# Can backup image reside on an NTFS drive?



## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Hello, I got my backup image from another TiVo person here on the forum; i.e. I didnt' get it from backing up my old TiVo. That's because the hard drive went bad on it.

Anyway, I copied it to the root of C: and renamed it TiVo.bak, per the Hinsdale instructions, but then when I try to mount the drive in MFS tools, it says something about the kernel not supporting NTFS.

So does this mean I need to load the image onto a FAT32 drive? Right now the only hard drives I own are:

1) the ones in my computers, which are NTFS
2) the bad one I'm replacing
3) two other blank ones I'm intending to put into my TiVo.

I hope these Hinsdale instructions don't require I get yet another hard drive to temporarily hold the image in FAT32 format. Do I not understand the correct procedure?


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## funtoupgrade (Mar 15, 2005)

Basically you are correct. To follow the Hinsdale instructions the backup needs to be in a FAT32 partition. You could try burning the image to a CD and working from that. If you have Partition Magic you could temporarily carve out a little space to temporarily add an FAT32 partition. The FAT drive does not have to be very big so any old drive laying around will work for this.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

I don't have any other drive laying around except for the broken one. Maybe the broken one is not too broken to hold the image, since the image is not very big.

Or I could burn to CD like you said, but then I'll need instructions on how to modify the MFS restore command to read from the CD instead of the hard drive.

Looking at part 8 of the Hinsale instructions, I assume I still need to do the umount command, then turn off PC then attach the new TiVo drive and power up again.

I have questions about these parts of the Hinsdale instructions:



> 8) Restoring Mfs Tools backup image
> 
> If you have just completed your Mfs Tools backup commands, and your new large upgrade drive is not yet currently connected to your PC, then first unmount your drives using the following command at the linux # prompt:
> 
> umount -f -a -r (umount not unmount)


So, I take it I should diconnect the new TiVo drive(s) from my PC before doing this



> Then power down your PC (press Ctrl-Alt-Del and wait for the 'No more processes ... ' message or the system starts to reboot, then power down.) and remove the original TiVo A (and B if applicable) drive(s) and connect your/(one of your) new large upgrade drive to the Primary Slave IDE connector. Then power up the PC and get back to the linux # prompt and re-mount your dos C: drive using the same commands as previously outlined in backup section 7 above.


So even though I'm wanting to use a Maxtor 80G and a WD 20G in my TiVo, I should only hook up one of them at this time? Also, isn't the purpose of re-mount the dos C: drive is so that the restore command later one will be able to retrieve the image off the C: drive? If I wind up storing the image on a CD, how does this affect this step of re-mounting the C: drive?



> Restore Mfs Tools backup image to your new large upgrade drive using ONE of the following commands:
> 
> (This is assuming you have connected your new large upgrade drive as Primary Slave)
> ....
> Note for those with already tested image: If you are restoring a previously tested backup image and are not concerned about preserving recordings, you can use Mfs Tools to restore the image and expand your drives at the same time  saving the mfsadd at Step 10 (this will overwrite any image/recordings existing on the destination drives).


This sounds like my situation, so I would think I could follow this paragraph



> With your new upgrade TiVo A drive as Secondary Master and new upgrade TiVo B drive (if any) as Primary Slave, you can use the following command to restore your Mfs Tools backup image to your new large upgrade drive(s) and expand them at the same time:


So I should have *both* my new TiVo drives hooked up? Earlier, it said to only hook up one. And if I hook them up as primary slave and secondary master, if I'm not mistaken, the primary master is already being used by my CD drive. How can I accomplish this step?



> Restore and expand in a single step using ONE of the following commands:
> 
> mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdc (restore/expand to single new larger A drive)
> 
> ...


I assume mine is the latter because I'm wanting two drives. But I'm thinking depending on the answers to my earlier questions, this command may need to be modified.


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## funtoupgrade (Mar 15, 2005)

First let me say I have only done this from an FAT32 partition on the primary hard drive as I have a dedicated computer for upgrading TiVos. I am guessing on the restore command and assume others more familiar with restoring from CD will jump in and correct me if I am wrong. You can't hurt anything by doing this over and over so it will give you something to play around with until somebody else jumps in with more help if it is wrong.

Do you have two CD drives? You need one to run the MFStools. I guess you can remove the tools disk once the program is loaded into memory and replace it with the image disk.

