Easy changes to allow larger disks

[JamieP]

Patch the kernel to allow partitions > 1TiB. This is an easy 2 line change:
diff -u -r linux-2.4-orig/drivers/ide/ide-disk.c linux-2.4/drivers/ide/ide-disk.c
--- linux-2.4-orig/drivers/ide/ide-disk.c 2008-10-04 11:39:38.000000000 -0600
+++ linux-2.4/drivers/ide/ide-disk.c 2008-10-19 15:59:05.000000000 -0600
@@ -1605,8 +1605,8 @@
unsigned int max_nrsectors;
int rw;
int minor;
- long int start_sect, nr_sects;
- unsigned long int sector;
+ long long int start_sect, nr_sects;
+ unsigned long long int sector;
ide_hwif_t *hwif = HWIF(drive);
struct io_scramble scrambleData;

Add /dev/hd* entries for partition #s > 16.
Either or both of these would enable expansion onto the new 1.5TB and 2 TB disks.

I'd like to see the limits lifted to something much higher than 2TiBs, however, I recognize that it would be a larger project to replace the Apple partition Map and other 32-to-64 bit code changes required to accomplish this. The above two changes are easy and shouldn't require more than a few hours of TiVo engineering time to include in the next release.

[ciper]

I would like to add my support for the two requested items.

Through simple testing it has been confirmed that the Apple Partition Map and Kernel on all TiVo's (including series one, series two and series three) have the ability to function with more than 16 partitions once the extra entries are created with mknod. Please see http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=7064735#post7064735

The 1TB partition limit bugfix has been verified to work properly. 1.5TB and 2TB drives are becoming more common these days and this bug prevents many from using them to the full potential.

The combination of the two previously mentioned bugs and the lack of an FSMAKE for 64 bit MFS make it nearly impossible to use all the capacity of a 1.5-2TB drive.

Thank you TiVo Engineers :)

[spike2k5]

Request #3:

How about fixing tivoapp so we can use more than 2 TiB on Tivo HD and Tivo HDXL.

[scoombs]

Yes please to all these suggestions.

[burnside]

Add me in!

[lrhorer]

Me, too. I have a Series 3 with 250G internal and 750G external I would like to upgrade with a 1.5T. I'm finding 1T is not quite enough, by a narrow margin.

[petestrash]

A Little late, but yes to all please!

Peter.

[djliquidice]

A Little late, but yes to all please!

Peter.

Why is it the Tivo Company is not responsive to *good* requests like this?

[innocentfreak]

The Tivo HD XL doesn't have this issue so I know some people have thought this was one of the reasons. With the March 2nd announcement it may not matter though but only time will tell.

[WhiskeyTango]

Why is it the Tivo Company is not responsive to *good* requests like this?

Because this site is where most of these requests are made and this site is not a part of Tivo, Inc. as stated in the upper left hand corner of this site.

[orangeboy]

Because this site is where most of these requests are made and this site is not a part of Tivo, Inc. as stated in the upper left hand corner of this site.

I had asked for this thread/post (http://tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=438159) to be stickied, but it hasn't yet...

[Jonathan_S]

The Tivo HD XL doesn't have this issue so I know some people have thought this was one of the reasons. With the March 2nd announcement it may not matter though but only time will tell.
I'm pretty sure the HD XL was determined to have the same bug. But you'd need a > 2 TB disk for it to express itself.

(Because winMFS expands a drive by using the last free partition slot to create a partition of all the remaining space, and because the HD XL's default recording partition is ~840 GB larger than the HD's (1 TB vs 160 GB) the 'new' partition is that much smaller, which just allows a 2TB disk in an XL w/o hitting the same 1 TiB (~1.1 TB) partition limit).

[WhiskeyTango]

I had asked for this thread/post (http://tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=438159) to be stickied, but it hasn't yet...

I hope they get it stickied for all of our sake. Most of the things people complain about not having are listed on that survey. I'm sure if they all took the time to fill it out, they may actually get what they want instead of complaining here.

[orangeboy]

I hope they get it stickied for all of our sake. Most of the things people complain about not having are listed on that survey. I'm sure if they all took the time to fill it out, they may actually get what they want instead of complaining here.

Done. :up:

[ciper]

*Bump* Still waiting :(
And yes the THD XL has the same issue (its no different from the THD besides the partition layout and a couple database entries)