# Upgrade TiVo HD drive with WinMFS - no space change



## CAPete (Feb 16, 2008)

I just used build 9.2 of WinMFS to copy my TiVo HD 160 GB drive to a new 1-TB drive (WD10EVCS). I used the instructions here and on the MFS site. 

The MFScopy procedure seemed to finish OK (in just under an hour, 2.5GB/minute via SATA). Though not mentioned in the instructions, when it finished a dialog box asked if I wanted to use the additional space on the new drive. I answered yes, and it said MFSadd was done.

But because both sets of instructions listed Mfsadd as an extra step, I tried it manually as well. Got a warning about modifying the TiVo disc, changed the disk selection to the new drive, and proceded. Still got the warning, and then an error message saying "nothing to do" (more or less). I also did MfsSuperSize, which indicated SuperSize was set.

When I plugged the drive into my TiVo everything seemed OK -- except that the capacity is still listed as 20 hours HD, same as the original disc.

I put the 1-TB drive back in my PC (now without the original 160GB drive to be sure I was modding the new drive) and used WinMFS to re-do MFSadd and MfsSuperSize again. This time it said "done" rather than "nothing to do". But again when I put it into my TiVo it still says 20 hours.

I also let it sit for a couple of hours, in case it takes a while for the TiVo to "notice" the new size -- but still the same. It also "phoned home" (via LAN) successfully during that time. It seems to record and play back fine. And on my PC WinMFS shows it being 1000 GB, so the drive itself seems OK.

Any thoughts on what might be going wrong? All the answers I could find to this problem suggest MFSadd hasn't been done -- but as far as I can tell (WinMFS's U/I is a bit cryptic!), I've done it twice. 

Thanks in advance for any advice.

- Pete


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## Jasper (Sep 4, 2001)

It sounds like when you did MFS Add the second time(you did it fine the first time) something screwed up. I would start over. Just skip the seperate MFS Add....


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## CAPete (Feb 16, 2008)

OK, I did that.

I also checked WinMFS's MSFinfo on the 1000 GB drive before and after the second copy-with-add & supersize exercise:
Before: "Total SA SD Hours: 165 Total DTV SD Hours: 144 18 % Free".
That's about what you'd expect for a 160 GB drive, I think.

After: "Total SA SD Hours: 1040 Total DTV SD Hours: 908 89 % Free".
That seems about right -- but still TiVo says "20 HD hours, or 184 SD hours".

More suggestions?

- Pete

Update: Hmm, it seems the disk looks OK (to MfsInfo) right after MFS copy & add are done. But after it's installed in the TiVo (and that's booted up and shut down, and the HD is re-connected to the PC), MfsInfo now sees it as being small, like the TiVo does. So it acts like the TiVo HD is un-doing the mfs add, or something. (More detail (the last few partitions' info) is at http://mfslive.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=900&p=4353#p4353.)

FWIW, the TiVo HD software version is 9.4-01-2-652.

- Pete


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## dwit (May 5, 2004)

Maybe just try doing a truncated back up/restore(no copying shows).

At the end of the restore, I believe it asks if you want to expand. Yes, of course. Then do the supersize step.

If this works, then I guess you'll have to decide if you can live with no copies, or if you want to redo and try mfscopy, expand, supsize again.


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## CAPete (Feb 16, 2008)

I'm still hoping to keep the recordings, so restoring the backup would be a last resort as a final answer. But as you suggest, it might be a useful experiment. (On the other hand I think Spike wrote that mfscopy was more robust than restore -- but I forget where or what version he was writing about.)

Are there other utilities that preserve content that folks have used successfully on TiVo HDs with the current software (9.4-01-2-652)?

Or for that matter, I've been assuming WinMFS has been used successfully with this TiVo HD software, for the upgrade from the original 160G drive to the 1TB WD10EVCS. Can anyone confirm?


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## mdbundy (Oct 5, 2005)

I'm going to be doing (or should I say "attempting"?) the same upgrade this week -- just waiting for my sata power cable to arrive (should come today). 

I always intended on doing the quick restore to validate that it worked and then doing the full backup afterwards.

I'll post my results ASAP.


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## Jasper (Sep 4, 2001)

I upgraded my HD Tivo with the exact same drive. It was a new tivo so I did not use the copy method, I made a backup and then restored it..... Took about 5 minutes total, no problems.


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## mdbundy (Oct 5, 2005)

Just an update. I upgraded my drive today, using the same drive mentioned, and backing up my programs. Took about an hour start to finish, and it worked.

System information is showing ~ 134 hours of HD capacity. Not quite as high as I thought it would be (was expecting closer to 160) but it should be good enough....


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## dwit (May 5, 2004)

mdbundy said:


> Just an update. I upgraded my drive today, using the same drive mentioned, and backing up my programs. Took about an hour start to finish, and it worked.
> 
> System information is showing ~ 134 hours of HD capacity. Not quite as high as I thought it would be (was expecting closer to 160) but it should be good enough....


Guess you didn't do the final, but distinct, "Supersize" step.


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## CAPete (Feb 16, 2008)

mdbundy said:


> Just an update. I upgraded my drive today, using the same drive mentioned, and backing up my programs. Took about an hour start to finish, and it worked.
> 
> System information is showing ~ 134 hours of HD capacity. Not quite as high as I thought it would be (was expecting closer to 160) but it should be good enough....


