So today a friend and I were talking. She says she thinks the reason our DVRs never add up to the 60 hours we were promised was due to defragging. Getting fragmented by watching things and deleting and not doing it in order that it was put on and so there are lots bits of drive space. I’m sure you guys know what I mean. And there’s no real way to manually defrag the hard drive.

So she was saying her DVR only adds up to like 50 hours. Mine generally adds up to around 55/56 so that’s not bad. I figure that my time is taken up with junk on the hard drive like the almost 50 times I have set. (Yes I’m sad, I know) Also with that wonderful 7 day guide. Love the 7 day guide. But that’s the 7 days of TV Guide PLUS the info on the shows. And my searches that I’ve done.. it saves my searches you know. Plus of course software.

Well my friend was told… delete everything off and it will force it to defrag and then you’ll fix your problem. Well her DVR is almost always pratically full. So she’s working to clear everything off to see if the guy is right.

So, here’s what I’ve been tracking. I looked at what I have on DVR. I have ALL of the Charmed from this season to reference back due to the mystery of “Who is Chris?” Plus I have the Dr Who movie. 2 sessions of General Conferance. 1 half hour cartoon X Men. Plus today’s TV. That’s pretty much Angel, Dharma and Greg, 1 Stargate, 7th Heaven, Everwood. Plus the Stargate I’m almost done watching right now. So let’s see.

Stargate just finished: Approx record time available: 34 horus 7 minutes. Now deleting Stargate I have: 35 hours 25 minutes. Hmm Stargate is only a one hour tv show. It says “duration one hour.” But as we see I gained 1 hour 15 minutes approx. Well I’ve watched the other two stargate episodes and noticed the same thing happening.

I must go to bed. But tomorrow when I watch half hour Dharma and Greg, I will see how much time is freed by deleting that. See if it is also a 15 minute block.

So curious. What is this 15 minute block supposed to represent? Is it the time and info and stuff that you can pull up? Well that’s rather silly since you’d think it wouldnt’ take up THAT much space. But basically with the three Stargates i watched… instead of freeing up 3 hours of TV, I actually freed up what appears by the counter to be 3 hours and 45 minutes!!

Now i can tell you that when watching TV back, I can get through a one hour tv show in about 45 minutes cutting out commercials. There’s about 15 minutes of commercials give or take in a hour long show. However we know this cannot be representative of the hour long program and giving us our fifteen minutes. It is included in that hour chunk. Hmmmm.

What I’d really like to know is how to keep the thing from shutting off while recording. Every now and then it will totally crash and shut itself off. EEEK Like just now… at 1 AM.. just shuts off leaving my tv staticky.

OK, that’s enough rambling for now. 🙂 Take care!! I’m off to bed!