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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 08/11/2015 01:44 PM, Michael T. Dean
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote cite="mid:55CA3492.4090909@thirdcontact.com" type="cite"><br>
a) it creates files with the least amount of fragmentation (this
is the primary benefit)***
<br>
</blockquote>
A good point I had not thought of.<br>
<br>
<blockquote cite="mid:55CA3492.4090909@thirdcontact.com" type="cite">b)
when hard drives fill up, it doesn't favor a single hard drive for
every single recording, leading to all new recordings going to the
same drive and all expired recordings coming from that same drive
(meaning that before long, the system is expiring new recordings
when there are tons of older--possibly Deleted and/or
Watched--recordings that could be expired instead if the system
would just choose another disk). If using Balanced Free Space or
Balanced Percent Free Space, this is exactly what happens when
disks fill up and autoexpire kicks in. See
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/556505#556505">http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/556505#556505</a>
(note, too, that neither Combination, nor Balanced Disk I/O will
avert this issue if the user never records multiple shows at the
same time--in which case, the user /must/ rebalance his/her
recordings)****.
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
This is I assume when you set "Deleted Max Age" to -1 so that it
keeps all of your files around for as long as possible (or set
auto-expire in your recording settings and never delete anything). I
gave up on this after I got burned when the expiring of old files
did not keep up with recording of new ones and recordings failed
because of running out of disk space. It seems to me that this is
not the best idea, having your disk always at 99% full will, I
think, cause fragmentation. So now I set it to 7 so that deleted
recordings are removed after 7 days<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.6999998092651px;
font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal;
letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 19.0499992370605px; orphans:
auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;
white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; display: inline !important; float:
none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></span>. Another
problem with setting "Deleted Max Age" to -1 is that it is difficult
to know how much space you have available for recordings since your
disk is always 99% full.<br>
<br>
Regarding re-balancing your storage groups and using Archive storage
groups, doing this requires some technical finesse to find the file
names of your recordings and move them around. This is not the
easiest thing for a newcomer. I can certainly document how and why
to do it for those wanting to get into it.<br>
<br>
Thanks for all the information, I will digest it and try to explain
it in the wiki.<br>
<br>
Peter<br>
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