# What method to use for hd upgrade



## ducker (Feb 21, 2006)

I've built myself a number of PCs over the years, and I'm fairly comfortable hacking away on the inside of a PC.

That being said I've never used Linux, and I'm a little apprehensive in opening up my Tivo now that Lifetime has been canceled 

I recently purchased a 200gb maxtor, and it's time to upgrade my box!! Which would be the easiest/safest method to go about this?

Instant cake seems like the easy way to go, but how is it different then simply downloading the tools and burning them on to a CD? is it any different? I just don't get why it costs $20 vs. doing it with the free tools one can download that I see when reading the Hinsdale walk-through.

What am I missing here??

Need a little guidance! thanks!

(I'm upgrading a 5400040)


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## HomeUser (Jan 12, 2003)

$20, if you do not want to learn a couple of Linux commands.

For easy DIY instructions see WeaKnees Interactive Online TiVo Upgrade Instructions follow the first link in the first message.

Or you could buy a drive all-ready setup for your TiVo from one of this forum sponsors.


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## ducker (Feb 21, 2006)

Na I already have a drive. I've been reading a lot of the threads in here... There's a lot of good information it just seems to be, well, all over the place!!

I already have the HD so I don't want to purchase an upgrade drive. I know I can do it, it's just well, a bit complex in places. At least the last outline I've recently read at Hinsdale's walk through made my head spin at all the options!!!

For me? I'd love to keep my season passes and wish lists. It's not too much of a priorty for me to keep all the shows (I could simply move them to my pc prior to upgrade)


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## HomeUser (Jan 12, 2003)

Did you miss the easy Step by Step instructions "WeaKnees Interactive Online TiVo Upgrade Instructions" I linked to?


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## hkancyr (Jan 20, 2002)

Goto PTVupgrade and download the Universal upgrade disc. Then take everything you can off your Tivo, not everything just get it down to about half full. Read the Hinsdale guide about doing a single disc installation. The LBA48 thing loads automatically and all you have to do is type in one command after you get the linux prompt, use the slow method, it's not all that time consuming if you don't have a full disc. The cool part is that everything is as it was when you yanked the drive once you put that 200 Gig back in, you just have alot more hours. I just did it the other day with a 300Gig in a 540040 which I just bought, now it has 340 hours and it was a piece of cake.
Boot from the CD hit enter, type the command at the # prompt and wait. 
Mine took less than an hour and I had about 7 hours on it, to transfer to the new drive.
Now I have a nice backup drive in case of a failure too.


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## xnevergiveinx (Apr 5, 2004)

i was worried about upgrading at first too. i used to use instant cake and i thought it was awesome...till i got sick of losing all my recordings and settings when i upgraded.

one night i printed out the hinsdale's how-to guide and read through it. it's really not that bad.

only thing i don't like is how for seemingly the same commands (maybe to make a backup of a drive onto a fat32 drive, then make a copy of the drive using mfsbackup | restore command), hinsdale's will give me one command and the weaknees guide will give me a similar one, but with slightly different switches.

i've never had trouble with hinsdale's guide, so i use that one


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## JS2003 (Jan 10, 2004)

I have done both -- the Hinsdale method and the Instantcake route. 

I used the Hinsdale instructions first and it wasn't too bad. Like you, I am pretty comfortable inside a computer, but I had no Linux experience (I still don't except working on Tivo drives). 

I had to get Instantcake when a Tivo drive died before I could do a backup to a new drive. Instantcake was easy and saved my heinie (and kept me from having to buy an pre-imaged drive when I already had a new one to use). 

I'd try it with the Hinsdale instructions first. If that doesn't work, you can always break down and buy the Instantcake package...

Good luck!


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## ducker (Feb 21, 2006)

HomeUser said:


> Did you miss the easy Step by Step instructions "WeaKnees Interactive Online TiVo Upgrade Instructions" I linked to?


No no, I saw it, I need to read through it. I'll most likely do that this weekend.



hkancyr said:


> The cool part is that everything is as it was when you yanked the drive once you put that 200 Gig back in, you just have alot more hours. I just did it the other day with a 300Gig in a 540040 which I just bought, now it has 340 hours and it was a piece of cake.


the 340 is with just the 200gig right? you're moth-balling the original 40.

