TiVo Community Forums Archives - mfsexpend problem (my bad)

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mfsexpend problem (my bad)
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Posted by: ira_l

I just expanded my new HDVR2, replacing the original 40GB Maxtor drive with two WD 120GB drives that had formerly been in my Series2. When I upgraded the Series2 I was unable to use the mfsbackup/mfsrestore technique successfully and so I was able to upgrade it using the dd technique, preserving all recordings and expanding its capacity greatly.

So, to upgrade the HDVR2, I took those two drives, and did the following:

1) I attached my drives as follows:

Primary Master (/dev/hda): CD-ROM
Primary Slave (/dev/hdb): New 120GB HDD
Secondary Master (/dev/hdc): Original HDVR2 40GB Drive

I ran the following commands:

hdparm -d1 -c3 -m16 /dev/hdb
hdparm -d1 -c3 -m16 /dev/hdc

I got some harmless error, but what I was looking for was turning DMA on which did succeed.
I went to sleep and the copy progressed overnight.

When I awoke, the copy was successful and I was able to boot the 120GB drive in the HDVR2 which reported only 40 hours even though it had the 120GB drive installed.

I stupidly forgot to run mfsexpand at this point, not using the following command:

mfsadd -x /dev/hdb

2) I attached my drives as follows:

Primary Master (/dev/hda): CD-ROM
Primary Slave (/dev/hdb): New 120GB HDD (New B Drive)
Secondary Master (/dev/hdc): New 120GB HDD (New A Drive)

I ran the following commands:

hdparm -d1 -c3 -m16 /dev/hdb
hdparm -d1 -c3 -m16 /dev/hdc

I got some harmless error, but what I was looking for was turning DMA on which did succeed.

I then ran the following command thinking that it would expand and utilize the total storage capabilities of both drives:

mfsadd -x /dev/hdc /dev/hdb

This resulted in a total of 140 hours instead of 212 hours. What happened, of course, is that it just expanded what it thought was a 40GB drive to include another attached 120GB drive.

Although this is much better, I would really like to get the total 212 hours.

My question is this:

Can I

1) divorce the B drive from the A drive
2) then expand the A drive
3) then remarry the B drive to the A drive and preserve recordings without doing a backup and restore?

If not, is there anything that might be the reason that a typical mfsbackup/restore has failed using these drives? What happens when I tried is that it never gets past the "Welcome, Powering Up" screen.

Thanks!

Posted by: Robert S

mfsadd should have expanded both drives. There's no particular reason to run it on the A drive first, or to run it on both drives simultaneously.

However, mfsadd doesn't always run, for reasons that aren't clear.

How did you copy the original A drive on to the new one?

Why didn't you use an MFS Tools pipe to copy from the original drive to the two new ones (with -x). At least with that measure, if MFS Tools is going to have a problem, it'll tell you right at the start.

If you used dd to clone the A drive, then you'll still have your original swap partition. This is not big enough for a 240Gb TiVo to recover from a Green Screen of Death.

Has this TiVo been hacked at all (esp with monte)?

Posted by: ira_l

I used dd to copy the original drive to the new one.

My syntax was:

dd conv=noerror,sync if=/dev/hdc of=/dev/hdb bs=1024k.

Is there some way for me to increase my swap size?

How is "MFS Tools pipe" done? I haven't heard of that.

I could do it all over again since I have the original 40GB drive, so what would you recommend for a sequence of commands/tactics to get it right?

Do you have any idea what might be causing it to wait at the "Welcome" screen and not advance? That is the only thing that has stood in the way of me using mfsbackup/restore to begin with.

Thank you very much for your reply, Robert S! I enjoy reading your posts here. You really know your stuff!!!
:)