721- how full can you load the hard drive?

[steveT]

So how full can you realistically get the 721's hard drive? I was hoping to never get it down below about 20 hours of remaining time, just because you always hear PC-types say not to let a computer hard drive get more than ~80% full.

I ended up going to about 15 hours remaining, with no problems. But the first time I let it get to 13 hours remaining, the 721 became extremely buggy (same type of bugs usually discussed on this forum). Has anyone else noticed a connection with "bugginess" vs. remaining record time?

[Jacob S]

I have heard people before say that it would get buggy on the 501/508 when it got near full such as 5 or 10 hours left on the 501 in which has a 30 hour capability.

[Randy_B]

We have taken our 501 down to 1 hr and it was fine. Haven't gotten that far with the 721 yet. I am sure given a few weeks, my wife will get us there. :)

[motjes2]

Got my 721 down to 0.35 minutes. I did not wait too long and started erasing/watching some programs. I did not see/experience any problems.

[Mike Russell]

About 65 hrs. is all I can get on my 721.I keep it full all the time without any problems.It will start deleting stuff when you get to about 1 hr. or so.

[steveT]

Looked to me like 65 hours was the max also. Which I thought was strange, since when I first installed it, before recording anything, I was sure it said 80 hours of total record time remaining.

[Bill D]

I got in down to under 10 minutes and immediately starting erasing stuff, for fear of losing something. I really should use the protect feature more..

[mbsea]

I NEVER erase anything on my 721. I ALWAYS let them "drop off the end" as new shows are recorded. We record about 16 - 20 shows per day. Have been doing this for many months on the 721 and have never had a problem with it. The same is true for my 501. Also no problems.

[dbronstein]

Originally posted by mbsea
I NEVER erase anything on my 721. I ALWAYS let them "drop off the end" as new shows are recorded. We record about 16 - 20 shows per day. Have been doing this for many months on the 721 and have never had a problem with it. The same is true for my 501. Also no problems.

I have to ask - how do you find time to watch 16-20 shows a day? And if you don't watch all the stuff you record, why do you record it? I'm just curious.

Dennis

[Jacob S]

I think some people like to have a choice in what they want to watch for the day, some may also be repeats so they can delete some of the repeats and then see what is left. Also there may be other members of the family that may want to watch some of the other shows a different part of the day.

[dbronstein]

Right, but 16-20 shows a day is probably about 12 hours or so. Even when you skip commercials you're still looking at the 721 being in use by someone watching something for about 9 hours every day, if it all gets watched.

Dennis

[mbsea]

I have a 7 year old who ONLY watches PVR recorded shows. She can't stand live TV and once threw the remote accross the room because she could not advance through the commercials. (disney is getting bad about that). She will even pause a live show, go play for awhile , and then come back to watch it so she can skip the "breaks". Remember that 16 shows = 8 hours of TV time but you can watch all of it in about 6 hours. Also have an 18 year old and my wife and I have our choices too. Almost Everything we watch is PVR recorded. We could not live withour a 2 tuner PVR!

[Jacob S]

16 shows at half an hour a peice but some would be an hour as well so it would average out to be about 10-12 hours, two people at 5-6 hours each minus the commercials would be 4 hours each. maybe 2 in the afternoon and 2 in the evening. some deleted because of repeats.

[TomCat]

Originally posted by mbsea
I NEVER erase anything on my 721. I ALWAYS let them "drop off the end" as new shows are recorded. We record about 16 - 20 shows per day. Have been doing this for many months on the 721 and have never had a problem with it. The same is true for my 501. Also no problems.

My sister also uses this technique, with few problems, on her 501. I'm sure many users do this.

I protect everything and try to manage space manually. While I've never got my 721 below 18 hours, I have filled my 501 a time or two, but recent adventures in filling the 501 HD have not yielded any problems, which used to not be the case. When folks were having problems with losing all or most recordings on their 501's a year or so ago, in almost every case the HD was nearly full. So the risk increases when the HD gets filled. PVR's don't fragment in the same way your PC's drive might (which is the root of most problems with filling them up), but it's probably not to be unexpected that the number or frequency of problems might increase with a full HD.

Even professional hard disk recorders (which I am becoming uncomfortably familiar with) that cost 6 figures have increased problems with bugginess and sluggishness and corrupted files when the HD's get more than 90% full (and they work pretty much the same way PVR's do). I try to keep a 10% reserve, but I think the dangers of not doing so are less than they were in the early days of the 501.

[Bill D]

Originally posted by mbsea
I have a 7 year old who ONLY watches PVR recorded shows. She can't stand live TV and once threw the remote accross the room because she could not advance through the commercials. (disney is getting bad about that).

This sounds familiar (not the remote throwing), but my 4 year old son, bangs through commercials now better then my wife, he even has the skip back 10 sec down pretty good. He also wonders why he can't skip things on the occasion that we are watching something live. I look at the lives of my kids with a PVR, and picking out DVD's to watch, and think back to when HBO was only on Weekends, and if you held down 3 numbers on the jerrold cable box you got some scrambled porn. :lol:

Which brings up the point does the 721 even do locks on prerecorded stuff??

[Greg Haynes]

I let my 721 get down to the very last hour and I lost the first episode of Sopranos because of it. Now I lock my shows. But never experienced any difference when it was low.