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Need help restoring A drive
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Posted by: triecke

For the last few weeks my TIVO has been unstable, freezing and rebooting multiple times per day. Every so often I have heard an odd sound from the box (which I assumed was one of the hard drives). The sound is sort of a ticking sound followed by something like a marble bouncing on a steel plate.

Today I confirmed that the sound was coming from the A drive (original 13.6 GB Quantum drive). I upgraded the TIVO last year with an additional 20 GB drive for the B drive.

I have a CD backup of the original A drive that I would like to restore to the remaining B drive until I can get a replacement drive. That is, I want to remove the failed A drive, restore the backup to the B drive and then use the B drive as the A drive replacement.

I tried restoring the backup file directly from the CD drive but was unsuccessful. I tried copying the backup file to my computer's C drive but was unsuccessful in the restore process (maybe because my operating system is XP? it is still FAT32 though).

I am guessing my problem stems from my complete lack of knowledge regarding the linux file system. All of the instructions I can find are specific to a certain configuration and I don't know how to modify them for my configuration.

I think the questions I need answered are:
1.) can I restore from a cd, if so, how?
2.) if I can't restore from a CD where do I need to store the backup and what is the command line entry to restore the backup?
3.) does it matter if my C drive contains the XP operating system if it formated as FAT32 and I am booting with the MFS Tools 2.0 CD?

I appreciate your help.

Posted by: triecke

No response? Not even a comment saying I should check the FAQ?

At least point me in the right direction.

Posted by: hpb

Are you sure that your backup is valid?

I can pm you a place to get a new backup image if necessary.

If you think your backup is ok, try these instructions:

http://www.newreleasesvideo.com/hin...-to/index9.html

There are half a dozen different upgrade options.

Posted by: triecke

Thanks for the response.

I checked the backup when I created it last year so I think it is valid. One problem is that I am not absolutely positive which software program I used to prepare the backup (DD, TivoMad, or MFS tools 1). I know it was around the time that TivoMad was new and the backup has a .bak extension (so I don't think it is a DD backup).

It might help if you PM a location to acquire a valid backup so at least I would know what software was used to create the backup.

I tried the instructions you linked in your e-mail before ever posting to this board. Probably where I am having problems is with Linux syntax. I copied the backup from the CD to the c:\ and tried the following commands after booting with the MFS CD:

mkdir /mnt/dos

mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/dos

mfsrestore -xzpi /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdc

No luck, but I think the problem may be my incorrect use of Linux commands. From the windows interface, where do I copy the backup so that when I try to retrieve it from Linux it is accessible? When I use the mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/dos command does that mount he primary master drive and link the c:/ root directory to the Linux /mnt/dos directory? Does this mean that if I copy the backup to the root directory of the C: drive that the above command will work?

I also tried changing the syntax to refer to the CD drive instead of a hard drive but was not successful.

Posted by: hpb

Based on the commands you listed:

Your FAT/FAT32 drive should be your Master Drive on the primary controller. Make sure the backup image is in the root of the drive.
Your Tivo A drive should be attached as the Master Drive on the secondary controller.

If you typed the command as you listed below your backup should be named tivo.bak.
If this is not the case change tivo.bak to <your filename>.bak.

Do you have a B drive?