How-To Upgrade your TiVo

[bwx]

I guess I could have included this.

Old = 120060MB, 14596 cyl
New = 120034MB, 14593 cyl

[Robert S]

If you restore without -s 127 (it looks like -s 100 would work), the swap partitio will shrink to 64 (or 100) megabytes, which should be enough to get it to fit. 64Mb of swap is enough for about 180Gb of disk space on that type of TiVo. (100Mb would do about 250Gb).

[bwx]

I tried down to -s 64. No joy! (uncomressed backup size: 112803 megabytes) Maybe I should note that this drive is an ex-winxp drive that has not been cleared. Do I need to do a format or other operation to prepare it for mfstools?

[weaknees]

mfstools doesn't even look at what's already on the drive in this case - it just writes right over it, so any type of reformatting would have no effect, unfortunately.

Michael

[Robert S]

You have taken the x out of the restore side, haven't you?

You can do this transfer with dd, although it's extremely painful. What you ahve to do is create a partition table for the new drive with pdisk. As the new drive is slightly smaller, you have to shrink some of the partitions to make thing fit. The active root partition and all the MFS partitions have to be the same size as before, but the inactive root, swap and /var partitions can lose a little weight without causing a problem.

Then you dd the partitions over from the old drive. Don't copy partition 1 as that's the partition table. You only need to copy the active boot, kernel and root partitions. If you've resize the swap partition you need to use mkswap to reinitialise it, otherwise you can copy it over from the old drive. Similarly, the /var partition can be copied if it's the same size. If it's not, just ignore it and th TiVo will rebuild it itself.

These procedures are described in a slightly different context in the first few posts of the Fixes thread, esp #7.

However, if you can possibly get MFS Tools to do the copy for you, that would greatly simplify things.

[bwx]

OK. Anyone have any other ideas? I still don't know how to access details about the use of mfstools. I am unix ignorant, although I do have previous experience with text (command) based OS's. I saw the README file on the CD, but don't know how to display the content. I didn't see anything in help that looked likely.

I used the command: mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hda | mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi - /dev/hdb

I understand the device spec, I glean the -s 127 MB swap file. I don't know what -Tao or -xzpi are for. I am less than inclined to read through thousands of posts to pick out what means what...

Can anyone point me to how to learn more about mfstools and the paramiters/switches?

Thanks all...

[Nightfall]

Just wanted to say that I used this guide when I upgraded my first Tivo last year. A couple days ago, I used this guide again and upgraded my second Tivo. I don't consider myself to be a Linux expert, but I have played on it a little bit. The commands are all right there on paper and no problems popped up. The key is just following the instructions to the letter.

Thanks! This was an easy upgrade process! :)

[weaknees]

Sounds like the drive is bad there. If it's failing in the TiVo also, then this is pretty conclusive. You basically need to get either a replacement drive, or an image.

Michael

[twoehr]

I got the following error when running "mfsadd" to expand a new disk in a Sony SVR-2000 Tivo, "would result in too many partitions". Is this the issue where I need to obtain an image with 11 partitions as mine has 13? I would like to confirm before seeking out a new image.

Thanks,

Tim

[jedi]

Your TiVo upgrade document is very well done. I ordered a drive this afternoon, picked it up on the way home from work, and in less than 2 hours added 107 hours to my recording capacity. The 2 hours included saving the existing recordings. The doc was easy to follow and covered all of the esoteric details required for a successful upgrade.

Well done.

[Robert S]

twoehr: There's more to it than that. Even a 13-partition image can be expanded once. What are you trying to do?

[twoehr]

Originally posted by Robert S
twoehr: There's more to it than that. Even a 13-partition image can be expanded once. What are you trying to do?

I backed up the Sony Tivo's disk, mfsbackup -6so

Then tried to restore (to a new 80 GB Maxtor disk) via, mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi, which failed

I then tried to restore without the expand, mfsrestore -s 127 -zpi, this worked

I verified operation of the new disk in the Tivo, no issues

Then tried to run mfsadd -x to expand the disk, to which I get the error "would result in too many partitions"

In a previous version of the Hinsdale instructions it states that "TiVoMad" can not expand the drives of Sony's with "13 partitions" and that an "11 partition" image needs to be obtained. (I am using the MFSTools 2.0 CD)

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Tim

[Robert S]

That's a specific limitation in TiVoMad. mfsadd is much more flexible.

What does mfsinfo say? It would seem that you already have six MFS partitions, although I don't see how that's possible.

[SuperRob]

Just another thank you to Hinsdale and Tiger for thier excellent tools and walkthrough. I just took a 100GB Western Digital drive that I had lying around and used the instructions to take my 35 Hr. Philips DSR7000 up to 87 Hours. A simple (albeit LONG) dd, followed by a quick and painless expand did the trick. It's working like a charm. Thanks, guys!

[ThreeSoFar]

Curious, and this seems like the place to get a quick answer, I bet.

I've always used mfsbackup/mfsrestore and never dd. If I want to preserve recordings, it's a mfsbackup ... | mfsrestore all at once.

Is there any advantage to one way or the other? (restore vs. dd)

[Robert S]

dd is (a bit) faster and can cope with bad blocks on the disk.

MFS Tools can expand your swap partition painlessly.

[steves36]

Just have to say I did this 2nite and it went great with now problems. Thanks so much for the guide. You really made it simple

[twoehr]

Originally posted by Robert S
That's a specific limitation in TiVoMad. mfsadd is much more flexible.

What does mfsinfo say? It would seem that you already have six MFS partitions, although I don't see how that's possible.

mfsinfo says I have 2 partitons and the volume may be expanded 5 more times. Also the volume header information says there is a mismatch: Total sectors (98847744) mismatch with volume header (57699328), that may be the problem. If so I do not know what to do to fix it.

Volume info:
hda10 512MiB
hda11 47753MiB

Tim

[greyskies]

Originally posted by abergdc
***

The Maxtor is distinctly noisier than the Samsung. The slight clicking of the seeking heads is easily audible in a quite room in the middle of the night. I suppose I'll have to run down that info about changing the defaults of the drive to make it more quiet, take the drive out and try to adjust it, and go through the reinstall of the Tivo drive from my mirrored back-up. A bit of a pain. Certainly, I would advise people who care a lot about volume to find another drive.

Thanks again for the incredibly prompt help.

Andy

Question for you. Did you find a way to get the head seeking noise reduced. I have recently upgraded from my original Quantum HD in a Sony SVR-2000 to a 120Gb Maxtor Plus 9. Any insight or guidance to reduce this noise annoyance would be deeply appreciated.

[Robert S]

twoehr: You have to run mfsinfo against both drives in a twin-drive set.

[twoehr]

Originally posted by Robert S
twoehr: You have to run mfsinfo against both drives in a twin-drive set.

That doesn't sound good. As I only have one drive. :o) Would you agree that I don't seem to be getting a good backup of my original drive if this is what my restores look like? (I've tried restoring a couple more time with the same results.)

Tim

[Robert S]

Well, the sector mismatch means the MFS set says it contains more partitions than mfsinfo can see. Normally this happens when people forget the B drive.

Clearly something weird is happening, although it's not obvious to me what's wrong.

[EdAtlanta]

Bill,

Here is a public copy of what I sent you early this morning. Thanks again.

Ed

Good morning Bill. When I got home from work yesterday my new drive was
waiting on me. It took me longer to unplug all of the cables and move
the Tivo to the work table than it did to change the drive. 4 hours
later it had upgraded itself twice and was back on the network.

Thank you for your help and prompt service. My 60 hour Tivo is now a
146 hour and the hard drive isn't dying. This new Maxtor drive is also
quieter than the Western Digital that was in it originally.

Thanks again.

[twoehr]

Thanks for helping me out Robert. I guess my image was just no good. The only other symptom was that at the conclusion of the restore it hung on the "cleanup".

I got hooked up with a good image and that restored and expanded without a hitch.

Thanks again,

Tim

Originally posted by Robert S
Well, the sector mismatch means the MFS set says it contains more partitions than mfsinfo can see. Normally this happens when people forget the B drive.

Clearly something weird is happening, although it's not obvious to me what's wrong.

[dishman]

Originally posted by greyskies
Question for you. Did you find a way to get the head seeking noise reduced. I have recently upgraded from my original Quantum HD in a Sony SVR-2000 to a 120Gb Maxtor Plus 9. Any insight or guidance to reduce this noise annoyance would be deeply appreciated.

I just put one of these Maxstor Diamondmax Plus 9 drives in as well (on sale at Buy.com). Noisest thing I've ever heard. I thought for sure the drive was defective.

[dishman]

Most of the upgrade instructions I've seen here discuss using a primary/secondary master/slave combination to backup and restore.
This is hard with a notebook, so I thought I'd try using a USB External drive.
Following Hinsdale's instructions but using /dev/sda rather than /dev/hdX, it worked just fine.

Thanks Hinsdale and Tiger.

[Robert S]

That comes up quite a bit. Tell us more.

[dishman]

Originally posted by Robert S
That comes up quite a bit. Tell us more.

Not much else to tell, really. I used a USB 1.1 external IDE drive enclosure which I normally use as a backup drive for the TiVo drive and my regular C drive as the FAT32 drive. I then followed Hinsdale's instructions but changed the backup to :
"mfsbackup -f 9999 -6so /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/sda"
and the restore to:
"mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/sda".
mfsinfo /dev/sda worked fine.

I had to make sure I jumpered the drive going into the enclosure as master, and needed to power down the enclosure and the PC when switching drives in the enclosure (powering down just the enclosure didn't work).

Also, when performing the backup, no progress was indicated for 10 minutes, but then regular progress updates appeared.

[Retiredibm]

Thank you to Weakness, PTVupgrade, Hinsdale and Tiger for their excellent tools and walk through. I am a newbie just 41 days since I purchased my 1st Series 2 and now a 2 TiVo owner and addict.(wife claimed the first TiVo and now we are a 2 TiVo HMO family)

I took a 160GB Maxtor Diamond Plus drive, used the instructions to take my Series 2 TiVo 140060 up to 165 Hours ( single drive). 1.3 hours later from, powering down the TiVo to start to watch TiVo. Interesting part was one of my To Do items started up recording while completing the boot up. Amazing! It's working like a charm. The only change I have noted is the MB temp is reporting 45c was 42c. I think that is the fact that the 7200 rpm drive runs hotter.

Thanks, guys!

[troyz]

A few months back I replaced my original A drive with a 160gb drive, I keep the drive on a shelf as a back and I have also made a tivo.bak file.

Now I want to add a second B drive, do I really need to do a second backup? Because the software version is the same, if something went wrong I could just pop the single drive back in correct? I would lose my season passes though.

Is my thinking correct?

[weaknees]

No - you don't need a second backup, but it might not be a bad idea since you'll already have your A drive in your computer. Putting a new backup on your PC means that if you ever have to restore, you'll have a newer OS and more recent settings. But the old one will work fine also.

Michael

[troyz]

Maybe I am remembering this wrong, the backup doesn't take that long does it? I am too busy to spend too much time on this and I am running out of space with my 160gb drive. (I never thought I would have to record the old shows like magnum for the wife) :)

It is the restore I did with recordings originally that took quite a few hours now that I think about it.

I think I will do a backup.

Troy

[weaknees]

Right - a backup on a reasonably fast PC should take maybe 5 minutes. And a restore without recordings takes even less. But a piped backup-restore could take hours.

Michael

[iosborn]

I've run into the dreaded green screen of death on my older Sony 2000 Tivo. I read over the install guides for the formatting of a new hard drive.

A few clarification questions if you don't mind:

1. Since I want to replace a corupted hard drive with a new one, and don't care about the setting on the old drive, do I ignore the backup/image instructions?

2. Is there a recomendation on the specific HD to buy?

3. I run win2K, so can I just disconnect my current hard drive (that run the MS OS) boot from the linux CD, and image the new TIVO drive on the primary slave channel? Or do I need to create a new MS bootable drive that uses Fat32? (I run NTFS currently)? What is the simplest way? (BTW, I shave a liscence or two of Win98 still - should I use a spare drive to create a win98 install on the primary master, then follow the instructions verbatim?)

[weaknees]

1. You need an image any way you slice it. If you can't get one off your existing TiVo HD, then you need to find one somewhere.

2. We highly recommend Maxtor QuickView hard drives. They are drives tuned for PVRs and are now in 80% of shipping units. That's all we use in our upgrade kits.

3. First, be careful to not boot any TiVo drive under Win 2K - it'll render it largely useless in a TiVo without some complicated manuvering. Next, you do need a place for your TiVo image. If you are getting one from your existing drive, you need a FAT32 partition somewhere. If you are getting one as a file, you can put it on an NTFS volume and mount that.

Michael

[iosborn]

Where can I get an image?

[weaknees]

Post a new thread with that as the title and you might get some help. They're getting pretty hard to find these days.

Michael

[dishman]

Originally posted by iosborn
Where can I get an image?

You could purchase a replacement drive ready to go from several firms, such as Weaknees and PTVUpgrade. They only cost a little more than
a blank drive, and all you'd have to do is plug it in.

[EdAtlanta]

That is what I did. Plugged in a new 120gig to replace my original dying 60gig. After a several connections and two service upgrades, it is totally back to normal and with a lot more capacity. I am keeping my original drive as a backup in case I ever need it. It wasn't dead, but dying.

Ed

[BlueXanaX]

Another added post.

:up:

[GargleBlast]

So I'm following the upgrade directions, getting my hda and hdb etc all in a row. I'm trying to create my image from the original 40 GB from a Philips DSR704. The mfsbackup -f 9999 -6so /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdc command lets me know (2 things I forgot, then) the size of my uncompressed image (around 14GB) and then nothing at all happened for around a 1/2 hour. What message should I be expecting and how long should I wait (P4 1.8GHz)? I'd rather have a safe backup than just copy direct to my new single drive A replacement.

