Upgrading using a Mac ?

[ebonovic]

A co-worker of mine wants to upgrade his Tivo via a single drive replacement.

However, he owns a Mac. (And I don't keep track of the Mac threads)

He is also in a remote office (so I can't do it for him), and the office is 100% laptop (he supports telecommuters).

I have found a few posts stating MFSTools 2.0 is avilable for the Mac and Series 2 systems.

Is there a bootable ISO yet for the Mac platform?
So he could follow Hinsdale Instructions?

Or is he just better off somehow getting ahold of a PC to do the upgrade.

Thanks

[classicsat]

Get a PC.

[ChrisNylen]

I would think that the MFSTools binaries would have to able to be compiled on a version of PPC Linux. I run Gentoo on my Powerbook and I'll see if I can get MFSTools to compile on there (although I doubt it), I'll get back to you on it.

[ChrisNylen]

Well I tried to find the source for MFSTools, on the MFSTools site, they only have the binaries, and I can't seem to connect to their CVS server to get the source that way. Does anyone know where I can get the sources? If I can get these going, I can make a Gentoo PPC boot disk with MFSTools on it.

[rb5505]

would this help for series2 and mac?

http://www.engineering.uiowa.edu/~aedelman/

[Jasoco]

Originally posted by classicsat
Get a PC. As a Mac user, I find your reply totally useless and uncalled for. Go back under your bridge, Troll. He was asking for help from Mac users, not PC Zealots.

[apollo8fan]

Originally posted by classicsat
Get a PC.

Right, I'd get right on that if I wanted to have a computer that was a crudely-designed, ill-conceived, virus-infected, trojan-hijacked zombie that required so much add-on software to prevent that stuff and correct the deficiencies that the system becomes useless. On second thought, I'll just stay with my PowerBook G4 and grin at the problems people have with their PC's.

Comments like that will get you flamed 99 times out of a 100.

[Jasoco]

Originally posted by apollo8fan
Comments like that will get you flamed 99 times out of a 100. Which is something I was trying to avoid with my post. We don't need this to turn into a big argument between ignorant PC users and Mac users. Let's drop it here.

[Montaño]

no tools for upgrading on a Mac, Earl :(
I guess that why I have a G4 and a PC ;)
It's called the best of BOTH worlds!!

[Fofer]

Originally posted by apollo8fan
Right, I'd get right on that if I wanted to have a computer that was a crudely-designed, ill-conceived, virus-infected, trojan-hijacked zombie that required so much add-on software to prevent that stuff and correct the deficiencies that the system becomes useless. On second thought, I'll just stay with my PowerBook G4 and grin at the problems people have with their PC's.

Comments like that will get you flamed 99 times out of a 100.

I am as big of a Mac zealot that you'll find, and I've made no secret of that here. However, I don't think classicsat's advice was trollish. I think it was spot-on. (Even ebonovic suggesting that getting a PC for the job wasn't out of the question...)

The fact is, the bulk of TiVo hacking tools are available for PC. For hobbyists that just want to get the job done, tinkering for hours and trying to be the first to force a Mac to get the job done, is clearly not an efficient use of time.

I'll go one step further and suggest the best path of them all: just get a preconfigured, preupgraded drive ready to go from Weaknees or PTVUpgrade.com:
http://partners.ptvupgrade.com/z/30/CD11/

[Ladd Morse]

Originally posted by Fofer
I am as big of a Mac zealot that you'll find, and I've made no secret of that here. However, I don't think classicsat's advice was trollish. I think it was spot-on. (Even ebonovic suggesting that getting a PC for the job wasn't out of the question...) Along with many other members here, my house has been Mac-only for decades. Last Spring I finally admitted that "you just can't get there from here" when it comes to tinkering with TiVo hard drives and picked up a basic PC when it came time to upgrade the Series One TiVo to the current 250GB drive.

The kicker is that you don't have to actually purchase a PC. You simply need one that will turn on without emitting smoke and has the very basic requirement that it has (or can be updated) to a BIOS that understands hard drives larger than 120GB.

I guarantee that you know (or can easily find) someone who has one of these PCs gathering dust in a closet in their basement. They'll be right next to the unused exercise equipment.

The PC I was given is a Dell mini-tower with a whompin' 166MHz CPU (not a mis-type - 166MHz). Extra bonus was a working CD drive. Booted from the PTVUpgrade CD-ROM, followed the instructions and it worked fabulously for formatting a 250GB hard drive to better-than-TiVo specs and copying over all the programs on the previous 120GB drive.

Ask your friends, stick a note up on the bulletin board at work or your local grocery store.

No, you can't do it from your Mac. But it's easy to work around.

[ebonovic]

Okay Okay Okay...

This isn't a Mac VS PC debate... both sides have their pros and cons, and uses...

I was simply trying to find out if there was an ISO or tools out there, as searches came up with: yes there is MFSTOOLS for MAC, but none of them refered to a download site.

