I have an expansion DVR on my FIOS system, and it seems to work fine. I have a lot of stuff on both drives, though my FIOS-supplied drive is over 95% full. The expansion drive still has substantial space.
Howvere, I just noticed that the system has auto-deleted some of my programming to "create space." These are programs I wanted to save! And there's room on my expansion drive for many hours of programs.
Is there any way to manage my DVR to prevent this auto-deletion? I'd rather have the system prevent me from new recordings and force me to pick what I want to delete. Help!
@inverness wrote:I have an expansion DVR on my FIOS system ... I have a lot of stuff on both drives ... just noticed that the system has auto-deleted some of my programming to "create space." These are programs I wanted to save! ... Is there any way to manage my DVR to prevent this auto-deletion? ...
In "Menu/DVD/Recorded" go to the program you want to save and in the menu choices, mark it as "Save Until I Delete." This should accomplish what you want to do. Of course if you mark everything as "Save Until I Delete" you will eventually start losing material. BTW, you could always obtain another external storage drive and switch between the two, as long as you don't change the DVR itself.
Armond is correct about protecting your recordings. If the All Activity (History) folder is claiming to have deleted them to increase space, leaving your recordings unprotected (no shield symbol beside them) is the likely culprit. He is also correct about being able to swap your external drive to add more space, as long as you realize that you won't be able to see all your recordings at the same time because you can only attach one expansion drive at a time. I just wanted to add some information that might help you understand what else could be happening.
First, in addition to protecting your recordings, if the shows that are being automatically deleted are part of a series recording, make sure that the Series Manager is set to Keep All Episodes for that program. Otherwise the DVR could begin deleting old episodes before you have viewed them, even if they are protected.
Also, from what Verizon tells us, the expansion drives are supposed to be filled first, then the internal DVR drive. However, contributors on this forum have noted that if the expansion drive is larger than 1TB, the DVR may fill the first TB on the expansion drive, then fill the internal DVR drive, then continue to record to the expansion drive. Also, while Verizon claims that there is no limit to how large the expansion drive can be, the largest eSATA drive that they recommend is 1TB, and no one on here has posted successfully adding more than a 2TB drive without having the extra space ignored.
But these are all suggestions based on a DVR functioning properly. It doesn't mean that yours is. Your DVR may be giving you an improper account of just how full your external drive is. It may be filled to the gills and just reading as a lower percentage. In this case you would have to know how many hours are on it versus how many hours you would expect to be able to record to it, and just ignore the estimate. You may need to perform an STB/DVR Auto Correct. You could even have a malfunctioning DVR that needs to be replaced. This last possibility is doubtful if everything else is functioning properly. And you would have to keep in mind that when you replace your DVR, all the recordings on your external drive will be lost as well.
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