HDD Question

[Justin]

I recently switched to Dish Network from DirecTV and TIVO. Since I no longer need my TIVO box, I decided to take it apart and salvage the HDD. Now, I plugged it into my system and the BIOS recognizes it but Windows does not. What can I do? I would like to salvage the data from the disk as I think it is all in MPEG format but at the very least, I just want to be able to use it. PLEASE HELP!!!

[BIGGI]

Justin,

I forgot the exact name, but you have to go under "Drive Management" ( I think the name is wrong..very wrong) and enable the drive.

I run into the same problem when I fortmat c:, bios sees the drive but XP doesnt.

[FormFactor]

yup, right click my computer, select manage. Then choose 'disk management'. Does the drive show up there? If so format it and mark it as active.

[Justin]

If I format it, I will loose the data, right. I did get Xp to recognize it in disk management but I still cannot access the data. Am I fighting a loosing battle here?

[BIGGI]

So when you open "My Computer" You can see all of your drives but you can't access it?

[BIGGI]

If I format it, I will loose the data, right


:thumbsup: Yes sir, it will be gone :bawling:

[Straight_Man]

As far as the data, possibly-- might be encrypted and\or in a Linux file system. As far as the drive probably not a losing battle to use it -- starting with formatting it -- at all.

[primesuspect]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the Tivo box doesn't use FAT or NTFS. Chances are, it's a proprietary or modified filesystem.

[deicist]

It's Linux based (isn't everything these days) but I would imagine the actual video data is encrypted somewhere. You can get an ethernet adaptor for the Tivo from here: http://www.9thtee.com/turbonet.htm and there's a guide to doing various fun and exciting things with that here: http://tivo.stevejenkins.com/network_cd.html but since that guide doesn't say anything about copying video data off your tivo I think you're out of luck.

[stabface]

Try a live linux cd see if you can see anything from there.

[FormFactor]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the Tivo box doesn't use FAT or NTFS. Chances are, it's a proprietary or modified filesystem.


You are correct, I saw a Tivo rep talk about it on techTV one day, and its some kind of file system that uses 1MB block sze that helps fit more video on the disk.

[fingerflinger]

A friend of mine has tried to rip the files from his Tivo, but couldn't do it. I'm pretty certain the Tivo uses some crazy, unusable format.

[jradmin]

Run Knoppix off a CD and see if you can mount the drive and access the info.

[scott]

Also most Tivo drives are locked and windows can not see the whole disk. I bought a 40gig tivo drive off of ebay a while back, it was a maxtor. But windows only saw it as a 10-12 mb drive and would only format that much of it. I called Maxtor and they directed me to some website that had an "Unlocking" tool that had to be run at bootup from a floppy. It did in fact unlock it and show the entire drive in windows.

I would first see what windows is reporting for drive size. Then if needed unlock it. Then maybe windows will see the files.


Scott


Edit

Found a link

http://www.weaknees.com/maxtor_powermax.php

[Armo]

remember now, Fdisk can see non Fat partitions, it might tell you what kind it is.

[GrayFox]

Tivo uses a modified version of riserfs.