stuck on 'welcome' screen can I save anything?

[ponto]

My 2 year old Samsung HA250JC after working perfectly rebooted due to a power cut and now sticks on the initial 'welcome' screen, the led stays green and I can't make it kickstart. I've removed the drive and run the Samsung hutil which reports that the drive has no problems. I've accessed the disk using the mfstool2-large-disk.iso and it seems normal, I've tried makebootable, but it still won't start up. Is there a way I can save the recordings before reimaging the disk? Has anyone got any suggestions? thanks in advance.

[blindlemon]

When you ran makeTiVobootable, was the drive mounted in byteswapped mode?

It needs to be so that mtb can access the TiVo partitions.

[ponto]

When you ran makeTiVobootable, was the drive mounted in byteswapped mode?

It needs to be so that mtb can access the TiVo partitions.

Yes it was :confused:

[blindlemon]

OK, did you try both options for MakeTiVoBootable? Do you know whether your system partition is 4 or 7?

Have you tried taking a minimal backup with mfstools and restoring that to another drive?

[ponto]

OK, did you try both options for MakeTiVoBootable? Do you know whether your system partition is 4 or 7?

Have you tried taking a minimal backup with mfstools and restoring that to another drive?


I did identify the system partition, haven't tried backing it up.

I have my old 120gig drive in there temporarily which works fine, is there a way to backup the system from that and restore it onto the broken larger one to try to make the original recordings accessible?

[blindlemon]

You could try dd-copying the boot partition and the system partition from the other drive but it's a lottery, and you could screw things up even worse by doing it.

I would take a minimal backup of the broken drive with mfstools (if possible) and try restoring it to another drive. Then mess around with that drive (copying system partitions etc.) if it won't boot. If it does boot then you're in luck and you could try copying the whole drive with a piped backup->restore.

[ponto]

You could try dd-copying the boot partition and the system partition from the other drive but it's a lottery, and you could screw things up even worse by doing it.

I would take a minimal backup of the broken drive with mfstools (if possible) and try restoring it to another drive. Then mess around with that drive (copying system partitions etc.) if it won't boot. If it does boot then you're in luck and you could try copying the whole drive with a piped backup->restore.

Thanks very much for the advice, I've just tried a backup as suggested but it won't do it:-

#mkdir /mnt/dos
#mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/dos
#mfsbackup -1 32 -6so /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdc
No such file or directory
3210: Illegal seek
mfs_load_volume_header: mfs_vol_read_data: Input/output error
mfsbackup failed to startup


Tivo drive is secondary master reporting correct size, dos drive is primary master

Should I just forget it and start again? Can I reuse this drive or should I chuck it?

[blindlemon]

#mfsbackup -1 32 -6so /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdc
No such file or directoryHmmm, that '1' should be an 'l' (letter L) - I don't have access to a TiVo upgrade PC at the moment but that may not be helping....

[ponto]

Hmmm, that '1' should be an 'l' (letter L) - I don't have access to a TiVo upgrade PC at the moment but that may not be helping....

sorry - it was in fact an 'l' just a typo here