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Tivo HD Upgrade Instructions - using JMFS

211K views 656 replies 114 participants last post by  unitron 
#1 ·
I thought it might be helpful to separate out the users that are trying to upgrade a Tivo HD using comer's JMFS tools. The original thread is here and the tools were designed for the Premiere, but based upon the experience of several members (including myself), it appears to work fine for Tivo HD's as well. If you intend to expand only to a maximum of 1.26TB, then you're probably better off sticking with WinMFS and the instructions in this thread.
If you're a little adventurous and you want to expand and fully utilize a 1.5TB/2.0TB drive, then you can try out this recipe:
  1. Use an original 160GB Tivo HD Drive - if it doesn't have the latest software, install it back into your Tivo HD and force it to upgrade to the latest version (11.0j currently).
  2. Burn a copy of JMFS Live onto a CD (or run it from a USB drive) from the Premiere Drive Upgrade thread. Follow those directions to connect and boot up with (1) the original 160GB Tivo HD drive and (2) the new 1.5TB/2.0TB drive.
  3. Run the menu item to do the disk copy from your original drive to your new drive.
  4. Run the menu item to do the expansion of your new drive.
  5. If you want to verify the AAM setting, you can go to the command line in JMFS and use "hdparm -M <device>". A value of 128 indicates that the drive is set for the quietest mode.
  6. Depending upon the drive you're using, you may also want to use "wdidle3.exe" to check and if necessary, disable the idle timeout for your drive to prevent a "soft reboot" issue. Please refer to Section IV, #29 of the original upgrade FAQ for the full details.
  7. If you want to supersize the drive for the Tivo HD, then DO NOT USE the JMFS menu option to Supersize!!! This option will only work with Premiere drives. Instead, shutdown and then connect the new drive to a computer with WinMFS and use WinMFS to "turn on supersize". On a 2TB drive, the WinMFS supersize will increase your recording time from 288 hrs to 318 hrs.
  8. Install the new drive back into your Tivo HD and enjoy!

Updated 2/11/2011 (and caveat added 8/14/2011):
Thanks to some pioneering work by KenVa, if you wish to keep all of the shows on your current THD, you can possibly use a WinMFS expanded drive as a source (see teiland's posts starting here to confirm the state of your WinMFS source drive for some possible issues):
  1. Burn a copy of JMFS Live (at least v1.04) onto a CD (or run it from a USB drive) from the Premiere Drive Upgrade thread. Follow those directions to connect and boot up with (1) a WinMFS expanded, Tivo HD drive and (2) the new 1.5TB/2.0TB drive.
  2. Run the menu item to do the disk copy from your source drive to your new drive.
  3. Run the menu item to do the expansion of your new drive.
  4. If you want to verify the AAM setting, you can go to the command line in JMFS and use "hdparm -M <device>". A value of 128 indicates that the drive is set for the quietest mode.
  5. Depending upon the drive you're using, you may also want to use "wdidle3.exe" to check and if necessary, disable the idle timeout for your drive to prevent a "soft reboot" issue. Please refer to Section IV, #29 of the original upgrade FAQ for the full details.
  6. If you want to supersize the drive for the Tivo HD, then DO NOT USE the JMFS menu option to Supersize!!! This option will only work with Premiere drives. Instead, shutdown and then connect the new drive to a computer with WinMFS and use WinMFS to "turn on supersize". On a 2TB drive, the WinMFS supersize will increase your recording time from 288 hrs to 318 hrs. If you already did the "turn on supersize" step with your source drive, you do not need to do it with the new drive as well - that setting will have been copied over already.
  7. Install the new drive back into your Tivo HD and enjoy!

Notes:

Thanks:
  • Props to comer for building the JMFS tools and also to retiredqwest for being the pioneering, first brave soul to try out and document success with the Tivo HD (and particularly for using WinMFS to do the supersize)!
  • Thanks also to KenVa for showing us how to use an already expanded drive as a source for those that want to carry over their current recordings.
  • Thanks to teiland for identifying some additional issues with WinMFS source drives.
 
