MFS Tools 2.0! An upgrade revolution!

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In principle you can split the A drive from a two drive set by restoring a 'divorced' backup to it - if the partition boundaries line up your recordings should survive.

With the various additional options in MFS Tools 2.0 (notably -p) that can move the partitions around, this is easier said than done.

The MFS Tools 2.0 CD is supposed to boot byteswapping if you type 'swap' at the boot prompt. That bit is definitely broken. However, it's only broken because byteswapping and DMA are incompatible, so if you manually boot the vmlnodma kernel it does work.

 

Forgive me if this question has already been posed......

What's the difference between the 2 boot cd downloads:

- Bootable CD ISO(10878k)
- Bootable CD (non Joliet) ISO(10878k)

I already made the "noJ" disk as it was the one linked in Hinsdale's guide, but now I'm seeing the other version and am unsure if I've made the correct disk.

Hope this isn't as dumb a question as it sounds...... =D

 

Some PC's can't boot off the original ISO. Tiger traced the problem to a the MS Joliet extensions and produced a non-Joliet version that seems to be more reliable.

Apart from this minor formatting change, everything else is the same - if the noJ disk boots, you're fine.

 

Thanks Tiger, Robert S and all...

In the last couple months, my TiVo (30 + added 80 GB) started having random hiccups and then lockups (got bad in the last month). I figured one drive was dying. I was so glad to find MFS Tools 2.0 would solve my issues!

I got a new 120 GB drive to move my previous images onto (Upgrade Configuration #6). At first, I could not boot off CD, so had to use the floppy. After about 10-11 hours of chugging, I came in to find my PC was OFF. I tried the new drive (thinking maybe it did an auto-shutdown?).

No luck. Back to the Underground. Found the Non-Joliet version, made a CD and it booted. Restarted and it took only about 2 hours (I think DMA was not on with the floppy).

New drive works fine! No lockups/freezes/hiccups in the last week. Now, I am going to run PowerMax to try to figure out which old drive is bad...

If is is the original 30 GB, I throw it away and put the 80 in as a 2nd drive.

If it is the 80, it should still be under 3-year warranty, I get it replaced and put it in.

One question:
I am a bit unclear; it appears that with Option 6, merging the 30 & 80 (110 GB) onto the 120 GB will also automatically use the entire new drive - so added the 10 GB, right? If so, I wish I would have checked the hours before since I'm pretty sure it is about the same total hours that it was before....

Second question:
Since I used the -127 (swap file) already when creating this new 120 GB drive, I can add the old 80 (via MFS Add) without worrying about my swap file, right (Upgrade Config #1)?

****

Now that my upgrade has been successful, my parents bought a 120 GB drive and when I visit for Christmas, will merge their 30/80 onto the 120 and add the 80 as their 2nd drive

Funny thing; My parents had never heard of TiVo before November 2000, when I ordered mine via a Mercata Power Buy. Due to reasons unknown, they gave me a 2nd one (then went out of business). Not knowing what to do with it, I mentioned it to my parents; they thought it sounded cool and wanted it -- but they wanted it upgraded before they ever saw it! "More is better!" (so I added an 80-GB drive that had just come out for a mere $250).

Now they can't imagine life without their TiVo

 

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It would only expand to fill the unused space if you included an x in the restore options or used mfsadd to expand.

127Mb of swap is enough for a 274Gb TiVo (the largest currently possible) to recover from a green screen of death without running out of memory. You'll be fine at 200Gb.

You may find your 'failed' drive works OK in a PC, although it may be progressively failing, so don't put anything too valuable on it.

 

Thanks, Robert. The command in Hinsdale's guide for Option #10 did have the 'x' (it just did not explain what each switch did

I did a quick-test of the 2 old drives yesterday, and the Quantum failed. I then did the advanced test on the Maxtor (80 GB), and then last night did the low-level format -- it seems just fine.

So, I am going to add it to the TiVo today

 

He is fine, just 'out of the tivo change business' for now since it is all working.....

 

I'd been following this thread for a while...but am a little confused. Is there still a problem with MFS 2.0 causing failures after a while, or does the 'swap file size' fix actually take care of the problem? If it does, is TIger going to integrate that change as part of the process?

Just a little confused. I've been waiting to add a couple of 80 GB drives to my TiVos because of this issue...

 

Just a quick post from across the pond to report a successful upgrade of my twin-drive 40Gb machine to a single-drive 120Gb today.

I guess a few more days of regular use will confirm this, but many, many thanks to Tiger for MFSTools2.0, and more thanks to Robert S and Woody (UK) for their prompt assistance during the process.

 

Sbmocp

As the swap issues were solved - the original post at the top of the thread was updated to reflect the findings. I was also confused with this for a day or two and was hesitant to go through with my upcoming upgrade - but I think I've got it straight now.

Also - if you have an old copy of Hinsdales instructions for mfstools 2.0 make sure to reprint them from the website again as they include the new code that avoids most problems.

basically (at least the way I read it) if you see the number "-s 128" in your restore process replace it with "-s 127" and you're OK. (unless you're restoring back to your smaller A drive again in which you'd leave out the -s 127 altogether.

