WeaKnees Interactive Online TiVo Upgrade Instructions [Text View] - Page 4

slaponte

01-31-2006, 05:41 PM

1) My PC is set up for NTFS (and Windows XP). Am I going to run into trouble with this set up? The WeaKnees instructions make it sound as though I might.

Yes in that you need to be carefull NOT to let the PC boot to XP while you do this. An easy way to do that is just disconnect the XP drive while you do the work. Boot from the CD and work from there.

2) When it asks me if I have a FAT partition on my C drive, I assume I answer "no" to this since I have NTFS. Is that correct?

Correct. And the problem with that is that to place the backup into the disk you need a fat partition you can mount. So, if you don't plan to do a backup, again, just unplug the XP/NTFS drive all together. If you WANT to backup the original drive, then you will need a disk with a FAT partition to place the backup into.

3) Does anyone have any recommendations as to the hard drive I should purchase (or ones to stay away from)? Is 7200 rpm ok?

EIDE 5400 or 7200. 5400 might be cheaper and works fine. I rather buy 7200 myself. NO SATA.

4) Does anyone know which hard drives are quieter?

Plenty of 250Gb and 300Gb on sale nowadays. Most ok. I used a pair of Seagate and I am happy so far.

What I recomend to you : get a 300Gb, take out your XP, put in the orig HUMAX 40Gb and the new drive, backup from one into a restore of the other and get it done. There is a thread with step by step instructions. Save the original 40GB as a backup. Install the 300Gb on the HUMAX and be happy.

Watch out for swap space. I haven't been here in a while, but you will need 150Mb of swap for the 300GB and that requires you to "TPIP" it.

slaponte

01-31-2006, 05:44 PM

For the benefit of anyone else who runs into this problem, I just downloaded the PTVupgrade "free version" of their boot CD, and it worked perfectly. So, there must have been something wrong/incompatible with the Weaknees CD.

The error is of no consequense. The module refered to doesn;t exists and thats why it fails. Seems their compilation of mount looks for it and gives out that line.

If you can see the drive contents after the mount, you can ignore the error.

Grimm1

02-03-2006, 09:02 PM

Yesterday I upgraded my TiVo using the WeaKnees CD and instructions. I've done 3 upgrades before over the years using the Hinsdale method and thought I would give the WeaKnees route a go.

The upgrade worked....eventually. There were a few things that brought my upgrade to a halt until I could research before continuing.

The first was the....
"kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k nls_iso8859-1, errno = 2"

Message that I got just from booting the CD...that got me to pause but I decided to continue and see what happened. Then came the first command to mount the FAT drive and I got that error again. Then I really put on the breaks. Luckily I had another PC I could run to and look this up and I found a few mentions that the error can be ignored.

This is information that needs to be in the instructions..so people don't freak out when they see it.

The second part that really stumped me was this part of the instructions....
****
The software will scan your drive for a few moments. You should see a progress indicator as the backup proceeds. Once the backup is successful, shut down the PC if your destination drive isn't connected by using CTRL-ALT-DELETE and waiting until the Linux has halted. Then boot again as before with the destination drive connected, and enter the following with hdZ (hdZZ if you have two) as your destination drive:

mount /dev/hdW1 /mnt
*****
So I just backed up to my FAT drive...I shutdown as described. I disconnect my FAT drive and attach my 2 destination drives hdZ and hdZZ then boot again with the CD and the command is to mount hdW1??? Why would I need to do that? At this point I don't even have hdW connected because I am using all 4 IDE connections with the Boot CD Drive, hdX, hdz and hdZZ.

Again I had to stop and run to the computer...this time after searching and searching I really couldn't find anything that referred to it specifically. It looked like it was an unneeded command at that point...but not really being a linux person I was not 100% sure. I finally decided to skip that command and continue and everything else went as advertised.

I also found what appeared to be some errors in the instruction for mounting the drives with the twinbreeze upgrade kit. Though I don't know if this would be the place to mention them.

dumpav

02-10-2006, 03:21 AM

Grimm1

02-10-2006, 05:49 AM

i have a t800 humax tivo and want to replace the 80G to a 300G seagate.

I want to know which boot up cd i should use? the weaknees cd or the cd from Hinsdale?

hda Primary Master = hdX > Original TiVo drive
hdb Primary Slave = hdY > no drive or FAT drive?
hdc Secondary Master = hdZ > NEW 300G seagate
hdd Secondary Slave = hdW > boot up cd rom

and use these commad?

mount /dev/hdW1 /mnt

then

mfsbackup -f 9999 -1so /mnt/backup.bak /dev/hdX

then

mfsadd -r 4 -x /dev/hdX /dev/hdZ

thanks

also do i need to insert special command for large swap space (300G drive)?

thanksI've used both...I think you just want to make sure you use the WeaKnees instructions if you use the WeaKnees CD and the Hinsdales instructions if you use the Hinsdale CD as there are some differences.

The WXYZ letters are variables...so you need to plug in the correct letter for your particular setup. I believe W is the variable for the DOS drive not the CD Drive. You don't have to have a DOS drive and you can skip that section of the backup if you want but then if something bad happens you won't have a backup to restore from.

So the first 2 commands you listed are for making a small Tivo backup (backs up the Tivo software and settings but not any recorded shows) to a DOS drive. So you would skip those two commands if you are not going to do this.

Also you said your wanted to "replace" your drive....I think the command you listed is for adding a drive..the command for replacing a drive would be...

mfsbackup -f 9999 -so - /dev/hda | mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -xzpi - /dev/hdc

This is assuming the original drive is on hda and the new drive is on hdc as you listed above.

Somehow I get the feeling you have not gone to the WeaKnees Interactive TiVo Upgrade Instructions page that is listed in the very first post of this thread. If you go there and answer the questions it will generate the instructions for exactly your situation.

http://tivo.upgrade-instructions.com/index.php

slaponte

02-10-2006, 10:30 AM

This is information that needs to be in the instructions..so people don't freak out when they see it.

But then, what fun would we have here??? :)

dumpav

02-10-2006, 02:50 PM

I've used both...I think you just want to make sure you use the WeaKnees instructions if you use the WeaKnees CD and the Hinsdales instructions if you use the Hinsdale CD as there are some differences.

The WXYZ letters are variables...so you need to plug in the correct letter for your particular setup. I believe W is the variable for the DOS drive not the CD Drive. You don't have to have a DOS drive and you can skip that section of the backup if you want but then if something bad happens you won't have a backup to restore from.

So the first 2 commands you listed are for making a small Tivo backup (backs up the Tivo software and settings but not any recorded shows) to a DOS drive. So you would skip those two commands if you are not going to do this.

Also you said your wanted to "replace" your drive....I think the command you listed is for adding a drive..the command for replacing a drive would be...

mfsbackup -f 9999 -so - /dev/hda | mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -xzpi - /dev/hdc

This is assuming the original drive is on hda and the new drive is on hdc as you listed above.

Somehow I get the feeling you have not gone to the WeaKnees Interactive TiVo Upgrade Instructions page that is listed in the very first post of this thread. If you go there and answer the questions it will generate the instructions for exactly your situation.

http://tivo.upgrade-instructions.com/index.php

thanks Grimm1, yeah, i went there, in fact those command i copy from that page, but i click the wrong setting. Lucky you remind me, i am Replacing the drive not adding the drive.

also do i use hda or hdX in the command line?

and do i need to concern about those swap file command setting tpip stuff?

thanks

Grimm1

02-10-2006, 04:37 PM

thanks Grimm1, yeah, i went there, in fact those command i copy from that page, but i click the wrong setting. Lucky you remind me, i am Replacing the drive not adding the drive.

also do i use hda or hdX in the command line?

and do i need to concern about those swap file command setting tpip stuff?

thanksIn the command line you would use hda (if that is were your orginal TiVo drive is). Like I mentioned hdX is used as a variable. It means plug in the location of your original TiVo drive be it hda, hdb, hdc or hdd. From what you listed you have yours hooked up to hda so you would use hda in the actual command line.

Queasy1

02-26-2006, 11:23 AM

Hello,

I'm searching through the forums now for an answer but am not finding anything. Thought it would just be quicker to ask.

I've got a Phillips DSR7000 DirecTivo. I added a second drive to it a couple of years ago when I got it but I'm now trying to replace the two drives with a much larger single drive.

The instructions say:
mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hdX (/dev/hdY) | mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -xzpi - /dev/hdZ (/dev/hdZZ)

Parentheticals are for two drive to two drive or one drive to two drive situations.

What about two drive to one drive situations? Will that work as well? Will I be able to save my shows?

Thanks.

GR626

02-26-2006, 11:13 PM

Just upgraded with the Weaknees instructions with no problems at all. Thank you!!

virent

02-27-2006, 11:13 AM

The Weaknees Interactive does not have instructions for replacing with a drive of the same size.
I am trying to replace the original TIVO DVR80 drive with a new drive of the same size(80GB).
The command below gives an error message that the target is too small.
mfsbackup -f 9999 -so - /dev/hda | mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -xzpi - /dev/hdb

The only way I can copy to the new drive is to omit the -s 127 and -x from the command.
Is there any downside to omitting these two parameters? Is there a better command that I can use?

azitnay

02-27-2006, 11:47 AM

-s 127 gives you more than the default amount of swap, which you obviously don't need since you're not increasing capacity, and it's also most likely the reason it's complaining about the target being too small (the target is the same size as the source, so there's no room for the extra swap).

-x just expands the restore to fill the rest of the disk, so I'd be surprised to hear that it's causing problems, but you also don't need it, since you're not expanding to a bigger capacity drive.

Drew

virent

03-02-2006, 03:29 PM

Thanks for the clarification.
I was able to succesfully hack the tivo but the menus items are slightly different than the 6.2 version. The "Standby" menu item is not on the first menu page when you press the DirecTV button. It is under the Setup & Messages menu after the Promos menu item. It is not visible in the Setup & Messages menu unless you scroll past the Promos menu item and go the next page. It is there by itself.
Is this normal? I used Zipper instructions.

Thanks

mr396

03-02-2006, 07:13 PM

what should the setting be for the swap file size if you are going to 500GB of disk space or 750GB? Can anyone provide any insight?

Thanks

mr396

03-02-2006, 07:30 PM

Reading through the posts, I have seen people referring to tpip if the swap file is larger than 127MB, does MFStools or weaknees CD take care of this or do you still need tpip to increase swap file larger than 127MB?

JamieP

03-02-2006, 07:43 PM

what should the setting be for the swap file size if you are going to 500GB of disk space or 750GB? Can anyone provide any insight?Two schools of thought: Use 127MB, the maximum that mfstools 2.0 can correctly initialize. Use the rule of thumb of 1MB of swap for each 2GB of disk. The additional swap may be needed to get through a serious file system corruption GSOD. mfstools can't initialize swap > 127MB, so you need to use tpip for that.The argument for the first approach is that there hasn't been any proof that the larger swap is needed with current tivo software versions, so keep it simple. It's only an issue if you ever hit a GSOD, and if you do, your disk may be shot anyway.

The argument for the second approach is that it's a small fraction of your total disk space, why not play it safe?

Relevant posts:
swap initialization with tpip (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=3085168&&#post3085168)
Checking that your swap space is recognized (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=3086651&&#post3086651)
Argument for staying with 127MB swap (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=3612772&&#post3612772)
PTVupgrade's position (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=4372670&&#post4372670)

mr396

03-03-2006, 08:20 AM

JamieP,

Thanks for this information. Using your rule of thumb would say a swap file size of 250MB would be needed for the 500GB of disk. This is about 2x the max size of 127MB. Have other people installed one 500GB drive, dual 250GBdrives, dual 500GB drives, etc. in a Tivo series 2 machine, kept the swap file at the 127MB, and everything works fine.

Like you say, I would like to keep it simple?

Where do I find the tpip program anyway?

azitnay

03-03-2006, 08:51 AM

The PTVupgrade CD includes tpip version 1.1, as far as I can recall (but you're most likely using the WeaKnees CD).

You can download 1.2 from:

http://www.courtesan.com/tivo/tpip.html

Drew

JamieP

03-03-2006, 09:16 AM

Have other people installed one 500GB drive, dual 250GBdrives, dual 500GB drives, etc. in a Tivo series 2 machine, kept the swap file at the 127MB, and everything works fine.Yes, your upgrade will work fine with 127MB of swap. It's just a question of what will happen if you ever get a GSOD. Follow the link in my earlier post to the "Argument for staying with 127MB swap", and follow the link in that post to the test by Dirac. IMHO, his test does not conclusively prove that you don't need the additional swap to get through a GSOD when you have a corrupt file system.

mr396

03-04-2006, 02:13 PM

JamieP,

Thanks for the info. I will attempt to upgrade my systems again this weekend. I already have 2 - 120GB drives in my Tivo's and woudl like to replace them with 2 -250GB.

Which CD and/or instructions do you feel is best. I used Hinsdale before, but this is the first time to upgrade my system since Tivo's supported LBA48.

mr396

03-05-2006, 01:48 AM

I am trying to upgrade a series 2 Tivo unit. I have already upgraded from a 40GB drive to a 120 GB HDD and now going to a 250GB drive. When I boot up it does recognize the correct size for the 250GB hdd.

When I type in the following command

mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hda | mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi - /dev/hdb
where
hda is primary master (which is a 120GB drive)
hdb is primary slave (which is a 250GB drive)

I get the following messages:

Source drive is 40hrs
-upgraded to 127 hrs
Uncompressed backup size: 113295 megabytes
Restore failed: Backup target not large enough for entire backup by itself.

I also tried the dd copy command and then mfsadd as well. It did not expand the capacity. It still reported 127 hrs.

any idea on what is going on or what I should do.

JamieP

03-05-2006, 12:46 PM

any idea on what is going on or what I should do.MFStools 2.0 will only allow you to expand a single drive system and keep your recordings once. You run out of partition slots when you try to expand a second time. You can: Drop your recordings by "shrinking" in the backup stage. or Add a second drive rather than replace the drive. or Live dangerously and apply the partition coalesce idea described here (http://alt.org/forum/index.php?t=msg&goto=772&rid=0&S=1776bbe4240cd9763a73481f4747a47f#msg_num_2). Not recommend unless you really know what you are doing.

HomeUser

03-05-2006, 12:51 PM

Try mfsbackup -f 9999 -so - /dev/hda | mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi - /dev/hdb
You can not re-expand a series 2 and keep recordings. There is a max number of partitions limitation.

mr396

03-05-2006, 01:43 PM

Homeuser

Thanks for the insight. I did try the command below. It did expand, but noy copy the movies over. The movies show up in the Now playing list, but when you try to play the data is not there.

mfsbackup -f 9999 -so - /dev/hda | mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi - /dev/hdb

How can you copy the movies as well? Is there another commands for this?

When I do msinfo it does say I can it expand it 3 more times. What is this all about?

mr396

03-05-2006, 01:49 PM

JamieP

I appreciate the options. I am at an decision point. I really do not want to put a two drive system in this Tivo and not ready to do the coalesce thing. I would really like to keep the movies though.

Does this max number of time to expand also apply if you had a 40hr Tivo, expanded it to 2 -120 GB drives. I would like to expand it again to 2 -250GB drives. Will I lose my recording on that as well?

One other question, what is the -r option for on mfsadd or mfsrestore? I downloaded the latest weeknees iso and burned in on a CD. When i tried to do this option it gives me an errorr message.

Any suggestion or helpful advice.

Thanks

JamieP

03-05-2006, 01:50 PM

How can you copy the movies as well? Is there another commands for this?Go back and read my post. I outlined your options. You just did option 1). If you want to preserve your recordings, you need to do 2) or 3).

There is another way to preserve your recordings if you have a standalone tivo running 7.2.x: copy them all off with TivoToGo, then restore them after taking option 1. It's slow, but it does work.

Does this max number of time to expand also apply if you had a 40hr Tivo, expanded it to 2 -120 GB drives. I would like to expand it again to 2 -250GB drives. Will I lose my recording on that as well?You probably won't run into the limit there, since you'll have two drives. It is more complicated to do the upgrade though, since you need all four ide chanels for your four disks, leaving nothing for a cdrom to boot from. You could boot from a floppy, but I'm not sure there is an lba48 tivo upgrade boot floppy available.One other question, what is the -r option for on mfsadd or mfsrestore? I downloaded the latest weeknees iso and burned in on a CD. When i tried to do this option it gives me an errorr message.You probably put the option in the wrong place in your command line. -r sets the minimum allocation unit. "-r 4" is needed to create partitions > 274GB.

mr396

03-05-2006, 01:57 PM

JamieP,

A question about expanding on a different series 2 Tivo box.

If I have a 40 hr Tivo series box, that was upgraded to 2 - 120GB hdds. Can I upgrade it to 2 - 250GB disks and still keep all the recordings, etc. using the normal mfsbackup|mfsrestore pipe or does it have the same restrictions or only expanding once as well.

mr396

03-05-2006, 02:00 PM

JamieP,

Thanks for the additional information.

on the 2 drive thread.

If I use the dd command and then the mfsadd command does that get me around needing 4 IDE ports (so I can boot off a cdrom for LBA48 support) and have the same result as mfsbackup|mfsrestore?

JamieP

03-05-2006, 02:04 PM

If I use the dd command and then the mfsadd command does that get me around needing 4 IDE ports (so I can boot off a cdrom for LBA48 support) and have the same result as mfsbackup|mfsrestore?Won't work. If you dd, you'll run into the partition count limit, since it can't redistribute partitions between the two disks. Your A drive most likely has a full partition table with 16 partitions now. The only way it can be expanded again is if some of the partitions can be moved off to the B drive. An mfsbackup|mfsrestore pipeline can do this if you can run it with all four disks at once. I've heard some people have had success booting a tivo upgrade environment from a usb flash drive.

The easiest thing to do is to backup your most important recordings with TTG and then expand without preserving recordings. You can restore the recordings at your leisure later.

mr396

03-05-2006, 02:07 PM

JamieP,

I could try the USB option, that is a good idea.

If I put in a pci card to add more IDE ports, will the tivo upgrade be able to use them?

JamieP

03-05-2006, 02:12 PM

If I put in a pci card to add more IDE ports, will the tivo upgrade be able to use them?It depends on the ide card and the boot cd you are using. Here's (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=249617) some background history. If you search around, you might find others.

mr396

03-05-2006, 09:08 PM

JamieP,

I read in the MFStools 2.0 worddoc that it supports upgrading a second time without losing recordings (you can upgrade one drive up to 5 times).

MFStools uses an argument of mfsbackup -aqo. what is the a for? I also noticed MFStolls 2.0 didn't support >137GBdrives as it only reported my 250GB as 137GB.

Some questions:
-does MFStools 2.0 really work to expand over and over again (up to 5 times) without losing recordings
- what is the "a" argument about
-is there a version of MFStools that supports >137GB drives.

JamieP

03-05-2006, 11:08 PM

I read in the MFStools 2.0 worddoc that it supports upgrading a second time without losing recordings (you can upgrade one drive up to 5 times).Either you misread, or the document is wrongMFStools uses an argument of mfsbackup -aqo. what is the a for?The command line options are described in detail here (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=2651877#post2651877). I also noticed MFStolls 2.0 didn't support >137GBdrives as it only reported my 250GB as 137GB.Mfstools 2.0 is fine, it's an issue with the linux kernel on whatever boot ISO you are using. If you follow the directions linked to the very first post in this thread, you should be using a ISO that supports LBA48 (required for >137GB disks), as long as you have a tivo that supports lba48.

mr396

03-06-2006, 08:20 AM

JamieP

On the MFStools 2.0, I used the link from the main "Upgrade Center" page labelled "MFSTOOL" to download MSFtools (it is the second listing under Weaknees). Then used the first thread t download.

