Question on H3 DVR Space

DialgaChampion

SatelliteGuys Pro
Original poster
Aug 27, 2015
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New York
Just had a quick question. For the Hopper 3, when you're in the DVR menu and it says the percentage, such as 75% full, does this percent include the primetime anytime recordings as well, or is it only referring to the 1 TB for the manually saved DVR recordings?
 
But I thought that it was a 2tb internal drive, separated into two partitions of 1tb each, one reserved strictly for the 8 days of PTAT and the other for non-PTAT manually saved recordings...? I'm lost...
 
But I thought that it was a 2tb internal drive, separated into two partitions of 1tb each, one reserved strictly for the 8 days of PTAT and the other for non-PTAT manually saved recordings...? I'm lost...
In the early days there was a partition for on demand, but that was done away with years ago.
 
I think the way it works is that there is still a reserved partition for On Demand. (The movies that appear on channel 1 and channel 501 in the guide.) In the early days, the PTAT had its own partition, but that was later moved into the regular DVR partition, so users could have the extra space available for personal use. Keep in mind that the percentage shown on the DVR screen also includes any On Demand events that you have actually downloaded to your internal hard drive to Watch Later.
 
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In the early days, the PTAT had its own partition, but that was later moved into the regular DVR partition, so users could have the extra space available for personal use. Keep in mind that the percentage shown on the DVR screen also includes any On Demand events that you have actually downloaded to your internal hard drive to Watch Later.
Oh okay. I don't have any on demand stuff at the moment, just ptat and my own manual recordings.

Based off the percentage saying 75%, I was just trying to figure out what size of external ssd to buy to move the most important recordings over, in case the internal drive fails.

So from what you and KAB said, I'm guessing I'd have to get a 2tb, cause a 1tb wouldn't cut it.
 
the percentage shown on the DVR screen also includes any On Demand events that you have actually downloaded to your internal hard drive to Watch Later.
Not only does On Demand content tape up disk space, but also it stays there until you delete it! Of course it will expire and be unwatchable, making it a complete waste of space.
I was just trying to figure out what size of external ssd to buy to move the most important recordings over, in case the internal drive fails.
Do not waste your money on an EHD based on a SSD! The speed is wasted for this purpose, and for the same money you can get a much bigger HDD. I recommend buying a 6TB disk. :D
 
The percentage estimate is only measuring the partition of the HDD space for your persoanl TV recording, which include--I think--any donwloaded VOD--NOT the VOD that resides on its own partition. Most of the VOD is now streamed rather than saved on the HDD, so even less worries about HDD space (the Channel 1 and 500 VOD's are save to their own partition of the HDD, I think).

The PTAT takes up relatively very little space on the User partition of the HDD.
That is NOT going to be the source of your storage limitations. Keep in mind that Dish uses MPEG4 for all HD content. In addtion to using the effienct MPEG4, Dish also compresses the data to a fairly high degree, which mean using even LESS space used on the HDD per recorded TV show, and more space for more recordings.

I think the HDD still has a seperate partition for the VOD Channel 1 and 500 that resides on the HDD, however, even that will not be taking up much space on the HDD. You have a TREMENDOUS amont of space still availabe for your personal TV recordings in the user partition even after 2 weeks worth of PTAT. I know this becasue I have an embarrasing TON of TV shows and that uses about 67% of my User partition with my PTAT active for all channels.

One last thing to know is that if you have the system set to automatically "Prepare" recordings for transfer to a mobile device (as I do), then I do believe those additional recordings are stored on your User Partition--HOWEVER, those "Prepared" for transfer to mobile device recordings are drasticlly reduced is size so that they can both be quickly transferd to and be so small as to not take up much room on your mobile device internal or external (SSD Card) memory.

Also, those "Prepared" recordings will automatically be erased from the HDD after a period of time--I know becaue I had to wait through the pain of re-coding many times on recordings I wanted to transfer, but they were older recordings made with the "Auto-Prepare" ON.

If you turn off the "Auto Prepare" or whatever the precise name of that feature, then you could use less space on the HDD, but as I satated above, those very small sized recrodings ready to move to mobile will be erased in not too long of time, so those recordings really won't take up much room on the HDD.

Further, if you turn off the "Auto Preapare" for mobile freature, then the cost to you is that the transfers will take longer because they have to go through the re-code first, and that is a time consuming process that can seem irritating if you are transferring even ONE recording, and even MORE irratating if you are transferring more than one recording, like 4 episodes of some show, for example. But the actual process to transfer is pretty fast; its the re-code that takes time.

I prefer to let the system autmatically re-code all new recordings made becase the temporary space it takes up is minimal compared to how much you can still record for viewing at home or remotely, at least in real-world usage even if the actual number may seem more than incidental. In other words, with PTAT and Auto-prepare on at all times, I experience no real world effect of being limited in recording space--and I record A LOT and leave recordings on the Hopper for me to watch for the very fist time many months or even OVER a year later.

The choice is yours, but if you want to get an external HDD for transferring recordings from the internal HDD to the external because you are tight on HDD space being reported, then that external HDD for archiving is an option.
 
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