# Series 1 Upgrade (Don't Laugh!)



## GerryinNV (May 6, 2004)

I have a Phillips Series 1 Tivo on which the hard drive has finally given up, it has a lifetime sub so I'd like to bring it back to life if possible. From looking through the threads it appears I can use an old SATA drive with the proper adapter but what about getting the hard drive properly formatted? Most of the posts I see about Series 1's are quite old and just making sure I have the most up to date information before I begin the drive replacement. Many thanks!


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## dwit (May 5, 2004)

http://mfslive.org/ typically is all you may need.

The winmfs options are seemingly the easiest. If your drive has totally failed, or the data corrupted, you will need to find the correct "image" for your exact model. The image is basically the Tivo operating system software that make the hard drive a "Tivo hard drive".

There is an "image begging" thread here to search(and beg) for an image. It's usually near the top of the list of threads here.


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## GerryinNV (May 6, 2004)

dwit said:


> http://mfslive.org/ typically is all you may need.
> 
> The winmfs options are seemingly the easiest. If your drive has totally failed, or the data corrupted, you will need to find the correct "image" for your exact model. The image is basically the Tivo operating system software that make the hard drive a "Tivo hard drive".
> 
> There is an "image begging" thread here to search(and beg) for an image. It's usually near the top of the list of threads here.


My Tivo is a Phillips hdr31203 that has two drives and one is failing but MFSTools isn't happy when I simply remove the one that's failing (making noise) and try to restore the OS from there, those two original drives must be acting as one or something because I get a volume checksum error or something to that effect. At any rate, I simply want to install 1 250GB drive I had lying around but since I cant seem to get the OS off the original you're saying I need the stock image for the hdr31203? And this can be found in the threads?

Also, does the MFSTools Linux boot disc simply label all additional drives as hda,b,c,d,e,...

I have more than the 4 Primary (Master/Slave) & Secondary (Master/Slave) and trying to figure out exactly how to connect them, right now I have disconnected my original windows boot drive since it's not a FAT partition so I have:

Primary Master - hda (FAT Partition)
Primary Slave - New Tivo Hard Drive
Secondary Master - Old Tivo Drive 1
Secondary Slave - Old Tivo Drive 2

Primary corresponds to IDE1 on my motherboard and Secondary corresponds to IDE2. IDE3 I have my CD drive connected to so I can boot to the MFSTools.

Does that all look correct?


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## dwit (May 5, 2004)

GerryinNV said:


> My Tivo is a Phillips hdr31203 that has two drives and one is failing but MFSTools isn't happy when I simply remove the one that's failing (making noise) and try to restore the OS from there, those two original drives must be acting as one or something because I get a volume checksum error or something to that effect. At any rate, I simply want to install 1 250GB drive I had lying around but since I cant seem to get the OS off the original you're saying I need the stock image for the hdr31203? And this can be found in the threads?


I think it depends on what you are actually trying to do. AFAIK, if you want to save all of your recordings and you have a two-drive set up, you can only copy to another 2 drives.

If you have a mind set to go from a 2 drive set up to a single drive, you must accept that you will lose whatever recordings were made after the 2 drives were "married". In that case, the drives must be divorced. I am only familiar with the winmfs options and in that case, you will use the mfs split function. After successfully completing the mfs split, you will of course then have a single drive system. Then you can use the saved truncated back up image to restore to another drive, or copy the complete image, including all shows to another drive(or even two if desired, I believe).

It's really best to read up on all of this before just jumping in and doing it. Especially if you have a good image that you don't want to end up destroying because you did something wrong.

Again, I found winmfs was perfect for my situation and all of it's capabilities are nicely outlined on it's linked page(s).

Please note that there is a *forum* link on the main mfslive.org page. Many questions you have may be answered there already. However, I am not sure how active things are over there now in case of new questions. If you have no luck there for support, you may find answers here.

Good luck.


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## GerryinNV (May 6, 2004)

dwit said:


> I think it depends on what you are actually trying to do. AFAIK, if you want to save all of your recordings and you have a two-drive set up, you can only copy to another 2 drives.
> 
> If you have a mind set to go from a 2 drive set up to a single drive, you must accept that you will lose whatever recordings were made after the 2 drives were "married". In that case, the drives must be divorced. I am only familiar with the winmfs options and in that case, you will use the mfs split function. After successfully completing the mfs split, you will of course then have a single drive system. Then you can use the saved truncated back up image to restore to another drive, or copy the complete image, including all shows to another drive(or even two if desired, I believe).
> 
> ...