In the word doc that comes with MFStools it says

MFS Tools 2.0 New Features
MFS Tools 1.0 was evolutionary in the TiVo upgrade process. MFS Tools 2.0 may prove to be revolutionary.

- Seamless support for AT&T and Series 2 TiVo
When restoring a backup of an AT&T or Series 2 TiVo made with MFS Tools 2.0, no longer will it be necessary to give a flag to restore for it to get the byte order right. All Series 2 and AT&T TiVos can be worked on with the same ease afforded Series 1 TiVos, all completely seamlessly.

- Upgrade a second time without losing recordingsIt’s all over the hack FAQ and the underground. You can only have TiVo upgrade with a blessed drive once. It is set in stone. If you want to upgrade again you have to lose your recordings. Not anymore. Due to research into the workings of TiVo, MFS Tools is now able to upgrade a drive without having to bless it and rely on the TiVo software to upgrade it correctly. In fact, with MFS Tools 2.0, you can upgrade again and again, upgrading one drive up to 5 types (3 for some models).

As far as the Linux iso, it was what came downloaded with the MFStools 2.0 download.

So maybe I got the wrong one?

JamieP

03-06-2006, 09:06 AM

So maybe I got the wrong one?You must use an "large disk" or "lba48" boot disk. If you followed the http://tivo.upgrade-instructions.com/ link in the first post in this thread, selected "Click here to start your TiVo Upgrade", then selected a hardware model that had an lba48 TiVo software version (e.g. 6.2 or 7.2), you'd get instructions that included a link to an lba48 iso.

mr396

03-08-2006, 08:25 AM

JamieP,

Thanks for the suggestion and the link. The link provided is one of the CD's iso's I have tried using (the others being PVTupgrade and MFStools all found from links on this site).

Some questions:
1. If I take the one drive 120GB Tivo system (that has been upgraded from the 40Gb already), expand it to use 2 -120GB drives and then use the process to go to 1 -250GB drive, will that process work and save all the recordings?

2. Why does MFStools say it can upgrade a second time without losing recordings, up to 5 times on one drive, when it does not appear like you can?

6stringbass

03-10-2006, 05:48 PM

Gonna jump in the fray to ask....SDDVR40 with 6.2 software. Added another 40 gig drive to the original 40 gig drive. I'd like to go to a single 250gig drive but I'd like to save the recordings. Reading mr396's posts it seems unlikely but I didn't replace the original drive but merely added a second. Will I be able to easily move both drive's data to a single or will I run into the same partition count limit as mr396?

bnm81002

03-13-2006, 10:42 PM

I will be replacing the original drive to a 300GB drive in 1 of my Philips DTivo unit, so here's my setup in the computer,

Primary Master hda(hdW)>Fat 32 drive
Primary Slave hdb(hdX)>Original Tivo drive
Secondary Master hdc(hdY)>CDRW drive
Secondary Slave hdd(hdZ)>New 300GB drive

I will save the recordings and make a backup of the 6.2 software as well as restore the original drive to the 300GB drive,
is this correct or should it be configured differently? thanks

tripmaster

03-16-2006, 03:51 PM

How does using tpip 1.2 differ from 1.1?

I read that using 1.1 the command was:

TPIP -–swapped –s /dev/hdc

The PTVupgrade CD includes tpip version 1.1, as far as I can recall (but you're most likely using the WeaKnees CD).

You can download 1.2 from:

http://www.courtesan.com/tivo/tpip.html

Drew

azitnay

03-16-2006, 03:56 PM

At first glance I thought your handle was tpipmaster, and I was wondering why you'd be asking about tpip :).

Anyway, I believe the recommend usage for tpip 1.2 is to simply change the --swapped to -1. Thus (assuming your TiVo drive is indeed /dev/hdc):

tpip -1 -s /dev/hdc

Drew

bnm81002

03-17-2006, 11:55 PM

Grimm1

03-18-2006, 12:45 AM

anyone please? :(I don't think it matters where the drives are connected just as long as you plug in the correct variable in the commands for the proper drive werever it's connected. But as far as the drives you need that should be correct. You'll boot off the CD Drive...backup the TiVo software/settings to the FAT32 drive and then backup everything (software/settings/shows) to the new drive. If you want to hold on to a backup of everything then just hold on to the original TiVo drive.

I should add that I've never upgraded a DTivo so I'm assuming the basics of the process would be the same.

BillyBob_jcv

03-18-2006, 08:12 PM

I'm using the weaknees instructions to copy from my Philips DSR-708 80GB drive to a Maxtor 200 GB drive. I have the DTivo drive as master and the Maxtor as slave. The command I am using is:

mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hda | mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -xzpi - /dev/hdb

It reported my source drive as 78 hours and 50098 megabytes.

The operation has now been running for over 4 hours and I am only at 49% complete! Is this normal for this size of a backup? If it is, I will definitely need to schedule my second unit upgrade for an overnight run...

SethC

03-18-2006, 09:23 PM

I'm attempting to install a new hard drive in my HR10-250 because the existing one was stuttering and rebooting quite often and I followed the Weaknees instructions to a the letter. The drive I installed was a Maxtor 300gb drive. I installed it and tried setting the jumper to master and cable select; both times the Tivo started the boot up process and said "almost there a few more seconds then reboots and starts over. Any easy answers to this?

Thanks.

I'm positive the drive was never plugged in while I booted up XP so it's not that. The process took about 5 hours and said it was successfull when done.

this was the command line I used:

mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hdc | mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -xzpi - /dev/hdd

Grimm1

03-18-2006, 09:46 PM

microtogo

03-19-2006, 12:36 AM

Weakness I have a Model TCD24008A and the hard drive just completely went dead. I looked at the How to guide but everything is showing if the original was ok. How can I install a new drive without having the original. Can i find an image? Is there any way to make this Tivo manually record, i thinking of modding this one and buying a new one for now.

BillyBob_jcv

03-19-2006, 01:08 AM

It takes a long time. When I upgraded from one drive to two drives the process took at least 10 hours.

Thanks - it finally finished - after almost 10 hours. The good news is that the new drive booted right-up with all my recordings & season passes intact! Tomorrow, the Zipper! :D

jschwartz

03-19-2006, 12:07 PM

I just got RCA DVR39 (series2) from ebay. I plugged it into a phone line to let it download 6.2 which worked fine. Next, I removed the drive and set it as hdb (slave) with a 300GB as master hda. I will keep the original as backup so I used the piped mfsbackup | mfsrestore command as such:

mfsbackup -so - /dev/hdb | mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi - dev/hda

seemed to work fine but with a 300GB drive as destination, I was surprised to only get 147 hours reports by mfs tools 2.0 and only 120 reported by the tivo.

I've seen references to the -r switch but the help doesn't list it and when I tried it, get restore error showing all the proper switches.

Is that all I should expect from a 300gb drive? Can I re-run this again without doing something to initialize the new drive?

I just ran the full weaknees command:
mfsbackup -f 9999 -so - /dev/hdb | mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -xzpi - /dev/hda

where hdb is original drive and hda is new 300gb... result says est size 147 hours. says it added pair: /dev/hda14 and /dev/hda15

mfsinfo show 6 partitions but /dev/hda14 is zero and had15 is 91800 with total as 130550MiB. Could the drive be locked? it is a Maxtor

newsposter

03-20-2006, 09:02 AM

My goal is to add more space to my stock HDtivo without a PC. I have win98SE now and dont think i could upgrade big drives anyway could I?

I'm a tad confused about 2 different web pages. A few years ago I saved some recordings from a failing drive to a new drive and also added one to my t60 so I do know what I'm doing from that aspect, I've just become lazy and so have looked at the weaknees page for adding a drive to my HDtivo and dont want to do anything with my computer at all.

When I hit the add a drive option from http://tivo.upgrade-instructions.com/step3.php and click no for every option, it still says I need to use mfstools.

then if you go to the page http://www.weaknees.com/details2/as250hr10.php it clearly states that "PC usage:

You DO NOT need a computer in any way for this TiVo upgrade kit - this drive is completely formatted for your TiVo here at Weaknees.com - no further modification in a PC is necessary. " and also the online instructions http://www.weaknees.com/instructions/twinbreeze_hd.pdf clearly show no PC is needed.

My guess is the first page above is for people that have non stock hard drives and need to use their PC? I just wanted to confirm that. If so, then I'm assuming there is something special about the $200 250gig drive from weaknees that enables just a drop in procedure.

shn2006

03-28-2006, 03:37 PM

I am going to try this with the instructions generated by the interactive tool... I am going to use a separate dedicated -offline old NT box that I have for this purpose. I am really not sure of PC bios will recognize my 40GB old HD or the 80 GB new HD... When Booting with Linux CD, does it matter? I know NT4 SP 3 onwards it had capacity to recognize large drives... so PC BIOS should have that capacity (I'm assuming)... Is there a way to make sure though? Looks liek operations take long and I can not take myo pther PC offline for so long...
Thanks for help,
ShN

spudhorse

03-28-2006, 09:24 PM

I just wanted to put in a plug for acoustic management with the Hitachi Feature Tool (v2.00) at http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm . My Maxtor 120Gb was making so much noise compared to the 40Gb, I was actually thinking I'd need to put the 40Gb back in. The 120Gb quieted right down after adjusting the acoustic setting so that it's now virtually silent. It's probably a 10 minute gig to make the floppy (or CD) and run the utility. Definitely a must have!

I realize that this utility has been described in various other threads. However, adding it to http://tivo.upgrade-instructions.com would be a big plus IMO.

melgar

03-29-2006, 08:53 PM

Is there a place where there are instructions on upgrading from an already upgraded TiVo?

I started with 40 hr. 24004A.

Then pre-lba48 I upgraded to 2-160Gb drives=317hrs

One 160Gb drive failed so I upgraded starting with the original 40 hr. image to a 160Gb & a 200Gb drive=420 hrs.

The other 160Gb has failed now and I want to upgrade to a 250Gb and the 200Gb. Is there a site with instructions on upgrading with an image back-up of the 160Gb & 200Gb (420 hrs total)?

Or is it the same as the Weaknees instructions in spite of the warning that they only have instructions for non-modified TiVo's?

Thanks...

jaybird13

03-29-2006, 09:12 PM

I want to thank Weeknees for posting these instructions. I paid a pretty penny for one of their preconfigured drives last year and it worked great.

Wanting to avoid that cost to upgrade my 2nd TIVO, I went for it myself. Although the instructions are daunting, the real "work" is typing in one simple command.

40 to 160 in 60 minutes. Thanks.

newsposter

03-30-2006, 09:50 AM

Melgar i'm didn't look at the instructions you are talking about but can tell you for certain the hinsdale ones can be used to do what you want. I went from a 40 to a 40 and 80...then 2 80s...then one failed so went to 2 160s and used hinsdale

good luck!

mr396

04-02-2006, 10:43 PM

I am trying to upgrade a dual drive Tivo system with two new larger drives.

1. I put in a Promise PCI card to add more channels. Linux seems to find all the four drives and the CDROM drive ok when booting up. It has hdc, hde, hdf, hdg, and hdh (CDROM)When it tries to mount the CDROM it could not find it. It is located as /dev/hdh. How do I get the CDROM drive mounted

2. When I tried the to use the weakness floppy disk (which I downloaded from the website), it does not appear it support lba48 so this option does not work either.

Any suggestions?

jaybird13

04-03-2006, 10:27 PM

I have a couple of quick questions.

I've now performed two succesful upgrades but two simple things I couldn't figure out.

1. How do you scroll back up to read all the boot info? "Shift+PageUp" doesn't work for me. I have to catch it quick while it boots up to make sure my drives are reporting the correct sizes.

2. Once upgrade is complete what's a safe command to shut down?

Thanks!

azitnay

04-04-2006, 09:05 AM

1. How do you scroll back up to read all the boot info? "Shift+PageUp" doesn't work for me. I have to catch it quick while it boots up to make sure my drives are reporting the correct sizes.

Shift+PageUp is definitely the way to go, and I don't know why it wouldn't be working for you... The information *might* be stored in a log file in /var/log as well, but I wouldn't know which one offhand.

Edit: Ahh, now I think I remember: /var/log/dmesg. You should be able to view it by simply typing:

dmesg

or perhaps (so you can read it all):

dmesg | less

2. Once upgrade is complete what's a safe command to shut down?

I don't know how necessary it is as long as everything's unmounted, but you should be able to type:

halt

to halt Linux. It should give a message like "system halted" when it's done.

Drew

Parli

04-04-2006, 11:12 AM

I tried reading through this thread and did not see my problem covered here. I did what I believe to be a succsessful upgrade of my 40GB HD to 120GB HD. Everything works great after I fired the TiVo up except for one thing - the system information page is showing only 40 hours capability. I did a direct copy using the command dd if=/dev/hdc of=/dev/hdb bs=1024k.

Can anyone shed some light on what the problem may be?

Thanks!

azitnay

04-04-2006, 11:16 AM

A dd copy will not expand to fill the drive.

You could use mfsadd to expand after the fact. Or better yet, start over and follow:

http://tivo.upgrade-instructions.com/index.php

Drew

Parli

04-04-2006, 12:25 PM

Thanks for the quick response! Do I need to reformat the drive or will the process just overwrite what is there?

Also, just a side question. Why can't the backup process be done to a thumbdrive? That would take care of any NTFS issues. Just curious.

azitnay

04-04-2006, 12:34 PM

If you start over with the instructions above, what you've already done will be overwritten.

If you could manage to mount the thumbdrive in Linux, I'm sure you could backup to it (assuming it's big enough)... But I wouldn't know the first thing about how to accomplish that, or if it's even possible with the limited resources on a boot CD. The following might be helpful, though:

http://www.computing.net/linux/wwwboard/forum/27787.html

Drew

dandrewk

04-04-2006, 12:39 PM

Greetings, and thanks for all the great advice I have already read in this great thread.

I am about to replace my dying HD on an HR10-250 with a Maxtor Quickview 300GB which should arrive today. I will be backing up and restoring from the old drive to the new one. I have never even cracked open a TiVO before, but have built plenty of PC's so hopefully it won't be too bad.

I have a few questions, and please forgive if they have been answered here. I have looked.

1. I don't have a FAT partition, so will be using the new drive as a temporary repository. When backing up to the C drive (XP) after backing up the old drive to the new drive, the instructions tell me to hook the new drive and boot up to XP. Silly question, maybe, but won't this make the new drive unbootable to TiVO?

2. How much free space will I need on the C drive? If the old TiVO drive is 250GB, does that mean I need 250GB free space on the C drive? I reckon the old TiVO drive is about 60% full.

3. My PC is dual boot, XP and Linux (debian-xandros). Do I need to boot off the weaknees CD or can I just use my Linux OS with the weaknees apps. available on the CD?

Thanks for any insight, apologies if my questions seem silly. I understand the steps involved, but won't really be clear as to the "why" until I get my hands dirty.

azitnay

04-04-2006, 12:45 PM

1) Once you mfsrestore to the new drive, it will once again be TiVo-bootable.

2) Backup images are typically under 1GB, often smaller.

3) mfstool definitely runs under most if not all standard Linux distributions, and I've run it myself this way several times. Also, if you do it this way, you can most likely backup directly to your Linux partition, thereby avoiding the hassle of powering back down and copying the backup image to your Windows partition, etc.

Just be sure to test the backup image you create if you decide to go this route (in reality, you should test it no matter what) -- I once created a backup image via mfsbackup under Fedora Linux, and it ended up not working later. I ended up having to boot with a boot CD to get a good backup image. Never bothered to look into why.

Drew

dandrewk

04-04-2006, 12:53 PM

Drew - many thanks for your quick reply. Two more quick (I hope) questions.

1. I am a bit naive, but how could a ~180gb backup fit into 1gb?
2. How do I test the backup image? Is this just a basic file integrity check?

azitnay

04-04-2006, 01:01 PM

1) You're not backing up most of the MFS streams (i.e. the recordings), you're only backing up the operating system and some vital MFS streams (menu backgrounds, etc). The vast majority of the hard drive space is reserved for recordings, so the rest isn't very big. Couple that with some compression, and it easily gets down below 1GB (the backup images I currently have range in size anywhere from 159MB to 854MB).

2) You can test it by restoring it to your new drive with mfsrestore.

Drew

dandrewk

04-04-2006, 01:17 PM

Thanks again, Drew. The task looks a bit daunting atm, but I love a good challenge. :)

Parli

04-04-2006, 02:46 PM

Thanks, Drew! That did the trick. I'm all set to go now with the new hard drive. I appreciate your quick and helpful responses!

dandrewk

04-04-2006, 06:52 PM

Ok. Partial success, and potentially tragic. :)

I did the backup, and got the mfsrestore working so I saw the progress bar. It stopped at .19% (same on second attempt), exiting with an I/O error. This I attribute to the old drive being toast - I got a few "unrecoverable errors prior to the restore beginning. (My "smart disk" on BIOS bootup also said it was "bad").

So I did the system restore to the new drive, hooked it up and it booted fine. My recordings all show up in the listing, but they are all blank files. Happily, my season pass and other settings transferred.

So... I am left with a few options, and would appreciate advice.

1. Take the new drive and run. Don't try to use the old drive again. Only tragedy can result.

2. Swap back the old drive and see if it can survive for a few more hours, but only as a player. Hopefully, I can eek out it's showing the recorded programming, especially if I remove the satellite feed to prevent the drive having to record two live feeds.

3. Don't give up on restoring from the old drive. I used the Weaknees method. Would any other method work? Hinsdale maybe? I have a Linux dual boot, anyway to do a straight restore from the Linux desktop?

It's not the end of the world if I lose the recorded programming, but there are some things there that are not replaceable. Between iTunes, bitstream, and HBO repeats (Sopranos!) I could make up a lot. But not all those CSI's. How sad.

TIA for any info. At the very least, I now have a larger and quieter drive.

HomeUser

04-04-2006, 08:01 PM

You could try a hard drive utility by Gibson Research (grc.com) called Spinrite.
SpinRite recovered my 160G HD long enough to do an image copy. SpinRite is $90 the price is kind of high for a single use especially when there is no grantee that it will recover all your data. I justified it because I use it on every new drive before the drive is installed in a computer or TiVo it has saved me a couple of times now.

azitnay

04-04-2006, 08:10 PM

SpinRite's definitely good stuff... If the price tag isn't worth it to you, though, you could try dd_rescue (http://www.garloff.de/kurt/linux/ddrescue/). I've never used it, but it's supposedly better than dd at recovering data from bad drives. Depending on how bad off the drive is, you could have luck with it.

Keep in mind, though, that every operation you perform on the dying drive is probably killing it even more. So if you're willing to try SpinRite anyway, it's probably not worth trying dd_rescue first.

Drew

6stringbass

04-05-2006, 12:00 AM

Ok. Partial success, and potentially tragic. :)

But not all those CSI's. How sad.

