Replacing hard drive - Partitionless HR10-250

[batchman]

See this thread (http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/showthread.php?p=252619) for details on my situation from a little over a month ago.

Here is a summary: My HR10-250 hard drive has been going bad so I bought a replacement which has now arrived (quick like thanks to NewEgg!)

I hooked the two drives up to my system and booted PartitionMagic 8 (latest version). It does not see a partition table.

So, two questions:
1. Is there some way I can recreate the partition table for a standard HR10-250 without wiping out the data on the disk?
or
2. The disks are identical. Can I use a Windows XP app to copy one disk to another? I have linux but am a newbie. With no backup of the drive, I am worried about learning the hard way.

Thanks in advance!
Tim

[stevel]

Partition Magic does not understand the types of partitions on TiVo disks. If you booted XP with your TiVo drive attached, you may have rendered it unbootable by TiVo. There's a way to fix that ("maketivobootable" or some such).

Use mfstools or dd to copy the disk using the standard methods described for disk upgrades.

[batchman]

Luckily, I have read enough to know not to boot XP. I only booted Partion Magic. And for safety's sake, I disconnected my XP drive. :-)

If I use dd, I can copy /dev/sda to /dev/sdb and the entire drive (partions and all) will be copied?

Also, keeping in mind I am a fairly new linux user, how would I find out the number of bytes on a hard drive? I am assuming I couldn't just tell dd to copy everything. (That would be too easy)

Thanks,
Tim

[batchman]

One more thing... How can I be 100% sure that I am copying the right drive if the partition table is missing?

The second drive is brand spanking new so I should be able to see what is on a sector. If all 0's then that is my new one. But I am not sure how to dump a sector in hex.

Any suggestion?

[PlainBill]

I have several suggestions.

First of all, READ THE STICKIES in the Newbie forum.

Second, these are newbie questions, you'll get a little more respect if you post there.

Third, you are wrong, dd will copy an entire drive, you don't have to tell it how many bytes to copy, it runs until their is nothing more to read.

Fourth, the partition table isn't missing, Partition Magic is unable to recognise it. For the last time, download a linux tools cd designed for the TiVo. I STRONGLY recommend PTVupgrade's LBA-48 tools cd.

Lastly, if you are having this much trouble with simple stuff, I shudder to think what will happen when you try something complex.

PlainBill

[Narf54321]

One more thing... How can I be 100% sure that I am copying the right drive if the partition table is missing?

The second drive is brand spanking new so I should be able to see what is on a sector. If all 0's then that is my new one. But I am not sure how to dump a sector in hex.

Any suggestion?

Cripes, use pdisk to check the partition table.

[fantmn]

Also pay attention at boot up of Linux. It will most likely tell you which type each drive is. Unless they are exactly the same kind of drive you should be able to tell.

[batchman]

First off, thanks to those posting helpful information.

I downloaded the PTVupgrade per PlainBill's suggestion.

fdisk /dev/hda shows an empty disk. No partition information. I have no idea how this thing has been booting correctly on the Tivo.

In any case, it was time to copy the disk. dd is running now.

I haven't tried pdisk as recommended by Narf54321. However, googling it shows it is used on macs so I'm not going to pursue that. (It isn't listed in debian.org's package list either)

Since both hard drives are the same model, I used the serial numbers to tell the difference so I was 100% sure I wasn't copying over the wrong disk. Just paranoid...

Thanks for the help.

[PlainBill]

Let's see, Narf54321 has been a member more than a year and has over 500 posts. You've been a member for a month and have 8 posts. But when he suggests using pdisk, you decide he must be wrong. This is REALLY getting funny! :D

PlainBill

[cheer]

And in case that doesn't make it clear enough...use pdisk.

[batchman]

Somebeach. Yep. Pdisk did show the partitions.

[Narf54321]

You'll find a number of the useful utilities for dealing with the tivo are lurking around these forums. Usually they're either compiled for PC Linux (for dealing with the Tivo drive in a PeeCee) or recompiled for MIPS, for running on the Tivo hardware itself. The older series-1 Tivos used a PowerPC processor, so you come across a few older tools which only run on PPC units.

If you really want to manipulate the partitions themselves, download alldeadhomiez' tivopart (http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/showthread.php?t=25219) which can be used to update the tivo drive partition info inside a running linux session. You'll only be able to mount the ext2 partition, though.

[batchman]

That is good background info Narf54321. Thanks.

In the distant future, I'll have to read up on the apple partitions. I didn't know that older tivos used ppc. Interesting. However, I'm not trying to hack my Tivo. Just trying to get it to breath again.

The wife is going to cut me off if I don't get Desperate Housewives recorded. :-)

I stopped dd and switched to dd_rescue. Since I know there are bad sectors it makes more sense to start over with something intended to handle that.