Upgrading from 160+160 to 500?

[mr_fusion_512]

I've upgraded a lot (more than I can count) of 240040's & 540040's (the charcoal and silver Tivo Series II 40 Hr's) to Dual 160's without a hitch... BUT, that was a LONG time again and since then, we all have discovered (a) it gets really hot, (b) 500's are (now) relatively cheap (especially when you can get back 2x 160's for other uses) and (c) the Tivo seems to "stutter" sometimes, often enough to notice... Maybe it's because it's two drives, maybe it's bad sectors, who knows... but 500 seems more than enough :) (to get rid of the 2x160's for)

So... I've been out of the loop on Tivo upgrading for quite a while, but last time I checked, you can enlarge an A (with or without a B) and then re-enlarge it again... (and again?)

So here's the question, given that the "new A" (ie. 500 gb) is sufficiently large enough to handle the old A+B (320 total), is there a utility / procedure out there to divorce them again? (I know that for a long time it wasn't possible) - The idea is to replace the two drives with the new 500 and pick up where we left off, season passes and shows intact.

I still have the original 40 gb images and I know I can utilize them to make a fresh single A, but the problem I had with this (as I did my first upgrade this way) is that shows (series, in particular) that are no longer aired get transferred into individual slots. Ie. 20 episodes (clippings actually) of 60 Minutes Wednesday existed as a single folder of 20 on the original unit. But when transferred over to the brand new 500, it because 20 separate shows (ungroupable). So you can imagine that as we consolidated into the unit (with almost 600 hrs), the ungroupable shows really became a bit of a mess as there were about 100+ shows that couldn't be grouped any longer, etc. (Scrolling and sorting took much longer, too)

I can only figure that at some point when the show is being aired, the Tivo downloads its show ID or something and that helps hold the group together for all future downloads. But the new tivo, while able to recreate the groups for still-current shows (Tonight Show, for example), doesn't know how to handle no-longer-airing shows. If you know how to work around this problem (from the command prompt, so to speak), I'd be willing to make the 500 from the 40gb image and then copy the show data manually and recreate the season passes. Either solution will do :)

Look forward to hearing the latest... or being pointed to it.

Thanks!
-sMrF

[mr_fusion_512]

Just an update, but I wanted to rule out any "easy" solutions:

With HDA/HDB as the old drives (200GB ea.) and HDC as the new one (500GB), I tried with both the PTVLBA48-4.04.iso and Weaknees_LBA_Boot_CD.iso the following two commands:

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

Fully expecting it to give me some "too many partitions" error, it instead gave me the following (summarized):
Source 40
Upgraded to 227
Upgraded to 471
Uncompressed 379272 MB
Restore Failed: Backup target not large enough for entire backup by itself

Well, that wasn't the error I expected so (a) is this its way of indicating the "too many partitions" problem or (b) is it just not properly seeing a 500 GB drive?

If it's (a) then I've seen posts (elsewhere) that show how to eliminate a couple of partitions, but I'm not sure on the long term effects especially if there's an OS upgrade that then trashes *everything* (I've had issues like that, probably my fault in part) ... Anyway, if this particular discussion needs to continue somewhere else, let me know.

If it's (b), then it may be an easy fix and hopefully an easy end solution?

Alternately, if it's (a), does anyone know how to manually copy the data with the show ID's that handle the ability for the Tivo to group shows of the same series? From observation (expanding on the first post), when you connect a freshly upgraded Tivo, it downloads all the ID's for any and all current shows (even if re-runs). But for shows that no longer exist (and they're not *currently* running re-runs), imported shows (from a group on another Tivo) end up as single episodes on the new Tivo (so 200 total shows may be 40 grouped and manageable on the old Tivo, but after xfer to the new one, it may be 120 which becomes absolute clutter and havoc :)

Anyone?... Thanks!
-sMrF

[JamieP]

It's (a).

