Ya, you might not want to YOLO this…it would really suck to lose everything. Maybe someone with a new setup or mostly empty drive will test this. It doesn’t seem like @TabloTV is going to create a utility if they haven’t gotten to it in the past 9 years.
@TabloTV - How you know a feature (or utility) is needed. Over 48.8k views should tell you something.
My 4th gen Tablo stopped working and I’m waiting for a replacement from Tablo. I had about 1.5 TB of programs on the 5 TB drive. It’s my understanding that there is no way to watch the saved programming and that the drive will need to be formatted to use it.
If anybody knows of a way to salvage the programs, please advise.
@lowman - since you’re about to lose your data anyway, you could try this process as I’ve gleaned from the other posts. I’m definitely no expert, but this is what I’d probably do in your situation. I hope some of the more experienced computer and @TabloTV users will chime in on whether or not this would work and maybe provide additional steps to follow.
- Get your new Tablo and install a 2TB drive and allow it to format;
- Shut down the Tablo and disconnect the 2 TB drive;
- Use a laptop (Linux, Mac, Windows) that will read the EXT4 format to copy all the data files from the 5TB drive into the structure of the newly-formatted 2TB drive, ensuring you maintain the structure of the 2TB drive;
- Connect the 2TB drive back to the new Tablo and power it up;
- Once (if) it’s working you might try either reinstalling the 5TB drive or reversing the process to copy the entire 2TB drive structure back to a freshly Tablo-formatted 5TB drive.
I would think you would be able to do steps #1-3 more than once if you make a mistake. Let us know your results.
We’re certainly aware of this request but, unfortunately, it’s not something that’s easily done. We’ve explored various ways to do it but haven’t found anything that would work natively without the need for a third-party device.
Is there a way we can we turn this into a positive? With a disclaimer, would you comment on the steps provided and whether or not they would or should work? It would also be nice if @TabloTV provided better granularity on and maybe documented such a process. Remember, @lowman is about to lose ALL recordings. Having something to try is better than the alternative.
I don’t have another drive to use. Most of the programs are also recorded on my TIVO Bolt that is aging but has been trouble-free. I purchased the TABLO with the intent of eventually replacing the TIVO but the TABLO needs some real improvement to be as stable as the TIVO. I will pass the testing on to somebody else and wipe this drive and start over.
Thanks for the info though
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Has anyone @here attempted to migrate a 4th Gen external drive? That is, use Linux-based partition tools to image an old drive to a new one (same size, or larger)?
@TabloTV, is there a chance that would work?
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I don’t think it’s just the file format. I have a feeling there is some device ID encoded on the drive. If it doesn’t match, it won’t see any of the “other” devices files.
Unfortunately, it’s not something the 4th Generation Tablo supports.
I don’t think it’s just the file format. I have a feeling there is some device ID encoded on the drive.
But if I image all the bits on the old drive…?
By that, do you mean the Tablo itself won’t do that (which is fine, I’m proposing to do it myself)?
…or that even if I try, the Tablo will reject the cloned drive?
It’s also possible it may use drive information to verify a drive is the right one.
I run Linux. I’ve tried, but I cannot figure out how the drive “pairs” with the Tablo.
I was, however, able to extract video out of it. Videos are stored in short clips.
Would it be possible to remove the smaller drive, install the larger drive and get it formatted and set up, then remove it and copy the original file structure of the old, smaller drive onto the new, larger drive? Might that work?
It’s “virtual DRM.”
You can record and play back all the OTA you want, but only on one (Tablo) device.
Device broken or no longer supported, effectively no more recordings.
I think I tried that (it has been a few months) and it didn’t work. I tried a bunch of different things.
If I had to guess, I think the drive has to match up with some sort of table that is stored on the Tablo’s internal memory.
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I used the EaseUS Partition Master Pro a few years ago to migrate my legacy drive from 500gig to 2TB.
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OK, thanks for running that experiment.
If I were to try it, I use the dd command on the linux system to clone the smaller drive to the larger.
Then use cfdisk to expand the partition on the larger disk.
Not sure what quirky stuff Tablo does though.
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