WinMFS Beta Build 5

[gespears]

Hey Spike, I upgraded (MFScopy) the original 160 in my HD to a 500 and now have copied that to a 750. When I said yes to the prompt to expand the space it said I had no partitions left. Anything I can do with WinMFS to fix it? I really don't want to load my backup and loose my software upgrades, my season passes, and the things I've recorded and kept.

Thanks.

I tried turning off the supersize and then doing a MFSadd and the "Windows must shut down this program" window. Bummer. I did the fixswap before I started the copy process. Would that have anything to do with the problem?

[gespears]

The drive actually works, but it only shows 70 hours of HD recording time.

[spike]

The drive actually works, but it only shows 70 hours of HD recording time.

That's because two drives are identical in tivo recording capacity.

Have you tried running mfsadd on the new drive. It should work.
Make sure you use the latest WinMFS version.

[gespears]

The drive actually works, but it only shows 70 hours of HD recording time.

That's because two drives are identical in tivo recording capacity.

Have you tried running mfsadd on the new drive. It should work.
Make sure you use the latest WinMFS version.

I'm using version 5 that I downloaded this evening and when I try to run MFSadd the program crashes. As I stated earlier, when I did the copy, everything went well but when it asked if I wanted to expand the drive and I said yes, it said that there were no more partitions or something.

[5gs]

sorry if I missed it, but can I use winmfs to upgrade from the stock s3 drive to a bigger internal plus a big external drive? I'd also like to copy the recorded contents on the stock drive onto the new drive. basically I will have 3 sata drives (stock plus 2 other drives) connected to my computer's usb ports. thanks!

[spike]

sorry if I missed it, but can I use winmfs to upgrade from the stock s3 drive to a bigger internal plus a big external drive? I'd also like to copy the recorded contents on the stock drive onto the new drive. basically I will have 3 sata drives (stock plus 2 other drives) connected to my computer's usb ports. thanks!

If you have 3 connections you can but you don't have to connect all three.
Connect your original and new drive the do mfscopy.
After it's done, don't answer "yes"

Then, put away your orignal drive safely and connect new interal + eSATA drive and do mfsadd.

[5gs]

sorry if I missed it, but can I use winmfs to upgrade from the stock s3 drive to a bigger internal plus a big external drive? I'd also like to copy the recorded contents on the stock drive onto the new drive. basically I will have 3 sata drives (stock plus 2 other drives) connected to my computer's usb ports. thanks!

If you have 3 connections you can but you don't have to connect all three.
Connect your original and new drive the do mfscopy.
After it's done, don't answer "yes"

Then, put away your orignal drive safely and connect new interal + eSATA drive and do mfsadd.

6 minutes to reply...you sure are fast! I'm going to do that now. thanks!

[HDTiVo]

Sure.

I upgraded the Free Agent Pro's firmware as you indicated to improve eSata performance.

I then married the drive to the internal drive using mfsadd and put both drives back on the TivoHD. The TivoHd would make it to the point where it looks at the external drive, the green led would blink a few times (twice I think) and reboot - over and over.

I swapped the SATA cables inside the TivoHD making the external connection the primary and only connection, and used WinMFS to restore a previously saved truncated backup of the original internal drive to the eSata drive, hooked it up to the TivoHD as the only drive using eSata connector and powered up.

The TivoHD worked fine. Went back to the PC and did a MFSCopy to the eSata drive to recover my recordings, put the eSata drive back on the TivoHD as the only drive, and it worked, and my recordings were there and the TivoHD saw the extra space.

I've been trying recordings now off and all for 24 hours. Things are fine.

In summary, I was only able to get the Free Agent Pro to work as the sold drive, not as an add-on.

Thanks for the clarification. So you are essentially using the Tivo without the internal hard drive at all. Interesting.

What that person is doing is very cool. Someone should write it up and post it in an obvious place.

I think I'll write a blog post and link to the post.

[gespears]

The drive actually works, but it only shows 70 hours of HD recording time.

That's because two drives are identical in tivo recording capacity.

Have you tried running mfsadd on the new drive. It should work.
Make sure you use the latest WinMFS version.