If the speed at which my second DTivo is filling up with CSI's (ones my other unit has already recorded as well as others) you won't have to wait long to recover all those shows!

dandrewk

04-05-2006, 01:28 AM

I bit the bullet and purchased SpinRite. After doing a data recovery, it looks like I am getting the bad drive to restore to the new drive. A few I/O errors, but it hasn't bailed yet, and it is a lot farther than it was before. I won't know until tomorrow morning.

Question - when a restore starts, it overwrites whatever was on the new disk, right?

HomeUser

04-05-2006, 08:37 AM

Yes MFSTools restore overwrites anything that was on the drive before.

dandrewk

04-05-2006, 06:40 PM

I'm thinking about doing the USB networking upgrade from PTVnet. Does anyone know if this will wipe recorded programming, or does it just activate the USB port?

uscpsycho

04-11-2006, 07:28 AM

First time upgrader (HR10-250) looking for a little clarification before I take the dive.

My parameters are:
Backup - yes
FAT - no
XP - yes
save recordings - yes
moving to new TiVo - no

My questions:

1) Is this a typo in the directions? "mount /dev/hdZ1 /mnt" Should hdz1 simply be hdz where z is a-d?

2) After rebooting windows, where on my C drive should I copy the .bak file? I don't see any arguments in the restore process that point back to the .bak file.

3) I have a question about primary/secondary IDE. When I boot from my C drive I know that my C drive is the primary master (hda) and my CD-ROM is the secondary master (hdc). But if I set my CD-ROM as the boot drive without changing any IDE connections, is the CD-ROM still hdc or does it become hda because it is the boot drive? In other words, is hda always the boot drive, or can hdb / hdc be the boot drive?

4) What should I do to make sure that I have a good copy? If I can boot up and access items in my list is that good enough? Or do you recommend I give the drive a lot of real-world use before I Zipper it?

How long should I expect for this to take if I'm going from the original 250GB to 300GB + 200GB?

Thank you so much for your help! I would really like to get going with this so I can put everything back together and get all these computer parts out of my living room.

newsposter

04-11-2006, 09:02 AM

usc's post exemplifies why i just spent the $200 from weaknees instead of saving the $100 and doing it myself. going through all that one time was enough for me :)

I can answer that one question. I'm pretty sure they use a character like Z to denote where you need to figure out where your own drive is at. It can get pretty confusing, especially if you have 4 drives attached like i did..fun fun fun

azitnay

04-11-2006, 09:18 AM

1) Is this a typo in the directions? "mount /dev/hdZ1 /mnt" Should hdz1 simply be hdz where z is a-d?

You need the "1" to indicate that it's the first partition (I'm assuming you're backing up to a FAT32 partition here, where it's the only partition on the drive, so it would be partition 1). So, /dev/hda1 would be an example of the partition to mount (assuming the drive you're mounting is the primary master, i.e. hda).

2) After rebooting windows, where on my C drive should I copy the .bak file? I don't see any arguments in the restore process that point back to the .bak file.

Doesn't really matter... You can make a new directory called C:\TiVo if you want, and then copy it to C:\TiVo\tivo.bak.

3) I have a question about primary/secondary IDE. When I boot from my C drive I know that my C drive is the primary master (hda) and my CD-ROM is the secondary master (hdc). But if I set my CD-ROM as the boot drive without changing any IDE connections, is the CD-ROM still hdc or does it become hda because it is the boot drive? In other words, is hda always the boot drive, or can hdb / hdc be the boot drive?

Primary and secondary IDE are physical connectors on the motherboard. So unless you switch which physical connector the CD-ROM is connected to, it'll stay on the secondary IDE controller. It won't magically switch.

4) What should I do to make sure that I have a good copy? If I can boot up and access items in my list is that good enough? Or do you recommend I give the drive a lot of real-world use before I Zipper it?

Assuming you can boot up, play a recording, and record a new recording, without noticing any problems, I'd say it's a good copy.

How long should I expect for this to take if I'm going from the original 250GB to 300GB + 200GB?

Hard to say exactly... It could take a few hours to do the initial copy, since you're saving recordings.

Drew

uscpsycho

04-11-2006, 01:54 PM

Thanks for your help!

2) After rebooting windows, where on my C drive should I copy the .bak file? I don't see any arguments in the restore process that point back to the .bak file.

Doesn't really matter... You can make a new directory called C:\TiVo if you want, and then copy it to C:\TiVo\tivo.bak.

I realized this after posting. I thought that the restore procedure somehow used this file, but that's not so. So the questions arise:

Why bother making the .bak file (a real hassle if you don't already have a FAT partition)? Can't you skip that step altogether since you still have your original TiVo harddrive as a backup?

I haven't come across an explanation of this .bak file. What is in it? Mfsrestore doesn't use it, so how is it used for data recovery? If the new drive were to fail, wouldn't it be best to drop the original drive back in or make a fresh copy of it? After all, any scheduled recordings and such in the .bak file will be quickly outdated.

I feel like I'm missing the point of making the backup file.

azitnay

04-11-2006, 02:12 PM

The .bak file contains the bare necessities required to image a hard drive for use in your TiVo. Essentially, everything except the recordings.

As you've stated, it's not technically necessary to make one, but I prefer to have a small (always <1GB in my experience) file handy for when the inevitable drive failure occurs. You can keep this file in multiple locations for redundancy, which you can't do with the original TiVo hard drive. Sure, the original drive might not be as susceptible to drive failure as an active drive is, but it's still susceptible to getting lost, etc.

I'm not sure I'd call creating a backup file without an existing FAT32 partition a "real hassle"... It might add half an hour or so to the entire process, which I personally feel is worth it.

Drew

uscpsycho

04-12-2006, 06:29 PM

The .bak file contains the bare necessities required to image a hard drive for use in your TiVo. Essentially, everything except the recordings.

So are you saying that I can image a virgin hard drive from a .bak file?

As it happens I created a .bak file and then somehow hosed my original OEM drive. Am I going to be able to build a new image from my .bak file, or am I going to have to instantcake a new drive?

If I can create a new image from the .bak, please tell me how!

If I have to start with a fresh disk image from instantcake, I assume I'll be able to restore wishlists and such from the .bak file. If not, what good is the .bak file?

Thanks!

naiLS1

04-12-2006, 08:15 PM

So are you saying that I can image a virgin hard drive from a .bak file?

As it happens I created a .bak file and then somehow hosed my original OEM drive. Am I going to be able to build a new image from my .bak file, or am I going to have to instantcake a new drive?

If I can create a new image from the .bak, please tell me how!

If I have to start with a fresh disk image from instantcake, I assume I'll be able to restore wishlists and such from the .bak file. If not, what good is the .bak file?

Thanks!

Yes, you can image a virgin drive with the .bak file. Your .bak file will save any wishlists, season passes you had as far as I know. It's just everything but the recordings. Check out the hinsdale how to or the weaknees how to. They are both pretty straight forward on how to do this.

I just upgraded for the first time a few days ago and it went flawlessly. It took about 5 hours because I copied from the original drive to a new one (recordings are big!). I also backed up my 3 tivos just in case they decide to bite it. I put all of the .bak files on a dvd and I also have the original drive from the one I just upgraded sitting in storage.

uscpsycho

04-12-2006, 09:54 PM

I tried an upgrade following the Weaknees directions and ran into some problems I'm hoping someone can help me with.

I have an HR10-250 that I was trying to upgrade from the OEM 250GB drive to two 300GB drives. I followed the weaknees directions to the letter and successfully created a .bak file, but that's as far as I got. When I got to copying the data (including the recorded shows) to the new drives I got errors which stopped the process. Then when I put the OEM drive back in my TiVo it wouldn't boot. BIG TROUBLE.

To be safe I ran dd to copy the OEM drive onto one of the new 300GB drives (I got three errors during dd) and restored the .bak file onto the new drive. Now my TiVo boots up with the new drive and SURPRISE! I can watch and record live TV, plus my wishlists, to do list, season passes and playlist look intact. WOO HOO!!!

Not so fast... Trying to watch the programs in my playlist causes problems. I randomly picked one program to watch and it played just fine. Then I pressed the advance button to see if my 30 second skip still works, but the TiVo jumps to the very end of the program and then the TiVo suddenly reboots. I try again with the same program and it reboots a second time. Then I try to watch other programs in my playlist and I keep getting a message that says the program wasn't recorded because there was no signal at the time of recroding or I don't subscribe to the channel (I know these programs were recorded).

So my TiVo is back in business and it LOOKS like my previously recorded shows are available but when I try to watch them there's nothing there. Losing my recorded shows was my greatest fear when I started this so I am not happy.

Is there anything I can do to this new drive that might restore these shows?

What if I restore the .bak file to my original OEM drive? Will I have the same problem or will I be more likely to salvage my previously recorded programs on the OEM?

Thank you!

P.S. Drew - You were right about creating the .bak file. Even though things aren't quite the way I want them to be, if not for the .bak file my TiVo would be totally hosed.

azitnay

04-12-2006, 10:49 PM

uscpsycho

04-12-2006, 11:49 PM

First of all, regarding 30-second skip, did you reenable it after the TiVo booted up? If not, that's obviously why it skipped to the end.

As for the recordings, as I mentioned to you in another thread, what you have is probably the best you're going to get now that you've restored from a backup. It sounds like you can at least view some recordings, which is better than what I had expected.

The reason every program you'd expect to be listed is listed in NP is that the NPL entries themselves were saved with the backup. The MFS streams, however, were not. They're still technically present on the drive, but they're obviously not all where the TiVo thinks they are.

Drew

As it turns out, all I seem to have is parts of some shows. When I get to a certain point in the programs that I can still access, the TiVo crashes and reboots. I have a feeling nothing made it through in its entireity.

I'll try to recover another copy of my drive using MTB instead of .bak and see if I have any more luck with the previously recorded programs.

Since I ran dd to copy from a 250GB drive to a 300GB drive, will I be able to access the extra 50GB on the new drive or do I need to take another step to free up the whole thing?

Thanks so much for all your help Drew!!!

azitnay

04-13-2006, 09:25 AM

As it turns out, all I seem to have is parts of some shows. When I get to a certain point in the programs that I can still access, the TiVo crashes and reboots. I have a feeling nothing made it through in its entireity.

I'll try to recover another copy of my drive using MTB instead of .bak and see if I have any more luck with the previously recorded programs.

Since I ran dd to copy from a 250GB drive to a 300GB drive, will I be able to access the extra 50GB on the new drive or do I need to take another step to free up the whole thing?

Thanks so much for all your help Drew!!!

I just posted an answer to your 50GB question in the other thread.

One final note: If your reboot / slowness problems don't go away after deleting some of these bad recordings, it might be time for a Clear & Delete Everything.

Drew

VanGoghLikesTivo

04-15-2006, 07:21 PM

Thanks for the guide. I just followed the instructions for my 240040 to replace the original 40 GB drive with a 200GB drive. One minor issue is that the instructions said to remove 4 screws from the back of the unit at the start, however, there are 5 screws on the back of my unit. It took me a while to figure out how to set the jumpers on the drives properly, as there was not much explanation. Also, it was difficult to figure out which of the actual drives were set up as drive a, b, c, d etc. I found the tip in this thread to use shift-Page Up to be able to read the text showing which drive matches with what. It would be useful if the software on the boot-up CD would do a printout of each of the drives it found before the prompt.

Anyway, I got everything working now on my new larger Tivo. Thanks a lot!

uscpsycho

04-20-2006, 07:01 AM

Is it a good idea to upgrade a TiVo to two drives?

Seems like once you do, you are permanently stuck with those two drives. How can you make any changes from that point forward? Say you install two 400GB drives - if you want to upgrade those drives you need to boot up with those two drives and two new upgrade drives. That leaves no IDE for the CD-ROM.

Trying to decide whether I should add a second drive or stick to one big drive.

Thanks.

azitnay

04-20-2006, 08:49 AM

If you wanted to upgrade again, you'd probably have to start over with a fresh image anyway (losing recordings)... One way to upgrade from two old drives to two new drives would be to boot up with a CD-ROM drive, the two old TiVo drives, and a third hard drive to temporarily store the backup image. Create the backup image, and then power down, put the new TiVo drives in place of the old ones, and restore from the backup image.

I personally feel it's usually not ideal to upgrade to two drives any more for other chance-of-failure-related reasons, but to me this isn't really one of the reasons.

Drew

newsposter

04-20-2006, 09:40 AM

as an aside, if you can narrow down the 1 failing drive and catch it in time, you can save some of your recordings. I did this with my T60. Got an advance replacement drive and used dd(i forget what command) and did save some of my programs on the failing drive.

brotharoach

04-21-2006, 02:00 AM

alright so here's the rundown.

i'm trying to upgrade from the stock 40g to a western digital 250gb eide. of course i went back to weaknees since they helped me upgrade my last series 2. we now have directv and the samsung 4040r. we/i got tired of the horrible cueing on the r15.

when i dl the cd and try to boot from it i get a message saying "insert boot media and press any key or restart and select correct boot device". when i tried to open it, roxio opened and went to disc copy. i tried to boot from the floppy and couldn't get those files to compress far enough to fit, the floppy was only yielding 1.38mb instead of the 1.42 required for the boot. i also tried to run the "MakeDisk.bat" command and my computer thought i was stupid or something. i tried to put the floppy info onto cd and i got the same error as the new cd dl.

i also want to make sure i have my code right when someone finally helps me figure out what's going on.

hda: c drive
hdb: original tivo hard drive
hdc: cd-rom drive
hdd: new hard drive

mfsbackup -f 9999 -so - /dev/hdb | mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -xzpi - /dev/hdd

this unit also has nothing recorded on it, i received it last night. could that cause problems with the mfsbackup prompt since there's nothing really to back up?

if anyone can help i'd greatly appreciate it.

brotharoach

04-22-2006, 04:47 AM

works now and everyhting's all good.

i didn't realize that when the .iso file came up and opened roxio it was putting the data on the cd and not simply the .iso file. duh.

Starrbuck

04-23-2006, 11:38 AM

Hard to say exactly... It could take a few hours to do the initial copy, since you're saving recordings.
I just copied my 250GB drive from my HR10-250 to a new 300GB drive and it took around 30 hours.

Wish me luck, I'll be installing the new drive this afternoon. ;)

Xtra7973

04-24-2006, 09:24 AM

I just copied my 250GB drive from my HR10-250 to a new 300GB drive and it took around 30 hours.

Wish me luck, I'll be installing the new drive this afternoon. ;)

Just wondering how you made out with it. I did the same thing but it wasnt 30 hours but it felt like it only to find out it didnt work and I had to do a clear and delete. I was thinking of giving it another go.

Starrbuck

04-25-2006, 12:05 PM

Just wondering how you made out with it. I did the same thing but it wasnt 30 hours but it felt like it only to find out it didnt work and I had to do a clear and delete. I was thinking of giving it another go.
No problems at all! Following the ~30 hour copy, I popped in the new drive, put the top back on, and powered up to a normal-functioning HR10-250. The previously-recorded shows that I tried played fine.

Going from 250 to 300 gave me an additional 7 hours of HD recording space. Also the new drive seems a touch faster. It's a Maxtor DiamondMax Ultra 16 (L01R300).

klitton

05-01-2006, 07:46 AM

I recently upgraded a Toshiba RS-TX20 with a 250gb hard drive. Toshiba has since replaced that unti with a RS-TX60. I put the 250gb drive in it and it keeps telling me to activate the unit. It connects to TiVo without problems over ethernet. Also, the activation number shows as all zeros.

Aren't these 2 machines the same? Do I need to reimage the 250gb drive with the drive out of the RS-TX60?

Thanks for your help.

Kev

weaknees

05-01-2006, 09:05 AM

All you need to do is to do a "Clear and Delete Everything" so that the drive will reserialize to the new unit.

klitton

05-01-2006, 09:06 AM

Thanks. I'll give it a try.

Kev

klitton

05-01-2006, 12:34 PM

It looks like it worked. Thanks! Though, I can't believe how much time it takes for the TiVo to process the new info. I also could only connect via phone whereas before I could go over ethernet.

Oh, well.

Kev

weaknees

05-01-2006, 12:38 PM

What model and what OS do you have?

supasta

05-06-2006, 04:58 PM

This tutorial seems amazing!

However, will this be updated with instructions for the new S2DT boxes? Thanks!

weaknees

05-06-2006, 05:10 PM

Yes, when we have some time to devote to it, we'll certainly add the new units.

For now, go ahead and use the instructions for the 540040 units, but just be aware that you can only do a one-drive replacement until there's a bracket to hold a second drive.

supasta

05-06-2006, 11:59 PM

I will, thank you. I plan on a single 500GB drive anyway....that should be sufficent....for now!

weaknees

05-09-2006, 12:53 PM

Grimm1

05-09-2006, 02:13 PM

OK - we added support for the 649xxx units. So far, we only added information for replacing with one drive, or restoring from backup to one drive, since there's no second drive bracket at this point . . .Hi, just wondering why you haven't made any changes related to the problems I ran into and reported back in early feb? The setup I had chosen was to upgrade an 80HR Humax with 2 new larger drives. I answered Yes to all the questions except the last.

Yesterday I upgraded my TiVo using the WeaKnees CD and instructions. I've done 3 upgrades before over the years using the Hinsdale method and thought I would give the WeaKnees route a go.

The upgrade worked....eventually. There were a few things that brought my upgrade to a halt until I could research before continuing.

The first was the....
"kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k nls_iso8859-1, errno = 2"

Message that I got just from booting the CD...that got me to pause but I decided to continue and see what happened. Then came the first command to mount the FAT drive and I got that error again. Then I really put on the breaks. Luckily I had another PC I could run to and look this up and I found a few mentions that the error can be ignored.

This is information that needs to be in the instructions..so people don't freak out when they see it.

The second part that really stumped me was this part of the instructions....
****
The software will scan your drive for a few moments. You should see a progress indicator as the backup proceeds. Once the backup is successful, shut down the PC if your destination drive isn't connected by using CTRL-ALT-DELETE and waiting until the Linux has halted. Then boot again as before with the destination drive connected, and enter the following with hdZ (hdZZ if you have two) as your destination drive:

mount /dev/hdW1 /mnt
*****
So I just backed up to my FAT drive...I shutdown as described. I disconnect my FAT drive and attach my 2 destination drives hdZ and hdZZ then boot again with the CD and the command is to mount hdW1??? Why would I need to do that? At this point I don't even have hdW connected because I am using all 4 IDE connections with the Boot CD Drive, hdX, hdz and hdZZ.

Again I had to stop and run to the computer...this time after searching and searching I really couldn't find anything that referred to it specifically. It looked like it was an unneeded command at that point...but not really being a linux person I was not 100% sure. I finally decided to skip that command and continue and everything else went as advertised.

I also found what appeared to be some errors in the instruction for mounting the drives with the twinbreeze upgrade kit. Though I don't know if this would be the place to mention them.

High Technology

05-13-2006, 01:01 AM

This was great -- I struggled through a blesstivo upgrade on my HDR-112 when they first came out, and then again when I upgraded a Series 2 to 120GB a couple of years back.

The disc, plus these instructions make life much easier -- THANKS!

Quick Question: I am now upgrading an HR10-250 and had no problems adding another 250GB drive to it. I did the back-up and then MFSADD and all looked good -- will reassemble the TiVo on Monday (ETA for my Weaknees bracket) and boot it up.

