# Can Roamio's 3TB disk be cloned?



## jlin (Nov 20, 1999)

I'm experiencing some numerous freezing of playback of recorded shows on my Roamio's 3TB drive.

Interesting enough, when I rewind back to the same spot, it does not freeze as before.

I suspect the hard drive maybe going bad.

I have another spare 3TB drive. Can I use my hard drive duplicator to make a copy of the old drive and put the new drive back to Roamio and expect it to work?


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## ThAbtO (Apr 6, 2000)

Currently there is no software available to copy a Roamio drive with recordings.


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

You can us dd or your drive duplicator to clone the drive. Should work just fine.

Check the drive with a diagnostic program for errors that have not reached SMART threshold.

If this drive is in a Roamio basic, would try to find a power brick that has the ability to provide a little more power when needed and see if that fixes the problem.


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## jlin (Nov 20, 1999)

jmbach said:


> You can us dd or your drive duplicator to clone the drive. Should work just fine.
> 
> Check the drive with a diagnostic program for errors that have not reached SMART threshold.
> 
> If this drive is in a Roamio basic, would try to find a power brick that has the ability to provide a little more power when needed and see if that fixes the problem.


Yes I have the Roamio Basic.. I tried cloning it but it was taking forever. I assume that the the duplicator probably bump into a bad sector that it can't skip over.

What's wrong with the original power supply that Roamio Basic came with?


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

Nothing wrong per se. The issue may be the amount of power needed for larger drives may not be sufficient at times depending on the state of the drive and unit. As the power draw from the unit nears maximum capacity of the power brick, the unit might experience a brief under voltage causing problems.


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## Thom (Jun 5, 2000)

Get a copy of Spinrite v6 and run it at level 2 on your drive. If Spinrite fixes your drive, then use your drive duplicator to copy the drive to a more reliable one.


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## russdog (Aug 22, 2004)

jlin said:


> Yes I have the Roamio Basic.. I tried cloning it but it was taking forever. I assume that the the duplicator probably bump into a bad sector that it can't skip over.
> 
> What's wrong with the original power supply that Roamio Basic came with?


Tivo cheaped out on it for unknown iffy reasons.

Others have reported problems disappearing once they used a 12V 2.5A brick rather than the std 12V 2.0A brick.

Others have suggested looking for a Liteon brick on ebay that is the recommended 12V 2.5A. Lots of used ones for $8 (from off-lease laptops which always get new bricks when resold), supposedly some new ones for under $20.

Apparently, 2.5A is enough to make some problems vanish. There is some controversy about using a brick that is rated at more than 3A. In theory, it shouldn't matter at all, but there are iffy unknowns about whether the tivo box is designed to cope with possible exceptional conditions that might cause it to accidentally draw more amps and burnout something. The upper limit on a brick evidently puts a ceiling on how power hungry the tivo box is allowed to be, so a higher-A brick raises that ceiling. You want that to go up from 2.0A to 2.5A but you don't want it very much higher than that. Chances are a 4A or 5A brick would work just fine with nary a problem, it mainly comes down to how paranoid you think it's smart to be.

If it was me, I'd get a used Liteon 12V 2.5A brick for cheap.


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## b-ball-fanatic (Aug 5, 2003)

jlin said:


> I'm experiencing some numerous freezing of playback of recorded shows on my Roamio's 3TB drive.
> 
> Interesting enough, when I rewind back to the same spot, it does not freeze as before.
> 
> ...




ThAbtO said:


> Currently there is no software available to copy a Roamio drive with recordings.




jmbach said:


> You can us dd or your drive duplicator to clone the drive. Should work just fine.



Don't want to stir up any disagreements, but these two responses seem completely contradictory. Hopefully, there was just a misunderstanding about the OP's question.....

Is this a matter of debate, or is there a definitive answer as to whether a Roamio HDD,_ with recordings,_ can be cloned to an identical drive.....not upsized, upgraded, etc....just cloned for the purpose of replacing a questionable HDD?


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

A Roamio drive with recordings and cableCARD pairings can be cloned with a disk duplicator or a program like dd and work like the original drive in the same Roamio unit.

It does sound controversial on the surface. There are no current tools available to copy and expand a Roamio drive with recordings.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

b-ball-fanatic said:


> ​​
> Don't want to stir up any disagreements, but these two responses seem completely contradictory. Hopefully, there was just a misunderstanding about the OP's question.....
> 
> Is this a matter of debate, or is there a definitive answer as to whether a Roamio HDD,_ with recordings,_ can be cloned to an identical drive.....not upsized, upgraded, etc....just cloned for the purpose of replacing a questionable HDD?


The Linux/Unix utility

dd

or its two more sophisticated cousins

ddrescue

and

dd_rescue

can "Xerox" a hard drive to another hard drive of the same size (in LBA) or larger, although I wouldn't recommend using a larger one in this instance, as I don't know how the Roamio, if it could detect the change, would react to the change.

Using a second drive with the same LBA number should result in the Roamio not even knowing that it's not the same drive as the one you took out.


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## b-ball-fanatic (Aug 5, 2003)

Thanks for the replies. 

That was my intention...to use dd_rescue to clone the original 3Tb drive straight across to another WD 3Tb Green. Though I currently have the Roamio working again, there's been too much weird behavior to have confidence going forward with the existing drive.

Thanks again for clearing that up.


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## telemark (Nov 12, 2013)

I'd suggest checking the SMART values, and migrate off this drive with a dd_rescue type program asap if you want to keep your recordings.

