2nd Drive Failed

[sonnywaters]

I recently added a 2nd drive, 40GB, 2 weeks ago. Everything went fine. I DID do the back 1st. Now, the second drive is failing. :mad: Even though it's new. Heads knocking. Not completely dead, but well on it's way.
I have read that once you "marry/bless" two drives you can't go backwards. True? The reason i'm asking, I purchased a new drive. Tried to restore the back up to it. The backup file that was created is reporting a CRC error. So now i'm f'd. :eek:
My question is: can I just start over? Meaning, can I put a blank drive in and go throught the "Guided Setup" to get back to Sq. 1? Or is there a util to "um-marry" or something? :confused:

PS: This is in a Series 2 DTivo

Thanks, John

[eastwind]

I don't think you'll be able to do anything by putting a blank drive in the TiVo--nothing would start if you don't have anything on the drive at all. You might be able to dd the failing drive to the brand new one (or dd_rescue) and get that to work. Or you'll need to go to the image begging thread to get a good backup to start over with.

ew

[Iago]

I recently added a 2nd drive, 40GB, 2 weeks ago.


Thanks, John


Have you tried Hinsdale's UPGRADE CONFIGURATION #2:
From: Any Single or Dual Drive TiVo
To: New A with B Drive |or| New Single Larger A Drive

[sonnywaters]

Dude... over looked that... i used that to install the drive in the 1st place. Just didn't look at that section (didn't apply @ that time)

That's what these brds are for, to point out how oblivious ( not necessarily stupid ) to certain things we can be. Thanks for the help.

Let y'all know how it goes.

John

[sonnywaters]

Ok spent what time i could last night on this. Going to night school is a biotch. Anyway, the steps in Hinsdale's (going from 2 to 1 large) stated that you would run out of space on the new drive and it wouldn't work. but gave the steps anyway. mfsbackup -Tao from drive(s) and so on to the new drive. That returned an error after just a few secs. Said that dest. drive not large enough. Huh...? 120 GB only have two 40gigs. Anyway, not put out yet, i decided to do the dd copy step. Only this didn't include the syntax for 2 drives to one. So, I guessed.
command: "dd /if=/dev/hba /if=/dev/hdb /of=/dev/hdc -bs=1024kb"
Where the new 120 was Sec. Mas. etc.
i hope i guessed right. Nonetheless, i haven't tested it yet. But the orig. setup is still working. (Cross fingers) heads are still acting freaky, but somewhat stable.

Can anyone verify that the syntax to that command would have copied both drives to the new 120 or if it copied the first drive, then overwrote that with the second.
BTW, the end message, after copy, was "60000(or so) +1 records copied"
Hopefully, now all i have to do is the "MFSadd -x /dev/hdc, right?

Thanks for everyones time and help.

John

[PlainBill]

No, using dd didn't work. IMHO, the best move would be to use ddrescue to copy the b drive to the 120 gig, then expand using mfsadd.

PlainBill

[sonnywaters]

OK Finally got everything back up and running. Successfully backed up the two drives to a single image, ( that was like pulling teeth ) "unmarrying" them. Then restored to the single 120.
( The object here was to get a single new big drive, to replace not only the defective drive, but the "old" A Drive also. _2years-old_ )
So, successfully restored the image to the new drive and all went well. Except that when you go to "Tivo Central" the TV show is still in the back ground, no blue screen. Also, on all of the menus. Is this common? A glitch from the copy?
Side note... I never "heard" the activity of the HD before, is it normal to have so much?


Thanks,

John

Edit--- found some other threads after "stumbling upon" them, dealing with this same issue. I'm going to try some other commands and re-backup/re-restore the drives. Yeah fun. Or is there some other "working" command that someone would like to share?

[eastwind]

OK Finally got everything back up and running. Successfully backed up the two drives to a single image, ( that was like pulling teeth ) "unmarrying" them. Then restored to the single 120.
( The object here was to get a single new big drive, to replace not only the defective drive, but the "old" A Drive also. _2years-old_ )
So, successfully restored the image to the new drive and all went well. Except that when you go to "Tivo Central" the TV show is still in the back ground, no blue screen. Also, on all of the menus. Is this common? A glitch from the copy?
Side note... I never "heard" the activity of the HD before, is it normal to have so much?


