TiVo Community Forums Archives - Whoops, I've broken it. Help please!

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Whoops, I've broken it. Help please!
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Posted by: pkr

I took delivery of my new TiVo yesterday and after establishing that the thing basically works ( up to the 'Wecome to TiVo' screen ) I removed the HD to back it up.

My intention was to backup as new, again when the setup was complete and a further backup once the firmware had been updated.

I added the TiVo drive as the Secondary Master, a formatted 20GB drive as the Primary Master.

I went into CMOS setup, detected the drives, saved and exited.

It then booted from a: with Dylan's boot floppy.

I mounted /dev/hda and issued the dd to create a single file image of A.

I was more than a little surprised when the dump finished in less than 10 seconds ( reporting 323+1 ).

Very suspicious of this, I put the A drive back in the TiVo. And on powering up I don't get any life whatsoever except for the power LED and after a couple of seconds, the TV receives a signal ( black screen ).

So,

1. Can anyone tell me what's likely to have happened
2. How do I fix it

I've since put the A drive back on as a secondary master, and I notice that it is being detected by CMOS setup as being just 9MB.

Added : Just had a more careful look, and the partition table is marked as invalid when booting. Looks like that may be the problem! Is there a way to fix the partition table without having to buy a new drive?

Posted by: BobBlueUK

Sounds to me like a Quantum firmware hard drive which needs to be unlocked before you can access the full drive size - will report to the BIOS as 8-9Mb until it's unlocked.

I think there's a file you can download to unlock it manually ('qunlock' or similar name). If you boot from the CD drive using Kazmyr's boot CD the unlocking is done for you automatically as Linux boots...

Search the forum for 'quantum' 'unlock' and 'kazmyr' to find relevant links... there are no doubt links in Hinsdale's guide too. :)

Posted by: gerald_sheils

9MB is a symptom of a 'locked' drive .. in need of Qunlock.

(See Steve Conrad's sanity-saving diary for his experience of doing an upgrade http://www.steveconrad.co.uk/tivo/ )

The lack of Qunlock would explain a less than satisfactory back-up ... it doesn't explain why the original drive won't now boot in the TiVo.

Were / are the jumper settings on the drives correct ?

Have you tried running any disk diagnostics on the drives?

I would suspect that if drive A hasn't completely died on you, you will need a new TiVo disk image on CD to start over again.

Posted by: BobBlueUK

I'd agree, a virgin backup image may be needed to restore your drive to its original functional condition - easily obtained by asking in here. That's a last resort though...

Not sure why it's not booting any more... did you double-check that the drive power cable and IDE ribbon were properly plugged in before powering up? That's often the cause for an apparently dead TiVo on bootup.

Posted by: sanderton

Can you describe exactly what commands you issued?

(My instant thought was that you might have accidentally dd'd your PC drive to the TiVo instead of the otherway around?)

Did your PC boot into Windows at any time with the TiVo drive attached?

Posted by: BobBlueUK

Another thought... have you got Windows 2000 on your PC? If so, did you by any chance boot into that with the TiVo drive attached? That can kill a TiVo drive too...

Posted by: pkr

Hi,

Thanks for the responses.

Using Kazymyr, the drive unlocks and I can see it as 40GB. However, printing the partition table reveals nothing :(

sanderton / BobBlueUK : Thinking about it, it is possible that there may have been a boot to Win98 with the TiVo drive connected - to check the 20GB FAT32 drive. My bad - I was being distracted by an inquistive 9 year old ( not his fault ).

So, it looks like the partition table has gone.

I've seen the partition table definition on http://www.tivofaq.com/hack/faq.html . Any tools recommended for me to try and repair this?

Or would I be much better off with a new image from some kind soul?

Again, thanks for the responses so far.

/me feeling very stoopid now!

Posted by: BobBlueUK

Hmmm... AFAIUI it's only Windows NT/2000/XP that cause problems if booted with the TiVo drive connected - don't think booting to Windows 98 would have done any damage?

Posted by: pkr

quote:
Originally posted by BobBlueUK
Hmmm... AFAIUI it's only Windows NT/2000/XP that cause problems if booted with the TiVo drive connected - don't think booting to Windows 98 would have done any damage?

dbl post

Posted by: pkr

quote:
Originally posted by BobBlueUK
Hmmm... AFAIUI it's only Windows NT/2000/XP that cause problems if booted with the TiVo drive connected - don't think booting to Windows 98 would have done any damage?

What if I ran fdisk ( to look at the 20GB drive )? I'm certain I did not specifically access the TiVo disk with fdisk ( i.e. change to it ).

