Disk Full error when watching live tv

[DOS4EVER]

Randomly pops up on live tv and I have to close WMC and reopen. I've checked my storage and there is over 400 GB free on the drive. What would cause this error?

[STC]

May be a problem with TempRec folder. An easy thing to try is move RecordedTV to somewhere, save, then back again. That will force a recreate.

[DOS4EVER]

I tried that but it happened again. I backed up my storage drive and reformatted it. I'll see if that helps.

[Scallica]

Check the C: drive disk space.

[DavidinCT]

Also, check where you set your recording settings... Settings>TV>Recorder>Recorder Storage.

If you set that to only use a smaller % of the drive and you go over it, there might be plenty of space but, this error will still show.

[DOS4EVER]

I tried everything suggested here, but nothing worked, so I just reloaded my PC from a previous backup and so far after two hours I've had no issues. Weird.

[DavidinCT]

I tried everything suggested here, but nothing worked, so I just reloaded my PC from a previous backup and so far after two hours I've had no issues. Weird.

Interesting... I have worked on 100's of WMC machines over the years. Never saw that issue unless there was a setting that was off, or there was a lack of space....

Would love to know what caused it but, if your working, awesome.

And thank god for backups (my system does a OS backup once a week and I keep a total of 4 weeks just incase)

[DOS4EVER]

I tried everything suggested here, but nothing worked, so I just reloaded my PC from a previous backup and so far after two hours I've had no issues. Weird.

Interesting... I have worked on 100's of WMC machines over the years. Never saw that issue unless there was a setting that was off, or there was a lack of space....

Would love to know what caused it but, if your working, awesome.

And thank god for backups (my system does a OS backup once a week and I keep a total of 4 weeks just incase)

I can only assume some of my WMC files got corrupt or something. Still working fine after the restore.

[lachape_one]

Hi

I had exatcly the same trouble in Frbruary with my W7 MCE (Hauppage Capture), i had to replace my "recorded TV" HDD (windows warned me on each boot that i have a SMART disk error, but i didn't pay attention because the system loaded correctly when i bypass the error msg). It fixed the problem

[DOS4EVER]

Hi

I had exatcly the same trouble in Frbruary with my W7 MCE (Hauppage Capture), i had to replace my "recorded TV" HDD (windows warned me on each boot that i have a SMART disk error, but i didn't pay attention because the system loaded correctly when i bypass the error msg). It fixed the problem

That's interesting because a couple of days after restoring Windows from a backup the DISK FULL error came back on my system. Thinking I had a bad external drive I went ahead and replaced the drive with another I found, but after a few hours the error came back again!! I was literally pulling my hair out because it made no sense. Then I saw something that caught my eye; I have been using a 3-foot USB extension cable with these drives so I disconnected the extension cable and what do you know, no issues since. So apparently the extension cable was bad and was causing the hard drives to disconnect and reconnect. Instead of WMC saying something like "drive not found", it gives a DISK FULL error. Crazy.

[STC]

Speedy MS coding. A 'that'll do' approach.

[lachape_one]

Crazy.

Salut,

Glad your problem is solved too..
I agree with you about the "disk full" error, a "message bidon": apart from the HDD with Smart problem, I have 2 another in the same computer (1SSD and 1 HDD) working perfectly. I tried to change my recorded TV folder several times in these drives without success: my conclusion is that probably the problem occur if just one HDD of the PC have a problem, it does'nt specially concern THE drive on which you configured your recorder tv folder...

[adam1991]

Speedy MS coding. A 'that'll do' approach.

How appropriate--MS coding Windows and ending up with, "That'll do, pig."

[DSperber]

And thank god for backups (my system does a OS backup once a week and I keep a total of 4 weeks just incase)

True enough. But if you are recording copy-protected content, after you restore a past image backup you will not be able to play any of the copy-protected recordings which were made after the date/time of the system image you just restored.

The encryption key used by WMC is apparently a time-based "moving key". So WMC is only capable of decrypting copy-protected recordings made "in the past". After your restore of say last week's image all of the following day's recordings now appear to be "in the future", according to the time-based encryption algorithm.

That's why I take TWO system image backups each week (one on Sunday, and a second on Thursday) with Macrium Reflect. That way if I had to restore a system image it would probably only be 1-3 days of "lost" copy-protected recordings which would not be usable. And hopefully I would still be able to re-record hopefully available additional re-airings of those programs in the current week.

So just think about this before reverting to a restore of a system image taken a week or two ago, if you've got copy-protected content recorded in those past weeks since the date/time of the image. You'll lose all of them.

[Space]

It's my understanding that in order to make sure you can play back DRM recordings all you need to have is the version of the "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\PlayReady\mspr.hds" file that was made after that recording finishes. So technically, you should be able to make an image backup of your system disk and then just make periodic (daily,twice daily, etc.) backups of this file and you should be OK. As long as you don't make any other changes to your system, you don't have to make a full image that often. Although you will lose any Series you created since the last image as well as any history of recordings (both in the log and the "recorded episodes" associated with each Series).

If you ever need to restore, just load the old disk image, and then copy the current mspr.hds file over the old one that was in the image. Note that you may have to stop the "Windows Media Center Receiver" Service before copying over the file and then restart it.

I have never done this, but I have seen posts here that say this works.

It seems that copying this small file would be much easier and be less stressful to the system than making a full image every few days, and you could do it as often as you want. Perhaps you could do an image once per week and backup the mspr.hds file daily, or something like that.

One thing I am not sure about with this is if the system will complain when you try to copy the file (to make the backup) or if you need to also first stop the above mentioned service (or use a special copy tool that invokes shadow copy) before doing the copy.

[epayson85]

If you are using a usb drive for recording and your C:\ drive is a small SSD then I will tell you exactly what is happening because I have seen something similar happen with pooling recording drives as well.

If windows boots up and the drive is not mounted by the time wmc service start up then the C:\ drive is put back as the recording drive. If you had lets say the D:\ drive put as the recording drive wmc will change it back once it mounts however the temporary recording drive for live tv will remain as C:\. The same thing is most likely happening if your USB drive is disconnecting and then reconnecting. While the drive is temporarily gone, WMC sets C:\ back as your recording drive. Then once the drive came back it went back to your USB drive but the temp recording drive remained pointed at your C:\ drive. You can see where WMC is placing the temp recordings via the registry. I couldn't figure it out for the life of me using flexraid to pool my recording drives. The problem was the pooled drive didn't mount until after the WMC services. I ended up delaying a registry change during the computer startup that fixed it... but now that there are bigger hard drives I don't even bother pooling anymore.