# I need a hug



## bigunk (Sep 12, 2006)

OK, here is my tale...    

I have a Hughes sd-dvr40 that I added a 120G drive to about a year ago. I start running out of room, so I figure I'll replace the 40G A: drive with a new 500G drive, since that 40 is the oldest drive in the machine, not to mention it's one of those crazy Maxtor single-sided drives. I head over to Hinsdale's site and follow the directions to the letter. I mount the new A: and old B: drive to test the dd copy I made. It comes up, but of course won't show the new capacity until I pair it with the old B:. So I pair it....GSOD. OK, I'll just put the old A: back in and be OK for a bit. GSOD. Weaknees says I have to redo the dd from scratch and do the mfsadd with another switch (r 4) in the command line. I did that. GSOD. Weaknees says once I pair a couple of drives, they can't be unpaired, yet Hinsdale seems to say it can be done.

I really need to get this running again, and hope I am not completely screwed. I would love to be able to recover all my recorded stuff.

So there you have it...my personal hell. Can anyone help me out?

Please let me know...


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## puffdaddy (Mar 1, 2006)

I am very confused. You had a dual drive setup consisting of a 40GB primary and 120G secondary drive, is that correct?

And then you planned to replace the 40GB drive with a 500GB drive? I think I'm with you so far.


bigunk said:


> I head over to Hinsdale's site and follow the directions to the letter. I mount the new A: and old B: drive to test the dd copy I made. It comes up, but of course won't show the new capacity


So you dd'ed the 40GB onto the 500GB and then attempted to boot using the 500GB as the primary and the 120GB as the secondary? And this worked? What capacity did it show?



> ... until I pair it with the old B:.


I'm lost? Old B? The 120GB drive?



> So I pair it....GSOD. OK, I'll just put the old A: back in and be OK for a bit. GSOD. Weaknees says I have to redo the dd from scratch and do the mfsadd with another switch (r 4) in the command line. I did that. GSOD. Weaknees says once I pair a couple of drives, they can't be unpaired, yet Hinsdale seems to say it can be done.


Did you let the GSOD run to completion? With more information, I might be able to provide some advice.


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## bigunk (Sep 12, 2006)

Yes, I had a dual drive setup 40G A: (primary) and 120G B: (secondary)

Yes, I tried to replace the 40 with the 500

I did do the dd from the 40 to the 500. When I mounted them in my tivo, It show the old capacity of 141 hours. I mounted them before doing the mfsadd to pair the 500 (new A to the 120 (old B. This is what Hinsdale says to do. I then took them out and mounted them in my PC to do the mfsadd. After taht I got the GSOD with the 500 as primary (A and the 120 as secondary (B

I let the GSOD run overnight. Still doing it in the morning.

I figured I wouldn't have to do anything to the old 40G drive for it to come up, so I have yet to try to re-pair that drive with the 120 (something Weaknees says can't be done) using mfsadd.

Sorry, but I don't have the quoting down like you. It should come with time. Did I answer your questions or do I still owe you some more info?

Please let me know, and thank you for your time. I really appreciate it.


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## willbhome (Aug 28, 2002)

bigunk said:


> Yes, I had a dual drive setup 40G A: (primary) and 120G B: (secondary)
> 
> Yes, I tried to replace the 40 with the 500
> 
> I did do the dd from the 40 to the 500. When I mounted them in my tivo, It show the old capacity of 141 hours. I mounted them before doing the mfsadd to pair the 500 (new A to the 120 (old B. This is what Hinsdale says to do. I then took them out and mounted them in my PC to do the mfsadd. After taht I got the GSOD with the 500 as primary (A and the 120 as secondary (B


It sounds like what you may have done, is run the process using only the 40 and 500 gig drives, leaving the 120 gig out of that process.
If my supposition is correct, then probably the problem is that you did not do that process from the 40 AND the 120 to the 500. Though, I could be wrong, not having used "dd" myself; but, rather, "mfsbackup|mfsrestore".



bigunk said:


> Sorry, but I don't have the quoting down like you. It should come with time. Did I answer your questions or do I still owe you some more info?


To do the quote, click the quote button at the bottom right of a post. This puts the entire post (less anything that may have been quoted within that) between bracketed "quote" flags. You can then edit out anything you wish, for the sake of brevity or clarification. For example, I shortened the first part of your message, then separated out another part to answer it separately.