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#303 ·
Just another data point to add to the conversation: I also recently purchased the WD20EARS drive (mfg May 2011), however, I was successful in changing the AAM setting to 128 using the latest version of HDDScan (3.3). For those of you having trouble, make sure you have the latest version of the software and remember to run it as an administrator (if you have Windows 7, like me).

Hopefully the rest of my upgrade will be this trouble free.
 
#304 ·
Let us know how it goes after you fill up your drive. When I first did my expansions, I recorded on both channels during the day just to fill up my drive faster, so that I could confirm the expansion really worked and to figure out exactly how much recording space I really had. Starting from scratch, it still took more than a week to fill it all up!
OK, to follow up on my post. After 2 months, I started getting the "Guide has run out" message and then the S03 error on my TIVO HD. I received the same error when I had my drive expanded by ebay dude. I used the ebay dude twice and eventually the 2TB drive always gets the S03 error. I suspect the S03 error is due to the 128M swap space but never figured out to expand the drive and swap space. I think I have a solution now.

I just expanded my drive again but with a 1G swap file. This method works if you have a 16th partition called Apple_free that is preventing JMFS from expanding your drive.

1. Make sure the source drive is up to date with all updates and guide info before you begin.

2. Copy the 1TB drive to 2TB drive using Winmfs and a custom swap size. I used 1G, enter "1024" in the box. Do not expand when the mfscopy completes.

3. Download a hex editor called iBored, I used ver 1.1.8. This program lets you directly edit the partition map on the disk. This software has templates and understands the Apple Partition Map format. You can view the partition data with the tool while you make changes. The partition map is stored as 1 partition per block so go to block 16 (partition 16, the Apple_free partition) and erase block 16 only. The tool has an erase block feature so erase block 16 length 1. Check the length it defaults to the whole drive. Now, go to partitions 1-15 and change the total number of partitions from 16 to 15, you have to write each block when the change is made. When you are done, you will have a 2TB drive with 15 partitions. Be extremely careful using this tool, it is very powerful!

4. Use JMFS to expand the drive to the full 2TB capacity.

5. Use MFS Live 1.4 and run pdisk on the new 2TB drive. Change something so you can write the partition map back to the drive. I changed the name of the /var partition to "/var". You need pdisk to think something was changed so it will write the partition map. Write the changes.

6. Install the 2TB drive in the TiVo.

Initial 1TB map:
#: type name length base ( size )
1 Apple_partition_map Apple 63@1 ( 31.5K)
2 Image Bootstrap 1 1@309550766 ( 512.0 )
3 Image Kernel 1 8192@309550767 ( 4.0M)
4 Ext2 Root 1 524288@309558959 ( 256.0M)
5 Image Bootstrap 2 1@310083247 ( 512.0 )
6 Image Kernel 2 8192@310083248 ( 4.0M)
7 Ext2 Root 2 524288@310091440 ( 256.0M)
8 Swap Linux swap 262144@310615728 ( 128.0M)
9 Ext2 /var 524288@310877872 ( 256.0M)
10 MFS MFS application region 589824@311402160 ( 288.0M)
11 MFS MFS media region 137630712@171920054 ( 65.6G)
12 MFS MFS application region 2 589824@311991984 ( 288.0M)
13 MFS MFS media region 2 171919990@64 ( 82.0G)
14 MFS MFS App by Winmfs 2048@312581808 ( 1.0M)
15 MFS MFS Media by Winmfs 1640939520@312583856 ( 782.5G)
16 Apple_Free Extra 1791@1953523376( 895.5K)

