TiVo Community Forums Archives - No win 2K to upgrade? HELP!!

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No win 2K to upgrade? HELP!!
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Posted by: MannyE

OK so Now I remember why I had sent my Tivo off to Hinsdale...

First I had little time, and my home computer is used constantly, so I didn't want to futz with it and possible screw up the Tivo AND the computer.

But then I remember that I had to go through a whole rigamarole (never have tried spelling that before) in order to use my computer because I have Win2K. and the primary drive is NFTS..not Fat 32. My D drive is Fat 32.

I was going to remove the D-drive and check out the condition of my Tivo drive (which seems to have fried) but now I remember the whole win2K thing.... AAAAAAAAAGGHHHH

So even if I buy a new drive tomorrow I won't be able to bless it..

Help me please....all the new stuff starts this week!

Posted by: Maurice

I just made a backup on a PC that uses XP (NTFS) on its C Drive
Hinsdale Instructions (simply great) and MFStools 2 have a note on XP and 2000.

I used free space in my C drive to make a DOS FAT32 partition (I used Partition Magic 8.0)

You just have to note to mount this extended partition per the instructions.
After all was done - the TIVO.BAK file was in the DOS partition.

Posted by: Robert S

Of course, if you don't want to mess up your XP install, just put a small (1Gb) FAT partition on the drive you're going to upgrade with and backup to that.

Posted by: tivo33

Is it ok to use the Hinsdale process on a win 2k system if the whole HD is in FAT32? Somewhere in Hinsdale it states to be careful not to boot into win 2k while the Tivo Drive is attached to you computer because it can cause severe damage. Is that because it is NTSF?

Posted by: Robert S

No, that's a separate issue. W2K will write a 'signature' to the first block on the disk. The signature goes into a spot that's not used by any of the Microsoft boot blocks, but it is used in the TiVo boot block and this change makes the drive unbootable.

You can fix it with MakeTiVoBootable, but that's very fiddly.

Posted by: tivo33

But If I have a HD with a tivo.bak on it then can I insert that drive into my win2k system and use it to burn that tivo.bak onto a cd? Or will using win2k ruin the backup?

Posted by: Robert S

The signature affect the boot block of hard drives connected to the computer when 2k is booted. The boot block is the first block on the disk and is not a file on the disk.

The compressed backup is not a hard drive, just a file, so you shouldn't have any problem putting it on a disk.

Posted by: jtown

It's not entirely clear what the OP needs/wants to do here that makes this so difficult. It seems like he's got a drive in his tivo that he suspects is bad. Since he doesn't say what kind of drive it is, I'll assume Maxtor. Maxtor's diagnostic utility comes on a bootable floppy. 2k/XP is not involved so the configuration of the computer is irrelevant. Unhook its hard drives, hook up the tivo drive, run the diagnostics.

Prepping a new drive doesn't require having any other drives hooked up so, again, I fail to see the problem here. Copying the data from the old tivo drive to a new tivo drive is also a standalone operation. Again, no problem.

The only reason he would need to have one of the computer's drives hooked up is if he wanted to make a backup. In that case, hook up the FAT32 drive and make the backup. Again, 2k is not used for this and wouldn't even be present on the target drive so there is no problem.

The only way the tivo drives could be screwed up is if 2k was booted with the tivo drives hooked up to the computer and there's simply no reason to even allow for the possibility. None of the potential actions call for having the 2k drive anywhere near the comptuer during any of the operations and only making a backup requires a non-tivo drive and the OP has a FAT32 drive already.

Read the Hinsdale HowTo.

Posted by: tivo33

What I have is a new Maxtor drive with tivo.bak image on it. I would like to install that into my win2k system so I can burn this tivo.bak image onto a cd so I don't have to waste a new hd just to store the backup image. I was concerned about booting up my system with the drive containing the .bak image if booting to 2k will corrup the backup image. I have already created a fat32 partition on my win2k C drive So if it is safe to do so I will copy the .bak image from the new maxtor onto the Fat32 partition then burn to a cd or even leave on the FAT32 partition as a backup.

Posted by: jtown

As has been said, the backup image is a file. Nothing more, nothing less. You could put it on any filesystem on any operating system. The only thing that can be screwed up is the physical drive used in the tivo. You could copy the .bak file to an NTFS drive on a 2k system. Or HPFS on an OS/2 system. Or HFS+ on OS X. Doesn't matter. The only thing you can't do is boot into Windows 2000 or Windows XP with a physical tivo drive attached to your computer.

Posted by: Robert S

There are exactly two issues raised by using a Windows NT-derived operating system (NT4, 2000, XP) to upgrade a TiVo.

1. NTFS. Windows NT is usually installed on NTFS. Linux has read-only support for NTFS. Therefore you can not write your backup file to your C: drive, as in Hinsdale. You must have a partition formatted as FAT (it's easy to format the drive you are about to use for the upgrade this way. Don't format the whole drive - 2Gb would be plenty of room). The backup file itself is just a file. There are no issues related to the handling of files in Windows NT.

2. The signature. Windows NT and derivates write a code to the boot block of all hard drives attached when the system boots. This change is harmless to the boot blocks commonly used on PC's, but breaks the TiVo's boot block. This is not a gypsy curse. This is not an irrevocable change. This is just an ordinary piece of data that's written to a part of the drive that the TiVo system can not tolerate being changed.

Any problems you may be anticipating copying files using Windows NT or turning drives that have been in an NT system into TiVo drives are entirely figments of your imagination.

Posted by: tivo33

That answered my questions. Thanks. I just did the backup and it appears to be fine.

Posted by: Cletus

Robert S, I admire your patience. I have given up long ago repeating the same things over and over again. :)