There (understandably) seems to be little activity on the Series 1 front. Are there any file repository archives you guys know about? I see mention to 'the usual location' but not sure what they're referring to.

Further, if only one drive goes bad on a two drive (married) system, is there any way to salvage the image from the one good drive? The good drive happens to be the master for whatever that's worth.


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## GerryinNV (May 6, 2004)

By the way, ever wondered what a 12 year old Tivo looks like inside?

http://twitpic.com/5jbtqb

I swear my house isn't this dirty!!


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## GerryinNV (May 6, 2004)

dwit said:


> http://mfslive.org/ typically is all you may need.
> 
> The winmfs options are seemingly the easiest. If your drive has totally failed, or the data corrupted, you will need to find the correct "image" for your exact model. The image is basically the Tivo operating system software that make the hard drive a "Tivo hard drive".
> 
> There is an "image begging" thread here to search(and beg) for an image. It's usually near the top of the list of threads here.


Just to be clear, did you mean I literally have to "beg"??  I'm not above it, just want to know before I begin...


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## dwit (May 5, 2004)

GerryinNV said:


> Just to be clear, did you mean I literally have to "beg"??  I'm not above it, just want to know before I begin...


Not sure how that works, besides hoping for the best. Might also just try a google search.


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## ggieseke (May 30, 2008)

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=388695


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## GerryinNV (May 6, 2004)

ggieseke said:


> http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=388695


Yeah I've been there but not a whole lot of help for my S1 Tivo. At any rate, I was able to recover the bad disk long enough to backup the Tivo OS so I'm good to go. BTW, you don't have to go through any divorcing/splitting of the drives going from 2 to 1, simple backup & restore with MFSTools works just fine, about a 15min process for the whole thing.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

GerryinNV said:


> Yeah I've been there but not a whole lot of help for my S1 Tivo. At any rate, I was able to recover the bad disk long enough to backup the Tivo OS so I'm good to go. BTW, you don't have to go through any divorcing/splitting of the drives going from 2 to 1, simple backup & restore with MFSTools works just fine, about a 15min process for the whole thing.


What you got was, of course, a truncated image, i.e., no TV shows, but if one of your drive pair was going bad, that was going to happen anyway.

To use all of that 250GB drive, you'll need to run the "copykern" patch on it to make the kernal LBA"more than 28" aware. It's not actually LBA48, more like LBA32 or LBA36, but it gets you over the 128/137 GB barrier.

You should probably use the MFS Live cd v1.4 from here on out, be sure you aren't using a GigaByte brand motherboard (due to HPA issue), do the restore something like

restore -s 128 -i /backupimage /dev/hd"whereverthe250is"

then run copykern on it from the free PTV upgrade cd

(when you boot from it do

mount -t iso9660 /dev/hde /cdrom

first --or hdf if cd drive is 3rd IDE slave-- before running copykern),

and then test it in the TiVo.

If it's working ok, put it back in the computer, do another backup image using the MFS Live cd (which has an LBA48 aware kernel).

backup is called backup, not mfsbackup on the MFS Live cd.

Then restore from that backup with the same command line to the 250 (yes, you'll overwrite what you just put on there and tested).

Then test it in the TiVo again. If it works, you know you have a good, LBA-patched, truncated backup image.

Then put it back in the computer, boot from the MFS Live cd, and do

mfsadd -x /dev/hd"whereverthe250is"

to add MFS partitions to fill the rest of the 250.

When using the MFS Live cd, despite what you might read wherever, do not use the -q switch at any time, it just hides information from you.

Do not use the -p switch when restoring Series 1 images.

Don't bother with the -r switch, that bug is fixed in the MFS Live cd, and leaving it off makes it use the default and that works just fine.

Don't bother with the -z switch.

It also occurs to me that if you did the backup/restore as one operation with the | in the middle, you don't even have a seperate backup image save on a "DOS" partition somewhere, which is just asking for trouble.

Was your unit already running version 3 of the TIVo software before its troubles started?


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## GerryinNV (May 6, 2004)

unitron said:


> What you got was, of course, a truncated image, i.e., no TV shows, but if one of your drive pair was going bad, that was going to happen anyway.
> 
> To use all of that 250GB drive, you'll need to run the "copykern" patch on it to make the kernal LBA"more than 28" aware. It's not actually LBA48, more like LBA32 or LBA36, but it gets you over the 128/137 GB barrier.
> 
> ...