Posted by: racingclub

pm me if you want to talk about downloading an image

Posted by: BobBlueUK

Not sure if FDISK may have done something similar to NT/2000/XP in writing over the TiVo drive's master boot record?

There's a thread here which mentions a fix for the Windows 2000 drive problem using a utility called MakeTiVoBootable by dmprantz. You might want to contact him to obtain a copy and/or see if his utility is relevant for your situation?

Failing that, restoring a virgin image may actually be easier than trying to troubleshoot the problem? :confused:

Posted by: cinnamon_oil

Check the jumpers if you changed them to get the drive recognised in your PC. I had a nightmare five minutes where I couldn't get mine to boot after doing that... huge amounts of "uh-oh".

Posted by: Fatbloke

Yeah - that's my first thought - is the tivo disk still set as Slave? It should be master again before going back into the pvr.

Posted by: Paul Stimpson

If I understand the procedure correctly (I'm sure somebody will correct me if I haven't) the TiVo disc was the secondary master it would have been hdc not hda (that was your blank disc)

The drive devices should be:

hda - Primary Master
hdb - Primary Slave
hdc - Seconary Master
hdd - Secondary Slave

Are you sure you put the original drive back into the TiVo and not the other one by mistake?

Please confirm that your PC had:
Primary master - new drive
Secondary master - TiVo drive

Exactly what did you type?

From what I can see the possibilities for acidens are:

1) New blank drive was copied to itself then put into the TiVo. No problem - original drive is intact just put it back in the TiVo.

2) Drive wasn't unlocked and you only copied the first 9 meg (not the whole drive) onto the new drive then put it in. No problem - original drive is intact just put it back in.

3) The blank drive was copied onto the TiVo A drive. You have a problem but it's not the end of the world - Effectively the TiVo's drive has been erased. This isn't as bad as it sounds as the TiVo's serial number is on the board not the drive so you can rebuild the drive with a backup from any UK TiVo You now need to find somebody with a backup so you can restore it to the TiVo drive.

Al the best,
Paul.

Posted by: Robert S

The point everyone seems to have missed is that you shouldn't be trying to backup with dd anyway. Use MFS Tools (see Hinsdale's post in the Upgrade Centre) and you'll get a much more useful backup in just a few minutes.

Given your configuration, I think what you meant to say was, I mounted hda1

mount /dev/hda1 /mnt

and then issued the dd to copy

dd if=/dev/hdc bsize=32k | gzip > /mnt/tivo.gz

Right? Or did you do something different?

Did you get a backup file on your backup drive?

Posted by: pkr

The TiVo disk was CS when it came out of the TiVo. I set it to be Master before connecting it as Sec Master ( /dev/hdc ). I switched it back to CS when putting it back in the TiVo. Subsequently, I've also tried it as Master.

My destination drive ( 1 partition of 20GB clean formatted FAT32 ) was Pri Master. Again, because I don't like CS, it was set to Master. The CD was disconnected as I didn't need it and the only other significant device connected was the a: drive. ( By significant, I meant that the only other device active in this bare bones machine was a network card ).

Under 'Dylan' boot floppy, I did -
mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /mnt
^^^ My blank 20GB
then
dd if=/dev/hdc bs=32k | gzip -9c > /mnt/tivodisk.gz

That last command took all of 5 or 6 seconds to complete which is when I got that bad feeling!

Posted by: pkr

quote:
Originally posted by Robert S
The point everyone seems to have missed is that you shouldn't be trying to backup with dd anyway. Use MFS Tools (see Hinsdale's post in the Upgrade Centre) and you'll get a much more useful backup in just a few minutes.

Given your configuration, I think what you meant to say was, I mounted hda1

mount /dev/hda1 /mnt

and then issued the dd to copy

dd if=/dev/hdc bsize=32k | gzip > /mnt/tivo.gz

Right? Or did you do something different?

Did you get a backup file on your backup drive?

That is correct. MFS tools. Hmm, so many options & it looks like I got the wrong one :)

I did get a backup but it was miniscule ( a few hundred K ).

Posted by: Paul Stimpson

pkr,

I don't really like CS either. Somebody once told me that if you take the drives out of CS you need to change the cable to a regular IDE cable and not a CS one (usually marked master,slave or hd,cd etc.) He told me that if you manualy set the drives and use a CS cable that it messes up the UDMA somehow and you lose a load of HD performance.

Cheers,
Paul.

Posted by: pkr

PHEW!!!

Thanks to the generosity of a very nice person ( and another who offered the same ), I have managed to restore the drive!

The beastie now boots again.

Thank you all for your help.

/me will be more careful in future!

:)