# How Long Does Clear And Delete Everything Take?



## jseelna (Jan 4, 2004)

I started mine 4 hours ago... still on the screen saying it is deleting everything and that it will take an hour...


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## lostman72 (Jul 12, 2003)

If I recall it can take about 2 hours. Being a 250G hard drive it might take as long as 3 hours? I never done it on the HD unit. I know on a stand alone unit it's about 2 hours total.


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## Mark Lopez (Jan 1, 2000)

It can easily take all night. I have done it a few times and have never had it only take 2 or 3 hours.


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## Ed Campbell (Jul 13, 2002)

Tech support told me 3-4 hours min. Incidentally, after all that, mine just started dying, again. Calling for a replacement in the morning.


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## memory1 (Jan 11, 2004)

When my first HR10-250 failed the clear and delete was still running after 24 hours !

It never finished, I called support and they agreed to send a replacement

No problems seen again


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## jseelna (Jan 4, 2004)

Did It ever finish -- Mine has been running about 10 hrs.


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## gquiring (Dec 13, 2002)

I did a clear & delete on a working drive with no errors in 1 hour. Running it on my flaky WD250 took about 6 hours. I later ran the WD diagnostics on that drive and found many bad sectors.


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## Scott Corbett (May 29, 2003)

Mine ran for about 48 hours. Didn't fix the problem.


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## jseelna (Jan 4, 2004)

I let mine run for 18 hrs. 
Then I unplugged and re-started....It went right back to Clearing and Deleting Everything...This will take an hour.

Let it run for 12 more..

Called Directv to get a replacement....after being on the phone for an hour and talking to multiple people, finally got them to agree to a replacement.

Supposedly will have a replacement no later than Friday...
I asked for a Fed-EX Tracking Number and the guy gave me an 8 digit number.....I seem to remember tracking numbers being longer and including letters....probably just wanted to get me off the phone.


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## hearth (Aug 10, 2002)

> _Originally posted by jseelna _
> *I let mine run for 18 hrs.
> Then I unplugged and re-started....It went right back to Clearing and Deleting Everything...This will take an hour.
> 
> ...


My story is almost exactly the same. Initially, it ran for about 18 hours. I unplugged and replugged, and let it run for about 18 more hours. Since I had called DirecTV for a replacement, I did not ever think (or care) that it would ever finish.

However, last night, it did indeed finish. I was able to go back into the system and watch my old programs, as well as record new shows. I am expecting that the machine will eventually have problems again, as most others have reported that the problems come back eventually, but for now, until I get my replacement, I can still enjoy HDTV....

Don


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## davsherm (Feb 23, 2003)

I ran a clear and delete two weeks ago, and it took 18+ hours. Once it was done, I was barely able to complete guided set up, but was able to watch my recordings before I got the unit replaced.


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## ozone (May 17, 2004)

when my unit began failing recently, the clear & delete was running for over 4 days while I waited for my replacement unit to arrive. It never finished, so I just unplugged it and sent it packing back to D*.


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## jayron (Aug 16, 2003)

I'm 48 hrs into a "clear and delete everything" on an 11 month old HDVR2.

Wonder what the longest anyone has run a continuous "clear and delete everything" that resulted in a successful rebuild.


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## Ensoniq (Sep 12, 2001)

What exactly is "Clear And Delete" supposed to do?

Some are talking about it as if it's some sort of repair tool. My understanding that was it was designed to simply remove all of your programming, and reset the TiVo unit to factory defaults. 

Why on earth should it take 4 hours for that? Can someone please clarify?


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## Mark Lopez (Jan 1, 2000)

> _Originally posted by Ensoniq _
> *What exactly is "Clear And Delete" supposed to do?
> 
> Some are talking about it as if it's some sort of repair tool. My understanding that was it was designed to simply remove all of your programming, and reset the TiVo unit to factory defaults.
> ...


I believe the Clear and Delete Everything also does sort of a 'scan disk' to check the drive for errors. That's why it takes so long (and why you shouldn't reboot it while it's running since I think it has to start all over).


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## jseelna (Jan 4, 2004)

Well as of this morning when I left for work... The Clear and Delete everything is still running. I had originally started it early Sunday afternoon and let it run ofr 18 hours and then unplugged and re-started.

