Is your HVR-DR60 stealing disk space from you? at DVinfo.net

Brent Kolitz · April 30th, 2007, 09:35 AM

I just wanted to validate my brief experience & see if anyone has any answers:

I've filled my DR60 to the brim twice, and each time, when I mount it on the computer, I find that there's approximately 4.40 GB of free space left over on the partition that holds the HDV files.

It's bad enough that those seemingly useless (at least once you dump the drive) .ts and .idx files take about 1.00 GB away, but why is the DR60 not using the last 4.40 GB? That's basically criminal, considering that the whole drive formatted is less than 60 GB (and also considering the cost of the unit).

Does this thing need a firmware update? Is this some weird FAT32 phenomenon?

Thanks,
Brent

Brent Kolitz · May 2nd, 2007, 06:45 PM

Just a bump -- Can anyone confirm or deny this?

Brent Kolitz · May 4th, 2007, 06:31 AM

Apologies for cross-posting this from the "direct to disk" forum, but I've racked up 60 views there, with no responses. Hopefully someone here can chime in:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I just wanted to validate my brief experience & see if anyone has any answers:

I've filled my DR60 to the brim twice, and each time, when I mount it on the computer, I find that there's approximately 4.40 GB of free space left over on the partition that holds the HDV files.

It's bad enough that those seemingly useless (at least once you dump the drive) .ts and .idx files take about 1.00 GB away, but why is the DR60 not using the last 4.40 GB? That's basically criminal, considering that the whole drive formatted is less than 60 GB (and also considering the cost of the unit).

Does this thing need a firmware update? Is this some weird FAT32 phenomenon?

Thanks,
Brent

Todd Giglio · May 4th, 2007, 08:21 AM

Brent,

I'll chime in. Now I'm just speculating based on hard drives, but I bet that Sony implemented this 'lack of full disk usage' for a few reasons. One, the operating system on the unit needs space (obviously not 4.4 gigs...), but I think the second reason would be how a hard drive operates when nearing it's limit on full capacity. I believe (and it's been recommended to my before) that you should never allow a hard drive to fill all the way up due to that fact that it affects performance/failure rate. Now again, I'm just offering what I believe could be the cause of this.

If anyone has the 'real' answer, let us know (I'm thinking about getting one of these drives too).

Brent Kolitz · May 4th, 2007, 08:28 AM

Thanks for the reply, Todd. I understand your theory (though I'm in trouble with most of my hard drives if that's the case!), but leaving 4.40 free out of less than 60 GB formatted seems excessively cautious to me, even if that's the case.

I'd love to hear from some DR60 owners whether they've observed the same thing, at least so I know my unit is not defective. Assuming all is consistent among us, I hope someone with contacts at Sony can get an answer to this, because it's really not cool. I'd be less annoyed if the drive started out at 120 GB or something, but the effective price per GB has gone up substantially if this is the case (though I guess the advertised recording time may actually be accurate -- I haven't really checked that).

Brent

Douglas Spotted Eagle · May 4th, 2007, 08:42 AM

According to sources at Sony, it's a buffer to prevent you from accidentally going too far with the drive and locking up your media.
Call it a safeguard. If you're trusting your critical content to an HDD, don't you want to know it's safe? Nnovia does much the same thing.

Piotr Wozniacki · May 5th, 2007, 03:41 PM

Let me ask you a question about sth else; you mentioned you broke the mic cable clamp by pushing too fat an XLR cable in it. Now, it almost happened to me as well! What is this clamp made of, cause I can't tell - is it a plastic or metal thingy? How is it fixed to the XLR box bottom - I can't see any screw, either (and the clamp is loose and rotates slightly)?

Thanks for your answer!

Brent Kolitz · May 5th, 2007, 07:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Piotr Wozniacki

Let me ask you a question about sth else; you mentioned you broke the mic cable clamp by pushing too fat an XLR cable in it. Now, it almost happened to me as well! What is this clamp made of, cause I can't tell - is it a plastic or metal thingy? How is it fixed to the XLR box bottom - I can't see any screw, either (and the clamp is loose and rotates slightly)?

Thanks for your answer!

Hi, Piotr:

The clamp is made of plastic. Funny you should ask how it's affixed, because I initially figured it would just pop into the bottom of the XLR box, through a tiny hole. But when I got the replacement, just by looking at the part of the clamp that you don't normally see, I could tell that there's no way such a "nub" could simply pop in and out. My assumption is that you have to open up the XLR box in order to replace the clamp. Maybe that's no big deal, but since I'm not using the clamp anyway (particularly since it is admittedly rather flimsy and only safe for cables roughly the diameter of the included mic's cable), I'm just keeping the replacement clamp in a drawer for now. I was stupid enough to take a needle-nose plier to the broken clamp and rip the remaining exterior portion off, which luckily did no damage, and I guess left the hidden half of the clamp stuck inside. And yes, before mine broke, it wasn't wildly loose, but it did have a little bit of play in it, if I remember correctly.