J

[weaknees]

You should be seeing percentages roll by, and this should take less than 5 minutes on that computer.

Michael

[hdeditor]

It took me a few hours, and a bit of head-banging, but I did it. I upgraded by latest EBay acquisition (a Sony SVR-2000) from the stock 30GB drive to a Samsung 120BG drive from ZipZoomFly. http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=101003

I ran into a bit of trouble because I tried to get the BIOS of the two PC's I used to recognize the drive. Both PC's locked up when trying to detect the drives. I forgot that Linux can probe the drives for the correct parameters. Once I let the CD boot and look for the drives, it was a piece of cake!

Thank you, thank you, thank you to all who made this possible!

[weaknees]

That's great! It's generally easiest to just set your BIOS to totally ignore the IDE locations where the drives will be located.

Michael

[ThreeSoFar]

I certainly don't post a "thanks Hinsdale and Tiger" thread after every upgrade, but thought I was due to express my gratitude.

I've got an upgrade of a friend's TiVo running on another system as I type this, the good ol' reliable "mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hdb | mfsrestore -s127 -xzpi - /dev/hda" method to keep all programs and settings and such.

This makes at least my 12th upgrade. My six, two (or more?) friends' at work, two upgrades to same box of another friend at work, my Dad's and one of my brother's (walked him through it by phone--I count this as mine).

Great job, guys. Thanks for all the TiVo goodness.

[scottym]

Hi,

I have a Hughes Series 2 DirecTivo (HDVR2) and I've previously (1 year ago) replaced my A drive with a 120 GB drive using MFSbackup and MFSrestore. I restored to the new A drive using the '-s 127' option so I'm assuming I don't need to worry about increasing the swap partition size when I add another 120 GB B drive.

Since I already have made a backup of my original A drive when I replaced the A drive (saved the old A drive as well), can I go directly to step 10 (upgrade configuration #1) of Hindale's HOWTO and run MFSadd?

Is it necessary to prepare the new B drive in any way before running MFSadd?

Thanks for your sage council!

Scott

[weaknees]

mfsadd is all you need at this point. If it's a used drive, you should check it with some diagnostic software first.

Michael

[cyoung315]

Your instructions seem to written extremely well! My only question is do I need the cooling assembly that others suggest using?

[weaknees]

Originally posted by cyoung315
Your instructions seem to written extremely well! My only question is do I need the cooling assembly that others suggest using?

What model TiVo? What upgrade?

Michael

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by cyoung315
Your instructions seem to written extremely well! My only question is do I need the cooling assembly that others suggest using?

If your unit is situated in a properly ventilated environment, adding an additional fan is of no apparent benefit; my recommendation would be to consider several things:

1) don't make it harder for the unit's fan to exhaust the warm air - putting additional cooling in the unit may very well do that

2) make attempts to reduce the temperature of the air ENTERING the unit -- make sure your component rack is well-ventilated and that your TiVo is not sitting on something that vents from the top

3) perhaps replace your unit's fan with a more powerful one, however this may create more noise, as well

[josan5885]

OK I have an RCA DVR-40. I wanted to replace my 40gb stock HD with a 160GB Western Digital. I followed Hinsdale instructions. This is what I did:

1. made backup of my tivo drive as tivo.bak
mkdir_ /mnt/dos
mount_ /dev/hda1_ /mnt/dos
mfsbackup_ -f 9999_ -6so_ /mnt/dos/tivo.bak_ /dev/hdc

2. Because I want to keep my tivo drive safe for future use, I decided to copy my tivo 40gb drive to my new 160gb upgrade drive by using this command:

dd_ conv=noerror,sync_ if=/dev/hdc_ of=/dev/hdb_ bs=1024k (I wanted to keep all of my recordings)

it seems that everything went fine I left it overnight and I placed it in the tivo. I turn tivo on and it turns on fine. my recordings are there (did not try to play any of them)

When I check in the system info the recorder capacity still is listed as Aproximately 35 hrs. as I re-read the hinsdale instruction it says that that is normal.

Questions
1-Is that OK, How can I make sure what the new capacity of my drive is?
2-Did I miss something?
3-Do I still need to do This command
mfsbackup_ -Tao_ -_ /dev/hdc | mfsrestore_ -s 127 -xzpi_ -_ /dev/hda
4-Is there a way to find out how much capacity I have left as I record shows?

Thanks to Hinsdale, Tyger and weaknees for all their work.

Josan

_

[weaknees]

If you are doing a one-drive replace, as you wrote, then there is really no convenient way to add more cooling. Our TwinBreeze bracket would work to add extra cooling, but it's primarily intended to add a second drive, and therefore cool the additional heat created.

Your WD drive is probably a 7200 RPM drive so it will run a bit hotter than the stock drive you pulled out of the unit - just watch your temps and you should be fine.

1 - Looks right. You'll need to use mfsadd to get the extra space used. Afterward, go to your System Information screen to verify.

2 - Just mfsadd.

3 - That would replace the "dd" and the "mfsadd" steps - so either way.

4 - Not easily. You can use "TiVo Suggestions" to fill up the unused space and gauge from there.

Michael

[josan5885]

this is getting anoying.

Well anyway after successfully following the hinsdale how too to go from a 40gb to a 160gb on a dvr-40. I decided to take the next step on my tivo
so I wanted to make an exact copy of my new hard drive including my recordings (have some veryold 1940's 1950s of a mexican comedian and can't find the dvd's anywhere) to keep as backup.

so anyway I ecided to do the dd command as instructed in hinsdale

dd if=/dev/hdc of=/dev/hdb bs=1024K

the first time I did this to go copy the 40gb to the 160gb it did it overnight less than 6hrs. now trying to copy the 160gb to a 200gb it has been going for over 12hrs is this normal. I have read sometimes it takes 1-4hr maybe 8hrs.

should I stop it or let it keep going? if I should stop it how can I doit?
and finally how can make a backup of my drive WITH the recordings.

any help or suggestions are greatly appreciated.

jose

[weaknees]

You can stop it with a ctrl-z.

Depending on the speed of your computer, this might be a reasonable amount of time.

To do a backup with recordings (it'll be huge) try:

mfsbackup -Tao /tivo.bak /dev/hdc

Have space ready.

Michael

[josan5885]

Thanks for your quick response

my computer is a 2400+ AMD Athlon with 512 of ram
I just want a copy to have while I try to figure out how to do something I am not suppossed to discuss in this forum. and since I want to experiment I do not want to lose those recordings.

I have a brand new 250gb that I can use for the backup. I was just worry why it was taking so long.

but thanks again.

jose

[tweekerz]

Thanks to Hinsdale, I was able to upgrade my ATTivo 40 hour to a 165 hour with an old 160 gb Maxtor 5400 rpm drive I had..

I happened to notice the bracket inside the Tivo.. it has room for another drive.....

I definately would need to replae the original Panflo fan, and upgrade


Thanks
Matt

[God]

You shouldn't upgrade your storage capacity, you are cheating tivo out of the extra money that they earn for selling higher capacity units.

[tweekerz]

Shoot, I did tivo a favor and bought their refurbished units off of them, saving them money from having to throw them away!

Originally posted by God
You shouldn't upgrade your storage capacity, you are cheating tivo out of the extra money that they earn for selling higher capacity units.

[Robert S]

TiVo have never shown any signs of distress over people upgrading their hard drives (I wonder if TiVoPony and TiVoBill still have their original drives?). It would be trivially easy for them to break the upgrade tools with minor changes to the TiVo disk format.

What they really want is your subscription fees.

[dishman]

Originally posted by God
You shouldn't upgrade your storage capacity, you are cheating tivo out of the extra money that they earn for selling higher capacity units.

Until recently the largest you could purchase was 80GB and TiVo does not offer any ability to upgrade an existing unit (surprisingly). I think Robert S is correct, they are focused on growing subscription fees, and HMO sales. If you are not doing anything to take away from them you aren't taking anything away from TiVo. I think everyone on these forums thinks TiVo was a great invention and wants the company to suceed.

[weaknees]

Further, I think they don't want to be in the hardware business at all. They would rather have companies like Philips, Hughes, Pioneer, Samsung, RCA, Toshiba, Sony, and Humax do the hardware end, where they concentrate on software. They generally try to do as little hardware as possible and the deal where Humax will begin making standalones soon seems to support this theory.

Michael

[scottym]

Hi,

I'm wondering if it's possible to harm your mutliswitch by restoring the wrong image to my HDVR2. I restored an image to my unit and my signal level for that particular drop (bedroom) went to zero for all satellites and transponders. I reloaded the correct image and the tivo seems to work in my other room(living room). Furthermore, I tried hooking-up my SAT receiver from my living room and it also reported zero signal for the satellite drop in my bedroom. This loss-of-signal occured after restoring the wrong image using mfsrestore. Is it possible my activities damaged my multiswitch?

Scott

[weaknees]

Never heard of that before. I can see how sending incorrect voltage up the line would harm the multiswitch, but not how a TiVo could be forced to do that.

Michael

[scottym]

Thanks for your reply. If you folk's haven't seen this before then it's probably a coincidence my multiswitch died while i was tweaking. Maybe it's not such a big coincidence since I spend a lot of tweaking and the switch had to die someday.

Scott

[weaknees]

I'm betting on the coincidence. It's unfortunate - when two things go bad at once, it makes troubleshooting much, much harder.

Michael

[FullThrottleDave]

Hello All,
It is late here so I don't expect I will get a reply until tomorrow. I spent the evening upgrading my Hughes SD40 by adding a Maxtor 120GB drive B. I followed Hinsdale and used a Weaknees bracket. Everything went along fine except I seem to be stuck on "Welcome Powering up" I had already tested the restored backup on the new Maxtor just to make sure the backup was good. Then put it back in the PC and did the MFSADD as directed. I checked the drive cables and jumper settings. The factory drive is set as master and the new Maxtor is set as slave. I powered down and rechecked everything. The Maxtor had been set as CS and I took off the jumper to make it specifically Slave. I have rechecked the white cable several times. Any ideas for me?

[weaknees]

Often the factory drive is set as CS and needs to be set as Master. Did you try that?

Michael

[FullThrottleDave]

Yes, I followed your included directions which were to move the jumper to the left most position to make sure it was the master.

[Robert S]

If you disconnect the B drive, can the A drive get to 'almost there'?

[FullThrottleDave]

Well, thanks to your question, I looked at the B drive connector and I had it in upside down.... oops! When turned right side up it powers up fine.
It's not a good idea to be doing the last steps so late at night...

I have up to 144 hours showing now....

I do think I will get a better cable since the one that came with the drive is stretched pretty tight. Then again doesn't that make data flow faster?

Thanks again

[dimindcutr]

Are there any drives that won't work with a TiVo? I purchased a Hitachi Deskstar with 164.7 GB capacity. Tried dd. Only took a second then got an error about I/O. Tried using Hinsdale How To. Every time I enter the command for moving from a one drive unit to a bigger one drive unit, I get the old DOS style error about syntax. Do I have to create a partition on the new drive for this to work?

Thanks,

Barry

[Robert S]

That's not a problem with the drive and the TiVo, it's a problem with the drive and the PC.

If you get an error about syntax, I think it's more likely that you mistyped the command, rather than a hardware problem.

Hinsdale covers everything you need. No partitioning of the drive is required to prepare it for the TiVo.

An I/O error does suggest a hardware problem. Might want to run the drive manufacturer's diagnostics.

If you come back, include a lot more detail.

[dimindcutr]

Ok. Here's what I've got. I boot from the MFSTools CD. Everything looks ok. Shows that I've got hda (new drive @ 137 GB), hdc (Original Tivo drive), hdd (CD drive). I type in "dd if=/dev/hdc of=/dev/hda bs=1024k" It works for a bit and then states something about I/O error with 4367+2 files in and the same out. So I try "mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hdc | mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi - /dev/hda" The system immeadiately outputs to the screen this:

mfsbackup [Options] BDrive [ADrive] and lists all of the available options for the mfsbackup command. It does the same thing for the mfsrestore command.

I've completely removed the existing HD from the PC I'm using, but that probably wouldn't matter as it is using Suse Linux.

[Robert S]

You appear to have typed the command correctly. Usually this comes down to a space in the wrong place.

You could start by trying to get mfsbackup to run:

mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hdc > /dev/null

MFS Tools will run under SuSe Linux. If the mfstool binary on the CD doesn't run, get the statically linked version from Tiger's site. SuSe will probably see the full capacity of the drive, so don't run mfsadd or restore with -x under SuSe.

However, you should be able to make a compressed backup, which would be a good idea as it looks like your drive may be failing. It should be obvious how to modify Hinsdale's commands to work in your system. Don't work from the MFS Tools README as that was written before your TiVo was designed.

[jlancton]

I upgraded my Series 2 DTivo last night, by adding a 120G drive to the existing 40, using the PTVUpgrade bracket and SmartStart.

Having done a similar upgrade on my SA S2 with the same kit some months ago, with no problems, I was tempted to skip the backup/test of the original image. Fortunately discretion ruled, and I made the backup.

It being a late night, I mistakenly connected the SmartStart to the slave drive when I put everything back together, and when I fired it up, I got the green Severe Error screen. A quick search here pointed me in the right direction, so I checked the SmartStart instructions and discovered my mistake.

So, drives out, back to the PC, restore the backup to the original drive, redo the mfsadd, and back together, SmartStart the right way, and I now have 141 hours on my DTivo, and didn't lose any recordings or season passes.

Just another success story, but one that wouldn't have been possible without a good backup. So, just a friendly reminder, don't skip the backup. It's well worth the extra few minutes.