As of this morning it had since been "Clearing and Deleting Everything" for 48 hours and still no dice.

I had called Monday to get a replacement and I just verified that it arrived at my Rental office an hour ago... Pretty good service on getting the replacement out. Although I have been on the phone several times for status and the first response is always that they are not able to ship replacements at this time....


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## bigrig (Jul 1, 2004)

So...I've entered into the Clear & Delete Everything Zone. This will take "an hour", my ass!! 



jayron said:


> Wonder what the longest anyone has run a continuous "clear and delete everything" that resulted in a successful rebuild.


Me too. This morning it was still going into hour 39.

Here's my story:
I was getting reboots and lockups. This is with the stock 250GB + Seagate 160GB.
I took the drives out and checked them with Spinrite. Stock had zero errors. The Seagate didn't need to recover any sectors, but it had 66 million some ECC errors. I assumed (?) this was the bad drive and the cause of my problems.

So I replaced it with a WD 250GB, and put the Tivo back together. It was better, but it still would sometimes spontaneously reboot.

So I tried the C&DE in hopes of killing whatever gremlin is inside my Tivo.

Does going into the 40th hour mean something is wrong with my hard drives? Maybe the stock drive has a problem Spinrite didn't detect?

Thanks for any suggestions,

Matt


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## DeWitt (Jun 30, 2004)

I have heard as long as 72 hours. I stopped mine after 24 hours. I assumed the drive was bad, but since it was snowing and I didn't want to go out for a new drive I downloaded the instant cake utulity from PTVUpgrade. (Was willing to risk $20) 

After using the utility to put a new image on the drive, the required C&D took less than an hour. That was months ago and all is still well. It was like getting a new machine.


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## rcwalters (Nov 15, 2003)

DeWitt said:


> I have heard as long as 72 hours. I stopped mine after 24 hours. I assumed the drive was bad, but since it was snowing and I didn't want to go out for a new drive I downloaded the instant cake utulity from PTVUpgrade. (Was willing to risk $20)
> 
> After using the utility to put a new image on the drive, the required C&D took less than an hour. That was months ago and all is still well. It was like getting a new machine.


The InstantCake page on ptvupgrade doesn't mention the HDTivo? So is it the same one they use for standard-def Series2 tivos?


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## DeWitt (Jun 30, 2004)

Click on Series 2 Direct tv units. On the next page there is a whole list. including:

InstantCake for Series2 HDTV DirecTiVo Units (3.1.5f)


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## Seminole (Oct 27, 2003)

I cleared and deleted my whole Tivo and had D* ship me another one.


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## coachO (Nov 26, 2004)

Mine ran almost 72 hours - I had it for 18 months and it was my first clear/delete. Since I had the insurance package and didnt think it would ever finish, D* agree to send me a new " refurb" one. I sent the refurb one back unopened. 

It was doing great after 6 weeks but the problem motivated me to learn how to replace the hard drive just like Dewitt. So now I have a backup HD sitting on the shelf. 

RC- check the site, you will find it.


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## bigrig (Jul 1, 2004)

So it did finally finish after 72 hours?! Wow. I got impatient, and unplugged after about 50 hours. Pulled the drive and restored the backup image I created when I first hacked the thing. Didn't go as smooth as it should have, but I'm back up and running again.

I considered trying Clear and Delete again, just to see if it would work, but I was too skeered. Hopefully it's gonna act right.

Matt


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## Chandler Mike (Mar 29, 2002)

Great, wish I had read this first...f-me...I started it 2 hours ago and the Suns game is on in like 45 minutes and I guess I wont be watching it in HD will I?


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## Chandler Mike (Mar 29, 2002)

Okay, well nevermind, I just looked at it's back to setup 

GUess I'm one of the lucky ones, only took 2 hours.


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## Yawn (May 17, 2004)

I started mine on Moday Night, and its still going. This is driving me nuts. It is way out of warranty, so I doubt Directv will replace it.


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## Yog-Sothoth (Jun 14, 2005)

Get a new hard disk (300 GB or larger), an InstantCake image for the HR10-250, and fix it yourself. If you don't feel "saavy" enough for that, PTVupgrade will do it for you.


