# Pathetic question - please help



## lxjenkins (Apr 2, 2006)

I have an incredibly stupid question, so bear with me.

I'm running a Dell Dimension 4700. I have a single IDE cable (with two IDE connections, one being used by my CD Drive). I also have a SATA drive. Because I'm unable to connect both the Tivo IDE drive and my new 300gb IDE drive at the same time (due to only 1 free IDE connector), how can I go about upgrading my tivo?

Is there a way to get around having to use the CD drive? Or can I create a partition on my existing SATA drive to act as a repository for the data and then disconnect the tivo drive, connect my new drive, and transfer the data over to my new drive?

Please help. Thanks!


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## lxjenkins (Apr 2, 2006)

Ok, I think I've figured it out, but am running into another problem.

I've connected my tivo drive to my remaining IDE connector. Original hard drive (with fat32 partition) is SATA and CD Drive via the other IDE connector. I boot from the weaknees disc. 

My CD Drive is hda
My tivo Drive is hdb
My hd with fat 32 partition is hde

give it the command:

mount /dev/hde1 /mnt

However, I get the following error message:

"special device /dev/hde1 does not exist"

Any ideas?


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## dbish (Aug 30, 2004)

lxjenkins said:


> Ok, I think I've figured it out, but am running into another problem.
> 
> I've connected my tivo drive to my remaining IDE connector. Original hard drive (with fat32 partition) is SATA and CD Drive via the other IDE connector. I boot from the weaknees disc.
> 
> ...


I don't think it will recognize the sata drive via the boot cd. I believe it needs all HD's to be ide.


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## lxjenkins (Apr 2, 2006)

dbish said:


> I don't think it will recognize the sata drive via the boot cd. I believe it needs all HD's to be ide.


So there's no workaround out there that would allow me to do without the the CD drive?


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## Netbudda (Mar 3, 2005)

lxjenkins said:


> So there's no workaround out there that would allow me to do without the the CD drive?


I believe you need a PATA drive and not a SATA drive.


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## lxjenkins (Apr 2, 2006)

Netbudda said:


> I believe you need a PATA drive and not a SATA drive.


What if I used a USB floppy drive and booted MFStools off of that? That would free up a total of two IDE connections.


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## HomeUser (Jan 12, 2003)

Which Boot CD are you using? The SATA drive will probably be emulated as a SCSI device /dev/sda check the device id from the partition table list, type cat /proc/partitions from the Linux command line. If this does not help you can use almost any "run from CD" Linux find one with support for your HW. I carry DSL Linux it can be configured to boot and run from a CD or USB drive.

The Boot Floppy does not have a LBA kernel will not support drives larger then 137G


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## lxjenkins (Apr 2, 2006)

HomeUser said:


> Which Boot CD are you using? The SATA drive will probably be emulated as a SCSI device /dev/sda check the device id from the partition table list, type cat /proc/partitions from the Linux command line. If this does not help you can use almost any "run from CD" Linux find one with support for your HW. I carry DSL Linux it can be configured to boot and run from a CD or USB drive.
> 
> The Boot Floppy does not have a LBA kernel will not support drives larger then 137G


Homeuser, thanks for the help. Although I have two questions:

1.) After typing "cat /proc/partitions" what am I looking for? If my SATA drive is emulated as a SCSI drive how can about go about backing up my tivo drive to it and then from the sata drive to the new drive? I apologize, but this is my first time upgrading my drive / working in linux.

2.) If I use the floppy to upgrade to a 300gb drive, will it not work at all or only recognize 137gb of it?


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## classicsat (Feb 18, 2004)

I'd do one of two things:

1: Get an SATA capable linux and intall it on the SATA HDD or a thumb drive, add mfstools.

2: Put the mfstools CD on a bootable thumb drive.

3: Get a DOS bootable FAT32 IDE HDD, and use loadlin to boot the mfstools Linux.


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## HomeUser (Jan 12, 2003)

> 1.) After typing "cat /proc/partitions" what am I looking for? If my SATA drive is emulated as a SCSI drive how can about go about backing up my tivo drive to it and then from the sata drive to the new drive? I apologize, but this is my first time upgrading my drive / working in linux.


 You should see a list of partitions for for each drive that Linux knows about

It looks something like this for my first EIDE drive (/dev/hda) 
major minor #blocks name 
3 0 30026600 hda 
3 1 522081 hda1 
3 2 1 hda2



> 2.) If I use the floppy to upgrade to a 300gb drive, will it not work at all or only recognize 137gb of it?


 Yes it will only see 137G of the 300G hard drive you need to boot with a LBA48 kernel


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## lxjenkins (Apr 2, 2006)

Thanks for the help.

One last thing, could someone send me the link to the ISO that contains the floppy boot folder...I can't seem to find it.


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## HomeUser (Jan 12, 2003)

It used to be here  Tiger's Original Disk site seems to be down or maybe it was moved. PM me and I can E-Mail it to you it is a zip file about 1.5meg.


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## codespy (Jan 7, 2006)

Continuing on with another pathetic question-

Cannot get anywhere with my HP m1195c. My 40gig Tivo drive connected to IDE port shows up as third channel on bios, no matter what settings I use. I am sure the image is gone now, but I have all necessary tools to make this work (I believe) according to posts. I do have backup drives and a 6.2 image on cd. I also have boot disks that give me the linux prompt, but I am stuck from here on out. 

Should I seek an older computer or do I stand a chance on this one. Thanks for any help. I have done the search to no avail. Computer illiteracy is running rampant here.


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## HomeUser (Jan 12, 2003)

Codespy, are you having problems identifying which Linux device your TiVo Drive is? From the Linux prompt type dmesg | grep ide this should help you identify where Linux labeled your IDE devices. Use mfsinfo /dev/hd? to verify the device is actually a valid TiVo drive (replace the ? with the device letter identified above).


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## Spenner (Mar 28, 2006)

I also have a Dell 4700 and recently upgraded my TiVo. I have the same config of boot drive is SATA and only one IDE chain for the CDROM and TiVo drive.

When you reboot your computer, use the F2 key to access the BIOS SETUP menu. Under DRIVES there's an option for SATA OPERATION. You have to change that option from NORMAL to COMBINATION. Then when you boot from the CD, LINUX will correctly see and use the SATA FAT32 disk.

You'll backup your TiVo drive to the FAT32 disk, shutdown, swap in your new big TiVo drive for the original TiVo drive, startup, and restore from the FAT32 to the new TiVo.

One catch, though: you can't backup your existing recordings with this method, only the "base" TiVo backup which has the software and all of your settings. The reason is that FAT32 has a filesize limit of 2GB, so if you try to backup your programs it will crap out after 2GB.

And remember, DON'T BOOT TO WINDOWS WITH YOUR TIVO DRIVE ATTACHED!


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