Reformat and move operating system

[Steve52]

I am having some problems with my STV server and want to reinstall windows XP Pro. At the same time I want to move windows to a seperate hard drive (it now shares a drive with a recording drive), and upgrade STV to the latest version 6 software. I am now on version 5. I have read the FAQ but my situation is somewhat different and I need some help. I don't want to loose my recordings from showing up in the Sage recording directory. Will the following work?

1) Install the new Hard drive
2) Format and install windows on the new drive
3) Make the hard drive letter assignments in windows the same as they were before. The ones that the STV recording directories are in.
4)Install STV ver 6.
5)Assign recording directories in STV same as before the move.
6)replace the wiz.bin and backup in the new version 6 with the old one from version 5 before the move and upgrade.

Will this keep all my recording in the correct place?

[bcjenkins]

Since you haven't outlined current drive letters, etc. I can only offer how I would go about it.

1) Convert from drive letter mapping to unc pathing before messing with the OS. That way the recordings can be put anywhere and as long as the path remains the same you won't have any issues.

2) If you opt to not do that, and get into a spot with drive letters, you can always mount a volume to an empty directory which would help put it in the path of the old information.

B

[Steve52]

Current drives are C: E: F: G: I think, I am not at the server now. I have three hard drives in it now. Anyway C: and G: are on the same physical drive c: is in a 10GB partition. These are all SATA drives and I plan to put the OS on an IDE drive with nothing else on it.

I tried UNC paths once a lone time ago and didn't like them. My system worked better using drive letters.

Will the wiz.bin from version 5 work as I have described in version 6 by copying it into the installation of v6.?

[bcjenkins]

Originally Posted by Steve52

Current drives are C: E: F: G: I think, I am not at the server now. I have three hard drives in it now. Anyway C: and G: are on the same physical drive c: is in a 10GB partition. These are all SATA drives and I plan to put the OS on an IDE drive with nothing else on it.

I tried UNC paths once a lone time ago and didn't like them. My system worked better using drive letters.

Will the wiz.bin from version 5 work as I have described in version 6 by copying it into the installation of v6.?

If I understand you correctly, videos are on G: and it will remain e: f: and g: after the build. You should be fine

Good question on the wiz.bin. You should do the upgrade first then move to new drive. Or install 5 first then upgrade on the new setup.

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[Steve52]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

If I understand you correctly, videos are on G: and it will remain e: f: and g: after the build. You should be fine

Good question on the wiz.bin. You should do the upgrade first then move to new drive. Or install 5 first then upgrade on the new setup.

B

Good idea about upgrade to v6 first. That way any needed changes to wiz.bin will already be made.

I am not going to try this until tonight at least. Anyone else's ideas would be appreciated. I really would like to know if what I stated in the first post will work. (including upgrading to V6 first).

[petereader]

Sorry to chime in so late here, but I thought I would add my.02. If you really want be thorough and possibly avoid headache's I would add to bcjenkin's great idea of upgrading first, then at least do some quick testing and make sure ver. 6 is still working correctly on your current system (playback is still smooth, recordings are showing up where they should be, etc). That way, if you encounter a problem in your new build, you can be fairly certain that it is not related to the upgrade (I guess about as sure as you can be with anything related to computers).

And if you do happen to encounter any problems related to the upgrade, you can resolve them on a familiar build rather than transporting them to your new build. At least, that's how I would do it. Then again, I am a bit of a paranoid freak sometimes.

Of course, my entire response will be rendered meaningless, when you do all of this tonight with no problems whatsover

BTW, my upgrade to ver 6 (from 5) went very smoothly.

Good luck and have fun with it.

[Steve52]

Well the upgrade from V5 to V6 went well it seems. At least I have not seen any problems yet. I let the server run all night before connecting with any clients just in case it needed a lot of time to convert all the files. I am ready to install the new hard drive that will be for the operating system. I saw from another post that the V5 & V6 wiz.bin files are not compatible so the upgrade to v6 before the move had to be done. I am planning to reinstall the operating system on my server and install SageTv V6. I then plan to copy the old wiz.bin from today (which I copied off) before the reformat into the new Sage program. If anyone knows if this will cause a problem let me know please.

[mcaron1234]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

Since you haven't outlined current drive letters, etc. I can only offer how I would go about it.

1) Convert from drive letter mapping to unc pathing before messing with the OS. That way the recordings can be put anywhere and as long as the path remains the same you won't have any issues.

2) If you opt to not do that, and get into a spot with drive letters, you can always mount a volume to an empty directory which would help put it in the path of the old information.

B

I'm getting ready to do this myself. For the UNC path to work on the new windows install will the new windows install have to have the same name?

Example: If currently videos are on \\Tivo\Videos will the name of the computer after the install also have to be Tivo for the wiz.bin to recognize the recordings? Or how about if drive letters are used? Can you give the new install a different name and sill have your videos show up as normal?

Thanks,
Matt

[Opus4]

There is a FAQ about moving recordings, changing PCs, etc. For UNC paths to work on a new system, you will need to have the same network names, or SageTV will not be able to check those locations to see if the recordings it thinks are there really are there. For this reason, the FAQ suggests moving away from UNC paths before changing systems, especially if the network name for the old paths won't be available any more. Of course, you will need to have the same drive letters available on the new system, but it seems easier to fake a drive letter than a network path.

- Andy

[bcjenkins]

Not overly difficult to fake a network path.. Just add the host to the hosts file in c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\

B

[Steve52]

FYI,
The procedure I described in my first post worked. I setup the server the same as before with the same drive letters, and unc paths (I just had one unc path for the DVDs). I installed V6 STV and copied in the wiz.bin from before and all is good. All recordings are listed just as before.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

Not overly difficult to fake a network path.. Just add the host to the hosts file in c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\

OK, that could be useful to know... So, if you had a PC named "Bob" with a UNC path of \\Bob\BobsDriveE\Media, how do you use the hosts file to make it look like that path is still there after the "Bob" PC is gone? Thanks.

- Andy

[bcjenkins]

Scenario -

Old PC Bob
New PC Tom

New PC has IP of 192.168.1.100. Just create network share BobsDriveE on Tom. I would also create a new Share as well pointing to the same location. Add host entry of "192.168.1.100 Bob" to hosts file (no quotes). When the user attempts to map it will look into hosts for name resolution (first I believe).

Now if Bob is going to be around after Tom is set up; you'll want to jockey share names around until you free up Bob and can then remove it from your hosts file.

B