Getting a PC is possible, just not very practical... So he will be holding off on his upgrade, until he comes up here for a meeting or training or something and I can do it with one of our office's work PCs.

[cab1024]

The kicker is that you don't have to actually purchase a PC. You simply need one that will turn on without emitting smoke and has the very basic requirement that it has (or can be updated) to a BIOS that understands hard drives larger than 120GB.

I guarantee that you know (or can easily find) someone who has one of these PCs gathering dust in a closet in their basement.

Well I took your advice, emailed the IT dept and by the time I got back from lunch there was a P3 with 512MB RAM, a 10GB HD, and no OS sitting in my cubicle when I returned.

So what's the best free OS, preferably with a GUI, I can download and install on this 10GB HD? I don't know the processor speed. It is Dell Optiplex GX110, but I have a feeling that comes in a variety of speeds.

[Jasoco]

If someone could come up with a foolproof way for me to take an off the shelf (Or ordered off a site) HD, connect it up to my Mac mini and clone whatever I need over to it, then put it in my TiVo, I'd do it. I've been stuck with 40GB forever. And I'm tired of waiting for Series 3. (Which is the only time I'll buy a new TiVo.)

[ADent]

There were reports of MFSTools running on a Mac.

I use my Mac to surf the web while MFStools runs on a cheap PC. I originally used a free PC the neighbors gave me, but bought a $299 (no rebate!) machine a couple of years ago to do this type of stuff.

[JohnTivo]

Over at soureforge.net there is a snapshot of the latest and greatest MFS TOOLS which includes the preliminary mac OS X support. I do not have a mac, so I cannot say if it works.

http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=307354

[qdemn7]

Rather than buy a whole PC, all you need is a motherboard, cpu, heatsink, PSU, memory and optical drive. You don't need a case or any HD for the PC components. Check if there's a Fry's Electronics near you or got to one of the online retailers. You can get a combo consisting of motherboard, (it should have integrated video) CPU and HS for under a $100. Get a cheap PSU, cheap memory, and optical drive and you're good to go. The whole thing should set you back no more than $200 if you get the cheapest stuff you can. Most people have extra KB and Mice laying around, but if not there are cheap ones of each for under $10 each.

This way Mac purists won't be violating their ethics, since they don't actually "own" a PC, just some parts. :D ;)

[SteveInNC]

Well I took your advice, emailed the IT dept and by the time I got back from lunch there was a P3 with 512MB RAM, a 10GB HD, and no OS sitting in my cubicle when I returned.

So what's the best free OS, preferably with a GUI, I can download and install on this 10GB HD? I don't know the processor speed. It is Dell Optiplex GX110, but I have a feeling that comes in a variety of speeds.

For purposes of doing a Tivo upgrade, you don't need to load an OS. The typical MFSTOOLS ISO images out there are based around a bootable Linux CD, and typically install themselves into a ram disk. You can run the required tools with no OS disk (other than the CD) even connnected to the drive chain. I just did exactly that last night.

If you just want to put an OS on there, do a web search for both Debian and Knoppix. ISO images should be easy to find on the net.

As to the Mac debate, I've been a Mac owner since the Plus, and have a dual G5 and iMac G5 now. I also have an ancient Emachine I keep around for stuff like this. You can download the required ISOs to a Mac and burn them from there - they'll work fine in the x86 box.

[dylanemcgregor]

Over at soureforge.net there is a snapshot of the latest and greatest MFS TOOLS which includes the preliminary mac OS X support. I do not have a mac, so I cannot say if it works.

http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=307354

Thanks for the link. If anyone gets this working on a mac, could you post here?

I am in a similar situation as the OP's coworker. I have a Mac G4 and a PC laptop and I have been on the lookout for a cheap hard drive deal so that I can upgrade my DRT800. I have done TiVo upgrades on a PC before, but I do not feel proficient enough on the Mac side of things to attempt this until I have solid confirmation that it works and is easy. If I screw up my girlfriend's Mac in anyway I will not be a happy camper.

[apollo8fan]

OK, folks, I successfully upgraded my SD-DVR40 from it's 40GB Western Digital drive to a 120GB Maxtor using my Powerbook G4 with OS X 10.4 (aka: Tiger).

To do so required TWO USB drive enclosures and MFSTOOL for the Mac, which I had to compile myself after downloading the source code.

I'm going to keep this brief, 'cuz there is tons of info about these commands already. Essentially, I used three commands for the job:

1. mfstool backup (for saving the drive info)
2. dd (for duplicating the drive)
3. mfstool add (for adding the additional partition)

Yes, the command is "mfstool" in all instances. This is a result of the Mac port.

Take the Tivo drive, put it into its USB enclosure and plug it into the Mac FIRST; this drive will be "/dev/disk1" in the Mac filesystem. Take the new drive, put it into its USB enclosure and plug it into the Mac SECOND; this drive will be "/dev/disk2". Other configurations MAY result in different device addresses (Apple's Disk Utility is your friend).

