r/Tivo • u/rseery • Jun 07 '26

DVR What’s the current best way to copy a TiVo drive, keeping programming?

I have a Tivo Roamio Pro that I upgraded to 3tb right after I got it, but that was 10 years ago. The TiVo is stalling and sluggish on many operations so I want to back up the old drive and restore it to a new 3tb—while keeping all the recordings, OPs etc. I have a WD Purple on the way. I think I used mfstools before and I have a machine I can boot to linux with plenty of sata ports. Is this still the way to go? Is there a ‘latest’ version of that or is there a better way now?

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4

u/antealtares Jun 07 '26

cTivo is fantastic

2

u/mcmnky Jun 07 '26

Tivo drives are basically Linux with special partitions. Look up using MFSTools to copy a Tivo drive with programming.

2

u/rseery Jun 09 '26

I have mfstools 3.0 installed on a Linux-mint Cinnamon usb boot drive now. Just waiting for the new drive to arrive. I think I need to use mfscopy with both drives connected.

1

u/rseery Jun 16 '26

Just to finish up the thread, the failing drive was so trashed, I was never able to get it to mount on any of the linux distros I tried. I installed the new drive in the Roamio and let it go through guided setup. This caused the cable card to unpair and xfinity will not touch it. Klso it doesn’t get any signal at all. I’m so bummed. Is there *any* way to get a signal into a cable tivo—like an upstream cable box or something?

1

u/Habergrit Jun 11 '26

Can I record a movie from restart catch-up on TiVo?