GSOD = Failing Drive

[wesmoc]

I've determined that I have a failing drive in my DirecTivo. Ages ago ( probably 2 years or more), I bought the unit with a 40GB drive in it. I subsequently upgraded the drive to a 120GB drive, and it has been running happily since.

A full description can be found at http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/showthread.php?t=52383.

Anyhow, I downloaded the Weaknees version of the MFSTools 2 ISO, burned it, set up a machine with the old 120GB drive and a new 160GB drive (finding a 120GB drive isn't easy). Booted off of the cdrom, which recognized both disks, and I entered in:
mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hda | mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -xzpi - /dev/hdb

It chugged for a few minutes (~5mins) as it analyzed the source disk. It spit out:

Source drive size is 39 hours
- Upgraded to 129 hours
Uncompressed backup size: 116239 megabytes
Restore failed: Backup target not large enough for entire backup by itself.

And I am back at a prompt. Hrmm..

SO.. what am I doing wrong here? I was hoping to avoid doing a simple dd of the two drives. I'm not entirely attached to the video contents of the original drive, but it would be nice to move them over if I could.

[wesmoc]

It looks like I am answering my own question here, but I will post it for the sake of completeness.

It looks like the output from mfsinfo is highly inaccurate and should not be used as a basis of fact. :) Even though it reports that the drive can be upgraded 3 more times, the backup/restore process still fails, and, as it turns out, the truth is that there is a limit on the number of tivo video (mfs) partitions ON A SINGLE DRIVE. Sure, the Tivo can be expanded by adding more drives, but, since this has already been upgraded once, it's already at the maximum number of partitions.

I found references here:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=281509

Which brushed off the old brain cells that I used when I upgraded from the 40GB to the 120GB.

I'm running the dd now, which should take a few hours, and, when it is complete, I expect that it will behave just like a 120GB tivo drive.

Of course, I have the option of doing a fresh install to the 160GB drive and blowing away all of the recordings, but that will probably require a bit more effort on my part. :)

[WK-Michael]

That's all exactly right - one upgrade per boot drive. Since you upgraded the boot drive from 40 to 120 GB, then you can't go farther, without just making a no-recordings backup and then starting at 40 GB and expanding again.