Unusual disk upgrade help????

[Bodger]

I upgraded my TiVo years ago to 2x160Gb Maxtors, and everything was peachy until lately when the disks started to fail.

I have purchased 2x160Gb WDC to replace, but they are slightly smaller (that old chesnut!). I tried the copy anyway hoping that originally I had only used 137Gb of the original disks, but new disk just give GSOD and keep rebooting.

Setup is as follows:

TiVo A drive (old) = IDE0 Master = hda
TiVo B drive (old) = IDE0 Slave = hdb
Tivo A or B (New) = IDE1 Master = hdc
CDRom drive with bootable MFSTools = IDE1 Slave = HDD

Copied disks with command(s):

DD if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdc bs=1024k conv=noerror,sync
Then swopped new disk:
DD if=/dev/hdb of=/dev/hdc bs=1024k conv=noerror,sync

The copies gave 2-3 errors but copied before running out of space near the end. Also took around 6 hours each!!

Where I am right now is I just need the TiVo back uprgently (how do people live without it?). I do not need to preserve recordings, and I want to preserve old disks just in case.

Reading through the forums I am think that I can pipe the MFSBACKUP ¦ MFSRESTORE commands so that I do not need another drive to store the backup temporarily or use a boot floopy, but i can't find the right commands. Hinsdales is great, but always assumes you are going to a larger drive and is not clear. I am an IT expert (Ha Ha), but know very little about Unix/Linux.

Sorry for the waffle.

Does anyone know that command I could use for the following?

1) Backup/Restore (piped) old 2x160 to new 1x160 preserving setup only without recordings.
2) Hookup both new drives then use MFSADD to add new B drive.

Any assistance would be much appreciated. There may even be a reward for the best/quickest answer that gets my TiVo back. Like a third son to me!!

[blindlemon]

Boot from the Version 1.0 LBA48 CD (http://www.tivoheaven.com/download/ptv-mfstools2-large-disk.iso)

Fit the new "A" drive at /dev/hdZ and the 2 old drives at /dev/hdX and /dev/hdY and run:-

mfsbackup -l32 -so - /dev/hdX /dev/hdY | mfsrestore -s 330 -r4 -xzpi - /dev/hdZ

Should take about 5-10 minutes :)

Then run copykern specifying /dev/hdZ and kernel option 1 to copy the LBA48 kernel and initialise the swap.

Fit the new "B" drive at /dev/hdX and run:-

mfsadd -x -r4 /dev/hdZ /dev/hdX

(I've specified a swapsize of 330mb to give you scope to replace the "B" drive with a 500gb drive at a later stage without having to worry about swapsize. If you are sure you are never going to increase the size of this drive then you could use -s 160 instead.)

[Bodger]

OK, so I'll answer my own question!! I managed to find another spare hard drive to use as a temporary backup drive (formatted as FAT32). So I could follow hinsdales instructions after all. Here is what I did, would appreciate it of anyone can check my work.

Setup is as follows:

TiVo A drive (old) = IDE0 Master = hda
TiVo B drive (old) = IDE0 Slave = hdb
Temp Backup disk = IDE1 Master = hdc
CDRom drive with bootable MFSTools = IDE1 Slave = HDD

Ran the commands:

mkdir /mnt/dos
mount /dev/hdc1 /mnt/dos
mfsbackup -l 32 -so /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hda /dev/hdb

This gave me a 30 hour backup image. I assume this is the basic single drive setup. Next rebooted and setup the drives as follows:

TiVo A drive (new) = IDE0 Master = hda
TiVo B drive (new) = IDE0 Slave = hdb
Temp Backup disk = IDE1 Master = hdc
CDRom drive with bootable MFSTools = IDE1 Slave = HDD

Ran the commands:

mkdir /mnt/dos
mount /dev/hdc1 /mnt/dos
mfsrestore -s 300 -xzpi /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hda /dev/hdb

Got the following messages:

Restore done!
Adding pair /dev/hda12 - /dev/hda13
New estimated standalone size: 174 hours (144 more)
Adding pair /dev/hdb2 - /dev/hdb3
New estimated standalone size: 366 hours (192 more)

Put the drives back in the TiVO fired up and working great. Only small caveat is that I can still see all of my old recording listed, but cannot play them. I assume I'll have to clear these down manually.

I will monitor this for a couple of days before checking/low level formatting the old drives and sending back to maxtor for replacements (hopefully).

Does anyone have any shortcuts or improvement to save time?

I would have liked to have kept the programmes, but i was getting errors using the DD command before it ran out of space, so assumed that many of them would be unwatchable anyway. This method gets my TiVo back quickly, which is what I need over the Bank Holiday weekend!!

[Bodger]

Thanks blindlemon. Just missed your post by a few minutes as I was typing up my own reply.

Looks like I got it pretty much correct though. I don't know about the copykern parts though. I assumed that because I was already using 160Gb disks that I didn't need this.

Looking at the hours listed from the MFS RESTORE command, does it look like I am using 2x137Gb instead of 2x160Gb? Not the end of the world. Just happy to have TiVo back!!

