Winged Power Photography

Upgrading Tivo hard drive upgrades on a MacBook pro with VMware's Mac OS X virtualization product: Fusion

So, you've got a Tivo that needs upgrading, but you recently switched completely to all Apple computers. What are you to do? There are certainly a few applications out there for upgrading a Tivo's hard drive, but they only do a few of the functions of the bootable Linux-based tools. Most would suggest borrowing a friend's PC for a while, or booting your Apple computer into Linux for a while, so you can do the Tivo upgrade. But... what if that isn't an option? What if you HAVE to get work, chatting, or web surfing done?

The answer: VMware's Fusion. It's VMware's virtualization software for your Intel-based Mac, whether you are using a Mac Pro, iMac, Mac Mini, MacBook Pro, or even a MacBook Air. :)

The Tools You'll Need For Your Tivo Upgrade

Some things you'll need for your Tivo upgrade, using your Mac.

• Torx bit screwdrivers #10 and #15.
  Anytime Tools 32 pc MICRO PRECISION SCREWDRIVER SET w/ T4 T5 T6 Mini Torx, Hex, Flat, Pozi
  
• 2 USB enclosures that have PATA connectors, for Tivo Series1 and Tivo Series2 units. The higher performance, the faster it will work, but otherwise, go with a nice pair of cheap ones. I got some $20 ones from a local retailer
  CoolMax HD-360B-U2 USB 2.0 3.5" Aluminum External Hard Drive Enclosure
  
• 1 or 2 new hard drives for the upgrade (up to 120GB for non-LBA Tivo(s) and as big as you'd like, for the Tivo(s) that support LBA)
  
• Your Apple Mac!
• VMware's Fusion
  VMware Fusion Mac
  
• MFS Live Boot CD ISO ( http://www.mfslive.org/ )
• A block of time that your Tivo can be turned off and that you can afford your Mac to be stationary and on for. (Aprox 1 hour / 20GB of storage in the original drive)

How Does It All Work?

Well, it's pretty straightforward:

1. Go get yourself a copy of VMware's Fusion. You can opt to download their 30 day demo to give it a try at http://www.vmware.com/go/fusion
2. Install it on your Mac OS X system.
3. Download the MFS Live ISO. No need to burn it, as you will be booting up your VMware Fusion with it.
4. Using the Torx screwdriver, open your Tivo and remove the installed drive(s). Install your Tivo drive in one USB enclosure and your new blank drive in the other. If you have a 2 drive Tivo, please use the MFS Live documentation on how to perform a 2 drive upgrade. Needless to say, you will most likely need 2 more USB enclosures.
   
5. Attach the USB enclosures, with the blank drives in them. Enable them in your VMware Fusion USB configuration, so that Fusion gets to see them. Note, Mac OS X will want to reformat the disk, tell Mac OS X to ignore the new USB drives.
   
6. When you bootup in Fusion with MFS Live, it will boot to Linux and show you the USB drives. Once booted to the command line in MFS Live, you can issue the following command to check for the presence of the USB drives:
   
   dmesg | grep -i "/dev/[sh][d]"
   
   
7. Depending on which one got detected as what, note down the one that is the original Tivo drive and which one is the new blank drive. You can validate which one is which with the following command:
   
   mfsinfo [device path you want to test]
   
   Ex:
   mfsinfo /dev/sda
   
   
8. If the drive you performed a mfsinfo on is the Tivo drive, you will get a report on the disk. Otherwise, you will get an error or blank result.
   
9. To upgrade your main drive with the newer drive, you can perform the following:
   
   backup -qTao - /dev/hdc | restore -s 128 -r 4 -xzpi - /dev/hdd
   
   This assumes that /dev/hdc is your Tivo drive and /dev/hdd is your new blank drive. Please use the appropriate values for your setup. :)
   
10. Wait 2-3 hours (40GB Original Tivo drive)... More if your current Tivo drive(s) are larger. Please refer to the MFS Live site's documentation: http://www.mfslive.org/softwareguide.htm
    
11. Once it's done, install the new drive into your Tivo and start it up. Assuming all went well, you will now have alot more storage. The original Tivo drive can be kept in a safe place, labeled, in the event the new drive fails later.
    

Okay, it's pretty much as involved as most other howto's, but using this method, you can use any Intel Mac computer with USB ports, to perform an upgrade of the Tivo drives, using the Linux-based tools. This means you will be able to make the most of your Tivo drives as well as being able to still surf the new and perform other tasks, during the hours that the drives are upgrading!

Side Note: For those who want to create a smaller backup instance of their original Tivo hard drive, you can give your VMware Fusion virtual machine a small 1-2GB virtual drive using your Apple Mac's disk space. Format the virtual disk with FAT32 or EXT2/3 and you will be able to perform the Tivo drive backup to the local virtual hard drive. Keep this Tivo Upgrade Virtual Machine around and restore/backup/upgrade as needed!

Enjoy!

Update: Made the VMware Team Fusion Blog! Sweet!

Looks like I made the VMware Team Fusion blog! Check them out here:
http://blogs.vmware.com/teamfusion/2008/02/upgrading-your.html

Folks who are interested in learning more about VMware's vitualization software, or who just have a question to ask, can also check out the VMware Communities Forums. For Fusion specific assist/questions, you can check out the VMware Communities Fusion Forums. I've always found the forums to be a gold mine of useful information and for first timers, it can be invaluable!

Technorati Tags: apple Apple how-to howto mac mac fusion macbook pro Operating System Software tivo tivo upgrade tutorial Tutorial usb enclosure virtualization Virtualization vmtn vmware VMware vmware communities vmware forums vmware fusion vmware support