After mfscopy before deleting partion 16:
#: type name length base ( size )
1 Apple_partition_map Apple 63@1 ( 31.5K)
2 Image Bootstrap 1 1@309550766 ( 512.0 )
3 Image Kernel 1 8192@309550767 ( 4.0M)
4 Ext2 Root 1 524288@309558959 ( 256.0M)
5 Image Bootstrap 2 1@310083247 ( 512.0 )
6 Image Kernel 2 8192@310083248 ( 4.0M)
7 Ext2 Root 2 524288@310091440 ( 256.0M)
8 Swap Linux swap 2048000@310615728 (1000.0M)
9 Ext2 /var 524288@312663728 ( 256.0M)
10 MFS MFS application region 589824@313188016 ( 288.0M)
11 MFS MFS media region 137630712@171920054 ( 65.6G)
12 MFS MFS application region 2 589824@313777840 ( 288.0M)
13 MFS MFS media region 2 171919990@64 ( 82.0G)
14 MFS MFS App by Winmfs 2048@314367664 ( 1.0M)
15 MFS MFS Media by Winmfs 1640939520@314369712 ( 782.5G)
16 Apple_Free Extra 1951719935@1955309232( 930.7G)

Partition 16 deleted with iBored:
#: type name length base ( size )
1 Apple_partition_map Apple 63@1 ( 31.5K)
2 Image Bootstrap 1 1@309550766 ( 512.0 )
3 Image Kernel 1 8192@309550767 ( 4.0M)
4 Ext2 Root 1 524288@309558959 ( 256.0M)
5 Image Bootstrap 2 1@310083247 ( 512.0 )
6 Image Kernel 2 8192@310083248 ( 4.0M)
7 Ext2 Root 2 524288@310091440 ( 256.0M)
8 Swap Linux swap 2097152@310615728 ( 1.0G)
9 Ext2 /var 524288@312712880 ( 256.0M)
10 MFS MFS application region 589824@313237168 ( 288.0M)
11 MFS MFS media region 137630712@171920054 ( 65.6G)
12 MFS MFS application region 2 589824@313826992 ( 288.0M)
13 MFS MFS media region 2 171919990@64 ( 82.0G)
14 MFS MFS App by Winmfs 2048@314416816 ( 1.0M)
15 MFS MFS Media by Winmfs 1640939520@314418864 ( 782.5G)

Final partition map after JMFS expand:
#: type name length base ( size )
1 Apple_partition_map Apple 63@1 ( 31.5K)
2 Image Bootstrap 1 1@309550766 ( 512.0 )
3 Image Kernel 1 8192@309550767 ( 4.0M)
4 Ext2 Root 1 524288@309558959 ( 256.0M)
5 Image Bootstrap 2 1@310083247 ( 512.0 )
6 Image Kernel 2 8192@310083248 ( 4.0M)
7 Ext2 Root 2 524288@310091440 ( 256.0M)
8 Swap Linux swap 2097152@310615728 ( 1.0G)
9 Ext2 /var 524288@312712880 ( 256.0M)
10 MFS MFS application region 589824@313237168 ( 288.0M)
11 MFS MFS media region 137630712@171920054 ( 65.6G)
12 MFS MFS application region 2 589824@313826992 ( 288.0M)
13 MFS MFS media region 2 171919990@64 ( 82.0G)
14 MFS MFS App by Winmfs 2048@314416816 ( 1.0M)
15 MFS MFS Media by Winmfs 1640939520@314418864 ( 782.5G)
16 MFS MFS media region 3 1951670784@1955358384( 930.6G)
 
#306 ·
New to the forum!

I've moded 2 tivos already. My current setup is a THD with 1TB drive. I'm almost maxing this out and want 2TB. I know I can just add another 1TB external but that seams like a lot of trouble if I can just use JMFS to copy-expand and WINMFS to supersize it.

My question is that it looks like a few guys have upgraded their THD from 160GIG to 1TB and then upgraded the 1TB to 2TB without having to lose all their shows.

Is the only thing screwing this up the apple partion that's created when people originally used WINMFS to upgrade from the original 160gig?
 
#307 ·
2nd question is a follow up from above where the guy asked if he can use a 2.5TB drive to gain more space. Does this work? Will JMFS expand it past the 2TB barrier and make it like 2.26TB?

I DON'T CARE ABOUT COST! I just want to know if it will give that extra .26TB of space. For some people its worth the extra $20 or $30 bucks.
 
#308 ·
2nd question is a follow up from above where the guy asked if he can use a 2.5TB drive to gain more space. Does this work? Will JMFS expand it past the 2TB barrier and make it like 2.26TB?

