How do I completely disable SageTV's ability to delete shows

[perfessor101]

Hello,

I tried moving my network encoding / extra storage machine from one room to another ... shut down the network ... unplugged that machine ... plugged it in again ... connected the cables ... turned it on ... turned the rest of the network on ... and zap 175 GB's of recordings gone ... New shows ... old shows ... manual recordings and favorites.

I have 6 recording drives, 2 are local to the sagetv server (125 GB's free before shutdown) and 4 are in the network encoder system (200 GB's free before shutdown).

My hardware, OS and software is listed below ...

After restarting both systems and the network I had an extra 175 GB's free as Sage had decided to do mass deletion on startup.

All drives are present, accounted for, working well and all have been scanned with no errors.

I have never in the last year let my free space as reported by sagetv drop below 100 Gb's so that I have a choice in what is deleted as I had found that anytime it dropped below 75 GB's Sagetv started to delete things seemingly at random (it didn't matter if it was a manual, a favorite, a new recording or an old one). And oh, yes the free space during this time never dropped below 65 GB's before or during a mass file deletion.

Now I am curious as to whether there is a way to render sagetv unable to delete anything except when expressly told to do so for all recordings.

For the last year I've been doing manual deletions removing shows as they're watched or burned to DVD to save me from any surprises which this definately was.

Thanks for your time,
and sorry for the rant,

Bobby

ps ... anyone know of any good file recovery software on the cheap?

SageTV Server:
Windows MCE 2005 OEM, SageTV 4.0 Client with Default STV, Java j2re1.5.0_04 installed, Catalyst 5.10 and ATI Multmedia Center 9.08 with DVD fully installed.
AN7 Motherboard, AMD 2600XP+ processor, 1024 MB DDR 400 Samsung OEM Memory, ATI AIW Radeon 9600 Video Card, Hauppauge Wintv PVR 500 MCE, Maxtor 40 GB hard drive as a boot disk, 2 x Seagate 250 GB IDE Hard Disk, Liteon 16X DL DVD Burner, Alps 1.44 Floppy Drive, Gyration Ultra Keyboard and Mouse, USB-UIRT

Sage TV Network Encoder:
Windows XP MCE 2005 OEM, SageRecorder 1.5.6, Java j2re1.5.0_04 installed, Catalyst 5.10 and ATI Multmedia Center 9.08 with DVD fully installed
At7-Max Motherboard, AMD 2400XP+ processor, 1024 MB DDR 333 Samsung OEM Memory, ATI AIW Radeon 9000 Video Card, 3 x ATI eHome Wonder Capture Cards with latest drivers, Seagate 200 GB Hard Disk ATA100 x 2, Maxtor 120 GB Hard Disk ATA133, Seagate 120 GB Hard Disk ATA100, Alps 1.44 Floppy Drive
MS Wheel Mouse Optical USB, Cicero Multimedia USB Keyboard

SageTV Client:
Windows XP SP2 OEM, SageTV 4.0 Client with Crashless's 0.5.0 Meekell STV for DVD burning, Java j2re1.5.0_04 installed, Catalyst 5.10 and ATI Multmedia Center 9.08 with DVD fully installed
AN7 Motherboard, AMD 3000XP+ processor, 1024 MB DDR Dual Channel OCZ Premier Memory, ATI Radeon 9800 Video Card, 2 x Seagate 120 GB Hard Disk SATA, Liteon 16X DL DVD Burner, 52X Liteon CD Burner, Alps 1.44 Floppy Drive, Logitech Cordless MX Duo Keyboard and Mouse, ATI Remote Wonder 2

[mayamaniac]

Originally Posted by perfessor101

Hello,

I tried moving my network encoding / extra storage machine from one room to another ... shut down the network ... unplugged that machine ... plugged it in again ... connected the cables ... turned it on ... turned the rest of the network on ... and zap 175 GB's of recordings gone ... New shows ... old shows ... manual recordings and favorites.

Thats nuts.

If all my shows get deleted, and it is SageTV's fault, then I would really consider dumping SageTV and trying the competition instead. I think there should be a clause or some sort of warning that notifies you before it deletes that much data. If this is indeed SageTV that's doing the deletion, then some core changes needs to be implemented so that this should never happen.

As for recovery software, I have a lot luck with Easy Recovery. It saved me a lot of times.

[dvd_maniac]

Just a recommendation..

After shows are recorded I cut out the commercials, encode them and move them into an Import folder. I do not think that Sage can delete an import automatically. And with Greggerms new STV for V4, it creates .my files with the details of the show that can be moved with it. So I myself see no reason to keep things in the recording folder.
I have over 600GB of recordings in my import folder and that is encoded into 300MB/hr. If Sage ever deleted it I would not just drop it, I'd throw it out the window.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by perfessor101

I tried moving my network encoding / extra storage machine from one room to another ... shut down the network ... unplugged that machine ... plugged it in again ... connected the cables ... turned it on ... turned the rest of the network on ... and zap 175 GB's of recordings gone ... New shows ... old shows ... manual recordings and favorites.

After restarting both systems and the network I had an extra 175 GB's free as Sage had decided to do mass deletion on startup.

