# How Long Should It Take?



## Avenger (Mar 26, 2002)

I am in the process of upgrading the original 250GB "A" drive on an HR10-250 that has previously had a 400GB "B" drive added to it, using the typical software tools. The new upgrade drive is also 400GB. The end product will be a pair of 400GB drives, with recordings preserved.

I performed a backup of the original drive pair, and I am currently using the dd command from the Hinsdale guide for moving the data from the old A drive to the new one. 

At this point, the dd has been ongoing for 17 hours. There is consistent hard drive activity, and the hard drives are clicking away, and every indication is that the computer is, in fact, busily copying data. I am certain that the 250GB source drive is completely full of data. Given that this is the case, how long should a dd like this take? I've done these before on old Series 1 and 2 DirecTivos, but never with drives anywhere near this big. And, predictably, they've never taken this long.

Does anyone have experience with a similar upgrade, who might be able to shed some light on how long I can expect this to take? Thanks!


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## JamieP (Aug 3, 2004)

Avenger said:


> I am in the process of upgrading the original 250GB "A" drive on an HR10-250 that has previously had a 400GB "B" drive added to it, using the typical software tools. The new upgrade drive is also 400GB. The end product will be a pair of 400GB drives, with recordings preserved.
> 
> I performed a backup of the original drive pair, and I am currently using the dd command from the Hinsdale guide for moving the data from the old A drive to the new one.
> 
> ...


If the source and destination drives are on different ide channels, and you have dma enabled, a dd copy should run at about 1GB/minute. dd doesn't give you any progress feedback, but dd_rescue does, IIRC.


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## litzdog911 (Oct 18, 2002)

Avenger:
I just went through this upgrading my HR10-250 ....
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=312002

I finally decided to upgrade/restore without preserving my old recordings because it was taking way too long. I think it might have been a problem with my old PC's BIOS not properly recognizing the large drives, even though MFSTools2 seemed to recognize them fine. It only took 10-minutes to upgrade/restore without preserving my old recordings.


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## Avenger (Mar 26, 2002)

> and you have dma enabled


Well, there's the thing. I went out and did some research on that. Turns out that my drives were not in DMA mode. But when I try to put them in DMA mode, I get an error message that tells me that the operation is prohibited. At least some Linux boards suggest that the Linux kernel has to be compiled with an IDE driver specific to your chipset in order to enable DMA.



> I finally decided to upgrade/restore without preserving my old recordings . . .


Not an option here. My wife has nine months worth of her soap opera saved on there. I'd be better off dead than to lose those to an upgrade.

FWIW, I just did a drive upgrade with this same computer a month ago in which I saved the recordings from a 40GB Series 2 DTivo drive to an 320GB drive, without incident. So I know that my computer's BIOS can handle large drives. But I definitely don't get anywhere near 1GB / hr transfer speed, and the drives are on separate PCI channels.


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## JamieP (Aug 3, 2004)

Avenger said:


> Well, there's the thing. I went out and did some research on that. Turns out that my drives were not in DMA mode. But when I try to put them in DMA mode, I get an error message that tells me that the operation is prohibited. At least some Linux boards suggest that the Linux kernel has to be compiled with an IDE driver specific to your chipset in order to enable DMA.
> 
> Not an option here. My wife has nine months worth of her soap opera saved on there. I'd be better off dead than to lose those to an upgrade.
> 
> FWIW, I just did a drive upgrade with this same computer a month ago in which I saved the recordings from a 40GB Series 2 DTivo drive to an 320GB drive, without incident. So I know that my computer's BIOS can handle large drives. But I definitely don't get anywhere near 1GB / hr transfer speed, and the drives are on separate PCI channels.


The tivo upgrade CD's seem to use fairly old linux kernels that might not have had the best ide dma support. All the current distributions have decent ide support and enable dma by default. You could grab the latest ubuntu or knoppix live cd iso and boot from that instead. It's not going to have the tivo tools on it, but it will have dd. You can always add mfstools and other utilities as needed. Or you can live with the slow pio ide performance.


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## Avenger (Mar 26, 2002)

I did grab Knoppix, because I had read about dd_rescue and thought that might be a useful alternative. Now, Knoppix won't mount the replacement A drive for my TiVo, citing an invalid filesystem. (The original A drive is currently back in the Tivo. There's some stuff on TV tonight I wanted to have recorded, so I reassembled the Tivo for now.) Is that going to be a problem for dd_rescue?

Would Ubuntu work better for this purpose?


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## JamieP (Aug 3, 2004)

Avenger said:


> I did grab Knoppix, because I had read about dd_rescue and thought that might be a useful alternative. Now, Knoppix won't mount the replacement A drive for my TiVo, citing an invalid filesystem. (The original A drive is currently back in the Tivo. There's some stuff on TV tonight I wanted to have recorded, so I reassembled the Tivo for now.) Is that going to be a problem for dd_rescue?
> 
> Would Ubuntu work better for this purpose?


