TiVo Community Forums Archives - Upgrading 2 x 120 to 2 x 160, "unable to fit backup onto drives"

TiVoCommunity.com
(c)opyright 1995-2005 All rights reserved
indexcheckTC
This area is a static history of posts in the TiVo Community Forum Archive.
This archive history was made for the simple indexing of search sites like Google.

Pages:1

Upgrading 2 x 120 to 2 x 160, "unable to fit backup onto drives"
(Click here to view the original thread with full colors/images)

Posted by: bmatson

I have previously used mfs 2.0 to upgrade a SAT-T60, 40 Mb to dual 120 Mb drives. Worked great. Now I just tried to upgrade the 2 x 120 drives to 2 x 160. On startup, I observed that Linux identified the drive sizes correctly:
hda (old Tivo A) = 122 Gb
hdb (old Tivo B) = 122 Gb
hdc (new 160) = 137 Gb
hdd (new 160) = 137 Gb

when I ran the command:
mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hda /dev/hdb | mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi - /dev/hdc /dev/hdd

I got the following output:

Scanning source drive. Please wait a moment.
Source drive is 39 hours.
- Upgraded to 129 hours
- Upgraded to 277 hours
Uncompressed backup size: 232847 megabytes
Restore failed: Unable to fit backup onto drives.

Whats going on here? It's almost as if the drives are reversed (old vs new), but I'v tried this 3 times, checked the output on boot-up each time (scrolling up), rechecked the ide cabling, done all I can think of short of actually trying reversing the "dev/hda /dev/hdb" with "/dev/hdc /dev/hdd". But I'm afraid of losing over 200 hours of recordings.

By the way, I first tested my new drives by doing a test upgrade of my old, removed 40 Gb drive, onto the two new drives. But I thought the new restore would just repartition the drives and overwrite whatever was there.

Please help. I'm nearing panic. (Hopefully I can get an answer before I have to put the old drives back in. HOPEFULLY, I still have a valid image on the original two drives.)

Thank you.

Posted by: Robert S

It's the x on the restore side - you don't have enough spare partition to expand.

Posted by: Oo.et.oO

quote:
Originally posted by Robert S
It's the x on the restore side - you don't have enough spare partition to expand.

meaning maybe you can expand to another drive on the PC and then restore it.
or, backup/restore without compression...?

:confused:

Posted by: bmatson

Robert,

If I leave off the "x", I presume I will end up with the same capacity as before. My intent was to go from 2 x 120 to 2 x 137 total capacity? I know that it is possible to get to that capacity. Is it that one simply can't get there from here (namely 2 x 120)? That I started off with too much capacity to make the jump to 2 x 137?

Is there a solution that gets me to 2 x 137 without losing all the programs on my 2 x 120 set? If not, how would I at least upgrade to 2 x 137 without first reverting to the previous version of Tivo (2.5, I think) that is on the original 40 Gb hard disk.?

Posted by: bmatson

Robert,

I had another thought. I do have another system with a large Raid disk, part of which is unused. I believe I could create a partition of nearly 200 Gb on it, and run Knoppix to create an ext2 linux filesystem on it (though I'm not sure Knoppix could create a filesystem that big - needs 48 bit addressing?) I would even be willing to load Red Hat 9 on the system if that would help this endeavor. I do know Linux fairly well, as I was a Unix programmer (C language) for 10 years, then system administrator for a couple of years. But I don't know anything about MFS Tools.

Can you possibly help with this (I see you posting A LOT), or refer me to somebody that might have a solution? (Or am I going off the deep end here? I obviously really LOVE my Tivo.....). Thanks.

Posted by: MCodanti

The problem is that you only get to upgrade your A drive once. As I understand it you can upgrade your B drive.

In the Hinsdale FAQ there is a command some thing like: (I'm going from memory here.)

mfsbackup -f 9999 -6so - /dev/hda

that you can use to copy your current setup minus programs to your new drive and expand it. (You should still get your thumbs, season passes, etc.)

final command would be something like:

mfsbackup -f 9999 -6so - /dev/hda /dev/hdb | mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi - /dev/hdc /dev/hdd

Posted by: Robert S

MCodanti seems to be the only one to follow what's going on, but I'll say what he said anyway.

You can only have three pairs of MFS partitions on your A drive. Your TiVo started with two pairs, when you upgraded you added a pair to the A drive, plus another pair on the B drive, meaning the partition table on the A drive is full.

The core problem is that MFS Tools can not resize MFS partitions, so there's no way to work around the problem by any of the means suggested here.

There is a possibility that has just occurred to me: Try following the procedure to upgrade to a large drive. (See das Monkey's How-to on page 6 of the 160Gb thread at the top of the Underground). My idea is that by using the full capacity of the 160Gb drive there may be enough room for MFS Tools to move a partition pair from the A drive to the B drive, thus freeing up some entries in the partition table for the expansion.

Failing that (and I know it's a scarier upgrade than you wanted!), you'll have to do as MCondanti suggests and revert to a commpressed backup, thus losing your recordings, or forego expanding.

(You don't need the -f 9999 for a Series 1 TiVo, but it shouldn't hurt).