Is there a way to control the order of deletion on TiVo?

[timckelley]

This question is on behalf of my wife, and I think it's probably only an issue because she tends to fill up her TiVo with shows. She has suggestions turned off, so the way she knows she's short on space is by the size of the Recently Deleted (RD) Folder.

She notices that when shows fall off from RD (as the TiVo needs the space for new shows) that it takes the oldest recorded shows first. She'd rather it taked the ones that were deleted longest ago. The reason is because she sometimes feels the need to recover shows from RD, and in general it's more likely that she'd like to recover a recently deleted show than one deleted a long time ago.

[ciper]

Is it true that the order in which it decides to place them in recently deleted is controlled by the season pass order?

[Adam1115]

This reminds me of people who store stuff in their deleted items in email.

It's meant to recover something you accidentally delete, not a storage folder. If you don't want it deleted, don't delete it.

[lafos]

One way she could do it is to go into the RD folder and clean it up manually. Best would be to postpone deletions until she sees the RD folder getting small, and then delete those shows she no longer needs.

My wife records a lot, too. I gave her a 500 GB drive on a S2. It gets full, but she likes having the space. We police the S3 and HD more closely.

[timckelley]

Originally Posted by Adam1115

If you don't want it deleted, don't delete it.

Originally Posted by lafos

Best would be to postpone deletions until she sees the RD folder getting small, and then delete those shows she no longer needs.

I think her TiVo gets so full that it deletes stuff on it's own, so these tips won't work. But then again, if that's what it's doing there wouldn't be anything in RD, so she must be deleting things manually. I'm going to ask her about this to get clarification of exactly what her situation is.

[Adam1115]

Originally Posted by timckelley

I think her TiVo gets so full that it deletes stuff on it's own, so these tips won't work. But then again, if that's what it's doing there wouldn't be anything in RD, so she must be deleting things manually. I'm going to ask her about this to get clarification of exactly what her situation is.

Exactly. She must be manually deleting them, which she shouldn't do unless she really wants to delete them. Tell her it like the recycle bin...

[timckelley]

Okay, I got clarification from her. When her TiVo gets close to full, she doesn't want it deciding for her on what gets deleted, so she'll manually delete 3 or 4 of her least important shows, so the TiVo has room in RD to tap into when it needs space, instead of going to Now Playing to get it, which could put her most important shows at risk.

But then when it actually starts deleting stuff from RD, it won't necessarily take out all 3 or 4 shows right away, and she'd like to be able to prioritize the order of deletion from RD, because it sounds like she didn't really want to delete those 3 or 4 shows. She just does that preemptively to protect all her other, even more important shows.

Apparently, if she gets time to watch some shows before all 3 or 4 of those RD entries are gone, she'd like the option of recovering from RD, and then watching stuff and then deleting them.

[steve614]

Yep, sounds like she's using RD folder as a temp storage.

You need to use your man card and tell her she's watching to much TV.

Seriously, another option would be for her to pick some shows she doesn't have to watch "right now", and off load them to PC storage and save them to watch when possible.

[MirclMax]

Originally Posted by timckelley

Okay, I got clarification from her. When her TiVo gets close to full, she doesn't want it deciding for her on what gets deleted, so she'll manually delete 3 or 4 of her least important shows, so the TiVo has room in RD to tap into when it needs space, instead of going to Now Playing to get it, which could put her most important shows at risk.

But then when it actually starts deleting stuff from RD, it won't necessarily take out all 3 or 4 shows right away, and she'd like to be able to prioritize the order of deletion from RD, because it sounds like she didn't really want to delete those 3 or 4 shows. She just does that preemptively to protect all her other, even more important shows.
.

How about, instead of *just* tossing the 3 or 4 least important shows into the RD, she goes in to the RD folder after that, and selects "Permanently Delete" .. that way those 3 or 4 are actually *gone* ??

My actual advice though would be a larger hard drive.

[ciper]

Originally Posted by MirclMax

My actual advice though would be a larger hard drive.

Agreed. 1TB drives are easily found for about 100$. Add it as a second drive for a 200% increase!

[ZeoTiVo]

there has been a long thread on how timckelley's wife would not delete recordings and I believe he already did increase her hard drive space. More space just seems to delay the inevitable.

Tim, I would suggest you and she look at how to work the "keep until date" on recordings and set those so that the least important will be the one to roll off when Tivo needs space. RD is not meant as secondary storage and does not look at the date recorded but at the deletion date. I think TiVo designers did this with the idea that the most recently deleted is what you wanted to find in "recently deleted"

In short for what your Wife wants to do "Now palying" is the correct place to organize.

[timckelley]

Originally Posted by ZeoTiVo

there has been a long thread on how timckelley's wife would not delete recordings and I believe he already did increase her hard drive space. More space just seems to delay the inevitable.

That does seem true. It seems like she uses up whatever space she gets. Right now she has 250 Gig on each of her two TiVos (one of which is shared with my son though, but he doesn't really use much space).

