# Instantcake SATA Problems



## crabell (Nov 27, 2006)

*The Background...*

I declared the internal Hard Drive on my S3 "dead" after it fell into a constant reboot sequence. I tried Kickstart 57, 58 & 52 with no results.

I tried using WinMFS but I just could not get it to work, it looks like the drive was beyond recovery.

So I decided to "retire" the internal drive that came with the S3 and move the External 750GB drive internally after using "Instantcake" on it.

*The Problem...*

My PC has 4 SATA ports and 1 IDE port. I have the "new" drive connected via SATA as well as my BD-ROM Drive. Instantcake boots just fine, but I just can't figure out how to mount the "cdrom".

I tried connecting my "old" CD-ROM to the IDE port and keeping my "new" drive on the SATA port, but I still can't figure out how to mount the cdrom.

I can see both drives on the BIOS, but I just can't identify them inside Instantcake. Is there a command that would help me identify the drives?

I tried the DVRUpgrade Forum and Support with no results, my "ticket" keep closing itself without getting any help back, it looks like they provide no support for their software whatsoever.

Living without my "main" TiVo is just not good... "Regular" TV should be ilegal!

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!


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## tivoupgrade (Sep 27, 2000)

crabell said:


> *The Background...*
> 
> I declared the internal Hard Drive on my S3 "dead" after it fell into a constant reboot sequence. I tried Kickstart 57, 58 & 52 with no results.
> 
> ...


We are very up front about the fact that products like InstantCake are offered without warranty or support, but with that said, we answer most questions posted on our forums; and we do offer full trade-in credit on the software if you are unable to get it working in your environment.

What we don't do is offer private assistance with these tools, and when you opened the ticket, you should have gotten more information and links to the right place to ask your question (we also state this on the helpdesk page, but perhaps you missed it?); it may have gone into your spam folder, so you may want to check that, as well.

In any case, you did post the same thing at about 4:30am this morning and I did respond to you just now, here.

Hopefully that will get you on the right track,

Lou


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## brianatthebeach (May 7, 2002)

Hi,

I bought instantcake for svr-2000 upgrade today Order Number: 7**63. I have mostly usb and sata ports available in my home. In my reading of the forums it seems I can only access hd connected drives but I would like to connect to sd (usb) connected drives. Is this possible under advanced mode? I went as far as seeing that instant cake suggested to me hd attached drives so I stopped so I would not cause any problems.

In other words can instantcake be used nowadays with notebooks and other hardware where ide is becoming less and less available and usb and sata more and more prevalent? I would think sellers of software would adjust for changing landscape of computers. I can borrow a PC but for now and in the future would really like to make things like instantcake work on modern computers like usb notebooks or sata equipped desktops.

Long story short, 
1) can we customize instancake install(use advanced mode?) to access usb connected drives for the tivo upgrade process and if so are there good links available to forum posts or websites that describe this process?

2) can I access instantcake image from my purchase and use mfslive to access usb drives as was suggested in tivocommunity? Also any suggested links describing this process?

PS I am having a little trouble figuring out how to access another iso when booting off one of 2 iso images. For example I can boot from mfslive cd but then not sure how to switch or navigate to the other iso(instantcake) mounted in another drive. I tried the obvious noob move to cd to
/dev/hdc<--other connected drive

I have tried searching forums but most will not let me search on a 3 letter word like USB 

Thanks,
Brian


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## crabell (Nov 27, 2006)

I did not find a way to mount my cdrom on my SATA system, so I borrowed a SATA to USB adapter from my Company's IT Department and used an older computer (without SATA).

It took a few tries, but I finally managed get my SATA Drive working using the USB adapter and Instantcake... my TiVo has been runnig smoothly for a few days now.

I think the developers should look into improving their support for SATA only computers, in the meantime using a USB to SATA adapter seems to be the simplest solution.


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## brianatthebeach (May 7, 2002)

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. From what you describe it still sounds like something I and others might be able to make use of. Can you give more details? I still want to use instantcake in a way that appears to not be documented very well. I have connected my tivo drives to usb external boxes and then to the computer's usb port. Now to use instantcake to install onto the usb connected drive eludes me. It appears instantcake only will give me hda-hdd connected drive choices not sd connected drives. 

Thanks,
Brian


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## tivoupgrade (Sep 27, 2000)

brianatthebeach said:


> Hi,
> 
> Thanks for the reply. From what you describe it still sounds like something I and others might be able to make use of. Can you give more details? I still want to use instantcake in a way that appears to not be documented very well. I have connected my tivo drives to usb external boxes and then to the computer's usb port. Now to use instantcake to install onto the usb connected drive eludes me. It appears instantcake only will give me hda-hdd connected drive choices not sd connected drives.
> 
> ...


Brian,

You are asking about a fundamentally different version of InstantCake than the OP is discussing. The version you are asking about is very old (almost five years) and uses a CD which only provides support for IDE devices. The OP is using a newer version of the software which uses a CD that has support for SATA devices and USB-IDE/SATA adapters.

