The following is a step by step guide to upgrading your TiVo Premiere, 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, TiVo HD and TiVo Premiere systems to larger 500GB+ drives and this method preserves all your recordings and settings. For UK customers it also allows you to upgrade the new Virgin Media Branded TiVo which is simply a rebranded TiVo Premiere.

Dec 2010: If you do not feel happy doing this yourself TiVo offer a TiVo HD XL system  and a TiVo Premiere XL system which, while a little pricey, include 1TB hard disks built in.

Dec 2008: One more reason to get a TiVo Premiere / HD if you haven't already: The latest software update adds support for on demand access to NetFlix films and TV shows.

If you want more space on your TiVo without upgrading then your options at present are to purchase a TiVo Premiere XL or a MyDVR Expander.

Unlike a number of sites that discuss upgrades I have personally tried these methods myself without problems on my series 2 and my "awesome" TiVo HD and TiVo Premiere. Many users have also reported success using these methods for TiVo Series 3 and Virgin Media (UK) TiVos.

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 [Tivo HD and series 2 only]) 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. These steps can be performed easily on a SATA capable desktop or if you buy refurbished laptops for example using USB hard drive adapters.

The procedures here have been tested by myself or others on the following TiVo hardware, although in principle should work with any TiVo series 2 or newer (including the new TiVo Premiere):

I set mine up on Time Warner Cable with two single stream cable cards, which I have since replaced with one M-card. 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, cheap, quiet and power efficient WD10EACS or WD10EADS or the newer DVR optimized WD10EVDS (recommended for Series 3, TiVo HD and TiVo Premiere) or newer WD10EARS (Recommended for TiVo Premiere only)). 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.

Update Dec 2010: I have now successfully repeated the above procedure on my TiVo Premiere using the instructions described in the TiVo Premiere Hard Disk Upgrade Procedure described below.

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 $2.50 a month for the M-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 Cable companies now provide a USB dongle for the TiVo HD / Premiere that ensures TiVo works with new switched digital video (SDV) HD channels you will never need to look at an awful Scientific Atlanta Cable Box again.

What you need before you get started

TiVo HD / TiVo Series 3 / TiVo Premiere

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. For some TiVo HD's and Premiere's you will also need a Torx T-15 screwdriver since these TiVo's use T-15 screws for the Hard Drive mount. It has been reported that some TiVo's have tamper resistant versions of the Torx T-10 screw. This appears to be just the UK based Virgin Media TiVo's but it could occur on other TiVo's as well. These type of screws have a little 'pin' in the middle of the star. For these you need a Tamper Resistant Torx T-10 screwdriver. Here's an example 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 or the Premiere USB boot method) - If you are upgrading a TiVo Series 2 then you will need an 80 pin parallel ATA cable. While the HD inside a series 2 is connected with a 40 pin cable when you plug it into your PC it needs to be connected with an 80 pin IDE cable to work properly. Note if you are not happy reconfiguring the insides of your PC you can also just use two USB adapters. This will mean the process takes slightly longer but it won't be a massive difference. You can also get such adapters very cheaply, often less than $10 each. An example that is reported to work great is: SATA/PATA/IDE Drive to USB 2.0 Adapter Converter Cable for 2.5 / 3.5 Inch Hard Drive / Optical Drive with External AC Power Adapter

3) A suitable Hard Disk to use to upgrade your TiVo. (see below) and a spare SATA cable (TiVo HD/Premiere) if buying an OEM drive. When considering which drive to purchase note that those labeled OEM are often cheaper but do not include a SATA cable while those labeled as boxed or retail should include the SATA cable.

4) The free upgrade software:

Series 2 / 3 and HD
Windows Method: A copy of WinMFS v9.3f
You will need to register and obtain this, currently free of charge from here.

