# Any way to defrag HDD in R-15



## hitechluddite (Feb 10, 2006)

Is there any way or need to Defrag the Drive on the R-15. I tend to record long blocks of video(3+hrs) and for the kids we record 15 minute sections off sprout. after 6 months the HDD has to be a mess.


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## qwerty (Feb 19, 2006)

No known way.


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## jpl (Jul 9, 2006)

I'd be surprised if the R15 didn't do this on its own - as part of it's general housecleaning.


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

If the OS use HUGE clusters as DishLinux (2 or 4 MB), then it will never happen.


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## Wolffpack (Jul 29, 2003)

Running Ranish Partition Manager against a R15 drive indicates the cluster size is 32K.


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## hitechluddite (Feb 10, 2006)

I'm just wondering if the timebar freeze isn't related to fragmentation....


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## jpl (Jul 9, 2006)

I really have a hard time believing that the R15 wouldn't defrag itself during normal housekeeping.


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## jonaswan2 (Oct 29, 2005)

jpl said:


> I really have a hard time believing that the R15 wouldn't defrag itself during normal housekeeping.


I'm totally with you. Besidee, I couldn't name another XTV based DVR that has a defrag feature. It has to be automatic (DirecTV isn't dumb enough just to not cover that kind of thing).


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## Earl Bonovich (Nov 15, 2005)

hitechluddite said:


> I'm just wondering if the timebar freeze isn't related to fragmentation....


I would be SHOCKED if it was related to fragmentation...


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## Jim Reid (May 30, 2006)

I asked the top post long ago...got the same answer... I am starting to wonder why the fan runs at high spped at 4am + or - an hour? 

too good to be true?


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## hitechluddite (Feb 10, 2006)

I'm just going by my experience with large volumes with thousands of MP3 files. A defragemented drive will generally still play but you get all kinds of little glitches in display parameters.


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## Wolffpack (Jul 29, 2003)

Maybe that's what some of us run into when we take the R15 out of StandBy and it doesn't respond. I've recently have this unit's HD full 2 times now. Maybe it's running a defrag and can't get out of it to service user requests. I had this 08/07 and again yesterday 08/12. I waited about 15 minutes on the 7th and 45 minutes on the 12th but then RESET the unit. Too bad there's no HD activity indicator on the R15. Hey, does anyone know of a device that can be added to an IDE cable the would show disk activity?


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

Wolffpack said:


> Running Ranish Partition Manager against a R15 drive indicates the cluster size is 32K.


Then high fragmentation is garantied ! Count - for for 1 hour show waht usually allocate 1 GB space for video or TS - how many clusters will be taken ? Plus busy File allocation table management. Are you sure the CS related to Video/Audio partition ?


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## Wolffpack (Jul 29, 2003)

P Smith said:


> Then high fragmentation is garantied ! Count - for for 1 hour show waht usually allocate 1 GB space for video or TS - how many clusters will be taken ? Plus busy File allocation table management. Are you sure the CS related to Video/Audio partition ?


Not necessarily. The partition is labeled as FAT32. If the R15 is using some extended version of a FAT32/FAT64 filesystem those can also include "streaming files". Any time I've taken a look at the R15 disk drive I can see all files except the actual data stream. I can hex dump the first 32K and then get read errors. Some utilities indicate the first 32K contains pointers to the remaining space which FAT32 drivers under Linux cannot read.

But, we really don't know.


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## pentium101 (Nov 19, 2005)

Wolffpack said:


> Too bad there's no HD activity indicator on the R15. Hey, does anyone know of a device that can be added to an IDE cable the would show disk activity?


Wolffpack, you can connect an LED to pin 39 (/ACT) of the IDE interface. A low level on this pin indicates that the IDE device is busy. This is the pin that a lot of people use when building their own IDE interface with an activity LED.

Depending on the LED that you use, you should try to keep the LED current between 15ma - 20ma.

I'll post a picture to give you an idea of what to do.


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## Bobman (Jan 3, 2006)

Wolffpack said:


> the R15 out of StandBy and it doesn't respond.


I am wondering if some of the problems your having with the R-15 aren't brought on by pulling drives all the time, using PC disk utilities on it and doing all the things you have been.


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## Wolffpack (Jul 29, 2003)

Bobman said:


> I am wondering if some of the problems your having with the R-15 aren't brought on by pulling drives all the time, using PC disk utilities on it and doing all the things you have been.


Especially since I'm the only one having these problems. 

Keep in mind that the only utility I've used to write to an R15 drive is to write zeros and in the past write sector 0 and 63. Don't even need that now and DA/R does the format regardless. I also "start over" quite often using a DA/R which returns the drive it's "factory state".

