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 soon TiVo Premiere systems to larger 500GB+ drives and this method preserves all your recordings and settings.

Sept 2008: If you do not feel happy doing this yourself TiVo just released a TiVo HD XL system which, while a little pricey, includes a 1TB hard disk built in.

Nov 2008: One more reason to get a TiVo HD if you haven't already: From Dec 2008 onwards TiVo Premieres, TiVo HDs and TiVo Series 3s will support on demand access to NetFlix films and TV shows!

Mar 2010: TiVo just announced the TiVo Premiere which is a replacement for the TiVo HD and Series 3 and features upgraded hardware along with a HD interface. The standard capacity Premiere will come with a 320GB disk which you should ultimately be able to upgrade to at least 1TB (probably 2TB+). If you don't want to do the hard disk upgrade yourself TiVo sells a TiVo Premiere XL model which comes with a 1TB hard disk.

Apr 2010: Having received my TiVo Premiere I can confirm what many have suspected. TiVo have changed the partition layout in the new Premiere which means at present the procedure below will NOT work on a TiVo Premiere. The issue is that one can no longer add additional partitions at the end of the disk and have TiVo recognize the space. The partition names have changed (to /dev/sdX) indicating that TiVo have changed to the SATA driver which is good news, since it should allow > 1TB disks, however, it will take a while for things to be updated to enable Premiere upgrades. One has to find a way to resize the initial media partition and convince the Premiere to accept it as additional space. One nice thing though is that there is NO WARRANTY VOID sticker on the TiVo Premiere which means you are safe to open the case and try the to upgrade it. If it does not work you can always put the original disk back in and close the case back up. There have been reports that TiVo know if you upgraded your system or not but they won't know this until you actually boot the TiVo with the new drive and connect to the TiVo service. Hence you are safe to at least try the upgrade.

As soon as I have more information I will post it here. For the time being the method below works for TiVo Series 2, Series 3 and TiVo HD.

If you want more space on your Premiere immediately then your only 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 both my series 2 and my "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, cheap, quiet and power efficient WD10EACS or WD10EADS or the newer DVR optimized WD10EVDS). 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 $1.50 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 Cable companies now provide a USB dongle for the TiVo HD 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

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. You may also need a Torx T-15 screwdriver since some TiVo's use T-15 screws for the Hard Drive mount.

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) - 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.

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

4) The free upgrade software:

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

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. As of March 2010, 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, WD10EADS or ideally the DVR optimized WD10EVDS drive. The 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 drives (especially the WD10EVDS) 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 these drives are so quiet, especially with the acoustic management turned on as explained below (note the DVR specific EVCS and EVDS series may have this on by default and not user settable), you cannot hear the TiVo at all. (Update Apr 2009 and Dec 2009 Western Digital have now brought out special version of their drives designed specifically for audio/visual use and for DVRs. These drives (the WD10EVCS and WD10EVDS) has been developed to be as quiet as possible (only 25db) and also to be very low power consumption but still with sufficient performance for devices such as a Tivo HD. The specs for this drive look excellent and so the WD10EVCS / WD10EVDS are probably the recommended models to use at present.

(Update Jun 2009) Caution: drives larger than 1TB: Several people have reported problems using drives greater than 1TB with a Tivo HD. It is possible that the OS does not support >1TB although I have not verified this. You should note that the largest drive I have tried is 1TB and so I cannot confirm or deny any problems with >1TB drives thus you use them at your own risk. With regards to drives >1TB, Western Digital now make a 2TB version of the EADS drive (The WD20EADS) although it is a little expensive at present. An alternative if you want to upgrade to 1.5TB capacity is the Seagate 1.5TB drive. This drive is not necessarily as quiet or energy efficient as the Western Digital Green drives (although some people have reported that the Seagate drives can be quieter) but it does offer a cheap way to upgrade to 1.5TB. BE AWARE THOUGH THAT I HAVE SEEN NO REPORTS OF SUCCESSFUL UPGRADES USING > 1TB DRIVES. - This may change with the TiVo Premiere though. I will update this page in a few weeks with my personal experiences trying to upgrade a new TiVo Premiere with 1TB and 2TB drives.

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 and Series 3s with External Drives

A note of caution: If you are planning to upgrade a TiVo 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.

Select your Preferred Upgrade Method

While either approach should work you should select whichever you feel more comfortable with. Either way I recommend reading through both sets of instructions below just to be sure.

| Windows Method | Linux Boot CD Method |

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, note some TiVo models require a Torx T-15 Screwdriver to unscrew the hard drive mounting. Be careful not to touch the power supply. Note, the only screws 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.

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) 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)

11) 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 (maybe a new HD TiVo 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 hardware and bandwidth 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.

Upgrade Instructions (Windows WinMFS option):

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. Be careful not to touch the power supply.

3) Check the BIOS settings of your PC to make sure it is set up to recognize all SATA drives that are connected.

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) 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)

13) 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 (maybe a new HD TiVo 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 hardware and bandwidth 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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