I DON'T CARE ABOUT COST! I just want to know if it will give that extra .26TB of space. For some people its worth the extra $20 or $30 bucks.
Well, if cost is no object, you can always add an additional TiVo box--get and subscribe a new Premiere and you'll get not just more hard drive space but two more tuners (four more if you go with Premiere Elite), and upgrading that new box is very easy (as you know). Two TiVos on one TV is an easy setup unless you don't have a free input on your TV or receiver.

But as far as which TiVos other than Premiere that JMFS works with, that I'm not sure of. All the Series 3 and HDTiVo upgrades I did were just with MFSLive, not JMFS.
 
#309 ·
Well, if cost is no object, you can always add an additional TiVo box--get and subscribe a new Premiere and you'll get not just more hard drive space but two more tuners (four more if you go with Premiere Elite), and upgrading that new box is very easy (as you know). Two TiVos on one TV is an easy setup unless you don't have a free input on your TV or receiver.

But as far as which TiVos other than Premiere that JMFS works with, that I'm not sure of. All the Series 3 and HDTiVo upgrades I did were just with MFSLive, not JMFS.
Your joke of a response wasn't very helpful. I meant the cost of a 2.5TB vs 2TB drive is what I don't care about. i.e. the $20-$30 more for the extra .5TB

Anybody else know if it will give you that extra .2TB of space?

Also on a typical 2TB drive I bet you lose a lot of space to formatting don't you? I think my 2TB drive on my computer ended up with only 1.87TB of usable space.
 
#310 ·
I think, when expanding from stock to 1TB using WinMFS some drives end up with this little apple_free space. I believe these are the drives that cannot be expanded any further with WinMFS or JMFS. WinMFS cannot add the required 2 partitions and apparently JMFS thinks apple_free is a real partition and leaves it as partiton 16 on the expanded drive which results in 17 partitions like this:

Partition Maps
#: type name length base ( size )
1 Apple_partition_map Apple 63@1 ( 31.5K)
2 Image Bootstrap 1 1@309550766 ( 512.0 )
3 Image Kernel 1 8192@309550767 ( 4.0M)
4 Ext2 Root 1 524288@309558959 ( 256.0M)
5 Image Bootstrap 2 1@310083247 ( 512.0 )
6 Image Kernel 2 8192@310083248 ( 4.0M)
7 Ext2 Root 2 524288@310091440 ( 256.0M)
8 Swap Linux swap 262144@310615728 ( 128.0M)
9 Ext2 /var 524288@310877872 ( 256.0M)
10 MFS MFS application region 589824@311402160 ( 288.0M)
11 MFS MFS media region 137630712@171920054 ( 65.6G)
12 MFS MFS application region 2 589824@311991984 ( 288.0M)
13 MFS MFS media region 2 171919990@64 ( 82.0G)
14 MFS MFS App by Winmfs 2048@312581808 ( 1.0M)
15 MFS MFS Media by Winmfs 1640939520@312583856 ( 782.5G)
16 Apple_Free Extra 1791@1953523376( 895.5K)
17 MFS MFS media region 3 1953504001@1953525167( 931.5G)

However, I finally did get my drive to expand with JMFS but I'm not sure how long it will work because I manually enlarged partition 15. Here is what I did:
- Copy 1TB drive to 2TB with JMFS copy, do not expand
- Delete partition 15 "MFS Media by Winmfs"
- Recreate partition 15 "MFS Media by Winmfs" but include the apple_free space (no more apple_free partition 16)
- Put 2TB drive in THD, it thinks the external drive is missing, let it repair the problem
- Expand 2TB drive with JMFS, no errors
- Put 2TB drive in TIVO, boots with no issues, 318hrs

I tried to put partition 15 back to the original size and make apple_free be partition 17 but the TIVO was caught in the endless reboot loop. I can post partition maps for each step if anyone is interested. I'm currently trying to duplicate the process on a second 2TB drive with a 1GB swap space. It'll be a while before I can get the maps.
After trying this have you intentionally recorded enough shows to fill up the drive to see if there are any ill side effects?

