2004 Update

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Adding a second drive to the Philips TiVo

First, some helpful tidbits...

• News flash: Quantum and Maxtor are MERGING! Interesting, given that most TiVo upgrade drives come from one or the other...
• The $100 rebate from TiVo for new units purchased seems to have ended at the end of December, 2000.
• A Macintosh version of the BlessTiVo utility has been written and is now available. I have not tried it.
• If TiVo gets "stuck" at the blue boot screen after the upgrade for more than a few minutes, you did something wrong. Don't panic. In my case, I forgot to move the jumper on the drive. There's a sticker on the drive that vaguely explains this, and additional (better) jumper information available on the Quantum Support web site.
• One of the pictures below shows how the jumper SHOULD be positioned, but beware: This picture may not apply to drives other than the Quantum LCT15. Then again, why would you want to use any other drive? This drive was (literally) made for TiVo! [Actually, some Sony units reportedly won't boot with a Quantum installed as the second drive. Then again, this page is targeted at folks adding a drive to the *Philips* TiVo. For more info on upgrading Sony units, search for "Sony" on the FAQ page.]
• This whole upgrade would not have been possible without the folks at the TiVo Underground at the AVS TiVo Forum. These guys are great!
• If you want to give a thank-you to the folks who made this possible, check out the PayPal message thread for details on how. As of 8/17/00, there's a newer PayPal message thread.
• Of course, there would be no point to any of this if it weren't for the AWESOME people at TiVo, who made this most excellent device in the first place!!
• If you like TiVo, be sure to also check out the Philips Pronto programmable remote control, and the amazing Remote Central web site with all sorts of information, message boards, and sample Pronto configurations that people have shared.
• Compatible drive brackets are now available - see links section below.

Next, some useful web links...

• TiVo Hack FAQ - READ IT before attempting the upgrade!! This upgrade is NOT for the squeamish!!
• The unofficial TiVo Hackers Site - Drive "blesser" program can be found here
• AVS TiVo Forum - Several TiVo-related message boards including TiVo Underground.
• Quantum Fireball LCT20 30GB drive - roughly $100, give or take a few bucks, at buy.com.
• Quantum Fireball LCT20 40GB drive - roughly $120, give or take a few bucks, at buy.com.
• Quantum Fireball Plus AS 60GB drive - roughly $215, give or take a few bucks, at buy.com. (Hopefully Quantum will do an LCT version of this drive, as an LCT would undoubtedly be cheaper, lower power, and quieter; then again, with a $40 rebate does it matter?)
• Check here for any Quantum rebates that may be available (including the Fireball Plus AS rebate through 4/3/01)...
• $100 rebate from TiVo - TiVo's old rebate program. Let me know if you hear of any new rebates.
• www.linux-hacker.net now sells drive brackets for $15.99 + S&H!!

Simple steps to bless a new drive...

After a great deal of swapping cables, connectors, jumpers, and BIOS settings, I discovered this straightforward approach to blessing a new drive that happens to work on the particular Dell desktop system I used:

• If the CD-ROM is plugged into the IDE Secondary Master connector, this may work. If not, you're on your own.
• Create the "TiVoBless" Linux boot floppy after downloading the zip file from The unofficial TiVo Hackers Site
• Power down the PC.
• Disconnect the IDE connector from the back of the CD-ROM drive
• Plug the IDE connector into the back of the Quantum drive
• Be sure the BIOS is set to "Auto" identify the Secondary Master device (which the CD-ROM was)
• The Quantum drive comes from the factory configured as a Master device so there's no jumper change needed
• Grab a loose power cable and plug it in to the Quantum drive.
• Boot up the PC using the "TiVoBless" Linux boot floppy.
• Type "BlessTiVo /dev/hdc" and hit return. Follow the instructions that appear.
• If the blessing process reports back a capacity less than 27GB, do NOT proceed. Read the FAQ for details.
• Power down the PC.
• Unplug the Quantum drive power and IDE cables, and return the IDE cable to the CD-ROM drive.
• Move the jumper over one position towards the power connector to make it a "slave" device.
• Drive is now ready for installation into the TiVo. Again, read the FAQ for complete details.
• Your mileage may vary.

To back up or not to back up...

I have a friend with a TiVo (same model as mine), so I figured if I goofed up my TiVo, I could always restore my drive from his. Thus, I don't have detailed steps for backing up the drive. That doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. If you don't know what you would do if you break your TiVo, then back it up first. You can either back it up to another 15GB drive using "dd" in from the Linux boot disk, or you can store an image of the drive (optionally compressed) as a file (or series of files) on your PC hard drive.

