# Questions about upgrade while preserving recordings.



## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Hello, I want to upgrade my series 2 TiVo which contains the original factory drive (80 hours) with a new 300 GB Seagate drive I bought. Because of the problems I've heard with series 2 holding 2 drives, I thought I'd make it easier and replace the old drive, rather than add a second drive. (I'll keep the old drive and maybe use it for extra in my PC. Maybe use it to hold TiVo2Go shows.)

But my wife (it's her TiVo) really doesn't want to lose her shows, so I want to preserve recordings, so I'll need to transfer the data from the old drive to the new drive.

I'm reading the Hinsdale instructions and am confused by a certain step:



> Swap File: When increasing your total recording capacity (A+B drives) to over ~140GB (actual threshold number is likely just over 150GB for Series 1 Standalones and over 180GB for DirecTiVos and Series 2 units) the preferable method for upgrade should include a means to increase the swap file so that the built-in TiVo repair utility (GSOD) can complete if ever triggered (rare). Those upgrading, or planning on upgrading in the future, to these larger capacities should consider using the Mfs Tools backup/restore options (-s 127 command line parameter increases the swap) outlined in Step 10 in preference to using this dd copy method.


So it sounds like since my new drive is a big one (300 GB) that I should not use the dd copy method.

But as I read on in the instructions, it sounds like, if I understand correctly, they want me to backup the data from the old drive somewhere. (my PC's C: drive, maybe?), and then using mfsrestore to restore from their to my new big drive.

The backup step looks to be using a dd command, even though I think they told me not to use that command. Can somebody tell me which command I should be using? Also, can I not directly copy from the old drive to the new drive, rather than intermediately copying to my PC C drive? It's a lot of data to be putting to my PC, and I'm not sure I have enough free space for that.


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## classicsat (Feb 18, 2004)

You need to do the piped mfsbackup|restore. You can (and likely should) make a system backup.

You cannot backup with recordings, at least to a FAT32 drive.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

classicsat said:


> You need to do the piped mfsbackup|restore. You can (and likely should) make a system backup.
> 
> You cannot backup with recordings, at least to a FAT32 drive.


I'm told (by Hinsdale and other) that there is a way to preserve the old recordings. Are you saying this is not done via back and restore? By the way, is there any need to partition my new drive first, or does the MFS utilties take care of that automatically?


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## kroddy (Oct 31, 2001)

Use

mfsbackup -Tao /dev/hdX | mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -xzpi /dev/hdZ

where X is your source Tivo drive and Z is your new destination drive. The | symbol (shift & backslash), called "Pipe" tells mfsbackup to "pipe" its output directly into mfsrestore - no need for an intermediate storage place for your backup. No partioning/formatting necessary - mfsrestore takes care of everything.

Worked fine for my HR10-250 which became a HR10-750 in the early hours of this morning  . Took about 2.5 hours to copy the original 250GB drive to the new 750GB. Make sure you have DMA enabled otherwise you will be in for a long wait.

Making a system backup is of limited value these days since you can "InstantCake" any new drive for just a few bucks if you do have a disaster.


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## JamieP (Aug 3, 2004)

[edit: never mind. Some how I misread your first post and thought you had 80+300 now and wanted to replace it with a single large drive.

Follow wscannell's advice and use the Weaknees instructions.]


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## wscannell (Dec 7, 2003)

For more details, these instructions are good and are customizable to your situation: http://tivo.upgrade-instructions.com/index.php


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Thank you for these answers. I hope to do this soon, but my wife wants me to hold off until an evening that her To Do List isn't recording something. (I told her I want to do this in the evening, let it do its copy overnight, then reinstall the hard drive the next morning. Apparently her To Do List has many late nights booked up.)


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Gosh, I've just spend 5 hours trying everything I can think of to create a boot CD containing the MFS utilities. Whatever I do, the CD I write to won't boot. 

The last time I upgraded a TiVo I used a boot diskette instead of a boot CD, but that was when I had a small hard drive. The hard drive I'm trying to read now is 300 GB, and the boot diskette is saying 137GB, and I'm told it's because I need to use weaknees version of the boot CD. So here I am, futilely trying to make a boot CD. I can copy the ISO image to CD, but it won't boot. I tried using the Windows XP built in CD burning software, and then I tried downloading Nero, and do that.

Is there a diskette version I can use? I know my diskettes will boot, but my CDs won't.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Well, I finally got my bootable CD. I finally gave up and installed Nero on my other computer, and all of a sudden, I could see the individual files inside the ISO image copying, so evidently something was wrong with my other computer's CD burner. But then it would abort with some kind of error. I googled the error, and it suggested a bad CD. I kept putting in other CDs, tweaking the NERO options (e.g. writing speed, etc.), after after over a dozen CDs, one of them finally burned successfully.

6 hours of struggling to get a CD burned, I finally have one, and as I speak, my wife's old TiVo hard drive is having it's content copied onto the new HD. When it finishes, I'll try installing it into her TiVo.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

It's finished, and it worked.  My space was 80 hours, is now 340 hours. 

Thank you for your help. I agree that the Weaknees instructions were really the best/easy to follow. They ask you some questions (like what model you have, # source drives, # target drives, do you want to preserve old recordings, etc.), and once you answer these questions, on easy, clickable buttons, it gives you customized instructions for your situation. This piping you told me about was in those customized instructions.

I like the customized instructions, because I don't have wade through pages of N/A stuff, and it gets right to meat of what I need, giving me the exact commands I need for my situation. :up:


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## Gunnyman (Jul 10, 2003)

How long before her not deleting anything becomes an issue again, Tim?


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