WDIDLE Software: If you are using a Western Digital WDxxEURS drive you will need this for all TiVo versions, otherwise you will just need it for TiVo Series 3 with Western Digital Drive. Download the ISO and burn it to an additional CD. (wdidle.iso [0.9 MB]) [Remember to choose Burn Image] - hint: you can also use the USB method described for the Premiere below.

TiVo Premiere & Virgin Media (UK) TiVo
Linux Boot CD Method: A copy of the Premiere JMFS Linux Boot CD ISO. (thanks to Comer for this Slax based compilation)
Download the ISO and burn it to CD. (premiere_linux_inc_supersize_jmfs-rev104.iso [82.3 MB]) [Remember to choose Burn Image]

Linux Bootable USB Key Method: You need a USB dongle large enough to hold the ISO image. A 256MB or larger USBkey should be fine. Assuming you are using Windows first download the the ISO and save it to your desktop. (premiere_linux_inc_supersize_jmfs-rev104.iso [82.3 MB]). You also need to download a program called Universal USB Installer that we will use to create the bootable USB key. Save this on your desktop as well. (Universal-USB-Installer-1.8.1.5 [862 KB]).

Next insert your USB key drive into an available USB slot. Then run the Universal-USB-Installer exe file you just downloaded. Select SLAX 6.1.2 as the Linux Distribution under step 1. Under step 2 browse for the iso file you saved on the desktop above. Finally select the drive letter for your USB drive (Make sure you get this correct) and tick the box that states you want to format the drive. Your screen should look something like this:

Finally click Create. The process will take approximately 1 minute. Once done, hit Close and unplug the USB drive and keep it safe until you are read to boot off it when upgrading your TiVo Premiere's hard drive as described below.

WDIDLE Software: If you are using a Western Digital WDxxEURS drive you will need this for all TiVo versions, otherwise you will just need it for TiVo Series 3 with Western Digital Drive. Download the ISO. (wdidle.iso [0.9 MB]). Then either make a second bootable USB pen drive for this ISO using the method described above or burn it to a CD [Remember to choose burn image].

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 while in a Premiere it is 320GB for around 35 - 45 hours of HD video and a Virgin Media (UK) TiVo it is 500GB . Hence you will need something bigger than this. As of June 2011, the best hard drives for upgrading an HD compatible TiVo are the Western Digital SATA drives including:

I highly recommend the Western Digital drives since they are optimized for DVRs, especially the EVDS / EURS Series (WD10EVDS, WD10EURS, WD20EURS, WD30EURS) although you should read the note regarding wdidle3 below if you use an EURS series drive. The original EACS version is the one I used in my TiVo HD and it works perfectly although it has been replaced by newer models now. The great thing about the Western Digital E[XX]S series drives are that they are optimized for low power consumption and low noise. They automatically slow to 5400 rpm or less when 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 these drives are so quiet, especially with the acoustic management turned on as explained below, you cannot hear the TiVo at all.

(Update Jun 2011) Caution with EURS / AURS drives. Western Digital now offer a newer drive in 2TB and 3TB capacity called WD20EURS / WD30EURS (I have NOT tested the 3TB drive yet though). These are cost effective drives BUT they have a head parking feature which can cause TiVos to lock up during boot. There is a third party tool you can use, discussed below, to change the disk idle timer to avoid this issue (wdidle3). Originally this was only needed for the WD drives on TiVo series 3s but I now have reports that if you use a EURS series drive you have to run this regardless of which TiVo version you have. Other WD drives should still work fine although resetting the wdidle time won't hurt.

