Not recording ( mce saying not enough space )

chiesa · **28th November 2005, 07:33 AM**

I have the problem with recording off the guide as when i press record it says that i do not have enough space ??

i have a c: with the os of 40 gig and a d: drive whcih i have a 80 gig for all the recordings. the problem is that i get about 20 hours of recorded tv and thats when the problem starts.

i go into recorder storage and it still says that i have approx 25 hours of recording time free, only using half of what i have. and it still says i dont have enough space required ??

very confused, and can anyone help

chiesa

pistnbroke · **28th November 2005, 07:41 AM**

Have you checked the actual drive space left on that drive ?

Mike · **28th November 2005, 08:19 AM**

It also depends on what you already have sheduled to record with your guide. If you have 25 hours space left (according to your recorder storage screen) but your scheduled recordings will consume that space, MCE will only add the white dot with an exclamation mark on any new recordings you add, and until you delete some files it won't let you record anything.

chiesa · **28th November 2005, 09:05 AM**

have checked the drive in explorer and it still says i have half free 36 gig, yes,

still not sure why

chiesa · **28th November 2005, 09:17 AM**

i thought that may have also been the case, but we only have 30 min recorded each day, and thats it, seems funny that, those schedualed recording would take the 25 hours of free space that mce says it has

help, anyone ??

chiesa

philzgr8 · **28th November 2005, 10:20 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by chiesa

i thought that may have also been the case, but we only have 30 min recorded each day, and thats it, seems funny that, those schedualed recording would take the 25 hours of free space that mce says it has

Possibly not the solution but just a suggestion... Have you tried running scandisk to make sure there is no corruption? Sometimes corruption can cause various utilities to misreport free space. It's also possibly worth doing a defrag to maximise contiguous free space. If that fails then I'm stumped!

pistnbroke · **28th November 2005, 10:24 AM**

Also if you are using Nortons, make sure the Norton Protected Recycle bin is empty...

rich110 · **28th November 2005, 12:08 PM**

Just a thought... have you checked your TV Recording setting within Media Center itself (TV > Recorder Settings i think). How much space have you actually allocated to MC for recording purposes?

For example, if you have a 80GB drive for recorded tv butMC is only set to use a max of 40GB for recording, then you will get a message from MCE saying that the disk is full after 40GB is recorded - even though in Explorer the disk still has 40GB free. Does that make sense? By default I think MC doesn't allocated all the free space on the Recorded TV drive for recording, only a percentage of it.

Sambooka · **28th November 2005, 12:14 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by rich110

Just a thought... have you checked your TV Recording setting within Media Center itself (TV > Recorder Settings i think). How much space have you actually allocated to MC for recording purposes?

For example, if you have a 80GB drive for recorded tv butMC is only set to use a max of 40GB for recording, then you will get a message from MCE saying that the disk is full after 40GB is recorded - even though in Explorer the disk still has 40GB free. Does that make sense? By default I think MC doesn't allocated all the free space on the Recorded TV drive for recording, only a percentage of it.

That would be my guess too.

Also, 80 GB is pretty close to 20 Hours. I get about 40hrs on a 150Gb drive.

Don't pay any attention to the hours MCE says it has left... it's on a different page altogether.

Cheers

Sambooka

chiesa · **28th November 2005, 03:00 PM**

have checked the storage options and it says i have only used aroudn half of my potential recordings, also done a scandisk and no errors

if you say not to go by mce storage what do i get out of 80 gig (mins)

if i have used all of my 80 gig, then why is it when i go to my computer it is only half full ??

chiesa

Sambooka · **28th November 2005, 03:11 PM**

I get around 3GB per hour for SD recordings.

I don't know why you're seeing all that free space in explorer. Mine is pretty accurate when looking in settings > recorder > storage compared with available space in explorer.

Cheers

Sambooka

philzgr8 · **28th November 2005, 03:19 PM**

At this point I would grasp Bill Gates roughly by the throat, shake violently and yell WHY???

Sorry, just my daily M$ hate post!

In all seriousness though I haven't seen this behaviour either and that's why I suggested potential corruption. If that's not the case (and given that you've checked all the obvious MCE settings) I can't think of much else other than the dreaded "V" word so I hope you have some kind of antivirus installed and up to date. The other thing I would consider is finding some type of disk space analyser which might potentially arrive at the same kind of finding as MCE. I'd hazard a guess there'd be something on cnet or tucows etc you could try. That may give you some clue but it's a bit in left field.