Re: Recorder Storage Locaction Change Won't Stay (Vista Home Premi

cHouston's external drive *is* partitioned. It couldn't have been formatted until after it was partitioned. Your instructions would cause him to lose all the current information on his drive... cHouston probably meant that there was only one partition on the drive. BTW, there are programs available that will non-destructively modify the partitioning of a drive (I believe Vista has this capability built in).

External drives are the same as internal drives, except that they are external...

The only way a backup program could prevent someone from writing on a drive would be for it to create a file (or a set of files) that fills the drive to capacity, in which case the drive's properties screen would show little or no free space on the drive...

I agree with your remark that you must tell Media Center how much disk space to allow for video recording. Otherwise it might default to a small amount, often much less than the free space on the drive.

Your remarks about drive letter changing are correct, if slightly confused...mainly, if you do not assign a specific *safe* letter to a drive and then you later unplug and replug it (or other drives for that matter), it can change its letter and perhaps then be lost to Media Center :-( This I see as design flaw in Windows (and DOS, back in the day).

On 1/14/2008, xiowan posted this:
Hello "cHouston":
You say the external drive isn't partitioned? I think for your pc to use that drive you need to go to start>right click computer>click manage>left click the drive>initialize the drive>then format, partition and assign a drive letter to the partition. I assume any drive you want to use for tv recordings would need to be formatted in NTSF not FAT for it to work. I don't use any external drives so I'm not sure if all external drives can be formatted in NTFS. If you have already initialized, partitioned and formatted the drive does it show "healthy" and "online" in computer management? I think I may have read that some are having problems with external drives after starting the pc with them disconnected and then connected after the next re-boot. If you do have to partition, format and assign a drive letter you might use a letter that isn't apt to be taken back and assigned to another drive if it is removed. IE: external drive is F:>then you add another external drive which becomes G:>then you remove the F: external drive and maybe the pc re-assigns F: to the G: that was left connected and when F: is re-connected it doesn't recognize it anymore? Just guessing but I thot maybe assigning it a drive letter further down the alphabet would prevent it from needing re-identified again?

xiowan.........in tucson

"cHouston" wrote:

I've got the same issue. I want to change destination to an relatively empty external USB drive and it won't "stick" when I change the "Record on drive" location. The drive is not partioned. I actually have 2 external drives, one works, the other always changes back to the c drive.

Hello Metal Ghost:
You could try a couple things to see if the entire F: drive was taken over by a back up program......click "computer" in the start menu then double click on the F: drive. If you can see all your back up files individually and open any of them, then the drive should be available to store other data on it. If the backup is in one folder and you can open it to view the back up your drive should be available. If you are't allowed to even open the F: drive there is a distinct possibility that the backup controls the entire drive. I'm surprised a pc shop would just copy files to a 2nd drive instead of setting up a complete pc back up you could use to re-store your entire pc . Original equipment PC manufacturers frequently put a complete pc backup on separate partition so you can restore your system to its original state. This is normally in a separate partition on the main drive. My best guess is after restoring your pc with the Hewlett Packard backup, they then upgraded to Vista and in the process, didn't partition the 2nd hard drive with separate partition for the backup and the backup commandeerd the entire drive. If you don't feel you can solve the problem of the lost 200 GBs on the 2nd drive, I would think they should fix the problem at no charge if they left most of the 2nd hard drive unusable. It's also possible that Vista automatically copied the original XP HP complete PC backup to the 2nd hard drive and took over the whole drive for the sole purpose of providing a pc back up. If the repair shop didn't know this would occur they wouldn't have prepared a partition for Vista to select for the back up.
I always buy the full retail versions of new operating systems so I haven't run into the problems that might occur when a previous generation OEM pc is formatted, O.S.re-installed and then upgraded to a newer O.S. like Vista. I thought Vista just "saved" the prior system in a folder called "Windows old" which can be used to re-install the older O.S. or can be deleted using "disk clean-up". You might check your pc and see if it has a file called Windows old and see if it's located on F:......if so you can delete it as mentioned and see if that leaves the 2nd drive empty and available for data storage such as TV recordings. I sure hope I'm not wasting your time with these suggestions! Good luck.

xiowan.......in tucson

xiowan........in tucson

"Metal Ghost" wrote:

As far as I'm aware a back-up program was never used, though I can't say that with certainty.

See, it was recently brought into be serviced. When I originally upgraded from XP MCE 2005, I was also running Windows Live One-Care, which created a whole set of issues (which I've since learned are pretty well documented). Anyway, I eventually got sick of dealing with it and had a local repair shop to a clean install for me.

So, as far as I'm aware they simply copied my C:Drive folders over to the F:Drive.

"xiowan" wrote:

Hello again "Metal Ghost":
I had another thought when you mentioned that you were using the F: drive for a pc backup. Did you partition the drive with F: on it or just send the back up directly to F:? I'm thinking maybe the backup program is set up to deny access to the F: drive to protect your backup. The best way would be to have your 2nd drive partitioned with one partition for only the backup and the balance in another partition for other storage purposes. I have a complete back-up on a 2nd hard drive for my Vista pc in a separate partition and you can't even look at it. I don't know what back up program you used for a complete pc back up but that might be your problem. If so, you might need to format the drive and partition it for a separate volume for the pc back up and another for storage.

xiowan........in tucson

"Metal Ghost" wrote:

Unfortunately no. the drive currently has approximatley 40 GB's of data on it (really just back-up from the C:Drive), but I tell it that it can use up to 200GB's of the F:Drive. But it never matters....it still won't keep the F:Drive as the storage location for TV recording.

I've read through other threads where people have said that it has something to do with the permissions on the root of the drive. BUT....I admittedly am not extremely proficient with changing that. I've tooled around with the permissions on the F:Drive, but nothing looks out of the ordinary. Anyone have detailed instructions on what this might be?

Oh, and xiowan, thanks for the help though. It is very appreciated.

"xiowan" wrote:

Hello "Metal Ghost":
Is it possible your F: drive is set with too low a "Maximum TV limit"? On the Recorder Storage interface in Media Center it will first show the available drives for storage and right below that you can select the maximum amount of space to devote to tv recordings and it may be set too low for recording purposes. By default it does not designate the entire drive to storage and you may have to click the + button and increase the amount available for recordings.

xiowan..........in tucson

"Metal Ghost" wrote:

Hello eveyrone, and thanks in advance for taking the time to help with this, it is GREATLY appreciated.

I have an HP Media Center M7590N with dual 250GB Hard Drives (C: and F:). My C: Drive (which is my primary, has the OS on it, etc.) is almost filled. I have gone into the Recorder Storage section under Settings in Vista WMC to change the record drive to my F:drive, which is almost empty.

However, after I press save, if I go back into the Recorder Storage screen it has defaulted back to the C:Drive. As I test, I recorded a few minutes of a TV. After I stopped recording, I found the show on the C:Drive.

Any idea why the change isn't sticking?

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Gene E. Bloch (Gino) letters617blochg3251
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