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## puffdaddy (Mar 1, 2006)

bigunk said:


> I did do the dd from the 40 to the 500. When I mounted them in my tivo, It show the old capacity of 141 hours.


Ok, this is good then, so the combination of the 500GB (albeit only using 40GB worth of the total space) with the 120GB drive powers up and functions correctly.


> I mounted them before doing the mfsadd to pair the 500 (new A to the 120 (old B. This is what Hinsdale says to do. I then took them out and mounted them in my PC to do the mfsadd. After taht I got the GSOD with the 500 as primary (A and the 120 as secondary (B


Hang on. So your put the 500 GB & the 120GB into your PC, booted a Tivo boot CD, and used MFSadd to expand and fill the 500GB drive, then put both drives back into the Tivo, booted, and got a GSOD?

The MFSadd operation sounds correct but you will need to use the -r 4 option as the added partition will be larger than ~276GB. See this thread for more information.

You haven't said this explicitly anywhere, but I was assuming that you're running 6.2 and nothing earlier than that, is that correct? If you're running 3.x or 4.x software then you'll need an lba48 aware kernel.

Another problem with what you've done could be related the amount of swap in your unit. I'm afraid that by using dd to clone your 40GB drive, you've ensured that you only have 64MB of swap, and most folks recommend using more swap than that.


> I figured I wouldn't have to do anything to the old 40G drive for it to come up, so I have yet to try to re-pair that drive with the 120 (something Weaknees says can't be done) using mfsadd.


You should be able to just plunk your original 40GB back in with the 120GB and not have to do anything with MFSTools and they should power up happily.


> Sorry, but I don't have the quoting down like you. It should come with time. Did I answer your questions or do I still owe you some more info?


There's a little "quote" button that you can use to start a post and it automatically inserts the full quote (you can further break it up after that). Answers to the above questions will help you identify the problem, though [SERMON] I'll note that guides remind me of Internet driving directions, if you make every turn correctly, you'll get to your destination quickly and without having to learn the route; however, one wrong turn and not only are you lost, but you've got no way to remedy your situation (other than asking others). Maps are far superior to driving directions.[/SERMON]


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## bigunk (Sep 12, 2006)

puffdaddy said:


> Ok, this is good then, so the combination of the 500GB (albeit only using 40GB worth of the total space) with the 120GB drive powers up and functions correctly.


No, the 500 and the 120 give me a GSOD



puffdaddy said:


> Hang on. So your put the 500 GB & the 120GB into your PC, booted a Tivo boot CD, and used MFSadd to expand and fill the 500GB drive, then put both drives back into the Tivo, booted, and got a GSOD?


Yes, that is what happened, but I did not use the -r 4 option



puffdaddy said:


> The MFSadd operation sounds correct but you will need to use the -r 4 option as the added partition will be larger than ~276GB. {can't post URLs yet}
> 
> You haven't said this explicitly anywhere, but I was assuming that you're running 6.2 and nothing earlier than that, is that correct? If you're running 3.x or 4.x software then you'll need an lba48 aware kernel.


I don't know off-hand what I am running. My machine has hopefully been getting its updates on its own. I have done no updating.



puffdaddy said:


> Another problem with what you've done could be related the amount of swap in your unit. I'm afraid that by using dd to clone your 40GB drive, you've ensured that you only have 64MB of swap, and {can't post URLs yet} most folks recommend[/URL] using more swap than that.


I'll try that.



puffdaddy said:


> You should be able to just plunk your original 40GB back in with the 120GB and not have to do anything with MFSTools and they should power up happily.


GSOD, but I'll try it again. Wouldn't I have to re-pair the old 40 with the old 120? I thought that must be done every time. No?


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## bigunk (Sep 12, 2006)

JUst tried the 40 and the 120 in there. GSOD.


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## bigunk (Sep 12, 2006)

I bought mfstools 2.0 and worked on trying to get things cooking. Seems there is no partition table on the old 40 or the new 500, so I can't mount it. Something blew it out. I guess this means it's over. So I guess my next step would be to format the thing and start from scratch. How to format and what do I put on there?

