tivo without initial hard drive question

[billywiggins]

I bought a tivo from ebay without the hard drive and I was wondering if it is possible to just pop a hard drive in and go? I know Im going to have to prepare it or Bless it rather, but are the any files I need from an original hard drive to put on my hard drive? I am very new to this and just need a little help getting started. I have just joined the forums and have done some searching but thought I would ask since I havent found an answer yet, but I will conitnue to look. Thanks!

Oh yeah, it is a HDR312.

[mrblack51]

you need to find a backup image (use the search button) and then restore it using mfstools (mfsrestore to be exact). the drive you need must be larger or equal size to the image you are restoring with.

[billywiggins]

Ok, Ive got another question regarding this. The drive Im using, Seagate 80GB, is from another computer I was using, it doesnt have anything on it but it was formatted for a FreeBSD system, do I need to fdisk it or anything before I try to write the backup image to it?

[billywiggins]

Now Im really confused. Ive been doing alot of readin on how to accomplish what my original post was about, but I havent found ANY how-tos, docs, instructions, nothing on how to do exactly what Im trying to do, which is take a bare drive and set it up for use in a Tivo, without an original hard drive. Everything I have read is telling you to make a backup and them restore that backup onto the new drive, ok I found a backup image, but I have other questions about the order of how things need to go. Like, what is the deal with Blessing a drive, it seems that it is only for adding another drive to an existing setup, not for replacing a drive. What creates the filesystem/structure on the hard drive? Do I need to create all the directories on the tivo drive or is there something that does this automatically? In other words, I want some really specific answers, all of these how-tos, etc. do not go into very much detail, I like to understand exactly what is going on with a process when doing stuff, it also helps me see if I can find a better way of doing something to contribute back to the community.

Thanks for any help.

[BubbleLamp]

Just restore the image using mfstools and that's it. No need to format or create any file structures first. You are basically re-imaging the drive, similar to ghosting a drive in the PC world.

[billywiggins]

Cool, I just got done restoring the image to it and it worked the first time. I wasnt sure how it created the filesystem, but I understand what yall are saying now, its restoring onto my new drive so it will be a mirror image of whatever drive it was backed up from. Gotcha! Thanks anyways, guess if I would have quite being a pooh and just done it the first time I would have found this out. Thanks again, Ill be spending alot of time in the forums now, continuing to modify my tivo.