# What makes a "better" TiVo drive, MFSLive linux tools or WinMFS?



## rlcarr (Jan 18, 2003)

Leaving aside all the ease of use, OSS or not, hardware availability, etc. issues (and I know they aren't trivial) and looking only at the final "product" of the re-imaged/restored drive that's going into the TiVo, which tool is the better one to use?

For example (and I may well have been misreading the thread!) I'm under the impression that WinMFS will resize partition(s) to make the extra space available when you're doing a restore+expand and thus not use up one of the partition slots (allowing a future expansion), whereas MFSLive will simply add a new partition to make that space available. So (assuming I didn't misunderstand this all) that would be a place where WinMFS produces a better "product".

That's the kind of stuff I'm looking to compare/contrast them on.


----------



## rbtravis (Aug 9, 2005)

If you are using www.mfslive.org's version upon which Spike fixed the problems with prior versions the the answer is winMFS which Spike also wrote. It was designed to be a improvement. Be aware that there are older version of MFSlive out there which could end in disaster. Also winMFS requires Windows XP Pro SP 2 or higher.


----------



## ciper (Nov 4, 2004)

rlcarr said:


> I'm under the impression that WinMFS will resize partition(s)


That is true but you were slightly misled. 
So the TiVoHD (for example) has 13 partitions used from the factory. The partition table used by TiVo can have a max of 16. Any MFS region (video) needs two partitions. Meaning any expansion will add 2 partitions to the drive that already has 13 for a total of 15. You can't add anymore partitions.

That is why it expands on future increases.

Back to the original question neither are really any different. The only important factors I can think of is that WinMFS supports supersizing (not necessary but nice to have) and can limit partition sizes to 1tb which is absolutely necessary on all TiVo's that don't have a kernel hacked specifically to handle large partitions.

Be aware that backup images are not compatible between the two.


----------



## rlcarr (Jan 18, 2003)

ciper said:


> Be aware that backup images are not compatible between the two.


That I did not know. Thanks for the warning!

Because of my hardware config (linux box with SATA and a Windows laptop without any SATA/eSATA) and the slowness of USB, I think I'll do the full backup/restore on the linux box with Spike's latest MFSLive boot disk and then do image backups on both systems so I have both kind of images for future use.

Is it true that once you do a full backup/restore with MFSLive boot disk you can then use WinMFS to supersize it? (And if you do that, do you want to wait until the drive has been supersized before making images of it?)


----------

