# Dual drive 2TB Series 3 (1 drive failing)...NEED HELP



## jhill1977 (Feb 19, 2007)

***UPDATE***

The primary internal drive in my dual drive 2TB Series 3 is on the way out. Before the drive totally dies, I'd like to copy the contents to a new 1TB drive. I only have one spare 1TB Seagate drive lying around. Is there a way to be able to simply make a mirror image copy using MFSLive or WInMFS of the existing primary drive, and then connect up my existing 1TB external, or do I need to have a PAIR of new 1TB drives to complete the task at hand? WinMFS seems to only want me to allow me to copy from the existing 2TB pair to a NEW 2TB pair of drives. HELP...!!!

***UPDATE***

Well I managed to find another SPARE 1TB Seagate drive, so I have a pair of new 1TB drives ready to put into service. That being said, what is the best way for me to get all my exiisting recordings over with the highest chance of success? I'm thinking WinMFS is my best bet. Overall the existing internal drive still works well, but I have noticed a few freezes during recent recordings..and the Kickstart 54 SMART test indicated a read element failure on the internal drive. 

Thanks..

Justin


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## ThAbtO (Apr 6, 2000)

Since Tivo stores its recording on BOTH drives at once, when you divorce the drives, the recordings are lost, or unallocatable. If you want to save your recordings, simply transfer them over to your PC. Transfer them back in when you have replaced the malfunctioning drive.


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## Soapm (May 9, 2007)

If your doing all this you should look for a single 2TB drive which will save you from that divorce business...

However, I understood what you mean about mirroring the drive and in theory it should work but I don't know of an application that can mirror your drive like that.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

jhill1977 said:


> ***UPDATE***
> 
> The primary internal drive in my dual drive 2TB Series 3 is on the way out. Before the drive totally dies, I'd like to copy the contents to a new 1TB drive. I only have one spare 1TB Seagate drive lying around. Is there a way to be able to simply make a mirror image copy using MFSLive or WInMFS of the existing primary drive, and then connect up my existing 1TB external, or do I need to have a PAIR of new 1TB drives to complete the task at hand? WinMFS seems to only want me to allow me to copy from the existing 2TB pair to a NEW 2TB pair of drives. HELP...!!!
> 
> ...


The MFS Live cd has the command line utility

dd

and another command line utility

dd_rescue

which pretty much will do everything

dd

will do, and then some, and is a little easier to use, and, unlike

dd

will show you what's going on if you include the "verbose" option

-v

You can use it to copy one drive to another of equal or greater capacity, and it has options that can help it copy "problem" drives, which apparently you have.

There's another utility out there called

ddrescue

or

GNU ddrescue

but it's not on the MFS Live cd, as far as I know. I mention it here so that you won't be confused when you go googling to learn how to use

dd

or

dd_rescue

All three copy bytes without regard to what's in them, so it doesn't matter if it's a TiVo drive or a drive out of a PC or a Mac or whatever.

If you copy to a drive with greater capacity, it'll still have the boot and partition information of the source drive and so will act smaller than it is if you don't do anything else. There are times when that can be a good thing.


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## dianebrat (Jul 6, 2002)

Soapm said:


> If your doing all this you should look for a single 2TB drive which will save you from that divorce business...


An original S3 can not take a 2TB single drive, the next gen TivoHD can.
The preferred full capacity setup on an original S3 is 2x1TB


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## Soapm (May 9, 2007)

dianebrat said:


> An original S3 can not take a 2TB single drive, the next gen TivoHD can.
> The preferred full capacity setup on an original S3 is 2x1TB


Didn't know that but wasn't it once believed a TivoHD (not XL) couldn't take a 2TB? That's whats in the faq. I'm just wondering if anyone tried with the tools available today???


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## dianebrat (Jul 6, 2002)

Soapm said:


> Didn't know that but wasn't it once believed a TivoHD (not XL) couldn't take a 2TB? That's whats in the faq. I'm just wondering if anyone tried with the tools available today???


Yes. this comes up very frequently, the TivoHD can use the tools developed for the Premiere to allow it to take advantage of a single 2TB drive, the Series 3 does not have that same capability. At this time there is no user accessible way to get a single 2TB drive in an S3, although several aftermarket sources have done it.


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## jhill1977 (Feb 19, 2007)

Thank you for the recommendations. One quick question, should I be able to copy my single failing drive to a second drive of equal size? Also, can anyone provide help with the command line syntax for dd or dd_rescue. I'm definitely not LINUX savvy, and I don't want to inadvertently copy the drives backwards.



unitron said:


> The MFS Live cd has the command line utility
> 
> dd
> 
> ...