Has anybody used a stock 160gig to copy and expand to a 2tb internal THD and then filled up the drive to see if there are any ill side effects?
 
#311 ·
After trying this have you intentionally recorded enough shows to fill up the drive to see if there are any ill side effects?

Has anybody used a stock 160gig to copy and expand to a 2tb internal THD and then filled up the drive to see if there are any ill side effects?
Yes, lots of people have . Just use jfms and follow the instructions in the upgrade thread.
 
#312 ·
New to the forum!

I've moded 2 tivos already. My current setup is a THD with 1TB drive. I'm almost maxing this out and want 2TB. I know I can just add another 1TB external but that seams like a lot of trouble if I can just use JMFS to copy-expand and WINMFS to supersize it.

My question is that it looks like a few guys have upgraded their THD from 160GIG to 1TB and then upgraded the 1TB to 2TB without having to lose all their shows.

Is the only thing screwing this up the apple partion that's created when people originally used WINMFS to upgrade from the original 160gig?
Yes, when I upgraded from 160GB to 1TB I had a 16th apple_free partition at the end of the drive. JMFS sees this a real partition and will not expand the drive any further. If you only have 15 partitions, JMFS is all you need.

I've expand my drive from 1TB to 2TB 3 times. I used ebay dude twice and JMFS once. Eventually the guide stops updating and I get the S03 error. Once that happens, you're hosed. I wanted to enlarge the swap partition to 1GB at the same time, that's why I had to use the more involved method. Time will tell if the larger swap partition fixes the S03 error. It seems that many people have no issues using the small swap space. I have well over 100 season passes, probably as many wishlists and hundreds of saved shows. I don't know if that is typical of other users.

About your second question, I think you probably can go >2TB. If I didn't already have two 2TB drives, I would have tried with a 2.5TB.

I've been running for about 2 weeks, I'll post if I have any issues.
 
#313 ·
Well i pulled my winmfs upgraded THD 1TB drive and checked it with winMFS and it has 15 partitions.

By the lurking i've been doing I think that since I don't have the 16th partition with the 15th partion as the "apple" one I should be good to use JMFS to copy/expand, and then winmfs to supersize?

I have 2 backup 2TB drives to my desktops 2TB "data" drive. And since i don't have any patience i'm stealing one of the backups and trying the upgrade tonight. I should have results in the morning.

I was planning on buying a 2.5TB drive to get maximum 2.2TB space, but I don't feel like waiting. I might try the 2.5TB in a few weeks.

Thanks Comer and Teiland!
 
#315 ·
Okay I did copy and expand with JMFS and made a boot disc with wdidle3.exe on it. I've read a few different steps from here. One says to typ[e wdidle3 /d and then it says idle timer is set to 62 mins, that fround from here
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5616160#post5616160

But i've also read i should type wdidle3 /s300 so that "idle3 timer is enabled and set to 300 seconds"

Which is right, or do they both work?
 
#316 ·
Well here is a recap, I used JMFS to copy and expand. Lucky for me I didn't have the 16th partition.

I tried using "hdparm -M <device>". to change the AAM settings to 128 on my drive but I couldn't get it to work. I could get it to display info about my drive by typing hdparm -i, but with -m I could not get it to set the AAM to 128.

I tried hddscan as well, ran it in administrator mode and got an error.

Next i downloaded the hitachi feature tools and was able to set AAM to 128. I thought i read info somewhere that setting this feature can decrease the life of the drive, any truth to that?

Finally I booted off my wdidle3 boot cd and ran "wdidle3 /d". I read on other places that you're suppose to type wdidle3 /s300. Don't know if it matters. (Later I did a menu soft reboot and it booted up just fine.)

I then used winmfs to supersize, threw the drive into Tina (my tivo's name), and now I have 318 hours in the information screen.
 
#317 ·
@steffen707: Congrats. Don't worry over the WDIDLE3 switches. You can always change that if you choose w/o upsetting your TiVo. FWIW, there's no lack of opinion and speculation between /D and /S300 (I chose the latter, lol). Enjoy your "unlimited" recording capacity :)
 
#319 ·
One thing i'm confused about. If JMFS can expand a THD drive to more than 1TB, what is limiting the winmfs software to 1TB? Does the developer of winmfs just not want to alter the code to make this work?
The difference is probably the "supersize". That's recovering some of the drive that TiVo had set aside for its own use (commercials, etc.) and using it instead for shows.
 