I guess the freaky part for me is potentially screwing up the HD/image of the oringial since I'll be doing this on a Win2k machine. Perhaps if I don't even bother making a hard copy of the image I won't run the risk...

The Hinsdale guide points do like 3 different downloads, some of them are free some of them cost additional. That's kinda throwing me off right from the get go.


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## HomeUser (Jan 12, 2003)

ducker said:


> No no, I saw it, I need to read through it. I'll most likely do that this weekend.


To use the Hinsdale's instructions you need to read it at least twice, it is more for the hard core user altho anyone that can replace a hard drive should be able to follow the instructions. The Interactive Online TiVo Upgrade will walk you through it by asking questions. It also includes pictures.


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## NewYorkLaw (Dec 9, 2005)

I did it myself with the online instructions and from what you've described, I have less knowledge of computers than you. I replaced my 40 gb drive with a 160 and have the 40 kept on the side as an emergency backup.


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## HomeUser (Jan 12, 2003)

NewYorkLaw said:


> I did it myself with the online instructions and from what you've described, I have less knowledge of computers than you. I replaced my 40 gb drive with a 160 and have the 40 kept on the side as an emergency backup.


Congratulations, I think the hardest part is building up the courage to open up the box, the possibility of not having a working TiVo is ... well Unthinkable.


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## ducker (Feb 21, 2006)

HomeUser said:


> Congratulations, I think the hardest part is building up the courage to open up the box, the possibility of not having a working TiVo is ... well Unthinkable.


That's the part that's freaking me out 

Especially with the whole "new" situation.... I'm a new tivo user, and my DW has given me a hard time about getting it 2 months ago... is now giving me a hard time about getting the smallest Hard Drive on it! So I really need to figure out my plan of attack. As that 200 gig isn't doing much help sitting NEXT to my Tivo... I'm going to flip through that site, and post any feedback after - thanks 

And yes... god, I love my Tivo... Especially transfering shows to my PC so that I can watch different shows when my wife wants to watch her soap!! (which she hasn't watched in years due to lack of desire to really program a VCR to record it)


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## ducker (Feb 21, 2006)

perhaps it's just a typo on the website but this throws me off a bit:


> Boot the PC from the Linux media that you marked "Weaknees CD"
> 
> Verify Drive Sizes


And then after it:


> Boot the PC from the Linux media
> 
> Verify Drive Sizes


Since I'm going to me storing my original 40g hard drive, I guess there really is no reason for me to make an image on a PC of it.

That being said, I have no reason to hook up any of my Win2k drives during this process.

I believe currently I have my CD-Rom as Secondary Master. So I will connect my original Tivo drive to "hda" and my new 200g to "hdb"

and I'm guessing the command I'll use is:



> mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hda | mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -xzpi - /dev/hdb


How does that look?


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## HomeUser (Jan 12, 2003)

Your command looks good. 

JFYI, The transfer will be faster if the source and destination hard drives are attached to different IDE channels. and the "-r 4" option is not needed for a 200G hard dirve altho it probably won't hurt anything.


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## Dkerr24 (Oct 29, 2004)

Here's a nice website in easy to read format that runs you through step-by-step to doing a Tivo update - even has nice pictures.

http://www.steveconrad.co.uk/tivo/upgrade2.html


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## ducker (Feb 21, 2006)

HomeUser said:


> Your command looks good.
> 
> JFYI, The transfer will be faster if the source and destination hard drives are attached to different IDE channels. and the "-r 4" option is not needed for a 200G hard dirve altho it probably won't hurt anything.


So toss my original on the primary Master IDE and the new drive on the Secondary Master. (and say my CD-Rom on the Primary slave)


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## HomeUser (Jan 12, 2003)

Yep,then the command for a new 200G HD becomes mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hda | mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi - /dev/hdc


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## ducker (Feb 21, 2006)

So I'm actually running my update as I post this... and it appears to be going fine... but I did see some error messages that I was unable to find any info on.

1: after booting up I'd see the following error occasionaly

259A interrupt: IRQ7

and something like
Kmod: failed to find /sbin /modprobe -s -k error=2

I was then able to properly enter the command (as listed above) and it found my source drive and then came up with a bunch of errors:

hdc: dma_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hdc: dma_intr: error=0x84 {DriveStatusError BadCRC }
hdc: dma_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hdc: dma_intr: error=0x84 {DriveStatusError BadCRC }
hdc: dma_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hdc: dma_intr: error=0x84 {DriveStatusError BadCRC }
hdc: dma_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hdc: dma_intr: error=0x84 {DriveStatusError BadCRC }
hdd: DMA disabled
idel1: reset: success

and then it started the restore.

