Using Hinsdale to replace bad 120GB drive in dual drive setup

[binkatl]

Ok, here's my deal. I have an upgraded/hacked HDVR2, and my A drive has started to go bad. It still works, but I get pauses and clicks. I ran diagnostics and was told that it needs to be replaced. The B drive is fine and doesn't need to be replaced.

So before I lose the A drive completely, I want to clone it to a spare 120GB drive I have ready to go. I was going to use the Hinsdale guide, Upgrade Configuration #4: From any dual drive Tivo to new A or new B drive (replacing only one or the other). This should save all my settings as well as my recordings.

Before I start this process I just wanted to be sure.... I'm replacing the drive with another drive that has the same capacity. The guide continually refers to replacing the drive with a "New, larger drive."

Will this still work if I'm replacing a 120GB drive with another 120GB drive?

Thanks for the help... if someone could respond soon, it'd be great. I'm just waiting for clarification on this before I start!

- Blake

[fixn278]

If you want to be sure it works and the drives are the same size, use dd to copy. It's the safest bet.

[binkatl]

Yep, that's actually what's suggested in this part of the guide. The actual command issued is:

dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdc bs=1024k

Does this seem right?

Thanks,
- Blake

[fixn278]

Originally posted by binkatl
Yep, that's actually what's suggested in this part of the guide. The actual command issued is:

dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdc bs=1024k

Does this seem right?

Thanks,
- Blake

The command assumes your origianl drive is on the 1st channel as primary and the new drive is on the second channel as primary.

I remember people having issues with byteswapping when using hda. I would use any other one just to be safe, but your command looks fine.

[comakid]

I have successfully "cloned" three sets of my 120 gig hd drives using the dd method. The only change I would reccomend would be to include progress=1 at the end of the command. this will let you see how far you are progressing. One warning... i have done it on three different machines. the first machine was a biostar motherboard with a celeron 1.7. this machine require 28 hours to do both hds.
the second machine was a biostar motherboard with an AMD 2800 processor. this required 26 hours for both hds.

The third machine was an intel chipset motherboard runing a
P4 2.4 gig processor. this completed the job in about 5 hours total for both hds