Doing someting unconventional, need your thoughts

1536 Views 21 Replies 6 Participants Last post by unitron, Sep 19, 2011

TattooedBones

Discussion Starter · Sep 16, 2011

My Series 3 HDD died. It won't even spin when I put power to it.

I got my hands on a "virgin" series 3 restore that I assume is valid. I burned that to ISO9660 DVD. I also purchased a Seagate 500GB SATA drive.

Tried using a couple of different boot CDs the results usually go like this-

Boot up
Mount the DVD that has the tivo.mfs file
attempt to execute: restore -s 127 -zxpi /cdrom/tivo.mfs /dev/hdd

I normally get something like there is no space. SO
I ran FDISK, created a partition using all the defautls, rebooted. That at least ATTEMPTED the install.

However, the restore just keeps blowing up saying there isn't enough space. I also tried running mke2fs and mkreiserfs but regardless of what I try, the results are the same.

I'm running out of ideas, please help.

1 - 20 of 22 Posts

HomeUser

· #2 · Sep 16, 2011

Two thoughts.
1: What size is the image file from? a 250G , 750G or 1TB S3? If it is from the 750 or larger you need a larger hard drive.

2: Leave out the expand option 'x' in the -zxpi.

You might want to check the original (Failed) drive in the PC with the manufactures boot from CD diagnostics.

TattooedBones

Discussion Starter · #3 · Sep 16, 2011

Hi, thanks for the input. The MFS file was created from an original Series 3 250GB drive. The new drive I purchased is 500GB.

Should I still leave out the x?

Also, I tried hooking the original drive up several ways, but it doesn't even spin up under power. dead as a doornail.

Thanks!

dwit

· #4 · Sep 16, 2011

Just something to try:

Try burning the iso to a cd, instead of dvd.

TattooedBones

Discussion Starter · #5 · Sep 16, 2011

Hi, thanks for the response but the MFS backup image file is 1.7GB. I'm definitely burning the boot .ISOs to CD.

HomeUser

· #6 · Sep 16, 2011

Leaving the x out is worth a try. You should look for a different image for your S3 or purchase Instant Cake

TattooedBones

Discussion Starter · #7 · Sep 16, 2011

Instant Cake looks nice, but folks are reporting success with the image I have and the $40 is almost what the drive itself cost.

I'll try tonight without X, but will that limit my 500GB drive to 250GB from the image?

Thanks again for the help. It's whacky because it *should* be working.

TattooedBones

Discussion Starter · #8 · Sep 16, 2011

FYI, this is about the point where my restore is blowing up (I'm not using InstantCake, I'm doing this manually)...

To give you an idea of how far I'm getting. Is the image still suspect?

See less See more

ThAbtO

· #9 · Sep 16, 2011

You cannot use FFDISK or format for a Tivo drive.

One of your problems may be the drive specification, instead of HDD, try hda or hdb.

I may be wrong as I do not know any Linux, but I read from other posts in this forum.

HomeUser

· #10 · Sep 16, 2011

It should work, unless the image is corrupt. No need to prep the drive MFSRestore will create the partitions and wipe out any that may exist. The destination drive should be un-mounted.

Oh wait... Is the restore failing at 138GB? You may need a newer version of the MFSTools boot CD try the one from http://mfslive.org or

I am assuming it is for the TCD648250B model.

TattooedBones

Discussion Starter · #11 · Sep 16, 2011

Hi yes, this is the 648250B. Yes, I do notice that MFSRestore is wiping out any partitioning, however the restore doesn't even start unless I partition, which is odd. If I recall, it's blowing up somewhere around the 12 megabyte. I'll post the exact error message and point of failure when I get home.

The destination is definitely HDC, not HDA or HDB. #>hdparm -I /dev/hdc confirms it.

I have tried MFSLive's lastest CD, as well as the latest boot CD from MFSTools (2.0) and one other, which had LBA48 support.