 

Thank you Tiger, I just upgraded my Phillips DirecTiVo from 30 and 15 to 80 and 60. I used Hinsdales how to for your software and it went without a hitch. Took me quite a while because I wanted a small backup, which I tested and I wanted to retain all my recordings which took a long time to transfer. That certainly presented no problem. Every single step worked perfectly first time through. The original drives had some weird jumper settings. I used the settings for master and slave that were correct for the new drives and installed jumpers correctly for the old drives when making the total transfer and the new install.

 

seen talk about dual 120gigers -- will all of this work with dual 250GB drives?

 

With the current stock kernels, TiVo can only see the first 137Gb of a drive, so 2x250Gb = 274Gb

However, there is a patched kernel available that would let your TiVo use the whole of the drives and get you a 500Gb TiVo.

Post in that thread if you want to give it a go as it's not an MFS Tools 2.0 issue.

 

Thanks to all who answered my questions here ansd especially to Tiger for MFSTools and Hindsale for his guide..

I have now replaced my 40gb A drive with an 80gb drive and doubled the capacity of my Tivo.

 

THANKS TIGER!

Used mfsbackup -Tao piped to mfsrestore to replace the two 80G drives in my T60 with a 120/160G combination and it went perfect! Fired right up and all the recordings are there! Now both my T60's are at 230 hours. I was at first going to dd and use mfsadd until I discovered my A drive already had 15 partitions, so I had to invoke Plan B.

Thanks for taking the time to do this stuff so the rest of us can do it easily.

 

I have an interesting situation that I haven't seen covered so far. My DSR6000 has two drives, the factory 40GB A drive and a Maxtor 120GB B drive. The Maxtor is going bad and I want to replace it with a Seagate Barracuda V 120GB drive. Well, as some of you know, 120GB != 120GB, and the Seagate is actually a bit smaller than the Maxtor.

I want to preserve recordings, so what I THINK I have to do is create a divorced backup with the recordings preserved, then restore that backup to the two new drives (really one old and one new). Am I right so far?

What I haven't quite figured out is what combination of switches to use on the save and restore, so that's what I'm asking for - or if there's an easier way, please let me know. Thanks.

 

To divorce the drives, MFS Tools has to drop the recordings.

MFS Tools can't resize partitions, it has to copy the whole partition to carry over even one recording fragement in it, although it does zero out recordings it doesn't carry over, so the backup compresses properly.

 

Grumble.. Oh well, there goes THAT idea!

 

I used that "mount" command without the "1" like I was shown and was getting a somewhat frustrated because, besides the fact that I am new at this TiVo upgrading, it looked like I had to really dig into the Linux commands. I have been testing the "mount" command(and others) for the past few(being modest) hours and was getting nowhere. I kept getting errors like "wrong filesystem" and everyone I used(by adding the -t option) did not work but just another error I could not shake down.

Thank you for the "1". It's amaizing to know that just a simple character could make such a difference .

Your second error, I thought the same thing when I read it. So now I feel I am on the correct page to go through this "upgrade". Again, thank you!!!!

 

More praise to Tiger et al. for some awesome work!

My upgrade: Sony SVR-2000 version 3.0, 30h to 180h (120G+30G).
The highlights:
- I used allen wrenches (hexagones with flat sides) instead of Torx... works great
- burned the ISO file using Windows Adaptec Easy CD creator
- used MFStools 2.0
- I backed up the original A drive 30G to a skinny 816MB on my c:\ dos drive.
- restored to a 120G drive, tested it, worked fine.
- slow copied 30G to 120G because total is over 150MB and there is the swap problem (-s 127) ... this took about 1h40m
- improvised a msftadd -x to tack on the 30G as a B drive for the big one.
- found the quantum fireball jumper settings at http://support.jp.dell.com/docs/STORAGE/5962R/Jumpers.htm then realized they are printed on the drive... duh.
- switched the super duper rubber drive harness from the 30G drive to the 120G drive, and improvised a new harness out of some recycled PC parts.
- used a u-shaped drive craddle (looks like the mounting bracket for some 3.5 floppy drives). It has a wide flat bottom with holes and a steel spring underneath (asymetrical pointing to one side), and the sides are about 1.5 inch high and have 2+2 holes to secure the sides of the drive. The drive is sitting tall in there so it will have good air flow.
- used some thick double side sticky foam tape to affix the |___|-shape harness onto the edges of the tivo's drive B mounting hole/area. Feels really secure, and a bit cushy, and I am not shipping the unit anywhere so it does not need the super duper rubber mounted stuff of the A drive.
- I was lucky that the ATA cable of the tivo was already shreded/elongated... power cable was long enough as well.
- fired up the tivo, all good.

Well, only thing weird is the Tivo Suggestions menu gives me something like "If your tivo is new you should click thumbs up/down during some programs and this will make stuff appear here" (I paraphrased). My tivo is not new and was full of thumb data, So this seems to indicate that the thumbs are not completely restored. No biggie as far as I'm concerned.

Edit: oh, and I forgot to say my 120G is a 7200 rpm WD1200JB western digital, paid about $200 because it seems they were all sold out when I had to have my drive . Very quiet, 8MB of cache and it looks like operating power is less than the quantum fireball (milli amps were less for 5/12v rating). So I'd think it won't be too hot. I'll check the internal temp of the tivo later on.
The tivo feels slightly more spiffy, despite the fact that now I'm cranking on best video quality instead of medium... that's a good thing.

Update: the thumbs in the Tivo Suggestions finally showed up. They must have been dormant and got awaken somehow. All's well!