I am also trying to save a friend of mine some time by preparing his new second drive for him (they say no good deed goes unpunished :p). Does MFSADD change anything on the first drive, or does it just read information off it and do all of its writing on the second drive?

The reason I ask is that after I did the first drive (his), I powered down the PC and then reattached the second new drive (mine) and tried again. The MFSADD command failed, so I restored from my backup and then did the MFSADD again and it worked fine.

So what will happen if he puts the second drive into his HR10-250 and powers it up? Will his TiVo recognize it appropriately? Or do I need to get his primary TiVo drive and go through the MFSADD routine again? I guess I was thinking the MFSADD was like the old blesstivo where I don't recall it actually needing the primary TiVo drive to prep the new drive.

azitnay

05-13-2006, 10:46 PM

mfsadd does indeed differ from BlessTiVo, in that it requires both drives be present (essentially, mfsadd marries the two drives on the spot, and BlessTiVo sets it up so that the TiVo will marry the drives upon startup).

I remember WeaKnees reporting problems with BlessTiVo in recent times (causing them to at least temporarily halt the sale of "add" kits), but I believe I've seen a post since then indicating that the problem was resolved somehow (admittedly, I haven't kept up as much around here as I used to).

Drew

tkorpus

05-14-2006, 02:06 AM

I apologize if this is not the correct place for this post or if this has already been addressed, but I have searched and can't seem to find the answer. Here goes...

I have 2 Hughs SD-DVR80 units that I purchased from Weaknees. At the time of purchase I had them add a second 80GB drive to each unit resulting in 160GB (140 hours) per unit. Now I would like to replace both drives in each unit with 250GB drives (4 total) and keep my previously recorded shows.

I have found instructions in the Weaknees interactive guide and on Hinsdale for upgrading a 2 drive unit to 2 larger drives while preserving previously recorded shows, but it is unclear if this will work for a 2 drive unit that did not start out with 2 drives. I realize that this will require the use of all 4 IDE ports leaving nowhere to connect the CD-drive. The instructions suggest using an MFStools 2.0 floppy which I downloaded and tried to use, but the new drives were only detected as 137GB instead of 250GB. When I performed a backup of my 2 original drives, I used 1 of the new 250GB drives and MFStools on the CD. The CD version of MFStools properly detected the full 250GB drive.

Is there something wrong with the floppy version of MFStools? Am I missing a step somewhere?

cvbishop

05-15-2006, 10:23 AM

Hello,

I'm searching through the forums now for an answer but am not finding anything. Thought it would just be quicker to ask.

I've got a Phillips DSR7000 DirecTivo. I added a second drive to it a couple of years ago when I got it but I'm now trying to replace the two drives with a much larger single drive.

The instructions say:

What about two drive to one drive situations? Will that work as well? Will I be able to save my shows?

Thanks.
Hey...I'm in the same boat you described, but I don't see any direct replies to your post. Did you get help and succeed in the replacement? Thanks, Carl

johnmsch

05-15-2006, 04:43 PM

LarryInAz

05-15-2006, 04:59 PM

I don't see an option for my upgrade scenario. I had added a second drive (bought the kit from you guys) a couple of years ago, and now want to upgrade my main drive from the original 40G to something larger. After selecting my model (24004A), the next step has 3 options: Add a drive, Replace with one drive, Replace with 2 drives. Seems like there should be another option, such as "Replace one existing drive with a new larger drive"???

Thx

The two drives in your unit now are married to each other. You can't simply replace one of two drives. If you want to save the programming thats on the TWO drives you can but it is going be very time consuming and more challenging since you'd be dealing with 4 hard drives and one cd or dvd drive that you'd boot up from.

johnmsch

05-16-2006, 10:26 AM

The two drives in your unit now are married to each other. You can't simply replace one of two drives. If you want to save the programming thats on the TWO drives you can but it is going be very time consuming and more challenging since you'd be dealing with 4 hard drives and one cd or dvd drive that you'd boot up from.

Larry,

Time consuming and challenging I can handle! Been programming computers for longer than I care to remember, and have built about a dozen PCs over the years, so the technical part of this doesn't bother me. I'm just very rusty with Linux, and never took the time to research the structure of the drives/partitions the TiVo kernel uses. And yes, I do want to save the programming.

By "4 hard drives", I'm assuming you mean that I'll have to copy the current A/B drives to the new A/B drives? Even though I wasn't planning on replacing my current B drive, if there is no other way, I might as well do that one too. Another assumption on my part would be that the drives would be setup something like this?:
hda - Primary Master - Current "A" drive
hdb - Primary Slave - Current "B" drive
hdc - Secondary Master - New "A" drive
hdd - Secondary Slave - New "B" drive

If that is the case, then what would I need to do to copy the drives, and then make all the new space available?

Thank You!
John

HomeUser

05-16-2006, 10:49 AM

Not sure if it will work you might try
Binary copy using Linux cp or dd the original TiVo 'A' drive to the new larger drive.
Test in the TiVo with both the new (unexpanded) 'A' drive + 'B' drive just to be sure there are no unexpected problems.
with both the new 'A' and 'B' drive in the PC use the MFSAdd command to expand the 'A' drive.

Mfsadd options from thread New MFS Tools features, and a question (http://archive2.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=2651877&&#post2651877)
MFS Add
-x / -r
Same thing they do with restore.

-X
Expand only on one of the drives. For example, expand only the A drive or only the (Possibly new) B drive.

There was a bug in MFS Tools 2 where if you tried to create partitions on a new drive by hand and add them with mfsadd naming the partitions instead of using -x or -X, mfsadd would try and initialize the partition table because it's a new drive, then wouldn't find the partitions. (It doesn't actually initialize the partition table on the disk, just it's data structures.)

JamieP

05-16-2006, 11:21 AM

Time consuming and challenging I can handle!It's not that bad. If your A drive is still the original disk, it should have two partitions slots left for expansion. You should verify this by running "pdisk -l" on it. The last ("Apple_free Extra") partition should be #14. If it is, your in good shape. If it is not, it's probably #16, and you are out of partition slots.

Assuming you have two remaining partition slots on the A disk, you can dd (image copy) your old 40GB drive onto a new larger drive. You'll then have to put your new A and the old B drive in the PC together and run "mfs_add -x /dev/hdX /dev/hdY" (with appropriate X and Y) to expand the new A drive to fill the free capacity. You may have to update the partition table to reflect the full disk size as described here (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=629559&&#post629559). Ignore the recommendation there to use Kazymyr's boot CD: use a current lba48 boot CD instead.

[I guess I smeeked HomeUser.]

newsposter

05-16-2006, 01:07 PM

johnmsch

05-16-2006, 02:14 PM

Thanks to HomeUser and JamieP. I'll be getting a new drive in a few days, and will give one or both of your suggestions a try. Of course, I'll be doing a full backup of the drives first!!!!!!!!!

John

LastPlace

05-16-2006, 09:06 PM

The PTVupgrade CD includes tpip version 1.1, as far as I can recall (but you're most likely using the WeaKnees CD).

You can download 1.2 from:

http://www.courtesan.com/tivo/tpip.html

Drew

Can anyone help?!

I'm upgrading (trying to anyway) my Series 1 SVR-2000 from its original 30GB hard drive to a 300GB.

After InstantCake didn't work for me I went back to mfsbackup | mfsrestore and successfully got to

New estimated standalone size: 147 hours (117 more)

Based upon what I've read, I need the TPIP to use the full 300GB but when I try to unzip it I get header errors at "0".

Any suggestions on another way to get it or can you let me know what I might be doing wrong? I've tried downloading it and then unzipping it and when that didn't work I tried just opening it - it was much faster but the same error occured.

Thanx!

azitnay

05-16-2006, 09:21 PM

What boot CD are you using? Sounds like it's not LBA48-aware, which means you'll only be able to utilize the first 137GB of the drive (147 hours sounds about right).

Beyond that, since your SVR-2000's stock kernel isn't LBA48-aware, either, you'll need to look into copykern to replace the kernel.

The following boot CD might be your best bet (I think it might even come with copykern):

http://www.ptvupgrade.com/products/software/lba48/index.html

Drew

LastPlace

05-16-2006, 10:01 PM

Thanx Drew!

So, now I've downloaded the file you recommended (the free version), copied it to CD, booted the TiVo old PC, did mountcd and done copykern. I went through the process answering the questions and put the kernel on my hdc which is where my new TiVo drive is.

I'm at the PTVupgrade /# prompt.

With all the gyrations I've gone through I've managed to get myself confused:

So, am I all set, or am I supposed to go back and re-do mfsbackup | mfsrestore?

Thank you for your patience with my convoluted confusion :)

azitnay

05-16-2006, 10:34 PM

You definitely need to use MFS Tools to expand beyond the first 137GB. You could try:

mfsadd -x /dev/hdc

However, if you're out of partitions, you'll most likely have to re-do the mfsbackup | mfsrestore.

Drew

LastPlace

05-17-2006, 08:57 PM

:) DONE :)

Thank You! THANK YOU!!

tkorpus

05-17-2006, 09:20 PM

HomeUser

05-17-2006, 09:43 PM

I searched and I have not found an LBA48 boot Floppy with MFSTools. I boot Linux from a SCSI drive others have used USB drives.

If your 'A' drive has been expanded you will not be able to expand 2 drives to 2 drives because of a limit on the max number of partitions the 'A' Drive can only be expanded once keeping the recordings.

tkorpus

05-17-2006, 09:48 PM

Would it be possible to boot from one of the new disks that I will be restoring to?

HomeUser

05-18-2006, 01:00 AM

No, The boot disk would be locked. Do you have a bootable USB port? There are versions of Linux that boot from a USB Thumb Drive.

azitnay

05-18-2006, 12:32 PM

If you're just trying to move from two old drives to two new drives for whatever reason, as long as the new drives are as big or bigger than the old drives, you could first hook up the old A and new A drives and perform a dd copy, then hook up the old B and new B drives and perform a dd copy, and you should end up with a working new pair of drives.

After that, you could try to hook up the new drives and mfsadd -x to expand, but if you're out of partitions, you'll be out of luck there.

Drew

newsposter

05-18-2006, 01:39 PM

thanks for explaining why it worked for me.

tkorpus

05-18-2006, 06:20 PM

After that, you could try to hook up the new drives and mfsadd -x to expand, but if you're out of partitions, you'll be out of luck there.

Drew

When you say out of partitions do you mean for the drive pair or on an individual basis?

tkorpus

05-18-2006, 06:25 PM

No, The boot disk would be locked. Do you have a bootable USB port? There are versions of Linux that boot from a USB Thumb Drive.

My computer does have USB ports on the mother board, but I checked the bios and USB is not one of the options in the boot list so I am assuming that I can't boot from a USB port.

I have seen mention of people adding a second controller to connect more than 4 IDE devices...will this work for what I am trying to do? If so, do I need a special controller? Does it matter which devices go on which controller? Do I need to do anything special to access the devices on the additional controller?

azitnay

05-18-2006, 08:13 PM

When you say out of partitions do you mean for the drive pair or on an individual basis?

Each drive has a set limit of partitions (I don't know how many offhand)... But typically, once you expand a specific drive, you can't expand it again wthout starting over.

Drew

HomeUser

05-18-2006, 08:20 PM

Tkorpus, I think Azitnay's plan is the easiest dd (image copy) one drive at a time that way you only need 3 IDE ports. Then you can expand the drive(s) with mfsadd.

Yes you can use an add on controller to get the extra EIDE ports the PTV upgrade CD has the drivers for the Promise Ultra100 card. See this archived thread (http://archive2.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=3055345&&#post3055345)

tkorpus

05-18-2006, 08:38 PM

Thanks HomeUser. Is that correct, what Drew said about not expanding a previously expanded drive, becasuse I thought I've seen people talke about doing that as long as the two new drives were larger than the original two?

azitnay

05-19-2006, 09:53 AM

Hard to say for sure... It's certainly worth a shot, but I wouldn't get your hopes up.

Drew

tkorpus

05-19-2006, 05:06 PM

Thanks for the help guys, I appreciate your replies.

azitnay

06-03-2006, 05:22 PM

Sounds to me like you probably burned the .ISO as a file to a data CD, and also used your burning software to make it a bootable CD (booting into DR-DOS).

Instead, you need to burn the .ISO as a disc image. Most if not all burning software supports this.

Drew

tkorpus

06-04-2006, 03:00 PM

Please help.

I never got a response to my earlier post (#866 of this thread). Basically, I have a 2 drive box that Weaknees had expanded from 1 drive to 2 at the time of purchase. Now, I would like to replace both drives with 2 larger drives that exceed 137GB while preserving my recordings. Is there an lba48 aware floppy availible since I will be using all 4 IDE slots with hard drives leaving no room for a CD? Are there any other options for performing this upgrade?

Thanks.

I would just like to post an update for everyone's information.

I obtained a Promise Ultra 100 controller card, added it to my system and updated its bios giving me a total capacity of 8 IDE devices. I was then able to expand both of my already expanded systems from 2 80GB drives in each to 2 250GB drives in each and keep all of my shows. This worked without any hitches useing the latest PTV disk. This disk also now includes the latest TPIP version 1.2.

Thanks again for all of the help.

Sawblade

06-07-2006, 07:04 PM

I have the Humax Tivo with the DVD (DRT800) and decided to upgrade it from a 300gb Maxtor drive to the new Seagate 750gb drive using the Weaknees Interactive Guide.

I had used the interactive guide previously to go from the original 80gb drive to the 300gb Maxtor with no problems. This time I have some recordings (140gb worth) that I need to transfer over and I get an error message saying that the target drive is not large enough and the upgrade fails. I have checked the size and it is properly reported when I boot Linux, so I must be doing something wrong.

Command String:

mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hda | mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -xzpi - /dev/hdb

the old drive is primary master and the new (target) drive is primary slave

Just for fun, I tried doing it without transferring programs and it works like a charm so is there some size limit in the backup restore process that does not recognize the large drive?

There are about 140 gb of shows to transfer and they "should" fit easily, but have tried twice now and no luck. I will transfer using the network if no one has any ideas on how to get around this.

Thanks so much for any help you may provide!

Sawblade

HomeUser

06-07-2006, 07:34 PM

Sorry bad news. There is limit of the total number of partitions. You cannot upgrade an all-ready upgraded drive and keep the recordings.

Your options are
- Copy the drive without expanding.
- Make a "shrunk" copy without recordings then expand to fill the drive.
- use the new drive as a 'B' drive.

Of corse there are always exceptions there are reports of some tech savvy users using disk tools and binary editors to manually copy and modify the partitions.

MadHookUp

06-10-2006, 06:57 PM

I bought a modded Tivo off ebay a couple years ago. Its a Phillips HDR 212. The Tivo came with an 80gig HD and an Ethernet addition. It also has the Lifetime service attached.

All the instructions I read keep telling me to back up my old hard drive. I tried the weakness instructions and marked that I am not backing anything up and it still tells me I need to hook up my old drive. Are there any instructions for my situation?

Also, do I need special drivers for my ethernet card? I think its one of those Turbonet things.

azitnay

06-11-2006, 11:42 AM

While you didn't explictly state what you're trying to do, I assume you're trying to replace the hard drive... Whether or not you make a backup, you still need the old drive connected so you can copy the software to the new drive. I'm guessing the WeaKnees instructions were telling you the right thing.

Drew

Trinergy

06-25-2006, 11:54 PM

I am trying to add a Seagate ST3300831A (300GB) drive to a Series 2 540040. My Tivo original drive is "hda" (primary master), and the new drive is "hdb". I am not backing up the original just want to add the new space of the drive. I used to configurator and it gave me the command "mfsadd -r 4 -x /dev/hdX /dev/hdZ" where I replaced X with a and Z with b. I was expecting to see a result with the new space added but it just brings me to another # prompt and nothing happens. Just in case I put the drives back in the Tivo booted it up and it only saw the original 40GB. I have looked at other guides and used slightly different commands but to no avail. The drives are being reported with the correct sizes when the linux kernal is booting.

As I was researching the problem I saw that the swap file needs to be enlarged. I am ok with losing all of my recordings but does this lose my settings as well? If not what should I do using this the Weaknees CD to make it work most effectively? Thanks in advance.

azitnay

06-26-2006, 12:42 PM

Nothing gets printed at all? What happens when you simply type:

mfsadd

with no parameters? Do you see the usage info?

Aside from that, I wouldn't recommend adding a 300GB drive by simply mfsadd'ing, due to the swap issue. As the first step, I'd recommend using WeaKnees' "Replace with One Drive" instructions to replace the 40GB with the new 300GB (you'll be able to add swap, keep your settings, and even keep your recordings if you'd like).

If you really want to, you can add the 40GB drive as a second drive after performing the replacement step (of course, this will require a working mfsadd). However, I'd recommend just sticking with the single 300GB drive, and thus avoiding a two-drive setup.

Drew

Killerz298

06-29-2006, 10:35 PM

I am going to do an upgrade of my friend's TCD540080. I am going to replace the drive he currently has in it with a new 300gb Maxtor PATA. He wants to keep the recordings and hopefully the season passes. Are the instructions listed at http://tivo.upgrade-instructions.com good for this model? Will the full amount of the 300gb drive be able to be used by the tivo? Will the season passes be saved as well as the recordings?

About how long should the process take? The original drive is about 60% full.

azitnay

06-30-2006, 03:33 PM

Yes, if you follow those instructions correctly, the entire drive will be used, and all settings and recordings will be saved.

The time it takes seems to vary wildly according to past posts on these forums. Anywhere from several hours to over a day.

Drew

Killerz298

06-30-2006, 04:30 PM

Wow! I don't see why it would take more than a few hours, it is only copying like not even 80gb of data over IDE. Very odd, but thanks for the info, I want his upgrade to go smoothly.

VOLFAN

07-02-2006, 09:18 PM

Wow! I don't see why it would take more than a few hours, it is only copying like not even 80gb of data over IDE. Very odd, but thanks for the info, I want his upgrade to go smoothly.

I just completed upgrading my Series 2 40hr with a Maxtor 300gb / 16mb and all went smooth. (From the install link you posted earlier.) Yeah!

Also, my backup took a little over an hour.

Be sure to read the guide carefully and take your time. The only problem I ran into was placing the jumper(s) on Cap Limit instead of Slave. Other than that... smooth as silk.

Let me know if I can help. :)

Volfan
<><

Knyte

07-04-2006, 04:44 PM

Forgive me if this is the wrong thread...I've searched and this seems the most relevant place. If not, please correct/direct me :)

OK I bought a Series 1 TiVo (Phillips HDR31204) last year. Been using it as a dumb VCR until this weekend. Got a CacheCard, and two 250 GB's as an upgrade project. This TiVo has been worked on already, as I found a Seagate 80 GB in it. It had software 3.0, telnet, bash, and tivoftp.

I've been reading heavily, of course, and realize how leery some are about dual drives...but these are brand new with a 5 yr warranty. Really not worried. I've made a couple of images of the original (well, the Seagate 80 GB) TiV0 drive, so if one fails, no big deal, I can recover and get it going without much fuss. So, I'm willing to take the risk(?) in favour of more storage. Oh yes, I'll be using that storage.

OK so - CacheCard install went well. It's networked very well at the moment.