If your tivo is hacked, there are various tools and techniques around on the "other" forum (DDB) to manually group shows.

[mr_fusion_512]

Thanks for the reply... You seem to always have an answer for me :)

So, given it's a partition problem, if you were in my shoes, would you (a) manually group them? or (b) mess with the partitions? I'm guessing (a) is less likely to have long term problems.

Thanks!

[JamieP]

Thanks for the reply... You seem to always have an answer for me :)

So, given it's a partition problem, if you were in my shoes, would you (a) manually group them? or (b) mess with the partitions? I'm guessing (a) is less likely to have long term problems.In my own shoes, I've taken the (b) approach and haven't had any problems and have gone through a number of tivo software upgrades. On the other hand, I'm prepared to deal with problems if they should crop up later. The only issue is that mfsbackup can't properly backup a tivo disk mangled in this way.

The easiest aproach (obviously) is to kiss your recordings goodbye. Can you catch up over the summer when there isn't much new on tv, then upgrade in the fall, sans recordings?

[mr_fusion_512]

Thanks for your opinion... I'm working on posting this on another forum as well... but I'm starting to like the idea of "mangling" the drives only because you have done it as well. It's just the fact that I'm going to do this upgrade about 6-8 times for all my friends (I don't remember how many units there are out there, but there are a lot and everyone wants to see if we can do this). I figure that when I run into trouble, I'll come look for help then.

Besides, by theory, the Tivo OS upgrades typically don't entail any alterations to the partitions, just the contents right? If that's the case, I'm hoping I'll be safe... or safe enough? It sure would make life a lot faster & easier...

Also, I don't see ever needing to use mfsbackup as I plan on holding on to the original stock drives. Am I missing something?

Thanks again!

[greg_burns]

I can only figure that at some point when the show is being aired, the Tivo downloads its show ID or something and that helps hold the group together for all future downloads. But the new tivo, while able to recreate the groups for still-current shows (Tonight Show, for example), doesn't know how to handle no-longer-airing shows.

So more info on the subject (but no solution)...
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=4077517&&#post4077517

[mumpower]

Going a different way with this, you can upload your TiVo files to your computer, start fresh with the new larger TiVo drive then download them back down again from your computer. The only trick is that you would need a significant amount of hard drive space on your computer, but a lot of folks with RAID configurations do. Alternately, it's easy to throw in a new $90 300 GB hard drive on your computer. Later on, there is nothing stopping you from reformatting it and using it as a TiVo drive, also.

[greg_burns]

Going a different way with this, you can upload your TiVo files to your computer, start fresh with the new larger TiVo drive then download them back down again from your computer.

Yes, but then he would still have to deal with that grouping problem discussed above.

[mr_fusion_512]

Thanks for all your thoughts... I had considered that as I was posting my issue to another forum... regardless, it came down to these choices:

a) reduce partitions by 2 and then run mfsbackup/mfsrestore onto the new drive - although this opens up possible (but likely very rare) long term problems should a future upgrade one day decide to use those deleted partitions or change them the partition table structure

b) save everything to PC and then upload back, but using some script somewhere that preserves the info (each way). Not sure, however, if this also make the new folders compatible with recordings of the same series recorded on another "old" unit?

c) find a way to copy the SeriesID database from one old unit to the new unit prior to dvr-2-dvr xfer

d) copy everything over first (dvr-2-dvr) and then finding the ID on the old unit (TivoWeb?), creating it on the new unit and then delete/undelete everything in order to group it

I think my ideal option would be C if it were possible. So far, no one knows :) That said, I may lean towards B if it's fully compatible with the same series shows stored on an old Tivo also on the network.

I'm open to suggestions though :)
-sMrF *Smile*

[greg_burns]

Now that Tivo is storing some data on their servers that gets preserved after upgrades...

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=303886

Wouldn't it be nice to find out the "seriesID database" was one of them? :cool:

Make sure you privacy setting is correct so you can at least hope.