Anytime I've seen these freezes overnight my unit has had > 20 SLs. During the 10C8 rollout (5 weeks or so) I only had about 8-10 SLs on the unit and it never froze up.


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

pentium101 said:


> Wolffpack, you can connect an LED to pin 39 (/ACT) of the IDE interface. A low level on this pin indicates that the IDE device is busy. This is the pin that a lot of people use when building their own IDE interface with an activity LED.
> 
> Depending on the LED that you use, you should try to keep the LED current between 15ma - 20ma.
> 
> I'll post a picture to give you an idea of what to do.


Bad idea to load the line with 10+ mA; for such indicators there are plenty chips with open collector for LED and high input impedance. Using those chips you could monitor /WR /RD lines separately.


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## Wolffpack (Jul 29, 2003)

I completely forgot I've got a set of swappable drive enclosures with their own power and activity light. I'll just place the drive in one of these.


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## qwerty (Feb 19, 2006)

Wolffpack said:


> Especially since I'm the only one having these problems.
> 
> Keep in mind that the only utility I've used to write to an R15 drive is to write zeros and in the past write sector 0 and 63. Don't even need that now and DA/R does the format regardless. I also "start over" quite often using a DA/R which returns the drive it's "factory state".
> 
> Anytime I've seen these freezes overnight my unit has had > 20 SLs. During the 10C8 rollout (5 weeks or so) I only had about 8-10 SLs on the unit and it never froze up.


I've had the problem where it doesn't wake up from standby. It happened a few times several months ago.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

hitechluddite said:


> I'm just going by my experience with large volumes with thousands of MP3 files.


How does this relate to medium size drives and a file count in the low hundreds?

The worst case scenario is that two programs get somewhat interleaved. This is not the end of the world.


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## cabanaboy1977 (Nov 16, 2005)

Earl Bonovich said:


> I would be SHOCKED if it was related to fragmentation...


Ditto, more so since it only happen with this last release.


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## walters (Nov 18, 2005)

harsh said:


> How does this relate to medium size drives and a file count in the low hundreds?
> 
> The worst case scenario is that two programs get somewhat interleaved. This is not the end of the world.


32KB is about 1/10 of a second of video. I sure hope it's not recorded 32KB at a time. :eek2:


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## pentium101 (Nov 19, 2005)

P Smith said:


> Bad idea to load the line with 10+ mA; for such indicators there are plenty chips with open collector for LED and high input impedance. Using those chips you could monitor /WR /RD lines separately.


Pin 39 of the IDE interface is an open collector output and sinking the 15ma - 20ma of current should not be a problem.

Personally, I would use a PNP transistor driver circuit to control the LED and greatly reduce the amount of IDE sink current.


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## Wolffpack (Jul 29, 2003)

Here's the new setup. Activity light is interesting. Fan in the front and back of the HD enclosure which is barely warmer than the room temp plus R15 temp at 36.


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## cabanaboy1977 (Nov 16, 2005)

Watch, now that you've done this it's not going to lockup now  . 

I'm going to LOL if the only reason the R15 was looking up was due to temp issues.


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## Wolffpack (Jul 29, 2003)

Cabanaboy, wanna buy one of my patented non-lockup/temp reducing kits? :lol:


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## qwerty (Feb 19, 2006)

Well, with the unit on, and buffering, I would expect the activity light to be constant. 

Removing the hard drive should reduce the heat in the R15 considerably.


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## Wolffpack (Jul 29, 2003)

In StabdBy with one show recording it's a blink about every 1-2 seconds.

In StandBy with no recordings active I haven't seen any activity.

If I get time I'll pull together some short .wmv's of the different situations.


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## cabanaboy1977 (Nov 16, 2005)

Wolffpack said:


> Cabanaboy, wanna buy one of my patented non-lockup/temp reducing kits? :lol:


:lol:, Sure . I think we should start a joint business venture here and start mass market this product of yours :lol:


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## Clint Lamor (Nov 15, 2005)

cabanaboy1977 said:


> :lol:, Sure . I think we should start a joint business venture here and start mass market this product of yours :lol:


Should make a water cooling kit for it like someone did for the XBOX 360 :lol:


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## Wolffpack (Jul 29, 2003)

Just need to find a bulk supplier of bubble gum and duct tape. :eek2:


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## Clint Lamor (Nov 15, 2005)

Wolffpack said:


> Just need to find a bulk supplier of bubble gum and duct tape. :eek2:


WollfM we don't make products we just make them better (3M commercial) :lol:


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## cabanaboy1977 (Nov 16, 2005)

Wolffpack said:


> Just need to find a bulk supplier of bubble gum and duct tape. :eek2:


I'll have to talk to MacGyver to see who he buy from :lol:


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