Then came the dual 250 GB's. Not so successful. As of this moment I have one installed (w/300 MB swap, initialized, in anticipation of the 2nd drive), and working well, but could not get the pair to work. I tried a direct backup / restore from the original to the two new ones, as well as a restore from the image. Both methods resulted in the same thing: no TiVo :( It displays Please Wait While Tivo Starts (or something similar) but does not advance to the CacheCard progress screen. I even tried to bless the B drive (boot CD had an LBA48 compatible kernel), however the confirmation message says 127 GB added (not 250). Looks like BlessTiVo won't work on large drives, hence mfsadd?

To recap: Installed CacheCard (256 MB SDRAM was all I had on hand) and drivers.
Attempted to install / upgrade drives - backup OK, mfsrestore to both drives as a pair, and patched the kernel for LBA48 support, all OK, but TiVo would not boot. Tried mfsrestore to one drive, patch the kernel for LBA48, and TiVo boots. Tried mfsadd, TiVo then is in a reboot loop.

The interactive guide (as well as information from here and other sources) is very straightorward and concise, I'm sure I've followed the directions correctly (several times in fact).

I've read in here that some TiVo's don't like dual drives and have an issue with the drives' spin up requirements. To rule that out, I tried booting the TiVo with both drives' Molex connector (power) connected, but just the A drive connected to the IDE ribbon. Boots fine. Re-image both drives as a pair, patch kernel, plug both back into the TiVo, and no boot.

In the mfsrestore and mfsadd commands, I noticed the Weaknees interactive guide recommends the -r 4 switch, with no mention of drive sizes, yet in these forums I've seen it suggested that -r 4 be used when any single drive is > 300 GB. Think this is related? I have been including the -r 4 switch so far where required / suggested.

Thank you in advance for reading my post! I've left out the commands used unless someone wants them.

EDIT - looks as though no two Seagate 7200.9's in a TiVo will work, reasons unknown. Likely NOT a power supply issue.

2nd EDIT - Have swapped out one of the Seagates for a WD of identical size. Works like a champ...640 hrs @ Basic.

So that confirms it - dual 7200.9's (in my case) do NOT work, and it's NOT a power supply issue. Gotta be a firmware incompatibility somewhere.

flava

07-09-2006, 12:22 AM

Hi

I have already successfully upgraded a HR10-250 to the original 250gb drive and a second 300gb drive, so I'm not a total newbie, however, that was close to 2 years ago and I don't remember everything I've done nor was I ever clear on it.

So, now I just got another brand new HR10-250 and I want to immediately upgrade it to dual 500gb drives. I don't want to copy anything on the original drive, other than make a backup of it, which I have already done. I am going to post my steps and please tell me if they are correct or something else needs to be done. Last time I upgraded I used the Hinsdale instructions, I plan on trying the Weaknees instructions and CD, but even after reading for a couple afternoons, I have never seen this scenario exactly laid out.

1) I connect
hda - primary master - FAT32 partition
hdb - primary slave - new 500gb (1)
hdc - secondary master - original 250gb Tivo drive
hdd - secondary slave - CD-ROM

2) boot to CD

3) mount /dev/hda1 /mnt

4) Backup existing Tivo:
mfsbackup -f 9999 -1so /mnt/backup.bak /dev/hdc

5) This is where I get confused. Do I want to disconnect the original 250gb Tivo drive and connect both 500 gb drives now? If so I would have:
hda - primary master - FAT32 partition
hdb - primary slave - new 500gb (1)
hdc - secondary master - new 500gb (2)
hdd - secondary slave - CD-ROM

6) If I have both 500gb drives connected now, I run:
mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -zxpi /mnt/backup.bak /dev/hdb /dev/hdc
I have read that the -s should really be 500 for 1000gb of disk space, but I'm confused that the -s won't work for 500, and that somehow I have to use tpip, but I can't figure out when or how to do this.
I've also read that I shouldn't expand the drive right away, and that I should just use -zi, and expand it later some other way. I originally used BlessTivo to do this on my original upgrade, but once again I've not sure how I did this or where I even found this utility. Since I am upgrading to dual 500gb drives, I am unsure whether I expand first or TPIP or BlessTivo later or what, so if someone can explain this to me it would really help.

After that, not really sure what to do. So if someone could please let me know what to do to get these drives working properly, I'd greatly appreciate it!

THANKS!

mikieminnow

07-17-2006, 11:45 AM

I just upgraded from the original 40 GB to a WD 300 GB drive. My 40 GB was crashing while trying to access recorded programs, now no problem. This could not have been easier!!

TravisT

07-19-2006, 11:08 PM

SystemJinx

07-19-2006, 11:58 PM

I just replaced the 120GB hard drive in my Toshiba RS-TX20 with a Western Digital 320GB drive. It was almost painless with your detailed instructions and boot CD.

Thank you WeaKnees. :up:

azitnay

07-20-2006, 09:44 AM

I have an HR10-250 (250 GB) with a failing harddrive. Prior to removing the harddrive the Tivo would lockup at various times. I've also booted Windows XP with the drive connected in order to run diagnostics on it. I now know I shouldn't have done that because the boot sector will get messed up, however the diagnostics did show SMART errors. I just ordered a WD3200JB (320 GB) drive to replace it.

Can I still use the upgrade procedure to prepare the new drive, and possibly even transfer some of my saved programs? Would the bad boot sector and corruped programs get copied to the new drive?

I guess if I can't copy from one drive to another I'll need to download an image. Right?

Since your drive is failing, your mileage will vary with respect to being able to image your new drive with its contents. However, if MFS Tools 2.0 is able to pull a valid image (with or without recordings) off the old drive, the fact that you booted into Windows XP should have no affect on the process.

Drew

andydumi

07-20-2006, 10:29 AM

i have a tivo series2 40 hour now. i also have 2 80gig harddrives laying around. if i follow the instructions, to replace the one existing drive with 2 new ones, then i dont really need a backup correct? as my original 40 will still contain a "backup" image.

supasta

07-20-2006, 10:24 PM

Correct.

ottergoose

07-22-2006, 03:12 PM

I've read that this takes a long time... but it's taken so long so far that I'm a bit concerned... the step with "mfsbackup -Tao .... | mfsrestore ... -xzpi - dev/hdZ" has been going for 39 hours on my DirecTV R10 80 GB drive / new Seagate 320 GB drive. The screen says "Scanning source drive. Please wait a moment."

When should I be concerned that I'm going to have to start over here? What's the longest it has ever taken for drives of this size? Thanks.

magnus

07-22-2006, 03:41 PM

Yep, that would be true. However, I'd make a backup anyway. I like to copy it to another drive on my system and then burn to CD rom. From then on all you would need to do is use the cdrom ever you new drives ever crashed for some reason (of course it's only a backup of the software and not any of tthe movies that were recorded).

i have a tivo series2 40 hour now. i also have 2 80gig harddrives laying around. if i follow the instructions, to replace the one existing drive with 2 new ones, then i dont really need a backup correct? as my original 40 will still contain a "backup" image.

ottergoose

07-23-2006, 01:42 AM

The screen says "Scanning source drive. Please wait a moment."

Alright... after 50 hours I gave up on it, pulled out the drives, and checked the jumpers. Unfortunately, I missed "Master" and "Master w/ Slave Present" being separate options... After getting that taken care of, I restarted the process and now I've got a message telling me the status (up to 1.78% now) of the restoration process.

Kudos to those that have worked on these tools and this forum, it's an excellent resource.

SonyTiVoLover

07-23-2006, 02:53 PM

Quick question:

I have an older Hughes dual tuner non-HD TiVo (The HDVR2 I believe) that I've already explanded with two 200GB drives. I'd like to replace those drives with two 500GB drives AND retain all my recorded programs, as well as season passes, etc. Most instructions I've used just backup everything EXCEPT the recorded programs.

Since 400GB worth of recorded programs would make a pretty large backup file, is there a procudure for putting both old drives and both new drives into a PC and transferring everything from the old set directly to the new set (without making a "backup file")?

Thanks for the assistance!

fotoryder

07-23-2006, 04:37 PM

Just a quick thanks for the upgrade instrucions. I just upgraded my Series-2 540 40 hour Tivo to a 300 GB Maxtor drive. The upgrade probably took about 15-30 minutes, copy and restore the image from the 40 GB drive to the 300 GB drive.We didn't save any ofthe recordings, I'd been copying the stuff I wanted save with TIVO Desktop.

It was easy to follow the instructions, but be sure to read the explanation of the parameters on the mfsbackup and mfsrestore commands.

gregm

07-26-2006, 03:42 PM

I'm copying from a 160 GB HD to a 200 GB HD, preserving recordings. This is an older upgrade, so it's only using 137 GB on the source. It's been sitting at 99.97% complete for at least 2 hours now. Before that, the percentage was going up about 0.01% per second. I know it says that it may take a long time, but it seems a bit odd for the last 0.03% to take longer than the first 99.97%. Does this sound normal to anyone? Should I pull the plug and start again (shudder)?

gregm

07-26-2006, 05:54 PM

After another hour, I killed it, and started again.

HomeUser

07-26-2006, 06:05 PM

What command are you using?

jkast

07-27-2006, 12:58 AM

I successfully installed a second (500mb) drive (mating it with the original 250mb drive per the Weaknees instructions) and the twin breeze bracket in my hr10-250 last summer. Everything has continued to work well since. Now I have the desire to go bigger yet, maybe by replacing the original 250mb drive with a now much more affordable 500mb drive (I would end up with 2 500mb drives in the box). I usually use Windows XP, so would want to boot from the Weaknees CD... Can this be done? It is not obvious to me that it can.

pablo1234

07-27-2006, 02:08 AM

I have a series 2 box with a 40gb hard drive which is dying. I have another on the way that I purchased on e-bay for $41 + shipping. Would like to replace dying hard drive to put into my bedroom, but how do you do it? Do you need any software? Is it plug & play? So far, this website seems a bit cumbersome and not a lot of answers. Please help.

grins

07-27-2006, 05:35 PM

Thanks in advance for even looking. I'm hoping y'all can help me :)

Short Version and Questions

1) I've got a 2-disk HDTiVo that's been crashing lately. With the console log showing disk errors, I ran the disk-manufacturer full-surface scan on the disk TiVo said was the problem, which found no errors. I used dd_rescue to copy the entire drive to another device, and that reported no read errors. Is the next step to mfsbackup drives A & B to another device, low-level format the A drive, then mfsrestore? I've got a spare 250GB disk, and I hope I've deleted enough stuff from the HDTiVo to make the full backup fit on that. If so, I think I do the backup like

mfsbackup -ao /dev/hda/bigbackup.bak /dev/hdX /dev/hdY

2) If backup-wipe-restore is a valid plan, I know I should increase my swap space, is there anything else I should do? I think the right command to do a basic restore is:

mfsrestore -s 300 -zpi /dev/hda/bigbackup.bak /dev/hdX /dev/hdY
./tpip -1 -s /dev/hdX

3) Should I also try to decrease the partition count? A is up to 16, B is up to 6. What about trying to recombine the 2 drives to a single--presuming there's space, is that even possible? If I'm trying to divorce the two drives, the restore command might be

mfsrestore -s 150 -zpli /dev/hda/bigbackup.bak /dev/hdX /dev/hdY
./tpip -1 -s /dev/hdX

Thanks again. I'd love to get the old dog humming again before the fall season starts. ;)

More Details

I've had my HDTivo for a long time. Somewhere along the way I Zippered it. Love it :) Long ago I added a 160 GB B drive. A while ago, the B drive started acting up, and since I now had an instant cake image, I decided to use the original kept-on-a-shelf 250GB HDTiVo drive for the B. Within just a few months, the B drive started acting up again, so I swapped the old A drive, a 250GB, into the B drive and replaced the A drive with a 300GB drive.

Now, though, the new 300 is giving me issues. I can hear clicks just before re-boots, and if the stars align I can be monitoring the console log and see drive not ready errors or seek errors on hda before it crashes. Since I got the 300GB by buying it in a USB enclosure, I can't just do a swap with Maxtor, I'd have to go through joe's discount parts, who knows if I'd get a new drive back. Therefore, I'd like to try wiping the 300 before going through a return process. Can I draw any conclusions from the successful full-surface scan and no errors from dd_rescue reading off the device? Does that mean the errors are logical errors in the mfs structure, not hardware errors on the drive?

As I said above, I get some errors in the boot log, here's the relevant snippet:

Found rev 'F' Si2433 modem on /dev/cua1
Cleanup /dev/hda9 pass 1
ext2fs_check_if_mount: No such file or directory while determining whether /dev/hda9 is mounted.
/dev/hda9 was not cleanly unmounted, check forced.
Inode 2052, i_blocks wrong 28 (counted=22). Set i_blocks to counted? yes

Inode 2059, i_blocks wrong 24 (counted=16). Set i_blocks to counted? yes

Inode 2061, i_blocks wrong 16 (counted=14). Set i_blocks to counted? yes

Inode 2050, i_blocks wrong 56 (counted=48). Set i_blocks to counted? yes

Inode 2056, i_blocks wrong 242 (counted=238). Set i_blocks to counted? yes

Inode 4122, i_blocks wrong 16 (counted=8). Set i_blocks to counted? yes

Inode 4119, i_blocks wrong 544 (counted=490). Set i_blocks to counted? yes

Inode 4120, i_blocks wrong 208 (counted=186). Set i_blocks to counted? yes

Inode 4121, i_blocks wrong 128 (counted=106). Set i_blocks to counted? yes

Block 1313821194 of inode 4123 > BLOCKS (131072)

/dev/hda9: UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY; RUN fsck MANUALLY.
(i.e., without -a or -p options)
Cleanup /dev/hda9 pass 2
ext2fs_check_if_mount: No such file or directory while determining whether /dev/hda9 is mounted.
/dev/hda9 contains a file system with errors, check forced.
Block 1313821194 of inode 4123 > BLOCKS (131072)

/dev/hda9: UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY; RUN fsck MANUALLY.
(i.e., without -a or -p options)
Can't clean /dev/hda9 - rebuilding
mke2fs 1.06, 7-Oct-96 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09
ext2fs_check_if_mount: No such file or directory while determining whether /dev/hda9 is mounted.
Linux ext2 filesystem format
Filesystem label=
32768 inodes, 131072 blocks
6553 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=1
Block size=1024 (log=0)
Fragment size=1024 (log=0)
16 block groups
8192 blocks per group, 8192 fragments per group
2048 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
8193, 16385, 24577, 32769, 40961, 49153, 57345, 65537, 73729,
81921, 90113, 98305, 106497, 114689, 122881

Checking for bad blocks (read-only test): 0/ 131072 18064/
131072 36688/ 131072 55280/
131072 73872/ 131072 91632/
131072 109088/ 131072 126752/
131072done
Writing inode tables: 0/ 16 1/ 16 2/ 16 3/
16 4/ 16 5/ 16 6/ 16 7/ 16
8/ 16 9/ 16 10/ 16 11/ 16 12/
16 13/ 16 14/ 16 15/ 16done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done
Mounting /var to rebuild it
warning: can't open /var/mtab: No such file or directory
Mounting /var
/dev/hda9 on /var type ext2 (rw)
Cleaning up /var/mtab...
Using default TIVO_SVR_ADDR
Mounting initial environment...
Loading input section drivers
cobra module was successfully installed, LNBPA 0x10 LNBPB 0x12
Cleaning up temporary files in /var/tmp and /var/run
Cleaning up old slices and bundles in /var/packages...
Checking space in /var
Found Silicon Labs "Si2433" modem, rev F, skipping modem patch
Scanning for phase1 repair scripts
Initializing TiVo extension...

and it goes on from there. The Inode stuff I'm used to, I'm ass-uming that's just because it crashed, but I've never seen the UNEXPECTED messages or the superblock stuff, or the bad block tests.

Anyway, thanks for your help and ideas--I'm tired of being without my HDTiVo. I know this is a novel, and if you've made it all the way down here, I owe you a beer :D

morsadean

08-01-2006, 09:54 AM

I just used the WeaKnees Interactive Online TiVo Upgrade Instructions to upgrade my failing 80 gb hard drive to a 160 gb drive. Everything went smoothly. The instructions are perfect.

The one issue I had was related to the linux code (which I know nothing about). When I tried typing in the command line "mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hda | mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -xzpi - /dev/hdb", I kept getting a keyboard error. I Googled the error and someone suggested typing "dumpkeys" or "loadkeys", which worked like a charm.

Overall, it took roughly 8 hours. I wanted to preserve the shows I had recorded (12 hours at best quality). I assume that it would have been quicker with less shows or none at all.

mgswed

08-01-2006, 10:54 AM

Hopefully someone can help me. I tried doing a search but here goes. I am upgrading a series 2 tivo 40 hour to 160GB and when i try to mount the drive it says its read only. Thanks for any help. -MG

azitnay

08-01-2006, 10:58 AM

Are you attempting to mount your Windows drive, in order to store a backup image on it? If so, your Windows drive is probably NTFS, which means you will only be able to mount it readonly under Linux, and will thus have to find another target for your backup image.

Drew

mgswed

08-01-2006, 11:09 AM

I used a win98 boot disk to make my new 160 drive Fat32 and want to mount it in order to make a back up, then transfer the backup to the NTFS drive later. Any Ideas?

DavePurz

08-02-2006, 05:17 AM

I've seen a lot of messages on Swap File Size greater than 127 for large Hard Drives but I have the opposite question . . .

I'm replacing a failing drive in a Hughes SD-DVR40 with a new 80 GB drive. Should I set the swap file option in mfsrestore to -s 40?

Half the GB size of the Hard Drive, right?

azitnay

08-02-2006, 08:58 AM

No real reason to bump it down from 127MB... The extra 87MB aren't going to result in any noticeable amount of extra recording space.

Drew

DavePurz

08-02-2006, 02:40 PM

Thanks.

I've been reading these boards for a couple of years and done MRV, etc. to a half-dozen units but hadn't had to do a hard drive change-out (saving recordings) until recently and all the chatter was for LARGE drives and swap files.

Maybe, in the future, some kind person will condense what we've learned on this topic and add it to one of the stickies as a simple "how-to".

Thanks again!

--Dave

bodjie

08-05-2006, 07:07 PM

I'm trying to replace my 80-hour drive to a bigger one but am having problems. I need some help from the knowledgeble people on this board.
I keep getting these messages when my restore gets to about 80% or so:

/dev/hdb110 no such file or directory
/dev/hdb/111 no such file or directory
/dev/hdb/112 no such file or directory
/dev/hdb113 no such file or directory

I have a DirecTV R10 and did a backup of the image to a FAT drive using the following:
hdb = Original 80-hour drive from DirecTV R10
hda = 40 gig FAT drive
mfsbackup -f 9999 -1so /mnt/backup.bak /dev/hdb1

All went well on this. I shutdown and then disconnected the original DirecTV R10 drive and plugged-in my 120 gig drive in its place making sure the Master/Slave jumpers were the same. I booted off the CD and try to do the restore using the following:
hdb = New 120-gig drive
hda = 40 gig FAT drive
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt
mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -zxpi /mnt/backup.bak /dev/hda1

It started chugging along until it got past 80% and gave me that message about /dev/hdb110 up to hdb113 no such file or directory.

