Hard drive won't work in tivo and it won't boot into mfslive or anything else!

[Xybernauts]

So I'm using MFSlive 1.4 to upgrade my TiVo TCD540140 single drive tivo for the first time. I've been reading several differant version of the upgrade isntructions on mfslive and the mfstools how to on the old tyger website.

I've already been able to make a backup of my Tivo drive using mfstools.

I used mfslive to add the hard drive because for some reason mfstools was telling me that my 750gb drive only had about 134gb (give or take).

The original 120gb Tivo drive = hdc and the new 750GB drive = hdb. I typed the commands:

mfsadd -x -r 4 /dev/hdc /dev/hdb

Everything seemed to be successful, according to the program atleast. MFSlive told me that I had about 1000 hours of recording space on my Tivo. To verify, I typed mfsinfo /dev/hdc /dev/hdb and I got the same results.

From there I followed the instructions for the Weaknees Twinbreeze Gen2 to install the kit I puchased. My kit included the PowerTrip. weaknees website and I used the instructions that came in the box that are slightly differant.

Everything seemed to work out, but when I plugged my Tivo in I got the "external storage missing" error. I selected to remove the drive (which I think was a mistake) by pressing the thumbs down button three times and pressing enter. I did some more research and came to a thread on this forum about the "external storage error"...

The basic solution was to remove the PowerTrip, which i did, but my Tivo system information is still telling me that I only have 140hrs recording time. I'm not sure what to do now. I'm thinking of trying the kickstart? Would that work? I found similar threads, but for issues other then what I have experienced or for dvrs other then series two.

Also, is there a way to turn external storage back on? Do series 2 have external storage ?

So, I narrowed the problem to my new 750gb hard drive. It seems the drive is no longer working. I opened my tivo again and took out the drives. I found that this time around I couldn't boot into mfslive. Note that just hours before this same config worked with out a hitch. After an hour of frustration and fiddling around with various alternative configurations I came to realize that mfslive would only boot when the Seagate st3750840ace hard drive wasn't connected. The drive is jumpered to slave. I tried alternative jumper settings and none of them worked. To make sure it wasn't the ide cable, I tried another hard drive and it worked flawlessly. I can't even boot into the windows vista os with it connected. Any ideas on whats wrong with the drive? It was fine when I started. I was able to use mfslive the first time around and successfully created the drives. Is it possible the tivo did something to the drive?

If I get a new hard drive, what drive should i get?

[Rick Travis]

First you are in the wrong forum. You should ask this question in www.mfslive.org. However your system is configured wrong. the CDrom should be \dev\hdb your source drive should be \dev\hdc your target drive should be \dev\hda. These are as described at www.mfslive.org. The drive I would recommend is WD5000AAKB from Western Digital. You can use Acoustic Management to quiet down the TiVo experience and is the Last Major manufacturer to offer PATA drives. Before returning the Seagate 750GB drive I would run the manufacturers diagnostics and check out the results. Devices hda and hdc should be jumpered as master and plugged into the black cable connector. The CDROM should be jumpered as slave and plugged into the gray cable connector on the blue motherboard connector channel. Both blue connectors should be plugged into the motherboard with \dev\hda plugged into the blue motherboard connector along with the CDROM drive. Good Luck. :)

[Xybernauts]

Thanks for the reply. I was hoping for something alittle bit larger like around 750gb or more. I believe the reason I configured my hd and cd-rom the ay i did was because my boot cd would only boot when the cd-rom drive was on the primary master ide cable. The original operation was successful. i saw about 1000gb or so. I'll try it again though, as prescribed by mfslive, just in case.

[Rick Travis]

You should be able to set the boot sequence in the system bios