Can you shrink a previously expanded image???

[sbradford]

OK I am a newbie, and i have just spent my entire Sunday afternoon reading about expanding an image to a larger drive. I have read so many different things that I don't know what to beleive. Here is my situation.

I have a Sony SAT-T60 that came with a 40GB hard Drive which was expanded to a 60GB hard drive.
I do not have the original image because I did not back it up.
I do have a backup image of the 60GB in it's current state.
Can i shrink this 60GB image so that it thinks it has never been expanded?
I am trying to do this so I can expand to a 200GB hard drive.

I have read that you cannot expand an image if it has already been expanded... I have read that you can expand an image if it was expanded using certain software...

So what is the truth? What is the software/or command?
Can anyone please give me a straight answer.

Thank You so much.

[compwiz312]

If you backup using mfstools (2.0) then it will automatically shrink the drive back to its original size when you back up.

[PlainBill]

OK I am a newbie, and i have just spent my entire Sunday afternoon reading about expanding an image to a larger drive. I have read so many different things that I don't know what to beleive. Here is my situation.

I have a Sony SAT-T60 that came with a 40GB hard Drive which was expanded to a 60GB hard drive.
I do not have the original image because I did not back it up.
I do have a backup image of the 60GB in it's current state.
Can i shrink this 60GB image so that it thinks it has never been expanded?
I am trying to do this so I can expand to a 200GB hard drive.

I have read that you cannot expand an image if it has already been expanded... I have read that you can expand an image if it was expanded using certain software...

So what is the truth? What is the software/or command?
Can anyone please give me a straight answer.

Thank You so much.

I have done it sucessfully using mfsbackup -l 32 -6so /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdc Note that you will loose all recordings.

I suggest a two stage approach. First, use 'pdisk -l /dev/hda' to check the number of partitions on your drive. If you have three sets of mfs partitions (15 total partitions), you cannot further expand the drive. If you can't expand, make a backup using the above parameters and see if it reports the drive was shrunk. You could try reducing the -l parameter to 5 or so. In any case, restore the image and test it, making sure you have backgrounds BEFORE doing anything permanent.

Lastly, you will have to use an LBA-48 kernel to use the full capacity of the drive.

As an aside, the Series 1 systems were built to accomodate two drives. You could simply use mfsadd to add the 200 Gig to the system.

EDIT: Oops, not quite so simple. You will also have to install an LFB-48 kernel to the existing drive.

PlainBill

[sbradford]

PlainBill

I did everything that was in your instructions regarding backing up/shrinking, and restoring/expanding and it worked great. It even kept my season passes and to do list. Thanks for the straight answer.

The first day I had backgrounds and now I don't. Is this a problem? Did I do something wrong? Is there a fix for it?

I now have backups of my original shrunken image on 2 hard drives, a CD, and I kept the original expanded 60GB TiVo hard drive. So I think I can recover if I need to restore anything. I learned my lesson from not backing up the last time. Now it's overkill.

Thanks again