The following assumes CD drive is primary master as you indicated. The only drive that needs to be mounted is the one with the image (*mount \dev\hda \mnt*). Hook up both Tivo drives (*mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi \mnt\tivo.bak \dev\hdc \dev\hdb*). Then *umount -f -a -r*, then *control-alt-del * until screen blank then shut off computer and remove drives.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

funtoupgrade said:


> First let me say I have only done this from an FAT32 partition on the primary hard drive as I have a dedicated computer for upgrading TiVos. I am guessing on the restore command and assume others more familiar with restoring from CD will jump in and correct me if I am wrong. You can't hurt anything by doing this over and over so it will give you something to play around with until somebody else jumps in with more help if it is wrong.
> 
> Do you have two CD drives? You need one to run the MFStools. I guess you can remove the tools disk once the program is loaded into memory and replace it with the image disk.
> 
> The following assumes CD drive is primary master as you indicated. The only drive that needs to be mounted is the one with the image (*mount \dev\hda \mnt*). Hook up both Tivo drives (*mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi \mnt\tivo.bak \dev\hdc \dev\hdb*). Then *umount -f -a -r*, then *control-alt-del * until screen blank then shut off computer and remove drives.


Actually, I've got the MFS tools on a diskette, so there shouldn't be a conflict between the tools and the image.

Also, my CD drive is the secondary master, so I'm guessing I should modify your commands as:

mount \dev\hdc \mnt
mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi \mnt\tivo.bak \dev\hda \dev\hdb (assuming I use the primary master and primary slave as my two TiVo drives.)

Thank you for your reply, I think I understand better based on what you've said.

Now for a new problem: For some reason, today when I reran my drive fitness utilities, it says that both of the old TiVo drives have no errors on them, so now I'm mystified. The symptoms I've been having certainly seem like hard drive problems. Oh well, maybe I should just assume that the drive that originally said had errors is bad and replace it.


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## HomeUser (Jan 12, 2003)

> Actually, I've got the MFS tools on a diskette, so there shouldn't be a conflict between the tools and the image.


 You have a LBA48 MFSTools boot Floppy?
MFSTools can run from several of the "run from CD" Linux versions that have NTFS access.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

HomeUser said:


> You have a LBA48 MFSTools boot Floppy?
> MFSTools can run from several of the "run from CD" Linux versions that have NTFS access.


I don't know what LBA48 means, but it is indeed a boot floppy containing MFStools. I downloaded it from the link provided in the Hinsdale instructions:

http://hellcat.tyger.org/MFS/2.0/mfstools2noJ.iso


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## HomeUser (Jan 12, 2003)

The floppy is fine if you are just restoring to the 80G + 40G drives. 

Just In case you get a larger HD, Boot CD's with LBA48 Linux kernels allow you to use drives that are larger then 137G I do not know of any MFSTools Boot Floppy that has the LBA48 Kernel. If you wanted to use all of a drive larger then 137G you would need a LBA48 aware boot CD. Another issue is the model of TiVo you have would need software that supports the large hard drives also.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

HomeUser said:


> The floppy is fine if you are just restoring to the 80G + 40G drives.
> 
> Just In case you get a larger HD, Boot CD's with LBA48 Linux kernels allow you to use drives that are larger then 137G I do not know of any MFSTools Boot Floppy that has the LBA48 Kernel. If you wanted to use all of a drive larger then 137G you would need a LBA48 aware boot CD. Another issue is the model of TiVo you have would need software that supports the large hard drives also.


This is good to know; I don't remember the Hinsdale instructions mentioning this.


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

Today I tried to do a restore from a tivo image that I burned to cd,
because I ddn't have a pc fat32 drive (and no drive to spare).

but the tivomad boot floppy I tried to use didn't support iso9660 cd filesystem
when I tried to mount the cd.

That's something to be aware of...

Anyway, I used a tivo bootcd and two CD drives (tivo.bak in the other cd drive),
and it worked a treat.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

mikerr said:


> Today I tried to do a restore from a tivo image that I burned to cd,
> because I ddn't have a pc fat32 drive (and no drive to spare).
> 
> but the tivomad boot floppy I tried to use didn't support iso9660 cd filesystem
> ...


Yesterday when I used MFS tools to mount the CD (in preparation for restore), it warned me that the media was read-only, but it appeared to successfully mount. So I'm guessing that I'm not going to have the problem you just alluded to.


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