Originally Posted by ZeoTiVo

Tim, I would suggest you and she look at how to work the "keep until date" on recordings and set those so that the least important will be the one to roll off when Tivo needs space.

Yes, I guess she could use that to control what deletes, in which order, but it seems like that could be a lot of work, because she'd have to set keep until on every recording she's got to really control things. But I guess if she does that with each show as she set them up in her To Do List, it could be a managable task. It still sounds confusing to me, because I think Keep Until only lets you keep until a particular day (not hour or minute), and she could conceivably have multiple shows that she doesn't want kept past a certain day (lest some new shows not be able to record), but she'd have no way to prioritize within that day. Plus it's hard to predict on which exact day TiVo might need to find space for new stuff, so to manage her goals through "Keep Until" could be tricky.

Originally Posted by ZeoTiVo

RD is not meant as secondary storage and does not look at the date recorded but at the deletion date.

That's what she wants it to do, but she claims it's not doing that. She'd like the show deleted longest ago to be the first to fall off RD. But she think's it's going by the "date recorded", i.e. the show recorded longest ago is what's falling off first. If RD did as you say, I think she'd be happy.

But yes, it does make sense the the TiVo designers probably didn't intend people to use RD to organize when things permanently delete, but instead for it to be a way to get back shows recently lost.

But something occurs to me... if my wife is right, and it really does delete by date recorded, the following could happen, which doesn't seem right to me:

1) A show recorded on 12-1-2008 gets deleted
2) A week later, a show recorded on 11-1-2008 gets deleted
3) 5 minutes later, the TiVo needs space to record something new
4) It takes the one recorded longest ago, which happens to be the show you just deleted 5 minutes ago.
5) 5 minutes after that, it dawns on you that you didn't intend to delete that show, but it's too late - you can't recover it.

I would have thought the purpose of RD is to be like a recycle bin; i.e. a place to get back a show you accidentally deleted, and the sooner you realize your mistake, the greater the odds you can recover it. To achieve this objective, I would have thought that when TiVo deletes from RD, it ought to take the show deleted longest ago (by now, you should have known if you want to recover it). But my wife thinks it's going by "date recorded", which seems counterintuitive to me.

[Russ Arcuri]

She needs a 1 TB drive.

[Adam1115]

Originally Posted by timckelley

Okay, I got clarification from her. When her TiVo gets close to full, she doesn't want it deciding for her on what gets deleted, so she'll manually delete 3 or 4 of her least important shows, so the TiVo has room in RD to tap into when it needs space, instead of going to Now Playing to get it, which could put her most important shows at risk.

But then when it actually starts deleting stuff from RD, it won't necessarily take out all 3 or 4 shows right away, and she'd like to be able to prioritize the order of deletion from RD, because it sounds like she didn't really want to delete those 3 or 4 shows. She just does that preemptively to protect all her other, even more important shows.

Apparently, if she gets time to watch some shows before all 3 or 4 of those RD entries are gone, she'd like the option of recovering from RD, and then watching stuff and then deleting them.

There's a whole system of green, yellow, and yellow exclamations designed to alert you of shows that might delete.

If a show has a circle with an exclamation that she really wants, she can just change the 'keep until' date...

[timckelley]

Originally Posted by Adam1115

There's a whole system of green, yellow, and yellow exclamations designed to alert you of shows that might delete.

If a show has a circle with an exclamation that she really wants, she can just change the 'keep until' date...

That's fine if she wants to mark the next show that is to delete, but effectively she'd like to mark the next 3 or 4 that are to delete, and in what order it should happen in. I guess the reason is she doesn't always know if the TiVo is imminently going to need space from 1 show or from a few. The exclamation marks don't really tell you that. (this thread illustrates a lot of detail about the yellow dots and exclamation points, and the problems behind them.)

[Adam1115]

Originally Posted by timckelley

That's fine if she wants to mark the next show that is to delete, but effectively she'd like to mark the next 3 or 4 that are to delete, and in what order it should happen in. I guess the reason is she doesn't always know if the TiVo is imminently going to need space from 1 show or from a few. The exclamation marks don't really tell you that. (this thread illustrates a lot of detail about the yellow dots and exclamation points, and the problems behind them.)

I see what you're saying. It would be nice if there ware a setting on the 'keep until' that said this program can be deleted now if necessary instead of having to delete it...

[ZeoTiVo]

Originally Posted by timckelley

That's fine if she wants to mark the next show that is to delete, but effectively she'd like to mark the next 3 or 4 that are to delete, and in what order it should happen in.

been said in the other thread and you most likely know it already but..
You both need to address the OCD aspect of wanting this much control over the show management. To work out the order of deletion on 4 shows that are at the bottom of a list of maybe 150 shows is just a little much.

The icons mean little but what I do is look at stuff and if I do want to keep it around versus other stuff I then set a keep until for 30 days from now, but I use that for things like making sure christmas specials stick around through the holidays versus managing which Series episode will go next in line to be deleted.

It sounds like the real answer, as it has always been, is to look at hwat she is recording and just face facts that she will never watch it all.