I also tried to do the backup and restore in one shot but got the same message:
hdb = Original 80-hour drive from DirecTV R10
hda = New 120-gig drive
mfsbackup -f 9999 -so - /dev/hdb | mfrestore -s 127 -r 4 -xzpi /dev/hda1

Can someone please tell me what I might be doing wrong? Any help is appreciated.

tcooper1561

08-06-2006, 05:44 AM

I am attempting to upgrade a TCD140060 with a 250gb Maxtor Quickview drive and I am having a problem using the WeaKnees software. I have my new drive (fat 32 single 250gb partition) on the secondary slave the old Tivo drive on primary slave and my CD/DVD drive is on secondary master.
When I boot the PC from the weaknees.iso disk and hit enter at the "boot:" prompt and the software finds the drives on the following: old Tivo drive = J, CD drive = K, and new drive = L (all show the proper make and size). It shows hda, c, e & g as "no response" and as I said, hdj, k ,l as the proper drive. It does not show any hdb, d, or f at all.
At the "SH-2.5b#" prompt I typed: mount /dev/hdl1 /mnt and I get the error message "mount: mount point /mnt does not exist" If I try it from the "boot:" prompt I get "no such image. [tab] shows a list." I have also substituted the drive letter d for the secondary slave (mount /dev/hdd1 /mnt) with the same results. From everything I have read in this thread, nowhere have I seen the attached drives come up as anything other than a,b,c & d, so what's up with the j, k & l?

As you can tell I know nothing about Linux. What am I doing wrong???

Also, when and if I ever get a backup.bat made, can I just copy that file from the new 250gb (FAT 32) drive over to my regular WinXP NTFS C: drive on my PC as an archive, or does it need to be copied to a FAT 32 partition?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

wotan6

08-07-2006, 01:07 AM

When I boot the PC from the weaknees.iso disk and hit enter at the "boot:" prompt the software finds the drives on the following: old drive = J, CD drive = K, and new drive = L and all show the proper make and size. It shows hda, c, e & g as "no response" and as I said, hdj, k ,l as the proper drive. It does not show any hdb, d, or f at all.

Tcooper, I'm new here, but I did see a similar post where this behavior occurred in the presence of a PCI IDE card with 4 ports. Even when no drives were attached, the ports were allocated. Once the PCI card was removed, behavior was the usual hda, hdb, hdc, hdd or similar.

Anything unusual about your IDE setup?

tcooper1561

08-07-2006, 01:57 AM

There is no PCI controller other than what is on the mother board. There is however a memory card reader that in "my Computer" shows the different card slots as individual drive letters above D: and of course D: is the restore partition on the PC's factory drive. I belive that may explain the J K & L, but I'm not sure. I have disconnected the card reader from the mother board, but it still reacts the same way. I have also tried MFS Tools and get a similar but different error message.

wotan6

08-07-2006, 02:36 AM

This is long, but has a lot of useful info all in one place. Hope it helps.

Just finished successfully replacing a FAILING hard drive on my HR10-250 according to the interactive instructions mentioned in the first post of this thread. I replaced the failing OEM drive with a Maxtor 500GB 7200rpm ATA/133 , now Tivo's happy with 63 hrs HD / 426 hrs SD.

It was definitely a nail-biter though, so if you're thinking of doing this, here's what I learned after many hours of thread-searching:

1.) Don't buy a SATA drive! TIVO wants an ordinary IDE drive (also referred to as: ATA, PATA, ATA/133, or ULTRA-ATA ). Ultra-ATA (=ATA/133) would probably be best. I stayed away from the fastest 10,000rpm models due to noise and heat concerns. This 7200rpm is very quiet, and running at 47 Centigrade ("normal").

2.) These Interactive Tivo Upgrade Instructions are very good, and better kept up to date than others such as Hinsdale. These include the latest recommended -r 4 flag for drives larger than 300GB, so you'll get the full capacity of the new drive.

3.) For the HR10-250, you DON'T need L-shaped Torx keys, straight drivers are fine.

4.) The CD-ROM drive on your production machine MUST be bootable (mine wasn't, I had to swap in the one from my main XP machine). To be bootable, the CD drive itself must support it, as well as your BIOS. If the BIOS has settings for CD-ROM in the boot sequence, then you're OK on the BIOS side. There are no floppy based boot disks of MFStools that support large drives (lba48 support) - I looked.

5.) If you're making a backup of your Tivo (a good idea), MFStools must have a FAT32 partition to save it on. FAT(16) or NTFS won't do. My FAT32 partition was on the D: drive. The C: drive was FAT16. For some reason, I couldn't get MFStools to accept terms like hdc2 in place of hdc where applicable, to access the 2nd ( D: ) partition, even after using mkdir and mount commands as suggested in some posts. I ended up hosing the entire backup drive with fdisk from a WIN95 boot disk, which then created a single FAT32 partition for me. Then it worked.

6.) When the MFStools CD booted, I reviewed the data to ensure my drives were being recognized at full capacity - no problem. BUT, I got several scary-looking entries of "kmod: failed to exec". That didn't sound encouraging. Then I found a post that said you could probably ignore that. I did and came out OK, so apparently YOU CAN ignore that kmod garbage.

7.) Then, even scarier, during the final copy&restore phase, my failing Tivo drive caused at least a dozen "UncorrectableError" entries right off the bat, during the first 1/2 percent of progress. They were drive seek errors on certain sectors, probably the cause of the stuttering and slow menu problems that drove me to do this in the first place. Now I'm thinking I've got a BAD image, that I'm going to copy over to a brand new drive. Great. Well, if you get a few dozen "UncorrectableError" entries like I did, don't despair. Allow it to go to completion, but be prepared for...

8.) When Tivo booted up, he did the usual "Welcome, powering up", then "Almost there...", then WHAM! -- the dreaded GSOD, the Green Screen of Death: "A SEVERE ERROR HAS OCCURRED", etc. The Green screen says to wait at least 3 hours while Tivo tries to repair the problem. Searching the posts here yet again, I learned that the GSOD is Tivo's own Scandisk-type utility. After a couple hours of this, I went to my XP machine and downloaded Instant Cake in order to prepare a clean image (but lose all of my recordings and settings - an acceptable Plan B). As I'm in the other room I hear the TV blaring -- it's working! It's OK! The GSOD worked! It managed to handle those couple of dozen bad sectors in the bad image just fine.

End result: in spite of the litany of problems and errors above, I finally got NO STUTTERING, faster menus, and a single 500GB drive running perfectly. Settings and recordings appear to be all there, but I expect a few may be incomplete due to those bad sectors. So don't despair! Plod through it step by step and VICTORY will be yours!

-Doug

wotan6

08-07-2006, 02:49 AM

tcooper, it sounds like this is your main machine (running XP?). If so, you're braver than I am. Try to find an older WIN95 or WIN98 machine that somebody has in a closet. Ask around, every nerd has a few! And to think I almost threw it out. It's a perfect Tivo-upgrade workstation, and if I break something, no big deal!

-Doug

tcooper1561

08-07-2006, 12:52 PM

Thanks Doug, I think you are right. I need to find one of my old PCs and resurrect it for this project. As it is, I am scared to death that I might forget to insert the boot CD and my PC will boot up XP with the old Tivo drive attached. BTW, do you know if I can store the .bak file (once it is created) on my NTFS drive or could I burn it to a DVD ROM?

BigDaddio

08-13-2006, 03:46 PM

Greetings all. Well, I finally took the big plunge and started the upgrade of my HR10-250 using the PTVnetHD Utility CD for Hughes/DirecTV HR10-250. I am replacing the original drive with a new 400gb and a 2nd 400gb drive, using Weaknees bracket (what a work of art!!). I'm using Hinsdale's instructions to backup/restore the single drive to two drives using this command line.

mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hdc | mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi - /dev/hda /dev/hdb

After putting the drives back in the Tivo, I got the dreaded GSOD and so I went back and ran Seagate Tools (from Hiram's Boot CD ver 8), and both drives were clean. That runs in MS-Dos, so my original drive was safe. I ran the same backup/restore routine again, except I changed the 127 to 400 (per directions that I need .5mb for each 1gb of drive space).

I'm getting ready to put the drives back in, but I think I need to 'bless' the 2nd drive using BlessTivo, but the cleanup process from the combined backup/restore appears to have done this already. Can anyone clarify this for me? Do I need to 'BlessTivo' before starting with the rest of the upgrade?

Another question, since I have a good Tivo OS, do I need to use Instantcake to get USB & ultimately network functionality? I do not want to C&DE, which appears to be the bottom line.

Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated.

Best regards,

BigDaddio

BigDaddio

08-14-2006, 01:25 AM

I put both drives in after finding that MFSTools 2.0 will do the 'BlessTivo', but still got the GSOD. I let the self-repair process run again for a few hours, but it was in a constant reboot loop.

I decided to try upgrading only one drive, so I ran the backup/restore command line from Hinsdale's instructions:

mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hdc | mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi - /dev/hda /dev/hdb

and I kept the 127, instead of increasing it to reflect the 1mb -> 2gb ratio that some have suggested for swap space, and it worked as expected. The original recordings were intact and the full drive space is recognized by the OS.

Since this is still the original OS load, I plugged in the phone and will see if I get the D* Upgrade for my HR10-250.

herby1620

08-20-2006, 07:58 PM

In looking over the instructions that I got (upgrading from a single drive to two new drives), I notice a couple of different options:
On the mfstools 2.0 blurb (howto), it indicates using the options "-aqo" on the backup, and "-xpi" on the restore. The options suggested here are "Tao" (added 'T') on the backup, and "-s 127 -r 4 -xzpi" on the restore. From this I have a couple of questions:
With the '-s 127' I get a swap size of 127 Mbytes. Is theis enough for large dirves? I plan to use a PAIR of 400 Gbyte drives (gotta please the wife!).
I also see '-r 4'. From what I understand (it isn't mentioned in the help I get on mfsrestore), this makes the cluster size of 4. Again, should I make this a bit larger for a pair of 400Gb drives.
The other option I see is the 'z' to zero out all the other stuff. Is this a missing 'secret', as I got hte 'green screen' before. If this actually zeros out things, how long will this take for xxx Gbytes of disk (xxx being quite a bit). How necessary is it?

Can I become "enlightened" as to the meanings of these??

Thanks.

DHardmanJr

08-21-2006, 10:12 AM

First, thanks to WeaKnees for the guided instructions. I have a bit of a problem though.

I have a Phillips DSR6000R01. The original drivers were 30GB (A) and 15GB (B). I followed the instructions and performed the following command which worked without error. :D

mfsbackup -f 9999 -so - /dev/hda /dev/hdb | mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -xzpi - /dev/hdd

My drives were in my PC in this way:
Primary IDE Master: Old drive (A)
Primary IDE Slave: Old drive (B)
Secondary IDE Master: CD-ROM drive (booted to the MFS tools CD)
Secondary IDE Slave: New Drive (160GB Seagate ATA100)

I was happy after the command worked, but when I put the new drive in the Tivo and plugged in the power I got to the "Welcome. Powering up..." and it just stayed. :(

With the drive in the Tivo it drive made sound as if it were starting up (I have power to the drive). The IDE cables were snug. I tried both setting the drive to master and setting it to cable select and tried both IDE connectors on the cable to no avail.

Is there some way to validate that the backup/restore I did to the new drive actually has all the pieces/parts of the Tivo software in the right place on the new drive?

Any suggestions?

Jeremybme

08-22-2006, 01:45 PM

I went to the interactive site to get instructions on upgrading my dual tuner model. And the only option is to replace the original drive. Here is the thing at a minimum i want to add another drive. But i might actually want to replace the original drive with a 160 gb and add a 2nd 160gb. ( i have these drives already)

can i just choose another model and use those instructions? if so can some tell me what the model to choose is?

thanks

Jeremy

azitnay

08-22-2006, 01:53 PM

The reason for no "Add a Drive" or "Replace with Two Drives" options on the instructions for the DT initially was probably that there wasn't yet a two-drive bracket available for the DT. However, it appears that item is now available:

http://www.wkblog.com/2006/08/dual_tuner_tivo_brackets_are_i.html

I'd imagine WeaKnees will get around to updating the instructions sooner or later, but for now you could probably use the instructions for one of the 540xxx models without any trouble. It might be worth a sanity check (for example, comparing the "Replace with One Drive" option for the DT with the same option for the 540), but I wouldn't expect any differences.

Drew

rtlemke

08-22-2006, 09:35 PM

Okay, I am new to the TIVO upgrading, and I have read a lot of the posts here and I felt pretty comfortable in trying to upgrade my current drive from an 80 GB Maxtor Diamondmax 16 to a 300 GB Seagate Barracuda. I used the Weaknees interactive TIVO upgrade page, and downloaded the Weeknees .iso file from the site after entering in all of the options. Here is what I selected:

TiVo 24008A
Do you want to make a backup: No
Do you have a FAT partition on your C drive: No
Are you using Windows XP or Windows 2000: Yes
Save or disregard recordings: Save
Are you moving this software from one TiVo to another: No
Do you have TiVo OS 7.1 or later?: Yes

After selecting these options, it took me to page four where I downloaded the .iso file. I then used Nero to burn the image file to a CD.

Next I took the original HD from the TIVO and connected it to the Primary Master IDE connector. I connected the new HD to the Primary Slave IDE connector. I put the CD into the Secondary Master CD-ROM, and booted up the machine. (as a side here, I disconnected the HD that was in the computer, so there would be no chance of accidently booting into Windows with the TIVO drive attached) The computer found the boot record on the CD and proceeded to boot into the Linux shell with no problems. I was able to see both HD, and they showed the correct sizes. Everything looked as it should, so I typed in the command that the website gave me:

mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hda | mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -xzpi - /dev/hdb

The process started fine and everything seemed to be going well. After watching it go for the first 3% or so, I left it alone to crunch. When I came back later, I was getting a tom of error messages. The error messages were:

end_request: I/O error, dev 03:40 (hdb). sector *********

where ******** where incrementing sector numbers.

Every so often, I will get a:

Backing up ***** of 76390 megabytes (**.**%)

again where ***** and **.** are incrementing.

From what I can make of this, it seems like it is having troubles writing to the HD attached at hdb, my primary slave, which is the new HD. So, what does this mean? Do I have a bad HD, or did I type something wrong, or do I need to do something to the drive before this procedure. Any ideas?

Any help is greatly appreciated.
Rick

natepenn

08-22-2006, 10:17 PM

I may be missing something in my brain here, but I just can't figure out how to connect the drives to my PC. I have a Dell with two IDE ports. One port goes to the C drive and only has two connectors on the ribbon. The other port goes to the CDR and CD drives and has three connectors on the ribbon. I purchased the twin breeze kit with the purpose of adding a second drive. The kit came with an IDE cable with three connectors, do you think I should put that in the primary port (the one that goes to the hard drive) and then disconnect my C drive and connect the original Tivo drive as master and the new drive as slave? I can't disconnect the CD drive because I need to use it to boot off of. I can disconnect the CDR drive though. Any help is greatly appreciated!
-Nate

Jeremybme

08-22-2006, 11:38 PM

Just disconnect the cable that is currently going to your C drive. Replace with the cable from the twin breeze kit. Now connect your primary tivo drive ( make sure jumper is set to master) connect your new drive to the remaining port on the new cable. (make sure this drive is set to slave)

Now both tivo drives are connected.. the C drive is disconnected and the CD drives are still connected. This should hopefully get you going....

Jeremy

natepenn

08-23-2006, 01:14 AM

Thank you jeremybme, that worked! However, I plugged everything in and booted up the Tivo without any problems, except when I check the Record capacity, it still says 81 hours. Any idea why this is happening? I unplugged everything and put the two drives back in my PC and ran the linux stuff again thinking maybe it will help. The only error i get is
kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe/ -s -k nls_iso8859-1 ,errno=2

----update
plugged it back into the PC making sure the slave was the slave and the master was the master. I checked to see if it recognized the disks storage and it did. I received the same error as mentioned above. Turn the Tivo on with drives installed and it still says up to 81 hours total. What am I not doing right?

Jeremybme

08-23-2006, 09:13 AM

LastPlace

08-23-2006, 09:49 AM

natepenn

08-23-2006, 10:19 AM

when you first hooked everything up and followed the instructions, it should have completed and then told you the new recording size did you ever see the new hours prior to disconnecting the drives from your computer?

I looked all over for the new hours, but I didn't see anything that mentioned "hours" I only saw disk size. Another bit of info for you, the very last line says "Weaknees #" and it just seems to wait for me to enter something in. Maybe its not finishing?

natepenn

08-23-2006, 03:09 PM

Wow, okay I guess I wasn't thinking clearly last nite. After re-reading the interactive guide for about the 20th time it made sense:
Issue expand command

Issue the following command:

mfsadd -r 4 -x /dev/hdX /dev/hdZ
The reason why I didn't understand that this command was for me was because I thought it was only if I had to unlock the drive. It just seemed like it was part of the unlocking the drive step.
Perhaps a little restructuring of the steps or hell, maybe even throw in a NUMBER next to each step? That would have saved me many frustrating hours. Also, if I had enough sleep that could have helped.

tnedator

08-24-2006, 10:13 AM

Ok, before I pull the trigger, I have a couple questions.

I have an hr10-250 with the stock 250gb drive. I will be upgrading to a 750gb drive and want to preserve my recordings.

If I am reading the interactive guide correctly, once I boot up and if the drive sizes are reported correctly, it becomes a one step process.

Simply issue this command:

mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hda | mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -xzpi - /dev/hdb

assuming hda=old drive and hdb=new drive

Is that truely all that needs to be done to copy everything on my old Tivo drive to my new 750gb drive? No Tivo blessing anymore? No mounting of drives prior running commands?

Thanks for the help

SteelersFan

08-24-2006, 04:43 PM

AjaxKappaSig

09-02-2006, 05:33 AM

Dual Tuner standalone (649080) upgrade to 320g or 320g + 120g. 2 pc to choose from, one is a newer dual-core processor with a single IDE controller on motherboard and 4 SATA. Or, an archaic Pentium 166MHz (that's right, it's got MMX).

A few questions:
1) Is it possible to put two new drives in these dual tuner units? Azitnay's theory that the absence of brackets sounds plausible, but has anyone successfully put two drives in one of these yet and were there any suggestions or deviations you'd like to share?

2) I tried my newer machine first since it was in the next room and the case was open as always. I knew it would likely have an issue with only allowing for two IDE drives, but I saw this as a chance to use my SATA to IDE adaptor, but no such luck in any configuration. I have a PCI IDE controller card somewhere, but I've only seen posts referring to these as theoretical options, but no confirmation from anyone with success. I've also seen referrals to booting via USB jumpdrive, but again I've only seen posts mentioning it, but not confirming that this would work. Would this consist of more than just copying the files from the disk/mounted image? Sorry, I've never booted from a jumpdrive.

3) Is there any reason to leave the original boot drive in when modding a TiVo? It seems to me a bit risky/pointless to leave it attached. Of course that's likely the problem I'm having if it is needed.

4) When I hit the wall(mentally and physically) with the new pc, I got the ol' Pentium 166 out and, after configuring the bios, succeded in booting from the weaknees disc. Got the press enter dialog, pressed enter, loading linux, then I turned away to clean up part of my mess and came back within a few minutes and it appeared as if the pc restarted and froze at the bios screen. My first thought was that maybe the 166 is too slow for the utilities, but then I thought that maybe the motherboard doesn't have support for larger drives. Another option that has occurred to me is that the pc has finally died, although it hasn't been used in 6-8 years.