For more detailed instructions on how to do back up before you upgrade, READ THE FAQ

Buy.com used to sell the Quantum LCT15 15GB drive for about $80. Since it's no longer available, check out the Quantum LCT20 20GB drive for about $90. You should be able to use this drive as a backup (or use it as your new "main" drive and archive the original).

Update (8/22/00): Since I just bought a few more TiVo's for family and friends, I decided to order a 15GB drive to back up one of the new TiVo's before upgrading it. Here's what I did:

• Since my computer doesn't seem to like drives on the secondary connector, I installed the original TiVo drive on Primary Master, and the new blank 15GB drive on Primary Slave (after moving the 15GB jumper to the slave position).
• I made sure Primary Master and Slave were both set to AUTO in the BIOS.
• I booted the BlessTiVO floppy, and held down SHIFT to get the "LILO:" prompt.
• I typed "TiVo_Bootdisk hda=bswap" to tell Linux that hda was NOT my Windows drive but rather was the byte-swapped TiVo drive. This gets around the normal limitation of not being able to do anything with a TiVo drive (or blessing) on Primary Master. [DO *NOT* do this if your Windows C: drive is still connected as Primary Master!]
• I logged in as root, and typed "DD conv=noerror if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb bs=1024k".
• After several hours, I had a backup drive. To confirm, I moved the slave jumper back to master, installed the drive into the TiVo, and booted it. It worked fine.

I also wanted to copy the backup as a file (or series of files) onto my Windows drive, and eventually burn the backup onto a series of CDR discs. Here's what I did:

• Reconnected my Windows C: drive to the IDE cable as Primary master.
• Moved the original TiVo drive's master jumper to slave, and installed it as Primary slave.
• Booted the BlessTiVo floppy.
• Typed "mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /mnt" to mount the Windows drive at /mnt.
• Typed "cd /mnt" and "ls" to verify the Windows drive was mounted correctly.
• Typed "dd if=/dev/hdb bs=1024k |gzip -1c >tivodisk.gz" to backup to a single file. (From what I hear, -9c doesn't save much more space but takes even longer to perform.)
• I should've typed "dd if=/dev/hdb bs=1024k |gzip -1c |split -b650m - /mnt/tivodisk.gz."
• Since I didn't, I typed "cat tivodisk.gz |split -b650m >tivodisk.gz." to split the single backup file into CDR-sized pieces.
• To unmount the Windows drive before shutting down, type "umount /mnt".

Supposedly, to restore the image, I would simply type: "cat /tivodisk* | gzip -dc | dd of=/dev/hdb obs=1024k"

Disclaimers...

PLEASE do not bother the nice folks at TiVo if you goof up your TiVo device.

• TiVo Inc. should not be expected to provide support for this upgrade.
• The folks at the AVS TiVo Forum do not officially support this upgrade (though the people on the message boards are pretty good about answering questions).
• I do not support this upgrade.
• You're on your own!!
• Is that enough disclaimers for you? :-)

And now, the pictures...

(Click on any picture to see a larger, more detailed version!)

Here lies an unsuspecting 14-hour Philips TiVo, shortly before the operation...	The case is *REALLY* hard to open. Here's the best way we found to pry it loose.	Once the cover is loose, slide it back about this far, and then lift straight up.	An overview of the TiVo internals. Note the empty spot where the second drive goes.
A white wire-tie holds down the extra power connector. It needs to be cut.	New (black) wire-tie holds down bundle after freeing the extra power connector.	This is where the upgrade drive will go. Note the wire-tie waiting to hold it down.	Here's the original drive with stock mounting plate. Brackets are now available from www.linux-hacker.net
Here's the new drive with the jumper moved to the correct (secondary/park) position.	Here's the new drive with a rubber foot installed over each of the four screw holes.	Here's the drive mounted with ties snugged down. Corner tie is not ideal, but works.	Here's another wire-tie configuration, with a second tie around the power connector.
Here's the TiVo boot screen that should appear right after plugging the device back in.	Here's the second TiVo screen that appears shortly after the first screen.	Here's the System Information screen, which shows that the system is now 52+ hours.	Here's the Video Recording Quality screen showing the various recording modes.

These pages were created on a Macintosh PowerBook G3, using Claris Home Page 3.0, GraphicConverter, and Adobe Photoshop, and uploaded with NetFinder. All images and movies were captured (at HQ resolution: 1600x1200, medium quality) with an Olympus C2020 Zoom digital camera, and transferred to the PowerBook using a SanDisk ImageMate USB reader for SmartMedia cards, where I reduced them to 800x600 and 160x120 for the web.