Can you divorce a (failed) 2nd drive - UK series 1

[davidshack]

Help please anyone!

Just upgraded a UK series 1 TiVo with a new 300Gb drive (as first drive) and a 120Gb drive (as second drive).

Within a day, the second drive became noisy and failed.

Warranty replaced second drive with an identical one, but (of course) first drive doesn't recognise the new one (I guess MFSadd put some config info on the second drive). Nor will the first drive boot alone (on boot it looks for original second drive).

I used MFStools & MFSadd to pair the drives.

Please, how can I either:
- access the boot configuration on the first drive and remove the link to the old second drive? So it boots alone (& I can later MFSadd the new second if I want)
- OR what file/command do I need to put on the new second drive so that the first drive recognises it? (ie what does MFSadd put on the second drive).

There are no programmes recorded on the first drive, though it does have season pass and wishlist info.

I know I could start again from scratch on the first drive, but it'll take all day, by the time you've added TiViweb, endpad, upto date setup and passes etc

I expect this is becoming a common problem but the only posts I've found are where the first drive failed


Thank you
David

[classicsat]

Just restore the image to the first drive again.

[davidshack]

Just restore the image to the first drive again.


Thanks for your reply.

Sorry to be dense, but which image?
Do you mean start again from scratch?
Please can I ask you to explain?

I have an image of the 2.5.5 software, but for UK series 1 TiVos this is standardised for a basic kernel - ie doesn't support a big disk - and is the bare minimum. I guess Canada and US software is now way ahead of our old stuff.

MFStools puts the 2.5.5 onto the disk, but I also have to manually install large kernel support, expand the partitions to use the available disk size, copy across TiVoweb etc, copy add-ons such as endpad etc, then use MFSadd to see a second drive. Test it all. Run guided setup to reflect up-to-date channels and connections. Programme the season passes and wishlists. Four hours if I'm lucky, with a friend's help and disks.

I don't know of an image to load all of that - though after this experience I'll certainly try to make one for the future.


The workload of starting again from scratch was why I was hoping someone knew a simple MFSadd "undo", or the code that it adds to both the first & second drives when pairing them.
The rest of the software is so elegant, it seems odd if this situation hasn't been foreseen - second drive failure must be an increasingly frequent problem as the installed base of machines gets older.

Thanks for any advice
David

[Dan Collins]

You can't actually "undo" the mfsadd directly.

What you need to do is create a new backup of your hacked Drive A, using MFSTools 2.0 and the -s (shrink) parameter. That will backup your boot partition and the root partition (with the TiVo software and your season passes). Then restore that image back to your 300GB drive. This will get you a standalone Drive A that will be divorced from the failed Drive B and back to your TiVo's original storage size. Then, an mfsadd run against both drives will re-expand Drive A and remarry it to the new Drive B.

[davidshack]

You can't actually "undo" the mfsadd directly.

What you need to do is create a new backup of your hacked Drive A, using MFSTools 2.0 and the -s (shrink) parameter. That will backup your boot partition and the root partition (with the TiVo software and your season passes). Then restore that image back to your 300GB drive. This will get you a standalone Drive A that will be divorced from the failed Drive B and back to your TiVo's original storage size. Then, an mfsadd run against both drives will re-expand Drive A and remarry it to the new Drive B.


Thanks Dan, I'll give it a try.

Let's hope an "undo" gets put in MFStools 2.1 !

David