Second TiVo upgrade - 2ndtivoupgrade_11142000November 14, 2000Second TiVo upgrade November 14, 2000 By Jeff Keegan This is a log of the second TiVo upgrade I've ever done. I'm trying to duplicate the upgrade I did on my own TiVo (which was my first upgrade) for the TiVo that I've purchased for my parents' Christmas gift for this year. The only difference here will be that I haven't purchased a backup Quantum 15 gig drive (LCT15-15) to back up their A drive onto. Instead, I'm going to try to copy the drive onto one file, with the hope that I can compress that file down to less than 650 megs so I can burn it onto a CD. (Their unit is virgin so far) ======================================================================= 12:35am, 11/14/00 ----------------- Took the TiVo out of the box. Went upstairs and plugged the Coax OUT into my TV. Plugged the phone line into the modem. Plugged the infared blaster into the bottom port, just for the hell of it. Did *NOT* plug any video inputs into the TiVo. Turned on the TV to channel 3. Finally, plugged the power cord into the TiVo. The TiVo asked if I was using a cable box. I said yes. It asked what my zip code was. I said 02180 (my parents' zip code). It then asked if I wanted to make changes to the phone settings. I said YES. On the resulting screen, I chose the test modem setup option. It dialed, connected, and succeeded. It said to press Select to continue. I unplugged the TiVo from everything and brought it into the basement. I now knew the modem (as well as the video output) worked, so I could more easily justify voiding the warrantee. (By not allowing any video input, or further dialing into the TiVo service, I've hopefully kept the A drive unpopulated with data, so it should compress more easily. 1:00am, 11/14/00 ---------------- Removed 3 torx screws from the top back of the unit, using a #10 Torx screwdriver. Placed them carefully where I'll remember which screws they are. (It's a damned good idea to make sure this isn't a magnetic screwdriver.......) Carefully pried Warranty sticker back. Holding the TiVo with the bottom facing me, the front facing down, and the inputs facing up, I pried the case off. This is extremely difficult the first few times you do it.. It's on very tight. Internally the way it's held shut is that the black case has two metal clamp/sleeve-like things holding on to the main case. Pressure is all that's needed to pull the top off of the case, but it's really difficult to get any kind of grip. I now use a small tool I got at Home Depot that looks like a screwdriver but with a bent V-like shape, to pull out nails.. Once you pry it beneath the black case on the top back of the device, you can gently pry the black case back (away from the front of the device) enough to feel it pull. The case doesn't slide all the way off.. It only needs an inch or so, then you pull it off on the top (it'll be obvious once you pull it free). TAKE YOUR TIME WITH THIS. Carefully placed the top off to the side, and placed the TiVo itself in a safe space that I could clearly access. Made sure I was grounded. VERY CAREFULLY removed the ribbon cable from the back of the drive. Also removed the white power plug. Using the #10 Torx screw driver again, unscrewed the two torx screws on the back of the mounting bracket inside the TiVo. Placed those screws carefully so I'd remember which THOSE were. Gently lifted the drive and mounting bracket (which were still attached to each other) off of the metal casing they had been screwed to. Being careful about static, I moved the drive and bracket to another desk to work. Since I wasn't mounting the drive inside the computer I was using to do the backup (as I had during my first upgrade), I didn't bother removing the drive from the mounting bracket. During the first upgrade I HAD to remove it from the mounting bracket, because in my first upgrade my original TiVo "A" drive came OUT of the unit permanently; I had copied it onto a Quantum 15 gig drive, then put that new Quantum 15 gig drive into the TiVo as drive "A", placing the original (safely packed) in storage. In this case though, the same "A" drive that's in the TiVo now will still be the "A" drive after the upgrade is done - the only reason I'm even taking it out is to make the backup (and to move it a notch to the left when I put it back in later, but I'm getting ahead of myself). Anyway, I didn't remove the mounting bracket. If you do, BE SURE TO LOOK VERY CLOSELY AT HOW IT'S SET UP.. It's very easy to unscrew everything, have it fall apart, and wonder nervously where each washer went, etc. I then placed the original TiVo "A" drive in a PC. I left the jumpers set the way they were - as the master drive. I placed it in the SECONDARY IDE BUS, AS THE MASTER DRIVE. I then placed a Linux drive with a large ext2 partition into the PC, as the MASTER DRIVE on the PRIMARY IDE BUS. I put in the Dylan's