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Trying to backup failing drives, but getting 'Unable to fit backup onto drives.'
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Posted by: Bagpuss

Hi All,

Just wondering if someone can help me.

I've recently upgraded my UK Series 1 Tivo using 2 IBM 123Gb drives. Everything was working fine for about 4 weeks, but now I'm hearing lots of clicking from the disks, and the Tivo freezes and crashes periodically.

As this is the second set of IBM drives to do this, I am trying to replace them with 2 Western Digital 120Gb drives.

What I'd like to do is copy the contents of the IBM drives onto the Western Digitals, preserving the recordings. The IBM drives are not full, but there are a lot of recordings that I don't want to lose.

I've tried using the following command, but I always get the 'unable to fit backup onto drives' error:

mfsbackup - Tao - /dev/hda /dev/hdb | mfsrestore -zpi - /dev/hdc /dev/hdd

I'm assuming that the command fails because the total recording time for the IBMs is greater than that for the Western Digitals, even though the IBMs are not full.

Is there a way to copy my data across, preserving the recordings?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Andy.

Posted by: Robert S

Check that the boot log is declaring the drive sizes correctly.

How big are the drives to the megabyte? If the new drives are smaller than the old then you can't copy.

I'd be inclined to use dd rather than MFS Tools so I could copy the drives individually. The clicking suggests there are bad blocks one of the drives. MFS Tools will stop if it hits a bad block. dd will keep trying if you use conv=noerror,sync You might also want to run the diagnostic (Drive Fitness Test) and get it to 'repair' the bad blocks.

The 'fullness' of the drives makes no difference, you have to copy the entire MFS partition, there's no way to shrink it, even if it contains some deleted recordings or empty space.

Posted by: Bagpuss

Hi Robert,

Thanks for the information.

It looks like I am stuffed, as the old drives are about 6Gb bigger (in total) than the new ones.

I guess I'll have to ask some questions on a certain taboo subject at a certain deal type forum.

Oh well, I'm glad I bought that TurboNet card, as I think it's going to get a bit of a workout.

Andy.

Posted by: Robert S

There's a certain amount (a few tens of Mb) of wiggle-room on the A drive because you can shrink some of the system partitions. There's no way to get 3Gb, though.

So, yes, extracting the recordings, digitally or otherwise, is about all you can do.

Posted by: Bagpuss

Okay. I've now managed to preserve some of my recordings, and I want to do the migration to my new 120Gb WD drives.

I've backed up the the IBM drives using the following command:

mfsbackup -l 32 -6so /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hda /dev/hdb

and have ended up with a 1.2Gb tivo.bak image.

I have now moved the drives around, and the WD 120s are now /dev/hdc and /dev/hdd.

I have then tried issuing the following restore commands:

mfsrestore -xzpi /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdc /dev/hdd

mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdc /dev/hdd

I left out the -s 127, as my IBM disks had already had the swap space enlarged.

Regardless of which command I use, then I always get the error:

Restore failed: Unable to fit backup onto drives.

Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong here?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Andy.

Posted by: Robert S

My guess would be that the drives haven't divorced. What size does mfsbackup say the backup is? It should be 40 Hours, but yours is probably bigger. You're looking at having to download a UK backup, I'm afraid.

It's irrelevent now, but if you left out -s 127 you'd get 64Mb of swap on your new disks. Not what you want.