Help! Problem copying to new drive. Need to clear out second drive...

[TRILIGHT]

Ok, I have been running an 80GB drive without any problems. All I want to do is add an old 100GB drive to the system. However, I would like the "new" 100GB drive to be the A drive now with the 80GB the B drive. I am using mfstools 2.0 and using the following command...


mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hdc | mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi - /dev/hda


My drives ARE connected correctly and ARE being detected at their proper sizes correctly. However, after the source drive is scanned, I get the following error...


Uncompressed backup size: 66419 megabytes
Restore failed: Backup target not large enough for entire backup by itself.


Now this is just not possible becase the backup drive is 100GB! Now, this 100GB drive was used as a TiVo drive before so perhaps there is crap on it I need to clear out. How do I do this? I tried fdisk but it does not recognize a partition (foreign or otherwise) on the drive at all. How can I clean this drive in Linux so I can use it?? I'd like to get this done sometime tonight so any quick answers would be very welcomes! Thanks!!!

[TRILIGHT]

Ok, I found THIS THREAD (http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=27291) that says I should not use the -s 127 to increase the swap file. HOWEVER, I just read Captain's post in another thread that said if my overall size was going to end up being larger than 140GB that I NEEDED this. Now, of course, I can't really have both drives connected at once for the overall upgrade because I need to copy the drive before I blow it away to be the second drive! How the hell can I copy it without the swap being increased and then increase the swap AFTER the fact? I'm lost. :( Not stupid mind you!!! ;) Just lost.

EDIT: Ok, I've looked around and now I know it is the -s 127 command doing it. However, The Hinsdale guide says that I need this if my overall space is going to be larger than 140GB! I know it says the GSOD is rare but I don't think so. Well, I haven't seen it much with 2.5.2 but with 2.5, I got a GSOD a LOT! I do not want this system to hit a green screen and then be permanently hosed. Can I change the swap file later?

[Silverdude]

Its been a while since i looked at the MFStools 2.0 readme, but from what i remember you can copy the hard drives any way you want, then they you can use MFS tools to "add new partitions" to those hard drives.

From the MFS tools 2.0

10C) Replacing dual drive TiVo with new larger A drive and B drive
10D) Replacing just the A drive or just the B drive in a dual drive TiVo with a new larger drive

I think those are the two sections you are going to need. If you need more PM me.

SD

[TRILIGHT]

Thanks Silverdude. I was following the right section. It's just the swap deal that was throwing things off. Basically, the only way I was going to be able to do the swap file deal would have been to backup the 80GB to a different drive and then do all of this with the 80GB and 100GB connected and reading the backup from that other drive. Problem is, I don't have a 80+GB drive just sitting around for that. LOL!

I just decided to throw caution to the wind and just add the 100GB as a B drive. Hell of a lot easier and faster. Now, if the damn thing goes belly up with a GSOD, I'm sure I'll be TOTALLY hosed. It would be annoying as hell but I'll worry about that when the time comes. I haven't really had the same sort of GSOD issues with 2.5.2 that I had with 2.5. It is a LOT more stable.

I know I could have just done a backup and lost the recordings but if I run into trouble later, I'm going to lose the recordings anyway. Oh well. :)

[David Bought]

Originally posted by TRILIGHT
I just decided to throw caution to the wind and just add the 100GB as a B drive. Hell of a lot easier and faster. Now, if the damn thing goes belly up with a GSOD, I'm sure I'll be TOTALLY hosed. It would be annoying as hell but I'll worry about that when the time comes. I haven't really had the same sort of GSOD issues with 2.5.2 that I had with 2.5. It is a LOT more stable.

You may have been able to make a swap partition on the new B drive before running mfsadd and then hacked rc.sysinit to activate it (swapon). Had it worked, it would have solved the potential green screen problems.

Did you try mfsbackup with and without the "shrink" option?

[comer]

I got the same problem except I am trying to expand 40G drive onto 80G. So my resulting size will not be larger than 120G, yet I got exactly the same message at 0%.

So what's the solution? Remove "-s 127" option?

Thanks,
comer
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[TRILIGHT]

You do not need that switch at all, comer. It is only used if your overall space will be greater than 140GB.

[comer]

After trying everything, excluding removing that option of course, I was almost ready to loose my recordings, but you bring me hope again! :p

Think like running home during lunch just to try it out :D

Thanks!
comer
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PS: could you elaborate why that prevented me from copying the drive, please? just to understand the thing better :)

[TRILIGHT]

Originally posted by comer
PS: could you elaborate why that prevented me from copying the drive, please? just to understand the thing better :)

While I do not pretend to be an expert in such matters, it is my understanding that the switch is intended to increase the space available for a "swap" location in the event of a green screen. Apparently, on modified units with recording space larger than 140GB, this is required so that the green screen repair process can complete it's work and you could potentionally get your unit up and running again by just letting it run the repair. From what I've read, it seems that if you do not adjust this swap space when running more than 140GB, your green screen repair will not complete properly and your unit is hosed. (Until you reload it from scratch, of course.)

I now have 180GB of total space for a total of 166 recording hours. I simply added the new drive and did not make a backup or increase the swap space. I did so, however, with the full knowledge that I could potentially lose all of my recordings at some point should the unit throw a green screen. However, it has been my experience that the modified 2.5.2 is infinitely more stable than the 2.5 I was running before anyway. So far, everything has been fine. I have a backup of the main system so if it goes belly up, I'll just lose the recordings. I'll get upset and then I'll get over it. :D

[comer]

Well, removing "-s" did not worked, but without "-x" it did (as per Robert S suggestion from Tivocommunity).

The restore did not expand the original image, so as of now it stays at 35h recording time, but I think DTivomad will help here ;)

Thanks,
comer
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[TRILIGHT]

Cool! Thanks for sharing the info, comer. Would you mind posting a link to the post that person helped you on? Or, could you paste the information here? That way, if someone searches on this problem and ends up here, they might be able to find more info if you put it here.

[captain_video]

I am assuming that you are not concerned about saving your recordings and just want to backup your current 80 GB drive to the new 100 GB drive. If that's the case then I would suggest backing up the 80GB drive to your C drive and then restoring the backup image to the new 100GB drive instead of trying to do it all at once. You are basically doing the same thing but I don't know if the backup image is retained on the C drive afterwards when using the one-step process. Since you will be using the existing drive as your new B drive, this is desireable because you'll want a backup image to fall back on if something gets hosed later on. Perform the backup as follows:

mfsbackup -6so /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdc

This is assuming that you have your C drive mounted as primary master and the 80GB drive mounted as secondary master. You can rename the backup image (i.e. tivo.bak) to whatever you want. If you already mounted your 100GB drive as primary slave then restore the image as follows:

mfsrestore -s 127 -zpi /mnt/dos/tivobak /dev/hdb

Install the 100GB drive in your DTivo after resetting the jumpers to master configuration and boot it up. Once you're satisfied that the image is working, reinstall the 100GB drive in your DTivo as secondary master and the 80GB drive as primary slave. Expand and marry the partitions to include the original 80GB drive as the new B drive as follows:

mfsadd -x /dev/hdc /dev/hdb

This process provides you with a backup image that you have tested and now know to be good. You should always test a backup image before wiping the original to make sure it works.