Thanks for listening, and thanks to PTV Upgrade for a great product!

-Jeff

[Robert S]

The GSOD should have resolved itself fairly quickly. There's nothing actually wrong with the MFS system when that happens - the TiVo just sees that it can't connect to the MFS system properly and triggers mfsfix.

It would have GSOD'd every time you powered up with the SmartStart in that position, of course.

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by jlancton


Just another success story, but one that wouldn't have been possible without a good backup. So, just a friendly reminder, don't skip the backup. It's well worth the extra few minutes.

Thanks for listening, and thanks to PTVupgrade for a great product!

-Jeff

Thanks for your support Jeff, we appreciate the good words, and having you as a customer!

Lou

[Riproarer]

I have a TiVo Series 2 Model TCD 240080 standalone and I think it has a fried drive. I come to this conclusion, because I get a persistent message "almost there... just a few more minutes" despite my having unplugged the unit, waited, powered up, and waited, and waited, and waited. The facts are:


I purchased a new ultra series 160GB 7200 rpm Hard drive for $109
I followed Hinsdale's message up to the backup instructions
when I backed up, I got an error message at 22.58% complete
I have, according to Mfs tools, 79 hours of recordings on my TiVo drive
I have a lifetime TiVo membership for which I paid $295
I don't care if I lose my season passes or programs


My questions are:


is there a way to backup my TiVo drive?
do I really need to backup my TiVo drive?
are there critical files that I can save one at a time
is my TiVo membership doomed?
what should I do?


Thanks in advance,

Sid

[Robert S]

Well, you can try to use more robust tools like dd or dd_rescue to copy the drive, but it's possible that the copy will have the same problems as the current drive.

The problem is probably not in the system partitions (where you can get at the files fairly easily), but in the MFS system, which is virtually inaccessible outside the TiVo.

If you're really lucky you may be able to find a backup online. If that fails, PTVupgrade sell a recovery CD called InstantCake.

[jlancton]

I upgraded my Dtivo, DSR7000 last week by adding a second drive, a 120GB. It has seemed to work fine, but twice while viewing recorded programs, they have stopped part way through, as if someone pressed the pause button. The green bar indicates it has the whole 60 minutes, yet it won't go beyond that point. After one time when that happened, and I went back to the description screen, there was an error message about it not being able to play, and suggested lost signal. The other time it didn't show a message. It's really strange.

Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

-Jeff

[dwfletcher]

I currently have an RCA DVR40 and will be removing the 40 GB drive and adding either and 80 GB or 120 GB drive. Any recommendations on a make and model of drive to achive maximum performance?

[ThreeSoFar]

Samsung. Quiet. High quality. Affordable. No *#&$*@( rebates.

newegg.com has good prices and free (usually) shipping.

[nkuefler]

I just wanted to say thanks for helping me fix my dead hard drive with a new, much larger one. The new drive came within 2 days and took about 10 minutes to put in for someone with almost no experience doing this sort of thing. Everything works perfectly and I am so grateful! Thanks again.

Nancy

[ThreeSoFar]

Originally posted by nkuefler
I just wanted to say thanks for helping me fix my dead hard drive with a new, much larger one. The new drive came within 2 days and took about 10 minutes to put in for someone with almost no experience doing this sort of thing. Everything works perfectly and I am so grateful! Thanks again.

Nancy Thought you might want to clarify who it is you are thanking. There's a couple companies that are active here that do exactly that. Plus Tiger who wrote mfstools that they use to do it (I think they use mfstools?). Plus Hinsdale that wrote the HowTo guide. (Plus all the users who do it themselves.)

[JamesonTiVo]

Forgive if this is an old question, but I'm new to the scene after performing an additional "add larger B drive" the easy way two years ago.

Now because of a problem with the factory A drive, I've removed A and B and installed a new WeaKnees A drive (A1). I didn't put B back in because 1) I don't know if that will work -- is it dependent on A? and 2) I don't know for sure that both A and B aren't broken.

My question is this: Assuming I can get the data on A restored, which instructions do I want to follow to copy all the A data onto A1 and reinstall A1 and B as my new drives? I believe the

"UPGRADE CONFIGURATION #3:_
From:_ Any Single Drive TiVo
To:__ New A and New B Drive_ |or|__ New Single Larger A Drive"

instructions are for me, since the TiVo was initially a single drive and drive B was just added storage, but I don't know a ton about how this works. Is this the right upgrade configuration for me to follow?

Many humble thanks in advance,
Jameson

[Robert S]

Once you put a second drive in a TiVo, you have a two-drive TiVo, even if it originally had one drive. Conversely, if you replace the two drives in your TiVo with a lone A drive, then you have a single drive TiVo, even if it was originally a twin.

The problem with copying the old A drive on to the new is that you might end up with two broken drives.

Does the TiVo still boot with the original drives?

[JamesonTiVo]

Does the TiVo still boot with the original drives? [/B]

I won't know until I get the original drives back from data recovery. At this point I am assuming that A is not corrupted, the drive just has a hardware failure.

But it sounds like I should not try to put drive B back in with drive A1. (This might result in two broken drives?) My only choice to try to preserve the recordings on A and B will be to copy a perfect image of (restored) A onto A1, correct? (The reason to do this instead of just reinstalling A is that A is 40 GB and A1 is 120.)

Thanks!

[Robert S]

Well currently A1 will just ignore B. If you mfsadd (NOT BlessTiVo!) B, you forfeit any chance of recovering your old recordings. Obviously if B is the failing drive, marrying it to A1 would not be a good idea.

[JamesonTiVo]

This leads me to believe that if I take out A1 and send it to DriveSavers, asking them to restore A onto A1 (assuming A is the failing drive), then put A1 and B back in the TiVo, I'll be fine. A1 will recognize B and B will recognize A1.

Am I missing anything?

Many thanks,
Jameson

[Robert S]

You're really going to do data recovery on a TiVo drive???

Anyway, yes, in principle, if you can copy the data off the A drive, it should restore things to working order, but that that's a really big 'if'!

If the problems with the hard drive have corrupted the TiVo image, then copying it to a fresh drive might not solve the problem. So copying on to A1 is probably not a good idea.

[JamesonTiVo]

Thanks. DriveSavers said they wouldn't do it unless they could get a clean copy. Based on the symptoms, chances are good that it's a hardware failure with the drive mechanism and not corrupted data.

I appreciate all the advice. :)

[wlewis]

I have a philips directivo, and was able to successfully backup (i think), but the restore is not executing properly. No errors are reported, but a fdisk -l reports that /dev/hdb doesn't contain a valid partition table. I used the following commands from the hinsdale guide:

mfsbackup -6so /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdc
mfsrestore -s 127 -zpi /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdb

drives are hooked up as described in the guide, and I am attempting to go from a single 40GB drive to a single western digital 160GB drive. I also confirmed that windows xp could format the new drive (while tivo drive was disconnected), so I think that the new drive is good.

Any suggestions?

[Da King]

Just offering more "Thanks" for the Hinsdale instructions. I upgraded my 35 hr DirecTV to 105 hrs today, and everything went flawless. I set aside an entire evening to do it, and wrapped it up within 2 hours. Niiiice.

[wlewis]

Originally posted by wlewis
I have a philips directivo, and was able to successfully backup (i think), but the restore is not executing properly. No errors are reported, but a fdisk -l reports that /dev/hdb doesn't contain a valid partition table. I used the following commands from the hinsdale guide:

mfsbackup -6so /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdc
mfsrestore -s 127 -zpi /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdb

drives are hooked up as described in the guide, and I am attempting to go from a single 40GB drive to a single western digital 160GB drive. I also confirmed that windows xp could format the new drive (while tivo drive was disconnected), so I think that the new drive is good.

Any suggestions?

Just to add more detail... This is a philips DSR6000 series 1, and when powering up Tivo, it does not progress beyond the "powering up" screen. Harddrive spins, jumpers confirmed, ide cable confirmed. I reinstalled the original tivo drive and all boots up ok, so i'm guessing something is not working correctly with the backup/restore process to the new drive???

[weaknees]

wlewis-

Your commands look right. What size backup does the first one report? What size drive does the second report? Have you tried mfsinfo?

Michael

[wlewis]

Originally posted by weaknees
wlewis-

Your commands look right. What size backup does the first one report? What size drive does the second report? Have you tried mfsinfo?

Michael


Michael -- I guess that the 3rd try really is lucky... stepped through it again, this time confirming that the original drive and new drive had the same config. as reported by msinfo. Put the new drive in TiVo, and it booted fine?!

Thanks for the msinfo tip! Now on to copying the shows...

Wade.

[weaknees]

Glad it works - but you are copying shows after you've already moved to the new drives? I don't understand.

[jay8dogg]

This is my first time trying to upgrade a TiVo and I've never used Linux but I got a basic understanding of the commands after some reading. I have a Phillips DSR704 DirecTiVo. I'm trying to upgrade from the original 40GB Maxtor to a 120GB Seagate. I downloaded the Tiger Tools 2.0 Boot CD from a link in Hinsdale's instructions. I burned the CD with Nero the way Hinsdale said.

The first problem I had was that I was not able to "Page Up" to see the hard drive sizes to verify them. I had to hit pause in order to freeze the screen to view them and they were correct and not locked.

The next problem I had was when I typed in the command:
mfsbackup -f9999 -6so /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdc I got an error
sh: mfsbackup: command not found. I read the readme file for Tiger MFS2.0 software and Tiger shows the commnds being entered as "mfstool backup". So I entered the command as:
mfstool backup -f9999 -6so /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdc and the program did the backup with no errors.

I proceeded to step 8. I typed in
mfsrestore -s 127 -bzpi /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdb Once again I got a
sh: mfsrestore: command not found. I typed in
mfstool restore -s 127 -bzpi /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdb. I got and error
restore: invalid option -- b.
restore: invalid [options] Adrive [Bdrive]
Options:
- i file Input from file, - for stdin
- q Do not display progress
- qq Do not display anything but error message
- v size Recreate /var as size megabytes (only if not a backup)
-s size Recreate swap size as megabytes
-z zero out partitions not backed up
/#

The list above does not show b or p as an option. I removed the b from the command and got the same error but for p. Reading through Tigers release notes, b and p should be valid commands. I removed the p and ended up entering
mfstool restore -s 127 -zi /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdb
and it loaded the image to my new 120GB HDD. I typed umount -f -a -r [using umount -f-a-r, (w/ no spaces) caused another error]. Installed the drive in the TiVo and got stuck on the Powering up screen. I had the jumper configuration set to CS the whole time on the new 120GB HDD since thats what the original TiVo HDD was set to.

I reinstalled the original TiVo drive and it powers backup with no issues.

My questions are:
1) Is my software bad since it does not have options that should be there?
2) Is there a software difference between the boot floppy and Boot CD?
3) Am I typing in something wrong?
4) Could it be the jumper config on the new hard drive.
5) Should I be following Tigers release notes or Hinsdales instructions?
6) Any other ideas or suggestions?

Please Help!!! :) :confused:

[wlewis]

Originally posted by weaknees
Glad it works - but you are copying shows after you've already moved to the new drives? I don't understand.

per the hinsdale guide, step 8/9 was to restore the tivo.bak file and test. step 10 is then to do a full copy of the tivo w/ the shows.... That's where I am now...

[beachkeefes]

Thanks hinsdale - your instructions are great...I upgraded my Hughes SD-DVR-40 from 40 hrs to 130 hrs without any problem - keeping the recordings using dd took 9 hours, but everything is present and accounted for!

[ThreeSoFar]

FYI, keeping your recordings via the "mfs backup ... | mfsrestore ..." option only takes a couple hours, tops.

[Blackbeard]

Ordered another Hinsdale upgrade...and this one was even easier than the first time...that annoying golf tee that you glue in is gone...and it is open, unplug, screw-in plate, plug in, remove styrofoam...close...ready to go...amazing!


Thanks again!!!!

[JohnnyF]

Hi, thanks in advance.. quick question for a Series 2 40 GB 240A model. I want to copy the original 40GB drive (to archive the original drive) onto another 40 GB spare drive I have lying around and at the same time add a 120 GB drive.. I'm planning on using the MFSTools backup | restore pipe command with the -s 127 option to increase the swap..

Question: Does anyone know if the 128M swap will fit on a drive that's exacly the same size as the original or does the drive always have to be bigger than the original to increase the swap?

Thanks in Advance.. (p.s. I did a fly-by review of the forum for this answer, but was not able to find, so apologies if answer is already posted).

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by JohnnyF
Hi, thanks in advance.. quick question for a Series 2 40 GB 240A model. I want to copy the original 40GB drive (to archive the original drive) onto another 40 GB spare drive I have lying around and at the same time add a 120 GB drive.. I'm planning on using the MFSTools backup | restore pipe command with the -s 127 option to increase the swap..

Question: Does anyone know if the 128M swap will fit on a drive that's exacly the same size as the original or does the drive always have to be bigger than the original to increase the swap?

Thanks in Advance.. (p.s. I did a fly-by review of the forum for this answer, but was not able to find, so apologies if answer is already posted).

Most likely, its not going to fit. Use -s 127 not 128 when doing your restore onto the new drive. Also, there is no benefit to increasing your swap in most situations, especially on a small drive.

[JohnnyF]

Originally posted by tivoupgrade
Most likely, its not going to fit. Use -s 127 not 128 when doing your restore onto the new drive. Also, there is no benefit to increasing your swap in most situations, especially on a small drive.

Thanks.. I guess I could restore the original image to the 120GB and add the 40GB as the 2nd hard drive, I'm just curious as to whether you can fit a larger swap in a drive restore image to a HD the same size as the original. I'll try it this weekend and post results.

[Robert S]

The original image fits on its drive almost exactly, so there's no room to increase swap.