ThAbtO

· #12 · Sep 16, 2011

In your original post, you had "/dev/hdd" not "/dev/hdc".

TattooedBones

Discussion Starter · #13 · Sep 16, 2011

I see that now, it's a typo.

CDROM is HDD and destination hard disk is HDC.
Regardless of the letter, it never hurts to double check the drive & the advice is appreciated.

lillevig

· #14 · Sep 16, 2011

TattooedBones said:
My Series 3 HDD died. It won't even spin when I put power to it.

I got my hands on a "virgin" series 3 restore that I assume is valid. I burned that to ISO9660 DVD. I also purchased a Seagate 500GB SATA drive.

Tried using a couple of different boot CDs the results usually go like this-

Boot up
Mount the DVD that has the tivo.mfs file
attempt to execute: restore -s 127 -zxpi /cdrom/tivo.mfs /dev/hdd

I normally get something like there is no space. SO
I ran FDISK, created a partition using all the defautls, rebooted. That at least ATTEMPTED the install.

However, the restore just keeps blowing up saying there isn't enough space. I also tried running mke2fs and mkreiserfs but regardless of what I try, the results are the same.

I'm running out of ideas, please help.

That image size sounds suspect for a "virgin" image. I would think it would be much less than a GB (my 160 GB HD image is only 400 MB). Also, are you sure it is an image for use with MFSTools and not WINMFS? They are not compatible.

unitron

· #15 · Sep 17, 2011

TattooedBones said:
My Series 3 HDD died. It won't even spin when I put power to it.

I got my hands on a "virgin" series 3 restore that I assume is valid. I burned that to ISO9660 DVD. I also purchased a Seagate 500GB SATA drive.

Tried using a couple of different boot CDs the results usually go like this-

Boot up
Mount the DVD that has the tivo.mfs file
attempt to execute: restore -s 127 -zxpi /cdrom/tivo.mfs /dev/hdd

I normally get something like there is no space. SO
I ran FDISK, created a partition using all the defautls, rebooted. That at least ATTEMPTED the install.

However, the restore just keeps blowing up saying there isn't enough space. I also tried running mke2fs and mkreiserfs but regardless of what I try, the results are the same.

I'm running out of ideas, please help.

fdisk does the IBM compatible/DOS type partition table and partitions.

TiVo uses the Apple_Partition_Map

If you want the hassle of manually creating those kinds of partitons, use

pdisk

It's available on the MFS Live cd v1.4

You can download the .iso (or the zip of the .iso) from

http://mfslive.org

where you can also find instructions on how to use the MFS utilities on the disk.

Unfortunately you won't find a full list of all of the programs available on the disk, like fdisk, pdisk, dd, dd_rescue, and others, or instructions on how to use them, but at least it's free.

You can also get

WinMFS

from

http://mfslive.org

Before you proceed any farther (further?), get the manufacturer's diagnostic software and run the long test on that brand new drive.

If you get a good result from that, that's one variable eliminated.

See less See more

TattooedBones

Discussion Starter · #16 · Sep 17, 2011

Thanks again for the input. Last night right after work I had an idea.

When I put the file on DVD using ISO9660, it shortened the file name to 8 characters. I feared there may have been other changes, so I did the following:

I had a Windows (NTFS) drive also in the box, I copied the image onto that. The boot disk I was using was able to mount NTFS drives, so I ran the restore again and it didn't crash- BUT...

Attached you see the progress after 15 hours of running (73%). It's excruciatingly slow. I took that picutre about 5 minutes ago.

What's the "normal" restore times?

I am trying to work on a plan B, in case this crashes. I don't want to blow another whole day waiting for the restore. Thanks again!

See less See more

TattooedBones

Discussion Starter · #17 · Sep 17, 2011

Update! Knowing full well that 15+ hours was too long for this restore, I bailed out. THIS time, wise enough to enable DMA on both hard drives: hdparm -d1 /dev/hdb1 (source NTFS drive) and also on /dev/hdc, the destination. In the time it took me to author this, it's done at 100%. Will keep you posted. Thanks again for the help!

