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TiVo recordings say 'not enough disc space' - the box is brand new today

Kachi
Tuning in

Long story short, we were having issues with our old TiVo box, including it insisting that it could not create new series links without clipping programmes on the 1st October that weren't even on the same day, and saying it couldn't record things because it was running out of space.

Anyway, it died a death the other day by simply beeping like an almost-dead car alarm and refusing to boot up. Fast forward to today when a lovely engineer turned up and replaced it with a shiny new and very empty one.

Almost every series link we've tried to create has thrown up the exact same errors, including insisting that it can't record things a few days from now because it won't have any disc space.  There is nothing on it.

Can anyone shed any light on why it might be having these errors? Has Virgin pushed a faulty update?  Because it's hard to believe that the same problems exist totally independently of each other on two separate boxes, one of which was several years old and the other of which is still gleaming new.

10 REPLIES 10

japitts
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

What's the free disk space report as, in the following 2 locations...

1: My Shows view, at the top?

2: System info screen.. home > Help & Settings > System Info, and about 2/3 down the first page.

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What with it being brand-new-installed-today, My Shows shows it at 3%, and the System Info Free Disc Space is "Up to 56 hours for HD, or up to 272 hours for SD." 

japitts
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

Ok - tricky to directly compare the 2, but importantly..

1: Plenty of space is confirmed by both, and 2: A touch shy of empty.

There's been no update pushed that would have caused this. I suggest following the resets via the menu, as a first attempt... Home > Help & Settings > Clear or restart.

1: First try the "clear programme info & planned recordings" option. This will wipe your planned recordings & EPG data but keep the recordings intact. The box will restart, and download a fresh EPG. Any SL's will reschedule, but manual recordings will need creating again. See if this sorts things.

2: If that fails, go nuclear and "clear & delete everything". AFAIK this isn't a reformat but isn't far short.

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You do realise that the box is brand new, straight from the box, fitted today by the engineer? If there is a problem that requires a brand-spanking-new box to be reformatted, I think I might need yet another new box.

Unfortunately, what with the exact same problem being on the old box too, I'm hardly convinced clearing the data will fix anything - it would instead suggest this is a Virgin problem, and not an inherent problem with the box as 1) this one is, again, brand new, and 2) only started around 3 weeks ago with no previous issues whatsoever. 

japitts
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

I do realise that.

I'm trying to suggest possible solutions that might mean you can resolve this by "self-help" methods in a matter of hours, rather than having to wait for the replacement/tech-visit process to work its course.

If these suggestions don't work, then you'll need to do that anyway - so you've got nothing to lose.

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Natalie_L
Forum Team (Retired)
Forum Team (Retired)

Hi Kachi, 

 

Thank you for reaching out to us here on the Community and thank you japitts for your assistance 

 

I am very sorry to hear you are still experiencing the issue with your equipment following the exchange. 

 

Just to clarify, have you been to try any of the suggestions made by japitts? If so, has this helped at all?

 

If not, please do let us know and we will be happy to assist further. 

 

Thanks 

 

 

Nat

No, the suggestions didn't help.  I fixed it, after thinking about it overnight after I'd posted.  It is, as expected, a software issue with the TiVo software.  The default Series Link settings were changed to keep programmes "Until I delete" which, previously, didn't cause any problems.  But now the software assumes that if the default is "Until I delete," that nothing will ever be deleted and it calculates it will run out of space on the hard disk in approximately a week.  Because no one will ever delete anything manually like a sane person, apparently.

Once the default is changed back to delete when it runs low on space, the error vanishes.

It's poor programming, nothing a reset would ever fix.  If the option doesn't work properly, it should be removed from the defaults screen.

japitts
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

I'm very doubtful that, if your used disk space is around the ~3% mark, that current recordings should fail. If nothing else, to use 97% of disk space will take a couple of days of all 3 tuners continually recording (back of **bleep** packet calculations)

As and when it reaches a higher %age, then that's a different story.

Changing the default setting from KUID to keep-until-space-needed, is an easy alteration to make via the settings menu. With VM's primary development focus now being on 360, then I very much doubt this will be altered.

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You can be 'very doubtful of that' all you like. Setting a series link for Rick and Morty at 1am on the 24th September (around 14 hours after the box arrived, at that point with less than 3% content on the drive) threw up the error that it wouldn't record House of Games on the 7th October at 6pm because, and I explicitly quote, with (blurry) photo: "not enough disk space."

20210924-002000

Setting a manual record on House of Games then threw up the error that it wouldn't record Doctors at 1:45pm on the same day because, again, not enough disk space.

20210924-002311 

And as I said, the error immediately resolved once it was returned to the default setting.  As to VM's willingness to fix their broken software, considering their "getting the most out of your TiVo box" video only leads to an advert about the V6 box, I already know it will never be fixed now they've broken it. I'm saying the option should be removed entirely, a much quicker fix.