I'm starting to mistrust my free space indicator

[cfb]

Wondering if anyone else is noticing that the free space available indicator seems to be rather generous over the last couple of weeks.

I havent added up the hours of recordings to try and manually compare the results, but my 1TB box was sitting at around ~50% available before the four day free premier thing, and I recorded about 20 movies. We then added about 7-8 more series links.

Its recorded one heck of a lot of stuff. Yet the free space indicator is sitting at around 46%. Based on what I'd recorded, I'd expected it to be in the 20's.

I did have that glitch last week where a bunch of stuff recorded but only showed up in the history, not the playlist...that was fixed with a reboot.

But I wonder if the FSI is missing some of the recordings. Anyone know if thats generated in real time or regenerated at boot time? If its just a number thats added to and subtracted from as each recording is made/deleted, I'm wondering if mine is accurate.

If its not generated in real time or recalculated at boot time, anyone know a procedure to force it to recalculate? I know that during boot time you can pop into a diagnostic menu and force a file system check...but that can take 3+ hours.

 

[JosephB]

Have you checked to see if anything deleted/expired? It's also subject to varying bitrates of the content you have recorded.

 

[Jimbo]

Have you checked to see if anything deleted/expired? It's also subject to varying bitrates of the content you have recorded.

Agreed, if everything the OP has recorded is MPEG4 then it is possible that it is correct.

 

[cfb]

I need to sit down and add it all up manually.

Almost everything I've ever recorded has been Mpeg4, and you sort of get a seat-of-your-pants feeling when you're adding shows of what the free space impact will be.

I was at half and added a lot of premium channel movies along with several series links, and my pants seat said it would knock me down to ~25% and it had almost no impact at all.

Just figured I'd float it and see if anyone else had the same feeling before I did any actual work, because we all know how painful and often unnecessary THAT is...

 

[Jimbo]

I would suggest adding up the total amount of time you added and see if it adds up.
remember your using a TB HD, that changes your figures from other sizes.
With my 750, I usually count on approx 1 digit for each hour, so if I am empty and record in MPEG 2 1 hour it would show 99, not necessarily the case with Mpeg 4 stuff.

 

[cfb]

With my 1TB I've generally seen ~1% for each 1.5 to 2 hour HD movie. I added about ~20 movies and it recorded ~6-8 episodes of other 1 hour shows.

That smelled more to me like 20-25% down from 50% rather than 4%.

But like I said, a fair bit of this stuff recorded and didnt show up in the playlist, just in the history and could be played from there. When I rebooted all the stuff showed up but the FSI didnt change.

So if they're calculating the FSI by subtracting from it when something is added to the playlist after recording and adding to it when something is deleted rather than calculating it periodically from actual playlist contents, then I could see where it might be wrong if the bug that prevented the shows from appearing in the playlist prevented the subtraction.

I'll have to wait for the family to release the tv set, drop the playlist to local and count 'em up.