TiVo HD Upgrade Via MacBook and Parallels

[Guy Kuo]

Last night, I verified that Windows Media Center edition running under Parallels on my MacBook allows WinMFS to see USB2 attached drives. Used a SATA to USB adapter cable. Sees drives fine. In a few hours, I'll try that combination to back up a TiVo HD drive and then MFScopy to a larger drive. Here's to luck.

[Guy Kuo]

Connected HDTivo original drive via SATA/USB converter cable and got winMFS to see the drive and do a backup. (All under Parallels virtual machine)

Now in the process of doing a mfscopy to a 750 gb WD drive.

I'm a bit concerned about how small the truncated backup file came out. It was just about 100K. Does that sound right?

[spike]

Connected HDTivo original drive via SATA/USB converter cable and got winMFS to see the drive and do a backup. (All under Parallels virtual machine)

Now in the process of doing a mfscopy to a 750 gb WD drive.

I'm a bit concerned about how small the truncated backup file came out. It was just about 100K. Does that sound right?

Backup file is too small.
It should be around 380MB.

[Guy Kuo]

Thought as much. It probably bombed out when Windows decided to try doing an automated system updated. I said no, but winMFS went unresponsive right after I dismissed the Windows dialog. Pulling the USB plug somehow made winMFS responsive again, and the program claimed to be done. That's what make the small backup file.

I'll do backup again once the machine is done with mfsCopy. It's going to take a long time since the USB interfaces on a MacBook are slower than on a physical PC.

Amazing that winMFS is even running though...

[Guy Kuo]

After about six hours of Mfscopy activity, I could still see the usb ports were busy, but progress was still not done. Since there isn't a numeric display of sectors copied, I could not estimate the completion time, nor really verify that progress was indeed happening.

Ended up aborting the process and simply doing it using one of my PC's.

So, I don't think doing it under Parallels is practical due to slow USB speed. Had I the patience, it probably would have done it, but I didn't want to wait overnight. I haven't tested under Bootcamp, which unlike Parallels, completely takes over the machine and makes the Mac actually into a PC instead of just a virtualized machine.

After switching to a physical PC's. It too just about an hour to do the Mfscopy including some recordings on the original drive. SATA to USB drive adapter is a Vantech (only good up to 500 GB). I left the new WD 750 inside its MyBook casing for the file transfer. Once file copies were completed, it was simple to swap the drives between the TiVo case and the MyBook case.

Addendum: It looks as though Parallels specifically has trouble with USB 2.0 speed if one checks on the web. Probably would be fine using Bootcamp, but I haven't tested that.

[Guy Kuo]

Went back and tried again under Parallels 3.0 and Windows XP SP2. Indeed, winMFS will complete a truncated backup, but it is very slow. It required just about two hours before it actually got done. This is probably due to Parallels only supporting slower USB speeds.

When I get a chance to get BootCamp and XP reinstalled, I'll report on how fast things go with the USB ports under direct control of XP. Should be much faster.

As an aside, it takes only a few minutes to do a truncated backup on a real PC with a SATA host adapter.

[Guy Kuo]

I can also now confirm that one can boot a MacBook with the MFSlive Linux CD and perform a backup | restore between drives connected to the two USB ports. It works quite rapidly, but the command line interface is a far cry from the blessed simplicity of winMFS.

The online command generator doe help. Just make sure you get the drive designations correct for your drives. Hint: connect one at a time to your USB ports and you'll see info about each as it mounts. That will give you the correct sda, sdb, sdc, sdd etc device id's to substitute into the command line.

It does work even if you don't have a "PC" An Intel based Mac works fine.

[Guy Kuo]

Finally had a chance to test winMFS under Bootcamp with Windows XP.

It works as well as my regular PC. A truncated backup of the original TiVo HD drive was completed in under four minutes. This was with the drive attached via USB using a Western Digital Mybook case. (That was the case which originally housed the 750 GB drive now in the HD TiVo)

So, we have at least two viable ways of working on the TiVo drives using a MacBook.

