# (Incorrect) Target disk size error from mfsrestore



## ETR (Mar 22, 2002)

Okay -- last time I was here the "underground" was for upgrades and I automatically posted here even though I had already scanned the upgrade forum for similar posts. Now I'm looking for how to delete this post so I can move it to the right forum, but for the life of me I can't find a delete option in the edit screen. If someone wants to PM me a clue, feel free!

-- Clueless 

Hi all,

It's been about three years since I've posted on this forum. I've done over a dozen TiVo upgrades and I'm running into a problem I've never had before.

Doing a drive-to-drive upgrade running the Hinsdale recommended commands

mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/source | mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi - /dev/target

I'm getting the report that the target drive cannot hold the image. 

The source drive is an upgraded 120 GB drive (upgraded from an original 40GB drive), the target is a 160 GB drive. This is the first upgrade I've done using a large drive, but I do have the PTV Upgrade disk that claims large drive support, and the bootup process shows the target drive reported properly as a 160GB drive. 

Is there anything obvious (or not so obvious) that I'm doing wrong? Any suggestions?

I went ahead and started a dd backup (since I believe the drive was originally upgraded with mfsrestore, I think I'll have the 127 swap size already), but that'll be running for a few hours yet. If successful I guess I'll have to do something futher with mfsadd?

Thanks in advance for any advice....

--- Eric


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## captain_video (Mar 1, 2002)

There's a limit on the number of times you can expand an image. You already expanded it once when you upgraded from a 40GB drive to a 120GB drive. You have probably already maxed out the number of allowable partitions. When you expand an image you're actually adding more partitions to the drive but there's a limit on the number that the Tivo OS will allow on a single drive. Your best bet would be to start over and install a fresh image on the 160GB drive. Another option would be to add the 160GB drive as your B drive.


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## ETR (Mar 22, 2002)

captain_video said:


> There's a limit on the number of times you can expand an image. You already expanded it once when you upgraded from a 40GB drive to a 120GB drive. You have probably already maxed out the number of allowable partitions. When you expand an image you're actually adding more partitions to the drive but there's a limit on the number that the Tivo OS will allow on a single drive. Your best bet would be to start over and install a fresh image on the 160GB drive. Another option would be to add the 160GB drive as your B drive.


Thanks for the response.

That's definitely my fallback plan (doing the backup from the original drive rather than the upgraded drive). There's not a ton of programming I care about on the current one, but I hate to lose things if I don't have to.

What's bugging me is that mfsinfo reports that the drive can be upgraded three more times, which I assumed means it's got three more partitions it can add. Also, mfsrestore was reporting that the restore wouldn't fit, which is clearly incorrect (even if the image can't be expanded). So I'm wondering if there's anything else that can cause those tools to fail.

As I said, I will fall back to doing the new upgrade, but it seems like this process should work, even though its a re-upgrade.

--- Eric


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## ETR (Mar 22, 2002)

And just for the sake of completeness -- I did the dd copy and it worked fine. 

The 160GB drive is seen as 130 hour TiVo, as is the 120 GB original. 

However mfsadd -x gives the error "Nothing to add!" even though mfsinfo still reports the drive can be upgraded three more times.

--- Eric

P.S. Thanks to whichever moderator moved this post into the correct forum!


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## Diana Collins (Aug 21, 2002)

The msinfo report of how many times a drive may be expanded is unreliable (it has always reported more upgrade opportunities for drives of mine I know for a fact have been expanded as far as possible).


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## ZeroTV (Nov 5, 2002)

I am having a similar problem and I am not sure what my options are or how to solve the problem.

I have one of the older series 2 Tivo's (ATT model). It was 40 hours that I upgraded to 80 hours then later upgraded to two 80GB drives for 179 hours. Recently problems started occuring and I determined a drive was dying (pausing, pixelation, reboots..etc) I got a single 250GB (Hitachi $50 after rebate from fry's) drive to replace both of them. I wanted to keep all my recordings and what not, so I chose the slow option from Hinsdale.

So when I run:
mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hda /dev/hdb | mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi - /dev/hdc
It reports back the 2 previous upgrades and uncompressed file size. (155K megabytes)
Restored failed: Backup target not large enough for entire backup by itself.

The only thing that doesn't look exactly right is when booting it never reports the drive sizes, it just reports the model numbers of the drives with no size at all. I have the CMOS set to manual for the IDE drive size, but the drive type is set to Auto. (ie LBA, Large, etc)

Couple notes. It looks like I only have 8 total partitions when looking at mfsinfo.
And it thinks I can do 2 more upgrades.
I used the standard BootCD that is linked from the Hinsdale HowTo.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?


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## Diana Collins (Aug 21, 2002)

Your first problem is that you can't use a "standard" boot CD with a 250GB drive - you need a LBA48 boot disk. The standard boot CD will only support a drive upto 137GB.

Your second problem is that when you combine 2 drives into one you need to sum the partitions on BOTH drives, and that total must be less than 16. 8 partitions seems pretty low - that's probably just the mfs partitions. You probably have at least another 7 partitions on the A drive. If that's correct, then you can copy to the 250GB drive, but you won't have the partitions available to further expand beyond the 160GB total.


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## ZeroTV (Nov 5, 2002)

When I do a mfsinfo it says the volume set contains 8 patitions and lists hda10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and hdb2 & 3. Is this not accurate?

You mention that I won't be able to get more than 160GB total, I assume this is due to the paritition limitation, is there anyway for me to get around this?


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## Diana Collins (Aug 21, 2002)

That's just the mfs partitions. The list indicates that you have 16 partitions already on the A drive, all of which must be copied to new larger drive, and 2 mfs partitions on the B drive, for a total 18 partitions. Therefore, you can not copy to one drive and preserve recordings, nevermind expanding beyond the existing 160GB.

Also, on a Series 1, you do know that you'll need to install a different Linux kernel to use drives over 137GB, right?

To use the large drive you would need to make a "minimal" copy (the -s 9999 parameter on mfsbackup) and restore that to the 250GB drive. The "minimal" copy would have 13 partitions, and the expansion would then get you back to 16, but the last two would fill the space from 40GB to 250GB. This will NOT preserve recordings.


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## ZeroTV (Nov 5, 2002)

I have a Series 2, its one of the early models though (one of the ATT versions) 

I thought since I had the Series 2 already that the kernel supported large drives already? maybe I read it wrong somewhere? The Tivo software on it now is the 7.2 or whatever version they are up to now. 

Eitherway, it sounds like there won't be any way for me to perserve my recordings as it currently stands. 

Can you clarify for me whether or not I need the LBA48 Boot CD since I already have a series 2?

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UPDATE: I went ahead an upgraded to the single 250GB HD, but since I didn't use the LBA48 boot CD I am only getting the 137GB usage out of the HD. What do I need to do to expand it all the way out to the full usageof the 250GB. I didn't see any threads in a quick search that dealt with just expanding the drives to take advantage of the extra space in place.

Thanks again.


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## Diana Collins (Aug 21, 2002)

Sorry, had your situation confused with another one involving a Series 1.

As you discovered, you need to boot with a LBA48 CD in order to expand to more than 137GB of disk space. At this point, the only way to expand to the full 250GB is to start over. Since you have already expanded from the original 40GB image to 137GB, you have 16 partitions on the drive again. You need re-restore the 40GB image after booting with the LBA48 CD.


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