So.... any suggestions?

Steve

supasta

09-02-2006, 10:58 AM

1. Yes, it is absolutly possible to put 2 drives in the DT units. People have done a ton of them here on TCF. There are brackets available, auctionook is a seller on ebay that has them and also has a site to order direct (I am not a home with the bookmark otherwise I would post it)

EDIT: WeaKneed also has dual-drive brackets for the DT models.

ddruker

09-03-2006, 12:58 PM

I upgraded to 750 GB (250+500) on two different HD-TIVO (HR10-250) units. I followed the Weaknees instructions to the letter, the key command being first to backup the original image, and then to add the new hard drive using
mfsadd -r 4 -x ...

I now see annoying behaviours on both units that did not exist before adding the extra 500 gig drives. About once every two weeks, both systems will stop recording new programs, and will stop playing recorded programs from the "now playing" list if you choose the program by pressing the select key. Both units will however still play recorded programs if you select the program using the "play" key when they are in this state. Occasionally both units also lose the ability to tune any channels - both OTA and Satellite - and report all channels are unavailable.

I posted to the forum and received several responses from other users indicating they have seen exactly this same problem.

I also received suggestions to fix indicating that I should have increased the swap space on the HD-Tivo when adding a very large second drive - that with 750 gigs of storage the swap space should have been increased beyond the default 127 megabytes.

This implies you should not use the mfsadd command to add large hard drives to the HD Tivo as shown in the weaknees instructions - rather you need to first backup and then restore specifying a larger swap file, adding the second drive as part of the restore process.

So I restored both HD-Tivo's and increased swap space to 400MB for each unit. I will report back in a week or so as to whether this solved the problem. There were a couple of gotcha's here to document just getting the 400MB swap file to work...

First - the default swap space for the HD-Tivo is 127 MB. There are many many threads on this forum that indicate there is limited or no benefit to expanding beyond 127 MB. There doesn't seem to be a definitive position on this on the forum that I could find - there are posts both ways.

Second - there is a known bug in MFS tools where when you do a restore and specify a swap file larger than 127 MB, that the most current version of MFStools 2.0 does not initialize the swap file correctly. This leaves you running without any swap at all, which has the same behavior as with the default swap size in terms of the problems I reported in the beginning of this thread.

Third - you need to use a tool called tpip to correctly initialize the new larger swap file, and then you should check to verify whether the HD-Tivo correctly is using it. You can find tpip version 1.2 by searching google - make sure you get version 1.2, and you need to save a copy on the drive where you put your backup image since it isn't on the weaknees CD so you can actually run it. You can also see directions for using tpip by searching on this forum.

So here is the full procedure:

download and burn the weaknees CD
download tpip 1.2

mount the drive with the fat32 partition to which you have already saved tpip and where you will save the backup of your HD tivo image

mount /dev/hdx1 /mnt

backup your single drive to a single image using mfsbackup as documented in the weaknees instructions.
mfsbackup -f 9999 -1so /mnt/backup.bak /dev/hdx

install the second drive, and restore the image to both drives using mfsrestore with the expanded swapfile (in my case I used 400MB)

mfsrestore -s 400 -r 4 -zxpi /mnt/backup.bak /dev/hday /dev/hdaz

Now run tpip to make sure your swap file is properly initialized

/mnt/tpip -1 -s /dev/hdy (where hdy is the primary HDTivo drive)

If you search this forum for tpip you will also find instructions on how to check to make sure the HD-Tivo is actually using the swap file. The general procedure is to reboot the tivo and let it run for a few minutes so it fully boots up, then pull out the plug and reattach the hard drives to your PC. Boot up in linux, mount the primary Tivo hard drive (mount /dev/hdy9 /mnt/var
go to the logs directory (cd /mnt/var/logs)
and finally search for entries about swap (grep -i swap *)

If you do this correctly you will see log records showing that the tivo booted up and found and is using the 400 Meg swap file.

Again I will post again next week to verify whether all this actually solved the original problem, which takes a few days to show up.

herby1620

09-04-2006, 12:00 AM

After SEVERAL attempts to get my TiVo (DirecTV/Phillips DSR7000) upgraded from the 120 Gbyte single drive to something bigger, I now can report that I am successful.
My current configuration is TWO (look they were $120/ea) 400 Gbyte drives. I went thry and used the 'mfsbackup'/'mfsrestore' with the magic options '-r 4' and '-s 127' on the restore. It went quite nicely (well, it took 2 hours to copy the data, but other than that...). I then mounted the drives in my TiVo, and it was ALL there. No problems. So now I have over 700 hours of record time (wife is VERY happy!). My only comments: Follow the 'one liner' instruction carefully. If you don't, it just won't work. My partitions are now very functional, and I don't anticipate any problems.

Just for the record: Old: 120 Gbyte single drive (about 100 hours). New: 800 Gbyte dual drive (over 700 hours, according to the status screen!).

Good luck to everyone!

drfinn

09-04-2006, 04:32 PM

I am attempting to replace the two original HD on my Phillips HDR612 with a new one that I bought from Weakness. I was doing okay until I got to the point of removing the screws from the Hard Drive bracket. They will not come out. THey just spin and spin in both directions.

Any easy solution to this problem?

azitnay

09-04-2006, 05:42 PM

I've never worked with an HDR612, but I'm not sure how much sense it would make that those particular screws would be stripped... Assuming they are, though, the easiest way to get stripped screws out (in general, not TiVo-specific) is often to push the head of a thin flathead screwdriver between the screw and the object it's screwed into, while loosening the screw (i.e. turning it counterclockwise). As it gets looser, you can push lightly towards the object on the handle of the flathead, to make sure the screw keeps coming out.

Obviously, do it in a controlled fashion, so as not to damage anything.

Drew

drfinn

09-04-2006, 06:10 PM

Thanks, thats pretty much what I ended up doing. I am not sure if they are stripped or deformed. I ended up using a knife to pry the bracket up slightly and that allowed the screw to keep moving upwards. Then I pushed down on the bracket and it skipped the deformed area and continued to unscrew.

Bottom line is I got the new HD in and its calling TIVO now.

Thanks for the help!

Dojimaster

09-08-2006, 08:14 PM

Hello -

I backed up my tivo using the following commands:

mount /dev/hda1 /mnt

mfsbackup -f 9999 -1so /mnt/backup.bak /dev/hdc /dev/hdd

everything backed up fine

then rebooted to allow me to attach the new target drive to hdc and restored using:

mount /dev/hda1 /mnt

mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -zxpi /mnt/backup.bak /dev/hdc

everything restored fine (or so it seemed)

reintstalled to tivo, and GSOD

read forums here, decided to try larger swap of 200, so...

restored using commands:

mount /dev/hda1 /mnt

mfsrestore -s 200 -r 4 -zxpi /mnt/backup.bak /dev/hdc

reintalled into TIVO and GSOD, but let it sit and later (<1hr) is was working - BUT....

I intalled a new 320GB hard drive (the old combined was 2 x 120GB) and now I am only getting 123 hours and none of my programs are accessible, but they are in the "Now PLaying" list.

QUESTIONS

1) What did I screw up?

2) Can you NOT make a back up to a disk and then resore it? Will this not carry over your recordings?

3) Why only 123 hours?

Help! I originally upgrade all 4 of my DSR6000s and I don't remember this being so challenging!

Jeff

HomeUser

09-08-2006, 10:25 PM

1 The 200M swap needs to be adjusted with tpip. The un-hacked DSR6000 does not support drives larger then 137G.

2 There are not enough partitions to restore a full backup of a dual drive system to a back to a single drive without loosing the recordings. The -f 9999 does not backup the program files the s option in the backup removes the extra now empty partitions. The SP's and indexes are included however.

3 You need the MFSTools2 LBA48 boot CD and a new kernel for the DSR6000 that is modified for large drive support.

BorisSWort

09-13-2006, 10:29 AM

I bought a new 200gb hard drive to upgrade my 40-hour drive in a standard Tivo. I don't need to save any recordings, but I do want to save my Season Passes and how I connect to the network. Does that mean I want to make a backup? Or, would it be easier to just re-do my season passes and network connection?

If I start this process and it isn't going good, can I just put my current hard drive back in the Tivo and everything will go back to normal? The things that concern me are putting hard drives in my PC. I have never figured out what jumpers and slaves, etc., are.

If I did not need to make a backup or save recordings, could I set up my new hard drive using an old computer before taking out the original Tivo hard drive? In other words, could I have everything set up so I just take out the old Tivo hard drive, put in the new one, and be on my way?

azitnay

09-13-2006, 10:38 AM

Any upgrade method you choose will save your season passes and network settings.

You don't technically need to make a backup file (although it doesn't hurt)... You can simply copy directly from the old drive to the new drive.

Yes, as long as you don't reverse a command or something the original drive will remain in a state where you can simply plug it back in and go back to normal. The main exception to this would be booting into XP or something with your TiVo drive attached, but even that isn't irreversible.

You need the original drive, so that you can transfer the TiVo software onto the new drive. The only other options would be to find an image elsewhere or buy InstantCake, but you'd lose your season passes and settings.

Drew

deek_man

09-14-2006, 07:00 PM

I hope this is the right place to post this.

I have upgraded several different units for myself and a couple of friends. I now have a refurbished Hughes SD-DVR40 which I want to upgrade for a friend to two 200 GB hard drives. I've checked the machine and it seems to work properly but it has the 3.xxxxx software. My underestanding is that it has to have the 6.xxxx software in order to recognize the entire 400 GB due to the limits on the older software. I can't activate with DTV and force the new software upgrade since I'm upgrading this for a friend who lives on the other side of the country. My question is this: If I choose the option in the option list that I have less than the 6.2 software version in the weaknees interactive upgrade instructions, will the upgrade process do whatever is necessary to recognize the entire 400 GB? Or will the software have to be upgraded first. If it will not recognize the entire 400 GB, must I have the DTivo upgraded to the higher version software first and can I do that without sending the machine to my friend to activate and force the upgrade, then send it back to me to upgrade with the larger drives?

Any help greatly appreciated.

deek_man

09-15-2006, 05:55 PM

Can I use a drive from one DTivo (Hughes SD-DVR40) to replace a drive in an identical unit? It could solve the problem I mentioned above.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Jeremybme

09-19-2006, 05:12 PM

Good Afternoon.

I have a Dual Tuner 80 hour model that i bought a couple of weeks ago
today i followed instructions from The interactive upgrade instructions website and added to the 80 gb drive a 160 gb drive. When i had finished with the mfsadd command it said the new size was 270 hours.

yet my tivo only shows 259 hours when i boot it up. im slightly confused... is this correct? is the tivo using all of the new drive like it should or did i mess up somewhere.

here is the other reason i have a regular series 2 that has two 80gb drives in it. and under high quality it says 103 hours of recording

now my dual tuner model has an 80 and a 160.. that is 80gb more then my regular NON dual tuner model and under high quality it says 118 hours.

so the extra 80gb of drive only got me 15 hours more of high quality tv? or is the dual tuner use more drive space, or again

is it using all of both drives correctly.
is there any way to verify it sees both 80 and 160 drives correclty

or did i mess up

thanks for your help

Jeremy

Aethicus

09-20-2006, 01:04 PM

newsposter

09-20-2006, 01:14 PM

The instructions on adding a second drive are not clear on why I need to do anything to the first drive. why do I need to remove it and install it in my PC and run the utils, why can't I just take my new WS3200 (350G drive) and format it and add it to the system?

I am new here but have been using TV DirectTV units for years :-)

totally unscientific terms but this is why:

tivo needs to marry or bless (i forget the exact term) the drives so they will work together in perfect harmony.

If you really want to avoid it, pony up the $ like I did and pay for a weaknees drive. Sure it's more money but it's one thing I dont mind paying for since you dont need a PC at all.

For the record, i have gone thru multiple upgrades and replacing bad drives with my T60 so yes i do know how to do it, just got tired of doing it given the placement of my PC case etc.

Aethicus

09-20-2006, 02:21 PM

totally unscientific terms but this is why:...
.

ok I like the Unscientific terms :-)

I have no problems doing the upgrade just have questions :-)

More questions...
if I put the new drive and the TIVO drive in my system both on the 2n IDE chain and I am not making a backup/copy, do I need space on one of my PC drives?

I figured I just boot in the Unix Shell run the commands and pop the drives back into my system.

thanks

azitnay

09-20-2006, 02:24 PM

No, if all you're doing is mfsadd'ing a second drive, and you don't want to make a backup, you won't need any drive space on your PC.

Drew

Aethicus

09-20-2006, 02:35 PM

Thanks Drew!

BTW: I see articles when I google around using the USB port on my HR10-250. what can I do with this port?

and to totally mess up the topics :-) Has anyone put together an external Array of drives for content? I am thinking with the price of drives I could build a 2 Terabyte array and just run a shielded IDE cable to it.

Thoughts?

y2khardtop

09-22-2006, 07:16 PM

I didn't read all 972 responses, so I apologize if this is a repeat. Simple, but I didn't see anything in the instructions regarding a "screen saver". Anyway, after about 5 minutes into my copy, the screen when BLACK, and I just about had a heart attack! Hitting the space key brought it back, but it scared me. Kid's would kill me if I lost all of their cartoons :)

grins

09-23-2006, 03:25 PM

I used the interactive guide to get my backup command. I'm backing up my HDTivo's 250Gb drive to a new 500Gb, and I'm saving shows, so I used

mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hdb | mfsrestore -s 300 -r 4 -xzpi - /dev/hda

However, it reported that the destination drive is not big enough. checking the boot output I see that it reports that hdb has a bunch of partitions, but for hda (the new disk) it reports "Unknown partition table"

Do I need to do something to the new drive before I can restore to it? How does on format a drive under linux?

Thanks, y'all! :-)

MichaelK

09-23-2006, 03:30 PM

i think you have your hdb and hda reversed...

blank disks come up as "unkknown"

tivo disks have tons of partitions.

grins

09-23-2006, 03:52 PM

Thanks for replying michael, but I'm quite sure of the devices.

I used cfdisk to create a linux partition on the new drive

at boot time, I now get hda with 500108 MB and 1 partition, and hdb with 251000MB and lots of partitions.

I issue the backup | restore command, and get
Scanning source drive. Please wait a moment
Source drive size is 281 hours
- Upgraded to 283 hours
Uncompressed backup size 211018 megabytes
Restore failed: Backup target not large enough for entire backup by itself.

Any ideas?

uclajd

09-24-2006, 05:55 PM

Look, I am certainly no expert on this, but I used the Hinsdale guide (+ the all-important -r 4 instruction for 274GB+ drives) with great success with a 400GB yesterday. First off, just for the record:

hda = Primary Master (dos/windows fat32 C: drive or partition)

hdb = Primary Slave

hdc = Secondary Master

hdd = Secondary Slave

The existing TiVo drive is jumpered to master and connected to the secondary master IDE port in your PC. Large upgrade drive, for use as your new TiVo A drive, is jumpered to master and attached to the Primary Master IDE connector

And here is command line I used :

mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hdc | mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -xzpi - /dev/hda

I see no reason to deviate from this, unless you don't want to backup recordings.

FWIW

JD, now with a 462-hour Tivo :D

Thanks for replying michael, but I'm quite sure of the devices.

I used cfdisk to create a linux partition on the new drive

at boot time, I now get hda with 500108 MB and 1 partition, and hdb with 251000MB and lots of partitions.

I issue the backup | restore command, and get
Scanning source drive. Please wait a moment
Source drive size is 281 hours
- Upgraded to 283 hours
Uncompressed backup size 211018 megabytes
Restore failed: Backup target not large enough for entire backup by itself.

Any ideas?

MichaelK

09-24-2006, 07:39 PM

HomeUser

09-24-2006, 09:09 PM

grins "Source drive size is 281 hours
- Upgraded to 283 hours"
Hmm, how did you get a 2 hr upgrade?

For the series 2 and most likely series 3 TiVos mfstools can only upgrade a single drive once and keep recordings. Because your expanded drive is so small you could try using the -s (shrink) option in the backup command this removes the extra partitions that were added with previous expand. Works only if the added partitions are empty you might get lucky if you can delete enough shows to remove all the files stored in the extra partitions.
your command now becomes
mfsbackup -Taso - /dev/hdb | mfsrestore -s 300 -r 4 -xzpi - /dev/hda

Oh Just in case you do not all-ready know the 300meg swap partition will need to be adjusted with tpip after the upgrade before using in the TiVo.

hotshot79

09-25-2006, 08:46 PM

OK - this is my first post on this site so first I'll say hello and THANK YOU!!!

My god there is so much info on here it's going to take me years to catch up!!

On to my question - regarding the interactive instructions: I purchased a HRD112 on eBay but it was sold to me without a hard drive in it - It does come with a TiVo CD which is the software or image?

What options would I choose in the interactive instructions for this scenario?

I'm sorry if this question has been answered but I've been looking and searching for about 45mins now to no avail....

Any help would be appreciated!!

Thanks

seven

09-25-2006, 10:01 PM

I've got a TCD14006 that is stuck at "Powering up" since a lightning strike. I found a backup image online and used the interactive guide to get some instructions and just want to double check 1 thing.

The instructions say to use the WeaKnees Large Kernel Support which would see larger drives. But, if I use a larger drive my Tivo still won't see more than 137GB or so will it?

I just want to be sure, because I've got a empty 250GB I was going to use, but if it won't see it all I've got a 120GB or 150GB that I can use after copying the contents to the 250GB

Thanks,
Seven

ranbou

09-26-2006, 12:24 AM

I recently upgraded my Humax DRT 400 and replaced the 40 GB drive with a 250 GB drive. All went well and the unit booted up with the new drive. I had copied all of the recordings from the old drive to the new one so I watched a few minutes of one of the recordings and it worked fine.

The next evening I noticed the front of the unit said "Welcome" on the display. I turned on the TV and the unit is stuck on the "sunrise" or "Welcome! Powering up..." screen. I rechecked all of the connections and everything is as it should be. I replaced the upgraded drive with the original and it booted correctly. I replaced the upgraded drive and it hung a the "sunrise" or "Welcome! Powering up..." screen again. I am not sure if it is relevant or not, but I noticed the "sunrise" or "Welcome! Powering up..." screen seemd to reset twice.

Any ideas about what is wrong and how to fix it will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

ranbou

09-26-2006, 10:52 PM

supasta

09-30-2006, 12:39 PM

Does the Weaknees Upgrade CD include USB drivers?

KGAI

10-01-2006, 12:39 AM

I have Pioneer DVR-57H and could upgrade from 160GB to 250GB Maxtor without any problem. I bought a used Pioneer DVR-810H recently and replace 80GB with the 57H's 160GB with no problem. I recently bought Maxtor 500GB at Fry's and tried following command but didn't work:

mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hda | mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -xzpi - /dev/hdb

So I pulled out previous method that I succede with 57H and modified the command slightly. Then it is accepted TiVo but showed only 96hours or so, so I reset TiVo. It went through up to downloading the program guide. but it stucked at Loading Info (Organizing). It has been this status over 8 hours.

What is the status and what should I do.