Use "dd" to copy the drive. This took about 13 hours for a 40GB drive on my G4; be patient.

Then use "mfstool add" to add the new, large partition.

Unmount the drives with Disk Utility.

Be warned, I couldn't get the command "mfstool restore" to work when I played with it, so save your backup file to a CD or something. Sorry, but this is the only thing I did and nothing else...any deviation from this would be speculation.

[escaport]

OK, folks, I successfully upgraded my SD-DVR40 from it's 40GB Western Digital drive to a 120GB Maxtor using my Powerbook G4 with OS X 10.4 (aka: Tiger).

To do so required TWO USB drive enclosures and MFSTOOL for the Mac, which I had to compile myself after downloading the source code.

I'm going to keep this brief, 'cuz there is tons of info about these commands already. Essentially, I used three commands for the job:

1. mfstool backup (for saving the drive info)
2. dd (for duplicating the drive)
3. mfstool add (for adding the additional partition)

Yes, the command is "mfstool" in all instances. This is a result of the Mac port.

Take the Tivo drive, put it into its USB enclosure and plug it into the Mac FIRST; this drive will be "/dev/disk1" in the Mac filesystem. Take the new drive, put it into its USB enclosure and plug it into the Mac SECOND; this drive will be "/dev/disk2". Other configurations MAY result in different device addresses (Apple's Disk Utility is your friend).

Use "dd" to copy the drive. This took about 13 hours for a 40GB drive on my G4; be patient.

Then use "mfstool add" to add the new, large partition.

Unmount the drives with Disk Utility.

Be warned, I couldn't get the command "mfstool restore" to work when I played with it, so save your backup file to a CD or something. Sorry, but this is the only thing I did and nothing else...any deviation from this would be speculation.

I'm not all that sure of how to go about this. I have the newest source code from sourceforge, and I'm in the middle of the annoyingly large (823mb) download of Xcode, but where do I go from there? I've never compiled anything in my life, or at least not since I was a kid messing around with TurboPascal on my old amiga 64 (long time ago).

I can see that on my system, they are "disk1" and "disk2" accourding to Disk Uttility.

Do I have to install MfsTools in a particular directory? Nightmares of my PHP5/MySQL install are coming back as we speak, because I know next to nothing about Linux or Unix or any other 'nix.

If I compile the MfsTools and just type mfstool dd in terminal, will terminal know to do what I want it to?

My goal is very simple. I have a DirectTivo Hughes HDVR2. The original drive is failling (cutouts, constant restarts, ect.) and I bought a Western Digital 80gb 7200 drive to replace the original. I don't have any need for backups, hacks, or large disk support. I just want to copy my old drive to the new drive, make the partitions right, and move on with my watching. Just a simple swap, I don't even care about what is recorded on the original drive.

The catch is that I only have three Mac to work with. They are all 10.4.4 machines. I installed ExtFSmanager (sourceforge/projects/ext2fsx) to be able to just plain mount the drives as Mac readable FS drive volumes, but Apple changed something in 10.4 that broke ExtFSmanager, so the volumes won't mount. So I'm left with what you did. With, what it seems like quite a bit less knowledge of how to do it. :D

[apollo8fan]

escaport:

You have to read the Hinsdale How-to to understand the basic concept of what's being done.

The Mac port of mfstools is different only in the command set and the drive identifiers. In Linux, where Hinsdale says "mfsbackup ....." you use "mfstool backup ....." to backup your software.

To backup the software only, I used Option #1 of Step 7. This is where the "mfstool backup" comes in.

To duplicate the drive, I used Option #3 of Step 7. This is where the "dd" command comes in.

To expand the drive, I used Upgrade Configuration #2 of Step 10. This is where the "mfstool add" command comes in.

IMPORTANT: In all of these steps, it's necessary to substitute the Macintosh mount points for the Linux mount points.

It's too difficult to get into instructions on compiling source code and projects. Suffice it to say, the Sourceforge package has contained within it the X-Code project for the compile. Then following the compile, the mfstool will be located on the hard drive in the package's directory. Since this won't be in the command path anywhere, you'll need to move it or call it directly by prepending the directory structure to the command. There might have even been a chmod command required to make the program executable.

As I recall, there's a bug in the source code that I had to fiddle with just to get the package to compile, which is probably why "mfstool restore" didn't ever work for me.

I'm going from memory on a lot of this this since it has been something like three months ago when I did it.

[escaport]

Well, I aprecitate the reply. I downloaded MFSTools-snapshot050221.tar.gz. There wasn't a Xcode project in it unfortunatly. :(

I ran through a bunch of terminal "configure" and "make" commands, but I'm not skilled enough to continue with it. After configure and make install and such, it still wouldn't recognise the mfstool as a command. So, I've thrown in the towel on this project. I also don't want to do something stupid and mess up my Mac by using commands that I really don't have a clue about why and how they work.


