# Series 2, post upgrade, constant rebooting



## firstmagic (Feb 7, 2002)

I have a series 2 TCD240040 (comes stock with the single 40GB hd) running 7.2.1. It's been running fine for almost 2 years.

I just did a storage upgrade, using the lba48 weaknees cd/mfs tools.

I replaced the stock drive with 2 new seagate 250GB drives (my understanding is that the series 2 standalones running 7.1 or greater have an lba48 kernel). I wanted to preserve my existing shows, so I ran the "mfsbackup .... | mfsrestore .... " command. It took several hours to run, as expected, and all the output looked appropriate. No reported errors.

After placing the new drives in the unit and powering it up (lid still off), it never fully boots up, however. It gets past the grey 'powering up' screen and gets to the orange screen with the giant TiVo mascott claiming 'almost there. just a few minutes more...'. It stays there for a minute or so, and then reboots, starting the process over again.

I watched it do this about 3 or 4 times before I powered it off.

Any clues?


(edit: updated the title)


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## windracer (Jan 3, 2003)

I have no experience with multiple drives in a unit, but from what I remember reading, the power supplies in the 240s were not meant to handle spinning up two drives at once. From Weaknees' site for their PowerTrip product:



> Although the PowerTrip will work in any TiVo, we believe that it is only necessary in the TiVo-branded TCD240040, TCD24004A, TCD 240080, and TCD24008A, and the AT&T-branded TCD230040. Each of these TiVos has a power supply that is rated 38W max. By contrast, every other TiVo manufactured has a power supply with a max rating of 61W-78W. The 61W-78W power supplies are certainly sufficient to power up two hard drives; a 38W power supply is questionable. At startup, a hard drive requires between 20W and 30W of power, but after only a few seconds, that power draw drops to about 5W to 7W. Thus, by delaying the startup of one drive, the PowerTrip cuts by 40-45% the single-largest draw on the TiVo's power supply.


Also, are your jumpers set correctly? Finally, when you did the mfsrestore, you used the -x switch to "expand" the backup image across both new drives, right?

Just guessing here ...


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## firstmagic (Feb 7, 2002)

Thanks for the response!



windracer said:


> I have no experience with multiple drives in a unit, but from what I remember reading, the power supplies in the 240s were not meant to handle spinning up two drives at once. From Weaknees' site for their PowerTrip product:


I didn't see that specific detail, but this from the Hinsdale How-to:



> The newer Series 2 model TCD2XXXXX 40hr and 80hr units noted above do have a smaller power supply than previous models, but after 6 months of testing (running dual drives in 3 separate units) with over 1000 power cycles each (normal use would only experience a couple power cycles) without any problems/failures indicates that there are no long term heat or power issues running dual drives in these units.


So... I thought it would be ok. Maybe not? I would imagine though, that by the time I've gotten to that orange screen, both drives have long since spun up. Then again, a constant rebooting like that could be a sign of an over-taxed powersupply. 



windracer said:


> Also, are your jumpers set correctly? Finally, when you did the mfsrestore, you used the -x switch to "expand" the backup image across both new drives, right?
> 
> Just guessing here ...


Yup, jumpers are good, and yeah, I used the -x switch. The command I used was:

mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hdc | mfsrestore -s 192 -xzpi - /dev/hda /dev/hdb​
... where /dev/hdc was the original tivo A drive.

Of course, I don't have that screen up anymore where I typed that command, so I can't verify by looking at it, I can only go by the Hinsdale how-to in front of me, and know that I typed it exactly as it is there. I do remember seeing messages where it was adding the new drives and gave me a total size which seemed about right (580 hours, or something like that).

I'm hoping it's *not* the power supply issue you mentioned... I really want to have both drives in there.


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## windracer (Jan 3, 2003)

firstmagic said:


> mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hdc | mfsrestore -s 192 -xzpi - /dev/hda /dev/hdb


Hmm ... there used to be a problem with mfstools (see here) where using a swap size larger than 127 would cause NO SWAP to be created, which can cause problems. I think you need to use tpip to create swaps larger than 127mb (see here and here).

So, based on what we're talking about here, my guess is there's no (or insufficient) swap space available and that's causing the reboot loop.


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## firstmagic (Feb 7, 2002)

ah. yeah, that could be the issue. I can modify the .iso I have (with the lba48 stuff) to include a version of tpip and redo the whole thing from the beginning (after reading those links, I realize I should have a swap space of 250 anyway).

I imagine in a 2 drive setup you point tpip to the A drive (I'll see if there's documentation) since the examples I'm seeing only involve a single drive system.


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## windracer (Jan 3, 2003)

I've never used tpip, so I'm not sure which drive to point it at, but search enough on here and I'm sure you'll find the answer. Good luck!


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## firstmagic (Feb 7, 2002)

Thanks for the tpip tip! 

Yes, that did the trick. Created a new .iso that included tpip, redid the mfsbackup|mfsrestore command (with a 250 meg swap space), then told tpip to fix/enable the swap space on the 'A' drive, and everything seems to be working fine now. 

So, my second tivo hack, a 40 hour Series 2 SA to a 582 hour unit, is now a success.

Thanks!


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## windracer (Jan 3, 2003)

Sweet! Glad it worked out. :up:


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