InstantCake question

billbillw · 06-16-2010, 06:59 PM

Will InstantCake for Series3 (648) work with a 250GB drive or does it have to be larger than the original drive? My original drive was acting up. It had all the tell tale signs, slow menus, freezing, rebooting, incomplete recordings, etc. I ordered a new 1TB drive yesterday.

Just to be sure, I pulled it out the original drive an hooked it to my computer and ran the WD tools. Of course, it found bad sectors. When I tried to repair them, it gave me errors. I thought, what the heck the drive is bad, might as well see if a low level format helps. Set the disc to write zeros (WDs equivalent of low level format?). It finished the whole disc with no errors. I re-ran the error scan and it passed. I thought, what the heck, might as well try to restore the image to the original disc as a backup.

Put the 250GB disc in a 2nd computer as the only SATA drive (on SATA1) and tried to run InstantCake. It went through to the point of starting to bake and it said the target was too small.

Any suggestions?

billbillw · 06-16-2010, 08:58 PM

I tried a couple more times. I guess the program isn't designed to restore a same size disc. I'll just have to wait till my 1TB shows up tomorrow. Use Cake to image the 1TB. I'll just shelve the original 250GB until something else comes up, like maybe the drive in my TivoHD goes flakey.

lessd · 06-16-2010, 09:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by billbillw

Will InstantCake for Series3 (648) work with a 250GB drive or does it have to be larger than the original drive? My original drive was acting up. It had all the tell tale signs, slow menus, freezing, rebooting, incomplete recordings, etc. I ordered a new 1TB drive yesterday.

Just to be sure, I pulled it out the original drive an hooked it to my computer and ran the WD tools. Of course, it found bad sectors. When I tried to repair them, it gave me errors. I thought, what the heck the drive is bad, might as well see if a low level format helps. Set the disc to write zeros (WDs equivalent of low level format?). It finished the whole disc with no errors. I re-ran the error scan and it passed. I thought, what the heck, might as well try to restore the image to the original disc as a backup.

Put the 250GB disc in a 2nd computer as the only SATA drive (on SATA1) and tried to run InstantCake. It went through to the point of starting to bake and it said the target was too small.

Any suggestions?

If the new drive has one sector (or more) less than the original drive it will not work. A 250Gb drive can have different amount of sectors and still be called a 250Gb drive. Sometimes if you connect the new drive up using a USB to SATA external box, the drive will show a few more sectors and the software will work, don't ask me why a USB connected 250Gb drives shows more sectors than one connected directly to your computer SATA port as i don't know.

billbillw · 06-16-2010, 09:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lessd

If the new drive has one sector (or more) less than the original drive it will not work. A 250Gb drive can have different amount of sectors and still be called a 250Gb drive. Sometimes if you connect the new drive up using a USB to SATA external box, the drive will show a few more sectors and the software will work, don't ask me why a USB connected 250Gb drives shows more sectors than one connected directly to your computer SATA port as i don't know.

The drive was installed internally, directly to the sata port. The drive was freshly fresh off a low level format as well, so I don't know how I could set it up any different.

I should re-mention, the drive I am using IS the original drive, not a different 250GB.

lessd · 06-16-2010, 11:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by billbillw

The drive was installed internally, directly to the sata port. The drive was freshly fresh off a low level format as well, so I don't know how I could set it up any different.

I should re-mention, the drive I am using IS the original drive, not a different 250GB.

As I said i have found, for reasons I don't understand, the the sector count for a drive mounted inside a computer is less than an external USB drive by a few sectors, some computers BIOS drives controllers can use two options for controlling SATA drives, PATA simulation or ACHI. I know that if you start off installing Windows using the PATA simulation mode than change over to ACHI the system will not boot, if you start with ACHI you can go back to PATA simulation. A format using ACHI gives you a different number of sectors than the PATA simulation. When you make a copy of the image the sector count in the copy must be = or less than the sector count of the target drive. If i take the image from an original TiVo drive connected to a external USB port, I can't put that image on the same drive connected to an internal SATA port, again I don't know why, others on this Forum may have a better answer for this.

billbillw · 06-17-2010, 08:24 AM

OK, I read your 1st post wrong. I thought you were saying that using USB>SATA caused problems. Anyway, for whatever reason, it wouldn't let me install the image for the Series3, so instead, I loaded an image for my other unit, a TivoHD and it worked fine. I'll just keep that disc around in case my other unit develops a problem. I will also be sure to make a truncated back up image of the 1TB drive using WinMFS and keep it around in case the new drive fails.