Starting Fresh - Help!

[SEC55]

My original Tivo HD died, so I have a new Hitachi 250 and a drive image from one of the forum members. I've searched through the forums and can't find an answer to this specific question:

What's the procedure for putting a drive image on a new drive when you're not copying from an old one?

I've read Hinsdale and used it to add a second drive before, but all the info involves copying an image from an existing Tivo drive. I haven't been able to find anything about starting fresh anywhere. (Maybe I haven't looked in the right place.)

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[funtoupgrade]

Boot from MFStools LBA48 CD
mkdir /mnt/dos
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/dos where hda1 is your FAT32 partition number
mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hd? where name of tivo backup file is tivo.bak and ? is location of new hard drive
mountcd assumes series one tivo
copykern following 6 steps prompted for, assumes series one tivo
umount -f -a -r
control-alt-del

[SEC55]

Thanks so much for the help. I was trying it last night and something wasn't working. Turns out that the boot floppy was corrupted. I'll download the files onto another one and try again.

[wscannell]

You will not be able to boot from floppy to use the entire drive on a Series 1. You need to get the ptvupgrade.com LBA48 boot CD. The free one has everything that you need.

[SEC55]

I wish I'd come back to the forum earlier today! Your post would've saved me a lot of trouble. Thanks, I'll get it and see if I can make it work.

[SEC55]

Don't have a CD burner, but a friend is going to do it for me. I'll report back later.

[SEC55]

Got the CD and ran through the process, and your commands worked perfectly, funtoupgrade. But the Tivo gets stuck on the powering up screen. It sounds like the disk is being accessed, but nothing happens. I disconnected my second drive to take it out of the mix, but no change.

Is it possible the upgrade didn't work as planned, could the ribbon cable be bad, or could it be something worse?

[wscannell]

Where did the second drive come from that you refer to? The instructions above were written for a single drive TiVo. It sounds like you were putting a single 250 in the TiVo.

[SEC55]

It's a new Hitachi 250 GB. It's going into an SVR2000 which I previously upgraded with a second 160 GB drive.

[wscannell]

OK - the problem here is when you have a two drive TiVo, the two drives become "married". Neither drive can be used alone in the TiVo any longer. They cannot be used with any other drive unless they are both reloaded. I would expect the 250GB drive to work by itself in the TiVo. If it does not, then there is some other problem. This problem should be solved first before going to two drives.

Then you need to have both the 250 and the 160 connected to the PC and add the second drive:

mfsadd -x /dev/hdX /dev/hdY

X would be the letter associated with where the 250 is connected and Y would be the 160.

[SEC55]

OK, thanks. I'll try that tomorrow and see how it goes (have class tonight).

But you say that it should work with just the 250 hooked up, right? It wasn't last night. I'll try it again and see what happens.

[SEC55]

With the second drive completely disconnected, the Tivo is still stuck on the powering up screen. What do you suggest now?

[wscannell]

Is it possible that the image that you got is not for an SVR-2000? If it is not, then that would explain why it will not boot. If not, test the image by using this restore command. This will create a drive with the same space as the image without expansion. (you can expand later.)

mfsrestore -s 127 -zpi /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hd?

Do not do the copykern at this time, because it will not be needed.

Once it tests ok in the TiVo, do the copykern and verify that it works.

Then use mfsadd to expand and test again.

[SEC55]

OK, no change, still stuck. Here's what I did:

mkdir /mnt/dos

mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/dos where hda1 is the FAT32 partition (primary master)

mfsrestore -s 127 -zpi /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdc (new upgrade drive is secondary master)

The image says that it's for an SVR-2000, but is it possible that it isn't? It came from Stan Simmons here in the forums.

Also, I just realized that I'd forgotten to plug in the modem cable, but I doubt that's the problem.

[SEC55]

IT WORKED!!!!

I found my original drive image from when I did the 160 GB upgrade and used that, and it expanded perfectly and my Tivo is now back in business! WOOHOO!!

Now I have to add the second drive. As mentioned above, the commands were for a single-drive unit. How do I now add back my 160?

[SEC55]

Still hoping someone can help me with the commands to add in the second drive. Can you help me, funtoupgrade?

[wscannell]

Then you need to have both the 250 and the 160 connected to the PC and add the second drive:

mfsadd -x /dev/hdX /dev/hdY

X would be the letter associated with where the 250 is connected and Y would be the 160.

Here is the command.

[SEC55]

Thanks a lot. And that's just going to tell it that the second drive is there, right? It will preserve my recordings on the 160? There's a lot of stuff I'd hate to lose.

[wscannell]

That just adds the 160 and does not affect the first drive. However, if something does go wrong in the process, you will lose what is on the original drive. This does not usually happen, but it is a possibility.

Once you have created a two drive TiVo, the two drives are a "married" pair. They always need to be used together. The TiVo will never boot without both present. Since you are starting with a used 160, more than likely the 160 will die first. You then will need to start with a backup image to reload the TiVo.

[SEC55]

OK, great. The next few days or so will be very busy for me, so I probably won't have time to do this for a little while. But when I do, I'll report back on the results.

Thanks again! You guys are great!

[SEC55]

OK, another problem. After working perfectly for the last couple of weeks, this morning the Tivo refused to boot, saying "cannot load kernel." I hadn't added the second drive yet. I followed the procedures detailed above and restored the drive image.

But now the Tivo doesn't see the recordings made in the last two weeks. Did the restore process delete them? :(

[wscannell]

An image file that is saved does not contain programs. When you restore an image, you will be restoring pointers to programs, but not the actual programs themselves. You may get lucky and the pointers to some of the programs (that are saved with the image) may work if you are restoring to the same drive. Otherwise, you do not have any programs on the restored drive.

[SEC55]

Aww, rats, I was afraid you were going to say that. I did restore to the same drive. Oh, well, at least it was only two weeks of programs. Thanks.

I may wait a bit to add the second drive, hoping to pick up a DVD recorder so I can burn its programs onto disk.