# Some Help For A Mac Guy To Upgrade A TivoHD



## bracoh (Jan 9, 2003)

Ok, I got the TivoHD today. It's all set up. I have a 400 gig and the Tivo drive in SATA USB boxes. I'm on an Intel Mac and am able to boot from the Linux Boot CD from MFSLive. I'm a little confused on the correct Unix commands. I don't want to overwrite my internal drive. I have read the directions and am still confused. Any help would be much appreciated!


----------



## supasta (May 6, 2006)

This site makes things a little easier to understand:
http://tivo.upgrade-instructions.com/index.php


----------



## ciper (Nov 4, 2004)

Why not disconnect the internal drive if you are worried?


----------



## supasta (May 6, 2006)

ciper said:


> Why not disconnect the internal drive if you are worried?


An excellent suggestion!


----------



## bracoh (Jan 9, 2003)

ciper said:


> Why not disconnect the internal drive if you are worried?


Can't do that on an iMac.


----------



## bracoh (Jan 9, 2003)

supasta said:


> This site makes things a little easier to understand:
> http://tivo.upgrade-instructions.com/index.php


Thanks for the replies but weaknees doesn't have directions for the HD unit only the S3. I had already looked at them.


----------



## supasta (May 6, 2006)

bracoh said:


> Thanks for the replies but weaknees doesn't have directions for the HD unit only the S3. I had already looked at them.


Instructions for the HD and the S3 would be the same


----------



## bracoh (Jan 9, 2003)

supasta said:


> Instructions for the HD and the S3 would be the same


Thanks, I'll try it. I just wasn't sure about them being the same.


----------



## spike2k5 (Feb 21, 2006)

supasta said:


> Instructions for the HD and the S3 would be the same


Instructions are the same but mfstools won't work.

You will need the new mfstools updated just for Tivo HD.


----------



## ciper (Nov 4, 2004)

bracoh said:


> Can't do that on an iMac.


I don't believe you. I've disconnected the internal drive of my Mac Mini many times including to double the capacity.

edit:Noob  http://home.comcast.net/~woojo/DFFA53A0-F23D-4541-9015-481FD3B6532E/iMac_Disassembly.html

If you're not willing to do that then you can verify which disk is which using the command "pdisk -l /dev/hdX" and replace X with a b c or d. The Tivo drives will be obvious since they have 14+ partitions with strange FS types.
edit2: Your usb drives may show up as something like /dev/sdd I think.


----------



## bracoh (Jan 9, 2003)

ciper said:


> I don't believe you. I've disconnected the internal drive of my Mac Mini many times including to double the capacity.
> 
> edit:Noob  http://home.comcast.net/~woojo/DFFA53A0-F23D-4541-9015-481FD3B6532E/iMac_Disassembly.html
> 
> ...


The mac mini is much easier to get to the drive than an iMac. I will try your Unix commands though.


----------



## ciper (Nov 4, 2004)

Once the cd is done booting you can press shift-pgup and scroll through the messages to hopefully see what the drives were detected as. If you try to run pdisk against the CD drive you will probably get a segmentation fault. I know that with the MFSLive cd you can wait until the system is booted and then plug the USB device in and it will display the drive locations.

I've always disliked the LCD based iMacs and this makes the feeling even stronger. Having upgraded Apple laptops as well as the CRT iMacs I can tell you that the walkthrough I posted is just ridiculous. How do they expect someone to increase HD capacity without potentially breaking the system?


----------



## bracoh (Jan 9, 2003)

ciper said:


> Once the cd is done booting you can press shift-pgup and scroll through the messages to hopefully see what the drives were detected as. If you try to run pdisk against the CD drive you will probably get a segmentation fault. I know that with the MFSLive cd you can wait until the system is booted and then plug the USB device in and it will display the drive locations.
> 
> I've always disliked the LCD based iMacs and this makes the feeling even stronger. Having upgraded Apple laptops as well as the CRT iMacs I can tell you that the walkthrough I posted is just ridiculous. How do they expect someone to increase HD capacity without potentially breaking the system?


