# WinMFS Issues -- Can't Find Drives 2nd Time Around



## [NG]Owner (Dec 19, 2006)

This is a cross post from the WinMFS forums, I thought I'd see if I could get help here, too.

This is not going well for me.

I'm upgrading a TivoHD from a Seagate 500 GB drive to a WD 1TB EADS drive using Windows XP patched to the latest release and a pair of USB to SATA adapters. I had planned to use MFSLive 1.4 to set the WD AAM to 128, then WinMFS to handle the upgrade.

Booted into MFSLive 1.4 first. Saw through the scrolling text that the system had found both drives. Couldn't set AAM. Kept getting Invalid errors (I remember one of the errors being invalid argument, there was another invalid something, but I don't remember it) regardless of whether I started with the hdparm command or the mount command. Oh well, I figured, I'll just live with the drive being a little louder. Besides, I could never figure out how scroll back up through the boot text to figure out which drive was SDA and which was SDB. So how do you scroll back up to see? And what's the difference between selecting 1 and 3 from the MFSLive boot menu?

Gave up on MFSLive, and switched over to WinMFS. Set everything up for the copy and away she went. It was cake. ETA reported as about 10 hours. Let her run overnight. This morning came back downstairs, it was complete with a dialogue box: "Do you want to expand?" Hell yeah I thought. I clicked Yes, and bam, the application failed with a suggestion that I send an error report to Microsoft. I'd seen others write about this, and figured oh well, I'll just start the process over, hopefully the error won't happen again.

Restarted the application and no dice.

Neither drive shows up in the Select Drive window. I check Show Mounted Drives. Nothing shows up. I unplug and replug the USB ports. Ba-dong. Ba-ding. Windows recognized that something is being unplugged and replugged. WinMFS doesn't. Go into Control Panel, and find both USB drives in the Control Panel. Disable them, then enable them from the Control Panel. No help. WinMFS doesn't see them. I switch USB ports. Still no love. I download a new copy of WinMFS and try again. No dice. No matter what I do I can't seem to get WinMFS to recognize that there are ANY drives in my system.

So in a nutshell, I can't seem to get MFSLive to work; none of the commands register. WinMFS did once work, but now doesn't. There's nothing wrong with the adapters, as it appears they worked once, and while booting in MFSLive the drives are seen, and they are seen in XP. Where do I go from here? Any advice?

[NG]Owner


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## rbtravis (Aug 9, 2005)

Instantcake from DVRupgrade will fix your problem. I got the same message about expanding drive size and after saying yes, nothing worked. Instantcaked the same drive and all is fine. Well worth the $20.00


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## [NG]Owner (Dec 19, 2006)

Problem is, I want to save the recordings on the 500GB drive. Instant Cake doesn't help me there ....

Also, this is the answer I got from Spike from his forum, along with my further questions.



NGOwner said:


> spike said:
> 
> 
> > You cannot set AAM using USB to SATA interface.
> ...


[NG]Owner


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## [NG]Owner (Dec 19, 2006)

I thought I'd close the loop on this one. A very strange sequence of events.

It appears that the reason WinMFS didn't see the drives was because my system became infected with a rootkit. A rootkit that wasn't there when WinMFS began its run, but was before WinMFS completed its magic. It appears that the infection occured after WinMFS started, but before it finished (I am assuming that because WinMFS saw the two drives intially). And that may have been why WinMFS crashed with an error when I initially clicked yes to the expand dialogue box.

It took several days to rid my system of the rootkit (Win32/Cryptor) and the other malware it bootstrapped, but my system is now appears by all accounts to be running fine, despite warnings about restore points still containing Win32/Cryptor references from the anti-virus program I obtained.

After I cleaned the system, WinMFS ran fine, too. It saw both drives again, and I just completed two 500 GB -> 1TB upgrades, expand dialogue box and all.

[NG]Owner


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## beequick (Mar 23, 2008)

Also, try copying to the desktop and run WINMFS as the administrator.


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