TattooedBones

Discussion Starter · #18 · Sep 18, 2011

In case this helps anyone else out, I figured it was worth assembling all the successful tidbits into one spot-

The Problem - Original Series 3 TCD648250B complete hard drive crash

Required Tools -
Backup image, I used one called virgin from Supafly.
Boot CD, the best working tool-set was PTVLBA48 from this site.
New Hard Drive, I bought a Seagate 500GB

Steps-

Burn your ISO to CD
Copy the .MFS or .BAK file to a hard disk. I used a Windows NTFS-formatted drive.
Plug your new, blank HDD into your PC
Boot to the boot CD
You can list your hard drives using fdisk -l
You can view hard drive details using hdparm -I /dev/hdX X being the letter that corresponds with your drive.
Mount the NTFS drive with mount -t ntfs /dev/hdb1 /mnt/d (my NTFS drive and partition info was hdb1, yours will most likely be different)
Verify that DMA is enabled on both drives, mine was not. Use hdparm -d /dev/hdX to show DMA status. Change the switch to -d1 to enable
Restore with mfsrestore -s 127 -zxpi /mnt/d/path/to/TivoBakupImage.mfs /dev/hdX This process took approximately 2 minutes on my PC. It then waited at "cleaning up" for approx. 5 minutes.
Shutdown, Remove drive from PC, Reinstall into TiVo.
I went through guided setup. I had to use the modem to place the test call.
You will most likely get an "hardware error #51" message. Go into the TiVo SETTINGS, Restart & Reset menu, and choose CLEAR & DELETE EVERYTHING. This took just over 2 hours for me.
When this is done, repeat setup.
Enjoy!

See less See more

unitron

· #19 · Sep 18, 2011

TattooedBones said:
In case this helps anyone else out, I figured it was worth assembling all the successful tidbits into one spot-

The Problem - Original Series 3 TCD648250B complete hard drive crash

Required Tools -
Backup image, I used one called virgin from Supafly.
Boot CD, the best working tool-set was PTVLBA48 from this site.
New Hard Drive, I bought a Seagate 500GB

Steps-

Burn your ISO to CD

Copy the .MFS or .BAK file to a hard disk. I used a Windows NTFS-formatted drive.

Plug your new, blank HDD into your PC

Boot to the boot CD

You can list your hard drives using fdisk -l

You can view hard drive details using hdparm -I /dev/hdX X being the letter that corresponds with your drive.

Mount the NTFS drive with mount -t ntfs /dev/hdb1 /mnt/d (my NTFS drive and partition info was hdb1, yours will most likely be different)

Verify that DMA is enabled on both drives, mine was not. Use hdparm -d /dev/hdX to show DMA status. Change the switch to -d1 to enable

Restore with mfsrestore -s 127 -zxpi /mnt/d/path/to/TivoBakupImage.mfs /dev/hdX This process took approximately 2 minutes on my PC. It then waited at "cleaning up" for approx. 5 minutes.

Shutdown, Remove drive from PC, Reinstall into TiVo.

I went through guided setup. I had to use the modem to place the test call.

You will most likely get an "hardware error #51" message. Go into the TiVo SETTINGS, Restart & Reset menu, and choose CLEAR & DELETE EVERYTHING. This took just over 2 hours for me.

When this is done, repeat setup.

Enjoy!

I think MFS Live v1.4 would have automatically enabled DMA transfers, and at any rate it's got the full guide at mfslive.org to go with it.

TattooedBones

Discussion Starter · #20 · Sep 18, 2011

I actually started with MFSLive CD but everything seems centered around having your original TiVo drive in healthy condition. I couldn't find squat for building a new drive from scratch. Kickoff in 15 and TiVo is working well minus the Wireless connection is spotty. Thanks all for the help!

1 - 20 of 22 Posts

This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.