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

jhill1977 said:


> Thank you for the recommendations. One quick question, should I be able to copy my single failing drive to a second drive of equal size? Also, can anyone provide help with the command line syntax for dd or dd_rescue. I'm definitely not LINUX savvy, and I don't want to inadvertently copy the drives backwards.


I do believe I said something about "...when you go googling to learn how to use..."

Actually, dd_rescue has an option to let you copy the drives backwards.

By which I mean it starts reading the source drive at the end of it and writing that to the end of the target drive.

It refers to that as doing it in reverse, which is why the option is

-r

Generally this works best on drives of the exact same size/capacity, and can sometimes be the better way to rescue stuff from an ailing drive.

What you are concerned about, I'm sure, is overwriting the source drive with whatever is on the target drive.

The dd utility, which has roots that go back further than UNIX, uses a syntax different from most UNIX/Linux commands, and you'd probably be better off to avoid it

The dd_rescue syntax is basically

dd_rescue options source target

where options are designated by a leading hyphen.

If you just said

dd_rescue /dev/hda /dev/hdb

it would start reading the source drive, in this case the device attached as master to the primary PATA/IDE controller and it would write what it read to the device attached as the slave to the primary IDE controller.

If you said

dd_rescue -v /dev/hda /dev/hdb

you'd get the same thing, with a lot more information on the screen as it was happening, the "v" standing for "verbose".

If you do

dd_rescue -h

or dd_rescue -?

you'll get the small help file, which is basically the syntax structure I mentioned earlier and a list of options.


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## Mr. E (May 18, 2008)

I had the exact same situation a few months back with my TiVo HD (a 1TB internal + 1TB external upgrade from the stone ages before 2 TB drives even existed). I used dd_rescue on the MFSLive boot CD to make bitwise image copies of both disks to new AV rated 1TB drives, and everything worked like a charm. 

Since we're talking about the internal+external upgrades, does anyone know if there's a solution that would allow me to combine a 1 TB internal and 1 TB external to a single 2 TB internal? It would be nice to eliminate that second point of potential failure.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

Mr. E said:


> I had the exact same situation a few months back with my TiVo HD (a 1TB internal + 1TB external upgrade from the stone ages before 2 TB drives even existed). I used dd_rescue on the MFSLive boot CD to make bitwise image copies of both disks to new AV rated 1TB drives, and everything worked like a charm.
> 
> Since we're talking about the internal+external upgrades, does anyone know if there's a solution that would allow me to combine a 1 TB internal and 1 TB external to a single 2 TB internal? It would be nice to eliminate that second point of potential failure.


I think that would have to start with figuring out exactly how TiVo spreads a single show over both drives to know what it looks for when it puts the pieces back together.


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## Soapm (May 9, 2007)

unitron said:


> I think that would have to start with figuring out exactly how TiVo spreads a single show over both drives to know what it looks for when it puts the pieces back together.


Sounds easier to copy the shows to a PC then move them back to the Tivo after the upgrade. But sometimes its fun just learning...


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

Soapm said:


> Sounds easier to copy the shows to a PC then move them back to the Tivo after the upgrade. But sometimes its fun just learning...


The catch, of course, if is those shows have the no-copy bit set.

A problem that only came along with digital channels and S3s.


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## Mr. E (May 18, 2008)

unitron said:


> I think that would have to start with figuring out exactly how TiVo spreads a single show over both drives to know what it looks for when it puts the pieces back together.


Thanks, I did do a little more looking around last night, and it seems that the TiVo HD spreads individual recordings across both disks, so a recombine may be impossible. Not a big deal... I'm thinking I might eventually upgrade to a Premiere Elite anyway, once 4 TB AV drives are out and there is a DIY upgrade solution to a 4TB internal Premiere.


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## Soapm (May 9, 2007)

unitron said:


> The catch, of course, if is those shows have the no-copy bit set.
> 
> A problem that only came along with digital channels and S3s.


Does the no copy bit effect MRV or just Tivo ToGo?


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

Soapm said:


> Does the no copy bit effect MRV or just Tivo ToGo?


As far as I know, if the bit is set, you can't copy it from the TiVo on which it was recorded to either a computer or another TiVo or anything else as a TiVo recording, or any other kind of digital file.

I suppose you can go from the red, white, yellow RCA line out jacks to a VCR and make an analog tape of it.


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## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

dianebrat said:


> An original S3 can not take a 2TB single drive, the next gen TivoHD can.
> The preferred full capacity setup on an original S3 is 2x1TB


You can use 1.5TB drives and get 1.3TB usable space on each.


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