TiVo Community Forums Archives - upgrading an upgraded SA Tivo

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upgrading an upgraded SA Tivo _ mfstools 1.1 saves recordings?
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Posted by: philhu

I was looking through the MFSTools 1.1 docs....I ran across this tidbit:

Q. Can I backup a dual drive and restore to a single drive?

Yes. If the drive is large enough. The MFS Tools restore automatically tries to fill up the A drive before putting anything on the B drive. However, failing fitting everything on the A drive, it will then try to fit as much as it can on the A drive.

Q. Will this work with a dual drive TiVo, such as the 312, original UK TiVo, 60 hour standalone, or original DirecTV with TiVo recievers?

Absolutely. In fact, with the right set of options, MFS Tools can restore these systems to single drives, in such a way as a second drive can then be added by "Blessing" it and adding it, as covered in the normal TiVo hack FAQ. For the 312, or 60 hour standalone, all that is needed is a large enough drive to restore to. For the dual drive UK TiVo and idual drive combo, the -s option is needed.

If you read this, it looks like a SA single drive TIVO, already upgraded to a dual drive, can be backed up completely (including streams) and restored to a single drive. As long as the new drive a is bigger than the old a+b!! So, if you have a 30gig a and a 60 gig b, you can restore it, WITH RECORDINGS, to a new 120 gig A

Without loss of programs. Am I reading the FAQ correctly?

Posted by: Otto

No. You can take a 30 gig A and 60 gig B, and create a 30 gig A with all your programs, assuming you have few enough programs to fit into that 30 gig image. You can then expand the 30 gig image to fill a 120 gig drive, but MFSTools cannot create a single, unmarried, 90 gig image with the contents of the dual drives. Now, it can create a single 90 gig image, but it can't be married or Tivomadded again, I believe.

If you use the -s option and the -a option together, and have few enough programs for it to be able to swing it, then it will create an unmarried single drive backup. But, if you have too many programs on the drive, then it will still be a dual drive backup.

Posted by: hinsdale

quote:
Originally posted by Otto
Now, it can create a single 90 gig image, but it can't be married or Tivomadded again, I believe.

Otto is correct as usual.

The only exception is if it was a true factory "melded" dual drive. Theortically you could use MFS Tools to combine the A+B onto a larger drive (preserving recordings) and then use DTiVoMad 4 to expand A and Bless B although I have not seen anyone yet actually accomplish this (adding a B drive should not be a problem but not sure expanding the A drive with DTiVoMad will actually work).

Posted by: philhu

ok, then is it possible to copy the B drive and all programs to a larger B drive, and then expand it?

IE, 30 gig A, 60 gig B

Copy 60 g B to 120 gig B

Put in tivo, let it do it's thing, then back to pc to expand B?

Posted by: Otto

quote:
Originally posted by philhu
ok, then is it possible to copy the B drive and all programs to a larger B drive, and then expand it?

IE, 30 gig A, 60 gig B

Copy 60 g B to 120 gig B

Put in tivo, let it do it's thing, then back to pc to expand B?

No, it's not.

You cannot treat the Tivo drives as separate units. They're not. Nor can expansion of any kind occur once it has already occured. Expanding drives is currently a one-time deal. To expand your drives again, you must get them to a divorced state, using MFSTool -s. There is no other way.

In this specific example, you can copy the B drive to a bigger drive, but there's no way to utilize that extra space. You cannot expand the B drive. You cannot expand the A drive unless it's a single drive.

The gist here is that for any given upgrade, you must start fresh and clean, with a one drive, unmarried image. Period. No other way to do it.