Registered: Apr 2003
Location:
Posts: 19

How can I create a backup image file smaller than the drive capacity?

Forgive me if this is a FAQ, I couldn't find the answer in the Tivo HACK FAQ.

I have a 40GB drive that I've pulled from my Tivo (replaced with a Western Digital 160GB drive, of which 137GB is seen on my S2 AT&T/Tivo). I would like to use this 40GB drive in my PC to play around with FreeBSD, but would like to backup the drive first, in the event I need to restore it and use it back in my Tivo.

However, I'd like to avoid holding onto a 40GB sector-for-sector copy of the drive via dd. Is there an easier way to make a backup of JUST the OS/etc? I imagine it would fit on a CD, so I could burn it and keep the backup. Can anyone point me to the FAQ or HOWTO for this?

Thanks in advance!

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: Nashua, NH
Posts: 7476

The Hinsdale Upgrade How-To explains how to use mfs_tools to create a small backup which typically fits on a CD. This excludes any recorded content, but does have the software plus all your settings, season passes, etc.

The Hack FAQ is pretty useless nowadays. It hasn't been kept current.

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Steve

One thousand three hundred thirty-three, zero

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Registered: Apr 2003
Location:
Posts: 19

Thanks Steve, appreciate it. I used the mfs tools 2.0 to do the upgrade, and I *thought* I remembered a section that talked about a "fast" upgrade (e.g. doesn't capture recorded programs) so that should be similar. Thanks again, I'll check that out.

Actually, one complication. The native drive in the PC I'm working with is NTFS, and SATA to boot. So I don't think there's kernel support for NTFS write, nor for the SATA controller. So can I use a bootable Linux CD like Damn Small Linux or Knoppix for the OS/etc, then just mount the mfstools cd in my other drive and use the mfstools from it? Are they statically linked, etc?

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Registered: Oct 1999
Location: Allen, TX, USA
Posts: 4810

I'm pretty sure there's a static linked version available; if not, I can whip you one up. The rest of your plan sounds good.

Brad

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Registered: Apr 2003
Location:
Posts: 19

Thanks, I was able to get things going.

I ended up booting Damn Small Linux, mounting the MFStools CD in my other box, unziping the statically linked mfstools, and scp'ing them over to the Damn Small Linux box. When I unzip'd it, it was basically just a single "mfstool" binary, but which operates in multiple modes (suggesting perhaps "mfsbackup" is just an alias on the MFStools cd for "mfstools backup".

Anyway, thanks for the offer, but I was able to back it up. Compressed, it was about 160MB, and I was able to just run something along these lines:

mfstool backup -f 9999 -9 -s -o - /dev/hda | ssh user@linuxbox 'cat - >> /home/user/tivo.mfs'

That seems to have worked fine.

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Registered: Jul 2002
Location: Cambridgeshire, UK
Posts: 9266

'mfsbackup' is not an alias. It's a link that points to the mfstool file. When mfstool starts up, it checks the name it was invoked as, and if it's 'mfsbackup' (or, I think, 'backup'), it switches to backup mode. Unlike DOS, where such things indicate serious filesystem corruption, in Unix, it's quite natural for files to have multiple names.

Nice trick with ssh, although I think I'll continue to suggest people use their upgrade drive as a temporary FAT partition...

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Please do not PM me asking for TiVo backups. I don't have any.

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Registered: Apr 2003
Location:
Posts: 19

Oh I agree, the ssh thing works but is probably not for the faint of heart, and of course requires another box on the network you can dump the image to

That makes sense about mfstool, it's just checking argv[0] then I take it?

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Registered: Jul 2002
Location: Cambridgeshire, UK
Posts: 9266

Yes. That's a very common thing in Unix.

There's a binary called busybox that does dozens of common commands. You'd never know it unless you started picking apart the file links (or read the docs!).

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Please do not PM me asking for TiVo backups. I don't have any.

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