Further, not all 40Gb drives are the same size and the Maxtor/Quantum drives in TiVoes tend to be larger, so sometimes you have to reduce the size of your swap (-s 56 seems to do the trick) to fit a 40Gb backup on to a 40Gb drive.

There's no immediate advantage in increasing swap because your TiVo has 32Mb of RAM and can therefore cope with 180Gb of disk space with its original swap allocation. If you later upgrade the B drive to 120Gb, though, you'll be glad you increased swap at this point.

[Sonny]

Can I do a back-up/restore of my HD Tivo HDD with Windows XP? Or do I need to have a Win98 system?

[weaknees]

You need to do this in Linux - Windows won't help at all (and may even hurt).

Your hardware is likely fine, just follow a guide to making a CD of Linux and booting from that.

Michael

[slydog75]

Does anyone outside of weaknees have any insite/input into the true benefits of using one of their Quickview drives as opposed to a standard Maxtor DiamondMax?

[DCIFRTHS]

Originally posted by slydog75
Does anyone outside of weaknees have any insite/input into the true benefits of using one of their Quickview drives as opposed to a standard Maxtor DiamondMax?

Comment One (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?postid=1352711#post1352711)

Comment Two (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?postid=1355796#post1355796)

Comment Three (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?postid=1651576#post1651576) This one was from me. I was questioning Pony because I remember...well, just read the post :)

[ThreeSoFar]

Originally posted by slydog75
Does anyone outside of weaknees have any insite/input into the true benefits of using one of their Quickview drives as opposed to a standard Maxtor DiamondMax? I'll add one more.

The only people I see touting these drives are weaknees.com. Who happens to sell them at a pretty penny.

nice.

Though I don't think they're using those banner ads anymore, so maybe they've stopped doing that.

[sn9ke_eyes]

just upgraded a 35 hr to a 105 hour by going from a single 40 GB to a single 120 GB.

Thanks a bunch to hindsdale, tiger, and everyone else who contributed.

[betsos94]

I have a Samsung series 2 DTV Tivo upgraded to 120 gig with usb hacks and all
the others but, now my USB to ethernet adapter lights up and flashing but I can not see it on the network, I tried to pinging it nothing, I look for it on my router nothing can see it,

please any help thankx

[otsp]

I downloaded an image file named Philips_DSR6k.310c_30G.mfs from StanSimmons and extracted it to the root of my C: drive (not in any folders), then renamed it tivo.bak. Then I followed the directions that I thought would allow me to restore that image to my existing TiVo drive that I want to start completely anew with. But I got a "No such file or directory" error message. Here's exactly what I did...

Booted PC from CD with MFSTool 2.0, clicked Enter at boot options.

Typed the following to mount the C: drive:

mkdir /mnt/dos
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/dos

Typed the following to restore to TiVo drive:

mfsrestore -zpi /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdd

Then got the following message:

/mnt/dos/tivo.bak: No such file or directory!

Any ideas why? Please remember I know nothing about Linux, so I wouldn't know how to check directories, etc. But I do know that file is at that location. Thanks in advance for suggestions!

[budgetcomputers]

Hi otsp,

Make a sub dir named dos and put the file there. (i.e. from dos, MD DOS, copy *.bak to c:\dos - i.e. not from LINUX ).

You put the file in your c: drive root not in the sub dir c:\dos. Got it?

Also, I have been PM'ing Stan for the image. If it works, I would love a copy for myself! I have high speed so you can email it to me or email me Stans link.

Thanks a ton!

Rene

[weaknees]

otsp,

Posted a response here:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=2129077#post2129077

Michael

[Robert S]

budgetcomputers: The file is supposed to be called c:\tivo.bak. The 'dos' directory is created in the Linux filing system (in a RAM drive) to act as a 'mount point' for the C: drive. After the mount command, the file that Windows sees as c:\tivo.bak appears in the Linux system as /mnt/dos/tivo.bak.

If you had a file called c:\dos\tivo.bak, then Linux would see that as /mnt/dos/dos/tivo.bak.

[otsp]

Problem solved! I did not know that there was more than one partition on my C: drive. When I substituted hda2 for hda1, the restore worked! And now my TiVo works! So to summarize, the drive probably got corrupted by booting to XP during the downgrade to 3.1.0b, restoring an image file courtesy of StanSimmons fixed the drive, and I just needed to look for the image file in a different partition to complete the restore. Sounds so easy - so why did it take me a whole week??? Thanks, everyone!

[jmace57]

Originally posted by aswindler
Doh, sorry for the typo. Fixed now.

Okay, what you say makes sense. I tried making the backup and get this:

Uncompressed backup size: 1365 megabytes
Backup failed: /mnt/dos/tivo.bak: Success

That's a pretty contrary message so I'm not sure if it worked, but the file was indeed created on my C drive.

In any case, you mention this:



Does that mean I could somehow still go down to one drive from these two or should I just run with method #4 and replace one drive?

aswindler

I am attempting my first upgrade today, and I am getting a very similar message...

It says I have 1022 megabytes and when I ran the mfsbackup, it got to 178 megabytes and then popped a message up stating: "Backup failed: /mnt/dos/tivo.bak: Success

I went forward figuring that maybe it was OK, but when trying to do the mfsrestore, it hit 178 megs and then failed. I tried again to to the mfsbackup and it failed at the same point.

This was a 40 hour that was working fine. Have I gotten a bad block or something?

I am confused as to what to do next. Do I run some sort of diagnostics on the drive (which I don't know how to do) - it is a Maxtor fireball 3 40 gig drive.

Thanks in advance for any help or advice.

Regards,
Jim

[Edit] - after further searching, it looks like it is a matter of me having multiple partitions on the disk. I believe I can move forward now.

[further edit] - success. thanks for the instructions. Other than this one little glitch, I had no problems.

[mattack]

I'm trying to backup/restore a series 1 on a Mac.. I wrote a thread here:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=189372

I hope someone can help get these tools running under Mac OS X. (If anybody has them running on a Mac under some Mac Linux and had to make changes to the source, that info would probably be useful too.)

[weaknees]

Posted a thought there . . .

[The Percul8or]

Please help!

Using Hinsdale instructions, I am trying to upgrade a Series 2 TIVO, 40hr TCD240040 Standalone. This TIVO came with a 40GB Western Digital and I want to replace that with an 80GB, 7200RPM IBM Deskstar, which is in very good condition and has been working in my PC for about 15 months. TIVO Software is 4.0.1b.

Problem : I am hanging at TIVO's "Welcome, Powering Up..." when testing the small backup I made to IBM Deskstar (per Hinsdale instructions)

---> I used MFSTOOLS2.0 (via CD) to mount, make backup, restore, unmount via Linux:

In my WIN98SE, pentium 2 pc:

primary master (hda) : 12GB hard disk drive w/dos & WIN98SE
primary slave (hdb) : 80GB IBM Deskstar for 80hr new large upgrade drive
secondary master (hdc) : 40GB Western Digital w/original 40hr TIVO
secondary slave (hdd) : cd rom

In Linux (/# prompt):

mkdir /mnt/dos
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/dos

mfsbackup -f 9999 -6so /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdc

mfsrestore -s 127 -bzpi /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdb

umount -f -a -r
(after I typed this there was no response, linux just prompted /#)

I then did CTRL-ALT-DEL, waited for end of all processes, and proceeded.

---> In Hinsdale instructions, I am through step 9. Placed IBM Deskstar w/small backup into TIVO to test, verified IDE cables are connected properly, and that drive is jumpered properly. (new TIVO upgrade drive is a non-Quantum and tivo software is 4.0.1b, so I didn't make runideturbo adjustment).

I am not sure where to go from here, beyond testing small backup. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated - TIA!

[ThreeSoFar]

Could it be jumpered as a slave still? Must be master or cable select.

And why just 80G? They're so cheap now the 160's are just under $100, shipped. (newegg.com, Samsungs).

[The Percul8or]

thank you for your reply....

Yes, the IBM Deskstar in the TIVO is jumpered as master.

Also, I would like to use the IBM Deskstar because I have it immediately available and would like to put it to good use, save some $$$. If the upgrade is easy enough, using that hdd should be sufficient (this is my first snag). Are you familiar with the issues I've described above and what their solutions might be (aside from what you've mentioned regarding jumpers)?

[The Percul8or]

(btw, just as clarification, I had also tried jumpering as cable select, in addition to jumpering as master when the ibm dstar was in the tivo)

[ThreeSoFar]

No other ideas based on the detail above. Did the backup report any errors? Did you check how big the .bak file was? Boot to 98 and you'll see it, or do a "ls -alrt /mnt/dos" after the backup or after booting to Linux and mounting again.

Did the restore report any detail? Try a "mfsinfo /dev/hdb".

[Robert S]

The current DeskStars are OK, but the older ones are not compatible with Series 2 TiVoes.

[The Percul8or]

it's Nov 2002 on the drive, but was purchased early 2003....i don't mean to sound ridiculous but is that somewhat current or no (and therefore could be not a problem of compatibility but of some other nature)?

thank you for the reply and assistance-i am just trying to leave no stone unturned here...............................

[The Percul8or]

(also, the backup and restore reported no errors and the .bak file is not bigger than the target ibm deskstar if that was the other question, THREESOFAR - thanks in advance for any further assistance you could provide.........)

[Robert S]

Is a drive that's nearly two years old 'current'

No.

[The Percul8or]

80GB 7200RPM specs on a drive sound like reasonably current standards (at least that was my thinking in asking "is that somewhat current").

Would you also suggest a samsung 160gb hard drive or is there another hard drive that you've had better success with in upgrading a series 2 standalone, model 240040 with software 4.0.1b?

[Robert S]

A few months ago people started reporting successfully upgrading Series 2 TiVoes with DeskStar drives. Prior to that they only worked in Series 1 models.

What makes you think I've ever actually seen a Series 2 TiVo in person? Such things are but dreams on the far horizon here...

Anyway, all the hard drives currently on sale should be fine in your TiVo. People seem to like the Samsungs, but I've not used one myself.

[The Percul8or]

you the man, robert s. the info is much appreciated.

[Nascar24]

I did the upgrade to my DIRECTIVO this weekend and everything went great with one small exception. I just replaced the 40GB hard drive with a new 120GB hard drive. I completed all the steps and then pulled the drive out for testing in the TIVO before completing the last step and everything worked, even the blue background. I hooked it back up to the computer and completed the last step with no errors. I then put the hard drive back in the TIVO and everything works but the blue background is gone and you can delete a show and it still plays until you hit the live TV button. Can anyone tell me if there is something I can do to fix this? Thanks for the help.

[weaknees]

Sounds like on the "backup" phase you missed the "-f 9999" step.

Michael

[Nascar24]

Thanks. So can I just format the drive and start over with no problems?

[weaknees]

Sure - you don't really even need to specifically format it, other than to do what you already did right on top of what's there.

Michael

[dalejr]

I just upgraded using Hindale's Guide! What a nice piece of work. I had a few problems, but they appeared to be hardware issues. I originally used a Dell Dimension XPS 800 and it reported problems with a few Inodes, then gave me a few problems around 1100 MB, restarted, then around 1500MB, I switched to my P4-3.0GhZ and had no problems, copied all data and recordings from 40GB to new 160GB in less than 4 hours. The commands and the document were awesome! Thanks Hinsdale!

Proud owner of 120Hr DirecTV Tivo RCA 40 (well 160)

[hinsdale]

I wanted to say a quick thank you to all those that have emailed since yesterday. I created and continue to maintain the Hinsdale How-to as a resource for those with TiVos who want to upgrade themselves. If the moderators believe that the How-To has outlived it's usefulness to the TiVo community or is no longer worthy of a sticky note then that is their call (sorry there is nothing I can do about it). I will continue to keep the How-To updated/current on a daily basis (for the thousands daily that locate the Hinsdale How-To via the major search engines) and hopefully those in this forum who may find it useful will still be able to locate it. I will also continue to answer (as time allows) the many email questions and private messages I receive from members of this forum.

I have become hesitant to post as much in this forum because the Hinsdale How-To also links to my Upgrade Kits/service - so it might look like self promotion to refer to the document or generate a large presence on the forum - and that's not my style. But with Robert S around and others helping out it looks like my posting has not been overly missed recently. I will try to continue to participate in the community by keeping the How-To up-to-date for all model TiVos as they are released. The Hinsdale How-to also continues to refer thousands to forum sponsors such as weaknees and 9thtee and refers many to the TiVo Underground forum itself - so hopefully contributes in that way as well.

Good luck in your upgrades and remember if you run into trouble - the problem isn't the instructions :)

- Bill Regnery (hinsdale)

PS. On last count (dec 2003), I had received over 31,500 emails over the last three years (and hundreds more since last count) from those that had used the Hinsdale How-To successfully to Upgrade their TiVos and had actually taken the time to send a Thank-you note for the instructions. In a time of reportedly "diminishing civility", I have always been impressed with the class and camaraderie of the TiVo community - these thank-you notes have made contributing a pleasure.

[tivolovit]

Originally posted by hinsdale
I wanted to say a quick thank you to all those that have emailed since yesterday. I created and continue to maintain the Hinsdale How-to as a resource for those with TiVos who want to upgrade themselves. If the moderators believe that the How-To has outlived it's usefulness to the TiVo community or is no longer worthy of a sticky note then that is their call (sorry there is nothing I can do about it). I will continue to keep the How-To updated/current on a daily basis (for the thousands daily that locate the Hinsdale How-To via the major search engines) and hopefully those in this forum who may find it useful will still be able to locate it. I will also continue to answer (as time allows) the many email questions and private messages I receive from members of this forum.

