[jeff.wright]

Is it possible to backup directly to Disk B without making a .BAK file on a FAT32 partition? Should I use the Linux DD command for something like this?

 

[ciper]

Give more detail. What is disk b? What kind of backup do you want - a file or a disk to disk copy?

 

[jeff.wright]

I have an SD-DRV40. The original drive died last year and I used a user-provided backup image to re-create the Tivo partitions onto a 300GB drive. That replacement drive is now dead (Tivo hard locks after 40secs of live TV) so I'm trying to migrate the recordings directly to the 500GB drive. I'm doing this because I don't think I'll have a large enough disk to hold the contents of a .BAK file on any of my other hard drives, which are certainly not going to be formatted as FAT32. I've made a .BAK file of just my OS/settings, but I'm trying to maintain the recordings and expand to the full size of the new 500GB drive, if possible.

My setup: hda=300GB; hdb=500GB; hdc=CDrom
I used MFSTools from the Hinsdale How-To with the following command:
mfsbackup -qTao - /dev/hda | mfsrestore -s 250 -xzpi - /dev/hdb
After a few seconds, I then receive an error that the restore point is not large enough for the backup. Pretty odd, since its the larger of the two.

I also tried MFSLive, but cannot get past the boot section. It halts forever on some SCSI device, although I've taken the card out of the box and have no SCSI devices powered or cabled. ...back to MFSTools!

Late last night, I took out the -x switch and it seems to be cloning directly to the new disk - 45.5% so far. This would be good news except that I read a post on another board where someone said that (the cloned) drive can't be partitioned twice (factory + previous expansion) - meaning that my new 500GB drive with migrated recordings may end up the same size as my old 300GB. I don't know if this is true, so I'm awaiting the end of my dump to see how large MFS reports my upgraded size to be. I'm awaiting a reply on that other board (or here) if anyone knows, as well.

During the dump, it currently says:
Source drive size is 40 hours
- Upgraded to 342 hours
Uncompressed backup size: 282702 MB

 

[spike2k5]

My setup: hda=300GB; hdb=500GB; hdc=CDrom
I used MFSTools from the Hinsdale How-To with the following command:
mfsbackup -qTao - /dev/hda | mfsrestore -s 250 -xzpi - /dev/hdb
After a few seconds, I then receive an error that the restore point is not large enough for the backup. Pretty odd, since its the larger of the two.

- You can only have 16 partitons on a drive and by using that command, you are trying to go beyond 16 partition limit

- You can't use swap (-s) greater than 127 w/ hinsdale direction due to a mfstools bug in that boot cd. (fixed in MFSLive Boot CD)

- you will need to use -r 4 due to zone size calculation bug. (fixed in MFSLive Boot Cd)

I also tried MFSLive, but cannot get past the boot section. It halts forever on some SCSI device, although I've taken the card out of the box and have no SCSI devices powered or cabled. ...back to MFSTools!

A driver for your motherboard chipset might be missing. What kind of MB are you using?

Late last night, I took out the -x switch and it seems to be cloning directly to the new disk - 45.5% so far. This would be good news except that I read a post on another board where someone said that (the cloned) drive can't be partitioned twice (factory + previous expansion) - meaning that my new 500GB drive with migrated recordings may end up the same size as my old 300GB. I don't know if this is true, so I'm awaiting the end of my dump to see how large MFS reports my upgraded size to be. I'm awaiting a reply on that other board (or here) if anyone knows, as well.

During the dump, it currently says:
Source drive size is 40 hours
- Upgraded to 342 hours
Uncompressed backup size: 282702 MB

If you use it w/o -x switch it will make a same capacity drive. So your 500gb will only have 300GB worth of recording time.

You might want to try WinMFS. It will let you expand to full 500GB from 300GB that is already expanded.

 

[ciper]

Migrating recordings from an already expanded disk to another "going to be expanded" disc has been extremely hard (or impossible) in the past. I think you only have three choices
Turn your new 500gb drive into a 300gb drive wasting 200gb of space
WinMFS to reexpand the restored image
Lose your recordings and create a truncated backup/restore