Hack 25 Restoring from Backup

Restore your TiVo's software from backup, whether for disaster recovery or for expanding capacity.

There are two times when restoring a backup is necessary: either you are replacing your existing drive(s) with a new hard drive (or drives), or you are repairing a corrupt TiVo hard drive.

You'll need a backup in hand, whether your own or one that you've managed to convince somebody else to give you.

Although absolutely not recommended, if you do get a backup from another TiVo to restore to yours, make sure that the backup comes from the same model TiVo. If you don't, disaster is sure to strike.

Restoring this backup will make the TiVo look just like it did when the backup was made; all your Season Passes and other options (not recorded programming, however) will be restored from deep sleep right onto your drive. If you are restoring your backup onto a drive or drives that have more space that the original drive, then you are going to use all that capacity.

You are going to need access to your backup after booting up MFS Tools [Hack #23]. It's probably best to copy the backup back onto that FAT32 drive and install that drive as the primary master in your PC.

Install the hard drives destined for the TiVo into the spare PC IDE ports [Hack #22] to get them ready to be restored, and then boot MFS Tools. At the /# or # prompt, issue the following command:

# mount /dev/hda1 /mnt

We are trying to mount the FAT32 drive in the same way as we make a backup [Hack #24]. If this command is successful, you will see another prompt. If you get an error, follow the same line of thought from that previous hack.

If you are restoring onto a single TiVo drive, start the restore process with something like this:

# mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi /mnt/backup.bak /dev/hdX

If, on the other hand, you are restoring to two drives, run something like this:

# mfsrestore -s 127 -xzpi /mnt/backup.bak /dev/hdX /dev/hdY

If you are running with a type 3 TiVo, modify the commands to either:

# mfsrestore -s 127 -xzbpi /mnt/backup.bak /dev/hdX

or:

# mfsrestore -s 127 -xzbpi /mnt/backup.bak /dev/hdX /dev/hdY

These commands will take the backup at /mnt/backup.bak (c:\backup.bak on the DOS/Windows side) and restore it to /dev/hdX [Hack #22]. The magic is that it not only restores the backup, but also expands it. The backup made from the original TiVo is blown up to encompass the entire space of the new drive or drives. If the new drive or drives total up to more space than the original, then MFS Tools will modify the backup to take over the entire capacity. Of course, if your backup has a different name, or if the hard drive you are restoring is at a different location, then feel free to change either when typing out the commands. The -s flag actually sets up swap space on your drive. By default, only 64 MB of swap is allocated, but if you have a large amount of hard drive space, you might want a little more swap to fit it all in. Do not use more than 127 MB, and always use 127 MB if you have the space.

Both of these commands presume that the upgrade drive, hdX in our example, is larger than the original TiVo factory drive that the backup was made from. If that drive is the same size as the original factory drive, then you may have to remove the -s option from the command line to make sure it all fits. Don't try to make your first drive be smaller than your original drive; doing so is bound to fail.

Once the restore is complete, press Control-Alt-Delete. When your machine reboots, power down your PC and pull out the drives.