[myklbear]

Is it possible to take a Roamio drive out and defrag it in windows and return it in better shape? I haven't been able to get the Kickstart codes to work and after 7 years it's probably messed up.
Any tips on Kickstart?

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[ThAbtO]

No. In order to do that, you have to format it to FAT or NTFS and erase everything on it.

 

[josim]

Tivo Roamio user for 5+ years. Tried to use Kickstart for the first time a few months back. 54 gave me the blinking lights but no menu to scan the drive. Then I ran 57 which did function. I think that helped the performance. YMMV

 

[JoeKustra]

Is it possible to take a Roamio drive out and defrag it in windows and return it in better shape? I haven't been able to get the Kickstart codes to work and after 7 years it's probably messed up.
Any tips on Kickstart?

I find that no long pauses between the Pause key and the numbers helps with KS.
While I'm not sure about the defrag effects, I do avoid always using the same physical locations on the drive. That will happen if you are always killing the contents of your Recently Deleted folder. I record late night so it's easy for me. While I record some prime time, I only keep late night after watching and kill the rest. This results in Recently Deleted becoming full after a while (on a 1TB drive). Full can be observed by checking the "bottom" program. When it gets killed off by TiVo, the drive is physically full. Then I delete a month's worth of recordings. This usually happens after 160 hours of HD. On my 3TB Roamio, which records ABC & Fox, I have never (in two years) reached a full drive. BTW, there is no sorting in that folder, and entry to the folder is always at the "top".

 

[Worf]

There's no need to defrag it.

Media content is stored in large blocks (approximately 1MB in size, or around 1 second) so defragmentation will do nothing. The other content (guide info,e tc) is stored in a database and those generally self-manage the storage.

There's no real need to maintain the TiVo drive - the OS does it automatically, and if it's running well there is no need to break it.

 

[krkaufman]

BTW, there is no sorting in that folder, and entry to the folder is always at the "top".

I'm always a little amazed at the poor programming of the Recently Deleted folder. Not only is entry from the top to an unsorted list, but there's no option for sorting or filtering, and recovering a program resets you back to the top of the list. (I suppose KMTTG could be kept handy for multiple recoveries.)

One thing I thought they should have implemented, nearly from the beginning, was having a direct link to the deleted folder from within a show's listing, offering quick access to just that show's previously deleted content.

Vent expelled. You may now return to your regularly scheduled programming.

 

[ggieseke]

There's no need to defrag it.

Media content is stored in large blocks (approximately 1MB in size, or around 1 second) so defragmentation will do nothing. The other content (guide info,e tc) is stored in a database and those generally self-manage the storage.

There's no real need to maintain the TiVo drive - the OS does it automatically, and if it's running well there is no need to break it.

The minimum block size in the media partitions is actually 10MB.

 

[JoeKustra]

I'm always a little amazed at the poor programming of the Recently Deleted folder. Not only is entry from the top to an unsorted list, but there's no option for sorting or filtering, and recovering a program resets you back to the top of the list. (I suppose KMTTG could be kept handy for multiple recoveries.)
One thing I thought they should have implemented, nearly from the beginning, was having a direct link to the deleted folder from within a show's listing, offering quick access to just that show's previously deleted content.
Vent expelled. You may now return to your regularly scheduled programming.

I've learned to adjust to the ugly monster. I used to scroll up. Now it's just Left and Right. BTW, ran CPI&TDL on both my TE3 Roamio boxes. No problems.

 

[myklbear]

So just so I understand. After six or seven years of having the hard drive get into the high 90% range the TiVo is smart enough to not fragment files, the deleted files remain there as long as they're on the list, and there's no way to permanently delete them, so they are using up space.
It seems like that the only way to solve many TiVo problems is to put in a new drive or format the old drive in the machine. I guess it's similar to the old adage when things are not working " reboot ".
I don't think my TiVo likes working over about 85% full and I do have less problems at that point. I guess I just have to copy off more files to my OTA that's mostly empty.
Thanks for the feedback.

Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using Tapatalk

 

[PSU_Sudzi]

I find that no long pauses between the Pause key and the numbers helps with KS.
While I'm not sure about the defrag effects, I do avoid always using the same physical locations on the drive. That will happen if you are always killing the contents of your Recently Deleted folder. I record late night so it's easy for me. While I record some prime time, I only keep late night after watching and kill the rest. This results in Recently Deleted becoming full after a while (on a 1TB drive). Full can be observed by checking the "bottom" program. When it gets killed off by TiVo, the drive is physically full. Then I delete a month's worth of recordings. This usually happens after 160 hours of HD. On my 3TB Roamio, which records ABC & Fox, I have never (in two years) reached a full drive. BTW, there is no sorting in that folder, and entry to the folder is always at the "top".

Question, is it confirmed that if you keep deleting shows from your delete folder new shows get written to the same places they are? I've seen that posted here but don't know enough how HDs work to know that's true.

 

[Worf]

It doesn't matter for hard drives if you record over the same locations over and over again. Whether the same blocks are reused depends on the filesystem in use and its allocation policy. Presumably though, deleting a show means TiVo won't have to automatically clean up the oldest show and record over it. so it will just take any free space in use and start from there.

Having over 85% used is not a big issue, unless most of those shows are marked as "Keep until I delete", which locks the program and gives TiVo less options when it needs to free up space. If the majority of programs are marked that way it can potentially cause issues since TiVo has to keep searching for a program to delete when space is needed.

Else leaving it at 85%+ is not a big deal - if TiVo needs to free up space it can easily find an old program to delete. Problems happen if you have a lot of recordings and not a lot of space free or a lot of programs it can delete, especially if it has to delete programs early

 

[JoeKustra]

Question, is it confirmed that if you keep deleting shows from your delete folder new shows get written to the same places they are? I've seen that posted here but don't know enough how HDs work to know that's true.

No confirmation. But I've seen (long ago) a graphic display of a disk being defragged. It ended as a "packing" of data blocks. TiVo probably does whatever is easiest to program.

 

[PSU_Sudzi]

No confirmation. But I've seen (long ago) a graphic display of a disk being defragged. It ended as a "packing" of data blocks. TiVo probably does whatever is easiest to program.

The easiest to program is probably 100% correct.