrade my TiVo's capacity?

The following equipment is needed.

  1. Torx #10 screwdriver. You can one at almost any hardware store. (Sears and Lowes had them in my area). The TiVo uses special Torx screws for the case and drive. Don't try using a regular flat head screwdriver or you will end up stripping the screws out and making the upgrade more difficult.
  2. New IDE hard drive. See section for more information on drive options
  3. A backup program of some type to backup the "A" drive in the TiVo. See section for more information.
  4. Something to store your backup on. Section details this.
  5. Mounting hardware to mount the drive. See section for more information.

2.2 Are all TiVo's upgradeable?

The answer is yes and no. These are the current upgrade issues.

2.3 What type of drive do I need to add to my TiVo?

Well currently there have been three brands of drives that have been used to upgrade a TiVo. Here is a breakdown on known working drives.

  1. Quantum 15GB Fireball LCT10 5400 RPM. This drive adds roughly 15 hours of capacity.
  2. Quantum 30GB Fireball LCT10 5400 RPM. This drive adds roughly 38 hours of capacity.
  3. Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 30GB 5400 RPM. This drive adds roughly 38 hours of capacity.
  4. Western Digital Caviar 30GB 5400RPM. This drive adds roughly 38 hours of capacity.

Some caveats on choosing the right drive

2.4 Why should I make a backup?

Well there are numerous reasons you should make a backup

2.5 When should I make a backup?

Well the ideal time is with a TiVo that has never been powered up. Getting a backup in this "virgin" state is ideal. The problem with this is you are going to void your warranty on a new TiVo you have never used. Some people don't mind this, but if your TiVo modem is fried and you don't use your TiVo first you will never know until after you ruin your warranty. If you are going to make backup to file a virgin backup is ideal because many people have been able to compress their virgin TiVo A drives down to a file small enough to compress onto a single CDR (less than 650MB). Newer units with the demo mode only compress down to a file about 3GB or so which is still small enough to fit on 5 CD's. If the TiVo has actually been in use it will not compress well and could take dozens of CD's for a backup.

2.6 OK I will make a backup, but how do I do it?

Smart choice! Well there are a couple ways to do it.

  1. You can buy an extra drive and make a complete backup of your original A drive onto the new drive. This way you can pull the original A drive out and store it for safe keeping and run using the new backup A drive. Remember that your drive needs to be large enough to hold the copy. So if you have a TiVo with a 30GB Quantum as the A drive, you should buy a 30GB drive as the backup drive. I recommend getting the same drive as your original A drive so that you ensure your copy will fit. Some people bought a Western Digital 15GB drive for backing up their 15GB Quantum in their 14 hour TiVo only to find out the Western Digital was actually a tiny bit smaller and they couldn't make a backup. If you do buy a Quantum drive as your backup device you can run your backup drive in the TiVo and keep the original drive tucked away for safe keeping.
  2. You can also make a backup to a file or series of files onto another drive. You could keep them on that drive or possibly burn them onto a CDROM if you have a CDR or CDRW. The benefit to the backup to file method is that you do not have to worry about drive model type. As long as your drive is large enough to hold the image you are fine.

2.7 I bought an extra drive for my A drive backup how can I make a copy of it?

There are two recommended programs to do this with. One is a DOS program called Dolly. The other is a Linux boot disk put together by Dylan. These first steps must be done first regardless of method.

  1. Unplug your TiVo and allow time for the hard drive to stop spinning before moving it
  2. Open your TiVo. Remove the three Torx screws on the back of the TiVo. The top lid should slide off. It is on very tight. Some people have used a flat head screwdriver to pry under the top of the case where the screws in the back were removed. Take your time.
  3. Remove the IDE connector and power cable from the back of the drive in the TiVo. Be careful to not touch the power supply.
  4. Remove the two Torx screws from the front of the plate the drive is mounted to. The drive should then lift up from the front and easily be removed from the TiVo.
  5. Power off your PC and open up the case. Connect the original TiVo A drive to the Secondary IDE channel on your motherboard. Take your new backup drive and make sure it is set as the slave drive. This will vary depending on your drive type. See the manufacturers documentation for details. Connect it to the cable connected to the Secondary IDE channel also. This will make your original TiVo A drive the master on the Secondary IDE connector, and the backup drive will be the Slave on the Secondary IDE connector. Make sure each drive also has a power connector plugged into it.
  6. Power up your PC and go into your CMOS. This varies depending on the computer's BIOS. Some systems require hitting the delete key on power up, some F10, and some the escape key. If you don't know you will need to check your computers documentation. In the make sure the Secondary Master and Slave drives are set to AUTO. If your BIOS does not have an AUTO settings you can sometimes have the BIOS detect the drives for you. Save your settings and reboot.
  7. Make sure your PC detects the drive sizes correctly. If your CMOS reports either drives capacity wrong then DO NOT continue with the upgrade. Listed below are some reasons for the CMOS to not be able to auto-detect the drives capacity.