This is mentioned in the product description and also in the product documentation, so I'm sorry if you missed the fact that two IDE devices are required for use with this version. Here are the links to the instructions and the release notes for more details.

Lou


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## brianatthebeach (May 7, 2002)

Got it! Yes I missed that fact. Thought all instantcakes were all being kept current since many of the series 1s are still in use today. I have 1s and 2s with lifetimes and plan to keep em as long as I can 

Thanks,
Brian


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## tivoupgrade (Sep 27, 2000)

brianatthebeach said:


> Got it! Yes I missed that fact. Thought all instantcakes were all being kept current since many of the series 1s are still in use today. I have 1s and 2s with lifetimes and plan to keep em as long as I can
> 
> Thanks,
> Brian


The problem with the Series1 version is that it uses a completely different boot CD and part of the reason for that has to do with the Series1 DIRECTV family of units.

At some point, I'd LOVE to migrate it to a newer CD that has more options, and it IS on the list. BUT, because it is so old and to be honest, the least popular (there really aren't that many of these units still in service) it gets the lowest priority, unfortunately.

I won't say that it won't ever get updated, but there are a lot of other things that get a higher priority, sorry to say...

... but with all of that said, it still works fine as long as you've got an IDE-based system and even if you have a single IDE channel, it can still be used by editing the device names in the script (not trivial for many folks, but still doable).

I'll try to take a look at the scripts over the next few months and see if I can at least update them to include the 'advanced mode' for specifying device names, but beyond that, its probably not going to happen any time soon...

Cheers,
Lou


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## The Judge (Feb 18, 2008)

crabell said:


> *The Background...*
> 
> *The Problem...*
> 
> ...


I believe I have found the answer to the problem that you and most people are having when they attempt to use an SATA CD-ROM and SATA hard drive plugged directly into the PC motherboard using InstantCake. :up:

I just purchased the Series 3 Image from DVRUpgrade and went through the same frustrating problem and troubleshooting. I am extremly PC literate and know a lot more than the average person (I work with PC's, servers and OS' almost daily and I have 4 workstations and 2 laptops in my home running Windows and Linux). I realize they only charge $20 and one should only expect so much but I think the average person will struggle with this software unless the documentation is improved.

I have a relatively new (<12 months old) Intel motherboard with 6 SATA ports and I was using an SATA DVD-ROM drive. I could not get the CD to mount and struggled with it for over an hour. I finally put my drive into an external USB eclosure that supports an SATA drive and used a laptop to get where I needed to be. However, I felt this wasn't an acceptable solution and I knew it should work in a PC as advertised.

To make a long story short and hours of troubleshooting  it turns out you must use PATA and not SATA for the CD-ROM and hard drive even though they are both SATA interfaces. I tried changing my BIOS settings for the drive interface to legacy, IDE emulation, etc. and nothing worked when using the SATA option in InstantCake.

My hard drive was plugged into SATA Port-0 and my DVD-ROM was plugged into SATA Port-1. After troubleshooting with the "mount" command I finally got the DVD-ROM to mount as "hdc" as the device designation. After going through a similar set of steps for the hard drive, it mounted as "hda" and then everything finally worked as advertised.

I can't gaurantee that if you plug hard drive into SATA Port-0 and the DVD-ROM into SATA Port-1 on your motherboard that they will mount as PATA devices "hda" and "hdc" respectively but I can say with 100% certianly that an Intel (and most) motherboard(s) will require you to choose PATA and not SATA to identify these devices. You just may need to try a few of the "hdx" device options to get yours to mount.

When I got it to work in a laptop as a workaround, the DVD-ROM was set to PATA (it was an older IDE DVD-ROM in the laptop) and the SATA hard drive in the USB enclosure did allow the SATA option to work as "sda."

I hope this helps and saves other people a lot of wasted time!!!!


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## lmnya (Jan 20, 2009)

The Judge said:


> When I got it to work in a laptop as a workaround, the DVD-ROM was set to PATA (it was an older IDE DVD-ROM in the laptop) and the SATA hard drive in the USB enclosure did allow the SATA option to work as "sda."
> 
> I hope this helps and saves other people a lot of wasted time!!!!


Hello The Judge

Very insightful workup on alternative workarounds for the Instantcake reimaging...

not to ignore your entire post by all means but what caught my attention was your reference to getting it working with a laptop..

Could you(and by that I mean Please please please) possible give some more detail as to how you got the instacake boot and mfslive to recognize this usb based setup?....

Im fairly familiar with tivo related copying, upgrading and such but for the life of me could not get the instantcake to recognize my laptop attached drive(no PC with ide available)..downloaded most recent image for humax drt400..iso burned...I get cd boot startup no problem..WITH a usb enclosure(400gb ide drive within ) connected....instantcake runs all the ay to the point where it lets me pick y, n, a for drive setup..I choose advanced but the only choices available are hde, f, g, h...I cannot choose sda or anything other than hd- something..my question is at what point were you abe to allow the sata option you mentioned in your workaround...