I have become hesitant to post as much in this forum because the Hinsdale How-To also links to my Upgrade Kits/service - so it might look like self promotion to refer to the document or generate a large presence on the forum - and that's not my style. But with Robert S around and others helping out it looks like my posting has not been overly missed recently. I will try to continue to participate in the community by keeping the How-To up-to-date for all model TiVos as they are released. The Hinsdale How-to also continues to refer thousands to forum sponsors such as weaknees and 9thtee and refers many to the TiVo Underground forum itself - so hopefully contributes in that way as well.

Good luck in your upgrades and remember if you run into trouble - the problem isn't the instructions :)

- Bill Regnery (hinsdale)

PS. On last count (dec 2003), I had received over 31,500 emails over the last three years (and hundreds more since last count) from those that had used the Hinsdale How-To successfully to Upgrade their TiVos and had actually taken the time to send a Thank-you note for the instructions. In a time of reportedly "diminishing civility", I have always been impressed with the class and camaraderie of the TiVo community - these thank-you notes have made contributing a pleasure.

PURE CLASS! Hinsdale, A BIG THANKS!!!

[JamesonTiVo]

Originally posted by Robert S (Post #1340, 06-22-2004 12:17 PM)
Well currently A1 will just ignore B. If you mfsadd (NOT BlessTiVo!) B, you forfeit any chance of recovering your old recordings. Obviously if B is the failing drive, marrying it to A1 would not be a good idea.

I'm back! Thanks so much for the tips. Drive A turned out to be unrecoverable (the failing drive read head apparently scratched the disk surface beyond repair - yikes!), so now I have A1 in situ and B which has returned from DriveSavers, apparently unaffected by the crash of A, but has 80 GB worth of old recordings and won't be recognized by A1. Is there a way to accomplish either of these?

1. Get A1 to recognize B as a secondary drive, without losing the recordings from B?

2. Or, failing that, get B to perform as a primary drive, erase A1 and just make A1 the secondary drive, preserving the recordings on drive B?

Or is my only option to mfsadd B and lose all the old recordings?

Again, many many thanks.
Jameson

[weaknees]

There's no way to recover the recordings from the B drive if the A drive failed. Sorry.

Michael

[dishman]

Originally posted by hinsdale

PS. On last count (dec 2003), I had received over 31,500 emails over the last three years (and hundreds more since last count) from those that had used the Hinsdale How-To successfully to Upgrade their TiVos and had actually taken the time to send a Thank-you note for the instructions. In a time of reportedly "diminishing civility", I have always been impressed with the class and camaraderie of the TiVo community - these thank-you notes have made contributing a pleasure.

Add another to your count. Your instructions are excellent, and have been very helpful.

[JamesonTiVo]

Originally posted by weaknees
There's no way to recover the recordings from the B drive if the A drive failed. Sorry.

Michael

Alas. That's too bad; I suppose I'll just forfeit the recordings, mfsadd B to A1 and bump up the swap. Allow me one last query though (sorry to pester, but you can understand my desperation):

If I were to purchase a replacement B drive and undergo the Hinsdale Config #5 instructions, Upgrading a Dual Drive TiVo to a New A and New B Drive, that wouldn't work either would it? It sounds crazy but I had to ask; I'd hate to wipe drive B and then discover something I hadn't thought of once it's too late.

Thanks to all!
Jameson

[weaknees]

Sometimes that'll work, but it's very rare. Essentially, you'd have to be lucky enough for the PC to be able to read that data where the TiVo can't. But it does happen, so if you're desperate, give it a shot. But probably 1 in 100 make it.

Michael

[tivolovit]

Hey,


Just thought some of you might like to know (I am not sure if this is posted anywhere already, I did a quick search and didn't find it anywhere). Anyway, I just got a friend's Hughes SD-DVR40 to upgrade the storage capacity for him and noticed that the case and fan have been upgraded. They appear to be the same as those on the HR10-250, five screws hold the top cover on now and has a little "notch" cut out by the fan because it has been enlarged to 70mm instead of 60mm (that should help with the cooling.

Just FYI,

[weaknees]

Right - this is the "A" case that first showed up with the 24040A.

We have a bracket kit specifically for this model here:

http://www.weaknees.com/tbcompa.php

It doesn't contain a replacement for the case fan, but does have the extra mounting parts.

Michael

[stlrec]

I am using mfstools 2.0 to copy my Tivo drive to a new larger drive. I am coping a 40 gig to a 160 gig.
When I run mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hdc | mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi - /dev/hda
I get an error message restore failed : backup target not large enough for entire backup byt itself.
King up 1 of 34071 megabytes (0.00%)

I have my tivo drive setup as secondary master and the new drive a Primary master. Both drive read the correct size in both the CMOS and during linux boot.

Thanks Stlrec

[prodigy17]

I upgraded my Tivo 540040 last night from a 40 hour to a 139 hour by using the Hinsdale How-To a TwinBreeze bracket and a spare 120GB HD. I'm fairly unfamiliar with Linux and how it accesses a NTFS HD, but following the instruction in the How-To, I was unable to create the backup image on my windows HD because the linux OS from the Boot CD saw my hda drive as Read Only.

Fortunately this didn't hinder the Tivo upgrade, and I was able to complete the upgrade without a backup image, and have verified that my Tivo system works properly at the upgraded capacity. However, my computer now has a windows 2k problem with a "Limited Virtual Memory" error coming up immediately after logon. Clicking OK on the error message, brings me back to the logon, so I can never actually get into the system to fix it.

I'm trying to figure out how this could've happened, and what steps can be taken to repair this problem outside of windows. If anyone has any experience with this, or insight, please let me know. Thanks!!!

[Robert S]

stlrec: The most likely cause of that is that your 160Gb drive detected as 32Gb. Always read the boot log (dmesg | grep hd if you miss it) to check that all the drives detect as the correct sizes.

prodigy17: Weaknees interactive guide covers this case. If you format your upgrade drive with a FAT32 partition, you can write the backup to that.

[stlrec]

Originally posted by Robert S
stlrec: The most likely cause of that is that your 160Gb drive detected as 32Gb. Always read the boot log (dmesg | grep hd if you miss it) to check that all the drives detect as the correct sizes.


drives
A - Windows 98 - 10005 MB
B - New 160 - 137439 MB
C - Tivo - 40027 MB
I see that my system is not seeing the full 160 but I didn't think that was a problem.
I did do a back up and restores on the drive . I just want my recordings also.
Thanks
StlRec

[weaknees]

In your previous message, you had it going to "hda" but here you have the location of the new drive as "hdb" - are you sure you didn't mistake a drive identifier somewhere?

[stlrec]

Yeah I was told on another forum that you should never use Primary master to do the upgrade.When I typed the line in I made the drive switch.
mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hdc | mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi - /dev/hdb

[Robert S]

The reason for not using hda does not apply to the MFS Tools 2.0 CD.

Does the copy work if you omit the x?

You would then run mfsadd on the new drive when the copy completes.

[stlrec]

That did the trick.
I used
mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hdc | mfsrestore -s 127 -zpi /dev/hda

Thanks for all the help.
Stlrec

[weaknees]

Don't forget to run mfsadd afterward - with the drive in a different position. Otherwise, you won't see your extra space.

Michael

[stlrec]

Well when I did that it gave me an error about to many partitions. I tested the drive and everything works fine so far. It just doesn't show the right size.

Thanks
Stlrec

[weaknees]

Had the drive already been expanded?

[stlrec]

No it was a brand new drive. When I first could not get the total back up to work I did a restore of the quick backup. Then after your help I got the full back up to work. Should I reformat in Fat32 and start from scratch ?

Stlrec

[Robert S]

What does mfsinfo report?

[stlrec]

I haven't run that yet. I'll get back to you after the holiday weekend. Family call.
Thanks Again.
Stlrec

[unsped]

anyone done an upgrade on silver 2 series with drive larger than 160?

[weaknees]

We have . . .

[bob330i]

Ok, excuse the possible rude question from a computer illiterate person: has anyone used both the Weaknees and Hinsdale upgrade instructions? Which one is easier to follow?

I read the Hindsdale one and reading this forum, it appears that a lot of things can go wrong, hda/hdb, missing slashes, etc. especially knowing myself and computers. Unfortunately, most of the things described in the instructions are gobblygook to me but I have a 160G drive that's burning to go into my recently ordered DTivos.

As I mentioned above, I want to replace the current 40G drive with a 160G in a new (S2?) DTivo. I am still waiting for it to come in but want to be ready once I get it installed. When I'm ready I won't be too concerned about keeping recordings so I'll start out fresh, just keeping season passes and such. I'm running Windows XP at home so I need to be concered about the extra instructions noted by Hinsdale.

I'm not meaning to open a thread that bashes either method, just want to know which one would be the easier and more foolproof of the two considering my situation. I also am cheap so unless I blow the Dtivos to heck, I won't consider the plug and play solution from either party.

TIA!

BTW, if this is an inappropriate question, Mods, please feel free to delete/modify.

Bob

[stlrec]

Originally posted by Robert S
What does mfsinfo report?

/dev/hdc10
mfs partition size 512 MiB
/dev/hdc11
mfs partition size 11403 MiB
/dev/hdc12
mfs partition size 521 MiB
/dev/hdc13
mfs partition size 15746 MiB
/dev/hdc14
mfs partition size 4 MiB
/dev/hdc15
mfs partition size 9539 MiB
Total MFS Volume size 37716MiB
Estimated Hours in a Standalone Tivo 39
This MFS volume may be expanded 3 more times

[Robert S]

So, the TiVo had already been expanded. It originally had a 30Gb drive.

That does cut down your options. You can do any two of the following three things:

Keep your recordings (in the new drive set - they'll remain on the current drive, naturally).

Expand your recording capacity.

Remain with a single drive configuration.

But you can't do all three.

[stlrec]

I'm reading that it is a issue with 2.5xtreme. I guess when I put it on that it automatically expanded the drive from 30 to 39. I did a full back up to save my show to a new 160 gig . I didn't realize that it had been expanded till I did the MFSINFO.

So I guess I can either restore a simple back up then do the mfsadd , or keep the original drive in and the do the mfsadd and run a 2 drive configuration?

With it being the original drive I was worrying about it dying soon . That's why I went to the single larger drive.

Thanks Again,
Stlrec

[Robert S]

You don't have to keep the current drive.

If you do an MFS Tools pipe (mfsbackup ... | mfsrestore ...) from the current drive to two new ones, MFS Tools will put a pair of partitions on the new B drive to make room to expand the A drive again.

[BigScreen]

I've wanted to upgrade my DSR6000 for quite some time, and always found reasons not to. Over the past few months, the drive has begun making more and more noise similar to a bearing going out. Not only was the noise very annoying, I figured a failure was in its future and it was only a matter of time. A recent deal at Best Buy for a Seagate 120GB drive finally made me take the plunge.

Armed with the excellent Hinsdale instructions, and the help of a friend who had done his a year ago, we cracked the box and proceeded to replace the LCT20 Fireball with the new drive.

I was following the path of replacing the existing drive with the new drive, while keeping all shows and settings intact.

When the instructions tell you that it may take 1-8 hours to do the "dd" step, believe them! In my case, it took 6.5 hours from issuing the dd command to getting a command prompt again. This seemed very odd to my friend, since he remembered that his upgrade didn't take nearly as long.

The source drive was on hda, and the destination drive was on hdc. My system drives were completely disconnected, and I used a boot floppy to hold the utils. I figured that this would have been the fastest configuration for making the copy. I don't know how much the CPU or system RAM is involved in the equation, but with a 3.02GHz P4 and 1GB of RAM, that shouldn't have caused any slow-downs either.

After the long wait, doing the mfsadd to expand the drive was quick, and getting everything back together went easily. All in all, an easy upgrade to 106 hours of storage, a quieter drive, and it actually runs a degree cooler than my second DSR6000 single-drive box that hasn't been modified.

My hat goes off to Hinsdale, and to everyone here, that made this process as easy to understand as it is, and for the great support that you provide to those that have questions. TiVo couldn't afford to pay for that kind of support! :)

Just out of curiousity, was there something I could have done to make the copy process go faster?

[Blackrowan]

ok I went through all the directions up to test the new drive. When I test the new drive I get the first screen that says "wait a moment while tivo starts up"

Then I get the grey screen.

Then I get a blue screen that says severe error. Plug the phone line in and leave it connected for 3 hours to try to repair the error.

should I do that and leave it plugged in like that or is something else the issue?

Any suggestions would be appreciated

[stlrec]

Originally posted by Robert S
You don't have to keep the current drive.

If you do an MFS Tools pipe (mfsbackup ... | mfsrestore ...) from the current drive to two new ones, MFS Tools will put a pair of partitions on the new B drive to make room to expand the A drive again.

Is there no way to just use the 160 drive that I have now ? I hate to go buy another drive just to expand the 160.

Thanks
Stlrec

[Robert S]

Like I said:

You can do any two of the following three things:

Keep your recordings (in the new drive set - they'll remain on the current drive, naturally).

Expand your recording capacity.

Remain with a single drive configuration.

But you can't do all three.

You have to choose - do you want to take your recordings to the new drive, or to expand the new drive or to purchase another drive or to keep using the current one?

[austinsho]

Originally posted by bob330i
Ok, excuse the possible rude question from a computer illiterate person: has anyone used both the Weaknees and Hinsdale upgrade instructions? Which one is easier to follow?

I read the Hindsdale one and reading this forum, it appears that a lot of things can go wrong, hda/hdb, missing slashes, etc. especially knowing myself and computers. Unfortunately, most of the things described in the instructions are gobblygook to me but I have a 160G drive that's burning to go into my recently ordered DTivos.

(snip)

Bob

Bob...you're in exactly the same position I was about a year and a half ago. Here's my experience.