Boot Disk (which I'd made from a program that I downloaded at http://www.tivofaq.com/hack from the link that said "download BlessTiVo Version 3"). Then I booted the PC. When I got the login prompt, I logged in as "root", with no password. (I ignored BIOS warnings that drives that had previously been there now weren't, and didn't worry about whether the BIOS would be able to detect such a large drive. When using Dylan's Boot Disk (which is a mini version of Linux), it completely ignores what the BIOS says about the disk size) 1:35am, 11/14/00 ---------------- Now I was loosely following the instructions at http://tivo.samba.org/index.cgi?req=show&file=faq02.017.htp (2.17. How do I make a backup to a single compressed file on another hard disk?) I wanted to make sure I had the right drives in the right places, so first I tried to mount at least one partition from the TiVo drive, which should have been on /dev/hdc . So, I tried: mount /dev/hdc0 /mnt (which failed, as I expected it might), then mount /dev/hdc1 /mnt (which also failed, etc, until I tried) mount /dev/hdc4 /mnt This came back with: EXT2-fs warning: checktime reached, running e2fsck is recommended I knew from my previous upgrade that this is ok, and that furthermore this is in fact the TiVo drive. There seem to be two ext2 (mountable) partitions on the TiVo "A" drive.. One of them gives the error above when you try to mount it - the other doesn't. I then remembered reading that partitions 4 and 7 were the two mountable ones, so I did a "umount /mnt", then "mount /dev/hdc7 /mnt", just to make sure. It turns out I got the same error on that partition too. Not sure exactly why. Maybe it had something to do with being a virgin drive, because when I upgraded MY machine last time, I was able to mount one of the two partitions without it complaining at all. Strange. Anyway, then I went to make sure I had the linux partition that I was making the diskToFile backup to in the right place. I did a "umount /mnt" first, then tried mounting /dev/hda1, /dev/hda2, /dev/hda3, etc, until I got the right partition.. (After each successful mount I did a "df", and when I saw that the size of the partition mounted on /mnt looked like the right partition I wanted to copy onto, I knew I had the right partition. In my case, it was /dev/hda5. (Unfortunately, I only have 6 gig free. This may fail miserably - yet, this is a log of my attempts, so I'll describe it here as it happens). 2:00am, 11/14/00 ---------------- Entered this command (again, because of my particular partitions.. ADJUST YOURS APPROPRIATELY.. Consult the above faq if you don't have Linux experience.. It's easier if you just have a large DOS FAT formatted hard drive available - I didn't.. Then again, I recommend against this whole copying-drive-to-a-file procedure and instead suggest paying the lousy $76 for a backup 15 gig Quantum drive.. But then again, I haven't finished what I'm trying here yet - maybe my opinion will change): dd conv=noerror if=/dev/hdc bs=1024k | gzip -9c > /mnt/tivodisk.gz Waited. (Actually, went upstairs to watch *my* TiVo for a while, to pass the time). Then went to bed. 10:45am, 11/14/00 ----------------- Woke up the next morning. Saw result: 13066+1 records in 13066+1 records out Success! A lack of error messages is a good thing. Then I did a "ls -l /mnt/tivodisk.gz" to see how large the compressed file had been.. # ls -l /mnt/tivodisk.gz -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2864291946 Nov 14 06:27 /mnt/tivodisk.gz # Damn, that won't fit on a CD. I was unlucky. There are reports of some "A" drives compressing down to 650 meg. This is more like 2.67 gigs. (Still way better than 15 gigs, though.. maybe it could fit split up onto 5 CD-ROMs) There is no "date" command on Dylan's boot disk, so typing "date" after the "dd" command above didn't tell me when it finished, but the date on the file did.. I checked to make sure the date was accurate by creating a new file and looking at the time on it, and it was current, so that means it took about 4 and a half hours to copy/compress this particular "A" drive. Typed "umount /mnt" Powered down the PC. 11:30am, 11/14/00 ----------------- The 80 gig drive hasn't arrived in the mail yet, so I didn't bless the 80 gig drive yet - I'll do that when I get it. So, I took the TiVo drive out of the PC, and placed it carefully back in the TiVo, one "notch" to the left of where it was. What I mean by that is, on the front of the mounting bracket there are two sets of holes.. On the TiVo's metal frame, there are two little metal stubs that go into one set of these holes. Just make sure the drive is as far to the left as possible (so the second drive will fit to the right of it). I then used the #10 Torx screwdriver to screw the drive back into the frame with the most recent 2 torx screws I'd put to the side.. (Note that now that you've moved the drive to