Thanks for the update. So, what's different about my system? Can you provide more detail?
* Same drive? (WD10EVCS)? (Mine reports WD10EVCS-63E0B0)
* Also a TiVo HD? What software version?
* WinMFS? What build (9.2?)

At Spike's suggestion I ran the WD (windows-based) diagnostic on my drive. The extended test says "pass" -- no bad sectors found.

Not sure what to try next -- maybe the Linux version of MFS tools?
Anyone have advice on settings (e.g. the swap (128) or -r value)? (WinMFS uses only -r2 => 4MB blocks; the Linux version lets you choose others.)


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## CAPete (Feb 16, 2008)

Success!

I was finally able to get my TiVo HD to see the extra space on my 1-TB WD10EVCS -- or at least most of it.

I'd tried copy 6 times with WinMFS (9.2 and 9.1, with and without SuperSize, and a couple of re-dos "just to be sure"). I also tried restoring the original backup (without recordings), as suggested by dwit.

In every case the drive looked OK right after the copy (or restore), but TiVo still saw 20 hours -- and when I put the drive back in my PC, WinMFS agreed it was again small. It also showed the last two partitions, including the new big one (added by MfsAdd?) had been replaced by one partition of type Apple_Free, named "Extra" -- presumably by the TiVo.

Last night I downloaded the Linux MFSLive image, and tried that. (Took a bit of head-scratching to figure out which drive was which; did *not* want to run the copy backwards ) That did work. The TiVo now shows 131 hours (no supersize, double-default swap and block sizes).

An MFSdump (using WinMFS) shows that the Linux tool added _3 partitions_, rather than the two added by WinMFS. The final partition is of type Apple_Free, named Extra -- just what TiVo has been changing the big partition to. So maybe TiVo thinks it needs the "Extra" partition?

I plan to try WinMFS's SuperSize, and probably to try the Linux copy again with the default block size (-r 2). But nice to finally see something besides "20 hours"!

Full details are at mfslive.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=900&p=4393#p4393.

Thanks for the various suggestions and other info. Not clear why WinMFS apparently worked for others, but not for me. Maybe Spike can figure it out.

---- Update 4:14 pm --
I reconnected the drive to my PC and used WinMFS's "supersize" option. Seemed like it registered, because when I quit WinMFS and tried it again, it said SS was already set. But (a) no difference in the MfsInfo dump before and after, and (b) more important, TiVo still says 131 HD hours. Anyone know if SuperSize works on a drive upgraded (copied) using the Linux tools?


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## entropy (Apr 1, 2002)

I just used WinMFS 9.3f (g? the US version) to upgrade an early model Series 3 WD hard drive to a Seagate 1.5TB 5900 RPM drive (not the 7200.x series, I don't know what they call this model.) So far it seems to be working. I was able to restart from the menu, play a bit of a show.

However, when it asked me if I wanted to enlarge my drive, of course I chose Yes. But nothing seemed to happen. I eventually cancelled, ran the command from the menu, and then got an alert that my drive had been enlarged. I did have to do something (I forget what) to get WinMFS to show the correct info for my drive.)

So there does seem to be a bug in the initial attempt to enlarge the drive after running mfscopy. However, the actual code seems to work.

As for supersize, I'm seeing 196 hours on what I believe is in practice a 1.35TB (?) drive, which seems to be 1.35x the numbers shown in the winmfs screenshots.

All in all, a success, I'd say. I remember having to do this with things like dd and netcat a few years ago... 20 hours to back up a 12G drive. This one was done in a tenth of that time. Hooray for spike and whoever else has contributed to this tool.

~ Kiran <[email protected]>


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## slutzo (Mar 4, 2008)

I'm sure CAPete is long past caring about this issue, but I was having the exact same symptoms and ran across this thread in my research. I never did find a solution online, but I did figure out how to fix the problem myself. Hopefully this information will help somebody else out some day.

First of all, it's not the TiVo that is invalidating the MfsAdd and MfsSupersize. It turns out that you don't have to put the drive back in the TiVo at all to replicate the issue. After running MfsAdd and MfsSupersize, you can simply power down your PC and start it up again. A quick peek at MfsInfo then shows that the drive has reverted its old 160GB capacity.

After trying a variety of different things, I eventually hit upon the idea of attaching the drive to a different SATA port. My motherboard, an ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe, has four SATA ports. There are two standard SATA ports built in to the south bridge, and two optional ports attached to an integrated Promise 20378 RAID controller.

I moved the drive from one of the optional ports -- where it had been all through the copy -- to one of the standard ones and tried again. This time the drive kept its larger capacity through a reboot, and after reattaching it to the TiVo and powering it up, all is well.

So what was going on? I dunno. If I were to venture a guess, I'd say that the Promise controller might have some sort of write cache on it. Perhaps the tiny bit of data WinMfs sends to the disk to remap the partition table and set the Supersize flag isn't enough to cause a cache flush. I would hope the OS would be smart enough to flush cache when you power down, but who knows?

Anyhoo, if you're experiencing this problem, try attaching the drive to another SATA port -- maybe even one attached to a different computer -- and try again. There's no need to re-copy everything, just do the MfsAdd and the MfsSupersize, reboot, and see what happens. It worked for me.


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