(Update Apr 2011) Caution with EARS / EURS / AURS drives on older TiVos. There are several discussion threads in the various news groups expressing concern about the newer EARS drives from Western Digital. These use what, I believe is marketing speak called Advanced Format. This is supposedly a method to allow drive manufacturers to get higher capacity on a drive. In reality it is a way to build cheaper drives and put more of the work of the drives electronics onto the host CPU. Nevertheless this could potentially cause problems with TiVo's earlier than the TiVo Premiere or Virgin Media (UK) TiVo. The reason for this is that Advanced Format needs to be supported by the underlying operating system and the older TiVo Series 3 and TiVo HD do not have new enough Linux Kernels to support it. That said I have had no reports of people actually seeing any problems with using EARS drives in older TiVos but there have been reports with EURS drives causing random reboots on the 60 to 90 minute timescale. One solution is to make a physical jumper setting on the drive before installation to turn off advanced format and put the drive in Windows XP compatibility mode. On EURS drives this is pins 7 and 8 as described here. However, if you wish to err on the side of caution it is best to stick to the WD10EVDS drives for upgrading TiVo HD and Series 3 models.

(Update Jun 2009) Caution: drives larger than 1TB: Several people have reported problems using drives greater than 1TB with a TiVo HD. Last time I checked the TiVo Series 3 / HD OS does not support >1TB. The TiVo Premiere should happily support up to a maximum of 2TB (possibly 3TB but untested) although I have only personally used a 1TB drive in my TiVo Premiere.

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.

TiVo HDs / Series 3s and Premieres with External Drives

A note of caution: If you are planning to upgrade a TiVo Premiere, HD or Series 3 that currently has an external drive connected then you will need to remove this drive before attempting the upgrade. This will result in you loosing the shows on your TiVo so I would suggest using TiVo Desktop to copy shows you want to keep onto your computer before starting. You can always copy them back once you complete the upgrade. You should then power down your TiVo, disconnect the external drive and power it up again. It will complain about the external drive not being connected. Let TiVo rebuild itself to be a single drive TiVo again. Then perform the drive upgrade as detailed below. Once the upgrade is done if you still want to use your external drive (to get even more capacity) then you can reconnect it using the same approach you did when you first purchased the external drive (may not work - comments / experiences welcome).

Select your Preferred Upgrade Method

While either the Linux or Windows approach should work for TiVo HD, Series 3 or Series 2 you should select whichever you feel more comfortable with although I recommend reading through both sets of instructions below just to be sure. For TiVo Premiere the Linux approach is the only one currently available.

TiVo HD / Series 3 / Series 2
| Windows Method | Linux Boot CD Method |

TiVo Premiere / Virgin Media (UK) TiVo
| Linux Boot CD / USB Key Method |

TiVo HD / Series 3 / Series 2 Upgrade Instructions (MFSLive Boot CD Method):

Warning: Do NOT use this method for a TiVo Premiere.
Use the Premiere method described below.

1) Use the Torx T-10 Screwdriver to open up your TiVo and then remove the hard drive that is inside, note recent TiVo models require a Torx T-15 Screwdriver to unscrew the hard drive mounting and then the T-10 again to unscrew the Hard Drive from the bracket. Be careful not to touch the power supply. Note, the only screws holding the TiVo lid are those on the back of the case. Sometimes the top can be a little stiff so you may have to slowly work it loose.

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. You should also check that your SATA ports are enabled in the bios. Some old PCs ship with these turned off.

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).

7) 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, (if you do not see the drives listed then it likely means that your motherboard's SATA controller is not supported by drivers included in the MFSLive boot CD. You could try a newer version of the CD or alternatively try the Windows method below which should ALWAYS see the drives since being able to boot Windows already should mean that the SATA controller is supported):

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.) Note, depending on the number of shows recorded on your original TiVo drive you may see lots of partitions listed here (such as sda1, sda2 etc.). You can safely ignore these since the commands below operate on the complete physical disk (in this case the letters before the number, so sda, sdb etc.)

8) 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:

backup -qTao - /dev/sda | restore -s 128 -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)
-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

9) 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 and 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. Also, it has been reported that some newer WD10EACS drives (and the WD10EADS / EVCS / EVDS series) do not allow software setting of the power management mode. If this is the case you will see a series of error messages indicating that you specified an invalid request. In which case try using the following command to just set the acoustic management:

hdparm -k 1 -M 128 /dev/sdb

10) Run wdidle3 to reset the idle time on Western Digital drives (Required for TiVo Series 3 with any WD drive. Required for ALL TiVos using WDxxEURS drives).