the left a notch, you'll be screwing into slightly different holes.. It's easy when you look at it). I carefully plugged the ribbon cable back into the "A" drive. I then took a pair of snippers (find a good pair, pretty sharp) and *very carefully* snipped the white plastic cord-tie that's holding the bundle of wires together in the middle (particularly the white power plugs for the drives). Look before you do it - you'll see why it's necessary.. The second white plug wouldn't be able to reach the second drive bay if the white plastic cord-tie it wasn't snipped. Then, I plugged the white power plug that originally went into the "A" drive back into the same "A" drive. I also rested the second power plug in the right place to plug into the 80 gig drive, when it arrives. With MY TiVo, I ran into a well documented problem where it appeared that my battery was dead. Every time I powered down my TiVo, a reboot would cause all program data (show titles, times, etc) to be lost, and the TiVo would think it had to dial the phone again.. (Season passes and recorded shows were still there, but all my recorded shows had yellow exclamation marks on them, except for the green ones). The problem was that the clock was being reset, because the battery contact was bad. Apparently this is an issue with old TiVo's that have been sitting on the shelf for a while. I'm considering being proactive in this case and cleaning out any existing gunk on my parents unit without seeing an actual problem. The 14 hour TiVos are pretty old these days, and it's possible it's either already gunked up or will be. Unfortunately this involves removing the motherboard, etc, which is a bit of a pain. Some URLs for how to deal with this are: http://www.avsforum.com/ubbtivo/Forum6/HTML/000738.html http://www.avsforum.com/ubbtivo/Forum6/HTML/000752.html http://www.tivofaq.com/Bugs.html I haven't decided yet if I should go ahead and do that while waiting for the drive, or whether I should describe the details involved in doing that here. We'll see. 12:30pm, 11/14/00 ----------------- Just finished fixing the battery problem. Yes I did it, no I didn't describe the steps here. Yes it was needed. I highly recommend cleaning the battery contacts for any 14 hour TiVo purchased these days - 2 out of 2 of the ones I've seen have had the battery problem. Packed the unit away until NEXT WEEK when the drive is due to arrive (just checked). Sigh. 8:15pm, 11/21/00 ---------------- Just got the 80 gig Maxtor drive in the mail. Opened it, then set the jumpers on the back to indicate that it was a SLAVE DRIVE. I connected it to the PC on the secondary bus, (again, as the slave drive). I disconnected all other hard drives that happened to have been connected during my week of waiting, just to make sure. (I think I read something about making sure nothing else was on.. then again, I think I remember reading that you NEED a drive as the master once.. Not sure, I guess I'll find out). I inserted the Dylan's Boot Disk floppy and booted. The BIOS tried complaining that devices had been moved around, blah blah blah. Exited the BIOS and continued. Logged in again as root, with no password. Thought hard about running some utility to test that the drive was good. (In this case, something from Maxtor). Couldn't remember if I had done this during my first upgrade (though I'm sure I did it on my Quantum backup drive, which I'd have to be insane not to do). Marked this moment in my mind (and in this file) as a moment I might heavily regret someday, since I decided not to do anything like that. Instead, ran: BlessTiVo /dev/hdd (since the drive is on the SECONDARY IDE BUS as the SLAVE DRIVE) Double checked to make sure it was the only drive connected in the PC before typing "Y" to continue, then typed "Y" to continue. Verified that it had determined it to be a 76 GB drive (which was close enough, so it was good). The drive had been blessed successfully. 8:50pm, 11/21/00 ---------------- Shut down the PC and took the 80 gig drive out. Followed the instructions at http://tivo.samba.org/index.cgi?req=show&file=faq02.017.htp on how to attach the mounting bracket to the 80 gig drive. Got the TiVo out of the box it'd been in for a week while waiting. Carefully placed the open TiVo on a desk. Put the 80 gig "B" drive into place to the right of the "A" drive. Screwed it down in the back with two screws that came with the mounting bracket. Connected the ribbon cable to drive B, as well as the second white power plug. (Again, the drive's jumpers were set to SLAVE mode). Put the TiVo cover back on, securing the 3 Torx screws on the back. 9:30pm, 11/21/00 ---------------- Done. Haven't tested it yet, but not sure if I want to since it's a gift. The several-hour downloading of all of the software upgrades etc would be a pain to do X-mas eve, but then again it would "feel" more new. Tough call, will think about it. |