TiVo Community Forums Archives - Can I use a USB Enclosure

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Can I use a USB Enclosure
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Posted by: tonyoci

Forgive me if this is a stupid question.

I have a USB 2.0 Hard Drive enclosure that allows me to connect standard IDE hard drives through USB 2.0

Would I be able to use this to perform backup and the initialization for an upgraded DirecTivo drive.

I am very uncomfortable opening up my (working) computer for this tasks.

?

Any constructive feedback would be appreciated

t

Posted by: Metaluna

To do this, you would need to create your own boot CD that contained a Linux kernel that had USB hard drive support. I don't know if any of the current boot CDs can do this. My guess would be no.

The other thing I'm not sure about is whether the USB interface is "raw" enough to allow making sector-by-sector copies of a hard drive, or writing to the partition tables as the various backup/upgrade tools must do.

Posted by: smitty99

Concern one is valid: you would need a custom kernel with USB 2.0 support, and that's extremely rare in ANY pre-compiled Linux kernel, let alone one specialized for hacking a TiVo.

The second one, about a USB drive not being raw enough, should not be a concern. You would use some device besides "/dev/hdXX" for your opertaions, but the raw disk device would still be there to use.

Posted by: emory

how rare could it be? kaz's boot CD has firewire support. i don't see why it's a stretch that usb isn't in there; i didn't pay attention to the umass* subsystem if it had one.

(under BSD systems umass is usb mass storage; i'm not sure what linux calls it off the top of my head..)

Posted by: Worf

Actually, IIRC, USB storage on Linux uses the SCSI subsystem (at least last time I tried to hook up a USB storage device). So it would appear to use /dev/sd?x, depending on just where it appears on the SCSI chain.