Backup TiVo series 2 with Norton Ghost 11 - is it possible?

[juzzie]

There is a new version of Norton Ghost 11 (part of Norton Solution Suite 2) that claimes to work with Linux partitions. I've been using Ghost for a long time (ver 8, corporate) to back up and restore Windows XP disks and partitions. Works like a charm!!!

If to follow the same logic as to regular NTFS partitions, Ghost 11 will be able to back up the hard drive with Linux partitions as well. As far as I understand - TiVo series 2 hard drives are Linux based partitions and I see no reason why Ghost 11 wouldn't be able to perform a backup. Why nowhere here in the forum nobody was suggesting this method? Am I missing something?

[David Platt]

While I'm not sure whether the Ghost backup will work or not, I'd venture to say that nobody's really looked into it or suggested it because-- well, there are already tools out there designed to do TiVo backups specifically and that work GREAT. :)

[litzdog911]

You can indeed use Ghost to backup an existing Tivo drive. But there is no way to expand a backup to take advantage of a larger drive. Besides, MFSTools is cheaper :)

[BTUx9]

In addition to all the reasons given above, the only way ghost works for tivo drives is to backup the whole disk (ignoring partitions)

the newest ghost may understand linux partitions, but tivo doesn't use a standard boot sector, and its partition scheme is based on mac's, so I find it extremely unlikely that ghost would actually work on a partition level.

[captain_video]

Ghost has never worked for backing up Tivo drives in the past so I find it unlikely it will now, even with Linux support, as BTUx9 indicated. Besides, there are freeware programs readily available for this specific purpose so why would you need to use Ghost?

[goony]

Only part of a Tivo/DTivo filesystem is Linux; the other (where the shows are stored) is a modified Apple-ish filesystem - I would highly doubt Ghost would be able to handle it other than a straight block-for-block "dumb" copy... as pointed out, you can get very good free tools that work, so why pay for Ghost?

Look for postings about mfstool for copying drives in a "Tivo-aware" fashion (you would want to use this when copying drives of different sizes). If you just want a block-for-block copy (to identically-sized drives without waste) I'd suggest looking on various Linux or Tivo boot discs for something called dd_rescue.