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Recover permanently deleted shows before new recordings are made?

Discussion in 'TiVo Underground' started by mattack, Nov 3, 2019.

  1. Nov 3, 2019 #1 of 15
    mattack

    mattack Well-Known Member

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    I presume the answer is no.

    This is NOT manually “permanently delete”-ing shows, but my TiVo nuked over 25% of my recordings when I tried to transfer BACK a ~3 gig recording with pytivo. Oh, and the transfer actually didn’t happen. It put it on the to do list for some reason even though nothing else was happening. So I deleted it from to do and rebooted to hopefully interrupt a “go delete stuff” operation.

    I turned off suggestions, but will let other recordings happen. Since it was almost all old stuff, I don’t care TOO much about most of it, but if there is a way to recover in a computer, great.

    I know the actual recordings are encrypted, I just don’t know if the directory structure, etc is known to fix that way.
     
  2. Nov 3, 2019 #2 of 15
    ThAbtO

    ThAbtO TiVoholic by the bay TCF Club

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    No is correct. Once its deleted from the Recently Deleted folder, its gone for good.
    Tivo almost always over estimates the space it needs. Transfer a .mp4 video and it gets transcoded to MPEG2 and size is 4-6x more then its original.

    I think you need to upgrade the drive if it is deleting shows you want to keep on the Tivo.
     
  3. Nov 3, 2019 #3 of 15
    techpro2004

    techpro2004 New Member

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    not sure if this would work but have you tried pulling the drive from your tivo, connecting it to a linux pc and running testdisk?
     
  4. Nov 3, 2019 #4 of 15
    mattack

    mattack Well-Known Member

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    What does that do? Does it recover shows?
     
  5. Nov 3, 2019 #5 of 15
    ThAbtO

    ThAbtO TiVoholic by the bay TCF Club

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    I'm sure it only test the integrity of the drive.
     
  6. Nov 3, 2019 #6 of 15
    mattack

    mattack Well-Known Member

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    again, it was never actually in the recently deleted folder. I was using that as an analogy because people would want to say “go into Recently Deleted” if I simply mentioned deleted shows.

    it overestimates, but this was like 2 orders of magnitude too much, and it never actually even started the transfer.

    The main thing I wanted to recover was a whole bunch of the last Letterman episodes.
     
  7. Nov 3, 2019 #7 of 15
    ThAbtO

    ThAbtO TiVoholic by the bay TCF Club

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    Even when it over estimates the space it needs for the recording/transfer, it would clear out the RD folder first, then it attacks suggestions, followed by any oldest? shows. It can even skip that RD folder.

    If the transfer did not start, but is in the TD list, reboot the Tivo and it would start momentarily. The transfer server tends to crash.
     
  8. Nov 3, 2019 #8 of 15
    techpro2004

    techpro2004 New Member

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    testdisk is a forensics utility that recovers deleted files on many different file systems. I have never used it with a tivo and do not know if it is compatible. it runs on linux so you must be comfortable with that and it requires that the drive must be directly connected to the system it runs on. It also requires a destination drive that is as big or bigger than the source. I don't know what format the recordings are stored in on the hard drive or if they are decode-able/playable on a pc but it is my go to utility for recovering deleted files.
     
  9. Nov 3, 2019 #9 of 15
    ThAbtO

    ThAbtO TiVoholic by the bay TCF Club

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    As the Tivo drive is encoded so the shows are only playable from that DVR that recorded/transferred to. There are no actual files to retrieve.
     
  10. Nov 3, 2019 #10 of 15
    techpro2004

    techpro2004 New Member

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    Even if they are coppy-freely or ota? If so then how does tivo2go work.
     
  11. Nov 3, 2019 #11 of 15
    ThAbtO

    ThAbtO TiVoholic by the bay TCF Club

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    Tivo drive is encoded with its TSN when it records, on transfers, decodes the TSN and encodes with the MAK and produces a .TiVo file.

    Which is why you just cannot swap Tivo drives and expect the shows to play on this other Tivo, which has a different TSN.
     
  12. Nov 3, 2019 #12 of 15
    techpro2004

    techpro2004 New Member

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    I understand, forget my suggestion. I am new to tivo.
     
  13. Nov 5, 2019 #13 of 15
    mattack

    mattack Well-Known Member

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    Though that's what I was originally asking.. since people figured out expansion tools, etc., I thought they had to have figured something out about the filesystem..

    (I bet someone knows, they just aren't saying..)

    anyway, I've given it up.. sigh.. I already knew I could get *one* show I lost on dvd if I really really wanted.. but it was mostly the last *bunch* (not hundreds, but a few months!! in SD) of Letterman shows..

    damn yeah I should keep until I delete everything... But then it gets so aggravating when one is 'near' full...

    and in this case they were deleted BECAUSE OF A TIVO BUG. I had counted up things in RD & Suggestions and it was several times what I was transferring.. but it literally deleted *hundreds* of gigs of stuff.
     
  14. Nov 6, 2019 #14 of 15
    ggieseke

    ggieseke Well-Known Member

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    There's enough known about the MFS file system to physically copy the recordings, but nobody has ever cracked the encryption.
     
  15. Nov 7, 2019 #15 of 15
    mattack

    mattack Well-Known Member

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    yeah but that's my point.. I am not/wasn't trying to crack the *encryption*.. unless the directory structure itself is encrypted too.. (unlikely)..

    again, I've given the entire idea up.. but just like you can scan computer hard drives of various OSes and "recover erased files", I thought this might be do-able too..

    yeah I know Tivos use some kind of database weirdness, etc..
     

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