TiVo Community Forums Archives - Imaging to a SMALLER HD!

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Imaging to a SMALLER HD! - How?
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Posted by: Opal

Hi all,

Im a bit of a n00b here, so sorry for this llama question but im kinda stuck atm... ok here is my position...

I decided to buy a Tivo, got one for Ł150 with a little bit of subs left on it (so i can kinda try before i subscribe) and it also came with a spare tivo box... by this i mean i got a complete Tivo minus any HD.

Ok now i know im being a cheapskate, especially seeing as i did get a bargain there (or at least i think i did, im looking for the catch but i haven't found it yet), but the only spare HD i have is a 20gig one.

The Tivo with HD's had a 30 and a 15 quantom in it. i've sucessfully made a backup image but i can't restore the image to a 20gig drive (which i don't really understand as the image itself is only 600mb-1gig in size).

Is there some sort of image processing or manipulation i have to do to get this image onto the smaller drive. At this point i don't care about preserving shows and settings, i just want to get the 2nd Tivo operational... Upgrading the unit can come later :)

Thanks for any Help

Posted by: Robert S

There's no way to get a UK TiVo image onto a drive smaller than the original Quantum Fireball (40027Mb for the single drive version - just slight larger than a 40Gb Seagate drive!)

The term 'image' is slightly misleading and dates from the time when the only way to backup a TiVo was to use dd and gzip to create a true drive image (if you did it on a never-used TiVo it would come out at about 800Mb). MFS Tools is more subtle (TiVo gave Tiger access to the proprietary specs for MFS) and only backs up what it needs to reconstruct a working TiVo drive. My MFS Tools backup came out at 340Mb compressed.

So, you're going to have to buy a new hard drive of at least 40027Mb. But looking at the current UK prices, (you're looking for the D540X drives, ignore the RP or Retail packs, you just need a bare drive) it's probably not worth going below 60Gb.

Posted by: Opal

Thanks for putting me in the picture rob, so the long and short of it is that im going to have to buy another HD to test.

It doesn't sound like it's impossible to do, just not possible right now. If Tiger has access to the MFS then possibly there would be a way to construct an image onto a smaller disk.

Mabey it would even be possible to create a "Formatted" disk, which would contain the current software version and nothing else, thereby allowing someone to operate a tivo on any size HD (would require running through setup etc, like a virgin disk really) which would be really great for having tivo's running on tiny disks for development purposes. Even if it was say 10gig, it would be better than having to use 40's.

On top of that, I don't like the idea of upgrading a tivo with 2x 120gb disks only to find that you HAVE to sell it like it as there is no way to downgrade (unless you kept a copy of a 40hr/45hr image). I guess the long and short of that argument is to make sure you always keep a copy ;) I still say it would be nice to have < 40 disks though.

Cheers

Posted by: Robert S

You could put the drive set from the working TiVo into the empty one if you just want to verify the hardware is working.

The whole issue is becoming irrelevant anyway - it soon won't be possible to buy drive smaller than 40Gb. If Tiger want's to improve MFS Tools, I can think of several more urgent things.

You can downgrade from 240 to 40 (upgraded TiVoes sell for a premium, so your scenario is actually insane), when MFS Tools makes its backup it only backs up the original partitions, not any partitions that were added by upgrade tools - the constraint is 'not smaller than the original A drive', not the current A drive or drive set.