TiVo Community Forums Archives - problems encountered during Tivo HD Upgrade

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problems encountered during Tivo HD Upgrade
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Posted by: coeng

I ran into some problems using Hinsdale's (new) Tivo upgrade instructions (for adding a new HD) and was hoping someone here could bale me out. This post may be a little lengthy, but I have to give details of what happened, so please bear with me.

I have a Sony Standalone (SVR2000) Series 1 Tivo with a 40 GB drive. I opened it fine, removed the drive, and brought it to my PC.

My PC has four hard drives and two CD-ROM drives. The four hard drives are connected to an IDE controller card and the two CD-ROM drives are connected to the two motherboard's IDE controllers. In order to connect the old Tivo drive (40GB Maxtor) and the new Tivo drive (100GB WD), I had to reconfigure connections and jumpers. This took a while to figure out. Since only one of my four PC hard drives had a boot partition (for Win XP), I didn't bother connecting the other three data drives. The drive that I connected was a 120GB (which is partitioned as 20GB for OS and Applications and 100GB for data files).

Playing around with the jumper settings and rebooting several times from the BootCD that I created, I was finally able to get all four devices to be listed after the Linux boot completed. However, no matter what jumper setting combination I used, I was unable to get the old Tivo drive to be recognized as the "master" on the SECONDARY IDE port and the CD-ROM drive as the "slave" on the SECONDARY IDE port. The only jumper setting combination that allowed me to see both of those devices was when I set the jumper to CABLE SELECT on BOTH the CD-ROM and the old Tivo drive.

The good news was that the "master" on my PRIMARY IDE controller was reporting my C drive and the "slave" on the PRIMARY IDE controller was reporting my new 100 GB drive, as should have been the case.

At this point, I figured the only difference (with respect to the instructions) is that my "hdc" and "hdd" were reversed. I therefore had to compensate for this when I entered my linux command prompts. The instructions even make it sound like this is not critical...as long as you see all four devices.

Before I was able to back the Tivo image up to my C drive, I realized I had to unlock the Maxtor drive because it was being reported as being 10 MB.

I removed the CD, rebooted the PC, and Windows XP loaded. I located the "qunlock" application on the web, downloaded it, made a boot floppy disk, and copied the "qunlock" application to the boot disk.

While I was doing that I read the instructions at the very end of the guide and realized that I should not have booted to WinXP with my Tivo drives attached. My heart stopped. I looked in Windows Explorer and did not see any other hard drives listed except for the 120GB (displayed as two partitions "C:" and "F:"). I figured I was still OK.

After rebooting with the boot floppy disk, I ran "qunlock 3" (not 2, but 3 since the old Tivo drive was being recognized as the "slave" on the SECONDARY IDE port). The unlock worked successfully.

After rebooting with the BootCD, all four drives were being properly reported (with exception that the old Tivo drive was the "slave" on the SECONDARY IDE port).

I then backed up the image of my old Tivo drive to my C drive using "...../dev/hdd" instead of "...../dev/hdc".

As per the instructions, I then restored the image to my new Tivo drive, changed the jumper setting on the drive from "slave" to "master" and connected it to my Tivo. After booting Tivo, it worked as it should (with the exception of the absence of the actual recordings).

I then took my new Tivo drive back to my PC, changed the jumper back to "slave" and reconnected it to the PRIMARY IDE controller.

The instructions at that point indicated that the old Tivo drive "should be" jumpered as "master" and the new Tivo drive should be jumpered as "slave" (even though they are are different controllers). The problem here was that the old Tivo drive was not jumpered as "master". It was jumpered as "Cable Select" and because of that, it was the "slave" on the SECONDARY IDE controller. I figured this was not really that important.

After booting from the CD again, I ran the command to instruct the old Tivo drive about the presence of the new Tivo drive (substituting "hdd" for "hdc" in the command to compensate for the master/slave issue on the SECONDARY IDE controller. This appeared to run successfully.

I then powered down the PC, disconnected both drives, and took them to the Tivo unit. Making sure that my old drive was jumpered as "master" and the new drive was jumpered as "slave", I connected the HDs to the Tivo, and booted. Nothing. It just hung there on the opening screen. I played with jumper settings, cycled power several times, and it still hung. I removed the new hard drive from the picture, still hung. With the new drive not connected, I even changed the jumper setting of the old drive to Cable Select (which I believe was the default jumper setting), still hung. I started to panic. At this point I said screw it, let me restore the old Tivo drive.

