TiVo Community Forums Archives - Getting Greedy for a B drive

TiVoCommunity.com
(c)opyright 1995-2005 All rights reserved
indexcheckTC
This area is a static history of posts in the TiVo Community Forum Archive.
This archive history was made for the simple indexing of search sites like Google.

Pages:1

Getting Greedy for a B drive
(Click here to view the original thread with full colors/images)

Posted by: stark_rayvyn

I did my upgrade about a week or 2 back and now am getting greedy for more... Is it as complicated to add a B drive and do I have to go through the whole production again?? Just don't want to risk my new and working 120gb A drive and don't like the idea of yanking it and going through the whole deal over again...

Posted by: rrr22777

quote:
Originally posted by stark_rayvyn
I did my upgrade about a week or 2 back and now am getting greedy for more... Is it as complicated to add a B drive and do I have to go through the whole production again?? Just don't want to risk my new and working 120gb A drive and don't like the idea of yanking it and going through the whole deal over again...

i am in the same situation. i asked around and it seems you have to remove the A drive, connect both A and new B drive to PC and then do a mfsadd as follows:

mfsadd -x /dev/hdc /dev/hdb

assuming hdc and hdb are where the drives are hooked up!

Posted by: Markelp

There should be a way around having to take out the A drive. I notice that there are companies that will send you a completely ready to go B drive for your TiVo. Doesn't require a PC or removal of the A drive. You should be able to do the same thing to a new B drive (using your own store-bought drive and your PC), drop it into your TiVo and go.

I do not know what the tools or commands are needed to make this happen, but it should be possible. The Hinsdale guide does not document this scenario.

Any ideas?

----Mark

Posted by: el_diabl0

this is just the simple blesstivo.

get a boot disk and then run blesstivo on the drive and drop it into your
TiVo.

the faq covers this in some depth. the whole mfsutils although it can handle this was aimed more are creating small backups and divorcing
joined drives.

AFAIK. you only need to bless the drive and then it will get picked up.

this is the way i originally added my 2nd drive.

Posted by: Robert S

Just a caution, guys, one of our UK members just had a rather negative outcome doing this. I think this is a problem with TiVoMad.

mfsadd should be safe, but it's MFS Tools 2.0, so incurs the GSOD risk.

Posted by: stark_rayvyn

Just a word back on this all... I used the Tivomad4 boot CD method originally to do a swap from my original 35 hour tivo drive to a 120... It went smooth until it was time to expand the new 120 drive beyond its initial 35 hour setting... That failed every which way I tried... Maybe 2 days worth of failing... In desperation I wiped it and started over using MFStools 2.0 and it went through perfectly with just one command line... Start to finish and running like a champ... I will only now use MFStools 2.0 and am wondering if it is possible to ready the new B drive and just drop it in... If so I will do it and can read the actual steps then... The only real question is, can the MFS Boot CD ready a Tivo B drive by itself so I can just drop it in and go?? I know I need a power Y connector and an A and B drive cable but need to know on the drive itself...

THX for all the help...

Posted by: Robert S

First of all, MFS Tools 2.0 isn't safe, your TiVo works at the moment, but if it green screens you'll lose everything and have to restore from backup. You may regard this as an acceptable risk (I do), but don't say 'I'll only use MFST2' without including a warning.

BlessTiVo seems to exploit some mechanism within TiVo for recognising B drives automatically. TiVoMad seems to break this and mfsadd just doesn't work that way. If you want to use mfsadd to add a B drive you'll have to have both drives connected.

Posted by: WB

If you want to keep your recorded programs now after your original upgrade, it may be tricky. I have not seen much talk on folks doing this with MFST2. I upgraded today with 2 WD 120G's using the DTiVoMad4 cd, and all went well. Not sure why you had all those problem with it, but I personally like my recordings, so I stayed away from MFS Tools 2.0

I have my original A drive. If you do too, and don't mind loosing what you have recorded and set up since your upgrade, you may wish to give
DTiVoMad4 another shot. Many have used it succesfully, as I did today.

If you don't then you'll have to look at all your options.

Good Luck!

Posted by: stark_rayvyn

If and when it fails I will report it here as you mentioned but until then, Tivomad is still the only thing I have to report as failed...

On the Tivomad, I backed the drive up using the dd commands (as per the instructions) and then tried to finalize or "expand it... In the dd copy method, it worked perfectly but left it as if it were a 35 hour drive... I Then returned it to the computer and attempted to expand it as per the instructions and it started as planned but failed... I swapped the drive from place to place in the pc and while it always started, it always failed...

On MFStools I returned my original Tivo drive and new 120 to the pc and started from scratch... I used 1 command line from the instructions provided and after 3 hours or so it finished... It seemed too easy and that day until today I was waiting for some failure... I had shows on there when I did this and I have heard of systems slowing but since I have recorded somewhere in the area of 150-200 hours of shows and still nothing to report... It is a bit faster than my original equipment was and it is flawless to date... I have never heard of these green screens but my original drive is on a shelf and ready to roll if that happens... I can only add that if and when it does go, I will redo it with the MFS tools on the 120 and take my chances... As for saving my stuff, I have a DVD recorder that I use to keep my important shows/movies so I have nothing I can not lose and it is far more than worth the risks...

As for Tivomad I admittedly have no idea how good or bad it is... People say it works and I don't doubt that... It may also be that it is better than MFS tools or it may be that MFS tools will fail and it does not really work at all... Regardless of what might be, the facts I have that I can share is that Tivomad did not work for me and MFS tools worked so well it seemed way, way too easy... I could not fathom the success in half the time, the easy of use and all with one little command line... I expected it to fail, I have waited for it to fail and to date, it has performed flawlessly... Those are my facts and my facts regarding Tivomad are simply that it was complicated, time consuming and in the end did not work... Neither speaks as the only facts relating to these programs... It is simply my facts regarding them... Beyond that and most importantly, I know way too little to be listened to as a leader or mentor of any kind... I am an idiot when it comes to all of this and people should not listen to me or anyone else as a sole source of info... I read through the instructions on both and anyone even thinking about this procedure should do the same... The rest will have to wait for time to tell the this tale... So far the ending is sweet but we all know that could change very quickly so the only real proof will require us all to wait...

Again, can a drive be readied by MFStools to be dropped in as a B drive?? Is that the "blessing" referred to??

Posted by: stark_rayvyn

So is that the end word?? All I have to do is (MFS tools 2.0) Bless the new drive and drop it in as a slave and the Tivo will find it and add it as a "B" drive??

Posted by: Robert S

BlessTiVo works that way, with MFS Tools you'll need to connect both drives to the PC to run mfsadd