Thanks,

John

Edit--- found some other threads after "stumbling upon" them, dealing with this same issue. I'm going to try some other commands and re-backup/re-restore the drives. Yeah fun. Or is there some other "working" command that someone would like to share?
Without knowing what exact command you already used it is difficult to know in which direction to point you. Normally when you mfsbackup -f 9999 you get your menus and backgrounds if the unit is mostly unused. Some say -f 19999 instead. I think if the unit has seen a lot of use and maybe a software upgrade or three you need to try -l 64 (lowercase 'L'--not a pipe) on the command line. YMMV, but that will backup all the streams that take up 64MB or less on the drive (I think).

ew

[Iago]

...So, successfully restored the image to the new drive and all went well. Except...

If you had previously hacked you tivo and disabled the decription, I would adivse FTPing the shows wou want to keep off of the Tivo and restore a clean image to your 120mb Tivo drive (start over) This would ensure that all is set up well.

[sonnywaters]

Ok... finally found some time this weekend to get everything working. Between a PC's death and other things, it was tough.
Still had problems with the back/restore process. I tried the -f xxxxx all the way up to 50000. That still did not get the menus/screens. So I tried the -l switch. That worked.
So i got the idea, since I have the drive space ( extra 120 drive ) then why could I not follow what Eastwind had mentioned and increase that to say, 2048 and that would get all files up to 2 gigs. Therefore, it would get my recordings. Just a thought. The b/u started so i walked away. I came back ( less than 15 min to check ) and it had failed.
I checked the file size, it was 2.3 something GB. Hmmm ok maybe it was just a read error. I started it again adn dropped the -l to 1024. Same backup size reported, no prob. Same outcome - THREE times. Same file size, etc.
Any ideas on why there may be a "cap" on the b/u file size?

Thanks,

John

[eastwind]

Ok... finally found some time this weekend to get everything working. Between a PC's death and other things, it was tough.
Still had problems with the back/restore process. I tried the -f xxxxx all the way up to 50000. That still did not get the menus/screens. So I tried the -l switch. That worked.
So i got the idea, since I have the drive space ( extra 120 drive ) then why could I not follow what Eastwind had mentioned and increase that to say, 2048 and that would get all files up to 2 gigs. Therefore, it would get my recordings. Just a thought. The b/u started so i walked away. I came back ( less than 15 min to check ) and it had failed.
I checked the file size, it was 2.3 something GB. Hmmm ok maybe it was just a read error. I started it again adn dropped the -l to 1024. Same backup size reported, no prob. Same outcome - THREE times. Same file size, etc.
Any ideas on why there may be a "cap" on the b/u file size?

Thanks,

John
If you want to save the recordings you needn't jump through hoop, just read the readme file and it will give you the correct parameter to pass to mfsbackup (I think -Tao will get them all). Most who do this do *not* try to save the backup on FAT drives as it will be far too large and you should instead pipe the backup to a restore (have to have both old and new drives in the PC).
mfsbackup -Tao /dev/hdc | mfsrestore /dev/hdb is approximately the correct line (it at least shows the syntax--check Hinsdale or the README for the correct parameters).

ew

[sonnywaters]

I tried that too. -Tao . Yep. Didn't work, going from 2 drives ( orig. setup )
Full part. table.
I realize now that my first mistake was putting a small drive on as my second/B drive. However, it _was_ a learning process. But, the failure was really what caused the problems. I just think that it sucks you can't unmarry/divide these drives.
I know the next question that you were going to ask.
Why didn't you just copy the bad new Bdrive to the 120?
Hmmm, I could have done that, but wanted to only have one drive in the Tivo.

Now, i've gotten past the pain of losing ( kinda ) a whole seaon of my fav. show, so now i'm on to the actual hacking stage. Network, ftp, web access, no-scramble, ty-tools, etc.

Thanks to all that have contributed.

John

[eastwind]

I tried that too. -Tao . Yep. Didn't work, going from 2 drives ( orig. setup )
Full part. table.
I realize now that my first mistake was putting a small drive on as my second/B drive. However, it _was_ a learning process. But, the failure was really what caused the problems. I just think that it sucks you can't unmarry/divide these drives.
I know the next question that you were going to ask.
Why didn't you just copy the bad new Bdrive to the 120?
Hmmm, I could have done that, but wanted to only have one drive in the Tivo.

Now, i've gotten past the pain of losing ( kinda ) a whole seaon of my fav. show, so now i'm on to the actual hacking stage. Network, ftp, web access, no-scramble, ty-tools, etc.

Thanks to all that have contributed.

JohnIf you want to save the recordings, you should dd_rescue the old B drive to the new 120. Should work to allow you to save the programs to another drive via mfs_ftp (in tmf format).

ew