If the capacity for each drive is detected correctly then you may proceed to the section for using Dolly or the Linux boot disk. You do not need to do both. Either one will work.

2.8 How do I make a disk to disk backup with Dolly?

The following are the steps needed to backup your original TiVo A drive to a new drive. If the new drive is a Quantum also it will be bootable in your TiVo. The below steps assume you have the drives connected as described in section.

  1. Download Dolly at the following address ftp://ftp.bke.hu/pub/mirrors/sac/utildisk/dolly.zip
  2. Format a bootable floppy and extract the files from the dolly archive to it. Do NOT run Dolly from inside Windows or from a DOS window.
  3. Boot your computer with the floppy in the drive. Make sure your computers boot up screen (Post screen) detects the drives fine.
  4. Type the following command from the A prompt "dolly xhd129: xhd130: /c" (do not type the quotes)
  5. After that command is finished type the following "dolly xhd129: xhd130:" (do not type the quotes)
  6. After the last command finishes you can turn off your computer, wait for the drives to spin down and you are done! Make sure there were NO error messages or problems with the copy process. If there was you should go back through the backup section here and make sure you followed every step. If it fails again, your likely problem is smaller destination drive.

This process can take HOURS to run. Do not be alarmed if it takes awhile. Once finished you can either boot your new copied A drive if it is a Quantum and store your original drive for safe keeping. If your new drive is a non quantum you will need to put your original A drive back in and keep the new drive as your backup.

2.9 How do I make a disk to disk backup with Dylan's Boot Disk?

Dylan's boot disk is a "Linux on a floppy" that one of the AVS members (Dlyan in case you didn't guess!) put together. It has everything on it you need to make either a disk to disk copy of a TiVo A drive, or a disk to image copy. It also contains my BlessTiVo program which will be described in later sections. The process to do this is as follows.

  1. Download Dylan's disk at the following sites. http://www.geocities.com/tivohack, or http://www.idrive.com/tivohack
  2. Extract the files from the archive. Get a blank formatted floppy ready and run the batch file from the archive. It will prompt you to insert a floppy in drive a, and it will create the boot disk for you.
  3. Reboot the PC with the floppy diskette in the A drive.
  4. Once the floppy has booted you will see a login prompt. Login as "root" (no quotes) and hit enter.
  5. Type the following command to make your image. This assumes you have the drives connected to your PC as described in section above. "dd if=/dev/hdc of=/dev/hdd bs=1024K" (no quotes)
  6. Make sure when the command is finished that no errors were reported. The program should report X number of blocks in and X numbers of blocks out. These should be equal. If there were errors, you need to go back through the backup section and see if you skipped a step.
  7. Turn off the PC and wait for the drive to spin down. Your backup is complete.

2.10 My TiVo A drive is locked what do I do?

Well this is a tricky one. There is a way around it, but it has some risks. The following steps need to be taken before you can connect the A drive to your PC for doing a backup. The below steps are tricky and could damage your TiVo, so do at your own risk. Others have done this and not damaged their TiVo's yet, but there is always a first time!

  1. Place the TiVo unit near your PC.
  2. Power up your TiVo with the A drive connected.(leave your PC off). After the TiVo has gotten to the "almost there screen" you need to unplug the IDE connector from the drive "while it is powered up". Leave the TiVo running. Then plug the TiVo drive into your PC's secondary IDE port. DO NOT move the drive while it is running. Get the TiVo as close to your PC as you can. This process works because the TiVo upon power-up will unlock the drive. As long as power remains on the drive remains unlocked.
  3. Proceed with the backup instructions detailed in the above sections for your particular backup type.
  4. When finished turn off the PC and the TiVo and allow time for all drives to spin down.

2.11 How do I make a backup to files?

To be added soon


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