# Upgrade with only one IDE port?



## User987 (Oct 18, 2008)

I upgraded my Tivo many years ago, soon after buying it when they were discontinued (best £99 I ever spent, by the way). Since then it contains two drives: a 120Gb "A" and the original 40Gb as "B" (as far as I can remember). I also have a network card and use Mode 0. I also did the colour/brightness/contrast adjustment thing though that seems to have undone itself. I have a lifetime sub (best £200 I ever spent).

One or both of the drives seem to be dying as I am getting severe picture dropout etc.

I have a slightly-used 160Gb drive (ie same size as the current two drives) that I would like to use to replace both the drives in the Tivo. I also have a new 250Gb drive but can't see much point using it if the 160Gb can be made to work. 160Gb is enough recording time for me.

My motherboard (WinXP) only has one IDE port and so I can't directly connect more than 2 IDE drives at the same time.

I wouldn't mind keeping my recordings but it doesn't matter if they are lost.

I have a virgin factory Tivo image backup somewhere, if needed. I also have about 10 empty used SATA and IDE drives, of all sizes from 10Gb to 200Gb.

I am not a Linux buff.

I had a look at various upgrade "how-to"s but none of them seems to cover my precise case and so I would be grateful for suggestions, especially for the following:

1) Which upgrade procedure would be the best one to follow? (Any hints as to the best command line to use for this particular configuration will be very welcome, bearing in mind the LBA48 issue.)

2) Will any/all upgrade procedures retain the network card drivers and settings, mode 0 etc. etc. or will I need to reinstall these?

3) Is it possible to use a USB key to boot from for the upgrade? My motherboard will boot from a key. I have several 4 and 8Gb keys.

4) or should I just put whatever upgrade programme I use onto an old SATA drive and boot from that?

5) Will any/all of the upgrade procedures work using drives in USB IDE caddies?

Thanks in advance.


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

First, delete all your recordings using my DeleteAll script (attached)

Then use the LBA48 Boot CD and make a divorced backup to a minimum 2gb USB stick (should show as /dev/sda1). eg. 
*
mkdir /mnt/dos
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/dos
mfsbackup -l32 -so /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hda /dev/hdb *

_(nb. this assumes your IDE drives show up as hda and hdb)_

Then swap in the new drive and restore from the backup:-

*mfsrestore -s 250 -r4 -xzpi /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hda
copykern * _(choose kernel option 1)_

Sit back and enjoy


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## User987 (Oct 18, 2008)

blindlemon said:


> First, delete all your recordings using my DeleteAll script (attached)


Thanks for your helpful comments. This bit seems straightforward. Would it make any difference if I deleted them manually from the Tivo GUI? I don't have many and it would probably be quicker.



> Then use the LBA48 Boot CD and make a divorced backup to a minimum 2gb USB stick (should show as /dev/sda1). eg.
> *
> mkdir /mnt/dos
> mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/dos
> ...


That's not so straightforward. If I boot from a Boot CD (as a CD) then I don't have two empty IDE channels left. I only have two in total and my CD drive is IDE not SATA. If I connect both my old drives to make the backup (and I think that I have to) then I need to boot from something else. So either I boot from a USB key (if the LBA48 Boot CD files support being booted from a key) or from a SATA drive. Any idea which would suit the LBA48 Boot CD software best?
Or will the Boot CD recognise IDE drives in USB caddies? This would solve the problem also.



> Then swap in the new drive and restore from the backup:-
> *mfsrestore -s 250 -r4 -xzpi /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hda
> copykern * _(choose kernel option 1)_


That part sounds fine also, thanks.


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

User987 said:


> TWould it make any difference if I deleted them manually from the Tivo GUI? I don't have many and it would probably be quicker.


Deleting from the TiVo UI only changes the status of the recordings to "deleted" rather than removing them, so they will still be copied in a backup and may prevent your backup from divorcing properly. DelelteAll deletes from the UI and the deleted folder, completely.



User987 said:


> will the Boot CD recognise IDE drives in USB caddies? This would solve the problem also.


Yes, so you may be able to boot from a CD and connect one of your drives to the slave IDE channel and the other via a USB caddy. Not sure where that would show up with a USB stick also in place, but would probably be /dev/sdb or something like that.


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## User987 (Oct 18, 2008)

Great, thanks. I'll have a go this afternoon.


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## User987 (Oct 18, 2008)

Just spent 3 hours trying to get the DeleteAll file across to my Tivo to run it. None of my FTP applications will connect to it reliably (I maintain websites and use FTP all day): and each time the FTP connection failed I had to reboot the Tivo which takes forever of course. When I finally did it from the command line the file ended up of zero size. I've no idea what's wrong there.

Is there some other way of deleting the trash folder manually, I wonder?


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## User987 (Oct 18, 2008)

Hmm. Finally tried FTP with Windows Explorer, which worked just fine. Not a tool I would normally consider for FTP, but there you go.

DeleteAll script is now deleting my programmes.


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## User987 (Oct 18, 2008)

Well, this LBA48 Boot CD isn't as easy to use as whichever one I used last time. Or maybe I've got older since then.

To start, I can't find any way of scrolling back through the umpteen pages of boot data to see how the various drives I have attached to the PC are being referenced by Linux. On the other version I seem to remember hitting "page up" a few times but this one boots to a prompt that doesn't allow this key function. Without knowing how they are referenced I don't know which command to type to do the backup.