Wait...I was just able to mount /dev/hda7 /mnt. There is all kinds of stuff in there. Can I recover from that? If so, how to recover/rebuild my partition table so I can get running?


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## JamieP (Aug 3, 2004)

bigunk said:


> I bought mfstools 2.0 and worked on trying to get things cooking. Seems there is no partition table on the old 40 or the new 500, so I can't mount it. Something blew it out. I guess this means it's over. So I guess my next step would be to format the thing and start from scratch. How to format and what do I put on there?
> 
> Wait...I was just able to mount /dev/hda7 /mnt. There is all kinds of stuff in there. Can I recover from that? If so, how to recover/rebuild my partition table so I can get running?


Tivo's have an Apple partition map. Use pdisk, not fdisk, to examine it.

If your original 40+120 GSOD's, you messed up badly enough that it is probably a lost cause. The key mistake was running mfsadd without *-r 4* when expanding to fill that 500GB drive. It's not clear to me why that would break the 40+120 combination though.

Best to start fresh with a new image. I'd lay it on the 500GB disk, and run a single disk configuration.


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## Dkerr24 (Oct 29, 2004)

I think that last bit of advice from Jamie is the wisest. Dump the dual-drive config and go with a single 500gb drive. It will run cooler, quieter, and lower failure rate since you'll only have one hard drive inside.


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## bigunk (Sep 12, 2006)

Apple partition map? This just gets weirder by the minute. OK, I'll give pdisk a shot. I have already used it, but not to read a partition table.

If I end up starting with a new image, where do I get it from? How do I get it running? Etc. etc. etc.

Thank you for your time.


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## bigunk (Sep 12, 2006)

Wow. Look at all that stuff. Now how can I make use of it? There are 13 partitions in there. Is there hope?

My current situation is the 40 and the 120 went back into the tivo last night and started with all the proper hard drive sounds. The tivo kept coming up with the powering up screen over and over. No GSOD, which makes me think there is still hope, but a continuous reboot. Rats.


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## JamieP (Aug 3, 2004)

bigunk said:


> Wow. Look at all that stuff. Now how can I make use of it? There are 13 partitions in there. Is there hope?
> 
> My current situation is the 40 and the 120 went back into the tivo last night and started with all the proper hard drive sounds. The tivo kept coming up with the powering up screen over and over. No GSOD, which makes me think there is still hope, but a continuous reboot. Rats.


Sounds like you didn't even get as far as the GSOD. You sure you have everything jumpered right? (that is, master/slave on the drives.)

If you really want to figure this out, go get a serial console cable, hook up a serial console, and enable serial console output. This is really the only way to debug bootup problems. Expect to spend a *lot* of time on this.

Otherwise, go find an image (instantcake is an option if you don't mind spending $20) and start over fresh.


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## bigunk (Sep 12, 2006)

I didn't see a serial connector on the unit, unless you're talking about the serial control connection for other AV devices (3.5mm headphone-looking jack thingy). I'll look again but I'm not sure.


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## JamieP (Aug 3, 2004)

bigunk said:


> I didn't see a serial connector on the unit, unless you're talking about the serial control connection for other AV devices (3.5mm headphone-looking jack thingy). I'll look again but I'm not sure.


Yes, that's it. You need a special cable you can buy from 9th-tee, or build from radioshack parts.


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## bigunk (Sep 12, 2006)

OK then. I imagine tip is send or receive, ring is the opposite of that (gotta try it), and sleeve is ground. Make sense?


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## JamieP (Aug 3, 2004)

bigunk said:


> OK then. I imagine tip is send or receive, ring is the opposite of that (gotta try it), and sleeve is ground. Make sense?


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## bigunk (Sep 12, 2006)

Nothing to it. I can whip this together in a Jiffy. I'll post my results when I get them. Anything special I need to be looking for, or just capture it all and we'll pore through it later?


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## JamieP (Aug 3, 2004)

bigunk said:


> Nothing to it. I can whip this together in a Jiffy. I'll post my results when I get them. Anything special I need to be looking for, or just capture it all and we'll pore through it later?


Capture it and post as an attachment.

You may need to change some bootpage settings to enable serial console output.


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## bigunk (Sep 12, 2006)

Bootpage settings. Can you give some guidance on that?


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