1. Switch off your PC and turn it back on with the WDIDLE boot CD (or USB stick attached) and just the new TiVo Western Digital disk attached to any SATA port (other disks should be disconnected). Note: If you have a newer PC, you may need to enter your PC bios and temporarily switch your SATA controller to EIDE mode from AHCI/RAID. This change is needed before a bootable DOS CD can detect the drive on some newer PCs.
    
2. Boot from the above CD [or USB] - hit "Enter" within 15 seconds to boot to DOS and then run "wdidle3 /D" to disable IntelliPark on the WD drive.
   
   A message should indicate "Idle3 Timer is enabled and set to 3720 seconds (62.0 minutes)." That means you were successful and you will no longer face what is known as the 'soft reboot' problem where some TiVos would hang on restart with newer Western Digital Hard Drives.

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 consider using one of the Amazon links on this website,  such as the one below, next time you purchase something from Amazon (anything works, maybe a new TiVo Premiere even!). Just follow the link below to get to amazon.com before adding items to your shopping cart. Alternatively please consider a small donation via paypal to help cover my server costs - even a dollar can help.

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.

TiVo HD / Series 3 / Series 2 Upgrade Instructions (Windows WinMFS option):

Warning: Do NOT use this method for a TiVo Premiere.
Use the Premiere method described below.

If you are more comfortable using Windows than Linux then you may prefer to use this method in place of the Linux boot CD method described above. However, be aware that you need to be careful here to make sure you DO NOT INITIALIZE your TiVo disk under Windows. Doing so will blank your TiVo disk. You also need to make sure you are logged in with an account that has administrator privileges.

1) Download the WinMFS software here. The program is standalone and so does not need to be installed. Fire it up now just to make sure it is working. You should see the following screen.

at the moment no TiVo drives will be recognized since they are not connected to your PC.

2) Use the Torx T-10 Screwdriver to open up your TiVo and then remove the hard drive that is inside, note recent TiVo models require a Torx T-15 Screwdriver to unscrew the hard drive mounting and then the T-10 again to unscrew the Hard Drive from the bracket. Be careful not to touch the power supply. Note, the only screws holding the TiVo lid are those on the back of the case. Sometimes the top can be a little stiff so you may have to slowly work it loose.

3) Check the BIOS settings of your PC to make sure it is set up to recognize all SATA drives that are connected. You should check that your SATA ports are enabled in the bios since some old PCs ship with these turned off.

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 available SATA port and the new drive to the second available SATA port. Also connect the power to these drives. Do NOT disconnect your windows Boot Drive.

5) Power on your PC, make sure the two new drives are recognized by the bios and then let it boot into Windows. If you get any messages about initializing the new drives make sure you select No or Cancel.

6) Once Windows has finished booting run the WinMFS.exe program. Select File -> Select Drive. This will bring up the following window:

Here you need to select your original TiVo drive (under the A drive box) - make sure you highlight the correct one - for a standard TiVo HD this should be the 160GB drive. Then hit the Select button.

7) Backup your original TiVo drive. One of the neat things about the WinMFS tools is that they provide an easy way to backup your original TiVo drive to an image file that you can store on your PC or later burn to a CD/DVD for safe keeping. This allows you to reuse your original TiVo HD for something else and not have to worry if your new 'upgrade' drive should fail at some point. Hit File->TiVo Drive (Truncated) - This will backup everything except for you actual saved videos meaning the image will be small enough to fit on a CD.

This will bring up a backup options window.

Here you just need to select the name of the file you want to backup to ad then hit start. This takes about 5 to 10 minutes depending on your hardware.