So, in the end I am borrowing an old PC from my cousin and just doing it from a boot CD, like all of the walkthroughs use. Oh well. :)

Thanks again.

[jimphillips224]

I'm used a PowerMac G3 Blue and White with 10.4.1.

I pulled the drive from my Tivo (Pioneer 810H-S), and removed the jumper. I installed it in my mac on the same chain as my primary hard drive. I downloaded mfstool for mac os x from http://archive.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/attachment.php?postid=1969708 and I downloaded disk mappering utility from here http://archive.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/attachment.php?postid=1969715.

Inside of the terminal application I entered the following commands:

"sudo Desktop/devMapper1.1"

"sudo Desktop/mfstool restore -s 127 -xzpi Desktop/pioneer_tivo_back.bak /dev/disk1"

"umount -f -a"

And then I reinstalled it into my Tivo and it works. Then I needed to run a Clear and Delete everything, but that is because the backup file is from another machine.

[entropy]

Does devMapper do anything more than print out the info for disks?

(That's a fairly useful thing on Macs, because things don't always mount where you expect them to mount.)

In a few days I hope to be able to try to upgrade my AT&TiVo using the software posted and a couple of bare drive-to-USB2 adapters. We'll see if it works.

~ Kiran <entropy@io.com>

[ding]

so let me see if I got this...

mounting a tivo drive on a mac doesnt harm it. So if I wanted to back up and restore to a larger drive on a standalone series2 540040 I would do this.

1. download a copy of Mac OS X Ext2 Filesystem from sourceforge
2. download a copy of mfstool for os x from the link above
3. install Ext2 Filesystem
4. install tivo drive in a FW inclosure or internally and new drive.
5. using disk utility or devmapper or whatever find the disk # of the disks
or type: mfstool info /dev/diskX
Where X is the letter of the drive you think it is. It should give you valid information about your drive.
This is where I get a little lost........

6. unmount tivo drive from desktop and run mfstool from terminal
7. type: mfstool backup -f 9999 -6so /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/diskX
X being the tivo drive disk number
or type: sudo ./mfstool backup -1 -o tivo4.x /dev/diskX
X being the tivo drive disk number
or type: dd if=/path/to/tivo/hardrive of=tivodrive.img

I dont know which one will work or if they all work but this will back up your original tivo drive. I dont know to where but I guess I can always do a search.

Then....
8. unmount drive if it got mounted due to copying
9. type: mfstool restore -s 127 -bzpi /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/diskY
Y being the new drive.
or type: dd of=/path/to/new/hardrive if=tivodrive.img - Im really not too sure about this one.-
this will copy the tivo backup onto the new drive

Then.....
10. type: mfstool add -x /dev/diskY
Y being the new drive
11. remove drives from mac. save original drive in safe place. copy backup to a CD or DVD. install new drive in tivo. reset Tivo and you are done.

There is also this command:
mfstool backup -Tao - /dev/diskX | mfstool restore -s 127 -pxi - /dev/diskY
which I think backs up and restores all at once, Im not sure.

I'm sure Im F***ing up somewhere or everywhere so if someone can show me where I'm messing up I would appreciate that.

[ding]

according to disk utility and devmapper 1.1 my tivo disk is disk3. I type the following:
./mfstool backup -f 9999 -6so /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/disk3
Terminal tells me this:
/mnt/dos/tivo.bak: No such file or directory
what am I doing wrong. I typed this in order to make a new drive and it works:
./mfstool backup -Tao - /dev/disk3 | mfstool restore -s 127 -pxi - /dev/disk2
but I would like to have a backup of my original tivo disk.
please help.

[ding]

I figured it out.

first you:
1. download a copy of mfstool for os x from the link above
2. install tivo drive in a FW inclosure or internally and new drive.
3. using disk utility or devmapper or whatever find the disk # of the disks
or type: mfstool info /dev/diskX
Where X is the letter of the drive you think it is. It should give you valid information about your drive.
4. type:
./mfstool backup -f 9999 -6so tivo.bak /dev/diskX
X being the tivo drive disk number (. is the location of the mfstool app)
this will give you a backup file on your home directory
5. type:
./mfstool backup -Tao - /dev/diskX | mfstool restore -s 127 -pxi - /dev/diskY
X being the tivo drive disk number and Y being the target drive
this will copy the entire contents of your tivo drive to the new drive
6. type:
./mfstool add -x /dev/diskY
Y being the new drive.
this is to expand the new drive just in case.
7. remove drives from mac, save original drive in safe place. copy backup to a CD or DVD. install new drive in tivo.

did it last night. worked for me. :)

[atlynch]

This is a really great thread. I am considering buying two diskless Tivos from weaknees, I have plenty of hard drives laying around. But, this means I have no disk to clone from. Have any of you tried extracting the image from one of the ptvupgrade CD's and installing it without having the original disk?

-Drew

[ding]

there's got to be a way to extract the tivo image from the disk. I just dont know the command or the directory. maybe if i had a copy I could mount it and find it but im not forking over $20 for that.

