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GSOD, Some info
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Posted by: Joe Party

A buddy has an upgraded Tivo Series 1 (A = 30gb, B= 80gb). Well, it went GSOD. Is there a way to determine which drive it is? Also, this Tivo has been used for several years now. I do have a backup of a Series II Tivo. Can I just put that image on a new hard drive and dump it in to correct the problem?

What is the best approach to tackle this problem without wasting money on a wild goose chase.

Thanks,
Joe Party :confused:

Posted by: Spence

No way of knowing which drive it is without taking them out and running the factory diagnostic program on the drives. DO NOT restore a Series II backup to a Series I Tivo! Someone will point you to a backup image of the correct model if you ask nice. :)

Posted by: Joe Party

I have two series I SA. Could I just use one of those images, and then just reset the whole recorder when all is working? The difference between these are they are not virgin, they are my running Tivos. The Series II were virgin, but will NOT USE under any circumstances.

Joe Party

Posted by: Robert S

It's not that 'Bad Things' will happen if you put a Series 2 drive in a Series 1 TiVo - nothing will happen. S1's and S2's have very little in common, they don't even use the same CPU.

If your other S1 is the same brand and type (SA/DTiVo) then that's fine.

Posted by: Joe Party

I've had this bad Tivo sent to me and I've got the following happening.

It's a SA Series one, A = Quantam Fireball, B = 80gb Maxtor

Was getting GSOD. When I open up the unit, and just disconnect B drive, it loops inot the "A few more Seconds" screen. Is it safe to assume that the bad drive is the B drive, or is there more research that I have to do?

Is there any other way of verifying which drive might be shot?

UPDATED!!!

Just reconnected Drive B, just for S&Gs, and now the GSOD is gone, but Tivo is stuck in start up loop. Any direction would be great on to which drive we have a problem with.

Thanks,
Joe Party

Posted by: Robert S

A twin-drive TiVo will never get past 'almost there' without the B drive. That tells you nothing.

Run diagnostics - PowerMax for both drives - and see if it finds a problem.

Posted by: Joe Party

Okay.... Thanks for the link. I did not have the most recent version of Powermax.

Joe Party

Posted by: Joe Party

Okay, the orginal Quantum Drive has failed the SMART test. Is it possible to still pull the image off to put on a new hard drive, or do I have to start from a fresh Series 1 Image from another Tivo.

What is the best approach to replace an A drive in an already upgraded Tivo? Especially when I can't get an image of the bad A drive?

Thanks,
Joe Party

Posted by: Robert S

It depends how bad the damage is. You can certainly try using dd to clone the disk as in Hinsdale (use conv=noerror,sync), but you can't use MFS Tools unless you can get the GSOD to clear.

Posted by: Joe Party

Thanks for the reply. dd did not work. It gave me errors.

Now, when I use the following:

Normal C: Drive on Primary Master
Series 1 image on Secondary Master (HDC)

using
mkdir /mnt/dos
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/dos

mfsbackup -6so /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdc

I get the following error

/mnt/dos/tivo.bak: Read-only file system

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Joe Party

Posted by: Robert S

Don't use BlessTiVo. Add the B drive with mfsadd.

Posted by: Joe Party

It's been a while since I've done one of these.

Also, did you see my post about the errors I've been receiving.

Thanks in advance

Joe

Posted by: Robert S

You're probably mounting an NTFS partition, Linux doesn't have write support for that. Put a FAT partition on your upgrade drive and write the backup to that instead.

Posted by: Joe Party

Thanks for all the help. Yes, I noticed that is the case. If I put the backup on the new drive, and get a backup there, what do I do with it at that point? If it's in the how-to, just point me there, and I can take it from there.

Joe

Posted by: Robert S

You boot Windows and copy the backup to somewhere safe and then proceed with the upgrade as if nothing had happened.

Don't fill the whole drive, BTW, a 1Gb partition is plenty of room.

Posted by: Joe Party

So, the only issue is Linux writing to NTFS?

I'll do that.

Joe

Posted by: Robert S

The other issue is that Windows will corrupt the boot block on your current A drive if it boots with it attached, but you don't need to have both the live TiVo drive and Windows drives connected simultaneously.

Posted by: Joe Party

I've done the backup to the new drive. Moved the backup file from my new drive, to my c:\ drive.

Now, I'm trying to do the restore to the new drive, so I can put it in my tivo, and it starts, then ends with an error about 90% of the way through. .3% decompression error, or something like that.

Since I am putting the image back on a 30gb HD, I removed the -s 127 command. Is this correct, or should I leave it in the command line?

Backup looks fine.

Joe

Posted by: Joe Party

I've decided to just do a dd and copy the image to the new drive.

After much processing, I get dd: writing '/dev/hdb': No space left on Device.

These are two identical drives. Both 30gb drives.

Any clues?

Joe