I reconnected the drives to my PC, and restored the image file back onto my old drive, leaving out the "-s 127" string. After reconnecting the old drive back to the Tivo, still nothing. I waited 15 min for the unit to boot. Still nothing.

What the heck happened? Everything was going along relatively smooth and then all of the sudden nothing works.

Could it be because I booted to Windows XP when I should not have? Could it be that the master/slave setting for the secondary IDE port needed to be the way it was in the instructions?

I also noticed that I can no longer boot the PC (to Win XP) unless my system drive is connected to the IDE controller of the motherboard. If I connect it to my IDE controller card, I get BOOT DISK FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK.

Please help. I will provide any information needed to solve this problem.

Posted by: Robert S

It's very strange. The problem with XP is that it modifies the boot blocks on the hard drives it detects when it boots. This has no effect on the DOS/Windows boot block, but breaks the TiVo one. (You can fix it with MakeTiVoBootable). However, as your TiVo booted with the backup image you'd made after booting XP, this appears not to have happened in your case.

The thing about XP not booting from the IDE card is probably a BIOS issue - when you reset the boot sequence to boot from the CD you probably didn't set it back exactly the way it was before.

I don't know why the TiVo would boot from a restored backup once and then not boot from the same backup later on.

Posted by: Sylentwulf

What, on, earth, do you have 4 hard drives and 2 CD drives connected to your computer for? The 2 CD drives, I can understand completely. But I've NEVER heard of anyone NEEDING 4 hard drives before. How big are they?

Posted by: coeng

Besides the point, but my 4 hard drives:

120GB. 100GB, 40GB, 18GB

I do a lot of digital video editing.

Posted by: coeng

Where can I find this "MakeTiVoBootable".
I did a search on the web and found nothing.

Posted by: Robert S

I don't think it's the solution to your problem, but here.

Posted by: coeng

Robert S,

Then what do you think I should do?

I just want to be able to get back to where I was before I started the upgrade. If I can do that, then I know I can make another attempt at adding the new HD.

I still have the tivo.bak file on my C drive. That file should be fine, right ?

My assumption is that all I need to do is fix the boot sector on the old TiVo drive (using MakeTiVoBootable) and then restore the original image (tivo.bak) back onto it.

If my assumption is correct, how do I execute the boot sector modification? I'm not Linux savvy, so step-by-step details would be greatly appreciated. All I've done so far is download and unzip the file in Win XP.

Do you think I would have to also re-write the boot sector on the new drive also? I wouldn't think so since TiVo booted successfully with just the new drive attached (which contained the "content-less" version of the original image) when I was following the steps of the Hinsdale guide.

Thanks.

Posted by: Robert S

I see your flawed assumption now. The problem is that XP modifies the boot block. The boot block contains a little machine code program that is capable of pulling the kernel off the drive and starting it running. When XP alters this, it prevents the program from running correctly and the TiVo won't boot. But this is just ordinary data on the hard drive, when you restore a backup it over-writes it.

MTB allows you to reconstruct the boot block without restoring a backup (which was very handy before MFS Tools came out).

So, your sequence above doesn't make complete sense.

I would download a backup and verify that you can make the TiVo boot with it. If you can, then you can look at trying to make a disk that boots with your recordings on it (one option would be to use dd to copy the recording partitions over).

Posted by: coeng

Robert S,

I see what you are talking about now. I did a little backtracking last night and was able to get somewhere, but I'm still not there yet.

Here's what I did:

I took both TiVo drives out of the unit again. I connected just the new drive to my PC and once again used mfsrestore to copy the image file (tivo.bak) to the new drive again. I then removed the drive from the PC, changed the jumper to master, connected it to TiVo (by itself), and then booted. It booted fine and I was able to see all of my settings (less the actual content).

I then did repeated the process for my old TiVo drive. The only difference was removing the "-s 127" from the mfsrestore command. (Can you elaborate on what "-s 127" does...I don't quite understand it). I then removed the old drive from the PC, changed the jumper to CABLE SELECT (default factory setting), connected it to TiVo (by itself), and then booted. It booted fine just like it did when the new drive was attached alone. (By the way...what will become of the actual recordings that I had on my old drive? did I purge them by restoring the image file onto that drive? can I recover them somehow?)