[ding]

I think i found the proper directory if you get instantcake. its:
/cdrom/.images/000001
so you could use something like this (I think):
./mfstool backup -Tao - /cdrom/.images/000001 | mfstool restore -s 127 -pxi - /dev/diskY
Y being the disk you want to restore the image on.
If you get this working let us know.

[entropy]

So far, this isn't working for me. Using a 250G Seagate drive (7200.8) and the command line

sudo mfstool backup -o - /dev/disk1 | mfstool restore -s 127 -xpi - /dev/disk2

I start with

/dev/disk1 Big Tivo 37.29 40.04
/dev/disk2 Big Mac 232.89 250.06

I end up with

/dev/disk1 Big Tivo 37.29 40.04
/dev/disk2 Little Unknown 232.89 250.06

and the drive won't boot. Looking at the first few bytes, it seems that it isn't at all the same.

thylacine:~: head /dev/disk1
?root=/dev/hda4 dsscon=true unfinaltest=trueunnamed
@?EMFS media region 2MFS?E3?TPM

thylacine:~: head /dev/disk2
PM?AppleApple_partition_map?3PM??@Bootstrap 1Image3PM??A Kernel 1Image 3PM?ARoot 1Ext23PM?ABootstrap 2Image3PM?$AKernel 2Image3PM?4ARoot 2Ext23PM?4A?Linux swapSwap?3PM?,A/varExt23PM?,MFS application regionMF3PM?D@??MFS media regionMFS??3PM?,Second MFS application regionMF3PM@?DSecond MFS media regionMFS?D3PM?,ANew MFS ApplicationMFS3PM?0Aq New MFS MediaMFSq 3PMPA /ExtraApple_Free /3

Is this a byteswapping problem? Previous to this attempt, I tried to backup to a file and restore from that. Using both the -b and -B options, I seemed to get the same thing--a drive that wouldn't boot in the TiVo. Or, could it be that AT&T Series 2 hardware can't actually handle 250G drives?

Thanks for any advice you can come up with. I'm probably going to have to use my friend's Linux box to do this since I want to get it done tonight or Saturday, but I'd *really* like to see this stuff working on a Mac.

(For reference, my hardware is a 20" iMac G4, and I'm using USB-to-IDE adapters

~ Kiran <entropy@io.com>

[apollo8fan]

I'm not going to be much help when using "mfstool restore". As I indicated in my initial post, I used "dd" to copy the small drive to the large one, then used "mfstool add" to add the new partition. "dd" took forever--13 hours--but it worked for me.

[ding]

try:
sudo mfstool backup -Tao - /dev/disk1 | mfstool restore -s 127 -pxi - /dev/disk2
and make sure both disks are not mounted.
also what does your terminal say when it is processing the restore?
it worked for me on a MDD OS 10.3.9 using 2 firewire cases.
good luck! :)

[entropy]

try:
sudo mfstool backup -Tao - /dev/disk1 | mfstool restore -s 127 -pxi - /dev/disk2
and make sure both disks are not mounted.
also what does your terminal say when it is processing the restore?
it worked for me on a MDD OS 10.3.9 using 2 firewire cases.
good luck! :)

It shows "backing up" and "restoring" at the same time (which is what I saw on Linux) or just restoring if I use the backup file

When I use what you used, I get

No such file or directory
zsh: 3173 broken pipe sudo mfstoolDEBUG backup -Tao - /dev/disk1 |
zsh: 3174 segmentation fault mfstoolDEBUG restore -s 127 -pxi - /dev/disk2

With several variations of that line, I get

No such file or directory
Restore failed: Internal error 4.

I don't want to backup video, which is why I originally tried just "backup -o" (is this the right command for that?)

~ Kiran <entropy@io.com>

[Gunnyman]

FWIW there are Mac Tivo hacking instructions at tivotool.com

[ding]

I'm realizing that i used a different mfstool than the one posted here. maybe that's why I got it to work. if you want to try it download it from here:
http://www.************.com/forum/showthread.php?t=41554&page=2
thats "deal data base" without the spaces dot com
It is a PKG that installs mfstool+bootpage+killhdinitrd in your main hardrive under this directory:
main HD/usr/tivo/bin.
so you will not have to enter sudo comand every time. The command would be:
/usr/tivo/bin mfstool whatever whatever. same goes for bootpage and killhdinitrd.
this was the one I used and it worked.
give it a try.
BTW i havent tried bootpage or killhdinitrd so I can't tell you if those worked or not.
good luck and let me know what happened :up:

[Laird]

I tried using the mfstool from that other site. I'm trying to restore the image from the InstantCake CD (which I bought) onto a new disk. The process runs, and gives me a 'Restore Done!' message. Unfortunately, my Series 1 won't boot with the restored drive. When I try using mfstool info /dev/disk1 on it, I get this set of error messages:
"/dev/disk1s10: No such file or directory
mfs_load_volume_header: mfsvol_read_data: Input/output error
mfstool(2481) malloc: *** Deallocation of a pointer not malloced: 0x3001e0; This could be a double free(), or free() called with the middle of an allocated block; Try setting environment variable MallocHelp to see tools to help debug"

Any ideas?