I have searched every possible word configuration attempting to find some detail of what you mentioned and alas nothing...

help..

thanks


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## tivoupgrade (Sep 27, 2000)

lmnya said:


> Hello The Judge
> 
> Very insightful workup on alternative workarounds for the Instantcake reimaging...
> 
> ...


I've done some testing with this particular adapter; it does not matter whether you use an IDE drive or a SATA drive with one; the device should be recognized as a PATA device (eg /dev/hdd). If it is not showing up on your laptop, then your particular chipset is probably not recognized by the boot CD (mfslive) and you will need to find a PC with a SATA chipset that is supported, or use an IDE-SATA adapter if you can find an IDE-based PC.

Lou


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## Southie Boy (Jun 21, 2008)

tivoupgrade said:


> If it is not showing up on your laptop, then your particular chipset is probably not recognized by the boot CD (mfslive) and you will need to find a PC with a SATA chipset that is supported,


Running around all creation trying to find a PC with a chipset that your product supports is sort of a lame suggestion (coming from someone trying to sell me something, that is. I'd expect that suggestion from many here, but not you). I am interested in your product, but before I buy, I would like to know the system requirements. Can you simply tell us what chipsets are supported in the current linux distro that you package your product with? My Asus motherboard uses an NVIDIA nForce Serial ATA Controller. Is it supported?


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## tivoupgrade (Sep 27, 2000)

Southie Boy said:


> Running around all creation trying to find a PC with a chipset that your product supports is sort of a lame suggestion (coming from someone trying to sell me something, that is. I'd expect that suggestion from many here, but not you). I am interested in your product, but before I buy, I would like to know the system requirements. Can you simply tell us what chipsets are supported in the current linux distro that you package your product with? My Asus motherboard uses an NVIDIA nForce Serial ATA Controller. Is it supported?


I'm not trying to sell you anything; I was offering a technical explanation to the previous poster's question.

I can't tell you what chipsets will work and which won't - there are just too many permutations and I honestly don't know. You can download the mfslive CD for free, though - so if it boots in your PC, then the InstantCake CD should work fine; if that seems lame, then I don't recommend going the DIY route.

Lou


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## Southie Boy (Jun 21, 2008)

Booting is not the issue. It boots fine. Mounting sata devices is the issue. I've been successfully modding and upgrading TiVo's for about as long as there have been TiVo's. I'll admit that I'm not proficient in Unix/Linux environments, but I can usually muddle through. I did purchase your product last week because it sounded like a fairly straight forward solution to a problem I had to solve. Well it turns out it is the single most frustrating, and costly product I have ever used for upgrading TiVo's. And that is due primarily to the lack of knowledge of your product that is available on the internet. I suspect that after a while the knowledge base will grow, and people like me will be able to find out, through research, if it works on our systems, but, for now I'm afraid your HD version of Instantcake is too immature for it's purchase to be any more than a crap shoot as to its ability to work on a sata pc.


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## Spharticus (Nov 26, 2002)

I DL'd the tivoHD version of IC today. I have a relatively new Dell with SATA only. Like others here I can't seem to get the cdrom mounted. Like others i've upgraded several tivo's and I know how to follow instructions, but I can't get the Instantcake program to mount my cdrom for anything! I even took video of the booting on the screen to try and see if the program recognized the drives but I didn't see anything useful (or it's there and I don't read Linux). The CDR has to be working with the software otherwise we wouldn't get as far as we do every time. 

I don't know enought about Linux to 'troubleshoot' the mount command. Anyone else get something to work?


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## Spharticus (Nov 26, 2002)

I found this post at dvrupgrade.com/forums/showthread.php?t=676 thread at the IC forums. When nothing else worked, this script edit did.

My bad- I didn't see in the InstantCake instructions where I had to know basic Linux mounting and editing programming...


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## zapatero (Jan 13, 2006)

... and years later the InstantCake SATA /cdrom mount problems continue.

I would highly recommend that everyone steer clear of InstantCake especially if you plan on doing the TiVo drive burning on a PC with a motherboard purchased from 2010 on. They sell a $40 product that will buy you a headache.

In the DVRupgrade forums you will find instructions on using mknod to create the missing /dev/sr0 block device. On most any modern motherboard this will be inadequate. To continue the laughs on this $40 "product" you then get instructions on using vi to edit their /usr/bin installation script. What a joke.

The linux distro that DVDupgrade has on their boot is archaic not maintained.

I find it funny too to see Lou's old posts here saying "hey if you can't DIY then it's not my fault." Sheesh. Come on dude, have some integrity... refund people's purchases.


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## joeshannallie (Jul 10, 2005)

Where do i get instantcake for Humax T800


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## dilbert27 (Dec 1, 2006)

joeshannallie said:


> Where do i get instantcake for Humax T800


http://www.dvrupgrade.com/tivo/product.php?productid=46&cat=3&page=1


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