Extract videos from a salvaged hard drive?

[jtrain73]

Newbie question here - I've upgraded my D-Tivo and replaced the drive.

I have my old drive (drives actually, had added a 2nd drive for capacity) and my significant other is asking about the recordings that were on the old drives.

Not a major issue if not easily done - but is there a way to get those old recordings off the drive to a PC or DVD easily? I don't want to un-do any of the hacking on my current unit.

Searched for this but could only come up with steps that were upgrade involved and not specific to my situation.

Any advice would be welcome. Thanks.

[PlainBill]

A lot depends on what series of DirecTiVo you have, and if it was hacked (you imply it wasn't). In a nutshell, if you have a Series 2 system and have added an ethernet adapter when you hacked it, AND have enough space available on the drive in your computer, this is fairly easy. If it is a Series 1, it gets a little more expensive. Usb-ethernet adapters for Series 2 are available for under $20.00; a turbonet card for Series 1 is about $70.00. Assuming the worst case scenario:

Buy a usb-ethernet adapter (Series 2) or a turbonet adapter (Series 1). Hack the old drives if you haven't already done so. Mount the old drives in your DirecTiVo and copy the recordings from them to your computer. Reinstall the new drive and restore the recordings to the new drive.

PlainBill

[jtrain73]

Sorry if I wasn't clear enough. It is a Series 2 D-Tivo...and no the old drives were not hacked.

I have the new drive hacked and in/working. Just have these old two drives. Is there a way to extract the videos without hacking them and remounting them in the Tivo? That is, is there a way I can add them to my PC and access the videos that way?

[PlainBill]

Sorry if I wasn't clear enough. It is a Series 2 D-Tivo...and no the old drives were not hacked.

I have the new drive hacked and in/working. Just have these old two drives. Is there a way to extract the videos without hacking them and remounting them in the Tivo? That is, is there a way I can add them to my PC and access the videos that way?
Not easily. Aside from the fact Win2K and WinXP would 'trash' the drive by marking the boot sector (avoidable by doing the extraction in Linux), there are no Windows or Linux utilities to access mfs partitions. IIRC, there was some work done on this for Series 1 systems, but it has languished. Since your old drives were unhacked, all you could do with the recordings is restore them to the new drive.

Note that hacking the old drives should take less than an hour, and extracting the recordings can run 'in the background' while you're watching TV (or sleeping). Give it a shot - Impress your wife with how smart you are and how much you care about her.

PlainBill

[Jamie]

Not easily. Aside from the fact Win2K and WinXP would 'trash' the drive by marking the boot sector (avoidable by doing the extraction in Linux), there are no Windows or Linux utilities to access mfs partitions. IIRC, there was some work done on this for Series 1 systems, but it has languished.
A small correction. This (http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/showthread.php?t=39487) package includes linux-PC side extraction tools that work for both S1 and S2. Here's (http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/showthread.php?p=201494#post201494) a little writeup I did on using it. Be sure to use tmf format for encrypted shows.

There is a "but" for the OP: if your original drive was unhacked, your shows are encrypted and you may have to play some games to get them to play on your new drive. See the readme.txt file in the scramble_utils subdirectory of mfs_ftp for details. You may still have to hack the old drive to extract the DiskConfigurationKey. If your new drive was copied from your old one, this may not be an issue.

[BobVVue02]

Here is what I want to do:
Hacked S2 DTIVO w/RID is on 6.2 . Recordings before 3-1-05 are encrypted and were recorder back when machine had 3.1.1e. I want to pull encrypted show off to PC or Linux box so I can archive them in a playable format on the PC (encryption be gone.)

-I see unscramble.o kernel mod only works on S1.
-I see there is a hacked kernel for version 4.x that unscrambles recordings and should work on a S2 DTIVO, but read the Newbie guide for 4.x + RID and there the a step CLEAR AND DELETE everything to avoid Error #51. Wouldn't this delete the shows I want, hence making the whole 4.0 experience useless???

I can remove the drive if need be, but I seemed to have missed the proper direction to go to get these shows off the S2 Dtivo w/RID.

Thanks
Bob
PS. sorry if I missed the thread where this is discussed already, but I did look for it for quite awhile...