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## WeatherMan (Oct 4, 2002)

My HR10-250 started showing signs of a suffering disk (studdering playback, very slow response, occassional reboot). I did the clear and delete everything and although the machine did come back to life for about 12 hours, it died thereafter, with continous green screens with "A severe error has occurred" message followed by a reboot every 10 minutes.

D* replaced the box for free, despite the machine being out of warranty for 8 months.

When I asked about mpeg4 DVR, the rep said they would be sending me one for free in July or August, along with a new 5 LNB dish.


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## ayrton911 (Sep 4, 2000)

WeatherMan said:


> My HR10-250 started showing signs of a suffering disk (studdering playback, very slow response, occassional reboot). I did the clear and delete everything and although the machine did come back to life for about 12 hours, it died thereafter, with continous green screens with "A severe error has occurred" message followed by a reboot every 10 minutes.
> 
> D* replaced the box for free, despite the machine being out of warranty for 8 months.
> 
> When I asked about mpeg4 DVR, the rep said they would be sending me one for free in July or August, along with a new 5 LNB dish.


Well it will be nice if they give us one. Oh no, a dish. That means they'll be sending out one of their professional installers too.


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## JKO (Feb 10, 2005)

My 15 month old unit stuttered and froze with more and more frequency, to the point that I had to reboot it every 20 minutes. This past weekend, out of desperation, I did my first C&DE. It took over 40 hours to complete. To my amazement, the CD&E was successful - it now works fine.

I have an extended warranty plan. My replacement unit from the vendor is to arrive tomorrow. I now must decide whether to return the replacement (I was told it will be a new unit) or the now-perfect original unit. What would you do?


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## bigrig (Jul 1, 2004)

I would keep the new one...the hard-drive in the old one must have problems. 

Matt


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## r_wolfcastle (Apr 29, 2005)

A clear & delete everything on my 21-month-old HR10-250 has been running for 53 hours so far. The screen has been completely black (as per usual with any reboot), and when I attempt to push the Menu/Tivo button on the remote it bongs angrily at me, which means that at some level it is still alive and responsive.

This. Is. Absurd.

If one is going to clear and delete everything on a Unix/Linux box, all one needs to do is blow away the partition, run mkfs to recreate the partition, and run fsck on it and any non-erased partitions (presumably they have the software stored on a separate partition to keep it safer). All of which, on a 250GB drive, *might* take a few hours at most, and then only if the drive has a lot of bad sectors.

I don't know what the idiots at Tivo have done this time, but it is, as is usual with them, inexcusable. (a) Why does such a simple thing take so long? (b) Why is there no progress indicator? It doesn't even have to be a percent-done indicator, it could just be some indication that progress is being made and the unit has not gone belly-up. (c) What moron in QA allowed the message "this will take an hour" to stand for a clear and delete everything? Or, possibly, the question is what moron in product marketing decided that a lie was better than the truth?

If anyone at Tivo reads this post and finds it offensive, I invite them to let me come to their house and unplug their Tivo(s) for 3 days or so and see how well they like it. This is yet another in a long list of examples of severely incompetent engineering and a total lack of regard for the customer.


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## TyroneShoes (Sep 6, 2004)

r_wolfcastle said:


> ...let me come to their house and unplug their Tivo(s) for 3 days or so and see how well they like it. This is yet another in a long list of examples of severely incompetent engineering and a total lack of regard for the customer.


I feel your pain. It really does seem like it should take less time. But this is not a low-level reformat, it is simply deleting pointers to all recordings, current program info, and user preference settings. The OS stays intact. Of course when you put it like that is seems like even 10 minutes might be too long for such an operation. But then just clearing thumbs ratings alone typically takes an hour or more. C&D is supposed to place the Tivo in the same status it was as it came out of the box, I think, just before "guided setup" is done.

Sure, I want maintenance routines that complete in a timely manner. But then I always wanted piano lessons, too. And a different outcome in the last two elections.

Actually, I can't think of any PVR who has a similar suite of last-ditch maintenance routines anything like those offered on every Tivo, so I would have to put both their engineering competence and regard for the customer somewhat below Tivo's. If you had a DISH PVR it would be boxed and shipped back by now.


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