While the TiVo Roamio line may officially max out at 3TB of recording capacity, licensed reseller WeaKnees has offered 4TB drives nearly since launch. And, should that 637 hours of HD content not be enough, WeaKnees has just unveiled 6TB drives – a TiVo upgrade good for a whopping 960 hours of high def content. The WeaKnees 6TB DIY kits clock in at $450 while preconfigured 6TB Roamios start at $700… which is a far more practical solution for most than the ridiculous $5000 TiVo Mega.
i wish there was a DIY kit for 6TB. I’m still contemplating sticking a 4TB drive in my Roamio Pro. The 6TB would be nic. If the price was $100 lower at Weaknees then I might consider it from them.
Acceptable price I guess. 6TB drives going for $250ish, so they’re making $200 profit on the deal. Given the low volume I suppose this is reasonable.
They’re also handling whatever software tweaks are required to make this happen, as I don’t think you can do it on your own with an off the shelf drive (vs a 1-3TB drive). Tools and directions, too. But, yeah, they’re a for-profit entity like most of us.
As for me, I’m at 3TB. I’m cleaning up now and then as I like to accumulate shows/series for binging and my wife doesn’t always delete stuff. But each time I think about expanding my capacity, I realize I probably watch more streamed content than linear these days and that ratio will probably continue to shift.
Speaking of drives, I’ve also been eyeing this 240GB SSD for a 2012 Macbook Air – it’s $179 and also includes tools, plus a chassis to reuse the existing 64GB drive. But then I think this laptop is just passing thru and I already possess a variety of external drives and sticks. Hm. :)
“They’re also handling whatever software tweaks are required to make this happen, as I don’t think you can do it on your own with an off the shelf drive (vs a 1-3TB drive).”
Any idea if this is actually true?
The self-install kit just ships you a drive, so unless they’re putting some engineered formatting on that drive, maybe a bare 6TB drive really would ‘just work’. But I have zero idea in reality if that’s true…
(And if they really are putting some special sauce formatting on the drive, I’d expect that to get reverse-engineered for open source in 3 to 12 months, judging from past experience.)
“which is a far more practical solution for most than the ridiculous $5000 TiVo Mega.”
But, won’t the inevitable zero down and $30 / month special on the Mega make it all worthwhile?
A bare 4TB isn’t even supposed to work by just putting it in a Roamio. Only up to a 3TB drive can be put in a Roamio and the Roamio will self configure. So they are configuring the 6TB drive(and 4TB) before they ship them out.
A more interesting conversation to me is how long TiVo will last now that the CableCARD mandate is ending. Apparently by the end of 2015 if Obama signs the bill.
Well… CableCARD will be buried in two phases. Phase one is no longer requiring the cable companies use them in their own boxes and *I believe* that’s what at play here. Phase two is replacing CableCARD with digital authentication for third parties (or failing to do so), which is further out and the point that’s relevant to TiVo. In conjunction with TiVo’s key patents and licensing revenues expiring towards 2018. Will Comcast continue to care about TiVo as they run up against that date? At least one institution thinks it’s time for CEO Tom Rogers to be shown the door in favor of more CE expertise and interest across the board.
Meanwhile Comcast tries to impress with their gigantic 512GB drives in their X1 boxes
“Phase one is no longer requiring the cable companies use them in their own boxes and *I believe* that’s what at play here.”
Yup. That’s exactly what happens in 13 months, under the execrable bill Congress just passed.
But that indeed won’t affect the mandate for MSO’s to continue to support CableCARD after that date…
“A bare 4TB isn’t even supposed to work by just putting it in a Roamio. Only up to a 3TB drive can be put in a Roamio and the Roamio will self configure.”
Thanks, aaronwt.
Is it possible to format the 6 TB HDD to 3+3 RAID 0? I’m not sure how one would “sneak” the second partition in afterwards.
“Is it possible to format the 6 TB HDD to 3+3 RAID 0? I’m not sure how one would “sneak” the second partition in afterwards.”
I must say, this is the single most mesmerizing and stupefying comment I’ve ever seen on the internet.
To answer your question, I dunno if you could implement this on a TiVo, but beware: it could make all your recordings playback at double-speed.
However, based on your idea, I’ve taken the long holiday weekend implementing a two-partition RAID 0 scheme on all the other hard drives I possess, both platter and SSD. And all I can say is “wow”! The performance improvement is quite unbelievable.
(Next up, I’m considering implementing a four-partition RAID 0 / RAID 1 scheme on all my drives. That way, I’d get both performance and safety. I can’t understand why I hadn’t thought of this before.)
I don’t know if others feel the same, but for a rather long time we’ve been stuck with hard drives -no matter what the use- in the 2 to 3 to 6 TeraByte range. I have a feeling there is some limit that the technology can’t cross because the ride from 128 kiloBytes on a one-sided 5.25 inch floppy to fast 1 TeraByte hard drives was a rather fast and in my opinion, smooth one. But since 2011 I still see the same 3TB drives, though much cheaper, I could by back then on offer.
“But since 2011 I still see the same 3TB drives, though much cheaper, I could by back then on offer.”
Well, capacity has expanded from 3TB to 6TB, along with dramatic price cuts. That really ain’t nothing.
And look at what happened since 2011. First came the massive Thailand floods, which destroyed a hefty chunk of global production. Second came the move from PC’s to post-PC devices, which diminished demand for platter drives, which greatly diminished the interest in investing in platter drive production to replace the lost Thai capacity. So we went from oversupply, to constrained supply.
In short, all things considered, I don’t think we’re doing all that bad as consumers of platter drives. I mean, 6TB drives are cheaper today than 3TB drives were in 2011…