Why not give 721 an undelete app?

[Randy_B]

Since some folks are still reporting some signficant 721 issues where they have lost all their recordings, why not put in an undelete app in the 721 code? Even if they couldn't restore everything that was lost, saving some of them would be incredibly helpful. It would also give the 721 a great added feature for those days when your 6 year old accidentally deletes one of your shows. There has bound to be a small open source undelete program for Linux out there. I would certainly give up some recordingtime on the HD for such a critical service.

Scott, do you know if the 721 team has ever looked into this capability? This kind of "saving grace" capability could be a 721 differentiator over the competition.

[Jacob S]

This is a wonderful idea, its kind of like restoring what you had, just like I hear people do with their computers to restore what they have deleted from their recycle bin.

Maybe a feature could be to see everything that is on the hard drive and then select the shows you would want deleted over once the hard drive is filled up, although one could do that now with the Protect feature.

[Cheyenne]

What makes you think that code would function better than the code that deleted the file to begin with?
I think some kind of effort needs applied to original code vs. a "patch" band-aid approach.

[Scott Greczkowski]

I honestly don't know anyone who has lost all their recordings on their 721. (I know people whos 721's have died and lost everything)

But other then that I dont see a need for this feature. (Although my wife is FAMOUS for deleting my shows that I have not watched yet) :D

[Jacob S]

If its still on the hard drive then why not have the ability to still access it? One could give priority to what is on the hard drive as to what to delete first and what to keep on there the longest, therefore one would not have to delete shows anymore if done that way, it would do it on its own.

[Randy_B]

I honestly don't know anyone who has lost all their recordings on their 721

:hi: Me!

We lost everything this weekend on our 721. It finished recording one of the kid's show on Nick and when my wife tried to change channels, a transparent menu screen came up saying the system had a fault and it was testing. After about 5 minutes it came back and said it had a HD failure, the HD started clicking. Unit wouldn't power off or go to any menu screen, but you could change channels. I tried a reboot, but the system wouldn't power back on like normal after the 6 sec button hold. So, I pulled the plug, waited a couple of minutes, plugged it in and it came up with the testing screen. Ran the tests for 5-7 minutes and the screen went black. I pulled the smart card reinserted it and the tests ran again. Tests passed (I guess) but it said it was installing the HD Image (like it did the very first time we activated the system). 20 minutes later, came back up, said it was downloading data from the satellite. After that I went to the PVR screen and Everything was gone, all recordings (about 40 hrs worth), timers, favorites, etc... The only guide that had any info was the All Sub list (the All channels list was empty, don't know why). Did a successful switch check and All Channel guide was then filled in.

Everything worked fine after all this.

After all of this, it would have been great IF I could have gone into an undelete app and looked to see what was remaining on the HD. The new image may have overwritten some recordings but at least some of the 40 hrs was probably still sitting there just had the markers removed from the file directory. This kind of fall back app shouldn't be that hard.

Catastrophic failure aside, even being able to restore an inadvertant delete would be very useful. Last Christmas, I deleted "Olive the other Reindeer," I had no idea my 7 yr old hadn't watched it all yet. She was quite upset. It would have been nice if I could have gone into the "trash" and restored it for her.