Hi. So I’m trying to migrate my recordings (about 3TB) from my old 2-tuner to a 4-tuner I’ve got. I followed the procedure and the new tablo has been blinking for about 4 hours already. I’m starting to think that I’ll end up with my recordings not being able to be played in my new Tablo. This reminds me of last year when I tried to migrate my old recordings (around 800GB) to a new 6TB drive and it also failed (recordings not being able to be played).
I think the only way to use a new Tablo and not loose the recordings is to use Tablo Exporter or something similar to extract the recordings… I’m glad I already did this before (because of my new 6TB drive) and that I setup a Plex server. I’ll have to do the same thing again! (rolling eyes)
Tablo is an awesome product and quite reliable and good. For me it’s still the best DVR available. So I won’t complain too much.
Your new 4 tuner Tablo is one of the network connected DVRs such as the OG Tablo 4 tuner or Tablo QUAD? Not the TV connected DVR such as the QUAD HDMI?
Don’t give up! If you did it right, it takes about 2 hours per TB to move the data over. If the LED is still “pulsing” (not flashing), hang on, it WILL get there. BTW, does the new Tablo have the same version software as the one the recordings were made on? Supposedly that’s a requirement but I’ve not tested that
Steve
My new 4-tuner Tablo is a network connected one (SPVR4-01, the original 4-tuner). My old 2-tuner Tablo is the SPVR2-01 (original 2 tuner). Both are network connected, not HDMI. So the procedure should work in theory.
Ok… I was trying to give a try again this morning and I think I might have lost my 3TB of recordings… :’(
I was in a hurry this morning so I did the mistake of just powering off the old Tablo, disconnect it, plug everything to the new Tablo (including the drive) and powering it up. The LED blinked only for a minute or so. So I went to see and all my recordings were showing up but they couldn’t be played. So I tried to connect my drive again to my old 2-tuner Tablo and it also couldn’t play any of my recordings. So I think that I might have lost them all… I get this error message when I try to play a recording: "Your tuner has been reassigned or your device has temporarily lost connection with your Tablo.
I think I should have just used Tablo Exporter :’(.
I will try to reset my new 4-tuner Tablo and try to make it import the recordings in the drive. I wonder if it can work again that way…
I would leave everything as it is so the situation isn’t complicated more and open a ticket with @TabloSupport to see if there is anything then can do to assist you.
Ok! Thanks for the advice. I’ll open a ticket with Tablo Support. I checked and I can still see the drive is reporting 3TB of data. So the drive wasn’t formatted and my recordings might still be there. Probably my Tablos aren’t just “mapping” the recordings…
My guess is it’s related to the internal database of show details on the Tablo itself.
Important points, both devices need to be on the same firmware. You need to tap the blue button on the old device! This creates the backup DB (feature request, this should be done routinely for the unfortunate failure). When the drive is connected to a new device, it will detect the DB and “restore” it and be up and almost pretty much ready to go.
Unless you formatted your drive, you didn’t loose anything. If the new device didn’t “take”, you should be able to go back to the first device – there should have been no reason anything changed onboard.
If this isn’t working – agree, before something gets beyond the point of no return - Tablo Support | Over The Air (OTA) DVR | Tablo
In my experience, if you stop the process before it completes, even though it takes several hours if you have a large database, there is no recovery. I did the same thing once and was told there was no way to get the recordings back. I later tested the process with about 3.5TB of recordings and it took almost 8 HOURS, (not minutes as the knowledgebase article says) but after that, it DID work fine. I suggested they change the knowledge base article to say that a large database will take HOURS to complete but the last time I looked at it, they had not changed it.
I’ll be interested if they can help get the recordings back because I was told, “If you stopped the process while the LED was still pulsing, there gone”…
Steve
Yes, both have the same firmware. Yesterday it seemed to be working but (pulsing LED for almost 5 hours) but I had to go to bed (it was a bit late) and I read that I shouldn’t leave it like that otherwise the nightly maintenance routine could wipe the whole disk. So I stopped the process. This morning I tried to do it again but the mistake I did was to connect the drive to the new Tablo before powering it up. So it seems like the new Tablo overwrited the DB because after trying to play my recordings with my new Tablo and failing, I tried to connect the drive back to the old Tablo and it also couldn’t play my recordings. The good news is that in the settings I see the drive has still 3TB of data so I assume my recordings are still there and that I just need to find a way to recover them. I’ll ask Tablo Support for help just in case. Otherwise I’ll connect it to my Ubuntu desktop or my Mac Mini and try to convert the files to mp4 somehow. Maybe MCEBuddy can convert them (it should be relatively simple to tranfer them to my Windows desktop).
OK! So probably Tablo Support will tell me same (that my recordings are gone). I’ll write them just in case and see. I tried to trigger the process again but it just took minutes (after my mistake of plugging the drive to the new tablo before powering it on, and also after factory resetting the new Tablo again to be sure it’s clean) and now the recorgins are not readable by both Tablos (even the old one). So at this point I think I lost my original database which was related to my recordings so I would need the Tablo to build a database or to recover it somehow from a “recycle bin” but I don’t know how to do that. My linux/terminal knowledge is very limited. I’ll let you know if I get a solution to recover my recordings.
Tablo Support answered my request and told me to try it again and put my device in “remote access mode” (3 quick blue button clicks). I called them and they checked and triggered the recovery process. It took some hours and now I have all my 3TB of recordings back! I’m so glad they fixed it! 
So now I can confirm it’s worth asking Tablo Support for help if having problems migrating your recordings to a new Tablo.
Excellent! Good to know.
How long?
and to note, at the bottom of the instructions Moving your recordings to a new Tablo – Tablo in red print:
PLEASE NOTE: If you run into any issues with the transfer and can’t get it to work, make sure the drive doesn’t remain plugged in to the new Tablo overnight - when Tablo does its nightly maintenance, the drive may get formatted. Just remove the drive and give us a call during support hours for a hand.
Great to read positive feedback for tablo support 
never really believed you "lost" everything, this has got to be so much easier than the path you were on... look at as a learning experience. I bet you have a greater understanding how your tablo works!
Im not sure cause I don’t know if tech support triggered the migration right after we talked on the phone or later. If the process started after the call and finished when I checked, it took about 3 to 4 hours for about 2.5TB of data. That seems shorter than what others have observed. Maybe since I tried last week and stopped the process after about 4 hours, the job was partially done?
If I was to start another migration of 3TB I would expect to wait for at least 8 hours.
Hahah! 
Of course I’ve learned many things! I executed and edited my first python script ( https://community.tablotv.com/t/extracting-videos-from-tablo-external-hard-drive/ ) and even played with my Ubuntu desktop after so long.
Yesterday I also tried Tablo Tools and I’m quite impressed!
awesome! maybe with time it’ll stop being “played with” and use as regular to actually get things done! quickly, how you want to get it done.
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