#320 ·
One thing i'm confused about. If JMFS can expand a THD drive to more than 1TB, what is limiting the winmfs software to 1TB? Does the developer of winmfs just not want to alter the code to make this work?
I suspect you are correct in that.

The difference is probably the "supersize". That's recovering some of the drive that TiVo had set aside for its own use (commercials, etc.) and using it instead for shows.
That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever since, after using JMFS to create a 2TB drive for a THD, you must use WinMFS to do the supersize.
 
#321 ·
I'm stuck. Bottom line, the upgraded Tivo keeps rebooting even after using WDIDLE3.

I have an HD Tivo (not the older, original Series 3).

I am trying to use JMFS to upgrade to a WD25EURS drive. Using JMFS, I copied the image from the original drive, and then I expanded the new drive. All that reported that it worked flawlessly. I supersized the drive using WINMFS. That went fine, too. Then I ran WDIDLE3 and disabled the timer. Then I used the /R function to check, and the timer was reported as disabled.

So, I put the new drive in the Tivo, and it just kept rebooting.

I realized that I was using WDIDLE3 version 1.0, so I got WDIDLE version 1.05 and put it on a floppy. I tried that using both the /D setting and the /S300 setting. With either setting, the Tivo keeps rebooting.

I have upgraded six HD Tivos and several more Series 2 Tivos in the past, using 1.5 TB WD green drives, so I do have experience with WINMFS and WDIDLE3.

Of course, this is a WD25EURS drive, not a WD20EURS drive. Using JMFS, with the WD25EURS drive, the expansion did report more than 2TB for those who were wondering. I think it said 2.19 TB.

I just bought this drive about a month ago, so its manufacture date must be in 2011.

Any ideas on the rebooting? PLEASE!!
 
#322 ·
I am trying to use JMFS to upgrade to a WD25EURS drive. Using JMFS, I copied the image from the original drive, and then I expanded the new drive. All that reported that it worked flawlessly. I supersized the drive using WINMFS. That went fine, too. Then I ran WDIDLE3 and disabled the timer. Then I used the /R function to check, and the timer was reported as disabled.

So, I put the new drive in the Tivo, and it just kept rebooting.
I think I've read here that no current TiVo models can address a drive larger than 2TB (or maybe slightly more) even if you don't expect to use all of it. It may be an OS limitation. I don't remember whether rebooting is the expected failure mode. If you can get your hands on a 2TB drive, try using that.
 
#323 ·
Well, I downloaded and burned a copy of jmfs rev 104 to try to use one of the $75 2TB Seagates Best Buy had on sale last week in an S3 HD I recently acquired (had to fix the power supply first).

I tried using WinMFS to copy a stock S3 HD (TCD652160) 's 160GB hard drive to a 2TB drive, increasing the swap partition to 1GB (1024MB), and then letting it expand when it offered to, and what I wound up with was the partitions from the stock drive (with the bigger swap), plus another partition pair with the media one being about 1TB. In other words, approximately 1TB + 160GB

The mfsinfo of WinMFS showed the partition layout with the 1TB as the last partition, and no "apple free" partition to account for the last 800-something GB. I don't know if that's because WinMFS gave it a partition table/map that was misinformed as to the drive's true size or what.

Tried upsizing that with jmfs 104, thinking I'd beaten the "apple free" catch, but apparently it (jmfs) choked on the reported size/actual size discrepancy.


Okay, so took the original 160GB drive, used backup pipe restore off the MFS Live cd with the swap partition option set to 1024MB and included the expand option going onto a 500GB drive.

That gave me the 1TB swap, 6MFS partitions (3 pairs), and no Apple Free partition on the end of the drive. Or so I thought, didn't show up when I ran pdisk -l

Used jmfs to copy the 500 to a 2TB, and when it finally finished, I let it do the expansion as well.

