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Forum Discussion
Archiving Tivo Recordings
I am looking to archive recordings for three networked Tivo's (Premiere, Premiere XL4 and Bolt 1000). Which ReadyNAS would you recommend? Does the software archive changes (additions/deletions) to the recordings, or does a complete overwrite of all the recordings?
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The Tivo Archiving function in ReadyNas uses the same solution as the discontinued Tivo Desktop software. It has not been updated in years and is ENTIRELY lacking. It does not sync recordings, it simply archives them from your Tivo and recovers them to the Tivo. There are several major downsides to archiving the shows from your Tivo:
1) You lose closed captions from the recording
2) As a by-product of losing the closed captions you lose the new Tivo commercial skip functionality
2) You lose metadata from the recording - so much of the shows description is lost
I have found the best solution for archiving a Tivo is to drop a 8TB disk in your newest Tivo (for you the bolt via eSATA) and use the Tivo itself as the NAS. You can share shows between your Tivos and have enough storage to last several seasons. You will have to use a program called MFS reformatter to set up the hard drive. You can find this on the TiVoCommunity forum.
Another option is to use one of the archiving programs like KMTTG or Archivo. But that is more of a hands on experience vs automated.
With WD 8TB Red internal drives available from Best Buy for $170 (via shucking the WD easystore), I think the Tivo as a NAS is currently the best archiving solution you can create.
Thanks so much for your response.
I need to revise my question. I am trying to backup my recordings so that when my Tivo crashes I do not completely lose my recordings. I have had many die over the years, and my Bolt was 5 months old when it bit the dust. I can live with the loss of close captions, metadata and commercial-skip.
Do you have a recommendation for this?
If all you want to do is archive the Tivo recordings and you definitely want a NAS, then the least expensive ReadyNAS will do. I purchased the RN102 for $80 on sale at New Egg a while back. You can put 2 WD Red drives in there for $100 or max it out for $340 as described above. That will give you all you need to enable the ReadyNAS Tivo archive function.
Having used the ReadyNAS Tivo archive function for a year, I would rather use a PC and one of the freely available programs on Tivo Community forums. The ReadyNAS solution is not perfect, but if you want a NAS for other things as well then maybe it makes some sense to go that route.
Good Luck
EDIT: Just thought of this as well. Some of the Netgear Routers support Tivo Archiving. You plug an external hard drive into the router and can back up your recordings in the same manner as the readyNas. Just another option
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