[ding]

try devmapper to make sure you have the correct directory. you can also try to get the images/000001 file from the download and put it on your desktop and then back up from there. i dont see how that would change anything but its a thought, it could be that when you burn the cd, the backup image becomes corrupt. i have never tried the instantcake cd method but i would be very interested to see if it can be done. keep us updated.

[ding]

you can also try this:
mfstool restore -x -p -b -s 127 -zi /cdrom/.images/000001 /dev/diskX
X=destination

[Laird]

I did use devmapper to make sure I had the correct drive, so that wasn't it. When I gave the mfstool restore command manually, as you suggested, it went through the restore process, said all was well, but the drive still didn't work. When I power up the unit, the drive spins up, 'chatters' for a second or two, then nothing - I get the Welcome screen but nothing proceeds from there.

Any other ideas? Thanks!

[ding]

check this first.
1. did you get the right instantcake cd for your unit
2. did you put the 00001 image on your desktop from the .iso using cp or manually and backed up from the desktop image.
3. what do you get when you use info comand on your new disk.
I've heard of a few people having problems with a burned copy of instantcake due to media or whatever but having good luck backing up this way. hopefully someone with more will chime in.

[Laird]

1) Yes, it does appear I got the correct instantcake CD - at least I know I ordered the correct one :)
2) I mounted the instantcake image and copied the image file to the desktop by dragging it. Do you think this could be the problem? I'll try again, being sure to point to the file on the mounted CD image.
3) When I use the mfstool info command, I get the error I posted in message #38 above - or do you mean doing a Get Info on the mounted disk image?

Thanks again for helping!

[ding]

Im not sure what it could be. Try posting here: http://forum.ptvupgrade.com see if anyone can help. hopefully you can get it working as this would be a great breakthrough. :up:

[TydalForce]

Pardon me for reviving an old thread but I'm about to do this...

I keep reading how MFSTools has a bug with swap files greater than 127gb, but haven't seen any mention of this related to OS X

Since I'm about to install a 300GB drive, which should mean a 150MB swap... but with OS X, do I need to compile tpip? Or, will MFSTools compiled for OS work with that size? Or, should I just leave it ast 127?

Any suggestions or advice would be appreciated! (c:

[TydalForce]

OK compiling tpip was easy; I guess I'll use that when I get the time to embark on this adventure

[funkyjunkman]

I tried using the mfstool from that other site. I'm trying to restore the image from the InstantCake CD (which I bought) onto a new disk. The process runs, and gives me a 'Restore Done!' message. Unfortunately, my Series 1 won't boot with the restored drive. When I try using mfstool info /dev/disk1 on it, I get this set of error messages:
"/dev/disk1s10: No such file or directory
mfs_load_volume_header: mfsvol_read_data: Input/output error
mfstool(2481) malloc: *** Deallocation of a pointer not malloced: 0x3001e0; This could be a double free(), or free() called with the middle of an allocated block; Try setting environment variable MallocHelp to see tools to help debug"

Any ideas?

After many trials and much frustration trying to back up my damaged Tivo drive and restoring onto a new and larger HD using only the Mac OS X version of mfstool, I have a couple of observations that might be helpful. Like in the post above, I was getting a lot of errors while trying to get info or file listing of my restored drive even though mfstool said the backup and restore were working properly.

First, I wasn't using running mfstool as super-user, and putting sudo in front of the mfstool on the command line seemed to help.

Second, I found that the mfstool 2.0 download I was originally using didn't seem to work consistently. I found a slightly newer version of this file on the deal data base forums in a file named 'TiVo OS X.pkg.zip'. I used Pacifist to remove the command line tools instead of using the installer.

Using sudo and using that particular version of mfstool on my Intel based MacPro worked perfectly and after hours of failed attempts I am finally up and running with my new Hitachi 250GB drive!

[RAZUR_BLADEZ]

Keep it simple, get an old pc, I use an old PII-333 and use an old 16gb ibm hard drive and a 8x cdrw. It works like a charm. Sure beats having to mess with my nice PC's.

David

[trantor]

Anohter Mac user here, wanting to upgrade a hard drive in Mac OS X.

I have a replayTV, and used dd to duplicate the hard drive to another larger disk, and then a simple command line tool to expand the disk partition capacity to the proper size.

it seems that on tivo, the process is much harder. i have searched for hours for Mac versions of MFStool, and cannot find anything, except perhaps a source that needs compiling, and I am not a programmer, and do not know how to compile code.

All the links for Tivo to mac tools seems dead. I would like to try the Tivo alongside the Replay. So far, I like the Replay interface better, but do not have enough experience with both yet.

