TiVo Upgrade instructions from our TechTV appearance

Do-It-Yourself Upgrades

How to prep your drive for add-on capacity in the Hughes HDVR2, Philips DSR7000, AT&T TiVo 230040, TiVo 240040, and TiVo 240080

This quick tutorial assumes that you are using a TwinBreeze™ bracket (and PowerTrip™ for relevant models) and that you have purchased a bare drive to add to your TiVo.

Important disclaimers: WeaKnees.com does not warrant these instructions in any way. This is a fairly abbreviated list that will get the job done if everything goes perfectly, but it won't help you much if your situation differs from our assumptions, or if you have a problem along the way. We do NOT offer software support to purchasers of our TwinBreeze Basic, TwinBreeze Complete or PowerTrip-only products. We DO offer full support to purchasers of our complete upgrade kits (including prepared hard drives), and if you purchase one of those kits, you will NOT need these instructions. If you are looking for a complete kit with parts, prepared drive and complete installation instructions, choose your TiVo model from here and find the kit you'd like. Also, these instructions do not explain how to back up your software. If you attempt to prepare your upgrade drive and something goes awry, without a backup you may need to have your drives professionally reformatted to get your TiVo working again.

The details:

Follow the TwinBreeze instructions until step 3. Then prep your drives with these instructions and then finish the TwinBreeze instructions.

Download this CDROM image and then burn it to a blank CD. Boot your PC from this CD (without your TiVo drives attached) to make sure it is burned properly. Be sure the CD works perfectly at boot, as booting a PC into XP with TiVo drives attached will corrupt the TiVo software and your TiVo will no longer operate. For the upgrade to work, you must be sure that your PC boots into Linux via the CD. If your PC continues to boot from your hard drive, you may need to adjust your BIOS to boot from CD. You may also want to disconnect any hard drives connected to your PC, especially if you are concerned about booting into XP with your TiVo drives attached.

Shut off your PC and open it and connect the drive you removed from the TiVo to the secondary master IDE position. Be sure your TiVo factory drive's jumper is positioned as master (or if you have a Western Digital, "master with slave present"). Set your additional/upgrade drive to "slave," and install this drive in the PC's secondary slave IDE position.

Boot from the CD that you've tested. Press the return key at the "boot:" prompt.

Follow the boot sequence to be sure that the lines for the drives labeled "hdc" and "hdd" show the correct approximate capacities for the drives you have installed. "hdc" should show a number like "(40021 MB)" for a 40 GB drive. You may have to scroll up to find these values - do this with shift-pageup. Remember, if installed properly and in the correct positions on the IDE chain, hdc is the drive from your TiVo and hdd is the new drive - make sure the sizes reported are correct, as now is your last chance to check this.

From the final "/#" prompt, type:

mfsadd -x -r 4 /dev/hdc /dev/hdd

Then press return. The tools will report the estimated new drive capacities in hours for standalone units (actual hours for DirecTV/TiVo combination units will be fewer than reported).

Now shut down the PC with ctrl-alt-delete and wait for the line that says: "stopping all md devices." and then cut the power. If this shutdown procedure doesn't work, type this before turning off the power:

umount -f -a -r

Detach the drives from the PC and continue with the TwinBreeze instructions.