The next thing is that after booting I get a message saying "remember, by now you should have already done this and that" using MFSTools but without telling me how to do it or even if I can do it with this CD. I guess from Blindlemon's comments above that I can do it from the prompt on the CD, but the CD certainly doesn't make it clear.

So I'm stuck.

Is there a staightforward walk-through for non-Linux users anywhere? I've found dozens of websites dealing with this subject, but all using different software tools and procedures, with little indication of which are up to date or still valid.


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## User987 (Oct 18, 2008)

Just in case anyone else ever needs to know it: you can scroll up in the LBA48 Boot CD by using shift-pageup. And down with shift-pagedown, of course.

However it doesn't help me at all as nowhere in the boot data are the USB drives listed.

Is there a Linux command that lists the connected drives? The Linux help doesn't seem to mention one.

If I try to mount /sda1 I just get "device not found". But then do I even need to mount it? Why does any drive need to be mounted anyway? Is there another way of telling if a drive is connected?

I'm amazed that in this day and age it should be so complicated just to copy a couple of Gb of data across to a new drive and to format it. Surely it could just be done from inside a GUI?


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## User987 (Oct 18, 2008)

And indeed there seems to be a proper Windows GUI that avoids all this command line nonsense. http://www.mfslive.org/winmfs/

Unfortunately their registration server is down and so it is impossible to activate a registration to download the software. The error message suggests contacting an administrator if you have activation problems, but the link to the administrators' details requires you to ....... register before viewing it. Victor Meldrew would not be surprised.


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

User987 said:


> If I try to mount /sda1 I just get "device not found". But then do I even need to mount it?


On my PC the USB stick shows up as /dev/sda and can be mounted as /dev/sda1.

You need to mount a device to access it via a filesystem. To access it directly you don't - so msfbackup/restore can just use /dev/sda


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## User987 (Oct 18, 2008)

blindlemon said:


> On my PC the USB stick shows up as /dev/sda and can be mounted as /dev/sda1.
> 
> You need to mount a device to access it via a filesystem. To access it directly you don't - so msfbackup/restore can just use /dev/sda


Thanks for that. I've obviously forgotten the little bit of Linux I learnt when I last used it: for the first upgrade over 6 years ago! 

I tried several times to access the key and the USB drive from the LBA48 boot CD but didn't have any success.

In the end I finally managed to download WinMFS which is very easy to use. Just a couple of mouse clicks and about 10 minutes all told, with the entire lot done from within Windows. WinMFS seems to recognise any drive, whether or not Windows has mounted it. This includes USB, SATA and PATA.
I recommend it stongly to anyone who isn't too keen on command-line stuff.

I used WinMFS to make a backup of the 120Gb drive, having divorced it from the 40Gb which was the oldest and, apparently, the sick one. I first installed this backup into the used 160Gb drive, with a 250Mb swapfile, and expanded it. WinMFS does this all very easily, regardless of which port the drives are on. 

As I wasn't sure about the LBA48 kernel I then ran copykern from the LBA48 CD. All seemed good and so I put the drive back in the Tivo. Sadly it wouldn't boot properly. The GSOD screen popped up for a couple of seconds and then the Tivo would just reboot endlessly. So I pulled the drive out and tested it in Windows. Windows didn't like it, even after formatting, so I suppose there may be something wrong with it. It was a used drive after all.

So then I took the original Samsung 120Gb upgrade drive (now over 6 years old and in constant daily use for all that time) and restored the 120Gb backup to it. Back into the Tivo which promply went to GSOD. 

However this time it didn't reboot and the GSOD stayed visible. About an hour later the GSOD disappeared and the Tivo is now working fine, albeit with 40Gb less space. I never filled the 160Gb when I had it so that's no real problem. I will bin the 40Gb drive and use the new 250Gb drive for something else, as long as the 120Gb is still working.

I didn't realise how much noise the old 40Gb drive was making either, until it wasn't in there any more.

So full marks to WinMFS and many thanks also to Blindlemon. I commend both of them to the house.:up:


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## Ramirez (Dec 12, 2003)

Hi all,

Well I've logged back on the forum after a year or two away as my new Tivo bought fromo Curry's what like 8-10 years ago is finally dropping sound on live TV and jolting, so I'm guessing the HD is finally on it way out...

So time to upgrade the drive from I'm guessing 40G, but my question simply is, can I use this MFSLive tool on UK Series 1 Tivo's here in the UK...

Also will any HD do (I notice talk of PVR specific Hard drives in places) I know I've got a new 250G IDE drive that I never used 2 years ago so was thinking of just using that...

Also when I do get the lid off the Tivo (probably this weekend) are there any hints and tips on other things I should do?

and becuase I've not asked alot already... Is there a step by step guide on how to do the upgrade, as I'm assuming that I'd want to have the Old TiVo drive and New Tivo Drive attached at the same time? or do we do a sensible backup then a restore... As you can see I've sorta skipped thru the thread...

Any help from you guys would be appreciated as I can just see I'll get something wrong, as yes I'd like to keep my recording just anoying there's not easy what to burn them to DVD and Achive, as I can do on my LG device


Over to you and thanks in advance...


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