Has anyone lost all of his or her recorded programs?

[Todd T]

Has anyone lost all of his or her recorded programs?

I have a 508 and today I turned on my system and it was locked up and had to unplug it, when it rebooted I lost all of my recorded shows. My drive was almost full.

I thought when the drive got full it suppose to erase the oldest programs to make room for the new. Not erase all of the programs has anyone else had this happed?


Thanks

Todd

Toddysfun@hotmail.com

 

[David_Levin]

This does happen on rare occassions. If it happens again, or you hear any strange sounds from the hard drive, you going to have to RMA it.

 

[DarrellP]

You should have been around 3 years ago when the 501 was first released, it was losing files and getting cross-linked clusters like crazy. You could be watching a show and all of a sudden something else would come on then it would go back to the other show. I lost all recordings 3 times on my 501. It's been stable recording wise for the past year, but it still requires a weekly reset to keep it running properly.

 

[dfergie]

Hnmm, have never lost any in my 501, Had it 2 years now but infrequently use it now as I have it in my ht room and added a replay last week to that room. (My 501 was refurbished when I got it)

 

[zubinh]

Has anyone lost all of his or her recorded programs?

I have a 508 and today I turned on my system and it was locked up and had to unplug it, when it rebooted I lost all of my recorded shows. My drive was almost full.
Toddysfun@hotmail.com

Todd:

Tha exact same thing happened to my 501 and 508. It happened to me once many years ago.

Since then I have never let the drive get too full. If I have less than 5 hours of record time left, then I start erasing programs. Since I started doing this I have never had a problem.

 

[dfergie]

Todd:

Tha exact same thing happened to my 501 and 508. It happened to me once many years ago.

Since then I have never let the drive get too full. If I have less than 5 hours of record time left, then I start erasing programs. Since I started doing this I have never had a problem.

My cutoff point is 2 hours( just a guess from reading posts on problems)

 

[Randy_B]

Has anyone lost all of his or her recorded programs?

I have a 508 and today I turned on my system and it was locked up and had to unplug it, when it rebooted I lost all of my recorded shows. My drive was almost full.

We had this happen twice on the 721 about 2 yrs ago and then again 6 months later. It was hard drive failure. The receiver recognized it and part of the self healing process is to download the software again. That overwrites the current directory and thus all recordings are gone. Dish quickly replaced the box.

This was a regular event with our original Dishplayers. But neither our 501 or 508 has dumped shows. I also try and keep at least a 2 hr buffer. I had one occassion where there was 75 minutes left on the 501 and a 1 hr recording started, theoritically it should not have needed to dump an old show, but it did anyway (and it picked a 60 min block -it was the first unviewed/unstarted show on the list-vice a 30 minute block a little further up the list).

I have written to E* a couple of times asking for an unerase tool. In the 721 case above, unerase would not have helped, but in some cases (like the Dishplayer) the lost programs are there, but the locator flag is gone. Even if the unerase tool was hidden from the user and could only be activated by adv tech support to help restore lost recordings would be great.

 

[tomnc]

lost recordings

Yes mine happened the other day. We had to do a hard reboot and just about everything was gone when it came back up. I can tell you--I have a 501 also that was replaced 2 times a couple years ago for various things--and I'm (1) not going to pay $14.95 per time to RMA it back to them. It's THEIR machine that doesn't work not anything I've done. (2) Going to dump if it happens again on the 508. Except for the inability to advance 30 seconds on the DirecTV/Tivo unit...I like that better and plus DirecTV is $2.00 cheaper a month and quality is better.

 

[TyroneShoes]

...when it rebooted I lost all of my recorded shows. My drive was almost full...]

There's the clue. When a HD gets full, that's exactly when problems occur. Fragmentation means higher reliance on extents records, which by definition have a higher potential for errors than cataloging routines for contiguous files do. It is a good practice to erase shows you are done with rather than let the PVR do it whenever it wants, because this opens up more contiguous space and helps minimize these types of problems. It's also a good practice to never fill the HD past about 90%, just like its a good idea on your PC or Mac.

I work with pro-level HD recorders that cost millions and use multi-terrabyte RAIDs, and they have the same issues as their little brothers (PVR's). Whenever the reserve capacity falls below 15-10%, the amount of corrupted files increases exponentially, and for the very same reasons. PVR's delete anything that doesn't add up parity-wise on the sanity-check routines during boot-up, meaning that files it's not sure about will simply disappear.

The bad news for DISH PVR owners is that the cataloging routines on their PVR's don't seem to be as robust as those on Replay or Tivo, which rarely have these issues, making it all the more important to keep some space available.

 

[Wishbone]

It's also a good practice to never fill the HD past about 90%, just like its a good idea on your PC or Mac.

If 20% of the disk is reserved for VOD and BOD, which isn't implemented yet, you shouldn't be able to exceed 80%

 

[SimpleSimon]

If 20% of the disk is reserved for VOD and BOD, which isn't implemented yet, you shouldn't be able to exceed 80%

I think we're talking about percentage of "our" space, not total space.

 

[TyroneShoes]

Exactly. Ignore partitions not included. If your PVR has an "80-hour" capacity, begin to get nervous when less than 8-10 hours remain, for instance.

 

[Wishbone]

True.. if it is separate partitions.

 

[Oyving]

HELP.. How do I get them back!

This morning, I lost my directory of shows but I have 85 hours remaining on my 510. How do I reset the box?

 

[OrangeandBlue33]

It happened one time to my 510 that I've had for 6 months. We had a power outage/surge while I was setting a timer. The receiver rebooted and low and behold all my listings were gone. It still said I had about 40 hours recording time left, but no programs anywhere to be found. I called DISH and one of their "helpful" support staff said "Let's see if we can fix that." She stepped me through a re-boot and low and behold I now had 100 hours of free space with no programs listed. :shocked "Sorry, we can send you a new one for $14.95." - No thanks! - not yet anyway. Since then, the past 4 months have been fine. <knocks on wood>

Gotta say that even with that problem, I still love my 510! It's a wonderful thing! I just wish I had more hours in the day to watch all the stuff I'm recording.

OrangeandBlue33

 

[Hall]

I have written to E* a couple of times asking for an unerase tool. In the 721 case above, unerase would not have helped, but in some cases (like the Dishplayer) the lost programs are there, but the locator flag is gone.

"unerase" isn't as simple on *nix-based filesystems as it is on DOS-based filesystems. On a "standard" ext2 filesystem, unerasing is possible, but it's a manual process. The current crop of DVRs (522, 721, etc) use the XFS filesystem. How unerasing works on it, if it's even possible, I don't know.

 

[Charise]

There's the clue. When a HD gets full, that's exactly when problems occur...

I'm not having this problem, thank goodness! Went on vacation leaving tons of things to record on my 508. Returned home to 20 minutes recording time left. I usually have 10-19 hours of recording time available, but have spent at least a few weeks with between 3-10 hours remaining.

So far, so good--no lost recordings or problems finding selections. I only have a few programs protected, so I guess I'm feeling lucky. My 508 is over a year and one-half old btw.

 

[Sean Mota]

Today I lost all my recording on my 721; I had about 80 hrs worth of recording. Very mad but I will have to live with it. Darn!

 

[rsebolt]

What happened to make it lose all the recordings?
I just got my 721 (no thooked up yet).
This news does not excite me to hear.

 

[Big Bob]

What happened to make it lose all the recordings?
I just got my 721 (no thooked up yet).
This news does not excite me to hear.

Never consider the hard drive as a place for permanent, long-term storage.
Too much can happen to a hard drive to use it as the only copy of an important piece of video.