# No longer a fan of L215. :(



## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

I just got nailed and lost *150 hours* of recordings, including entire seasons of Stargate SG-1, SG Atlantis, 24, and several other nice things.   

It seems that the ZSR problem is no longer limited to events that show as 0 seconds in length. This is the FIRST time I have lost recordings since I got the box in Feb., 2004. I still had the first event I recorded on it.

I'm very careful how I treat the 921 - just to make sure stuff like this doesn't happen to me.

It was near full, recording an HD event, watching another one delayed, SD event started. No apparent problems. Got the "running low" warning, jumped into the "pick something to erase" screen and cancelled out of it - as I always do. I had more than enough space to handle the event.

Life was good for a couple of hours - finished watching my HD on delay, watched and deleted the other HD event.

Went to watch the SD event and it was black screen with 0:00 time remaining - but the banner was showing the show prior to the recording - as it always does. No problem - I thought.

Tried to fast forward, pause, rewind, etc. No joy. Somewhere in there, I managed to get the "Remaining" bar to come up at the bottom, and it had no numbers or bar.

Hit DVR and nothing but timers was there, and 158+ hours of SD time available.

I really thought they had finally gotten it together with L215. NOT! 

Edit: It figures - really ironic and strangely appropriate. This is my 5,000th post on this forum.


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## boylehome (Jul 16, 2004)

Your description sounds like ZSR. I wonder what the root cause is? What makes it especially bad is that it is not an easy task to copy from the 921 as certain ports don't work. Gotta love the evaporation, not


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## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

Watching a non-recorded event on delay uses a different partition, the buffer partition on the hard drive. The recorded events occupy their own partition. I recall it said there are 5 different partitions on the 921 hard drive in use. Each has it's own purpose, including a backup of the OS. Something for you to ponder in your understanding of how these things work. By this, I think that watching a program on delay would not affect your storage of recordings unless you tried to save that 2 hour buffer to your archive partition that was near full.

Anyway, sorry to hear about your loss of programs. I believe you are the first report of this since L215. IT should be a lesson for all of us that the 921 remains an unreliable system for archiving. You may want to look into adding backup hard drives on your 921. It's possible now with a legal hack that does not compromise drive content security.


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## passing_ships (Aug 1, 2004)

DonLandis said:


> You may want to look into adding backup hard drives on your 921. It's possible now with a legal hack that does not compromise drive content security.


Really? Where do I find out more?


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## Jason Kragt (Dec 20, 2002)

DonLandis said:


> You may want to look into adding backup hard drives on your 921. It's possible now with a legal hack that does not compromise drive content security.


That peaked my interest as well. What are you talking about? I thought that the only legal hack to get this functionality was to buy a 942. :lol:


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## David_Levin (Apr 22, 2002)

Wow sorry Simon (maybe you'll have to find other outside entertainment besides skiing).

But really, that does suck. There's just no excuse for this. Perhaps this is where we are waiting for part 2 or the 2 part fix (maybe they are mucking with the file system, and need an intrum change because the final solution is incompatible with 213).

I wonder if we need to make sure the auto-delete function doesn't fire.

Hard drive swapping is painfully inconvenient for a PVR (and really the subject of a different thread). I have timers fireing all the timer. Isolating one drive for archival would be painful. And, what's to stop a crash with the archival drive installed?


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## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

_"Hard drive swapping is painfully inconvenient for a PVR "_

David- That depends on how you approach it. The specific complaint here is that the 921 has a bug that persists is deleting your content without warning. Many here, myself, probably you, and certainly Simple Simon use the 921 for both archival AND scratch recording (temporary) to the same original hard drive. The concept of archiving PVR921 content for safety can be quite easy or can be complicated as you presumed. If one tries to archive content the way we do with video tape it becomes a chore with the 921 and different hard drives indeed. But what about a philosophy of the typical hard drive "backup?" In other words you continue to use the 921 like you currently do but set up a schedule where you back up your PVR921 hard drive to a clone with Ghost 9.0 and then either use that drive or the original one for more use. With this approach, the day comes that you lose all your recordings and rather than cry buckets, you swap out the drive or make a clone of your backup drive and swap out and you haven't lost a thing. Plus, it will expand your capacity to store beyond the 25 hours of HD content by having several backup drives. The caveat is that this content will only play on your 921 so if your 921 is a loss the drives' content will not play on another 921 box. That is the security part of what you are doing with these clones. Is it really too painfully inconvenient? Let's ask Simple Simon if now that he has lost all those recordings if he had it to do all over again would he have rather had a backup of his content up to date to maybe the middle of June at least the last time he cloned the drive or just say it is too inconvenient to be bothered with doing backups? We all do a degree of backup and security of our computers as inconvenient as it is we do it because we know the loss in a disaster is worse than the loss of time to prepare for that disaster. Only you can decide if your archival content is worth the trouble to preserve and protect it against the ubiquitous bugs in the 921!