Been a change of plans, I found 4 IDE hard drives on craigslist for $10 and much to my surprise they all tested fine, so I installed (2) 120GB drives on my Series 1 and I decided to upgrade my Series 2 with (2) 250GB drive's. However, I didn't (knowingly) do anything about the 137GB barrier. However, my recording time is being reported as 571hrs 49min at Basic Quality. This would be more than the 137GB limit, right?

And yes, my Tivo's were both running version 3.x version. Thanks.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

GerryinNV said:


> Been a change of plans, I found 4 IDE hard drives on craigslist for $10...


Lucky dog. Which city?



> ... and much to my surprise they all tested fine, so I installed (2) 120GB drives on my Series 1 and I decided to upgrade my Series 2 with (2) 250GB drive's. However, I didn't (knowingly) do anything about the 137GB barrier. However, my recording time is being reported as 571hrs 49min at Basic Quality. This would be more than the 137GB limit, right?
> 
> And yes, my Tivo's were both running version 3.x version. Thanks.


Do you mean that your Series 2 (which already came from the factory with an LBA48 aware kernel, and needs the -p switch used on restore), which now has a total of 500GB of space is reporting about 500 hours at basic quality (roughly 1 hour per GB), or that your Series 1, which, without a patched kernel, can use one or two drives, either or both of which is anywhere below 128GB(binary) or 137GB(decimal), and which now has about 240GB of space is reporting approximately 2 hours per GB?

The former is to be expected.

The latter would probably violate any number of the laws of physics, and create at least a localized disruption in the time-space continuum.

But would be really, really cool.

Exactly which model number S2 do you have? 'Cause it should be up to version 9 of the software by now. (Version 3 is as far as the S1s ever got)


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## GerryinNV (May 6, 2004)

unitron said:


> Lucky dog. Which city?
> 
> Do you mean that your Series 2 (which already came from the factory with an LBA48 aware kernel, and needs the -p switch used on restore), which now has a total of 500GB of space is reporting about 500 hours at basic quality (roughly 1 hour per GB), or that your Series 1, which, without a patched kernel, can use one or two drives, either or both of which is anywhere below 128GB(binary) or 137GB(decimal), and which now has about 240GB of space is reporting approximately 2 hours per GB?
> 
> ...


I'm in Las Vegas, this woman has a garage full of stuff, mostly unix workstations which I have no use for but she wanted $20 for an Ultra 10 which probably cost about $10k new, I can't blame her though, it's just taking up space in her garage, I may pay her another visit though with more time. 

And yeah "the former" which makes sense because I didn't do anything special. My S2 is a 540040, and yeah it's probably version 9 I only checked the S1.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

GerryinNV said:


> I'm in Las Vegas, this woman has a garage full of stuff, mostly unix workstations which I have no use for but she wanted $20 for an Ultra 10 which probably cost about $10k new, I can't blame her though, it's just taking up space in her garage, I may pay her another visit though with more time.
> 
> And yeah "the former" which makes sense because I didn't do anything special. My S2 is a 540040, and yeah it's probably version 9 I only checked the S1.


Ask her if she recently sold a non-working lifetimed Series 2 to a guy in North Carolina.


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## ggieseke (May 30, 2008)

GerryinNV said:


> Yeah I've been there but not a whole lot of help for my S1 Tivo. At any rate, I was able to recover the bad disk long enough to backup the Tivo OS so I'm good to go. BTW, you don't have to go through any divorcing/splitting of the drives going from 2 to 1, simple backup & restore with MFSTools works just fine, about a 15min process for the whole thing.


Did you run the truncated backup with both drives attached, or just one? I would like to grab a backup image of my retired Sony SVR-2000 with WinMFS and a USB-PATA adapter but it has two drives.


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## GerryinNV (May 6, 2004)

unitron said:


> Ask her if she recently sold a non-working lifetimed Series 2 to a guy in North Carolina.


doubt it was her, when i told her what i was using them for it didn't look like she'd ever even heard of tivo.


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## GerryinNV (May 6, 2004)

ggieseke said:


> Did you run the truncated backup with both drives attached, or just one? I would like to grab a backup image of my retired Sony SVR-2000 with WinMFS and a USB-PATA adapter but it has two drives.


The backup didn't work unless I had both original Tivo drives connected, I tried just connecting the "master" but it didn't work, it wasn't until I was able to get the slave working long enough to complete the backup that I was successfull.


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