In any case, I went back to my PC with both drives. I booted and ran the "mfsadd" command. It seemed to work fine. I went back to the TiVo unit, modified the jumpers as follows: old drive = master, new drive = slave, and powered up. It hung. For the heck of it, I tried reversing the jumpers, still hung. I then made both settings CABLE SELECT. It booted, but only told me that I had 9 hrs best quality video (which led me to suspect that it only recognized one drive...probably the newer one because when I eventually tried to boot each one individually again, the old drive did not boot (no matter what jumper setting)...the new drive booted just as it did earlier (see beginning of this post).

Am I having a HD compatability issue here? The new drive is a Western Digital. The old one is a Maxtor.

Is there anyway to check that the "mfsadd" command worked properly?

And what about the content that I seem to be missing on the old drive?
I'm sure its still there on the drive (somewhere).

Thanks again.

Posted by: Robert S

-s sets the size of the swap partition. The original partition (and the default for MFS Tools) is 64Mb. If you have a really big TiVo (>150Gb) this doesn't provide enough memory for mfsfix (the 'green screen of death') to do its thing. Although GSOD's are quite rare, they are a pain if you don't have enough swap.

Obviously this increases the size of the image by 63Mb. This is irrelevent if you're putting a 120Gb hard drive in there, but it does make the image too big to fit on the original A drive.

If you're restoring to the original A drive then you don't want any options at all. My guess is you used -p, which re-orders the partitions. If you restore again without p then you partitions should line up and you may get some of your recordings back.

I don't think mfsadd did work. If it had your B drive would no longer be bootable and the A drive would not be able to get past 'almost there'.

Posted by: coeng

Where can I find the documentation for the mfsrestore options?
I can't find anything. It's like working in the dark.

When restoring the image to the new drive, Hinsdale says to use:
mfsrestore -s 127 -zpi /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdx
When restoring to the old drive, he says to drop the "-s 127"

Tiger's MFS Word Document says to use:
mfsrestore –i /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdx

At the following link (which is exactly for my model Tivo),
http://member.newsguy.com/~tatwell/...ts/TivoMFS2.htm
the command is:
mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdx

Which does what?

What is the command to restore my original drive back to the way it was (including recordings)?

Posted by: Robert S

The README on the CD covers the options, but hasn't been updated for more than a year and omits some important details.

-s controls the size of the swap partition, -x tries to expand into any unused space on the drive, -z zeroes out the unused system partitions (no idea why this might be important), -p reorders the partitions to put the Guide DB in the middle of the disk. -i <filename> (or a - to use stdin) gives the filename for the backup file. Options can be gathered, so -x -z -p -i is equivalent to -xzpi, but options like -s and -i that include a parameter must come at the end of the group.

Posted by: coeng

Unfortunately I'm not too knowledgable in hard drive partitioning details, so what you just told me went over my head.

Which options should I use to get back to where I started from before the upgrade? That's all I need to know at this point.

Thanks.

Posted by: Robert S

Ironically (given my disparaging comment's on Tiger's docs), his command you quoted:

mfsrestore –i /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdx

will do the trick.

Posted by: coeng

Robert,

No dice. On my old drive, I used:

mfsrestore -i /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdx

as you suggested, then booted TiVo, but it did not restore the actual programs. they're there in the menu of recorded programs, but I cannot actually play them.

did I miss anything?

is there any way I can check the contents of the old TiVo drive to ensure that my recordings are still there?

Posted by: Robert S

In that case they're probably gone. You could try doing -pi instead of -i incase you've got a 13 partition A drive, but that's about it.

Although I have had recordings survive restoring backups before, it's critical that the partition boundaries don't move. If they do, then you lose the recordings and it's not something you have much control over.

Posted by: coeng

I just tried "-pi". No difference. Still cannot play actual recordings.

On a much better note, I finally figured out why the upgrade did not initially work. I had the settings on the old TiVo drive backwards. I went to Maxtor's website and found diagrams of the back of the hard drive and then realized I was misinterpreting the diagrams on the actual hard drive. I felt like kicking myself in the ass.

Long story short, I now have both drives working in TiVo with expanded capacity.

But I still want those recordings on the old TiVo drive restored.
My wife is going to kick my ass because I told her they would not be lost.

Posted by: coeng

I finally conceded and deleted the program listings just so I can finally close the unit up.

On an interesting note, of the 15 or so half-hour shows that we recorded on the old drive prior to the upgrade, I was able to play a handful of them for about 15 minutes duration. At that point, the TiVo would reboot itself for some reason.