HDD Question

JustinJustin Atlanta
edited December 2005 in Hardware
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!!!

Comments

  • BIGGIBIGGI Fort Meade, MD
    edited December 2005
    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.
  • FormFactorFormFactor At the core of forgotten
    edited December 2005
    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.
  • JustinJustin Atlanta
    edited December 2005
    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?
  • BIGGIBIGGI Fort Meade, MD
    edited December 2005
    So when you open "My Computer" You can see all of your drives but you can't access it?
  • BIGGIBIGGI Fort Meade, MD
    edited December 2005
    Justin wrote:
    If I format it, I will loose the data, right


    :thumbsup: Yes sir, it will be gone :bawling:
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited December 2005
    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.
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited December 2005
    Yeah, I'm pretty sure the Tivo box doesn't use FAT or NTFS. Chances are, it's a proprietary or modified filesystem.
  • deicistdeicist Manchester, UK
    edited December 2005
    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.
  • stabfacestabface
    edited December 2005
    Try a live linux cd see if you can see anything from there.
  • FormFactorFormFactor At the core of forgotten
    edited December 2005
    primesuspect wrote:
    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.
  • fingerflingerfingerflinger Ohio
    edited December 2005
    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.
  • jradminjradmin North Kackalaki
    edited December 2005
    Run Knoppix off a CD and see if you can mount the drive and access the info.
  • scottscott Medina, Ohio Icrontian
    edited December 2005
    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
  • ArmoArmo Mr. Nice Guy Is Dead,Only Aqua Remains Member
    edited December 2005
    remember now, Fdisk can see non Fat partitions, it might tell you what kind it is.
  • GrayFoxGrayFox /dev/urandom Member
    edited December 2005
    Tivo uses a modified version of riserfs.
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