External Drive - Space Remaining Incorrect ?

kstuart

SatelliteGuys Master
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Nov 5, 2006
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Northern California
I was wondering if anyone else has encountered the External Hard Drive saying that there was room remaining when there really was not ?

I have encountered this twice (i.e. with two different hard drives when they became filled up).

If I try to transfer, I get:

An error occurred while transferring blah blah blah

If I delete a recording off the external drive, then the same program will transfer successfully. After deleting something, once I transfer files whose total size roughly equals the size of the deleted ones, then I get the error again.

The error has nothing to do with the program being transferred - I can always transfer it successfully to another external drive.

My guess:

Sometimes I cancel a transfer - for various reasons - such as starting it, and then wanting to play something back from the drive before it is finished. The so-called "space left" that is reported is roughly equal to the total length of all the canceled transfers...
 
I have two full drives and working on a third.

I have never cancelled a transfer.

I have moved several shows off a full drive so that I could move other shows onto it. I recently converted a full drive into an Olympics drive. It took several days to get everything moved back and forth until all the Olympics recordings were moved over.

The space I have left on the two full drives is too little for another show. I have never had the drive indicate sufficient space left but then unable to make the transfer.

Sounds like partially filled data blocks. The remaining space is reported but cannot be used.
 
I have two full drives and working on a third.

I have never cancelled a transfer.

Interesting, thanks.

The transfers that I have cancelled have all been rather large - things like an entire NBA playoff match in HD - where I start the transfer, it gives me this very long time remaining, and I realize I don't have that much time and decide to do the transfer another day.

So, perhaps cancelling transfers of large items - and filling a whole drive ;) is unique to me (or rare enough that no one else who encounters the problem is reading this Forum).
 
Interesting, thanks.

The transfers that I have cancelled have all been rather large - things like an entire NBA playoff match in HD - where I start the transfer, it gives me this very long time remaining, and I realize I don't have that much time and decide to do the transfer another day.

So, perhaps cancelling transfers of large items - and filling a whole drive ;) is unique to me (or rare enough that no one else who encounters the problem is reading this Forum).
Hard to say if cancelling would mess up the drive. I transferred about 18 hours of Olympics in the form of three recordings but I always transfer at night so that the 5 hours or more it took didn't affect anything.
 
Many times I have had sufficient space indicated, barely. But a second after starting a transfer, it will say an error occurred. Removing one or more files will allow the transfer. (BTW, it used to require a reboot before you could try again.) Sometimes you can put back most or all of the files. It seems likely that there is fragmentation that is not handled as well on the EHD as it is on the internal. The programming must allow some fragmented files but may limit it to 2 or 3 fragments, say.

Many may feel they do not get the full size they bought. The manufactures measure GB (gigabytes) in 1000^3 bytes, while computer makers and Dish measure GB in 1024^3 and the same for MB (megabytes). Thus each of my WD 750GB really holds nearly 699GB.

-Ken
 
They're the EXACT same space!

Many may feel they do not get the full size they bought. The manufactures measure GB (gigabytes) in 1000^3 bytes, while computer makers and Dish measure GB in 1024^3 and the same for MB (megabytes). Thus each of my WD 750GB really holds nearly 699GB.

-Ken

When are people going to wake up and quit repeating this false impression about hard drive space. 750GB is the space reported in decimal, base 10. 699GB is the space reported in binary, base 2. They are both the exact same space, just stated in 2 different base systems!

Compare 5 miles and 8 kilometers. They're the exact same distance, just stated in 2 different measuring systems!

32° F is the exact same temperature as 0° C. Again, 2 different measuring systems!
 
I don't think canceling a transfer will mess up the disk space but pulling the plug (USB or power) during a transfer could do damage to the file system. I recommend one UPS for both recorder and drive just in case of random brief power outage. I've been lucky so far with 2 722s and 5 750 GB drives, most full.
-Ken
 
When are people going to wake up and quit repeating this false impression about hard drive space. 750GB is the space reported in decimal, base 10. 699GB is the space reported in binary, base 2. They are both the exact same space, just stated in 2 different base systems!

ummm... that's exactly what he said, you said it in English, he said it with math.
 
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Thank you Agonizing Fury. I was just trying to point out the most common mistake in apparent size mismatch.

I find that my Excel spreadsheet totals without rounding up misses the total by a couple of GB. Rounding up would require knowing the block size of the EHD, which I haven't worried about. The simple computation does come close. BTW FWIW, I keep IMDB rank (top 250) and rating, DVD+R status (pre-EHD), film name, year, guide stars, run time, director and top actors, recording date and time, size (MB), size/run time in hours, channel name. The size ratio distinguishes SD, MPEG-4 HD, MPEG-2 HD, and OTA HD from each other (~1000, 2000-3000, 4000, 5000 MB/hr, respectively). Eventually I'll replace the MPEG-2 with MPEG-4 especially with HDNet movies and SHO changing this coming week. So I guess I have a lot more to record and I'll have to hope I don't end up with too much fragmentation. It would be nice to get an MPEG-4 feed for PBS to reduce the size there.
-Ken
 
I don't think canceling a transfer will mess up the disk space

I'm not talking about the theory.

You mentioned that you had an External Drive where the "space remaining" was not accurate.

Did you ever cancel a transfer to that drive ?

It would be helpful to me to know that, thanks.
 
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