# Tivo S2 Upgrade from bad hard-drive?



## GerryinNV (May 6, 2004)

I have a S2 Tivo which started getting stuck on the welcome/powering up screen. It would sit there for a few mins, then the light on the front momentarily goes off and reboots itself again. It's the original drive which I assumed was going bad so I bought a new 500GB drive and just attempted the mfsbackup from the original drive to the new one. 

Well, it flagged a bunch of read errors from the original drive during the backup process but it successfully (or so I thought?) completed the restore to the new 500GB drive. However, when I reinstalled the new drive, and powered up the Tivo, it did the same exact thing as before. 

Is it possible the original drive had a corrupt OS from the hard drive failing that would cause this? Would the mfsbackup software have anyway of checking this? This hard drive is brand new so I doubt the problem is the HD.

Thanks!


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## ggieseke (May 30, 2008)

If it's just a corrupt OS, running a Kickstart 52 may fix it. You could also try KS57 to check for corruption in the MFS file system.

If that doesn't work you'll have to get a clean image and start over from scratch.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

GerryinNV said:


> I have a S2 Tivo which started getting stuck on the welcome/powering up screen. It would sit there for a few mins, then the light on the front momentarily goes off and reboots itself again. It's the original drive which I assumed was going bad so I bought a new 500GB drive and just attempted the mfsbackup from the original drive to the new one.
> 
> Well, it flagged a bunch of read errors from the original drive during the backup process but it successfully (or so I thought?) completed the restore to the new 500GB drive. However, when I reinstalled the new drive, and powered up the Tivo, it did the same exact thing as before.
> 
> ...


You should always run the drive manufacturer's own diagnostic software long test on a new (or new to you) drive before putting it into service.

That said, if you have recordings you want to save, your best bet might be using

dd_rescue

or

ddrescue

(both of which are Linux command line utilities)

with the options set to copy a small "bite" at a time and to fall back to an ever smaller one if it runs into problems.

This could take a day or 3, and you'll need to take active measures to keep the source drive well chilled during the entire process.

If you don't need to save shows, just tell us which model Series 2 and we'll point you to an image file.


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## GerryinNV (May 6, 2004)

unitron said:


> You should always run the drive manufacturer's own diagnostic software long test on a new (or new to you) drive before putting it into service.
> 
> That said, if you have recordings you want to save, your best bet might be using
> 
> ...


Yeah I don't care to save any recordings, I have a TCD540040. Once I get the image file, which application would I use to install it on the drive? Thanks!


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

GerryinNV said:


> Yeah I don't care to save any recordings, I have a TCD540040. Once I get the image file, which application would I use to install it on the drive? Thanks!


That would depend on whether you use the .bak file, which means using the MFS Live cd v1.4 and booting the PC from it to a command line, or if you use the .tbk file, which means running WinMFS, specifically running

winmfs.exe

on a PC running XP SP3 or newer.

Just out of curiousity, what brand and model number is that 500GB drive?

Download either of these or both, as you prefer

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/49887720/540040c.bak

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/49887720/540040c.tbk

They require a minimum of a drive with as high an LBA number as the factory installed 40GB Maxtor, which is higher than the LBA number of other brand 40GB drives of that same era, but with a 500GB that won't be a problem.

Do not do the expanding into the other 460GB as an integral part of the restoration however.

Wait and do it as a separate step after restoring and testing.

With either version, you'll expand by using

mfsadd


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## GerryinNV (May 6, 2004)

unitron said:


> That would depend on whether you use the .bak file, which means using the MFS Live cd v1.4 and booting the PC from it to a command line, or if you use the .tbk file, which means running WinMFS, specifically running
> 
> winmfs.exe
> 
> ...


I'm not terribly fluent with Linux so I'm running WinMFS (beta9.3f) but it appears to be having a problem with the hard drive (Western Digital Blue). Once I select it, the program crashes. I was digging through the forums and it looks like other folks that had this problem were able to resolve it by writing zeros to the drive, so I'm trying that. I also ran the wdidle3 program to disable the intellipark feature just in case. Many thanks for the assistance.

(Update Tuesday Morning)
Ok, I finished formatting the drive and I ran WinMFS with the new image it all seemed to work ok. However, when I powered up the Tivo, it encountered an error and a screen came up that says: The Tivo has encountered a serious error and it's trying to fix it; it can take up to 3 hours to complete... I'll send an update when it completes.

(Update Wednesday Morning) 
The Tivo was able to automatically recover from whatever that error was that it encountered and all seems to be working ok.

Many thanks for the help!


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

GerryinNV said:


> I'm not terribly fluent with Linux so I'm running WinMFS (beta9.3f) but it appears to be having a problem with the hard drive (Western Digital Blue). Once I select it, the program crashes. I was digging through the forums and it looks like other folks that had this problem were able to resolve it by writing zeros to the drive, so I'm trying that. I also ran the wdidle3 program to disable the intellipark feature just in case. Many thanks for the assistance.
> 
> (Update Tuesday Morning)
> Ok, I finished formatting the drive and I ran WinMFS with the new image it all seemed to work ok. However, when I powered up the Tivo, it encountered an error and a screen came up that says: The Tivo has encountered a serious error and it's trying to fix it; it can take up to 3 hours to complete... I'll send an update when it completes.
> ...


Caviar Blues don't have Intellipark, just (some) Caviar Greens.

Series 1 TiVos do not like Caviar Blues, PATA or SATA, for some reason, but they work fine in S2s. and computers.

The serious error most likely was that your S2 has a unique TiVo Service Number burned into a chip on the motherboard, and the image you used came from an S2 with a different unique TSN on its motherboard and since it gets copied from the motherboard to the hard drive when the drive gets "married" to the board, and therefore winds up in any backup image made from that drive, your TiVo noticed the mismatch and had to rewrite some stuff on the hard drive to properly "marry" it to the motherboard it is now serving--all perfectly normal.


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