One final note I found interesting was that the original drive showed up as UMDA6 and my new drive UDMA2. the drive should be just fine.

Hopefuly someone can help and clear up what these errors mean so that I can rest and others can read it here and rest as well 

Thanks!
-Mike


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## HomeUser (Jan 12, 2003)

> Kmod: failed to find /sbin /modprobe -s -k error=2


 Check the syntax of the command there may be something misspelled, Linux is case sensitive. modprobe loads program modules into memory.



> 259A interrupt: IRQ7


 Possibly a conflict between the IDE card and the parallel port?



> hdc: dma_intr: error=0x84 {DriveStatusError BadCRC }
> hdd: DMA disabled
> idel1: reset: success


 Going to take longer with DMA disabled, possibly caused by one of the other problems.



> original drive showed up as UMDA6 and my new drive UDMA2


UDMA6 = Ultra DMA/133 
UDMA2 = Ultra DMA/33


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## ducker (Feb 21, 2006)

But at the end of the day... if the new HD booted up and I can watch / record footage I'm all set?

the BadCRC worried me the most... that I had a bad HD.


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## HomeUser (Jan 12, 2003)

Worries me also, however if it works ... I would keep the original drive intact JIC.


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## JamieP (Aug 3, 2004)

HomeUser said:


> ducker said:
> 
> 
> > original drive showed up as UMDA6 and my new drive UDMA2
> ...


Did you use an 80 conductor cable? If not, it might explain this and the dma errors.


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

ducker said:


> Instant cake seems like the easy way to go, but how is it different then simply downloading the tools and burning them on to a CD? is it any different? I just don't get why it costs $20 vs. doing it with the free tools one can download that I see when reading the Hinsdale walk-through.


I think you've pretty much answered your own question in this thread:- 


ducker said:


> There's a lot of good information it just seems to be, well, all over the place!!
> ...
> I know I can do it, it's just well, a bit complex in places. At least the last outline I've recently read at Hinsdale's walk through made my head spin at all the options!!!
> ...
> ...


Doing a self-upgrade from scratch is scary and confusing as there's so much information around, and not all of it consistent.

For $20 InstantCake does it all for you. That's what you're paying for.


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## ducker (Feb 21, 2006)

ok... Yes it was a 40 pin!!! not an 80... also, I noticed when I tried to connect my CD-ROM back up to secondary Slave it wasn't working... (It wasn't connected originaly)

So I'm thinking there might be potentially something wrong with my secondary IDE controler, where it's only happy with the master on that cable... not the secondary.

That being said, my Tivo is functioning just fine. So I guess it was able to transfer the data from my 40g to my 200g.

Yes, the original 40g is wrapped in the static case my new drive came from and is in a drawer 

Thanks for the feedback!!


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## ducker (Feb 21, 2006)

oh. I can deifnetly notice a slight increase in noise coming from the unit. Is it possible to run some type of quieting mode AFTER I did the data transfer?

Or was that required to do it before I did the data transfer?


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## rainwater (Sep 21, 2004)

ducker said:


> oh. I can deifnetly notice a slight increase in noise coming from the unit. Is it possible to run some type of quieting mode AFTER I did the data transfer?
> 
> Or was that required to do it before I did the data transfer?


If your drive supports Automatic Acoustic Management, you can adjust the setting using the Hitachi Feature Tool:

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

You just add the drive to your PC (like you did before, removing the windows drive(s)) and boot with the boot disk image. It really depends on if your hard drive supports AAC though.


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## ducker (Feb 21, 2006)

well it's a maxtor diamond max 10. (the version that doesn't skip...) how can I tell if it does/doesn't support acoustic management..?

I noticed it more last night when I was quietly reading in the room. a slight ticking/seeking noise... very slight, but annoying when not actually watching TV 

it looks like I should use AMSET:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=289974

I just hopeI can still use/run this on a HD I already put Tivo's software on. (of course I'll make sure no Windows' HDs are still attached as well!)


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## ducker (Feb 21, 2006)

anyone  ?


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