# Imaging a Series 2 disk



## gmcc (Feb 11, 2006)

I am posting this knowing it's pretty specific to Acronis True Image and thinking the odds are maybe small that anyone knows the answer, but ya never know.

I've had my series 2 box for a good while now and decided it was probably a good idea to make a backup image of the drive to keep on hand for when the drive finally dies.

I popped it out of the Tivo box and put it in a USB2 drive carrier and booted to the Acronis boot CD. While Acronis could see the disk, it thought the disk was empty so wouldn't allow it to be imaged. As a second test I put the drive in as a slave in a pc and tried again, with the exact same results.

I use this s'ware to back up Linux disks at work (mail server etc.) without a problem. Does Tive do something special to their disks to trip up imaging s'ware like this or is there something else going on here that I haven't thought of yet?

George


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## classicsat (Feb 18, 2004)

They don't use the partitioning system PCs use. 

If you can do a sector image.

Otherwise, it is recommended you use MFStools, which is designed to recognize TiVo partitions and treat them appropriately.


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## HomeUser (Jan 12, 2003)

You can make a "binary" backup using Ghost, DriveImage or Acronis. These programs are not able to read the TiVo partitions so they can only make a binary sector by sector backup. The backup includes every byte used or unused on the drive and because video does not compress very much the resulting backup file will be almost the same size as the TiVo's drive.

Here is your chance to try the new WinMFS TiVo backup software that runs on Windows.


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## gmcc (Feb 11, 2006)

HomeUser said:


> You can make a "binary" backup using Ghost, DriveImage or Acronis.


I didn't see that as an option in my software, but it dawned on me just now that I don't have the exact same version of Acronis at home as I have at work. So that may explain why I can do a Linux disk backup at work and not at home. I'll investigate that tomorrow.

George


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## HomeUser (Jan 12, 2003)

I have Acronis True Image Home V10. Make and boot from the CD click the check box next to the drive then next. 

Using Acronis and the binary backup is not the recommended or best way to backup you might as well just mirror the drive instead of storing 80G of backup image files. With the mirrored drive backup the drive is ready to plug in if needed. 

What I did for my TiVos was use the free MFSTools (now MFSLive) and copied the original TiVo drive to a new (much larger) drive using the MFSTools expand option now I have 320 hours of recording space on my 40 hr Series2 TiVo. The original 40G drive is safely stored away. I also made several small (without saving the recordings less then 200M) backup images that I burned to a CD.


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## gmcc (Feb 11, 2006)

So what would be the drive size limit for doing this in order for the Tivo to actually use the added space?


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## HomeUser (Jan 12, 2003)

gmcc said:


> So what would be the drive size limit for doing this in order for the Tivo to actually use the added space?


 Some say the limit for the Series2 is about 2 TeraBytes. 1TB EIDE drives are way out of my budget so the max size is what you can afford. The sweet spot was 500G that may of changed I have see some really good deals on 750G drives lately. For the Series2 TiVo be sure the drive is an EIDE (PATA) type drive the spindle speed (RPM) or the cache size is not important when it is used in the TiVo.


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## gmcc (Feb 11, 2006)

HomeUser said:


> 1TB EIDE drives are way out of my budget...


Price would be my limiting factor as well. I'll probably put his on my 'to do' list.


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## gmcc (Feb 11, 2006)

HomeUser said:


> Here is your chance to try the new WinMFS TiVo backup software that runs on Windows.


So from my bit of reading around here, am I correct in that I can't tell Acronis that I'm installing a new larger drive and let it just proportionally enlarge the partitions and end up with any more program storage?

(in the case where I'd double or so the physical HD size)

George


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## HomeUser (Jan 12, 2003)

gmcc said:


> So from my bit of reading around here, am I correct in that I can't tell Acronis that I'm installing a new larger drive and let it just proportionally enlarge the partitions and end up with any more program storage?
> 
> (in the case where I'd double or so the physical HD size)
> 
> George


 You are correct, Acronis TI can only make a 1:1 binary copy.

MFSTools is what you need for backup, copying and/or changing the size of TiVo drives. MFSLive is a new version of MFSTools with several fixes and some extras. There is an Interactive Command Generator for MFSLive that can help if you use the command line version boot CD. There is an even newer Windows version that I linked to before I have not had the opportunity to use the Windows version yet.


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## gmcc (Feb 11, 2006)

HomeUser said:


> You are correct, Acronis TI can only make a 1:1 binary copy.
> 
> MFSTools is what you need for backup, copying and/or changing the size of TiVo drives.


I certainly can't argue about the Acronis business because I've never tried to do it. It isn't that easy to find specific specifics on the Acronis help web site(s) but I did find the following statements with respect to Acronis 10 Home:

-----
Supported File Systems
 FAT16/32, NTFS, Linux Ext2, Ext3, ReiserFS, and Linux SWAP
 Special sector-by-sector support for other partitions and corrupted file
systems

Acronis® True Image 10 Home now includes the full capabilities of Acronis® Migrate Easy, the disk cloning and disk deployment solution.
-----

And under the Migrate Easy docs:

-----
Partition Management

Resizes transferred partitions to match new hard disk size;
-----

So on the surface it would appear that it could do what I was thinking, depending on exactly what sort of file system the Tivo uses. Is it not one of either Ext2 or 3?

George


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## HomeUser (Jan 12, 2003)

TiVo uses several partitions the un-hacked TiVo has 11 of them a combo of EXT2, Linux Swap and Modified Apple MFS partitions. Another problem is depending on the model of TiVo if it is one using a non Intel processor then the hard drive is written byte reversed. Acronis can not do what you want the Linux tools will.


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## gmcc (Feb 11, 2006)

HomeUser said:


> Acronis can not do what you want the Linux tools will.


OK... I'm sold.


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