8) Next comes the actual drive upgrade. Close the backup window and hit Tools->Mfscopy. As the source drive select your original TiVo drive and under target select the new 'larger' TiVo drive.

9) Hit Start and wait. A note of caution here, avoid running anything else why this copy is running. It won't actually effect the copy but if you drag something in front of the MFScopy window it will cease to update and you won't know how far it has got until it finishes and updates the window once more.

10) Once done WinMFS will ask you if you'd like to increase the TiVo image to make use of the extra capacity of your new drive. I assume you do so hit yes.

11) Optional. If you want you can enable the Supersize option under the tools menu. This supposedly takes space that would be reserved for downloading commercials and sponsored programs and instead makes it available for recordings further increasing your capacity. This option is experimental, I have been using it without any problems for over a year on my TiVo HD but if you turn it on be aware that there is a very slim chance it could cause problems down the line.

12) Run wdidle3 to reset the idle time on Western Digital drives (Required for TiVo Series 3 with any WD drive. Required for ALL TiVos using WDxxEURS drives).

1. Switch off your PC and turn it back on with the WDIDLE boot CD (or USB stick attached) and just the new TiVo Western Digital disk attached to any SATA port (other disks should be disconnected). Note: If you have a newer PC, you may need to enter your PC bios and temporarily switch your SATA controller to EIDE mode from AHCI/RAID. This change is needed before a bootable DOS CD can detect the drive on some newer PCs.
    
2. Boot from the above CD [or USB] - hit "Enter" within 15 seconds to boot to DOS and then run "wdidle3 /D" to disable IntelliPark on the WD drive.
   
   A message should indicate "Idle3 Timer is enabled and set to 3720 seconds (62.0 minutes)." That means you were successful and you will no longer face what is known as the 'soft reboot' problem where some TiVos would hang on restart with newer Western Digital Hard Drives.

13) With that you are done with the upgrade. Shut down Windows and power off your PC. 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)

14) Finally if you found this how to useful then please as a token of your gratitude consider using one of the Amazon links on this website,  such as the one below, next time you purchase something from Amazon (anything works, maybe a new TiVo Premiere even!). Just follow the link below to get to amazon.com before adding items to your shopping cart. Alternatively please consider a small donation via paypal to help cover my server costs - even a dollar can help.

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.

TiVo Premiere / Virgin Media TiVo Upgrade Instructions (Linux Boot CD / USB Method):

WARNING: This approach has ONLY been tested on a TiVo Premiere and Virgin Media (UK) TiVo
(I have no idea if it will work with a Premiere XL - if you try it please let me know the results)

This approach will also NOT work for upgrading a WeakKnees expanded drive. e.g. If you purchased a 1TB WeakKnees drive for your Premiere you will need to use the original 320GB hard drive to perform the upgrade to your new drive

1) Use the Torx T-10 Screwdriver to open up your TiVo and then remove the hard drive that is inside, note recent TiVo models require a Torx T-15 Screwdriver to unscrew the hard drive mounting and then the T-10 again to unscrew the Hard Drive from the bracket. Be careful not to touch the power supply. Note, the only screws holding the TiVo lid are those on the back of the case. Sometimes the top can be a little stiff so you may have to slowly work it loose. (Note the US version of the Premiere has no stickers or warranty void stickers preventing you opening the case. The Virgin Media (UK) branded TiVo Premiere includes a small sticker over one of the screw holes. This can be fairly easily removed using a sharp knife and a hairdryer. If you do it slowly enough you will not damage the sticker and can replace it should you need to.

Image of the rear of the TiVo Premiere with the 4 case screws numbered.

Image showing the inside of the TiVo Premiere. The power supply is on the right. Do NOT touch it. You can see the hard disk on the bottom left. Interestingly TiVo mount this upside down. You can do either with your new disk but for consistency you should probably mount it upside down as well.	Image showing the original TiVo premiere hard drive removed. As you can see TiVo use Western Digital drives like those recommended above.
Image showing the inside of the Virgin Media TiVo from the United Kingdom. The haddrive was mounted on the left and was removed for this photograph. The power supply is on the far right and you should be careful not to touch this.

