# Failed Disk? Upgrade question using Mac mfstools



## BarneyRubble (Jul 3, 2006)

My one and a half year old "lifetime" TCD540040 recently hung on the powering up screen and I read in a number of places that it was likely an HD problem and looks like a slam dunk to solve. Since I only have an OS X 10.4.7 Mac (B&W G3), I followed instructions on another thread (thread ID =209300) dealing with upgrading using a mac, and downloaded a mac version of mfstools and devMapper 1.1

I pulled the Tivo drive and connected to my external firewire enclosure, then devMapper identified the disk. I did a dd backup of the 40G drive, figuring that is probably bad from disk corruption. I attempted a full mfstool backup, and got some "corrupt inode" error messages. Then I used the -f option to backup a smaller part of the HD (and maybe not hit the bad inodes.)

So I entered the command to backup using the -f 9999 option from my Tivo HD to a file on my Mac. This proceeded without any error. Then I ran the mfstools restore command to restore onto a new Seagate 200mb drive I connected to my IDE card

/usr/tivo/bin/mfsrestore -i /Users/me/tivo.bak4 -pxz -s 127 /dev/disk2
Drive 1 size: 390721904
Size needed for single drive restore: 80290818
Moving partition 11
Moving partition 13
Starting restore
Uncompressed backup size: 1408 megabytes
Restoring 1408 of 1408 megabytes (100.00%) (52.72% compression) 
Cleaning up restore. Please wait a moment.
Restore done!
Adding pair /dev/disk2s14-/dev/disk2s15
New estimated standalone size: 222 hours (182 more)

No errors! Wow, that was easy, except that the result after putting the new HD in the Tivo: It hung on the Powering up screen.

Next attempt was to leave out the -p option and run the restore command again (after putting the Tivo back in the external enclosure):

/usr/tivo/bin/mfsrestore -i /Users/me/tivo.bak4 -x -s 127 /dev/disk2
Drive 1 size: 390721904
Size needed for single drive restore: 80290818
Starting restore
Uncompressed backup size: 1408 megabytes
Restoring 1408 of 1408 megabytes (100.00%) (52.72% compression) 
Cleaning up restore. Please wait a moment.
Restore done!
Adding pair /dev/disk2s14-/dev/disk2s15
New estimated standalone size: 222 hours (182 more)


With less enthusiasm, I connected the new drive back up to the Tivo and got this result: Disk activity, got through the Powering Up screen, some more disk activity, then hung at the Almost There with no apparent disk activity.

I also tried this after removing the -x command to expand the drive. Same results as above.

*My questions:
- Is it possible for mfstool backup/restore to fail yet report no errors? (i.e. is my backup file bad?)
- Is there anything obvious a noob like me is missing? I've read the hinsdale instructions and think I'm issuing the right commands, translated to mac using the info the above referenced thread.
- It sounded from the mac thread that others have used Mac mfstools with success. Any mac users out there to help me diagnose?*


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## GlennL (Mar 1, 2005)

I use a Mac but use a borrowed PC to format my HD since the tools are better tested and have been around a lot longer. Anyway, I've found Steve Jenkins' site to be the most helpful in upgrading: http://tivo.stevejenkins.com/network_cd.html. Once upgraded and hacked I use my Mac exclusively to tweak my TiVo. I wish I could help with the Mac HD upgrade.


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## BarneyRubble (Jul 3, 2006)

OK this is wierd (and good). 

In my original post, I mentioned I used dd to create a copy of the original drive that would not boot.

I just dd'ed the image onto my new drive, then ran

mfsadd -x /dev/disk1

and voila. It works in my tivo and has the upgraded capacity. Now that was easy (even if it took forever on my slow machine.

I still don't know why mfstools says it backed up my 40G and restored to my new drive without error, yet would not work in the Tivo. Any suggestions? I would like to get a good mfstool small backup for future use, but right now, the 40G dd'ed version is the only "backup" I have.


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## BarneyRubble (Jul 3, 2006)

Doing the same thing to another spare new drive results in the Tivo not getting past the "Almost there..." screen. I'd sure like this if it were predictable...


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