Instant Cake boots with no drives attached, fails with drive attached

[BigBillTolbert]

I am trying to upgrade a series 3 tivo from a 250gb drive to a 1tb drive. The drive is a Western Digital SATA WD10000LSRTL which people have had succes with for upgrades.

I burned the Instant Cake .iso to a CD and it boots to a banner screen where I hit enter to "boot:". It goes for a little bit and then fails with a Kernel error. If I disconnect the hard drive from the SATA cable the software will boot.

There are no setting or jumpers on the drive to change. I have tried all three jumper settings on the CDROM drive around the salve vs. cable select. I have gone into the BIOS and disable all the SATA's with no drives attached so only the CDROM and the SATA drive are selected.

Any ideas on how to get the software to boot with the drive attached?

The PC i'm using is a DELL Optiplex 320 which is about a year old. I upgraded the BIOS to the latest version too.

[Rick Travis]

The CDrom should be set to slave on the primary channel(drive B). the SATA drive should be set as Master on the secondary channel(drive C).

[BigBillTolbert]

I think I get what you are saying and here is how I have them configured.

I have the SATA drive connected to the SATA0 port and the drive says that for SATA there is no need to set master/slave. I have SATA1, SATA2, and SATA3 set to off.

I have the DVD on the PATA1 and it is set to slave with the jumper. I have PATA0 set to off. I have also hooked it to PATA0 with no luck either.

I tried the SATA drive hooked up to SATA3 to see if that helps, nothing.

Still the boot crashes.

I'm not sure what other combination to try. There are only two ports that you can put the DVD drive on and I have tried both. I also tried the SATA drive on port 0 and 3.

Could it be that the drive is too new for the version of Instant Cake? Doubt that, I would expect the CD to boot to a linux prompt and then it would not be able to see the drive.

[Lou Jacob]

It sounds like there is a problem with the specific PC you are using. It doesn't sound like a compatibility problem with the InstantCake CD and your PC, otherwise you would not be able to boot the CD without your hard drive connected.

Tough to say, but it could be a problem with your hard drive and the particular PC you are using, or it could be a problem that only happens with the combination of the particular hard drive you are using and your specific PC and the InstantCake CD you are using.

Really, the only thing you can do is try other combination (perhaps a different hard drive or a different PC) to see what you can find out.

As for rbtravis' response; you are correct, there are no jumper settings for SATA drives, only for PATA drives.

Lou

[BigBillTolbert]

Maybe I mis-spoke above. If I do not have the hard drive connected, the CD does boot past the error and gets to a Linux prompt. I can see the CD with the "ls" command at that point.

If I boot up to Windows it sees the drive, so I don't think it is a PC/Drive compatability problem.

I am trying to find another PC with a SATA card to see if that helps, but I'm the type of person that hates to not solve the problem........

[Lou Jacob]

I am trying to find another PC with a SATA card to see if that helps, but I'm the type of person that hates to not solve the problem........

Well, as I said previously, it could be a problem with the combination of the three and if that is the case, using a different PC may very well be the solution to the problem... The fact that the CD boots on the PC WITHOUT the drive you are using might also be an indication that the drive is as much of a factor as the PC, so trying with a different drive might be worthwhile, as well.

[BigBillTolbert]

I'm going to assume that the CD I paid $20 for works on at least one machine configuration out there, but walking my hard drive around to friends and neighbors to find one that works is not the right answer.

I was able to have windows see hard drive without a problem and was ultimately able to use MSFtools without a hitch. Attach old drive -- backup -- attach new drive -- restore. Took about 20 minutes.

I choose to use Instant Cake because it is described as being "simple" for people that don't want to try and use other tools. How surprising that MSFtools took about a total of an hour including research, downloading the tool, and the actual drive copy. I spent way more time with InstantCake, wasted $20, and ended up using another tool anyway.

[Lou Jacob]

Sorry to hear that it did not work for you, but glad to hear that you were able to use MFStools and got your unit upgraded anyway.

Most people don't have a problem and are not technical (or patient) enough to deal with the underlying tools; fortunately, PC incompatibilities are few and far between and even through we are up front about that possibility and provide a range of alternatives to those who don't want to deal with the minutia (eg our pre-configured kits and a full trade-in credit of your software purchase should you choose one), problems do occur from time to time.

Thanks,

Lou