A long explanation about a tiny plastic part!

Brent

Mikko Lopponen · May 6th, 2007, 05:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Douglas Spotted Eagle

According to sources at Sony, it's a buffer to prevent you from accidentally going too far with the drive and locking up your media.

a 4.4 gb buffer? So the drive won't lock? I don't get it.

Brent Kolitz · May 6th, 2007, 05:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mikko Lopponen

a 4.4 gb buffer? So the drive won't lock? I don't get it.

Yeah, I wouldn't mind hearing a little more detailed explanation for the amount of slack (not that I don't believe that there is a good reason, just curious).

Anyway, I think it would be a good idea for Sony to slip in an addendum sheet for the manual, just letting people know that it's normal to see that unused space when you mount the drive. Maybe DSE can mention this to one of his contacts there.

I'm surprised that no one else asked about this before I did...

And thanks, DSE, for confirming that what I'm seeing is at least normal and expected.

Brent

Piotr Wozniacki · May 9th, 2007, 01:03 AM

Brent, could you please update us on 2 things:

- what is the recording time before the drive is full?

- what is the cluster size in the formatted drive (you can check it when mounted in Windows with the chkdsk command); for performance reasons, it probably was chosen quite big as the files written to it are usually huge - this might explain some slack (not 7%, though...).

Thanks!

Brent Kolitz · May 10th, 2007, 07:55 AM

Piotr,

I'll check on those questions ASAP and will let you know....I just dumped the drive, so I need to fill it up again.

Brent

Piotr Wozniacki · May 10th, 2007, 03:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brent Kolitz

Piotr,

I'll check on those questions ASAP and will let you know....I just dumped the drive, so I need to fill it up again.

Brent

Brent, I'm looking forward to this info...Also, can you tell us how noisy the DR60 drive is - when mounted on the cold shoe, does the mic catch the spinning noise?

Douglas Spotted Eagle · May 10th, 2007, 06:37 PM

Both DR 60's I own are silent, it's difficult to know when they're even running.
Project today recorded full on one at 4:37, the other reported full at 4:48.
I'm very uncomfortable pushing the drive past 4 hours, regardless.

Armin Obersteiner · May 10th, 2007, 07:31 PM

a) filesystems go slow when they get >95% full, 5% of 60GB would be 3GB
b) a 60GB drive is usually not more than 57GB formated
c) there could be a reserved buffer area not visible to the filesystem in the last few GB.

however the question is: does sony use a standard filesystem or the disk blockwise in a custom way. which would make sense for speed. and it also makes sense to do that within a standard filesystem as reserved space and or files (like the swap file in windows).

taking all that into account this is sane. there are multiple technical reasons and sony surely would not waste space, cause the competitors definitely won't ...

April 30th, 2007, 09:35 AM	#1
Brent Kolitz Regular Crew Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Miami, FL Posts: 121	Is your HVR-DR60 stealing disk space from you? I just wanted to validate my brief experience & see if anyone has any answers: I've filled my DR60 to the brim twice, and each time, when I mount it on the computer, I find that there's approximately 4.40 GB of free space left over on the partition that holds the HDV files. It's bad enough that those seemingly useless (at least once you dump the drive) .ts and .idx files take about 1.00 GB away, but why is the DR60 not using the last 4.40 GB? That's basically criminal, considering that the whole drive formatted is less than 60 GB (and also considering the cost of the unit). Does this thing need a firmware update? Is this some weird FAT32 phenomenon? Thanks, Brent

May 4th, 2007, 06:31 AM	#3
Brent Kolitz Regular Crew Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Miami, FL Posts: 121	Is your HVR-DR60 stealing disk space from you? Apologies for cross-posting this from the "direct to disk" forum, but I've racked up 60 views there, with no responses. Hopefully someone here can chime in: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I just wanted to validate my brief experience & see if anyone has any answers: I've filled my DR60 to the brim twice, and each time, when I mount it on the computer, I find that there's approximately 4.40 GB of free space left over on the partition that holds the HDV files. It's bad enough that those seemingly useless (at least once you dump the drive) .ts and .idx files take about 1.00 GB away, but why is the DR60 not using the last 4.40 GB? That's basically criminal, considering that the whole drive formatted is less than 60 GB (and also considering the cost of the unit). Does this thing need a firmware update? Is this some weird FAT32 phenomenon? Thanks, Brent

May 4th, 2007, 08:42 AM	#6
Douglas Spotted Eagle VASST Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Stockton, UT Posts: 5,648	According to sources at Sony, it's a buffer to prevent you from accidentally going too far with the drive and locking up your media. Call it a safeguard. If you're trusting your critical content to an HDD, don't you want to know it's safe? Nnovia does much the same thing. __________________ Douglas Spotted Eagle/Spot Author, producer, composer Certified Sony Vegas Trainer http://www.vasst.com Last edited by Douglas Spotted Eagle; May 5th, 2007 at 03:48 PM. Reason: add

