Hack 23. Using MFS Tools for Backup and Restore | Tivo Hacks. 100 Industrial-strength Tips Tools 2003

Hack 23 Using MFS Tools for Backup and Restore

If you need to back up or restore your TiVo software, you are going to need to use MFS Tools .

MFS Tools is the TiVo backup and restore program. You should get familiar with using it so you can use it in a pinch , but pray that you never have to use it, except the one time that you want to upgrade the hard drives in your TiVo. To begin, you'll need to get your TiVo's hard drive installed in a PC [Hack #22].

Check Your BIOS Settings

Without some modification, your PC may not boot from the CD or the boot floppy. If you are using the boot CD, you will want to set your BIOS to boot from the CD. Likewise with the floppy: make sure that the BIOS tells the computer to boot from the floppy. Most BIOS configuration menus are reached by hitting the Delete key on your keyboard just as the first signs of life flicker across your computer's screen when booting up. Consult your BIOS manual (usually in the box with a new PC or available online from the PC vendor) for instructions on setting your PC to boot from CD or floppy rather than the primary master hard drive (drive C to you Windows users).

While the version of the Linux operating system that runs from the MFS Tools CD or boot floppy will recognize the full capacity of the larger drives, some earlier versions of the BIOS will not recognize hard drives above a certain size . You may have to adjust your BIOS settings so that the drive recognition parameter for your TiVo drive or drives is set to "none" rather than "auto." Do not alter the BIOS setting for your FAT32 drive.

Boot MFS Tools 2.0 CD or Floppy

Insert the MFS Tools CD or floppy, hold your breath , and boot your computer. If you are using the CD, you will see the following output when you start:

 default setup: Kernel with DMA enabled, but no byteswapping. nodma same as above, but with DMA disabled. swap DMA disabled, byte swapping enabled. dmaswap DMA enabled, byte-swapping enabled. (Dangerous) boot:

At the boot : prompt, hit the Return/Enter key on your keyboard. You'll see several pages of scrolling gobbledygook, and you should eventually see a /# prompt.

Floppy users shouldn't see the boot : prompt; after a minute or so of scrolling, you will just see the # prompt.

Verify Drive Sizes

Press Shift-PgUp repeatedly to scroll back through all that output. Among other things, you'll see whether or not the PC recognized your TiVo hard drive or drives. It is critical at this stage to verify that the full size of your TiVo drive was recognized. As you scroll up, you should see something like the following:

 hda: WDC WD450-AA-00BAA0, ATA DISK drive hdb: IDE/ATAPI CD-ROM 48X, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive hdc: QUANTUM FIREBALL CX13.6A, ATA DISK drive ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14 hda: 87930864 sectors (45021 MB) w/2048 KiB Cache, CHS=19929/255/63, UDMA(33) hdb: ATAPI 17X CD-ROM drive, 128kB Cache, UDMA(33) hdc: 26760384 sectors (13701 MB) w/418KiB Cache, CHS=1665/255/63 UDMA(33)

You are looking to confirm that each of your IDE drives was recognized and that the size of each drive is reported properly. For example, with a Sony SVR-3000, you will have an 80 GB drive, so it should be recognized as about 80000 MB. Above that, check to confirm that hda and hdc both look "normal" (in the text above, one is a WDC drive recognized at 45 GB, and the other is a Quantum Fireball with 14 GB of space). If one or more of your TiVo drives is being reported as an unexpectedly small number, such as 9 or 10 MB, then your drive is locked.

Unlock Your Drive

If the size of one or more of your drives is not being reported properly, then you are going to need to get your hands on a utility that will unlock them. Generally speaking, this should be a problem only if you are using the boot floppy, as the MFS Tools 2.0 CD should unlock the drive automatically. If you are facing a locked drive, first power down your PC by hitting the Control-Alt-Delete key combination. It is important to do this rather just hitting the power, because it will give your computer a chance to put the TiVo drives into a safe state. Wait until the screen displays No more processes ... or until the computer begins to reboot. This lets you know that you can safely power down the PC.

Extract DLGCHK.EXE from http://www.westerndigital.com/service/ftp/dlgtools/dlgchk.zip. Save the file to a DOS or Windows 95/98 bootable floppy disk; do not use a Windows NT/2K/XP disk. If you do not have access to a usable boot disk, then you can probably get a usable one from http://www.bootdisk.com.

With your TiVo drive or drives connected, boot from your newly created boot disk. At the DOS prompt, run the DLGCHK.EXE program and just hit Enter until you get back to a DOS prompt.

Alternatively, the program QUNLOCK.EXE (http://www.9thtee.com/qunlock.exe) will also work. Follow the same instructions used for DLGCHK.EXE to get QUNLOCK.EXE onto a boot disk and boot from it. Once you're at the DOS prompt, type:

 A:\  qunlock.exe 0

where the number is the location of the locked drive: is primary master, 1 is primary slave, 2 is secondary master, and 3 is secondary slave.

When using DLGCHK.EXE to unlock your TiVo's drive, do not power down your machine before rebooting into MFS Tools. Simply use your keyboard to reset your computer, and then quickly swap your boot floppy with the MFS Tools CD or disk. Once booted , review the output again to confirm that the drive size is being reported properly.

QUNLOCK.EXE users, on the other hand, should power down the machine. When you boot it back up, have the MFS Tools CD or floppy in the drive. Check to make sure that the drive size is being detected correctly.

And now you should be sitting at the prompt ready to back up or restore your TiVo software.

Top