[MikeFL]

Does anyone know how files are allocated on the disk? Are they fragmented to utilize all the available disk space? With the DVR people tend to run at quite a high disk utilization which would tend to lead to a lot of file fragmentation. On normal computers when the level of fragmentation gets high the computer tends to bog down and run errors occur, so you run some disk defragmentation software and the problems go away. Does the HR20 do any automatic defragmentation and space reallocation? I also assume that the disk is partitioned so that the operating system and run files are partitioned in protected part of the disk.

 

[btmoore]

Does anyone know how files are allocated on the disk? Are they fragmented to utilize all the available disk space? With the DVR people tend to run at quite a high disk utilization which would tend to lead to a lot of file fragmentation. On normal computers when the level of fragmentation gets high the computer tends to bog down and run errors occur, so you run some disk defragmentation software and the problems go away. Does the HR20 do any automatic defragmentation and space reallocation? I also assume that the disk is partitioned so that the operating system and run files are partitioned in protected part of the disk.

I as of yet, don't think anyone in the public knows how they are managing content on the physical volume, it is just a large raw partition with their proprietary data set on it.

The OS looks to be retained on some internal persistent solid state storage, from what I have read and observed they do not appear to use the drive for the operating system, this is different from the TiVo approach where the OS, appls and content are stored on the same physical volumes.

 

[cybrsurfer]

Does anyone know how files are allocated on the disk? Are they fragmented to utilize all the available disk space? With the DVR people tend to run at quite a high disk utilization which would tend to lead to a lot of file fragmentation. On normal computers when the level of fragmentation gets high the computer tends to bog down and run errors occur, so you run some disk defragmentation software and the problems go away. Does the HR20 do any automatic defragmentation and space reallocation? I also assume that the disk is partitioned so that the operating system and run files are partitioned in protected part of the disk.

I don't think so ... as far as defragmenting itself. I'm sure the OS/firmware is on a separate eeprom chip, but that's all. The OS/firmware is not on the hard drive because you can actually remove the original and put a new one in, and the system will format it (setup) automatically! You can't do that with a Tivo, that's one of the pluses with the HR20 (adding hard drive via eSATA). I have not come across any information on other DVR models having a defragmentation ability.

Other then simply reformat command to clear the unit 100%. Doing this will erase everything... customization and recorded programming.

 

[yamaham]

Somebody with an eSATA setup could download R-Studio 3.0 Demo and scan it for data on their PC. Should tell you if it can find FAT/NTFS/EXT2+3/UFS1+2 data and gives a visual representation of used/unused data blocks.

 

[cybrsurfer]

Somebody with an eSATA setup could download R-Studio 3.0 Demo and scan it for data on their PC. Should tell you if it can find FAT/NTFS/EXT2+3/UFS1+2 data and gives a visual representation of used/unused data blocks.

R-Studio run in the demo mode allows you to evaluate how all R-Studio family utilities recover lost files. The only limitation is you can not recover files larger than 64KB in the demo mode.