It is lengthy but I put the procedure that I have done:

1. Created Ptvupgrades’s MFStools 2.0 CD with LBA48 support.

2. Found an HDD with a capacity of 2GB with FAT 32 (Image HDD); For formatting, use MaxBlast 4 CD ROM came with Maxtor HDD. Chose Windows ME for FAT 32

3. Remove the HDD from TiVo (TiVo HDD)

4. Hook up PC with the drivers as follows:
a. Primary Master: Image HDD 2GB empty FAT32 = hda
b. Primary Slave: TiVo HDD =hdb
c. Secondary Master: CD-ROM Drive = hdc

5. Boot PC to bios and change the boot sequence from the CD drive first.

6. Boot with MFSTools 2.0 CD

7. At # prompt, type the following commands to mount the Image HDD:

mkdir /mnt/dos
mount/dev/hda1 /mnt/dos

8. At the next # prompt, type the following to backup the TiVo HDD:

mfsbackup –f 9999 -6so /mnt/dos/ptivo.bak /dev/hdb

9. Unmount the drives and shut down the system

10. Press Ctrl-Alt-Del to shutdown and reboot. When system started to reboot, power down the PC

11. Remove the Tivo HDD and replace it with new larger capacity HDD (Larger HDD such as 250GB or 500GB) at Primary Slave:

a. Primary Master: Image HDD 2GB empty FAT32 = hda
b. Primary Slave: Larger HDD =hdb
c. Secondary Master: CD-ROM Drive = hdc

12. Boot the PC again with MFStools 2.0 CD.

13. At # prompt, type the following commands to mount the Image HDD:

mkdir /mnt/dos
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/dos

14. At the next # prompt, typed the following to restore the backup TiVo image to the Larger HDD drive:

For 250GB drive:
mfsrestore –s 127 –zxpi /mnt/dos/ptivo.bak /dev/hdb
(This worked with 57H)

For 500GB drive:
mfsrestore –s 300 –r 4 –zxpi /mnt/dos/ptivo.bak /dev/hdb

15. Unmount the drivers and shut down the system.

16. Press Ctrl-Alt-Del to shutdown and reboot.

17. Install the Lager HDD to TiVo unit and powered up the system. The drive capacity was still a small number (96Hour or so for 500GB).

18. Clear and Delete everything at the Setup menu

19. Install program information. After downloaded the program info, it seems it has frozen.

I have stuck at the last step of Loading info (Preparing to load…) It took more than an hour with no change.

After rebooting, it stuck at almost the same place. But this time, the loading itself has been succeeded. However, another long time is taking place at Loading info (Organizing) for more than 8 hours.

Let me know of anything to solve this problem.

KGAI

KGAI

10-01-2006, 07:13 PM

This is follow up of the above posting.

I have done the following again:

mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hda | mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -xzpi - /dev/hdb

It worked this time except for the capacity.

The original HDD is 80GB and new 500GB is still recognized the same capacity (= 91hours in TiVo information screen.)

How can I let TiVo recognize full capacity of 500GB new drive?

Please let me know.

KGAI

10-01-2006, 09:19 PM

I tried mfsadd but didn't work:

mfsadd -x /dev/hdb (Maxtor 500GB in Primary Slave)
Current estimated standalone size: 582 hours
Nothing to add!

I wonder what else should I do?

Please help.

KGAI

10-02-2006, 01:56 AM

Sorry for making a fuss alone. I am releafed that nobody responded my project.

I could solve the problem.

After I learned that there is a problem with the partition list. I was wondering if I had to rewrite it manualy, which is a big job.

I recalled that there was no problem when I upgraded DVR-57H of Pioneer from 120GB to 250GB. So in stead of using, 80GB of HDD from DVR-810H, I used the original 120GB of 57H.

Then without any difficulty, my new 500GB drive is fully utilized.

It is easier than I thought.

I don't know what is the difference between 80GB and 120GB (both of them are Maxtor HDD) but there is completely different result anyway.

I am very happy now with comfortable disk space with over 100 hours of very high quality recording.

KGAI

10-02-2006, 02:10 AM

This is my revised procedure(not original), which worked successfully. Thank you very much for everything for the predecessor's works!

1. Created Ptvupgrades’s MFStools 2.0 CD with LBA48 support.

2. Found an HDD with a capacity of 2GB or more with FAT 32 (Image HDD); For formatting, use MaxBlast 4 CD ROM came with Maxtor HDD. Chose Windows ME for FAT 32

3. Remove the HDD from TiVo (TiVo HDD) By some reason 80GB disk drive (for 810H) didn't work but 120GB (for 57H) worked.

4. Hook up PC with the drivers as follows:
a. Primary Master: Image HDD 2GB empty FAT32 = hda
b. Primary Slave: TiVo HDD =hdb
c. Secondary Master: CD-ROM Drive = hdc

5. Boot PC to bios and change the boot sequence from the CD drive first.

6. Boot with MFSTools 2.0 CD

7. At # prompt, type the following commands to mount the Image HDD:

mkdir /mnt/dos
mount/dev/hda1 /mnt/dos

8. At the next # prompt, type the following to backup the TiVo HDD:

mfsbackup –f 9999 -6so /mnt/dos/ptivo.bak /dev/hdb

9. Unmount the drives and shut down the system

umount -f -a -r

10. Press Ctrl-Alt-Del to shutdown and reboot. When system started to reboot, power down the PC

11. Remove the Tivo HDD and replace it with new larger capacity HDD (Larger HDD such as 250GB or 500GB) at Primary Slave:

a. Primary Master: Image HDD 2GB empty FAT32 = hda
b. Primary Slave: Larger HDD =hdb
c. Secondary Master: CD-ROM Drive = hdc

12. Boot the PC again with MFStools 2.0 CD.

13. At # prompt, type the following commands to mount the Image HDD:

mkdir /mnt/dos
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/dos

14. At the next # prompt, typed the following to restore the backup TiVo image to the Larger HDD drive:

For 250GB drive:
mfsrestore –s 127 –zxpi /mnt/dos/ptivo.bak /dev/hdb
(This worked with 57H)

For 500GB drive:
mfsrestore –s 127 –r 4 –zxpi /mnt/dos/ptivo.bak /dev/hdb
("-r 4" is for over 300GB drive)

15. Unmount the drivers and shut down the system.

umount -f -a -r

16. Press Ctrl-Alt-Del to shutdown and reboot.

17. Install the Lager HDD to TiVo unit and powered up the system.

19. Start working as it was, although lose all the programs recorded.
(There are names of programs in "Now Playing List", however, there is no contents since this procedure does not copy the contents. The to do list is still kept intact.)

Enjoy upgrading your TiVo with higher capacity!

KGAI

10-02-2006, 02:32 AM

I didn't get any responses to my original post above, so I decided to try the install again. This time I just skipped the backup part since I will have the original drive when I am done (and it still works).

I booted from the CD and entered this command at the prompt:
mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hdb | mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -xzpi - /dev/hdd

My original Tivo drive is connected to the Primary Slave and my new drive is connected to the Secondary Slave.

It is working right now. I will post again with the results.

Well guys, no luck. It failed with the error:
Restore failed: Error restoreing MFS data.)

I tried several times and I get the same error. Does this mean my brand new hard drive is bad? Please let me know if there is something else I can try.

Thank you.

I am not an expert of this issue at all but would like to share the lessen I learned:
1. You'd better make the back-up. Otherwise, it copys the partition list so that there is no increase in the capacity even though you copy the program to a lerger capacity disk. In my case, only 91 hours for 500GB disk.
2. I am not sure but I think 40 GB original disk may need additional steps such as mfsadd -x or others. There are may discussion on how to increase the size of the swap file, or how to re-write the partition list. You may have to study those if there is no help from the others.

I would like to hear some opinion from the expert on this issue also.

Good luck!

KGAI

scarlet knights

10-02-2006, 03:41 PM

Last night I just ordered the complete Twin Breeze.

I found an old Maxtor QuickVeiw 40 GB that I removed from MY old RCA DVR-40 which I would like to add to my newer RCA DVR-40 so to have two drives.

Can I just change the second drive, pin in the back to a slave unit or must I hook up only the second drive to my computer and go through the process?

Thanks mike

jbs1136

10-03-2006, 10:01 AM

I use kanotix which is a debian based distro. I hooked the hard drive from my old Hughes sdr40 (which had a new 160gig hdd in it thanks to your instructions) and attempted to read it. It gave me a message that it did not recognize the partition type. The drive was recognized and mounted. The properties told me that it had data but I could not read it. Any suggestions?

John

acha85

10-03-2006, 09:36 PM

Just to clarify, the instructions didn't say that i have to format my extra hard drive into FAT32 if i'm adding a drive without backing stuff up first. is this true?

I'm adding a 250GB hdd to my TiVo 240040.

-Adri

azitnay

10-03-2006, 09:38 PM

No, no FAT32 formatting will be necessary if you don't intend to make a backup.

Drew

kingcull

10-06-2006, 10:07 AM

Adding an older Maxtor Ultra ATA to my Series 2 60 hour SA. I noticed that pins on this drive and the original WD TiVo drive are slightly different. Will only the Weaknees IDE cable work?

azitnay

10-06-2006, 10:47 AM

What pin differences have you noticed? Any IDE cable should work.

Drew

kingcull

10-06-2006, 11:27 AM

Thanks for your response.

I'm not at home now but I recall the pins at one end of the original TiVo drive were closer together. I couldn't attach the new 3 way 40 pin female IDE cable (do I need to use an 80 pin cable?). Hope I didn't bend the pins when I removed the cable...

azitnay

10-06-2006, 11:38 AM

Does the original TiVo cable fit easily back into the drive? If not, you may very well have bent some of the pins. You should be able to carefully unbend them.

Also, compare the original and new IDE cables... I'm guessing you won't notice a difference.

Drew

gbridgeman

10-10-2006, 05:25 PM

SHORT VERSION:

Thanks to Micheal and all the folks at Weaknees and thanks to everyone on this forum I went from 39 hours to 487 hours of space with a fully functional OS and with no errors and with all my shows saved! Hurrah!

VERY LONG VERSION:

Hopefully, this will help some other folks out.

I've been lurking for a WHILE now. I own Humax Series2 T800 as well as a Humax Series2 DRT400. Software version: 7.3.1-oth...etc on each.

If you're unfamiliar, the T800 has a single 80 GB but is upgradeable to dual disks using a bracket kit. The DRT400 has a single 40 GB and a DVD-RW drive and one can only upgrade the single disk drive as there is a space problem due to the DVD taking up real estate.

I wanted to upgrade both systems so I started researching on the forums.

After deciding I knew finally everything (HAHA!) I ordered 3 each Seagate 400 GB drives from Outpost-dot-com for $109 each intending to upgrade the 40 GB drive in the DRT400 and upgrade the 80GB in the T800 to 2 each 400 GB drives.

I then ordered the complete TwinBreeze bracket adapter system for my Humax T800 and waited for UPS.

Aside: I find it elegant that the T400 and T800 designations will soon be accurate, but that's just my twisted sense of humor

Well, the hard disks got here first so I went ahead with the DRT400 upgrade.

Using the interactive instructions was fairly clear.

Begin Feedback (For Micheal or whoever at Weaknees):

- I Selected -

Step 1: DRT400

Step 2: Replace with One Drive

Step 3:
Yes- Do you want to make a backup?
Yes- Do you have a FAT partition on your C drive?
No- Are you using Windows XP or Windows 2000?
Save- Save or disregard recordings?
No- Are you moving this software from one TiVo to another?

The following text is repeated twice nearly back to back in the instructions in Step 4 using these choices:

Verify Drive Sizes

Press <shift><pageup> repeatedly and you will be able to scroll to see, among other things, whether the PC recognized your hard drive(s). It is critical at this stage to verify that the full size of your TiVo drive was recognized. As you scroll up, you should see something like the following:

hda: XXX, ATA DISK drive
hdb: IDE/ATAPI CD-ROM 48X, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hdc: QUANTUM FIREBALL CX13.6A, ATA DISK drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
hda: ______ sectors (YYY MB) w/ZZZ KiB Cache, CHS=1111/222/33, UDMA(33)
hdb: ATAPI 17X CD-ROM drive, 128kB Cache, UDMA(33)
hdc: 26760384 sectors (13701 mb) w/418KiB Cache, CHS=1665/255/63 UDMA(33)

(Note: XXX, ____, YYY, ZZZ, 1111, 222, 33 will all vary, as will the size of your drive at hda, hdb, hdc and hdd.)

When looking at the data reported, you are looking to confirm that each of your IDE drives was recognized and that the size of the drive is reported properly. For example, if you have an SVR-2000 TiVo, you have a 30gb drive and it should be recognized as (give or take) 30000 mb.

End of Feedback

Okay, so I setup my PC in a few different ways.

The one that finally worked best was:
hda Original 250 GB PC Hard disk with (among others) FAT partition
hdb Original (Source) Humax DRT400 TiVo 40GB Seagate HDD
hdc Bootable DVD-ROM where I put in the Weaknees lb48 bootable CD
hdd New (Target) 400GB Seagate HDD

For those who don't know linux, I'll translate:
IDE01:
MASTER Original 250 GB PC HDD w/ FAT partition
SLAVE Original (Source) TiVo 40GB HDD

IDE02:
MASTER Bootable DVD-ROM loading Weaknees lb48 bootable CD
SLAVE New (Target) 400GB Seagate HDD

Fiddled with boot settings in BIOS to get it to boot to the CD then booted and successfully backed up the 40 gigger. Used the following commands (Note that ^ indicates I hit enter)

mount /dev/hda1 /mnt ^
mfsbackup -f 9999 -1so /mnt/backup.bak /dev/hdb ^

Then the problems started when I did this.
mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hdb | mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -xzpi - /dev/hdd ^

Everything went really well until about 2 hours into that process, I got this:

Uncompressed backup size: 16374 megabytes
Restore failed: Internal error 3. (57.13%)

I thought to myself,"Self, maybe this new drive is bad." I Ran SeaTools on it, zeroed it, and tested it and so on. Booted up, started completely fresh, did everything over, and ... got the same thing.

Uncompressed backup size: 16374 megabytes
Restore failed: Internal error 3. (57.13%)

Aaaarrrgh!

I thought to myself,"Self, maybe this drive is just funky and I should open one of the other two drives I have sitting over there on the coffee table." So I did that, and before I did anything else when I had it installed in the PC, I Ran SeaTools on it, zeroed it, and tested it and so on. Even booted to Partition Magic and made sure I could partition it and so forth.

Booted up, did everything over

mount /dev/hda1 /mnt ^
mfsbackup -f 9999 -1so /mnt/backup.bak /dev/hdb ^
mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hdb | mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -xzpi - /dev/hdd ^

and ... got the same thing.
Uncompressed backup size: 16374 megabytes
Restore failed: Internal error 3. (57.13%)

Now, this is with a completely new drive so I looked at the clock. It was late. I thought to myself,"Self, it's late. You might be doing something just plain dumb. Go to bed."

So I did. Slept like a baby. That is to say, I woke up crying several times during the night for no good reason. :p

Then I experienced more frustration the next day defining insanity by repeating identical steps and expecting a different outcome UNTILl I finally did this:

mount /dev/hda1 /mnt ^

mfsbackup -f 9999 -1so /mnt/backup.bak /dev/hdb ^

mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -zxpi /mnt/backup.bak /dev/hdd ^

Less than 30 minutes later, I went from 39 hours to 487 hours of space on a fully functional drive. No errors. All my settings and shows came over.

NOTE: For other end users, this baby took a HECK of a long time to boot the first time. I had read to simply be patient so I was willing to give it a good 10 minutes before powering down and breaking out the Torx screwdriver.
It flickered and rebooted a few times, went to Welcome Powering up several times, the lights on the front blinked in ways reminiscent of the original Star Trek. All told, it took just over 8 minutes before the little Tivo cartoon started dancing and singing. If you do this upgrade, I advise that you also be patient on first boot. Eight minutes is a LOOOONNNG time to sweat it out when you are wondering if you did everything right anyway.

Feedback for Weaknees:

Several hardware descriptions are incorrect or omitted from the interactive instructions.

Omitted: The DRT400 I took apart had a grounding strap that ran from the drive to the frame of the TiVo chasis. It was adhered to each with a light adhesive on the ends. I took care to remove it VERY carefully then reatttached it to the replacement drive.

Incorrect: The DRT400 I took apart had absolutely no Phillips head screws. Every screw, including the ones mounting the drive to the brackets, were all T-10 heads. Also, there were no screws on the sides of the chasis but there were 6 on the rear face.

End of Feedback for Weaknees:

Hopefully, this post will help some other lurkers out.

I am eagerly awaiting my TwinBreeze brackets and looking forward to taking on going from a single 80 gigger to twin 400 giggers. Next steps will be upgrading that baby, then sending each off for PROM socketing to explore other options that I won't discuss on this forum. :D

Again, thanks to Micheal and all the folks at Weaknees and thanks again, also, to everyone else on this forum that lurkers such as myself quietly appreciate.

Fantastic stuff.

God Bless,
G

iiigoiii

10-12-2006, 09:38 PM

hi all -

just wanted to write about my upgrade experience in case it can help
anyone else. the key points:

- i used a seagate 7200.7 drive - it's virtually silent, without any
hdd utility tweaking. (Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 Plus ST3160023A
160GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA100)

- i put my old failing tivo drive as a secondary master and the new
drive as secondary slave. this caused the new drive to show up in
mfstools as *hdc* which is the 2ndary MASTER (i assume if the real
master is bad it uses the slave as the new master).

- in order to possibly be able to read a failed drive, try different
physical orientations (upside down, edge up, ...).

- there was some confusion on which iso image to use for a bootable CD
(see below).

i have a philips DSR6000R01 directivo series 1 which was doing the
infamous freeze and reboot stuff. i kept power cycling it to watch my
favorite shows while waiting for a new hdd. problem was, it
eventually got to the point where it would not go past 'powering
up...', meaning i might not have had an image to backup/restore from.

restore/backup
--------------

i did a direct single-drive replacement, (no backup, ignore
recordings) using the interactive instructions from weaknees. they
worked great...only hitch was, since my original drive seemed to be
completely shot it wouldn't register at all in mfstools (and caused
the new drive on the slave to show up as the master instead).

facing finding a new image or buying and waiting for the cake CD, i
tried putting the failed tivo drive on its side (edge up) -
evidentally this allowed the drive to work long enough for the backup!

mfstools 2.0 iso image
----------------------
for those of you going to use the bootable CD, here's some notes on
which iso image is which:

- the hinsdale site ISO image link leads you to:
http://www.newreleasesvideo.com/hinsdale-how-to/MFSTOOLS20.zip in
the zip is exactly one file, MFSTOOLS20.iso.

- the iso image from the http://mfstools.sourceforge.net/ site sends
you to http://www.tyger.org/MFS/2.0/mfstools2.iso

- these two seem to be the same, with the difference that there is
more stuff on the tyger site disc (what more stuff i didn't bother
to find out).

- on the tyger site there is also a
http://www.tyger.org/MFS/2.0/mfstools2J.iso
which i'm assuming is the Joliet version that gave everyone problems

- on the tyger site there is a link to a
http://www.tyger.org/MFS/2.0/mfstools2noJ.iso
which is redirected to
http://www.tyger.org:8080/MFS/2.0/mfstools2.iso
which is not a valid link. i'm assuming it is a link back to the
mfstools2.iso, but has an invalid port number.

i used the http://www.tyger.org/MFS/2.0/mfstools2.iso.

hope this helps someone!
- bill c.