That's been my beef with Apple for a long time. I had a G5 iMac that was easily accessible. I probably changed the Hard Drive 5 or 6 times. The Intels are not. I wasn't willing to go through all of that just to do what I'm trying to do here. I could easily wait until the eSata port is activated but I'm home recovering from surgery so I've got the time. I'm heading in right now and will post an update when I'm done. Thanks again for all of the help!


----------



## bracoh (Jan 9, 2003)

Here's what I did: 
Booted from the bootcd
Turned on the case with the Tivo 160 in it. It showed up as sdc
Turned on the case with the 400 gig in it. It showed up as sdd (this was formatted as an OSX drive, but I thought it didn't matter
Typed in: backup -f 9999 -qso - /dev/sdc l restore -s 128 -xzpi -/dev/sdd the script I got from MFSLive

I keep getting an error: invalid option --x

edit: I figured what was wrong with the above command. I was using a lower case l after sdc. With that fixed i ran it again, the backup was successful but restore fails every time. I've tried sda and sdb

I also tried backup -qTao - /dev/sda | restore -s 128 -r 4 -xzpi - /dev/sdb, also from MFSLive. I get the same result every time. Backup is fine but restore fails every time. Anyone got any ideas of what I'm doing wrong?


----------



## Guy Kuo (Feb 10, 1999)

I would have expected the command to be

backup -qTao - /dev/sdc | restore -s 128 -xzpi - /dev/sdd 

with the original drive showing up as sdc and the new drive showing up as sdd


----------



## captain_video (Mar 1, 2002)

If you're using the MFSLive boot CD then make sure you're using the correct syntax. I haven't used it in a while but I seem to recall the syntax is slightly different than the ones used with MFSTools.


----------



## bracoh (Jan 9, 2003)

Guy Kuo said:


> I would have expected the command to be
> 
> backup -qTao - /dev/sdc | restore -s 128 -xzpi - /dev/sdd
> 
> with the original drive showing up as sdc and the new drive showing up as sdd


I swear I thought I had tried every combination but apparently I missed this one. I just did it and am sitting here with a TivoHD good for 51 hrs of HD or 480 SD. The whole thing took about 10 minutes.

Thanks for all of the help and I guess we can put this thread to rest!  :up:


----------



## Guy Kuo (Feb 10, 1999)

Very good. I had just started a test run on my MacBook (booted with the mfslive linux cd) to test this out to you.

The backup | restore process from a HDTivo 160 GB to a 250 WD is running now with the commands I gave you. Just make sure you set the source and destination drives correctly. Easiest is to boot up all the way. Plug in your source drive to the USB and note what it comes up as. Then, plug in your destination drive into the other USB port.

Yes, it works on a MacBook. The winMFS user interface is much nicer and probably safer, but at least Mac (intel) users have a means of doing the work.

I don't know how to do mount a Mac volume so you can do a truncated backup to your Mac drive. I'll leave that to real Mac and Linux user.

BTW the backup piped to restore looks to take about 40 minutes using a MacBook and USB to SATA adapters.


----------



## bracoh (Jan 9, 2003)

Guy, mine only took 10 minutes because I didn't have any recordings yet. I just got it set up with the Cable Cards today. That's why I wanted to get the larger drive in the unit before I started recording. Is there another command to expand the drive even more? I'm certainly not complaining about 51 hours of HD but if I can get more out of this 400 gig drive, I say why not.

I tried to get it to work through Parallels and Vista but couldn't get the WinFS to see the drives. The Linux worked great once I got the correct commands (with your help!)


----------



## Guy Kuo (Feb 10, 1999)

Mine had some recordings. So, yes longer. I forgot that little tidbit.

winMFS has a command to "supersize" but I don't think that is in the mfsLive linux Cd.


----------

