Need Help Troubleshooting - Recording Broken into multiple mpg pieces

[Brent]

I'm experiencing multiple (read more than ten in a half hour) breaks in my recordings in the past week. For one hour, the recording on the drive has ten or more "pieces" (mpg files) for that one show. In this process it's missing large chunks of the recording.

Today I tested by recording one show (Lost) on two different channels. One on a SD channel using a Hauppauge USBPVR2 and another on a HD channel using a HDHR. The strange thing is that the breaks take place on both recordings in the exact same places so I'm thinking this is either a problem on my HTPC server itself, a problem on my new Hard Drive or a problem with SageTV.

I'm using the latest version of SageTV beta so that could be a factor. The only other thing that's changed on my system recently is a new hard drive. It's a 1TB drive formatted in 64k clusters.

Any ideas on what's going on? It's a major problem that I haven't figured out thus far.

[Opus4]

A debug log might help you determnine what is happening when the recording stops & gets restarted. (If you contact support, they may ask for a log, but don't just sent it in until they ask.)

It might help someone come up with an idea if you mention what type of tuner it is & how the drive is connected. Perhaps run some drive diagnostics to see whether there are problems with the drive. I don't remember the terms for what mode the drive is in, but maybe it got slowed down somehow.

Edit: I see you added a little more info about the tuners while I was typing... have you added or changed firewall software? I would still check the drive setup & status.

- Andy

[Brent]

Originally Posted by Opus4

A debug log might help you determnine what is happening when the recording stops & gets restarted. (If you contact support, they may ask for a log, but don't just sent it in until they ask.)

I'll work on a log and post it here.

It might help someone come up with an idea if you mention what type of tuner it is

This is happening on all of my tuners including:
Hauppauge PVRUSB2
Hauppauge PVR500
SiliconDust HDHR

& how the drive is connected.

It's an internal SATA drive

Perhaps run some drive diagnostics to see whether there are problems with the drive. I don't remember the terms for what mode the drive is in, but maybe it got slowed down somehow.

i'll see what kind of diagnostics I can run on it and report back. EDIT: Ran several disk checks and diagnostics and all resulted in no errors or problems found.

have you added or changed firewall software?

firewall software is all turned off for the past day just to troubleshoot and eliminate that as a potential issue. No changes to firewall in the past month though.

Thanks for your input - I'm getting a little desperate...

[Polypro]

Is something killing the service, and then it's restarting a minute later?

P

[Brent]

Originally Posted by Polypro

Is something killing the service, and then it's restarting a minute later?

P

Hmm. That sounds like a possibility. What's the best way to monitor that - and if it is the problem, any ideas on what would cause it?

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by Brent

Hmm. That sounds like a possibility. What's the best way to monitor that - and if it is the problem, any ideas on what would cause it?

If the service is stoping a restarting you might check the windows system and application logs too. Also try runing in GUI mode rather than service mode if the service is stoping and restarting and see if it still happens.

[Brent]

Originally Posted by BobPhoenix

If the service is stoping a restarting you might check the windows system and application logs too. Also try runing in GUI mode rather than service mode if the service is stoping and restarting and see if it still happens.

ok. I'll be doing some additional testing tonight. Weird thing is, last night this happened when recording Lost (that's the one I did two recordings of HD and SD mentioned above) and it gave me these multiple files. Then after recording tons of other shows the same way up until midnight the problem didn't recur. Frustrating when doing troubleshooting...


By the way, thanks to everyone for the responses.

[mcaron1234]

Originally Posted by BobPhoenix

Also try runing in GUI mode rather than service mode if the service is stoping and restarting and see if it still happens.

Just a word of warning - I had a problem with the service crashing (which SageTV support diagnosed and corrected a few versions back). I switched over to GUI mode and it still crashed, only the GUI mode didn't automatically restart after a crash, so if you do tat make sure you are in a position to manually restart if it crashes.


Matt

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by mcaron1234

Just a word of warning - I had a problem with the service crashing (which SageTV support diagnosed and corrected a few versions back). I switched over to GUI mode and it still crashed, only the GUI mode didn't automatically restart after a crash, so if you do tat make sure you are in a position to manually restart if it crashes.


Matt

Yes I would never run on a permenent basis that way it is just as a test. I would expect that he will have the same errors in GUI mode that he does in Service mode but the Sage log and the windows logs may have better error messages when run in GUI mode that can help pinpoint the problem.

[phelme]

hey Brent, did you ever figure out what was happening here and what was causing it?

[zzmystique]

I had this problem and found it was related to the defrag software I had running in the background.

I uninstalled and the problem has gone away.

[Brent]

Originally Posted by phelme

hey Brent, did you ever figure out what was happening here and what was causing it?

No I never did figure it out. I'm not seeing multiple files anymore though so I'm thinking this issue went away. It still bugs me that I never figured out what was causing it...

[JREkiwi]

I've had theis problem a couple of times. One was caused by a faulty SATA cable, the other a dying disk. Both only showed up when the disk was under heavy usage.

John

[Brent]

Originally Posted by JREkiwi

I've had theis problem a couple of times. One was caused by a faulty SATA cable, the other a dying disk. Both only showed up when the disk was under heavy usage.

John

John,
Was it the recordings disk or the OS drive?

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by Brent

Was it the recordings disk or the OS drive?

Both times it was a recordings drive.

John

[Apap]

I have been having exactly the same problem and the recordings with these problems are all on the 2 new WD green 1 TB drives.

Has anyone else had a problem with these drives?

[farfromuman]

Originally Posted by Apap

I have been having exactly the same problem and the recordings with these problems are all on the 2 new WD green 1 TB drives.

Has anyone else had a problem with these drives?

I had the same problem when I first replaced 5 of my old drives with two WD 1TB Green SATA Drives. I am not 100% sure what fixed it but there is a setting for each drive to Optimize for performance and two more check boxes to improve writes to the drives. (I checked them all and it has been fine since then) It might be a good idea to run a UPS in this mode since data loss can occur.