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Back-Up Strategy
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Posted by: Donny

TiVo is great, recordings ready to watch whenever is convenient to you. But what happens when your drive goes? You loose everything.

With a PC you can back-up regularly to CD/DVD. At worst your losses should only be recent files. With TiVo it can be the lot. So. As I understand it you can back-up a drive using MFTOOLS (?), but how easy is it. Do you need to remove the drive from Tivo? Do you need to open up your PC? How do you connect the three drives (existing PC, existing TiVo, TiVo back-up)? How easy is the back-up process to run (think limited PC knowledge here); I'm quite happy (do I have to anyway) use a virgin drive for this purpose.

Is anybody operating a back-up strategy? I guess if you watch everything within days it may not be worth it. But if you keep recordings longer then your losses are reduced. Is a weekly back-up reasonable (or are you putting pressure on the hardware, powering up/down, removing drives etc). Is there an easy process (TivoWeb?) that makes a more regular process feasible and sensible?

I realise that if I searched the forum I could probably find more detailed info, but I would appreciate a little high level direction to begin with before I follow the more detailed descriptions.

Many thanks.

Don.

Posted by: sanderton

The only thing worth backing up is the SP list, which you can do via a network or serial connection and TivoWeb..

TiVo isn't intended for long term storage of shows, so if you have any you don't want to lose, then make a copy to another medium.

Posted by: cyril

The simplest back-up strategy is to have more than one TiVo :)

Useful to have both Sat and DTT, with at least one TiVo attached to each.

If one goes down it's not too crucial.

Gives you time to fix one while Euro 2004 /Wimbledon /Formula one etc is on.

Posted by: Robert S

You should make an MFS Tools backup. The procedure for this is described in Hinsdale's post at the top of the Upgrade Centre. The drive needs to be put in a PC with a FAT partition on a second drive to write the backup to.

As you've already upgraded, I assume you did this at the time.

However, that's not really a backup 'strategy', it's just a recovery backup to get your TiVo working again if the disk fails.

The problem with backing up a TiVo in the sense you mean is the vast quantity of data involved - your choices are a compressed backup (about 350Mb, but no recordings) of copying the whole drive set (tens or even hundreds of Gb).

There's no way to backup individual recordings without going down the video extraction/networking route.

Posted by: Donny

Robert. You overrate my abilities!!! Pacelink is perfect route for those who don't want to go the self-upgrade route. Simply send them your original HD and by return of post you get your original plus the upgraded drive together with all your settings and recordings. Highly recommended, very reasonably priced and exceptionally efficient.

So can I use MFS Tools to copy the entire drive onto another empty 120GB drive? Or is there an even easier way to copy an entire drive? I had a look on the other forum but it wasn't clear to me.

Thanks

Don.

Posted by: Robert S

You were talking about adding a second drive. You can't add a 'blessed' drive (like what Pacelink sell) to a TiVo that's already been upgraded. I assumed that this was made clear in the adverts for such drives and therefore you were considering using MFS Tools to add a drive. (Talking about backups also suggests some familiarity with computers).

You probably over estimate how hard it is to do the upgrade. Hinsdale covers every possible upgrade, so it's a bit intimidating, but once you figure out which bits apply to you, it's actually very simple.

Anyway, if you want to copy the whole TiVo drive, you need a drive that's at least as large as the one you want to copy. This can be a problem as different brands vary slightly in size (Maxtor 120Gb drives are actually 122Gb, most other brands are very close to 120Gb, for example).

Assuming you have enough room, if you just want to copy the whole drive, you might as well use dd as you don't need any of TiVo-specific functions of MFS Tools.

Posted by: iankb

Probably the most important tool for an upgrade is a highlighter pen - to mark those sections of Hinsdale that actually apply to you. Most of it doesn't.

Posted by: Donny

Hi Robert. Thanks for coming back again. Sorry if I'm confusing matters.

I'm currently a single 120GB drive which is an upgrade performed by Pacelink. My 40GB drive is stored away for emergencies. On a different thread I have discussed possibly upgrading to two 120GB drives. If I did this I would end my current drive to Pacelink and let them create the A and B drives as necessary.

My familiarity with PC's is probably limited plus. I can replace hard drives and power supplies and basically know the purpose of the various wiring to these.

I'm quite keen on the idea of copying my entire drive (120GB) to a totally empty drive. From your warning I would think a 160GB is the easy route for me to do this. I can get hold of one of those fairly cheaply.

My ideal is that I remove the TiVo HD, connect it to my PC, connect my empty HD to my PC, go into MS DOS and type something like "copy D:" On completion I can then insert either drive into my TiVo without being able to tell the difference. I only mentioned MFS Tools because I thought thats what I needed.

You mentioned "dd" as an easier option. What is "dd"?

As you can see I'm looking for the easiest option (not the cheapest and not necessarily the quickest - particularly if I can leave the PC to get on with it). As I have many older unwatched programmes I'd like to minimise the amount I loose if/when my HD dies.

Thank-you for your patience and assistance.

Don.

Posted by: sanderton

The best thing to do would be to get your TiVo networked to your PC so you can back up the individual shows to your PC's hard drive.

Making regular whole-disk copies is not practical; a dd copy (dd is the linux disk copy command) of a 120Gb HD will take many many hours, during which your Tivo and PC are out of action.

In terms of your hours spent it makes no sense for the off chance of saving a TV show - especially as you seem to value your time highly enough to pay the extra to get PaceLink to type a few Linux commands for you. :)

Oh, and you wouldn't need to send you disk to Pacelink to add a second one - they just sned you a blank disk to put in, if you don't want to go the DIY route.

Posted by: Robert S

Er, you would need to send the drive back to Pacelink. The results of trying to add a 'blessed' B drive to an upgraded A drive are really spectacularly bad!

If you can plug a drive into a TiVo, though, I really don't see the problem of doing the upgrade yourself.

Posted by: sanderton

Sorry, didn't know it was different if it was an upgraded drive.

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