2) Check the BIOS settings of your PC to make sure it is configured to boot from the CDROM drive / or USB if you are using the USB method then power off your PC and open the case. The precise layout and menu structure of your bios will differ but mine is show below for reference. Note you often need to press 'Del' or F2 at the initial power on screen to get into the bios settings. You should also check that your SATA ports are enabled in the bios. Some old PCs ship with these turned off.

3) Open your PC and disconnect all of the hard drives but leave the CDROM drive attached (if you plan on booting from CD). 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 / USB key so you don't need your PC's own operating system. It is not strictly critical that you disconnect the other drives but it will prevent you from accidentally erasing them.

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. The Western Digital drives are all 3.0 Gb/sec by default so you do not need to do anything to these. Next attach the original TiVo drive to the first SATA port and the new drive to the second SATA port (It is not critical that they be on these specific ports since we will be given a menu to choose from in the drive upgrade program). Also connect the power to these drives. (Note: One could also in principal use USB to SATA connectors here and plug the drives into USB ports but I have NOT tested this.)

5) Power on your PC, insert the Linux boot cd you made above in the drive (or plug in the USB key) and allow your machine to boot from it. The first screen that should come will ask you about video modes. You can either wait 30 seconds for things to continue or press the space bar to continue.

6) The Linux operating system should then boot, with a bunch of text scrolling past of the screen. Don't worry about this. If the system locks up or fails to recognize the drives then it is possible that your SATA controller is not recognized. Updating your machine's bios may fix this. If it does not please let me know the specs of your motherboard and I will see if Linux support is available and can be added to the image. If you have an alternative machine you can always try this one instead.

After about 20 to 30 seconds you should get presented with the main TiVo Premiere Upgrade command menu.

We will ultimately go through all 3 options in the following order. Copy, Expand and then Supersize. The Copy option simply copies our original TiVo hard disk to the new hard disk. Expand then expands that copy on the new disk to fill all of the available space so giving us the larger recording capacity. Finally the Supersize option modifies our new disk to have less space reserved for commercials and more for programs. This is GOOD in my opinion and gives almost a 10% boost in capacity for free. Do you really want TiVo recording 20 hours of HD infomercials?

Step one is to start the copy so press 'c' and then the enter key.

7) Next we will be presented with a screen showing the indentified Original TiVo drive.

Hopefully it will only show a single drive as above. You should check this has the capacity you expect for the original TiVo. In the case of the Premiere this is 320.0 GB. Press 'Y' then the enter key to accept this drive as the source drive. If you get presented with multiple drives be sure to choose the correct on.

8) Next we need to select the target drive. At this point the program will present you with a list of available drives in the computer. This will include the USB stick if you booted off of USB.

In the example above you see two drives listed. My 1TB Western Digital drive and the 1 GB USB pen drive. In this case I want to have the 1TB Western Digital drive as my new TiVo drive. Make a note of the 'device' identifier of the drive. This is the /dev/xxx text since you will need it for the optional step 12 below where you turn on the drives power saving and acoustic management settings. In this case it is /dev/sda. The drive to be copied to is clearly drive 1 here so I press '1' and then enter.

9) Next the program will present you with a summary screen confirming the source and destination drives. Double check this and if all is good press 'y' and then Enter.

The program will then begin copying your original TiVo drive to the new drive. You will see a screen similar to below showing you the progress.

Be patient this step can take up to 3 hours. You can get an estimate of how long it will take by looking at the 'average rate' on the right of the screen. You are copying 320GB = 320,000MB = 320,000,000 kB. The rate shows the copy rate in kB per sec. So in the example above 37,650 kB / s. Hence it will take 320,000,000 / 37,650 = 8499 seconds = 2.36 Hours.