I am not going to buy a PC for this. So please no snarky answers. If there are no mac tools, I can just sell this unit. I would find that disappointing, however. Its weird that OS X, which should be easy to work with for these kinds of tools, does not have Tivo tools available.

If I missed something, I'm sorry, but I have searched as best I could, asked in various other lists, etc, and can't find any working Mac tools for Tivo.

[ForrestB]

The Macs outnumber the PC's in my house 6 to 1 - but this is one of those rare instances where the PC is the best tool for the job.

[phototrek]

I have a MacPro and tried to boot the various Linux hacking CDs - they boot, but then I have no keyboard because there seem to be issues with the keyboard. Interestingly, I have keyboard input at the boot prompt, but then it dies. Whatever.

I also have a PC at home, but it doesn't have SATA which I would need for the Series-3 upgrade. I don't want to buy a SATA card - I have already two, but they are PCIe so my old PC can't use them. I won't buy another PC, now that they are really obsolete for other purposes than TiVo hacking (Parallels and BootCamp do everything else just fine). And I can't get the sources from Sourceforge to compile.

What's next? :)

[voidptr]

Anyone have any luck getting a restore for a Series 1 and a G5? I've got the dd osx mfstools installed and an old backup taken a couple years ago on a PC, but neither -B nor -b seem to produce a bootable image. Anyone know what the head of the disk should look like? I'm assuming it's still flipping bytes or words somehow (one gives me strings like '3txE' and one is 't3Ex', my gut is on a ppc it shoud be 'Ext3' for a series 1). If I knew what it was supposed to be I might be able to hack mfstools to dtrt.

Unfortunately my beater pc I used to use for this is a few hundred miles away and the drive in my T60 just cooked itself after being tossed around on a plane.

[Ult]

Okay I just did this using my MBP (intel duo2 laptop) and Ding's instructions from above. My setup was a bit different because I only had 1 USB/IDE adapter to connect the drive to my laptop which meant I had to do a bit of switch-a-roo w/out the luxury of two USB/IDE adapters. (so no source/target drives connected at the same time)

I downloaded the compiled MFSTOOLS for MACOSX as stated above from the deals link. Then I connected my TIVO to the USB adapter then to my mac and first did the mfstools backup onto my Mac (about 200mb):

mfstool backup -f 9999 -6so tivo.bak /dev/disk1

I knew it was disk1 thanks to Disk Utility

Okay once I had that, I unplugged my TIVO drive, plugged in my new DB35 drive from weaknees and copied the backup to the new drive:

mfstool restore -s 127 -xzpi tivo.bak /dev/disk1

Once done, I ejected with Disk Utility and popped it into my tivo. It booted up just fine.

Now, the only caveat here is that I did not choose to do a full stream restore thus my recordings were not transfered but my subscriptions, season pass, configs, etc all were. It was fine as I only had about 4 recordings on it anyway.

If I were to do a full transfer with recordings, I would have to have 80g of free space to create a tivo.bak with full stream (Ding's -Tao command from above) then restore that stream to my new tivo drive. But as I'm running a test run of this as I type this, it's a slow going deal. For example, the full stream is taking about 10 minutes to go just shy of 1%. Then remember I have to do it all again to restore the stream onto the new tivo drive so times that by 2 to get the final time. Long story short - if you dont care about saving your old recordings it's quick and painless and if you do care about saving your recordings it will take a few hours.

Let me know if you have any questions... as funkyjunkman pointed out above, it took me hours and hours to figure this out but once you get it, it was much easier with thanks in whole part to the already compiled mfstools for the mac (essential) and the posts here in this forum along with Hinsdale's instructions.

Now to get some fresh washington DC air outside... :)

[phototrek]

Can you please post exactly which OSX mfstool you used? I am not lazy going thru this thread; I did that, and the stuff that I donwnloaded wouldn't work :(

[octopus80]

I copied the file 000001 to my desktop and renamed it tivo.bak (I went to the .images directory and typed

cp ./000001 ~/Desktop/tivo.bak

From there, I just used the standard restore command:

sudo /usr/tivo/bin/mfstool restore -s 127 -xzpi ~/Desktop/tivo.bak /dev/disk1

note: as you can see above, I used the tivo.pkg that is referred to earlier in this thread to install the mfstool.

I am using MacOS 10.4.11 on a 17" Powerbook G4.

Thanks for the great instructions. I didn't have to touch a PeeCee.

TT


I think i found the proper directory if you get instantcake. its:
/cdrom/.images/000001
so you could use something like this (I think):
./mfstool backup -Tao - /cdrom/.images/000001 | mfstool restore -s 127 -pxi - /dev/diskY
Y being the disk you want to restore the image on.
If you get this working let us know.

[joestan]

If you have a intel based mac and fusion from vmware with windows insatlled you can run the windows pgm msftools just like you would on a windows box. I works perfectly.

[dtphonehome]

How would one go about doing this with Parallels on a Macbook? I have a IDE to USB adaptor, but only one.

