TiVo Community Forums Archives - Dual Drive DTivo Upgrade Question

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

Dual Drive DTivo Upgrade Question
(Click here to view the original thread with full colors/images)

Posted by: jerryc

I have two DSR6000s, both with dual drives. I just received my two Samsung 120GB hard drives from esystor. My plan was to go from the 30+15 drives to just the 120 as my A.

Then I read this in Hinsdale's How To (Upgrade Configuration #6):

quote:
Those with dual drive DirecTiVos, dual drive Series 2 units (with user added B drive), the rare factory combined dual drive standalones (see Step 7 Option #2 for description), or dual drive UK Thompson TiVo will not be able to combine their existing drives onto a single larger A drive and expand to use any remaining space (although they can be combined and restored to a single drive – just not further expanded). For further upgrade possibilities of these units see Upgrade Configuration #2 (will not preserve recordings) or Upgrade Configuration #4 or #5 (preserves recordings).

So it seems from Upgrade Configuration #2 I can do what I planned on I just can't keep my recordings. Is this correct?

Jerry

Posted by: mishagray

Actually, I think you can do a B drive replacement with the latest tools. Some smarter guy in the forum can confirm this.

That is copy the B drive from the 15G to the 120G. (You would probably need to do a low level 'dd' copy, not the TivoMad backup and restore).

Then I think you can use the TivoMad to "Re-expand" the B drive to 120G.

This would give you a 30G+120G setup.

I thought that the latest version of TivoMad would allow you to expand a drive than had already been previously "expanded".

Hey guys: would that work?

Posted by: jerryc

mishagray - I believe I saw something like that in the how-to. However, the end result I really want is just the single 120GB drive in the tivo.

Posted by: mishagray

quote:
Originally posted by jerryc
mishagray - I believe I saw something like that in the how-to. However, the end result I really want is just the single 120GB drive in the tivo.

As far as I know, you have a 2 drive solution.

In order to get a single drive, I think you need a divorce.
And a divorce results in lost shows.

You CAN get a single drive, but it will result in lost shows that's all.

Posted by: jerryc

That's the info I was missing. I guess I'll just have to relax and watch some TV before I upgrade. Not that big of a deal.

Thanks for the help.

Posted by: hinsdale

quote:
Originally posted by jerryc
mishagray - I believe I saw something like that in the how-to. However, the end result I really want is just the single 120GB drive in the tivo.

Yes you can simply create a shrucken volume image from your dual 30+15GB drives and restore to the new 120GB drive and expand (all season passes, etc are preserved but not your recordings) as is described in Configuration #2.

If wanting to preserve your recordings (not using -s to shrink the volume) there will not be enough available partitions left after combining the DirecTiVo 30+15GB drives onto the 120GB drive, to then expand to use the remaining space on the single 120GB drive.

Although you may be able to circumvent this problem - I have not tested this personally, and it won't harm anything so is worth trying:

(Assumes existing TiVo A drive as Primary Master, existing TiVo B drive as Primary Slave, and new larger upgrade A drive as Secondary Master)

mfsbackup -sTao - /dev/hda /dev/hdb | mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi - /dev/hdc

I believe this may work for you and preserve your recordings - please report back your results.

Posted by: jerryc

Hinsdale - I tried what you posted. Here's the output:

/# mfsbackup -sTao - /dev/hda /dev/hdb | mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi - /dev/hdc
Scanning source drive. Please wait a moment.
Source drive size is 30 hours
- Upgraded to 43 hours
Backup image will be 43 hours
Uncompressed backup size: 41368 megabytes
Restore failed: Backup target not large enough for entire backup by itself.
/# king up 1 of 41368 megabytes (0.00%)

Now when I booted up it said the proper size for hdc:
hdc: 234493056 sectors (120060 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=232632/16/63, UDMA(33)

However the pins on the new drive look like it is set for < 32GB, when I tried setting it to >= 32GB it reported the wrong size.

Posted by: jerryc

Never mind about the pins. As someone else in this forum posted before, I see that the jumper diagrams on the drive are different than the paper that came with it. The jumpers are fine.