If what you want is a big Tivo with the minimum of hassle and you're not looking forward to your computer and the only reason you're considering doing it yourself is to save a few bucks, don't do it. Just call up Weaknees, buy the prepared drive, slap it in and be happy. The same goes if you're concerned you might damage your Tivo or you have (ahem!) significant other issues (i.e., if you kill the Tivo, your wife will kill you!).

OTOH, if you're interested in how things work, have that spare drive just sitting around and aren't too concerned that you'll mess up the computer, go for it.

If you'd rather change your own oil, do it yourself. If you think paying the service station attendant $29.95 to get himself dirty is a deal, call Weaknees, buy the prepared drive and feel good about paying them for their knowledge.

Hmmm...OTOH, has anyone ever asked if Weaknees will image a drive you ship to them, and if so, how much would they charge?

[ThreeSoFar]

Originally posted by austinsho
Bob...you're in exactly the same position I was about a year and a half ago. Here's my experience.

If what you want is a big Tivo with the minimum of hassle and you're not looking forward to your computer and the only reason you're considering doing it yourself is to save a few bucks, don't do it. Just call up Weaknees, buy the prepared drive, slap it in and be happy. I disagree with austinsho. If you know PCs a bit, and have added a hard drive to a PC before, Hinsdale is pretty easy. Unless you're not interested in saving a few bucks, I wouldn't use weaknees (or any other) drop-in upgrade. They add a good $100 for the service. If you aren't computer literate enough and know someone who is, that works, too. I've done probably a dozen upgrades for friends for free (well, they bought the hard drive--Samsung, usually, at my recommendation, from Newegg.com).

[stlrec]

I will say I thought about buying the ready drive , but said what the heck. What better way to learn. Thanks to nice people like Robert S and Weakness I've learned allot.

Now for the next question. I know this is probably answered in you original response Robert S , but maybe I'm missing something.

I did a quick back up restore and expanded my 160 drive and it was recognized for the full amount. I used the new LBA48 supported MFStools and upgraded the kernel also.
My question is can I now do a full restore to back up all my recordings and keep my expanded drive or will I revert to the same problem I had before ?

Stlrec

[Robert S]

Yes, the same limits still apply (LBA-48 doesn't alter the partition table at all).

[austinsho]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by ThreeSoFar
I disagree with austinsho. If you know PCs a bit, and have added a hard drive to a PC before, Hinsdale is pretty easy. Unless you're not interested in saving a few bucks, I wouldn't use weaknees (or any other) drop-in upgrade.

Oh listen, I went there myself. My first upgrade was a Weaknees drop-in, the five since then have been home brew.

But what I'm saying is that there are people who want to learn something...and then there are people who just want to watch TV. Those folks have never taken the case off their PC and don't relish the thought of (possibly) messing up both their PC and their new Tivo in the same weekend! Yes, there are folks who don't like to poke and prod around under the hood. And given the construction of some of today's $400 and up PCs (hello Dell?) I can understand the mindset.

I don't see anything wrong with paying Weaknees for their service, should one be concerned about opening up a PC. You know, different strokes and all that....:D

[ThreeSoFar]

I love Dell cases, actually. What's your beef with them?

That's what I use for my upgrades. Only thing I had to do was replace the IDE cable with a longer one.

[austinsho]

Dells? The organization I work for has purchased more the 300+. We're seeing HD failures, DVD-ROM failures, slow bootups, you name it. These are the small footprint boxes and after I took a look inside mine, I'm glad I built my own at the house!

[ThreeSoFar]

Originally posted by austinsho
Dells? The organization I work for has purchased more the 300+. We're seeing HD failures, DVD-ROM failures, slow bootups, you name it. These are the small footprint boxes and after I took a look inside mine, I'm glad I built my own at the house! We have far more than 300, but they're the larger towers. No problems I know of.

[eyocum]

I have a Sony SVR3000. About a year ago I added a second 80gig drive, and things were fine. I decided last Friday that a fun weekend project would be to upgrade again, and this is where I've run into issues.

I have a pair of 120 gig drives I wanted to move the contents of my current A+B to. I followed the steps using config #5, from any 2 drives to any two drives - the command listed under the 4 ports option seemed to work (mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hda /dev/hdb | mfsrestore -2 127 -xzpi - /dev/hdc /dev/hdd). It took about 4 hours to complete, gave me a success message, and seemed to be ok.

I cabled the drives back into the Tivo and it sticks on the "Powering Up" grey screen.

I can restore my original image (tivo.bak) and use it, and my A+B combo still works, so I haven't managed to break anything there... It's just the data transfer that doesn't seem to take.

SO, in looking through this thread I've seen a couple posts that might be work arounds (1304 for example), but I'd like to know if I may be doing something incorrectly - it seems like people are using larger drives, so that isn't the limit.

I'm not sure what I need to provide to aid in diagnosis of my issue here, can somebody give me some pointers?

Thanks for any help!

[Robert S]

The most likely cause of that is a problem with the drive installation in the TiVo - jumper settings, cables, etc.

Try the A drive on its own - if it's correctly installed, it should be able to get to 'almost there' and then reboot.

[eyocum]

Originally posted by Robert S
The most likely cause of that is a problem with the drive installation in the TiVo - jumper settings, cables, etc.

Try the A drive on its own - if it's correctly installed, it should be able to get to 'almost there' and then reboot.


So - take the new upsized A+B drives, after copying over my original A+B and cable in only the new A drive?
If that corrects the problem, will there be an issue plugging in the new B drive, since it wasn't there at power up and recognition of the new A drive?


I'll give it a shot.

For the jumpering point, I had my A drive jumpered to Master, at the end of the cable, then my B drive jumpered to Slave, then the connection to the Tivo.

I used this same set up for the copying, with my original A+B on primary and the new upsized drives on secondary (A on Master at end, B on Slave in middle, then PC Motherboard).

Thanks for the advice.

[Robert S]

No, running just the A drive is an attempt to diagnose the problem, not a solution.

Like I said:

Try the A drive on its own - if it's correctly installed, it should be able to get to 'almost there' and then reboot.

If the A drive is not correctly installed, then it'll reboot before printing 'almost there'.

Therefore, by observing whether 'almost there' is printed or not, one can gather some indication of which drive is at fault.

[bob330i]

Austin/Three, thanks for the thoughts. Funny thing is that I'd like to know how things work, in fact, I do most of my own car maintenence and have done some extensive work on the inside of my house. However, it's fairly easy to figure out mechanical and structural issues and it's obvious (at least to me) what's wrong if I miss a step.

With computers, I feel that most of the things happen in the background and it's really not easy to find out why things aren't working. So maybe it's just a perceived intimidation factor here.

I have my stuff as of yesterday and the installers will be in Monday. I have a bit of time to think it over and really comb through both instruction sets. If 35 hrs on each DTivo turns out to be enough, then I'll just let it go.

Thanks again for your thoughts.

[ThreeSoFar]

No problem. But 35 hours is not near enough. Take the plunge.

[eyocum]

Thanks, Robert -

Trying it with just the imaged (bigger) A drive, jumpered to master on a single connection IDE cable got me to the 'Almost there' screen, then the system restarted back to the powering up screen.

I've done some other brief searches, wanting to know about drive size and partition information to research this problem in general and I've found a post (#1 - Fixes for MFSBoot swap issues) by you, discussing the -s 127 option.

In the posting you discuss 127mb of swap should be enough for a 274gb set up to recover; my image reports at 277gb at the end of the upgrade from the dual 80's. I was wondering if this swap issue and 277gb had something to do with the system not working when the B drive is cabled in?

In post #3 you discuss how to work with dual drive tivoes - is that information generic to tivoes, or specific to series 1?

Then the last few posts there indicate issues similar to mine (freitas and richard).

Hmm, should I move my questions over the that thread?

[eyocum]

Scratch my last reply, my report is about 153 megs, 277 hours i switched those around; so that's not the point I was thinking.

[Robert S]

You may be having the same problem as PTravel http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?threadid=195474.

Unfortunately, this is not an easy thing to fix, particularly if you don't want to lose your recordings.

It's nothing to do with swap. Even with no swap at all, TiVoes will boot up and run (for a few hours, at least). Lack of swap can prevent a TiVo recovering from a Green Screen of Death, which is what those posts were addressing.

[eyocum]

I looked at the link. Both drives are the same model, purcahsed at the same time, I don't think there would be a hardware incompatibility between them?



Well, I might need to bite the bullet and lose the recordings.



On another note, why do the Hinsdale and Tiger instrucrions give different cabling positions and copy commands for the same step of the upgrade?

If that's covered in a posting somewhere, I'm sure I'll find it sooner or later - lot's to read through in the forums.

Do both sets of options accomplish the same thing, or is that something else I should look into? The thread, 'MFS Tools 2 are a revolution!' has several people saying they're upgrading and saving recordings no problem...

[Robert S]

You can use any connection layout you like as long as the command lines reflect the layout.

It's not apparent to me why your upgrade didn't work.

[ThreeSoFar]

bump

[Klips]

Why is this thread no longer sticky? I have used this guide often, I hate having to keep this in my favorites list. I never have it when I need it. :(

[litzdog911]

Originally posted by Klips
Why is this thread no longer sticky? I have used this guide often, I hate having to keep this in my favorites list. I never have it when I need it. :(

I posted the same question a few days ago, but haven't really gotten an answer. I agree that it should be a sticky post again.

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=197274

[ThreeSoFar]

I asked Bott directly via PM and he was nice enough to reply.

Do the same. If enough people do so, maybe the sticky will be put back.

[Peter and Jim]

I spent a few hours this morning and now have a 120 hour standalone rather than the 40 hour I bought last week. Thanks for the instructions, and thanks to all the board participants for asking all the questions and writing such great answers! The interactions here on the board made some of what might have been confusing in the instructions (new to Linux here!).

Rather than even open our good XP machine, I used an old Compaq that had eaten its C drive and then refused to reload Windows. I reformatted the drive, then used the boot CD to run the system, so there was no chance of having that XP problem overwriting the disks. Now the only thing on the drive is the backup file.

I expect to do this all again at some point in the future, when I add a B drive to the system, but for now, WOW!

[ThreeSoFar]

Cool.

Actually, I always recommend considering a SECOND TiVo rather than a second drive in your existing TiVo. The second tuner (I'm assuming standalone here) to resolve conflicts is of more benefit than just more space is. Of course, you'll want to buy the cheap 40hr unit then upgrade it.

[Peter and Jim]

True, I am already (especially with the padding issue and the HMO option to share programs between them) finding that the second TiVo sounds like a wonderful idea. If TiVo figures out some kind of multi-unit conflict resolution, I'll be there immediately.

[weaknees]

Right - it seems as if TiVo is basically encouraging this as the answer to not having a dual-tuner cable TiVo (which would be pretty hard to make considering it would need to control two cable boxes, and those cable boxes could conflict . . .). Now that they lowered the monthly service price for the second box, if you have a network and two cable boxes, it's not a bad idea.

[avramd]

Hello Everyone,

I've upgraded two Tivo's with Western Digital 160 GB (WD1600JBRTL) drives. Most of the time they work fine, but a handful of programs freeze during playback, and a few others claim not to have been recorded b/c of no video signal or that I don't get the channel (but of course I do). When the programs freeze, I can back-out, start them over, skip to end, and rewind back to around 30 sec after the freeze, and play from there, but if I go to close, it'll freeze that way too.

I've been searching around here for a while, and the obvious next step is to run diagnostics on these drives. But the thing that seems strange to me is that I have the same behavior on both units. Both drives have never been used before this, I bought them about a year ago before finally getting around to this.

I'm wondering if I somehow did something wrong during the upgrade process, and maybe did the same wrong thing on both units. I'm a regular Unix user, so I don't have any trouble understanding the Hinsdale instructions, and the only "tweaking" I did was to use different positions for my drives. One thing that's crossing my mind is that maybe something about the filesystem is messed up, and blocks that are in-use are getting written over occasionally as though they are free.

Anybody have any ideas? Or do people think it's likely that I actually got two bad WD drives at the same time?

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by avramd
Hello Everyone,

I've upgraded two Tivo's with Western Digital 160 GB (WD1600JBRTL) drives. Most of the time they work fine, but a handful of programs freeze during playback, and a few others claim not to have been recorded b/c of no video signal or that I don't get the channel (but of course I do). When the programs freeze, I can back-out, start them over, skip to end, and rewind back to around 30 sec after the freeze, and play from there, but if I go to close, it'll freeze that way too.

I've been searching around here for a while, and the obvious next step is to run diagnostics on these drives. But the thing that seems strange to me is that I have the same behavior on both units. Both drives have never been used before this, I bought them about a year ago before finally getting around to this.

I'm wondering if I somehow did something wrong during the upgrade process, and maybe did the same wrong thing on both units. I'm a regular Unix user, so I don't have any trouble understanding the Hinsdale instructions, and the only "tweaking" I did was to use different positions for my drives. One thing that's crossing my mind is that maybe something about the filesystem is messed up, and blocks that are in-use are getting written over occasionally as though they are free.

Anybody have any ideas? Or do people think it's likely that I actually got two bad WD drives at the same time?

Its just as likely to have two bad drives as it is to have one (according to the notion of statistical independence)... best to run the manufacturer's diagnostics on them to make that determination, however.

[finaldiet]

I noticed that the original thread started quite a while ago. Is there a newer upgrade version available to upgrade tivos? Thanks for your info!:)

[Robert S]

Although this thread has been running for a while, the How-To is regularly updated (the current version was updated on the 11th of August) to reflect changes in thinking about upgrade processes and include new models of TiVo.

[HTH]

I have a Series2 recently upgraded with two 120 GB Western Digital drives. The drives are of different vintages, so I made the newer one with the 8 MB cache the master and tthe older one the slave.