There are those who have tried to go beyond the simple clone process, adding additional drive capacity and even attempting to hack the content to DVHS and computers. This area of the subject crosses the line of the security, IMO and is a taboo topic for any open forum. Obviously, any tampering with your 921, even to take the cover off is a violation of your warranty so be fore warned that this is only for those who don't care about the warranty on their 921. The specifics on how to do simple backup is easily found if you know anything about key word searches. I'm not about to cross the line on this forum by directing you to those places.


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## Scott Greczkowski (Mar 21, 2002)

This weekend I had a few isses with L2.15 A timer fired on Friday Night and was still recording on Sunday Morning (eeek)

Another timer I setup on Sunday fired Sunday Night and was still recording monday Morning. This timer was a new timer, the other one was a pre 215 timer.


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## Jon Spackman (Feb 7, 2005)

Simon - sorry to hear about your hard drive loss, Im assuming you did a couple of reboots to see if they will show up again, It worked for some people who thought they lost it all...

Scott - were those one time timers or weekly type timers?

Jon


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## Cyclone (Jul 1, 2002)

Ever since L215, I've have been losing the audio while watching with the 921. Both recorded and live programs have been effected. I use only the toslink connector to my Sony AV system. I have found that if I raise/lower the volume around that I eventually get the audio back.

This could be a probelm with the Sony, but I've had the thing for 5+ years and no problems. But the problem showed itself right after the L215 upgrade. I've been waiting for someone else to post this issue, but none so far.

*Follow up*: My AV receiver also acted up on a DVD, so the 921 has been exonerated.


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## Scott Greczkowski (Mar 21, 2002)

j5races said:


> Scott - were those one time timers or weekly type timers?
> 
> Jon


The first one was a weekly timer, the second was a one time only timer.


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## cleblanc (Dec 18, 2003)

Scott Greczkowski said:


> This weekend I had a few isses with L2.15 A timer fired on Friday Night and was still recording on Sunday Morning (eeek)
> 
> Another timer I setup on Sunday fired Sunday Night and was still recording monday Morning. This timer was a new timer, the other one was a pre 215 timer.


I've also had this problem. I had a M-F timer set up to record for 30 minutes. It was still recording 5 hours later. I couldn't stop it and had to reboot the machine while it was recording. I spoke to tech support that night and reported the problem. Apparently this is another major bug with the 215 release.


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

I'm very sorry to hear it, Simon. I know that only part of the fix is in this version, but I was really hoping that it was enough to keep it from happening again to any of you.


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

Thanks for all the condolences - and PM'd offers,  fellas.

I was planning on getting another 250GB drive soon, but just don't have the $$$ right now. Oh well.


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## Jon Spackman (Feb 7, 2005)

I have a 250 WD hard drive laying around will that work or do i need a matching type thats in it now (diamondmax i think)??

Scott, my theory was that one time timers may be less reliable than weekly, but i'm thinking i may not be correct.

Jon


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## Scott Greczkowski (Mar 21, 2002)

It happened again last night.

I wiped all my timers and put in a new weekly timers, I woke up to find one of my wifes CSI shows still recording from last night.

And I should also note that I am unable to stop the recording by selecting play then stop or by clicking on stop on the menu, I have to hold down the power button to have the unit reboot to stop it.

Did ANYONE really bata test this software?


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## Pils (Sep 20, 2004)

Scott Greczkowski said:


> It happened again last night.
> 
> I wiped all my timers and put in a new weekly timers, I woke up to find one of my wifes CSI shows still recording from last night.
> 
> ...


That happened to me on 213 and then the drive gave out. Is that a result of this software or just a bad drive?


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## Scott Greczkowski (Mar 21, 2002)

The drive seems to be working fine. It has only been doing this since L215 came out.


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## Richard King (Mar 25, 2002)

> Did ANYONE really bata test this software?


But I thought you were a beta tester.


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## Scott Greczkowski (Mar 21, 2002)

No I was for the 721, but not 921.

I was happy with L2.13 for the most part. But 2.15 has given me nothing but issues.


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

Scott Greczkowski said:


> It happened again last night.
> 
> I wiped all my timers and put in a new weekly timers, I woke up to find one of my wifes CSI shows still recording from last night.
> 
> ...


Well, thank God you didn't have to pay $1000 for your receivers! Whew!