With the latest SageTV versions, while there could always be some other issue I'm not aware of, the only thing I've seen that is linked to such behavior recently is when you have something like Norton Protected Recycle Bin turned on. When a show gets deleted, the space isn't actually freed, so SageTV has to delete another show, but no space is actually freed, delete another show, etc., until almost everything is removed. Do you have some utility like that running?

However, you said that Manual Recordings were removed & they aren't supposed to be deleted at all. You could ask tech support if they know of other situations that could cause file deletions.

- Andy

[Goodspike]

Originally Posted by Opus4

With the latest SageTV versions, while there could always be some other issue I'm not aware of, the only thing I've seen that is linked to such behavior recently is when you have something like Norton Protected Recycle Bin turned on.

I've run into that with other HTPC applications. I think I only had Norton Protected Files turned on for a day or two before it became obvious.

If manual programs are being deleted, I'd wonder if the show is still on the drive and just not showing up for some reason.

[ToxMox]

I'd like to know what version of Sage the OP is using.

[steingra]

Give this a look. Helped me several times in the past to recover deleted files.
http://www.quetek.com/download.htm

or maybe give this a look.
http://diskinternals.com/

or this
http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

[perfessor101]

Currently,
I'm running SageTV 4.0 Server (default STV with DirMon and ShowAnalyzer on MCE 2005) and Client (Crashless's Meekell with Kjakes DVD burning on XP SP2) along with SageRecorder 1.5.6 (on MCE 2005).

I have not had Norton anything running since May when I had a virii problem that took Sage down for about a week until I could track it down to a virus and a WinTV PVR USB2 (since then I've been using the antivirus from my ISP) also since then I have not been able to get my WinTV PVR USB2 working (it works until the next reboot and then says it's installed incorrectly, except this time [foreshadowing, hmmm]).

The Sunday before the file loss SageTV service started to freeze during startup at 17xxxKB's and so I switched over to running SageTV in 'program' mode as a short term fix as I had planned on various upgrades in the near future and was planning on doing a bare reinstall. I tried using a batch file with a sleep command to delay the startup of the SageTV service (which kinda worked) but then it seemed unable to access any remote file shares.

The day before loosing all the files I tried reinstalling the WinTV PVR USB2 (seeing others recent good fortunes with it, I mustered up the courage to try again) after the mandatory reboot, it worked perfectly no dropped frames or any problems (six encoders running at once and then retested after an hours wait, again good results, rebooted and still working) and then that night it caused all encoders to stutter the recordings massively ... SageTV couldn't play more than 2 - 5 minutes into a video and often said the video was 15 to 30 minutes shorter than the actual recording (all sleep funtions of all devices and the computer itself are disabled, nothing goes to sleep).

Rip goes the WinTV PVR USB2 plug ... no more stuttering ... then I shut down all the computers on the network because the roomy said the fan on the computer was too loud (Silent Boost by Thermal Take with 2 vantec stealth fans) in the living room. And this is where the rest of the story begins ... a prequel I guess ...

I found a freeware file undelete utility called Restoration at http://www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.html

Looking at all the files I burned, all the files I watched, all the files I burned but didn't watch, all the files I burned and watched ... trying to figure out a good strategy to recover 175 GB's of recordings with only 30GB's free on the only unaffected drive ... I deleted the rest and cleared all the watch flags and hope that some time soon they will rebroadcast all wanted shows.

Smallville was the only show with no delections of 84 episodes. Reunion, which I have never watched, it only deleted the 1987 episode. Jeremiah, Charlie Jade and a few others it deleted more than half.

On Wednesday I'll be getting the a new hard disk with another WinTV PVR 500MCE ... I may try to recover a few of the shows then as I will have the required space.


Thanks for your help and time,
Bobby

[Robsters]

I just upgraded to Sage 6.0 release (6.0.18). Rebooted...

Checked out my recordings and everything looked normal, loaded up videoredo, installed a videoredo upgrade, went to locate a video and noticed that it appeared to be missing, maximized Sage again to make sure I navigated to the right path, I then noticed that a large number of videos and that the contents of an entire directory of sage recording disappeared! I'm not sure if Sage deleted them or VideoRedo did.

An entire directory of video files on one drive (I use three (300gb) drives for recordings) disappeared in a matter of seconds! Very frustrating.

I have tried many recovery programs to analyze the drive, Handy Recovery looks very promising. However; it and a few other recovery programs show the recordings as deleted and recoverable, all with 0 bytes. I am unable to recover 0 byte files.

I know its possible to wipe out the file tables in a matter of seconds and still have the data around. But in this case, I have the tables and according the basic analysis I do not have the data.

It's physically impossible to wipe out 300gb of data in 2 minutes. The hard drive can't write that fast. So I know the data is still there.

I have disabled Sage from using the drive in question and are looking for a way to prevent Sage from automatically deleting anything else.

Prior to this incident I did not have any undelete or "norton recycle bin" utilities installed and had enough free space for 6-8 hours of HD on this drive.

Only the sage recording files were deleted from the directory. There are a few .log and other small text files left.

Any ideas?