Last week the unit crashed and hung at the starting up screen and I missed some shows. Cycling power would get it working again. Recently it has been dead in Standby, so I've avoided putting it in Standby. I've also seen it suddenly stop playback, then resume briefly before a restart occurs that again fails to get past the first screen.

I'm suspecting a drive problem which will work itself out when a GSOD finally occurs, but I'm suspecting the hardware that delays power to the slave drive as the cause for why it doesn't come back up by itself. I'm thinking that stress on the power supply at startup shouldn't be much of a concern for a system that keeps its drives spinning all the time anyway.

[Robert S]

The point about staggering the drive start-ups is that the drives draw much more than double their normal load for a few seconds as the spindle runs up to speed. Therefore knowing that the PSU can run two drives continuously doesn't tell you whether it can start two drives simultaneously.

However, I don't think this is a power supply. I had a TiVo get into a similar state. I think the drive is getting into an inconsistent state that is preventing it resetting properly when the TiVo reboots. Disconnecting the power clears all the latches and allows the drive to start normally.

So I'd just follow the procedure for replacing a failing drive and hope that fixes it.

[HTH]

Additional observation: it seems to only do these restarts when it is only buffering Live TV. If a recording is in progress, be it a suggestion or a scheduled recording, it stays up. So it could be an issue with recording the buffer.

I'll see in the morning whether or not it decided to die again tonight. If I have to replace, I'll replace the older of the two drives, but both were fresh from their packaging.

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by Robert S
The point about staggering the drive start-ups is that the drives draw much more than double their normal load for a few seconds as the spindle runs up to speed. Therefore knowing that the PSU can run two drives continuously doesn't tell you whether it can start two drives simultaneously.

However, I don't think this is a power supply. I had a TiVo get into a similar state. I think the drive is getting into an inconsistent state that is preventing it resetting properly when the TiVo reboots. Disconnecting the power clears all the latches and allows the drive to start normally.

So I'd just follow the procedure for replacing a failing drive and hope that fixes it.

I believe you've got a bad drive, as well.

FWIW, here is a graphical representation of two-drive startups with/without power staggering devices (one using solid-state design with separate circuits to ramp 5V and 12V power rails, and one using a mechanical relay (data obtained using a digital oscilloscope):

http://www.ptvupgrade.com/products/smartstart/Comp-Graph.bmp

[Lhach]

I am new to the forums, but would like the assistance of any gurus out there. I have a series 2 tivo that I upgraded a while back, adding one 60GB disk to it, to make a pair of 60GB disks. I have now got a failed power supply and need to take it in for service. They (Best-buy) tell me the service center will most likely wipe the disks with everything one them. Ack!

So... I decided to use the MFStools, and the Hinsdale How-to document. I started with the Option #6 turning a dual disk tivo into a single disk tivo using a 120GB disk as the new A drive. My thought was 60+60=120 I should be ok. That doesn't work. So, I went out, and picked up a 160Gb disk, thinking the extra 17GB (137GB limited) of capacity would help.
Here is the config of the disks in my PC:
A drive PM
B drive PS
new 160GB disk SM
CD SS

No such luck. Here's what it's telling me, starting with my command:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/# mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hda /dev/hdb | mfsrestore -s 127 xzpi - /dev/hdc
Scanning source drive. Please wait a moment.
Source drive is 57 hours
- Upgraded to 128 hours
Uncompressed backup size: 114100 megabytes
Restore failed: Backup target not large enough for entire backup by itelf.
/# king up 1 of 114100 megabytes (0.00%)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
not exactly sure what the "king up 1" statement is, but it puts that on the command line when the restore fails.

Any thoughts or assistance with this would be greatly appreciated, I really miss my tivo... =(

Thanks,

John P.

[Robert S]

I think 'king up 1' was originally 'backing up 1', but the first three letters got over-written by the prompt '/# ' because of a problem with linefeeds.

If you omit the x from the restore side, the copy should proceed.

However, as this is a Series 2 TiVo, there's probably no point. The recordings are encrypted with a key that ties them to the mobo serial number. If you try to use drives from this TiVo in the replacement, you'll just get an error #51 until you do a 'clear and delete everything' reset.

[spudly]

Hello,

I'll try to cut to the chase but I suppose I need to give a little bit of background:

I have a DSR6000 which was expanded (~ 2 yrs ago) from the original 40 hour to an additional 120 hours of space. The original 40 hour TiVo "A" Drive recently died and I lost all my recordings.

Someone was kind enough to give me a drive image of v3.1 software which I restored to the new "A" drive, the 120 hour drive. After restore, I had to do a clear and delete so it would report the correct number of hours. Then realizing I had an unopened boxed 40 hour drive I figured I would max my capacity by adding that as a "B" drive for 160 hours. So I married them using these Hindsdale instructions.

Recalling how bogged down the TiVo gets at that capacity I figured before I put this unit back in production, I would add the Cachecard as well which I had no previous experience with. After purchase I've had some minor glitches during the install but alas it seems to all work.

Before I put this unit back into service I wanted to do a backup of this image of a married a+b (120 + 4) with cachecard drivers intact, but I am a tad confused by Step 7, Option 2, 'backing up a dual drive tivo'. I am unclear whether I should or should not use the -s parameter.

FWIW I am executing the mfsbackup command with "-6so" and the display reads:


Source Drive size is 30 hours
- Upgraded to 129 hours
- Upgraded to 177 hours
Backup image will be 30 hours

This strikes me as odd. Is there something wrong? I want to have a good backup image in case of a problem since I already spent more time than I'd like to get to this point :cool:

Any input?

Thanks,
Glenn

[Robert S]

That seems normal. The upgrade partitions only hold recordings, which aren't included in the backup, so you want it to revert to the size of the original A drive.

[Jim Golden]

Earlier this year I purchased a second hard drive from Hinsdale for my Samsung 35hr S4040R DirecTiVo. I have now replaced this unit with the new HD DirecTivo unit. My question is, can I remove the hard drive I installed in my Samsung earlier this year, and put it in my new unit with little effort?

Thanks,
Jim

[ThreeSoFar]

I was asked via PM for some details on my DRT800 upgrade, so here they are.

I used Hinsdale's (excellent) instructions, which sadly are no longer a sticky thread in this forum, so this thread drops to the bottom.

Hinsdale's original thread is here (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=36974), but you are already there.

His HOWTO is linked in the first post, but also here (http://www.newreleasesvideo.com/hinsdale-how-to/).

Particulars: The upgrade I did is identical to those I'd done with the non-LBA48 boot cd. Hinsdale's HOWTO does mention that you need to ignore the initial messages the LBA48 cd pops up. Just hit return to get the root "#" prompt.

The LBA48 CD that supports larger than 137G drives (which can be used with the latest "nightlight" TiVos as well as with the DRT800) can be found here (http://www.ptvupgrade.com/downloads/ptv-mfstools2-large-disk.iso).

My preferred method to preserve shows from the old hard drive to the new one is under part 10), the "UPGRADE CONFIGURATION #3" option. If you use that method, and shelve the original hard drive as your backup, you have something to recover from even if you skip the part "7) Backup up your TiVo drive(s) with Mfs Tools".

As always, getting the /dev/hdX entries right is imperative. Get it wrong and you could wipe your TiVo source drive, or any other hard drive in that PC at the time. This command is helpful to figure out which is which, especially if they're different brand names (that character in the middle is the "pipe" character, usually shift-\):dmesg | grep hdThis is also useful, showing details about that TiVo drive(s) if that's what they are, and this one does not modify/write to that device:mfsinfo /dev/hdX [/dev/hdY]

Read Hinsdale's HOWTO for much much more detail. Read it all and, assuming you understand it, you should have no difficulty and run no risks. If you skim or skip parts, or rely only on this message, you may well be screwed, but that will be your problem.

Good luck! And feel free to refer me (see link in my sig for my e-mail) when activating any of your future TiVos if you appreciate the help and have no one else in mind.

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by ThreeSoFar
I was asked via PM for some details on my DRT800 upgrade, so here they are.

I used Hinsdale's (excellent) instructions, which sadly are no longer a sticky thread in this forum, so this thread drops to the bottom.

Hinsdale's original thread is here (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=36974), but you are already there.

His HOWTO is linked in the first post, but also here (http://www.newreleasesvideo.com/hinsdale-how-to/).

Particulars: The upgrade I did is identical to those I'd done with the non-LBA48 boot cd. Hinsdale's HOWTO does mention that you need to ignore the initial messages the LBA48 cd pops up. Just hit return to get the root "#" prompt.

The LBA48 CD that supports larger than 137G drives (which can be used with the latest "nightlight" TiVos as well as with the DRT800) can be found here (http://www.ptvupgrade.com/downloads/ptv-mfstools2-large-disk.iso).

My preferred method to preserve shows from the old hard drive to the new one is under part 10), the "UPGRADE CONFIGURATION #3" option. If you use that method, and shelve the original hard drive as your backup, you have something to recover from even if you skip the part "7) Backup up your TiVo drive(s) with Mfs Tools".

As always, getting the /dev/hdX entries right is imperative. Get it wrong and you could wipe your TiVo source drive, or any other hard drive in that PC at the time. This command is helpful to figure out which is which, especially if they're different brand names (that character in the middle is the "pipe" character, usually shift-\):dmesg | grep hdThis is also useful, showing details about that TiVo drive(s) if that's what they are, and this one does not modify/write to that device:mfsinfo /dev/hdX [/dev/hdY]

Read Hinsdale's HOWTO for much much more detail. Read it all and, assuming you understand it, you should have no difficulty and run no risks. If you skim or skip parts, or rely only on this message, you may well be screwed, but that will be your problem.

Good luck! And feel free to refer me (see link in my sig for my e-mail) when activating any of your future TiVos if you appreciate the help and have no one else in mind.

Please do not link directly to the LBA48 CD ISO on our site; refer people
here:

http://www.ptvupgrade.com/support/bigdisk/index.html

As the location, names and revisions of the CD's are likely to change.

[rrogan]

Does the Tivo drive actually have to be hooked up to your PC in order to boot off the ptv-mfstools2-large-disk.iso image I burned?

I tried booting but when I hit <enter> to continue as it says and nothing happens?

I just want to test the cd boot disk before I proceed with disecting my Tivo

[ThreeSoFar]

You can boot just the CD with no TiVo drive connected.

Hitting enter, you should see a text message and then a # prompt.

Type somehting at the # prompt if you see it. Like "mfsbackup" to see its usage.

[weaknees]

No - you don't need the TiVo drive attached to make the CD boot.

[Robert S]

The presence of hard drives in the PC has no effect on whether the CD will boot or not.

[rrogan]

I thought that would be the answer.

When booting off the CD this is what I get

ISOLINUX 1.62 2001-04-2004 COPYRIGHT 1994-2001 H Peter Anvin
welcome to the ptvupgrade bootdisk-on-cd running linux version 2.4.4!

If you need to pass extra parameters to the kernal, enter them at the prompt below after the name of the kernal to boot (vmlinuz or vmlnodma)

Note: In most cases the kernal detects your hardware and parameters are not needed.

boot: <enter>

*************************************************
PTVupgrade LBA48 utility disk version 1.0 Series 1 Units only
************************************************

Visit ptvupgradecom for more information on our
products and services. Join the tivocommunity.com forums for
more information and support using the products.
Please hit <enter> to continue!

This is where nothing else happens. It does not respond to me hitting enter.
Have you guys seen this before?

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by rrogan
I thought that would be the answer.

When booting off the CD this is what I get

ISOLINUX 1.62 2001-04-2004 COPYRIGHT 1994-2001 H Peter Anvin
welcome to the ptvupgrade bootdisk-on-cd running linux version 2.4.4!

If you need to pass extra parameters to the kernal, enter them at the prompt below after the name of the kernal to boot (vmlinuz or vmlnodma)

Note: In most cases the kernal detects your hardware and parameters are not needed.

boot: <enter>

*************************************************
PTVupgrade LBA48 utility disk version 1.0 Series 1 Units only
************************************************

Visit ptvupgradecom for more information on our
products and services. Join the tivocommunity.com forums for
more information and support using the products.
Please hit <enter> to continue!

This is where nothing else happens. It does not respond to me hitting enter.
Have you guys seen this before?

Haven't seen this. My guess is that it is "hanging" in an attempt to automount your CDROM. Are you certain there is not a "#" sign there?

If not, then try hitting ctrl-c to interrupt the automount script.

By any chance, do you have multiple CD-ROM drives in your PC?

[rrogan]

Yes.. One is a dvd-rw/cd-rw the second one is a dvd-rom

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by rrogan
Yes.. One is a dvd-rw/cd-rw the second one is a dvd-rom

That is most definitely the issue. If you know which device you booted the CDROM from, you can manually mount it with the following command:

mount -o -ro -t iso9660 /dev/hdX /cdrom

where hdX is:

/dev/hda --- primary master
/dev/hdb --- primary slave
/dev/hdc --- secondary master
/dev/hdd --- secondary slave

Oh, and here is the automount script; if anyone can figure out how to make it play well in a multi CD environment, by all means...

#!/bin/sh
#
for dev_name in hd{a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h}; do
{ if { test -e /proc/ide/$dev_name; }; then
{ if { cat /proc/ide/$dev_name/media|grep -q cdrom; }; then
{ export cd_name=$dev_name; };
fi; };
fi; };
done

mount -o ro -t iso9660 /dev/$cd_name /cdrom >& /dev/null

[ThreeSoFar]

Or could just having the same CD in both drives do the trick? It'll fine one or the other to mount?

[ThreeSoFar]

Originally posted by tivoupgrade
Oh, and here is the automount script; if anyone can figure out how to make it play well in a multi CD environment, by all means...


