[trstew]

Tonight, I noticed blue triangles next to some movies on my playlist - called Direct and they told me these would be deleted unless I chose to keep them (using blue button on remote). I never noticed these before, never read anything about them, but assume, as a new user, that this is nothing new... I've been recording on an EHD since end of Feb. If they can automatically delete recorded content after 3 weeks, does that mean that everything recorded before that on my internal drive has been deleted by them?? How long do the triangles last before movies are deleted? - should I go thru my playlist everyday to ensure that Big Brother is not deleting my recordings?? Does Dish do this too now? I was never was aware of this nonsense in the 7 years I used them - maybe I should switch back...

 

[P Smith]

Not for dish for sure.

 

[deardeva]

I have never heard of blue triangles, yellow yes, that means the hard drive is getting full and these will be auto deleted if you continue to schedule recordings, you can choose to delete your own choices to get the free disk space back to a reasonable level. Thats how I handle it.... blue circle with k in it, means to keep, to keep you from accidentally deleting it. Red button on remote is what deletes recordings, as it is highlighted.

 

[trstew]

11:45 pm MST
Now ALL my EHD recordings, even the ones recorded today, are marked for deletion with their blue triangles! As of now at least, my original internal drive recordings are still there... Is there any point to recording anything if Direct can delete everything at will whenever they choose? Why do they even supply you with a HDD at all?!

 

[litzdog911]

What movies? Some OnDemand movies do expire after several days or weeks. Those expiration dates are set by the network, not DirecTV.

 

[trstew]

Just regular-channel movies, TCM, HBO, etc. I'm worried about losing everything on my EHD if I connect it back up since everything has a blue triangle next to it...

 

[P Smith]

That is doomsday coming.

 

[zhezhang]

The blue triangle with a "!" inside is suppose to indicate that your disk space is low, and those are the ones to be deleted when you really run out of space (if I remember correctly, in the old GUI they are yellow). They have nothing to do with Big Brother.

In my case, I have an 1.5T external HDD. When the disk space drops to below 18-20%, I start seeing those blue triangles on the oldest programs. The thing is, after I did some cleanup, and deleted about 100 hours of newer stuff, the blue triangles did not go away. But I never allowed the disk space to really run out, and my DVR never did really delete anything.

I have no idea why all your new recordings will have the blue triangle. However, if you have a lot of recordings set to "keep till I delete" (a blue circle with a "K" inside), then your DVR cannot touch those, and will have to delete from the fewer remaining recordings.

 

[MysteryMan]

That is doomsday coming.

I take it your referring to the next time DISH has to renegotiate with one of it's content providers. :sure:

 

[Drew2k]

Tonight, I noticed blue triangles next to some movies on my playlist - called Direct and they told me these would be deleted unless I chose to keep them (using blue button on remote). I never noticed these before, never read anything about them, but assume, as a new user, that this is nothing new... I've been recording on an EHD since end of Feb. If they can automatically delete recorded content after 3 weeks, does that mean that everything recorded before that on my internal drive has been deleted by them?? How long do the triangles last before movies are deleted? - should I go thru my playlist everyday to ensure that Big Brother is not deleting my recordings?? Does Dish do this too now? I was never was aware of this nonsense in the 7 years I used them - maybe I should switch back...

trstew, what is the percentage next to the blue free-space indicator at the bottom of the playlist?

The DVR has a hard drive with a finite amount of space. When you record programs you can mark them "Keep Until I Delete" (KUID) or let the DVR manage the space. When the programs are not marked KUID the DVR will look at the scheduled recordings in the To Do List and will delete the oldest programs to make space for new recordings. If everything is marked "KUID" and there is no more space, future recordings will be canceled, because there's no where to save them.

Any DVR worth using will have similar capabilities.

 

[trstew]

trstew, what is the percentage next to the blue free-space indicator at the bottom of the playlist?

The DVR has a hard drive with a finite amount of space. When you record programs you can mark them "Keep Until I Delete" (KUID) or let the DVR manage the space. When the programs are not marked KUID the DVR will look at the scheduled recordings in the To Do List and will delete the oldest programs to make space for new recordings. If everything is marked "KUID" and there is no more space, future recordings will be canceled, because there's no where to save them.

Any DVR worth using will have similar capabilities.

I was down to 17% and starting to notice the drive bogging down some. I was on the verge of switching to another drive when I first noticed the blue triangles popping up - in a couple hours, they were everywhere! A few weeks ago, when I had 2% left on my internal, I didn't notice the triangles, but I may not have had as many movies in my To Do list, as I was worried about losing it when I switched to an EHD. When I switched drives last night, I did indeed lose my entire To Do list, a significant and frustrating loss of time and energy. C'est la vie... at least I know now that Big Brother isn't going to maliciously delete all my recordings.

 

[TomCat]

I was down to 17% and starting to notice the drive bogging down some...

It sounds like you are either recording a lot of content, are using small HDDs, or maybe a little of both.

Unlike PC HDDs, the storage protocol for DVRs is different and the HDD will not slow down simply because it is getting fuller. That is typically a function of fragmentation, and in the DVR storage protocol there is no file fragmentation (although there is free space fragmentation, which is harmless). I have run HR2x HDDs full many times without any slowdowns or adverse reactions. If your DVR is slowing down, that is for another reason (and there are plenty of other reasons out there, sadly).

If you think about it, this makes a lot of sense. The HDD is instructed to write to free space or read from written files. Both exist on the HDD in the same state regardless of what has been written to other places on the HDD, so previously-written files are completely out of the equation when the HDD attempts to read or write a file. The HDD neither knows nor cares what might or might not be written elsewhere on the drive; it is only interested in a particular file or a particular free space location, so there is no way that pre-written files can interfere with that process.

Folks find new DVRs faster, but not because the HDD is empty; its typically because there are not any SLs set, and when you set a new one it has to rectify all possible conflicts in serial order then and there with each of the previous ones, which grows exponentially with the number of SLs.

There is one exception to KUID that those not intimately familiar with HDDs should take into account, which is that if you set for KUID older programs will not be deleted to make space for new recordings except under one particular circumstance, which is if you set the DVR to record a finite number of episodes of a particular program. If you set the DVR to record 10 eps of The Finder (well, there are only about 8 left so bad example) or The Mentalist (lots more of those to come), when it goes to record ep #11, ep #1 will be deleted, even if KUID is set in preferences.

 

[trstew]

It sounds like you are either recording a lot of content, are using small HDDs, or maybe a little of both.
If your DVR is slowing down, that is for another reason (and there are plenty of other reasons out there, sadly).
Folks find new DVRs faster, but not because the HDD is empty; its typically because there are not any SLs set...

Both of my drives are 2 Tb and I don't have any series links, as I only record films, a lot of them. Are there a couple main reasons for DVR slowdown, or is it pretty much a crapshoot? BTW, thanks for your great explanation of DVR HDD protocols...

 

[dpeters11]

You do realize that if your DVR goes bad, you'll lose your movie collection, right?