Got the original 15 partitions, a damned Apple Free partition of 4.0M, and a 17th MFS media partition of 1.4 or thereabouts TB.

Put it in the HD, booted, got the "missing external" screen, told it to divorce it, it did, rebooted, seems to work fine, but sysinfo only shows 70 HD hours or 606 SD hours. I'm guessing what it divorced was the 17th partition jmfs added.

Unless comer releases an update with a choose your swap size option, looks like I need a 161GB drive to act as man in the middle. There's probably a Maxtor 160GB that's just bigger enough than the WD 160GB to do the trick, but I don't have one of those handy. I've got a 200GB Maxie, maybe I could try again with a 40GB swap partition.:D


==========================================================

Okay, that was the story a couple of days ago, when I first wrote that.


Since then I tried using the 200GB with a number of different values for the swap partition and could never get rid of the Apple Free partition that screws up using jmfs.

Tried deleting and creating partitions with pdisk, never got anywhere.


Stumbled onto something last night that seems to be working.

Used the MFS Live cd to copy the original 160GB drive to the 500GB drive.

It's a Seagate with an LBA number of 976773168

Previously I'd tried a -s option value of 1000 or 1024 for the swap size.

This time, for some reason, I did

Backup -Tao - /dev/sda | restore -s 999 -pi - /dev/sdb

the important part, it turned out, being the 999

I suppose I did it with MFS Live 'cause it seems to do it a little faster than WinMFS, either of which does in minutes what jmfs takes hours to do.

Didn't run pdisk -l afterwards for fear of jinxing it somehow.:)

Rebooted, took out the MFS Live cd, let it boot into XP and loaded WinMFS.

Selected sdb, clicked on mfsinfo, it showed a big Apple Free partition on the end.

Clicked on mfsadd, let it expand, clicked mfsinfo again to see what size Apple Free partition I wound up with, and, lo and behold, hallelujah, happy days are here again, partition 15 was the last one on the drive. No Apple Free partition and a swap partition of almost 1GB. Actually 999.0M If I'd used -s 1000 I think it would say 1000.0M and if I'd used -s 1024 I think it'd be 1.0G

Closed program, logged off XP, powered down, hooked up 2TB drive, rebooted with jmfs cd in drive, used it to copy 500GB to 2TB (it only took several or more hours:rolleyes:), used it to expand when it finally finished, powered down, put MFS Live cd back in, rebooted, checked drive with pdisk, have 3 MFS pairs plus a single MFS partition (the 16th).

Put the 2TB in the S3 HD, it booted right up (to the extent that a TiVo will boot right up:D), and seems to be behaving itself.

Will record a bunch of stuff and see.

I probably could have used WinMFS to do the original copy from the 160 to the 500, specifying 999 for the swap size, and gotten the same results, but that's an experiment for another day. Like after I fix the ignition on the lawn mower, rebuild the carb on the generator, etc, etc, etc.
 
#325 ·
So the moral to your post is jmfs doesn't make custom swap partitions? Is that what we learned?
Well, that, and that sometimes you can get the swap size you want and still be able to use jmfs to go over 1TB on a single drive on an HD, despite jmfs's lack of any built-in swap resizing function.

Of course it's only been 12 hours or so, so I'm not prepared to declare it an unqualified success just yet, but after beating my head against the wall for a few days over this, it's nice to have it at least look like it might work out in the long run without having had to spend a couple of years learning how to hex edit every last byte.
 
#326 ·
Well, that, and that sometimes you can get the swap size you want and still be able to use jmfs to go over 1TB on a single drive on an HD, despite jmfs's lack of any built-in swap resizing function.

Of course it's only been 12 hours or so, so I'm not prepared to declare it an unqualified success just yet, but after beating my head against the wall for a few days over this, it's nice to have it at least look like it might work out in the long run without having had to spend a couple of years learning how to hex edit every last byte.
Let's hope you're good to go. When I upgraded my 2TB using WinMFS JFMS wouldn't recognize the drive. So because JMFS recognized your drive says you're off to a good start...
 
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