The real answer is to
stop recording some of it
or
let the old stuff fall off without so much guilt.

I don't mean this to be a rude "tell you how to use your TiVo" and if we did not have the other thread in mind I would not have posted as such but from that other thread we know the history of trying to archive simply too much TV versus selecting what can be actually watched.

[JohnBrowning]

Originally Posted by steve614

You need to use your man card and tell her she's watching to much TV.

Sounds to me like she's not watching enough TV! That's why it is piling up!

[timckelley]

Originally Posted by JohnBrowning

Sounds to me like she's not watching enough TV! That's why it is piling up!

Exactly. That is in fact her situation... that and she records a lot. I think every Xmas season is like this. She can't resist recording all the Xmas specials.

[ZeoTiVo]

Originally Posted by timckelley

Exactly. That is in fact her situation... that and she records a lot. I think every Xmas season is like this. She can't resist recording all the Xmas specials.

I have a 500 meg DT and can get away with recording a lot of Christmas specials - 250 meg would be pretty tight

[lafos]

I checked with my wife, who also records a lot. Low priority shows are set to keep 10 max (Cash Cab). If she misses one, no big deal. Other shows, like Jeopardy, are keep all. She knows she records more than she can watch, but wants to pick and choose depending on whims and when reruns are on.

What's amazing is that she is giving up her expanded TiVo for a stock HD, so she can MRV HD broadcasts from the other boxes. Wonder how long that will last...

[ZeoTiVo]

Originally Posted by lafos

What's amazing is that she is giving up her expanded TiVo for a stock HD, so she can MRV HD broadcasts from the other boxes. Wonder how long that will last...

yep, I have a 300 meg DT and find that kind of cramped as i always record movies to it.

I just ordered a 1 TB drive for the Tivo HD we have and expect that stuff will roll off of it unwatched as well over time.

In fact I like big drives in the DVRs so I know that anything getting deleted automatically is old as the hills and I very likely no longer care about the lat 20 or so shows nor hwat order they roll off.

[Adam1115]

Originally Posted by ZeoTiVo

I have a 500 meg DT and can get away with recording a lot of Christmas specials - 250 meg would be pretty tight

Yikes! I think stock they come with 81,920 meg hard drives. Why did you downgrade to 500?

[TolloNodre]

Originally Posted by ZeoTiVo

It sounds like the real answer, as it has always been, is to look at what she is recording and just face facts that she will never watch it all.

The real answer is to
stop recording some of it
or
let the old stuff fall off without so much guilt.

Bingo!

Some people seem to be worried more about what they won't be able to watch, then actually watching the 100s of shows they actually have.

It's like that Seinfeld joke about men: "Men don't care what's on TV. They only care what else is on TV."

[mattack]

BTW, didn't the order of deletion change in the recent update on S3/TivoHD? I don't think it's an absolute rule, but I thought it did now delete the longest-ago-deleted items first.. or possibly that's only my inference based upon the display -- showing the most recently deleted items at the top.

[ZeoTiVo]

Originally Posted by Adam1115

Yikes! I think stock they come with 81,920 meg hard drives. Why did you downgrade to 500?

well cause 250 meg was just too tight

[Jonathan_S]

Originally Posted by timckelley

I would have thought the purpose of RD is to be like a recycle bin; i.e. a place to get back a show you accidentally deleted, and the sooner you realize your mistake, the greater the odds you can recover it. To achieve this objective, I would have thought that when TiVo deletes from RD, it ought to take the show deleted longest ago (by now, you should have known if you want to recover it). But my wife thinks it's going by "date recorded", which seems counterintuitive to me.

If it's acting like the TiVo does when it runs out of space for normal (non-deleted) shows, then I think it would be worked off of "longest expired", rather than "date recorded".

Of course, those are usually the same order, unless you've been manually adjusting the keep until dates.

[ZeoTiVo]

Originally Posted by Jonathan_S

Of course, those are usually the same order, unless you've been manually adjusting the keep until dates.

good point, that is probably what I was seeing

[timckelley]

This order makes sense for shows falling off NP, but it doesn't seem to make intuitive sense to me for RD. RD is supposed to be like a recycle bin, to undelete something you recently deleted. (Hence the name of the folder.) I should think the more recently it was deleted, the longer it will stay in the folder. IOW, the ones that have been sitting in RD the longest should be the first to go. But my wife swears that it's going by the recorded date, and not the deleted date. Maybe it's really going by the expired date, and she just thinks it's the recorded date, as the two correlate pretty well, but either way, it doesn't seem right - because I would think it should be the deleted date that gets used.

[Jonathan_S]

Originally Posted by timckelley

Maybe it's really going by the expired date, and she just thinks it's the recorded date, as the two correlate pretty well, but either way, it doesn't seem right - because I would think it should be the deleted date that gets used.

Oh, I agree. I was attempting to describe what I think was happening.
I don't think that is how it should happen.

Like you, I think, for the recently delete folder, it makes the most sense if it contains the most recently deleted items, not the most recently recorded items that have been deleted.