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11. 

    damian
    

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    JungleMartin - 8 hours ago  » 
    I don't fancy the factory reset at this stage as we have ~50 scheduled series records which would be a pain to add again. Plus in my own mind I would doubt a factory reset would make a difference anyway.

    I can understand with ~50 scheduled, it's an ongoing humax problem after a retune or reset. On some of the other humax boxes it's reported that too many scheduled entries can slow the box down. It would make sense to purge any schedule that you know has finished rather than wait the ~3 months for them to disappear, although I can't imagine that would make much difference.
    There's no other way forward than a factory reset. After checking for latest software update and reboot the factory reset will solve most remaining issues. The file system will be in a mess after being filled up to 100% too many times, ideally it shouldn't go over ~95%.
    What is clear is that the auto delete doesn't currently work and if a factory reset doesn't fix it then nothing will.
    In an ideal world, it'd be factory reset, tested to see if and when auto delete kicks in, take the drive out, copy recording off (directly assuming it's standard ext? or via usb?), format so the disk is clean, copy recording back, factory reset, test auto delete again, remove unwanted recordings, put/type schedule back.
    That's what I would do; however I can understand why most people wouldn't do it and take the view it shouldn't be necessary.

    If you purge the schedule and you're left with ~20 - 30 then you probably won't have a window to do any disk work anyway. With auto delete on presumably you're not worried about ~50% of the content on the disk. Running it at 96 - 100% capacity will only lead to further problems.
    It'll be interesting to see if powersave on/off makes any difference, also it's not clear from the post whether auto delete has ever worked? if it used to and powersave makes no difference then the answer is clear

    | Thu 17 Nov 2016 6:58:05 #11 |
12. 

    JungleMartin
    

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    I'll get the missus to have a clear out of the scheduled recordings. Might then take photos of what's left and do the factory reset to see if it makes any difference. What else will be lost other than planned recordings - just any settings we've changed?

    Damian, out of interest, where does your 95% figure come from?

    | Sun 20 Nov 2016 22:56:49 #12 |
13. 

    damian
    

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    JungleMartin - 11 hours ago  » 
    Damian, out of interest, where does your 95% figure come from?

    Good Question and I'm assuming the box still uses ext3:

    From wikipedia:
    "While ext3 is resistant to file fragmentation, ext3 can get fragmented over time or for specific usage patterns, like slowly writing large files"

    From Linux Magazine:
    "Fragmentation is something that primarily affects larger files that will not fit completely into the free space on a hard drive because of a lack of sufficiently large, contiguous space; thus, a file will reside in different segments"

    The lone sysadmin:
    "It’s actually quite easy to generate a fragmented disk on NTFS or ext3 filesystems. Fragmentation happens when you don’t have much free space on disk and a filesystem is forced to use non-contiguous blocks to fulfill requests."

    Web upd8:
    "I know everybody says EXT3 and EXT4 filesystems don't need defragmentation and in most cases, that's true! But sometimes they actually do need defragmentation. I've recently scanned my drives and found 1 partition (which hasn't been formatted in a very very long time) having a fragmentation level of over 70%"

    Writing large files to disk is exactly what the Humax does and there's no way to check fragmentation without access to the disk and no easy way to defrag. My files tend to be around 1GB for 1/2hr programme, ~4GB - film, sporting event 8GB - 12GB. The biggest advantage ext3 has over ext2 is it's journaled, but it's not magic and it will become heavily fragmented if allowed to fill up which is why some users problems disappear with a format as you've mentioned. Stay under 95% and there should be enough free contiguous blocks to stop/hinder fragmentation.

    You are, as the disk is so full and after a factory reset, in an ideal position to check if and when auto delete kicks in. If you can get access to the disk then run a e2fsck against it and let us all know the results. The only effective way to defrag is to copy off what you want to keep and re-format.

    For others, if the disk has filled up once or twice and the disk has been kept under ~95% for the rest of the time then it shouldn't be a problem and no need to worry.

    And yes, unfortunately, reset will lose the planned recordings schedule, force a retune and settings.
    I've never used auto delete and I'm sort of 50/50 on whether it actually works and if so at what level it kicks in. Personally I'd find locking files I want to keep much more of a pain than deleting stuff I no longer want, but each to their own. I'd imagine a reboot (power off) would bring the auto delete process back into sync with the file system, but this clearly hasn't worked.

    Let us know how you get on.

    | Mon 21 Nov 2016 12:11:55 #13 |

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