I'm using version 5 that I downloaded this evening and when I try to run MFSadd the program crashes. As I stated earlier, when I did the copy, everything went well but when it asked if I wanted to expand the drive and I said yes, it said that there were no more partitions or something.

I just gave up and copied from my original 160 gig to the 750, said yes to the add space which worked correctly, supersized it, and it booted. Then I downloaded the new software, Called the cable company after it finally updated and loaded the new software, hit the cards till they straighten out, set up my season passes again, and am now finally back where I started but with a ton of storage.

I needed to clean out the season passes anyway

All's good again. I'm still not sure why MFSadd would crash though.

Gary

[5gs]

sorry if I missed it, but can I use winmfs to upgrade from the stock s3 drive to a bigger internal plus a big external drive? I'd also like to copy the recorded contents on the stock drive onto the new drive. basically I will have 3 sata drives (stock plus 2 other drives) connected to my computer's usb ports. thanks!

If you have 3 connections you can but you don't have to connect all three.
Connect your original and new drive the do mfscopy.
After it's done, don't answer "yes"

Then, put away your orignal drive safely and connect new interal + eSATA drive and do mfsadd.

6 minutes to reply...you sure are fast! I'm going to do that now. thanks!

it took about 3.5 hours to copy the stuff over, and mfsadd took a few seconds. both drives are being used now. so far so good!

[zardano]

Hi. I'm having trouble using WinMFS and mfscopy to copy from a 500GB IDE drive to a 60GB IDE drive. There are only 2 1-hour shows recorded on the 500GB drive, so it should all fit.

After mfscopy completes copying the MFS media partitions, it reports "All done!"

However, when I then select the newly copied 60GB drive, it reports "Error Number: 8" "Error Message: Cannot read Tivo super header!"

mfsinfo then reports "Not a Tivo Drive!"

When trying to boot this disk, serial output is "diskboot failed to read boot block"

I am using the latest version of WinMFS (beta 5) and am running WinXp Pro, version 2002, SP2, on a 400MHz Pentium2 with 192MB RAM.

Any idea why this is not working? Trying to copy with MFSLive reports "Backup target not large enough" so I was trying WinMFS. I have my C:/windows drive as Primary IDE Master, the 500GB working Tivo drive as Primary IDE slave, and the 60GB target drive as Secondary IDE Master.

[spike]

Hi. I'm having trouble using WinMFS and mfscopy to copy from a 500GB IDE drive to a 60GB IDE drive. There are only 2 1-hour shows recorded on the 500GB drive, so it should all fit.

After mfscopy completes copying the MFS media partitions, it reports "All done!"

However, when I then select the newly copied 60GB drive, it reports "Error Number: 8" "Error Message: Cannot read Tivo super header!"

mfsinfo then reports "Not a Tivo Drive!"

When trying to boot this disk, serial output is "diskboot failed to read boot block"

I am using the latest version of WinMFS (beta 5) and am running WinXp Pro, version 2002, SP2, on a 400MHz Pentium2 with 192MB RAM.

Any idea why this is not working? Trying to copy with MFSLive reports "Backup target not large enough" so I was trying WinMFS. I have my C:/windows drive as Primary IDE Master, the 500GB working Tivo drive as Primary IDE slave, and the 60GB target drive as Secondary IDE Master.

You can't mfscopy 500GB to 60GB.
Try backup then restore.

[zardano]

You can't mfscopy 500GB to 60GB.
Try backup then restore.

Backup option only allows for truncated copy, losing shows. The goal was to copy/backup the drive to the 60GB drive to allow for modification without risking loss of the shows. This is not possible with either MFSLive or WinMFS?

[spike]

You can't mfscopy 500GB to 60GB.
Try backup then restore.

Backup option only allows for truncated copy, losing shows. The goal was to copy/backup the drive to the 60GB drive to allow for modification without risking loss of the shows. This is not possible with either MFSLive or WinMFS?

No, you can't copy 500GB to 60GB.

[sopcbuilder]

My eSata drive hooked up as the only drive on my TivoHD (sata cables swapped, no internal drive) is working fine. It's made numerous recordings without problems. I suspect there is something flaky in the TivoHD Kernel with the second sata port.

Has someone tried using a regular SATA drive hooked up to motherboard as the second drive?