# *Current* instructions and software for Mac?



## fhturner (Mar 15, 2003)

Hello Wizards--

I have a Sony SAT-T60 that is doing the never-ending reboot loop ("Welcome" -> "Almost there" -> "Welcome"...). I've been wanting to replace the 2 old, noisy 40GB & 80GB 3.5" HDs with a new 120GB 2.5" SATA drive for lower heat, power usage, and noise anyway, so no better time than now. I have the PATA-to-SATA adapter, so the physical part shouldn't be difficult. Just have to secure it sufficiently.

I'm a Mac guy, though, and I'd like to get to know how to make these disk swaps w/ one of my older G4 towers or even a newer machine w/ some external cases. I've spotted various threads about compiling and using MFStools and other utils, but some of those date back to 2004, so I'm unsure what's still relevant and useful.

Can someone describe the steps and tools needed to do these disk swaps, etc on a Mac? Or point me to a *current* source of info?

Thx,
Fred

P.S. I'll post another thread for this, but in case there's a quick answer: last I heard there's no way to combine 2 disks back to 1 and retain your recordings...has anyone found a way to work around this?


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

fhturner said:


> ...
> 
> P.S. I'll post another thread for this, but in case there's a quick answer: last I heard there's no way to combine 2 disks back to 1 and retain your recordings...has anyone found a way to work around this?


Couldn't find that other thread, but the answer depends on how many total MFS partitions you have on those two drives.


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## fhturner (Mar 15, 2003)

unitron said:


> Couldn't find that other thread, but the answer depends on how many total MFS partitions you have on those two drives.


Thanks, unitron. I actually didn't yet get around to posting that other thread...was hoping to get something going here first regarding compiling MFS tools for Mac! Anyway, since I'm not in MFS Tools very often, can you tell me the best way to determine the # of partitions, as well as what # is too many?

Thx,
Fred


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

fhturner said:


> Thanks, unitron. I actually didn't yet get around to posting that other thread...was hoping to get something going here first regarding compiling MFS tools for Mac! Anyway, since I'm not in MFS Tools very often, can you tell me the best way to determine the # of partitions, as well as what # is too many?
> 
> Thx,
> Fred


The only way that I know of to to examine a TiVo drive is on a PC, either running WinMFS under Windows XP or newer, or booting the PC with the MFS Live cd. MFS Tools is hideously out of date by now, MFS Live is its descendant. WinMFS is more like its cousin.

The TiVo hard drive has an "Apple-ish" partition map, but I don't really know anything about Macs, so I don't know if it can take a look at it or not.

Your first TiVo drive, called by many the TiVo "A" drive, the one a single drive unit comes with, the one single and dual drive units boot from, is generally limited to 6 MFS partitions. That's 3 pairs.

You're looking to go from an "A" drive and a "B" drive to just an "A" drive.

If your current "A" drive only has 2 pairs (in addition to the first 9 partitions, the map itself, boot, root, and kernel, boot2, root2, and kernel2, var, and swap), and your "B" drive only has a single MFS pair, it might be do-able. But probably only on a PC. And those partitions would have to remain the same size as they are now, so you wouldn't gain any more room for recordings.

Of course if you can put everything onto just one drive, then you could add a big ol' second drive for more space.

Eventually the lack of being able to use TiVo desktop to copy shows off of that Sony and onto another Tivo is probably going to come back to bite you. You should probably watch up everything on it and make analog copies of anything you want to save.


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## fhturner (Mar 15, 2003)

unitron said:


> If your current "A" drive only has 2 pairs (in addition to the first 9 partitions, the map itself, boot, root, and kernel, boot2, root2, and kernel2, var, and swap), and your "B" drive only has a single MFS pair, it might be do-able. But probably only on a PC. And those partitions would have to remain the same size as they are now, so you wouldn't gain any more room for recordings.


Thanks again, unitron! I'm back looking at this again. I'm not sure about what partitions I have yet, but I can tell you that I upgraded my SAT-T60 from its standard 40GB single drive by adding an 80GB drive to it w/ MFS Tools probably 8+ years ago. I'm interested in combining both of those onto a single, 120GB 2.5" drive in order to reduce noise, heat, and power consumption. I wouldn't really care if I don't gain any space, since I'm looking simply to "consolidate" w/ the same overall capacity.

Does that shed any light on what partitions I might have and whether it might be doable?

Thx,
Fred


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

fhturner said:


> Thanks again, unitron! I'm back looking at this again. I'm not sure about what partitions I have yet, but I can tell you that I upgraded my SAT-T60 from its standard 40GB single drive by adding an 80GB drive to it w/ MFS Tools probably 8+ years ago. I'm interested in combining both of those onto a single, 120GB 2.5" drive in order to reduce noise, heat, and power consumption. I wouldn't really care if I don't gain any space, since I'm looking simply to "consolidate" w/ the same overall capacity.
> 
> Does that shed any light on what partitions I might have and whether it might be doable?
> 
> ...


My first instinct is not to run a laptop hard drive 24/7, but I don't have any experience with them so I could be wrong.

I still can't tell you how to do it without a PC.

Did you happen to do an MFS Tools backup image way back when before adding the 80GB?

You might be able to restore an image to the 120, then expand it, then use dd or dd_rescue to copy the MFS partitions from the 40 and 80 into the space occupied by the MFS partitions on the 120, and if it doesn't work you've still got the source drives unchanged.

Actually, you probably need to restore an image to a spare drive at least 40GB big to see if your non-booting problem is the 40/80 pair, or something else, like power supply or motherboard.


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