Dead HD Replacemet Mess - Need Series 1 Image

[Czachorski]

I've been stuck in Tivo upgrade Hell! What a mess this has been! My Tivo Series 1 - Sony SVR 2000 HD died a few weeks back. Had an old 60 GB on the shelf, and figured I would throw it in there. I have upgraded Tivo drives before, so I thought I would give it a shot.

Started with mfslife boot CD, but that wouldn't boot on my ancient PC. So I found this tool called instantcake, bought it for $20, got the CD to boot on my old PC, and even installed the image on the new drive. Tivo booted just fine, went into guided set-up and it hangs on the dial in. It just won't dial in. I tried it 10 different ways, following trouble shooting tips from this forum. I know this Tivo was dialing just fine before the HD died. I see other people on the instantcake forum complaining of the same thing, so I give up. That was last weekend.

So tonight, I download MFSTools, burn the boot CD, it works fine on my PC. And the instruction are looking familiar - this is the same exact text instruction sheet I followed 4-5 years ago (the Hinsdale how to). I try to make a back-up of the image on the old Tivo HD, and it won't copy the image. It seems that whatever corrupted the drive is on the image part of the drive. So I am still no dice.

So long story short, I need a new image for a Sony Series 1 SVR 2000. My folks have one of these Sony's too, but they live 200 miles away, and I would hate to have to tear their Tivo apart just to get a working image. Any ideas of where I could more easily get one?

.......or, are there any commands in MFSTools that might recover the image from my corrupt old Tivo drive? Thanks.

[Czachorski]

Well, I am 1 step closer, but still stuck. I let the mfsbackup run for a long while, and it got through it. So now I have a backup image, but when I run MFSRestore, I get an error message that 'no such file or directory' exists. It seems to be a problem with my destination HD.

I did not do anything to my destination HD - it is straight out of another computer. Should I be formatting it first? I am not sure how to do that, or how to prepare the new drive.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Czachorski]

Wow - 8 posts in 6 years, and I am talking to myself here. :p

Found the "no such directory" issue. I had a type in those cryptic linux commands - I was typing in "xzip" instead of "xzpi".

So I managed to make a copy of the image from the dying HD to a new one. Plugged it into the Tivo, booted it up, and it green screened just like the old HD. So it seems that whatever corruption existed on the old bad HD was just copied over to the new one. I will let this one try to repair itself on the green screen and see if it has better luck that the old HD did at repairing itself.

But it looks like I am back to needing an image. Sheesh - this was such a PITA, that if I knew it was going to get this messy, I would have just ordered a pre-loaded replacement drive!

[classicsat]

There is an image on the Instantcake CD. It is working fine, TiVo is apparently having trouble with their initial 800 dial-in number.
Give Serial PPP a try.

[Czachorski]

There is an image on the Instantcake CD. It is working fine, TiVo is apparently having trouble with their initial 800 dial-in number.
Give Serial PPP a try.

I'm not sure that is the problem with instantcakes for me. It was giving an error that the phone line was unavailable. I tried here, at my neighbors house, to no avail. 1 month ago before the HD died, I know that this thing was dialing in just fine, and seeing the phone line. With instantcakes it is not.

Joy - more to educate myself on with some other work-around! A quick look at PPP seems to require the I get more parts, cables, tools, etc. No thanks. I am already 2 weekends deep and think this Tivo is not worth the effort. Next step: throw Tivo in garbage. It is a 2nd Tivo for the kids anyways, and already not worth the effort.