Copying Recordings after Instant Cake from Failing Drive

[jasonpalmer]

I used InstantCake on a brand new 250gb drive for my Humax T2500 to create a factory fresh Tivo.

Can anyone give me step-by-step instructions with the exact syntax to copy my recordings from my old failing 250gb drive to my new one? I have an assortment of Tivo utility program disks: Weaknees, DVRUpgrade Boot Disk, MFS Tools 2.0 disk. None have any real documentation on their functional commands or how to use them.

Please include whatever commands I might need to determine which partition and name of the partition I want to copy as well as how to perhaps see the files on those partitions, if possible.

It appears my old drive has two media partitions at hdc11 and hdc13. My new drive has only one media partition at hdd13.

I apologize but even after reviewing a number of Linux command guides, I just cannot figure out how to either mount these Tivo partitions or copy between them. The command names are too cryptic to be intuitive for us novices.

I have read almost all of the "how to upgrade" guides and none really discuss direct partition to partition copies for the recordings unless you perform an mfsbackup and mfsrestore. I would like to do this in one-step as I don't have a third hard drive available for the backup image.

Before using InstantCake, I tried to use dd_rescue to do an entire drive copy but the bad sectors must have been in the O/S partition because the Tivo never got past "Powering Up."

It would also be great if someone knew how to use InstantCake to just restore the O/S partition. Then I could use dd_rescue first and InstantCake second.

Help anyone?

Thanks,

Jason.

[emartin24]

I too would like to know if this is possible. I had to start fresh with a new InstantCake install and want to know if I can save my previous recordings from my old drive.

My inclination is that this is not possible, but I'm just looking for a definitive yes or no ;)

I also think it is not going to be possible because I get disk errors when I tried to run the mfsbackup command and when I try to mount certain partitions on the old drive.

[tivoupgrade]

Its not possible.

InstantCake is designed to create a replacement drive from a fresh, blank drive; period.

To migrate recordings from one drive to another requires a literal copy of the original drive to the new drive, as well as some additional software configuration to utilize any additional space. Copying JUST the content, without copying the software partitions and the associated database is not possible.

Also note that a literal copy of an "original" drive to a new one can be done, however it is a technical process and if you can do that, you don't need InstantCake.

And lastly, if your original drive is having problems, it may still be possible to take an even more technical approach and possibly recover some programs, however results may vary.

In any case, the definitive answer to your specific question is still "No."

[emartin24]

Thanks for your reply. The reason I used InstantCake was because when I tried to back up the original drive, I was receiving IO errors. I never tried the actual literal copy...I assumed I would have the same IO issues, and I kind of wanted to start with a fresh copy anyway (I've been having the error 126 issue and wanted to see if I could nail down the exact cause...which I did).

And lastly, if your original drive is having problems, it may still be possible to take an even more technical approach and possibly recover some programs, however results may vary.
So, are you saying that it is possible to pull shows off of the original drive to somehow get them on the new drive? What is the approach?

[anonymuse]

emartin, I'm by far a newbie, but trying to do the same as you. From what I've been reading, if part of the hdd containing the operating system is bad, then you're toast. I COULD BE WRONG.

However, read this thread and see what you come up with:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=190306&highlight=dd_rescue

[ddonohue]

I was watching this thread thinking I needed the same answers for my problem, but it turns out I was able to resolve it through other means. Maybe this will help someone.

The basics: dead Series 2 SA with a huge hard drive and lots of saved recordings. :eek: It failed to come back up after a power failure (I know, UPS, surge protector, live and learn).

It was stuck at Powering Up. On and off I tried lots of things, including spinrite which found and fixed some problems but it still wouldn't boot. The drive was perfectly usable in my PC, it just wouldn't boot. Viewing the log files showed nothing useful since the last successful boot, since it was having a problem accessing the disk. I was able to dd myself a perfectly non-working copy as well. I was about to attempt to recover the recordings manually if nothing turned up in this thread.

As a last resort, I followed instructions found elsewhere to enable monitoring the boot process via serial cable. Part of those instructions involved modifying the bootpage information, and when I examined the current bootpage info, it was pretty garbled. Hmmm. So I figured something was amiss in the boot sector, and since maketivobootable is supposed to fix that, I gave it a shot. Shazam! It worked!

So apparently there was some corruption (caused by a power outage AFAIK) and it was fixed by the combination of spinriting the disk and using maketivobootable.

Can't hurt to try, YMMV.