1. Run winMFS using Bootcamp

2. Run the mfslive boot CD

The third option of doing it under Parallels is not very practical because Parallels (even 3.0) has far too slow USB speed for manipulating drives. It works, but what should take minutes instead takes hours. And this is on the SAME USB port of the MacBook.

BTW winMFS also works with firewire drives under BootCamp and Windows XP Home.

[mooneydriver]

I can also now confirm that one can boot a MacBook with the MFSlive Linux CD and perform a backup | restore between drives connected to the two USB ports.

Interesting. Can you just pop a Linux boot CD into your Mac and restart while holding the "C" key, or do you need to use a bootloader such as REFIT?

Update: I just tried it. It works without REFIT, bootcamp, or anything else! Used Toast Titanium 6 to burn the iso image on a CD (make sure you burn the downloaded iso image as is, in ISO mode, and not the expanded / mounted folder structure). Restarted holding the "C" key, and it booted into the MFSLive Linux CD without problems. The computer is a 15" MacBook Pro (Santa Rosa).

[mooneydriver]

Another success story with WinMFS on a Mac. OS X 10.4.10 on a MacBook Pro, running Windows XP SP2 via Parallels. As Guy Kuo also experienced, I could not get the 750 GB SATA drives to work using a Vantec USB-to-SATA adapter (apparently, the adapter is not good with 750 GB drives). I tried a PC, but it didn't work on a PC either. I should have read his posts more carefully! After a couple of hours of frustration, I went out and bought another USB-capable enclosure, installed the TiVo "A" drive in the new enclosure, and used the USB connections to the enclosures in order to add a second drive. WinMFS was able to recognize the drives once they were connected via USB (without the external USB-SATA adapter). mfsadd took only a few seconds (quite anticlimatic, actually), and I am now the proud owner of a 1.5 TB TiVo S3!

Thanks, spike!

[rrg]

It might be worth trying this with VMware Fusion, the performance of which is said to be better than that of Parallels.

[emenne1@cox.net]

Has anyone tried using a sata express card with a Macbook & Parallels?

[wingedpower]

It might be worth trying this with VMware Fusion, the performance of which is said to be better than that of Parallels.

I've done just this. My Setup:

- MacBook Pro
- VMware Fusion
- 2 USB 2.0 enclosures ($20 apiece)
- Tivo Series 2 (40H)
- 320GB 5400rpm drive

Fusion picked up the drive enclosures. I booted with the mfslive linux CD and it worked great. I think I was getting 6-9MB/second xfer from drive to drive. I'll need to test with my better enclosures to see what the performance gain would be, but since I was going through airport security, I figured cheapo enclosures would minimize my loss.

I've got a writeup of it on my site at:

http://www.wingedpower.com/blog/wwong/u ... e-s-fusion

[NivekNitram]

If you have an Intel Mac copying a drive is MUCH Faster from the LINUX iso!!!

I also tried the USB + Parallels + WinMFS route... but after 7 hours I gave up.

So I tried the native/LINUX route with much success.

My config:
2007 MacBook Pro
2x USB2.0 > PATA adapters
Original 80GB
Newish 300GB

Methodology:
1. Use /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility to burn the MFSlive LINUX iso to a CD.
2. Restart your Mac with the freshly burned CD in the drive and hold down the OPTION key.
3. Select the "Windows" CD to boot from the MFSlive LINUX system.
4. Read the full guide to get an idea of how your drives are mounted and which command to run... my two USB drives mounted as /dev/sdb for the original 80 and /dev/sdc for the newer 300... thus I ended up issuing the following command: backup -qTao - /dev/sdb | restore -s 128 -r 4 -xzpi - /dev/sdc
5. The copy averaged 13 MB/sec!!! Which came out to moving 48GB in roughly one hour.

Good Luck!