[blindlemon]

If you ran the mfsrestore command while booted from the LBA48-aware CD then the drives will be fully utilised and they will have the LBA48 kernel if that was on your original drives.

However, your swapfile won't be initialised, which will give you problems with the daily call and if you ever get a GSOD. I'd put the "A" drive back in the PC and run copykern to ensure you have the LBA48 kernel and initialise the swap. This is a non-destructive operation so shouldn't affect the drive in any other way.

[Bodger]

Thats sounds familiar. After the upgrade I tested the dial-up a couple of times and it rebooted the TiVo. Strangely when I asked it to make it's daily call this worked OK.

Do you have the format for the copykern command? I can't find it in Hinsdales guide anywhere.

Also i have checked and I have 384 hours in basic mode. Does this seem OK for 2x160Gb? Still not sure if I am using 2x137Gb or 2x 160Gb.


Anyway, thanks for taking the time to reply.

[kitschcamp]

Copykern is a script that runs the right tools to do it. It really is just a process of following the prompts. The only freeko moment is you need to select the DTivo option (2.5.2) even though you're using a standalone UK tivo...

[Bodger]

OK ran the copykern command, and it sais that it has initialised the 300Mb swop file (no idea what it was using before!!).

The only problem was that it would not allow me to use hda for my TiVo drive!!

So had to spend a few minutes swopping cables around to get it working on hdc. These things never seem to be straightforward.

Anyway I've out everything back together and reran the diallip test, and it didn't reboot this time. So fingers crossed everything is now OK.

Thank very much for you assistance guys. Much appreciated.

[blindlemon]

OK ran the copykern command, and it sais that it has initialised the 300Mb swop file (no idea what it was using before!!). 0mb :)

[laurence@key2.co]

Hi,
I'm trying to use mfsbackup to create a tivo.bak - but it fails every time - and always at 9MB.
I have a twin drive tivo that I've previously upgraded.
I've used MSFTools2 Large Disk and followed the instructions to the letter.
mkdir /mnt/dos works fine.
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/dos returns the following:

/dev/hda1: success
mount: you must specify the filesystem type

Not sure if that's a problem... Filesystem of backup disk (master on primary ide channel is FAT 32).

I pressed on hopefully with

mfsbackup -l 32 -6so /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdc /dev/hdb

Which scans drives, tells me I've got 30 hour source drive upgraded to 117 hours and that uncompressed backup will be 1050MB.
After 9MB (which takes a few seconds) it reports:

Backup failed: /mnt/dos/tivo.bak: Success


Does anyone have any ideas? Could it be caused by read errors on my old tivo drives? I do sometimes get a GSOD when I reboot...

I'd be really grateful for any help!
Laurence

[laurence@key2.co]

Come to think of it... Is there any way of creating a tivo.bak file over the network - I have a cachecard installed and the old drives work fine (for the moment!).
Alternatively, I could try backing up on the fly rather than creating a backup file (would that help?). I guess then I'd have to back up two drives to a single 250GB, then add a second drive since I only have two ide channels...
Any advice??
Cheers,
Loz

[blindlemon]

mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/dos returns the following:

/dev/hda1: success
mount: you must specify the filesystem type

Not sure if that's a problem... Filesystem of backup disk (master on primary ide channel is FAT 32).I suspect the FAT32 partition on your drive is not hda1 - have you tried hda2, hda3 etc. etc?

You shouldn't get an error if it mounts OK.

[laurence@key2.co]

I suspect the FAT32 partition on your drive is not hda1 - have you tried hda2, hda3 etc. etc?

You shouldn't get an error if it mounts OK.

Thank you thank you thank you Blindlemon! Spent all day on this. Girlfriend a little unhappy!
It was hda5.

Unfortunately, I suspected drive errors, so I did a delete all and a mfs dskcheck to make sure all ok.

It's reporting source drive 30 hours upgraded to 117 hours, but backup image will be 30 hours. Is that a problem?
-Edit-
Ignore that question. Just found your reply to same question on another thread.

One more qu though. Steve Conrad says to use the following command if individual drives greater than 300GB:
"restore -x -r 4 -s 300 -zpi /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdc /dev/hdb"
Do I need the -r 4 for two 250GB drives - and will it cause any problems if I do use it (I have!).
Cheers,
Loz

[blindlemon]

Not a problem - it means your backup divorced correctly, so you can restore it to any size drive now.

BTW, I would re-do the backup with just -so instead of -6so if you have space (about 1.3gb) on your FAT32 drive as the compression in mfstools is buggy. You can always zip the backup file for archiving on CD if you need to.

[laurence@key2.co]

Not a problem - it means your backup divorced correctly, so you can restore it to any size drive now.

BTW, I would re-do the backup with just -so instead of -6so if you have space (about 1.3gb) on your FAT32 drive as the compression in mfstools is buggy. You can always zip the backup file for archiving on CD if you need to.

OK, will do that so I have a backup for future use. Is it worth redoing the restore? It seems to have worked ok...

[blindlemon]

If your restore worked then there's no point redoing it.

[laurence@key2.co]

If your restore worked then there's no point redoing it.

Brill. I'll put tivo back together then! Thanks tons for your help.
Laurence :D