Fixed one error....didn't have seds to fix change /proc* to /dev/*.

How about this. It should attempt one then the other, breaking out of the for loop on success. I don't have a system with both cd and dvd to test this on though. And I had to use two greps since the busybox grep does not work like egrep, namely egrep "dvd|cdrom" /proc/ide/*/media. But at least grep -l works.


#!/bin/sh
#
DRIVES=`(grep -l cdrom /proc/ide/*/media ; grep -l dvd /proc/ide/*/media) | sed "s/proc.ide/dev/g" | sed "s/.media.*//g"`
for dev in $DRIVES ; do
mount -o ro -t iso9660 $dev /cdrom >&/dev/null && break
done

[rrogan]

I tried a few of your suggestions with no luck.

My problem is that I never get a #

This is where the boot ends:

*************************************************
PTVupgrade LBA48 utility disk version 1.0 Series 1 Units only
************************************************

Visit ptvupgradecom for more information on our
products and services. Join the tivocommunity.com forums for
more information and support using the products.
Please hit <enter> to continue!

[rrogan]

I just tried a different iso: ptvlba48-3.01.iso
This one fails too but it gave me an error message:

loading vmlinuz.......................isolinux disk error 10 drive EF

[Robert S]

Have you tried a non-TiVo Linux CD like Knoppix? (If Knoppix is too big, use RIP (http://www.tux.org/pub/people/kent-robotti/looplinux/rip/RIP-11.4.iso.bin) instead).

[rrogan]

I downloaded the Knoppox ISO and booted up with no problem.

[Robert S]

If you read the LBA-48 thread at the top of the Underground, it explains how to do the upgrade from Knoppix. It's on page 5 or 6 if I recall correctly, and keep reading until you get to explanations of tpip. It's a bit fiddlier than using Lou's script, but it does work.

[tivoupgrade]

Originally posted by rrogan
I downloaded the Knoppox ISO and booted up with no problem.

Glad you got it working. Can you tell me a little bit more about your PC? CPU type, amount of memory, manufacturer?

We don't hear about many compatibility problems with the CD, so it would be good to know if there is anything identifyable here...

Thx

[rrogan]

FYI
I had overlooked trying the floppy version of mfstools 2
I tried it this am and it works ok too. Just not the CD for some reason.

I have a Sony Vaio PCV-RS430G Pentium 4 2.80GHz 512MB of Ram

[ThreeSoFar]

bump...and Happy Thanksgiving!

[sickal]

Robert S or anyone else...

(1) I upgraded a friend's stock Hughes DVR40 Tivo a few months ago and replaced his original 40GB drive with a new 120GB drive and increased the swap space at the same time during the upgrade using Hinsdale's Upgrade config#3 step. After a few months of making sure the new drive was working ok, we now want to add back the old 40GB drive as a new B drive. Since I already increased the swap before, can I just do Hinsdale's Upgrade#1 step using mfsadd only (after making a backup of the modified A drive of course) or do I need to increase the swap space a second time?

(2) I have a Samsung SIR-4120R unit with a stock 120GB A drive in it. I want to add a new 120GB B drive. Hinsdale's step#1 seemed the best thing to do, but I shouldn't I increase the swap of the old A drive before I marry the new B drive to the unit (using Upgrade config#3 instead of config#1)? If so, how can I do this with the new B drive at the same time since step #3 requires the oldA, newA, and newB drives in the pc at the same time? (i.e. my oldA=newA but just with increased swap). Should I do step#3 on the oldA drive first and increase the swap, test it out, and then go back and do step#1 (like for my friend's above) adding the newB drive?

Thanks

[Robert S]

1) mfsadd is the only thing you can do

2) I don't see how you can increase swap in that situation. The 'rescue' from the 3rd post of the Fixes thread should still work.

It would be worth checking the partition table (pdisk -l) to see if the swap partition is still 64Mb (on the off-chance that someone with half a brain was involved with constructing the image for that model and noticed that any expansion would break mfsfix).

[sickal]

RobertS, thanks very much. So in #2 I will use pdisk to make sure the swap space is set to 127MB. If it is, I can just use mfsadd. If for some reason as you say the swap is not 127, then rather than keeping the oldA as the newA, I can just make the new 120G drive my new A drive and the old stock drive the new B and do a normal hinsdale upgrade option#3 increasing the swap at the same time, right?

[Robert S]

I don't see how you can increase swap in that situation.

I try really hard to write clearly and make my posts as unambiguous as possible, but somehow people always manage to quote them back to me asking if they really mean the exact opposite of what I wrote.

You new 120Gb is probably smaller than the one in your TiVo. If it's a Maxtor, it might be the same size. To increase your swap by making the new drive the A drive, it has to be bigger than the original in order to allow the image to expand.

[sickal]

RobertS,

Your post was not ambiguous, I just did not understand that the expansion drive needed to be greater than (not greater than or equal to as I assumed) than the original A drive.

I checked the stock drive using pdisk and it still has a 64MB partition. So if I don't care about increasing the swap and want to take my chances with the GSOD as you say, I can just add the B drive and if it ever fails, I can try to fix it using your rescue post from the fixes thread (I read it).

Can I increase the swap space of my existing 120GB A drive by backing it up and restoring it to a new 120GB drive (to be the new A) using -s 127 if I DON'T care about preserving recordings, or am limited in this situation to never being able to increase the swap from this drive unless I use a 160GB drive?

Thanks again. I truly appreciate your taking the time to help me out as well as countless others you have helped. I know how much time it takes me to just read the other posts, so the time you take to answer them must be staggering. I truly appreciate your help.

[Robert S]

With any other TiVo, reverting to a backup would take you back to 40Gb or so, which would leave plenty of room to increase swap while expanding the image.

But, presumably, your original image is a nice, snug fit into 120Gb, so even if you reimaged the drive, there'd still be no room to expand the swap allocation.

I still don't see how to increase the swap, unless you buy a 160Gb drive.

I would just add the B drive and try not to worry about it. It might be a good idea to print out the 'rescue' post and keep it near the TiVo, just incase you ever need it.

I'm slightly shocked that the swap allocation hasn't been increased.

I guess TiVo's engineers don't read TCF.

[sickal]

RobertS, thanks for the advice. I was surprised that for a relatively new Samsung Tivo boasting 100 hours with a 120GB drive (got it last November'03) it still had a 64MB partition. However, I suspect the image may not be snug since my info screen only says there are 100 hours available even though for a normal 120GB drive there should be about 105 to 110. Anyway, I will just add the 120B and hope it works. Thanks again for all of your help.

[Robert S]

Well, pdisk will tell you. The last partition - 'Apple_Free' - is the unallocated space on the drive. It's usually a meg or so.

Isn't this a DTiVo? They estimate their disk space based on 1Gb = .9 Hrs, so 100 Hours doesn't seem so far off. The actual data rates used by DTV are actually higher than that, so they could've just upped the estimate rate a bit to reflect that.

[sickal]

RobertS,

I decided to skip just adding the new 120G without increasing the swap and upgrade instead from the current 120G to a new 160G (got on sale today for $54) so I can increase the swap space after adding the other 120G drive I had planned to add as a new B drive. So now I will go from a 120G stock A drive configuration to a new 160G (new A) + 120G (new B). That should resolve that problem and let me increase the swap on that Samsung that only had 64MB of swap on it.

In another unrelated matter, about a year ago I had upgraded a stock HDVR2 from 40G to a 120+40 configuation (old 40A to new 120A and added old40A back on as a new 40B) with 144 hours after the upgrade. When I did this upgrade, I did increase the swap. Yesterday I got another 120G drive to replace my 40G B drive with this new 120G B drive. I went through Hinsdale's steps, made the backup image (of the divorced drives), tested the backup image ok, and got to the final upgrade step in #10 of Hinsdale. Since I wanted to preserve my recordings, I selected step#4 to upgrade a dual drive tivo (120+40) to a new 120G B drive (i.e. replacing the old 40G B drive with a new 120G B drive).

I did the dd copy command and it worked fine, showing 39083+1 blocks in and out. However, when I did the mfsadd step immediately below, the response came back

/# mfsadd -x /dev/hda /dev/hdc
Current estimated standalone size: 179 hours
Nothing to add!

When I did an mfsinfo on the two drives (old 120A connected as hda, old 40G connected as hdb, new 120G connected as hdc exactly as in hinsdale's recommended IDE config), here's what I got (output condensed):

/# mfsinfo /dev/hda /dev/hdc
MFS Volume set for /dev/hda and /dev/hdc
The volume set contains 8 partitions
/dev/hda10 MFS Partition Size: 512 MiB
/dev/hda11 MFS Partition Size: 16107 MiB
/dev/hda12 MFS Partition Size: 512 MiB
/dev/hda13 MFS Partition Size: 21495 MiB
/dev/hda14 MFS Partition Size: 0 MiB
/dev/hda15 MFS Partition Size: 78100 MiB
/dev/hdc1 MFS Partition Size: 0 MiB
/dev/hdc2 MFS Partition Size: 39080 MiB
Total MFS volume size: 155808 MiB
Estimated hours in a standalone Tivo: 179
This MFS volume can be expanded 2 more times
/#

I am confused because when I did the mfsadd above it said there was nothing to expand and this didn't make sense since the 179 hours was the same number that was reported to me in my previous upgrade from 40 to 120+40. Why am I getting this error? Should I just try to do the mfsadd command again? I expected the mfsadd command to ADD more MFS parir sets in the new 120G drive, something like "Adding pair /dev/hdc3-/dev/hdc4..." that I saw when I initially upgraded the 40 to 120+40 and got "Adding pair /dev/hdc2-/dev/hdc3...".

If I can get the expanded space (roughly 80GB on the new 120 drive to be recognized without losing my existing recordings, that would be best, but if I need to do something that will require me to lose my recordings, that's ok since I can re-record them.

[Robert S]

See the 7th post of the Fixes thread.

No-one has figured out why that happens, although it does seem to affect pdisk as well as mfsadd.

Fortunately, as it's your B drive, rebuilding the partition table isn't too hard.

[sickal]

Thanks, I thought something was wierd. And it makes sense now since the Apple_Free partition on the new B drive only says about 3.1MB are free instead the roughly 80MB it should be... if I don't care about preserving recordings and just want to recognize the full size of the new 120G drive, can I just do an mfsrestore from my divorced A120+B40 backup to the old A120 and then mfsadd the new B120?

[sickal]

RobertS, two Linux questions if you have time: I tried to redirect the output of mfsinfo to a text file on my c drive as follows:

/# mfsinfo /dev/hda /dev/hdc > /mnt/dos/mfsinfo.txt

but it doesn't work (nor does it work with the tee command) and just spools the output to my console. When I do a similar redirect thing with pdisk -l ... it works. Why does mfsinfo not? Also is there a way to cat or redirect or tee the boot output from the MFS Tools 2 disk that we normally scroll backwards 5 or 6 times to confirm the disks were recognized properly).

[Robert S]

I've no idea whether that will solve the problem. As I said, the cause is unknown.

However, I am (fairly) confident that restoring the backup to both new drives will work.

The problem has only been reported for mfsadd on its own, never mfsrestore with -x.

[sickal]

RobertS, I used the 7th post of the fixes thread as you suggested, changed the partition table on my new 120B drive without any problems, did the mfsadd again, and it correctly expanded to use the full size of the new drive. Plugged the drives in my Tivo and now I have 217 hours instead of the 144 I had before. It works! Perfectly! Thank You Thank You Thank You!

[EvilSilverFish]

Hi all, I hope you can help me with this...

I have a UK Thomson Scenium, a two disk model.

The disks are both Quantum fireballs. The LHS is 15GB, the RHS is 30GB.

They have been noisey since I bought the Tivo, about two years ago. They have also been thrashing and stuttering quite badly now. I suspected a failing hard drive so sought out a nice quite Samsung 120GB to start the upgrade procedure.

I followed the guide but had lots of problems along the way...

Problem 1. The MFSTools CD wont boot on my computer, so I used the (older?) floppy image instead.
Problem 2. I was not able to carry out a backup because the tools reported that the disk were badly corrupted - I had '00s of disk error messages.
Problem 3. Both disks were locked, I ran the unlock util, but wasnt sure if it was working properly as there is no report. Once I restarted, it did display the right drive space though.
Problem 4. I was unable to copy both old disks to the new large disk, because of disk corruption messages etc.

What can I do next?

Im reasonably technically competent, and would prefer to do this myself, but can I given the disk errors? Or will I need to send the disks to one of the upgrade people out there (if there is one in the UK)?

The disks do work in the Tivo, its just that I get about 3 mins of stuttering for every 30 mins of playback.

Hope you guys can help.

Mike

[EvilSilverFish]

Some of the errors were down to a faulty ribbon cable (the rounded Coolermaster variety) replaced that, and applied a new image.

All running smoothly now.

Thanks anyway.

Mike

[Jolly-Roger-52]

Hinsdale,

I want to thank you and Tiger for your work on TiIVO upgrades It even works with newbees. I'm the proud owner of a 120 Hr SAT-T60. I had a minimum of problems.

I didn't have a grasp of your meaning when you said SLOW on "restore programming too". That turned out to be 6 hour & 20 min to back up the 35hr DIRECTIVO on a fast system.

I did have one scary moment.. After about 30 min of use the unit locked up hard and was sticking at the power up screen after unplugging & replugging. I still don't know why this works but I disconnected both antenna connections and the power cord and waited 15sec before re-hooking everything and re-plugging. It booted like a champ and healed whatever it was upset about.

Enjoy your holidays and thanks again for your work.

Jolly-Roger-52
Newbee but not virgin

Save the Smiley's':D'

[ThreeSoFar]

bump