There is no need to mount any of your tivo disks. You're dd copying the entire raw disk.

If you want to mount the tivo partitions (e.g. to make some modifications, aka hack), you'll need to go find tivopart over at Deal DataBase. In general, the information you'll want for hacking is best found over there.

If you are just doing a drive upgrade, there is no need to mount partitions. You will need mfstools for the mfsadd command. You may need pdisk too. You can also go back to the tivo upgrade disks for those. The dd copy is the slow part where dma really makes a big difference. mfsadd is fast.


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## wscannell (Dec 7, 2003)

You do not mount the drives to use dd_rescue. By the way, dd_rescue is on the ptvupgrade.com LBA48 boot CD. I do not know what boot CD you are using, but the ptvupgrade CD should support DMA as well.


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## Avenger (Mar 26, 2002)

I have a recent copy of the PTVUpgrade disk with LBA48. Didn't know that dd-rescue was on there. I did not have any luck activating dma on that disk, either. But I'll gice dd_rescue a shot with PTVUpgrade. Thanxs to all for the advice. I'll let you know how it turns out.


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## Avenger (Mar 26, 2002)

Well, I never did get DMA to work. Based on my review of the boot screen for the PTVUpgrade disk, it looks like the Linux kernel fails to recognize the mainboard's southbridge, and loads a "best odds" IDE driver that functions, but is slow. I never noticed it before, because most of my upgrades have involved relatively simple mfsadd operations and the like. Knoppix was even worse. That IDE driver seemed to be severely crippled - the drives showed up in the OS, but they could not be accessed at all -- not with hdparm, not with dd_rescue - nothing. I guess that's what I get for buying a $55 motherboard. 

So I am using dd_rescue (because it helps me to see the progress, even if it is 2.6MiB/sec), and it has been running for 27 hours now. It is almost done, with no errors. I'll test it when I get home tonight, and then mfsadd to expand / marry the new A to the existing B if all seems to have worked out well.

Thanks, as always, for everyone's help!


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## JamieP (Aug 3, 2004)

Avenger said:


> ... Knoppix was even worse. That IDE driver seemed to be severely crippled - the drives showed up in the OS, but they could not be accessed at all -- not with hdparm, not with dd_rescue - nothing. I guess that's what I get for buying a $55 motherboard. ...


Just curious: what version of Knoppix and what linux kernel did it have? Also, what chipset does your MB have? I've found that the linux 2.6 kernel has pretty good ide-dma support on every motherboard I've tried it on, but I guess they've all been intel, via or nvidia chipsets.


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## willbhome (Aug 28, 2002)

Avenger,
I saw something in your original post that caused me to wonder: If I read it correctly, you currently have a 250GB drive married to a 400GB second drive. You're attempting to replace only the 250 drive with a 400, retaining the currently-installed 400GB drive as its second. I was under the impression that a "second" drive is irretrievably married to its "first" drive, and that such an upgrade must replace both drives.
BTW, where did you get the two-drive bracket for your HR10-250. The one I bought from Weaknees does not fit my HR10-250.


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## Avenger (Mar 26, 2002)

JamieP said:


> Just curious: what version of Knoppix and what linux kernel did it have? Also, what chipset does your MB have? I've found that the linux 2.6 kernel has pretty good ide-dma support on every motherboard I've tried it on, but I guess they've all been intel, via or nvidia chipsets.


I was using Knoppix 2.78, with the 2.6.12 kernel.

The chipset is a Via VT8235. Interestingly, I tried the Knoppix disk on my very new computer at work, and it had no problem enabling DMA there. So it must be my 5-year-old, $55 motherboard that is the problem.

_UPDATE_: A quick Google search confirms that Linux users all over the place have had intractable DMA problems with this particular southbridge. So I guess that answers that.



willbhome said:


> I was under the impression that a "second" drive is irretrievably married to its "first" drive, and that such an upgrade must replace both drives.


Nope. Well, the drives are married, and the marriage is irretrievable to the extent that a failure of one drive or the other will cause the loss of the ability to access the current data on either one.

But, it is possible to upgrade one or the other, and to re-marry the remaining drive to a new one. In fact, I have done it, and I now have a HR10-250 that is running 2-400GB drives. The Hinsdale guide, to which I am partial, describes this whole process in great detail. Just Google for "Hinsdale Tivo." (not in quotes).



willbhome said:


> BTW, where did you get the two-drive bracket for your HR10-250. The one I bought from Weaknees does not fit my HR10-250.


http://www.weaknees.com/tbhd.php

There is an upgrade bracket that is specifically for the HR01-250. It works great for me.


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