DTivo consolidate 2 disks to one

[nimlet]

Hi,

I have an old SAT-T60 DirecTivo. I upgraded it a while back and have two disks in there. Now, it seems like one of the disks is failing and in any event I've wanted to replace the two disk setup with a single disk for some while (to reduce heat and energy use).

Reading Hinsdale's guide (as I've done many times before) it always said there was no way to upgrade two to one and preserve recordings. I really want to keep the stuff stored on my TiVo. However, the guide is quite old, so I thought I would reach out to see whether there was a solution to the problem now.

So, can I consolidate disks? Maybe I need to replace both disks?
TIA,
Dave

[bitmap]

Hi,

I have an old SAT-T60 DirecTivo. I upgraded it a while back and have two disks in there. Now, it seems like one of the disks is failing and in any event I've wanted to replace the two disk setup with a single disk for some while

If you upgraded by adding a second disk, and left the original "A" drive, you MAY be able to move everything to a single disk. The problems come when you take a factory "A" drive that already has two MFS media partitions, expand it to a larger disk leaving three media partitions, and no ability to expand again.

If you've hacked it for telnet or serial access (otherwise pull the disk to a PC), check the output from 'pdisk -l', and if partitions 14,15, and 16 say anything besides "Apple_Free Extra", you won't be able to combine both disks and save the recordings.

[nimlet]

Thanks, I appreciate the advice.

The TiVo came with one disk, and I expanded it by adding a 2nd disk.

I installed pdisk, but I don't see any partitions 14, 15, and 16. Here is the output.

Partition map (with 512 byte blocks) on '/dev/hda'
#: type name length base ( size )
1: Apple_partition_map Apple 63 @ 1
2: Image Bootstrap 1 4096 @ 42997799 ( 2.0M)
3: Image Kernel 1 4096 @ 43001895 ( 2.0M)
4: Ext2 Root 1 262144 @ 43005991 (128.0M)
5: Image Bootstrap 2 4096 @ 43268135 ( 2.0M)
6: Image Kernel 2 4096 @ 43272231 ( 2.0M)
7: Ext2 Root 2 262144 @ 43276327 (128.0M)
8: Swap Linux swap 131072 @ 43538471 ( 64.0M)
9: Ext2 /var 262144 @ 43669543 (128.0M)
10: MFS MFS application region 1048576 @ 43931687 (512.0M)
11: MFS MFS media region 32148953 @ 46028839 ( 15.3G)
12: MFS MFS application region 2 1048576 @ 44980263 (512.0M)
13: MFS MFS media region 2 42997735 @ 64 ( 20.5G)


Partition map (with 512 byte blocks) on '/dev/hdb'
#: type name length base ( size )
1: Apple_partition_map Apple 63 @ 1
2: MFS Second MFS application region 8192 @ 64 ( 4.0M)
3: MFS Second MFS media region 195703008 @ 8256 ( 93.3G)

[halfempty]

Looks like the A drive was never expanded, so you should be able to combine them into a single drive using WinMFS from http://www.mfslive.org/.

[bitmap]

That's good news. It looks like you should be able to merge them into a single disk, though still limited to the space you currently have, as there's no additional partitions available to expand again. MFStools can move the two partitions from the B disk onto the new larger A disk as #14&15. Look for Hinsdale's UPGRADE CONFIGURATION #6.

A 160GB or 200GB disk should do the trick, if you can still find one that small. ;)

[nimlet]

Great news. Looks like the state of the art is much advanced. Quick question though... Will a disk greater than 138gb be able to boot? The mfslive site seems to indicate a disk this "large" will need a hack to boot ok.

Thx for all your help.

[nimlet]

Thanks for your help. I was able to combine 2 disks to 1 using the mfslive CD. Unfortunately, I've had some challenges if I expand the drive beyond 137G.

It's a Directivo S1, with a cachecard installed. Here's the sequence:

1. Combine disks into one 300G disk with mfslive CD
2. Expand space with WinMFS -> Mfsadd
3. Use the LBA48 disk to write a LBA48 kernel

After this, the box boots fine and plays recordings. Unfortunately it typically resets itself sporadically. If I don't do steps #2 and #3 the box stays up just fine.

Dave