[joestan]

IF you are upgrading a s3 or tivohd you will need a sata to usb convert (newagge $15 - $20). Download winfms and use it to backup your old tivo drive and restore it to the new one. I will work using parallels but will take hours parallels does not support usb 2.0 and will read/write at usb 1.1 speed. You may want to check the vmware wegsite and see if the still offer the free 30 trial.

[Mindflux]

If you have a intel based mac and fusion from vmware with windows insatlled you can run the windows pgm msftools just like you would on a windows box. I works perfectly.

I realize this is an old thread, but this is very welcome news. Woo hoo.

Can you use WinMFS to copy the whole tivo drive? Settings and recorded content? I haven't managed to find much on that?

[mickrussom]

As a Mac user, I find your reply totally useless and uncalled for. Go back under your bridge, Troll. He was asking for help from Mac users, not PC Zealots.

Lol, macs are PCs now with a cryptic replacement for BIOS (EFI) which is inferior to openboot.

While I have a hackintosh here, after computing for decades (and using mostly Unix/Linux/etc for work), the bulk of the zealotry seems to concentrate in the Apple camp.

"Get a PC" is actually probably the easiest way to deal with this, as "mac" could mean quite a large number of machines with different CPU types and HDD support.

[mattack]

It's VERY VERY VERY easy to upgrade on a Mac. You just use the existing UNIX tools.

[emeraldspread]

I have a MacBook Pro, Series 1 TiVo w/Maxtor Quantum 30GB, New Maxtor 120GB DiamondMax 16 and a USB/IDE adapter.

I keep getting this error, when I either hook up the old drive or the new drive so I believe that means I can rule out the old drive being locked. What am I doing wrong? Thanks in advance!

new-host-2:bin michaelj$ mfstool backup -Tao - /cdrom/.images/000001 | mfstool restore -s 127 -pxi - /dev/disk2
/cdrom/.images/000001s10: Unknown error: -1
mfs_load_volume_header: mfsvol_read_data: Input/output error
mfstool(351) malloc: *** error for object 0x2001d0: Non-aligned pointer being freed (2)
*** set a breakpoint in malloc_error_break to debug
backup: Backup failed to startup. Make sure you specified the right
devices, and that the drives are not locked.
Bus error

[dcstager]

Your Maxtor/Quantum drive is locked just like the error message says.

[emeraldspread]

Ok how do I unlock them on a Macbook Pro using a USB/IDE adapter? When I try to unlock the drive in terminal i get this:

new-host-2:dev michaelj$ chflags 0 disk2s1
chflags: disk2s1: Operation not supported


disk2s1 being the identifier.

[dcstager]

I know of no tool to do it with a USB/IDE adapter. Find an old PC carcass and hook it up directly and boot from the MFSTOOLS CD ROM and run the utility. Actually the old Maxtor/Quantum drive is too obsolete to bother burning any calories to save. Get yourself a newer drive and clone it with your USB/IDE adapter. Honestly, just start all over with some decent larger drive. Download Darik's Boot and Nuke to wipe the old drives and throw them away. Sorry. Reality check needed.

[emeraldspread]

dcstager - ha! Thanks, I needed that, seriously. I got an instantcake image and took your advice. Got a big hard drive and just tonight, was able to restore the instakecake image to the drive. The code I used that finally worked was:

sudo mfstool restore -s 127 -xzpi cdrom/.images/000001 /dev/disk2

This only worked after unmounting the drive partition in disk utility. Thanks again!

[herbierobinson]

I replaced the hard drive using a Mac about 10 months ago. I had to download the source code and build it myself. It needed a few fixes, but I posted them to the mfstools project on sourceforge. I included changes that allow one to format the disk using Disk Utility so you don't have to guess at the size. It will work on any drive you can attach to the Mac; although, one has to be very careful to find the correct name in /dev... I used an external Firewire case, in fact.

And yes, the "In Use" message means the disk is mounted.

Oh yeah, I would recommend using a really huge drive. The user interface is starting to get pretty clunky now that it can record 50 or so programs. If the drive was much bigger, it would be annoying.

[fhturner]

I replaced the hard drive using a Mac about 10 months ago. I had to download the source code and build it myself. It needed a few fixes, but I posted them to the mfstools project on sourceforge. I included changes that allow one to format the disk using Disk Utility so you don't have to guess at the size. It will work on any drive you can attach to the Mac; although, one has to be very careful to find the correct name in /dev... I used an external Firewire case, in fact.

Hey Herbie--

Any chance you might include some step-by-step info in my "new" thread/question about upgrading w/ a Mac (since this thread dates back to 2004, I'm unsure what is still relevant)?

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=470657

I'm going to work on compiling the MFStools that you contributed patches to, but I haven't used SourceForge extensively, so I'm a bit unsure how you go about incorporating your patches and compiling. If you could provide any tips and pointers, or walk us through the steps, that would be greatly appreciated. Maybe if we get this info updated and in one place, we can have an easier time of it.

Thx!
Fred