mfsbackup | mfsrestore has been running for 3 days

[chown]

I started upgrading my HR10-250 to 2 drives on Sunday at noon. By Monday evening (30 hours later), the mfsrestore command had reported it was at about 2% completed.

This morning (66 hours later) it was showing about 16% finished. At this rate, I might finish by the end of the month.

I used the weaknees page to get the instructions at tivo[dot]upgrade-instructions[dot]com (the site won't let me post a url since this is my first post)

The command I used is:

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

the original Tivo drive is primary channel master
the 2 new drives are secondary channel master and slave

I'd like to know a few things.

1. I didn't read the README file, and I clearly should have. Are there switches I could have used to make this process more efficient?
2. Can I safely cancel the command now without corrupting the original drive?

I can actually afford to keep this going indefinitely as I don't need the computer it's running on, but I'd worry about power outages or the system locking up from the heat of the summer weather.

[funtoupgrade]

Stopping the process will not hurt anything. How big are the two new drives and also the original drive?

[chown]

original drive is 250GB
both new drives are 250GB

yes, I should have bought bigger drives.

I'd really like to keep the programs I have recorded, and I'm guessing that's what's taking so long. Are there switches I can use on mfsbackup to make that go faster?

[dumpav]

i will not surprise for that rate. I try to do a mfsbackup and restore from my Humax 80G > 500GB it take 20hr.

I am using a amd semptron 3400+ with 1G ram running in dual channel.


I think the big problem is copy the old program to the new drive. That probably take so much time.

At first i try to delete some progam b4 i do the backup, but it seems the new tivo OS will keep it in the trash can til it run of of space, so whatever i delete still in the drive. After it run the end the mfsbackup mfsrestore command, it scan the tivo drive and it report it had 74hr/G of stuff to copy. I bet since u have a 250 tivo drive, if u have it fill up already, u probably need to copy 250G of stuff to your new drive.

[JamieP]

Check your dma settings: "hdparm -d /dev/hdX", for each X in a,c,d. If dma is off, you can turn it on with "hdparm -d1 /dev/hdX", again for each disk. With dma on, you should get anywhere from 10-30MB/sec, or ~ 3-6 hours for a 250GB drive copy.

[chown]

Check your dma settings: "hdparm -d /dev/hdX", for each X in a,c,d. If dma is off, you can turn it on with "hdparm -d1 /dev/hdX", again for each disk. With dma on, you should get anywhere from 10-30MB/sec, or ~ 3-6 hours for a 250GB drive copy.
That did the trick. It's at 34% finished after about 30 minutes.

Thank you.