# How long should it take? (HR10-250 upgrade)



## litzdog911 (Oct 18, 2002)

Finally got around to upgrading my HR10-250 HD DirecTivo, replacing the original 250GB drive with a new Seagate 400GB drive. I figured after two years with no problems that now might be a good time to swap out that original drive and put it in a safe place.

Anyway, I've done several Tivo upgrades, but never an HR10-250, and I don't recall the process being so SLOW. I chose the option to preserve my existing recordings, using the command

_mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hdc | mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -xzpi - /dev/hdb_

Everything started out fine .... 
4% completed after 1 hour
7% completed after 2 hours
9% completed after 3 hours
10% completed after 4 hours
...
17% completed after 14 hours!

Every hour that passes the process is getting slower and slower! Is this normal? At this rate it's looking like it could take several DAYS to complete!

I'm using the same old 300MHz Pentium II PC that I've used for past Tivo upgrades, but this is the largest single drive upgrade I've done. Maybe this PC is just too slow? I know that it supports DMA, so I didn't expect it to be so slow.

I guess I should just be patient. Or perhaps give up on preserving my existing recordings. Any words of encouragement or wisdom are greatly appreciated!


----------



## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

I've had instances where a backup and restore took way longer than usual for no particular reason. I just rebooted the PC and started over and it ran fine after that. I don't do direct disk copies as I usually clear any recordings off my drive before upgrading them. I can do a full backup and restore in about 30 minutes or less, regardless of the drive size.


----------



## SteelersFan (Sep 7, 2004)

I just did an upgrade from 40GB to 400GB, saving recordings and it took about 6 hours. I have a 3GHz pc running Win XP.


----------



## JamieP (Aug 3, 2004)

You should be able to copy ~ 1GB per minute, so a 250GB drive should take 4-5 hours.

Make sure you have dma enabled (run *hdparm -d1 /dev/hdX* on each drive). Make sure the source and destination disks are on different ide channels.


----------



## litzdog911 (Oct 18, 2002)

JamieP said:


> You should be able to copy ~ 1GB per minute, so a 250GB drive should take 4-5 hours.
> 
> Make sure you have dma enabled (run *hdparm -d1 /dev/hdX* on each drive). Make sure the source and destination disks are on different ide channels.


Thanks Jamie! That's about the rate I had expected, and it seemed to start out that fast. But it's just getting slower and slower. Now, after 13 hours, the rate has dropped to 3GB/hr and it's only 17% completed, so it could take another 3 days!

I thought when I scanned the MFSTools boot screens that I saw DMA enabled, but I didn't run those hdparm commands. I do have each drive on different IDE channels (hdb and hdc).

What's the "graceful" way to stop the restore process now, so I can start over after making sure that DMA is enabled? I've never stopped one of these mid-stream.


----------



## litzdog911 (Oct 18, 2002)

Update ....

Used _CTRL-C_ to stop the current restore/upgrade process since I don't want to wait 4 days.

Rebooted MFSTools, used the _hpparm -d1 /dev/hdX _ to be sure that DMA is enabled on each drive and started the process over again. I don't think it's running any faster, but will give it an hour or two to be sure.

If it's still real slow, I guess my options are ....

* try a faster PC
* don't preserve my existing recordings

Any other hints and tips are greatly appreciated!


----------



## JamieP (Aug 3, 2004)

litzdog911 said:


> Update ....
> 
> Used _CTRL-C_ to stop the current restore/upgrade process since I don't want to wait 4 days.
> 
> ...


It does seem odd that it gets slower the longer it runs. I don't have any good explanation for that. *dmesgs* (if the command is available on the cd you used) lists kernel messages and might indicate if anything strange is going on, such as disk errors.

You could try a dd copy. dd itself doesn't give you any progress information, but ddrescue does.


----------



## litzdog911 (Oct 18, 2002)

Update ....

Well, the second time around the restore/upgrade process seemed to run quicker, so I left it alone for a couple of hours. But when I came back the process had stopped with the following errors ....

_Unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address fffffff
[bunch of stuff, memory addresses?]
Code: Bad EIP value
Segmentation fault_

I'm not sure what these mean. It's possible that the BIOS in my old Pentium II is not LBA48 compatible enough. Its BIOS doesn't recognize the full drive sizes (stopping at 8GB), but MFSTools recognized the correct sizes.

Anyway, I decided to simply restore without preserving my recordings. That process only took 10 minutes and so far the Tivo seems to be working fine with the new drive.


----------

