HDR112 series 1 Dual->Single drive transfer

[badcrc]

I have three series 1 tivos with lifetime and I've upgraded several tivos in the past. All the upgrades were usually simple single drive to larger single drive or single drive to dual drive upgrades. Now one of my tivos that I previously upgraded to two drives is having hd failure symptons (stuttering, skipping, etc). What I would like to do is a dual drive (75 hour) to single larger drive (160 hour+) upgrade while preserving recordings.

I thought this would be an easy upgrade but then I remembered the S1 has the 137gb limitation. My questions are:

1) Will it be a problem to use a Seagate 160gb DB35 and copy the dual drives to the Seagate using my PC which recognizes the full drive, and then put it in my tivo which doesn't recognize the full drive? (i.e., do I have to use software to limit the copy to 137gb capacity?)

2) I read that now you can hack the S1 images for LBA48 support. Is it possible to do a dual drive to single drive copy while preserving recordings and hack the new drive for LBA48?

I've been looking at the Seagate 160gb DB35 for $63, but if I can do an LBA48 hack after the copy/preserve I would probably go for a 300gb DB35 or more.

Any help appreciated!

[classicsat]

I think you can, just use an LBA48 version of an mfstools CD, and run copykern on the new drive.

[badcrc]

Originally Posted by classicsat

I think you can, just use an LBA48 version of an mfstools CD, and run copykern on the new drive.

Thanks, but since I've already upgraded that tivo once by replacing the 15 gig drive with a 30 gig, and adding a second 40 gig, would there be a problem with too few partitions to get the rest of the space on a drive >137gb?

[rbtravis]

It seems to me your best solution would be to start over. Buy a copy of Instantcake from www.DVRupgrade.com you could put in one drive one drive like:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136185
and have space and capability of adding a second drive later. Instantcake already comes with LBA48 boot so there are no size restrictions. I recommended the retail box because it is better for shipping. The JB in the model number means it is good for DVR's (quite and does not consume a lot of power as reported by Toms Hardware Page) so you get plenty of storage at a reasonable price. Good Luck.

[badcrc]

Here's an update for anyone attempting to do the same thing with their dying S1. I bought the Seagate DB35 160gb because of the size, low noise, speed, and 5 year warranty for $59+shipping. I went with the 160gb because I didn't want to risk using a hacked kernel and something going wrong in the future. MFSLive and WinMFS latest versions don't support dual to single drive transfers I found out the hard way, even though in the guide and the program it shows that feature.

Anyway I did the following from Hinsdale's howto with Tiger's MFSTools 2.0 that I've used many times before:

Originally Posted by Hinsdale HowTo

Command to copy/expand from dual drive to new single larger A drive:

(Assumes existing TiVo A drive as Primary Master, existing TiVo B drive as Primary Slave, and new larger upgrade A drive as Secondary Master)

mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hda /dev/hdb | mfsrestore -r 4 -s 127 -xzpi - /dev/hdc

I was expecting to get the "target not large enough" error like I have in the past trying to go from dual to single, but for some reason it worked this time. There were only 11 partitions on my A drive so I didn't have a partition shortage. So I went from 30gig+40gig(75 hours) to a single 160gig(163 hours). Hopefully this will help someone in the future.

[jangelj]

Badcrc, I am doing the exact same thing you did (just slightly different sized drives). Did you have to do "copykern" after the
mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hda /dev/hdb | mfsrestore -r 4 -s 127 -xzpi - /dev/hdc
command so that it would recognize the whole 160 GBs? Or are you just using the max 137 GB without the LBA48 kernel? Also, did you expand the swap size?

Thanks,
John

[badcrc]

Originally Posted by jangelj

Badcrc, I am doing the exact same thing you did (just slightly different sized drives). Did you have to do "copykern" after the
mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hda /dev/hdb | mfsrestore -r 4 -s 127 -xzpi - /dev/hdc
command so that it would recognize the whole 160 GBs? Or are you just using the max 137 GB without the LBA48 kernel? Also, did you expand the swap size?

Thanks,
John

I didn't have to do copykern. From what I read I believe mfs* by default limits the size to 137gb (at least with Tiger's MFStools v2.0). Just did that one command and it worked. Just make sure your original tivo drives don't have too many partitions or it won't work. It all depends how many partitions your tivo came with and how many it used after your first upgrade. To combine the drives and expand to a larger drive it has to make more partitions, but if your tivo was originally a series 1 single drive and you've only done the expand to larger drive once, you can probably do it once more (http://www.mfslive.org/tivofaq.htm)