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Restored winmfs images - stuck in "just a few minutes more" loop

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  • #1

    Restored winmfs images - stuck in "just a few minutes more" loop

    HELP PLEASE!!

    I am having an issue I do not understand that I am hoping to pick your brains on. I am an Australian TiVo fanatic. I have 3 Aussie Tivo's which are similar to the USA Series 3 TiVo.

    I have previously created backup images of my 3 Tivo hard disks (160gb, 320gb and 1tb) using WinMFS. These are saved on my computer.

    If I try to upgrade say my 160gb Tivo to a 2TB hard disk, and I use any of the 3 images by restoring them to the 2TB drive using WINMFS, the Tivo will goto the powering up stage, then to the “Just a few minutes more stage” then will reboot and cycle through those 2 stages forever.

    However if I use WinMFS’ MFSCOPY tool to actually copy the entire contents of the 160gb drive to the 2tb drive, this MFScopied drive works fine.
    Similarly if I use WinMFS’ MFSCOPY tool to actually copy the entire contents of the 320/1tb drive to the 2tb drive, this MFScopied drive works fine in the 160gb machine, except for the fact I have to do and CLEAR AND DELETE EVERYTHING before the hardware error message goes away.

    I know WINMFS backups are not complete backups, but I thought they were supposed to at least get you to the tivo menu so you could do a CLEAR and DELETE EVERYTHING.


    What am I doing wrong?
    Is it an issue with my images or my restores?

    Most people say that when you get stuck in this loop it means your hard disk is failing - but I know that isn't right because these are brand new drives and I can repeat these symptoms with any number of brand new drives using any of 3 disk images.

    My concern is that it is all very well to MFScopy the 160gb drive when it is working OK – but if it failed totally tomorrow, if I only had WINMFS backup images, I couldn’t get my tivo to get past the “Just a few minutes more” stage.

    Any advice you can offer would be appreciated.

    Regards

    Jenny
    Tags: None
  • #2
    I may have answered my own question:

    When I restore the tbk (truncated backup) of say the 160gb drive to a new 2tb drive, WinMFS prompts me if I want to expand the size of my drive to which I answer yes.

    It then asks me if I want to limit the size of the Tivo file system to 1tb. I have been answering NO to that question.

    I tried answering YES to limiting the size of the Tivo file system to 1tb, and hey presto, the Tivo now boots fine.

    I thought I read somewhere that you didn't need to limit the file system size for Series 3 and above Tivos. Perhaps I was mistaken.

    I'd be interested in your thoughts anyway...

    Comment

    • #3
      I know that originally a 2 TB drive was too large for these units. We had to do special development work to make 2 TB drives work properly in these models. So maybe WinMFS doesn't support drives that size correctly.

      Try a 1 TB or smaller and see what you get.
      Been here a long time . . .

      Comment

      • #4
        I guess I'm typing too slowly here, but yes, it sounds like we're both on the same page.
        Been here a long time . . .

        Comment

        • #5
          I may be hitting a similar issue with my series 2 tivo, although it's a slightly different scenario. I have a Series 2 single-drive 1TB setup. I'm not actually trying to upsize it, I just want to replace the 1TB drive with a newer 1TB drive before the old one dies. The history of drives and backup images was:

          - 2008: backup image created for 500GB single-drive. Using that image, upgraded to 1TB (WD Caviar Green).
          - 2016: backup image created for the above 1TB (WD Caviar Green) drive.
          - New 1TB drive: 1TB (WD Red)
          - I can restore the 2008 backup onto the new 1TB WD Red drive and it boots up just fine (albeit with an older version of tivo software), but if I try to restore the 2016 backup onto the same 1TB WD Red drive, it goes into the same infinite loop mentioned above by mahalko28.

          The restore command I've been using is:

          mfsrestore -s 2048 -xzpi /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdc
          (with tivo.bak renamed accordingly for the 2008 versus 2016 backup file)

          I wanted to try the same solution as mahalko28 to restrict to 1TB, but I am using a MfsTools 2.0-based ISO from Weaknees ("Weaknees lba48 boot cd with SATA support") that I needed for the SATA support. Is there an equivalent option to the "limit to 1TB" that I can try out using MfsTools?

          My only other thought is that perhaps the new WD Red 1TB drive is slightly smaller than the WD Green 1TB (I'll have to check when I can pull apart the reassembled tivo). Would this be a plausible explanation? If so, is there a way to work around this, or would I be forced to use a new >1TB drive in order to use the 2016 backup? (which would be a bummer, as I was hoping to find a generic solution that could be maintained over time without worrying about slight differences in drive size over time from manufacturer-to-manufacturer/model-to-model.)

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