Social Feed

First let me say thank you to captain video, litzdog911, classicsat, and others for your support (replies)!

My situation:
I purchased 3 DirecTv HR10-250, off ebay, to upgrade my DirecTV R10(80Gb) for more storage. I plan to stay with SD for another 2 years, before upgrading my 36", 32", 28" TVs and sat receivers to High Def. Before I purchased the HR10s, I called DirecTv, asking if any charges (like new Access card) for switching to the HR10, and was told NO!

When the first HR10 arrived, I swapped the R10 out and HR10 in, and notice, HR10 only has one output set, versus the R10 has 3 output sets; 2 av and 1 RF output. Presently I have the R10s outputs hooked up to the TV AND a VHS, for recording my wife's food and painting programs.

After the HR10 was hook up I called DirecTv and the rep switched the two units(no mention of access card issue!), live video came on, with the previous owners channels, then 3-4 hours later they went off. I called back and was told I had to talk to the access card dept. They told me I had to pay $20 for each access card.
PISSED ME OFF!
After talking to an access card manager for 40 minutes, I had them switch back the R10. That is when I decide to take out the HR10 drives and put them in the R10s as replacement to the 80Gb drives. Two of the HR10s were 250Gb and one had a 400Gb. The two 250Gb HR10 each cost me $50 w/shipping, the 400Gb HR10 cost $125 w/shipping.

My upgrade:
At first I google DirecTv and Tivo forums. Then I started reading and was overwhelm! I reviewed some How Tos and decided NO WAY. I even posted a request for a Tivo Upgrade Techie near Sunnyvale, but no one answered my call. So when my wife ask when I was going to clean up my stuff (the 3 HR10s), I took another attempt to understand the How Tos.

A BIG thanks to Captain Video for pointing me to mfslive org. I reviewed their step by step Full Guide AND their release notes. I have download mfslive-1.3b.iso and burned to a CD. This became my Bootable CD.

Note for other newbies, you will read about mfstools 2.0 and mfslive. They are different downloads and some commands may be different. From what I read, I believe mfslive 1.3 to be more current then mfstools 2.0. Because mfslive 1.3 fixes mfstools2.0 restore –r2 for drives greater then 274Gb.

Note for other newbies, my biggest headache was understanding how to hookup the drives to my PC, how to cable, (I did have to go buy a IDE cable for Master/Slave cable select) and did I need another hard drive with DOS or Windows to do a image save, did I need to do an image backup?
I was still a little confused and continued reading and recommend Hinsdale How to Tivo upgrade at www newreleasesvideo com/hinsdale-how-to/index9 html. The commands don't exactly apply to mfslive, but it is a helpful learning guide.

Lucky for me, my PC motherboard did have a Primary & Secondary IDE connectors. From the Hinsdale different options. I learned if I am only doing a copy from my original drive to my new larger drive I don't need a DOS or Windows drive to save an image.

Now I had to learned the Linux commands to issue.
mfslive org also has a tool which will give you the command you type in at the mfslive# Linux command prompt. It's the the MFSlive Linux Boot CD Interactive Command Generator. At first I thought it was asking for the IDE status of the drive in the Tivo(stupid me), but it's asking what will be the PC IDE config. The standard config listed in the How Tos is:
hdd will be Secondary Slave CD-ROM
hdc will be the Secondary Master original 80Gb
hdb Primary slave new 250Gb drive
Then the ONLY only Linux command you will need to enter is:

backup –qTao - /dev/hdc | restore –s 128 –r 4 –xzpi - /dev/hdb

Note for other old farts with poor vision: There is a space between the dash and /dev. mfslive web page is hard to see the space, for an old fart like me. The first time I typed in the command it didn't work. I then retyped with the space, and it WORKED!!
You may want to understand the backup and restore command. At the [mfslive]# prompt type in backup (or restore) then hit enter, and a help list will appear, showing all the sub commands.

Interesting on my 3 80Gb drives the results were different. The first transferred at 30Mbs and took 40 minutes. The second transferred at 12Mbs, and took 2 hours, the third at 20Mbs, took 60-70 minutes.

As a final review for other newbies: I disconnected my Windows XP drive, connected my new IDE cable, hookup my Tivo drives, turned power on, dropped in the mfslive CD, re-powered, waited for the mfslive linux to come up. At one point it seem to stalled, I hit entered and it continued, at the [mfslive]# prompt type in your Linux copy command, wait 1-2 hours, if it shows it completed, power off, disconnect drives, installed into DVR.

Again, I would not have been successful without all those who support forums like this one, thank you!

Ps, anyone interested in 3 good HR10 chassis, look for my other post