Upgrade from 40 + 120 to 160 + 160?

[tazmanhoke]

I recently had a problem where one of my drives is failing. All of a sudden I heard some very loud, very bad sounds coming from the TiVo... Then, black screen and finally had to power cycle the unit.

I promptly ordered up a couple of new drives which are supposed to be nice and quiet. Now that I've got them, I need to get them installed. And the sooner the better since my pregnant wife has been put on bedrest (I DO NOT want the tivo to go down while she's on bedrest... that would be BAD!!!).

Ok, with the background of why out of the way, now comes the question of how? I'm a technical guy, but I just don't have time to figure out from the various resources what the specific steps are. But because I'm technical, if I can have a few pointers in the right direction, I'm sure I'll be good to go.

As I see it, I've got two options:
1. Upgrade and ignore all the recordings.
2. Upgrade and keep all the recordings.

Ok, I thought of a 3rd.
3. Copy the TiVo OS stuff, expand to max capacity and then do a "clear everything" and re-run guided setup.

If I choose option 1, do I lose all my season passes, etc? If not, then I suspect that's my easiest option. But when answering the questions below, please keep both options in mind.

Some prelims, cuz I'm sure you'll all need it:
I've got a TiVo Series2 model 24004A
Software verision 7.2.2b-oth-01-2-140


I know I'll need some ISO. Which one and where do I get it? LBA 48?

Now, how do I copy from the old drives to the new ones? Keeping in mind that at least the 40GB needs to be "expanded".

As an additional question, is it possible to expand both disks to be able to use all 160GB of the new disks? (I suspect that because of my tivo model I won't be able to do this, so will be limited to 127GB?).

[funtoupgrade]

Quickest (but not cheapest) way to get going it to buy an InstantCake for your TiVo model and forget trying to save anything. You do need LBA48 version for two 160's.

Yes, you will be able to use full capacity (320GB) whichis not limited by hardware. Make sure to use a swap file of at least 160 and run tpip after the restore if InstantCake does not do that automatically (never used IC).

[Dkerr24]

I wouldn't bother with a dual drive setup. A large (300gb+) drive would run quieter, cooler and be more reliable than any dual drive setup.

[lessd]

I have been running 2 years with 300G drives and 127m swap file and never had a problem, does anybody know what the downside is on the swap being only 127m (I do use -r 4). I have heard of problems when the swap is made bigger than 127m using some program but none when its not.

[tazmanhoke]

It dawned on me that "upgrading" to a single 160GB drive ought to give me almost the same recording capacity. So in an attempt to retain all the recordings, I tried to use the following command:

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

However, I get an error regarding "Backup target not large enough for entire backup by itself". I'm not surprised about this since the sum of the two drives is slightly larger than the single drive by itself (41110 MB + 122942 MB = 164052 MB which is clearly larger than 160042 MB). It tells me the "Uncompressed backup size" is 152440 megabytes.

mfsinfo against that drive set reports 153222MiB as the Total MFS volume size.

Is there any way to reduce the size requirement so that I can "upgrade" to a single drive? I'm sure the partitions aren't full on the source disks, so if there's a way to reduce them to be small enough to fit on the new drive, then grow to fit the new disk, that'd be great!

TIA

[JamieP]

I have been running 2 years with 300G drives and 127m swap file and never had a problem, does anybody know what the downside is on the swap being only 127m (I do use -r 4). I have heard of problems when the swap is made bigger than 127m using some program but none when its not.There are two schools of thought (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=3825639#post3825639) on that.

[baronworm]

It dawned on me that "upgrading" to a single 160GB drive ought to give me almost the same recording capacity. So in an attempt to retain all the recordings, I tried to use the following command:

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

However, I get an error regarding "Backup target not large enough for entire backup by itself". I'm not surprised about this since the sum of the two drives is slightly larger than the single drive by itself (41110 MB + 122942 MB = 164052 MB which is clearly larger than 160042 MB). It tells me the "Uncompressed backup size" is 152440 megabytes.

mfsinfo against that drive set reports 153222MiB as the Total MFS volume size.

Is there any way to reduce the size requirement so that I can "upgrade" to a single drive? I'm sure the partitions aren't full on the source disks, so if there's a way to reduce them to be small enough to fit on the new drive, then grow to fit the new disk, that'd be great!

TIA


Hey, I happen to be in the EXACT same situation. I, too, would love a way to move from 120+40 to 160 without losing my recordings. And it does seem like it should be possible; after all... the bytes I care about WILL fit on the new drive! :-)

Anyone?