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Upgrading once-upgraded HDR112?
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Posted by: logic88

Sorry if this is an obvious question but it's been a few years since I've upgraded my HDR112 with a single 60GB A drive. At the time, there wasn't any way to upgrade again and keep all the SPs and programs. Now that I feel the need for more space by adding a 120GB drive, it appears that the latest version of the upgrade tools will let me upgrade and keep everything. Is this correct? And are there any gotcha's to be concerned about when adding the new 120GB drive to my upgraded HDR112?

Thanks for any info.

Posted by: Robert S

The good news is that MFS Tools 2.0 blows away the limitations of the old software tools (there are some hard limits in the TiVo system, but it's still a big improvement). So you can upgrade further without losing your recordings.

Further good news is that we have a work-around for the 137Gb for Series 1 TiVoes.

However, I wouldn't think adding a B drive is a good idea if the A drive is getting long-in-the-tooth.

So, as an alternative, consider getting a 200Gb drive and using it to replace the current A drive. Full instructions for doing this are on page 5 onwards of the 160Gb thread at the top of the Underground.

Posted by: logic88

Thanks for the detailed response. Too bad I already bought the 120GB drive. Besides, I think that 180GB should be plenty since I've lived with 60GB the past couple of years.

One last thing, you mentioned that that I would be adding a B drive to my box whereas I got the impression from reading the guide that I would be copying my old 60GB A drive to the 120GB drive and then using the 60GB as a new B drive since just simply adding a 120GB drive to my existing system would cause swap space problems. Was I mistaken in this belief?

Thanks again.

Posted by: Robert S

I assumed you were intending to add the new drive because you said you were going to upgrade by 'adding a 120Gb drive'.

Presumably you know whether you increased swap on the first upgrade, so yes, going to 180Gb on a Series 1 stand alone without extra swap is not a great idea (I kind-of talked around that by suggesting staying with a single drive).

It depends how paranoid you are and how comfortable you are with Linux. You might want to read the third post of the Fixes thread - there are a couple of ideas there that would let you just add the new drive (which is a two-minute job).

Otherwise, yes, copy the A drive with an MFS Tools pipe and then, when you're happy all is well with the new drive (I'd let it fill with recordings) you can add the old A drive as a B drive with mfsadd.

TBH, though, 120Gb is 11 pages of recordings (on High), so although I still look hungrily at the falling prices of big drives, I realise that more space than that wouldn't really be useful.

Posted by: logic88

Well, the upgrade from the 60GB to the 120GB went fine, if a little slow. It took something like 10+ hours to copy the entire 60GB drive. I wondered if I did anything wrong? I used a Dell 4500 (2.4 P4) with the 120GB drive as "hda" and the 60GB drive as "hdd". Booted up off the CD with the defaults and used the "mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hdd | mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi - /dev/hda" command. Since the 120GB seems to work OK (TiVo reports 145 hrs free), I guess I shouldn't complain but it just seem to take a really long time compared to using HD copying tools like Ghost.