10) Once the copy completes the program should then ask you if you want to expand your newly copied drive. (If the software fails to identify the new drive this may be an issue with the way your motherboards hard drive controller functions. The simplest approach is to reboot and then skip the above steps and go straight to this expand option).

Double check that the drive report is the correct 'NEW' drive and if it is press 'y' and then enter. Then press 'y' and enter again at the confirmation page to begin the expansion process. This should complete in a matter of seconds showing you the approximate recording space on the new drive. In this case 143 HD hours (for a 1TB drive).

11) The next step is optional but recommended. Press 'r' and then enter to choose another operation. This will take you back to the main menu where you can press 'z' and then enter to Supersize your disk. It will list 'BOTH' drives since both are now TiVo drives. Make sure you enter the number for the 'NEW' drive and then press enter. Confirm again with 'y' and enter. The process will take a couple of seconds and then should complete successfully. Congratulations you are now the owner of an expanded and blessed TiVo hard drive. You can now either press 's' enter to shutdown your machine or, if you want to carry out the optional step 12 below and turn on the power saving and acoustic management settings on the new drive press 'x' and then enter.

12) 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 and does not appear to impact TiVo's performance in any way. Issue the command on the command line that appeared after you pressed 'x' above:

hdparm -k 1 -B 1 -M 128 -W 1 /dev/sda

where /dev/sda is the NEW TiVo drive's identified you noted in step 8 above. 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.
-W 1 = Turn on write caching (helps keep the drive quiet)

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. Also, it has been reported that some newer WD10EACS drives (and the WD10EADS / EVCS / EVDS series) do not allow software setting of the power management mode. If this is the case you will see a series of error messages indicating that you specified an invalid request. You can safely ignore this.

13) Run wdidle3 to reset the idle time on Western Digital drives (Only required for TiVo Series 3 with WD drive or ANY TiVo [not confirmed] using WDxxEURS series drives).

1. Switch off your PC and turn it back on with the WDIDLE boot CD (or USB stick attached) and just the new TiVo Western Digital disk attached to any SATA port (other disks should be disconnected). Note: If you have a newer PC, you may need to enter your PC bios and temporarily switch your SATA controller to EIDE mode from AHCI/RAID. This change is needed before a bootable DOS CD can detect the drive on some newer PCs.
    
2. Boot from the above CD [or USB] - hit "Enter" within 15 seconds to boot to DOS and then run "wdidle3 /D" to disable IntelliPark on the WD drive.
   
   A message should indicate "Idle3 Timer is enabled and set to 3720 seconds (62.0 minutes)." That means you were successful and you will no longer face what is known as the 'soft reboot' problem where some TiVos would hang on restart with newer Western Digital Hard Drives.

14) With that you are done with the upgrade. Type 'halt' and press enter and within a few seconds your desktop should power down. You can 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 or your new drive fails for some reason and you have to use the original drive to copy onto a new disk. 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. Your TiVo Premiere should start to boot and after about 3 to 4 minutes display the initial lead in video. It will then go into Standby mode with a blank screen. Do not panic, just press the Standby button on the TiVo remote to bring your new TiVo alive. Then simply go to the settings -> System Information menu and you should see the new increased capacity of your TiVo Premiere.

(TiVo Premiere with 1TB disk and supersized.)

(Virgin Media TiVo from the United Kingdom with 2TB disk and supersized.)

There you have it. As easy as pie you are now the proud owner of a massive TiVo Premiere or Virgin Media TiVo..

15) Finally if you found this howto useful then please, as a token of your gratitude, consider using one of the Amazon links on this website,  such as the one below, next time you purchase something from Amazon (anything works, maybe a new TiVo Premiere even!). Just follow the link below to get to amazon.com before adding items to your shopping cart. Alternatively please consider a small donation via paypal to help cover my server costs - even a dollar can help.

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.

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