If the migration ends with unreadable sectors, then spinrite might recover some more bits, if you really want every one.

PS. if the drive acts rock-solid in the PC, you might have something else going on.


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## b-ball-fanatic (Aug 5, 2003)

telemark said:


> I'd suggest checking the SMART values, and migrate off this drive with a dd_rescue type program asap if you want to keep your recordings.
> 
> If the migration ends with unreadable sectors, then spinrite might recover some more bits, if you really want every one.
> 
> PS. if the drive acts rock-solid in the PC, you might have something else going on.


Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, yeah....I'm pretty sure something else is going on.  After all that trouble, I don't think it was ever the HDD.

As I've detailed a bit more HERE, the Roamio seems to operate fine once it's up & running, but it became increasingly difficult to get out of a boot loop and get it going. Today, I can't get it started at all....


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## todd_j_derr (Jun 6, 2000)

So, the drive on my Roamio Pro was failing. I started to see stuttering, then on Friday it wouldn't boot (all lights were flashing quickly), although after 3-4 tries it did boot and I could still see all my recordings intact. I immediately unplugged the Tivo and overnighted a new drive - I got the EURX, although the original was an EURS.

I got the drive, checked that the # of sectors were the same with hdparm, saw that the original drive was indeed hosed using smartctl, and followed the instructions here to clone the drive with ddrescue. This completed in ~6 hours and reported no errors (which I thought was a bit odd, but...). I'm a seasoned linux user and I've cloned drives before (and I checked the src/dest a few thousand times before pressing enter), so I'm fairly sure I did this part correctly.

Unfortunately, I messed up and missed the kickstart the first time, so it booted and went to GS. I rebooted it again and successfully did the kickstart 57 this time; it brought up the green screen for ~10-15 min and rebooted, but then it went back to GS. So, I ran GS, hoping that even if I lost my SPs I might still have the recordings, but no luck.

So, I guess I'll give it another try, but any suggestions for what I did wrong? Did missing the kickstart cause it to wipe the recordings? I guess I can try some kind of MFS tools after cloning this time to make sure the drive looks ok on the PC... I guess I'll know in 6 hours


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## telemark (Nov 12, 2013)

The most important part imho is the ddrescue.
Make sure you use a log.
Make sure the transfer rate and time it takes makes sense.

Once it's done, figure how much data is missing, and where it is. Based on that, you either keep running ddrescue or check the data by hand before booting it.

PS. I don't expect there's a difference between KS57 and letting it GSOD itself.


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## ggieseke (May 30, 2008)

It shouldn't need a KS if the clone was successful and the source drive was clean.

From a TON of recent experience trying to crack 6TB drives, if it went straight to GS it reformatted the drive. If you can after this attempt, time the first "Welcome" screen. About 35 seconds means it passed the first barrier. If it takes a full minute it's reformatting the drive from scratch.


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## todd_j_derr (Jun 6, 2000)

Thanks. The good news is that I'm just an idiot. I added the '-g' flag myself thinking "well, of course I want to generate a logfile", not realizing until just now that puts it in a mode where it *only* generates a logfile. I guess I should have spent more time wondering why that flag wasn't in the initial instructions. So, hopefully now that I'm actually copying the drive it will work better. 

[Note they've since renamed the flag from --generate-logfile (-g) to --generate-mode (-G) which is certainly a more descriptive name... I might not have made the same mistake.]

[Edit: and, of course, it was the thing I was "fairly sure" I didn't screw up that I actually screwed up. Well, at least I didn't mix up src and dest!]


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## ggieseke (May 30, 2008)

Hope it works!


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## todd_j_derr (Jun 6, 2000)

Yep, no problems the second time. I didn't do kickstart 57, just let it boot, and everything looks good. There was one bad sector during the copy so I assume I'll find a messed up recording (maybe one of the two that were in progress when it crashed, which I don't really care about - one of them claims a duration of 2 days 12 hours). Overall it was pretty painless and would have been even more painless if I hadn't messed up the first attempt.


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## todd_j_derr (Jun 6, 2000)

hmmm... I did have to get Verizon to re-pair the CC - unsure if that was because I re-ran GS or if I would have had to do it regardless... but it was pretty painless.


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## telemark (Nov 12, 2013)

todd_j_derr said:


> hmmm... I did have to get Verizon to re-pair the CC - unsure if that was because I re-ran GS or if I would have had to do it regardless... but it was pretty painless.


Possible explanation:
If the 1st attempt was blank or substantially similar, the Roamio formatted the drive as it's only method of repair. The CC creds were wiped from the drive then and if the CC was inserted, it would reset itself as a new host. Reoffering the old drive image and creds is too late, the CC already move on.


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## ggieseke (May 30, 2008)

telemark said:


> Possible explanation:
> If the 1st attempt was blank or substantially similar, the Roamio formatted the drive as it's only method of repair. The CC creds were wiped from the drive then and if the CC was inserted, it would reset itself as a new host. Reoffering the old drive image and creds is too late, the CC already move on.


If the CC was in the box when you booted it, that makes sense. Glad it's working.


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## todd_j_derr (Jun 6, 2000)

makes sense.

This is the first Tivo drive I've lost since the 30GB in my S1 went in 2001 or so... way less painful this time.


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## Parkers (Jul 12, 2015)

jlin said:


> I'm experiencing some numerous freezing of playback of recorded shows on my Roamio's 3TB drive.
> 
> Interesting enough, when I rewind back to the same spot, it does not freeze as before.
> 
> ...


Use ddresue or dd_rescue. As long as you have another 3 TB it should work fine.


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