May 5th, 2007, 03:41 PM	#7
Piotr Wozniacki Inner Circle Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Poland Posts: 4,086	Let me ask you a question about sth else; you mentioned you broke the mic cable clamp by pushing too fat an XLR cable in it. Now, it almost happened to me as well! What is this clamp made of, cause I can't tell - is it a plastic or metal thingy? How is it fixed to the XLR box bottom - I can't see any screw, either (and the clamp is loose and rotates slightly)? Thanks for your answer! __________________ Sony PXW-FS7 \| DaVinci Resolve Studio; Magix Vegas Pro; i7-5960X CPU; 64 GB RAM; 2x GTX 1080 8GB GPU; Decklink 4K Extreme 12G; 4x 3TB WD Black in RAID 0; 1TB M.2 NVMe cache drive Last edited by Piotr Wozniacki; May 5th, 2007 at 03:45 PM. Reason: referred to removed post

May 9th, 2007, 01:03 AM	#11
Piotr Wozniacki Inner Circle Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Poland Posts: 4,086	Brent, could you please update us on 2 things: - what is the recording time before the drive is full? - what is the cluster size in the formatted drive (you can check it when mounted in Windows with the chkdsk command); for performance reasons, it probably was chosen quite big as the files written to it are usually huge - this might explain some slack (not 7%, though...). Thanks! __________________ Sony PXW-FS7 \| DaVinci Resolve Studio; Magix Vegas Pro; i7-5960X CPU; 64 GB RAM; 2x GTX 1080 8GB GPU; Decklink 4K Extreme 12G; 4x 3TB WD Black in RAID 0; 1TB M.2 NVMe cache drive Last edited by Piotr Wozniacki; May 9th, 2007 at 04:16 AM.

May 2nd, 2007, 06:45 PM	#2
Brent Kolitz Regular Crew Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Miami, FL Posts: 121	Just a bump -- Can anyone confirm or deny this?

May 4th, 2007, 08:21 AM	#4
Todd Giglio Major Player Join Date: Sep 2005 Posts: 265	Brent, I'll chime in. Now I'm just speculating based on hard drives, but I bet that Sony implemented this 'lack of full disk usage' for a few reasons. One, the operating system on the unit needs space (obviously not 4.4 gigs...), but I think the second reason would be how a hard drive operates when nearing it's limit on full capacity. I believe (and it's been recommended to my before) that you should never allow a hard drive to fill all the way up due to that fact that it affects performance/failure rate. Now again, I'm just offering what I believe could be the cause of this. If anyone has the 'real' answer, let us know (I'm thinking about getting one of these drives too).

May 4th, 2007, 08:28 AM	#5
Brent Kolitz Regular Crew Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Miami, FL Posts: 121	Thanks for the reply, Todd. I understand your theory (though I'm in trouble with most of my hard drives if that's the case!), but leaving 4.40 free out of less than 60 GB formatted seems excessively cautious to me, even if that's the case. I'd love to hear from some DR60 owners whether they've observed the same thing, at least so I know my unit is not defective. Assuming all is consistent among us, I hope someone with contacts at Sony can get an answer to this, because it's really not cool. I'd be less annoyed if the drive started out at 120 GB or something, but the effective price per GB has gone up substantially if this is the case (though I guess the advertised recording time may actually be accurate -- I haven't really checked that). Brent

May 10th, 2007, 07:55 AM	#12
Brent Kolitz Regular Crew Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Miami, FL Posts: 121	Piotr, I'll check on those questions ASAP and will let you know....I just dumped the drive, so I need to fill it up again. Brent

May 10th, 2007, 06:37 PM	#14
Douglas Spotted Eagle VASST Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Stockton, UT Posts: 5,648	Both DR 60's I own are silent, it's difficult to know when they're even running. Project today recorded full on one at 4:37, the other reported full at 4:48. I'm very uncomfortable pushing the drive past 4 hours, regardless. __________________ Douglas Spotted Eagle/Spot Author, producer, composer Certified Sony Vegas Trainer http://www.vasst.com

May 10th, 2007, 07:31 PM	#15
Armin Obersteiner New Boot Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Vienna, Austria Posts: 24	Buffer or not. a) filesystems go slow when they get >95% full, 5% of 60GB would be 3GB b) a 60GB drive is usually not more than 57GB formated c) there could be a reserved buffer area not visible to the filesystem in the last few GB. however the question is: does sony use a standard filesystem or the disk blockwise in a custom way. which would make sense for speed. and it also makes sense to do that within a standard filesystem as reserved space and or files (like the swap file in windows). taking all that into account this is sane. there are multiple technical reasons and sony surely would not waste space, cause the competitors definitely won't ...