Seriously, sounds like you need to pull the power cord, Scott. My weekly timers (and daily, M-F and one time) are all firing correctly and stopping at the right time.


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## KKlare (Sep 24, 2004)

DonLandis said:


> Watching a non-recorded event on delay uses a different partition, the buffer partition on the hard drive. The recorded events occupy their own partition. I recall it said there are 5 different partitions on the 921 hard drive in use. Each has it's own purpose, including a backup of the OS.


I've seen that claim before but how can you then convert a live viewing into a recording unless they are on the same physical partition short of copying it, which would really exercize the disk. Soft partitions, perhaps?
-Ken


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## Scott Greczkowski (Mar 21, 2002)

Mark Lamutt said:


> Well, thank God you didn't have to pay $1000 for your receivers! Whew!


I did pay for one of them (and I paid full price too!), and I won the other on a tech chat. 



> Seriously, sounds like you need to pull the power cord, Scott. My weekly timers (and daily, M-F and one time) are all firing correctly and stopping at the right time.


Been there did that and got the t shirt to prove it. 

Just for laughs I should hook up the 921 I am not using and see if it has the same issues. Again all was good with the old software.


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## IamtheEggman (Sep 21, 2004)

Scott Greczkowski said:


> And I should also note that I am unable to stop the recording by selecting play then stop or by clicking on stop on the menu, I have to hold down the power button to have the unit reboot to stop it.?


Just an FYI, Do a check switch and it will stop without rebooting. This has happened to me(and others) before 215


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## srrobinson2 (Sep 16, 2003)

SimpleSimon said:


> I just got nailed and lost *150 hours* of recordings, including entire seasons of Stargate SG-1, SG Atlantis, 24, and several other nice things.
> 
> It seems that the ZSR problem is no longer limited to events that show as 0 seconds in length. This is the FIRST time I have lost recordings since I got the box in Feb., 2004. I still had the first event I recorded on it.
> 
> ...


This same thing happened to me and erased an entire season of Enterprise! (see an earlier pose in the Bugs forum).


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## srrobinson2 (Sep 16, 2003)

DonLandis said:


> _"Hard drive swapping is painfully inconvenient for a PVR "_
> 
> David- That depends on how you approach it. The specific complaint here is that the 921 has a bug that persists is deleting your content without warning. Many here, myself, probably you, and certainly Simple Simon use the 921 for both archival AND scratch recording (temporary) to the same original hard drive. The concept of archiving PVR921 content for safety can be quite easy or can be complicated as you presumed. If one tries to archive content the way we do with video tape it becomes a chore with the 921 and different hard drives indeed. But what about a philosophy of the typical hard drive "backup?" In other words you continue to use the 921 like you currently do but set up a schedule where you back up your PVR921 hard drive to a clone with Ghost 9.0 and then either use that drive or the original one for more use. With this approach, the day comes that you lose all your recordings and rather than cry buckets, you swap out the drive or make a clone of your backup drive and swap out and you haven't lost a thing. Plus, it will expand your capacity to store beyond the 25 hours of HD content by having several backup drives. The caveat is that this content will only play on your 921 so if your 921 is a loss the drives' content will not play on another 921 box. That is the security part of what you are doing with these clones. Is it really too painfully inconvenient? Let's ask Simple Simon if now that he has lost all those recordings if he had it to do all over again would he have rather had a backup of his content up to date to maybe the middle of June at least the last time he cloned the drive or just say it is too inconvenient to be bothered with doing backups? We all do a degree of backup and security of our computers as inconvenient as it is we do it because we know the loss in a disaster is worse than the loss of time to prepare for that disaster. Only you can decide if your archival content is worth the trouble to preserve and protect it against the ubiquitous bugs in the 921!
> 
> There are those who have tried to go beyond the simple clone process, adding additional drive capacity and even attempting to hack the content to DVHS and computers. This area of the subject crosses the line of the security, IMO and is a taboo topic for any open forum. Obviously, any tampering with your 921, even to take the cover off is a violation of your warranty so be fore warned that this is only for those who don't care about the warranty on their 921. The specifics on how to do simple backup is easily found if you know anything about key word searches. I'm not about to cross the line on this forum by directing you to those places.


In understand that these topics are toboo for Dish for some bizzare reason. My question is, when are they not taboo for TIVO?


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## srrobinson2 (Sep 16, 2003)

Mark Lamutt said:


> Well, thank God you didn't have to pay $1000 for your receivers! Whew!
> 
> Seriously, sounds like you need to pull the power cord, Scott. My weekly timers (and daily, M-F and one time) are all firing correctly and stopping at the right time.


Well, I did pay $1000 for mine! And, I appear to be an unhappy involuntary beta tester!


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