# Clear ALL recently deleted at once?



## headless chicken (Oct 8, 2004)

What is the shortcut to permanently delete the contents of the recently deleted folder? Surely Tivo doesn't us to sit there and delete each program one by one when there could be over 100 items in the recently deleted folder and it takes time for the DVR to process each command...right??


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## steve614 (May 1, 2006)

There is no shortcut. You have to delete them one by one.

I'm sure this will stir up a debate...but why do you feel the need to permanently delete the contents of the deleted folder?
It is only there in case you make a mistake in deleting a program and need to recover it.
Otherwise it has no effect in how the Tivo operates. You can ignore it.
The programs in the Recently Deleted folder do not take up hard drive space.
In fact, all you're doing by permanently deleting shows is removing your access to them. The data remains on the hard drive until it is overwritten by new content.


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

steve614 said:


> There is no shortcut. You have to delete them one by one.
> 
> I'm sure this will stir up a debate...but why do you feel the need to permanently delete the contents of the deleted folder?
> It is only there in case you make a mistake in deleting a program and need to recover it.
> ...


*What!! *do you think I want people to see all the late night HBO sex stuff I watch and then delete, I might drop dead and be mortified that my kids would see all that stuff as they cleaned up my TiVo and estate.


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## headless chicken (Oct 8, 2004)

steve614 said:


> I'm sure this will stir up a debate...but why do you feel the need to permanently delete the contents of the deleted folder?


Because 98% of it is Tivo suggestions I don't care for.


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

headless chicken said:


> steve614 said:
> 
> 
> > I'm sure this will stir up a debate...but why do you feel the need to permanently delete the contents of the deleted folder?
> ...


Hmm... I see a conflict though. You want to filter out the Recently Deleted folder of all TiVo Suggestions with a "delete all" function. But since there would be nothing left in the RDF, it isn't much of a "filter". You could accomplish the same thing by just not looking in the RDF, yes?


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## Phantom Gremlin (Jun 20, 2002)

headless chicken said:


> What is the shortcut to permanently delete the contents of the recently deleted folder? Surely Tivo doesn't us to sit there and delete each program one by one when there could be over 100 items in the recently deleted folder and it takes time for the DVR to process each command...right??


First thing I do to all of my TiVos is turn of suggestions. So that's one way of avoiding all these shows in the first place.

You can try my idea. It might save you a bit of time. However, if you read just two messages further in that thread you will see a reply to my post with a much simpler technique that worked for the Premiere. Offhand I don't know if it will work for the S3 or the TiVo HD (you didn't say which you have). If it works, let us know!

Also you can use my other idea to speed up the clearing a little bit.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

headless chicken said:


> Because 98% of it is Tivo suggestions I don't care for.


TiVo does not expect you to sit in Recently deleted folder and permanently delete each one of those individually. Instead TiVo expects you to enjoy your shows you have not deleted yet and let the file system delete algorithms take care of shows that end up on recently deleted.

The filter is to just ignore recently deleted until such time as you need to *restore* a show that was deleted


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## steve614 (May 1, 2006)

lessd said:


> *What!! *do you think I want people to see all the late night HBO sex stuff I watch and then delete.


Well then.
Having to permanently delete them one by one is your punishment for watching such filth.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

steve614 said:


> I'm sure this will stir up a debate...but why do you feel the need to permanently delete the contents of the deleted folder?


I actually agree with you.. but here's one reason I recently manually deleted some stuff in the recently deleted folder.. (and yes, it is ultra-micromanaging the Tivo)

I knew my Tivo was close to completely full, and didn't want to lose recordings indiscriminately.. so I deleted (i.e. put in recently deleted) some other recordings that I didn't care about too much.. But I *also* manually deleted stuff in the recently deleted folder that I had definitely watched.. so that the other thing I sort of still wanted would be the last thing to be overwritten if it really needed more space. The thing I "sort of" wanted lasted I think about a day before it went away.

There's actually too many good things (or at least new shows I want to _try_ this summer!)

(Though ironically, I lost some recordings on my S1 when a wishlist started recording the Today show for several hours after I manually deleted a different To Do list item last night.. ARGH)


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## MPSAN (Jun 20, 2009)

...and it is nice to get rid of them before upgrading the hard drive!


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

mattack said:


> I actually agree with you.. but here's one reason I recently manually deleted some stuff in the recently deleted folder.. (and yes, it is ultra-micromanaging the Tivo)


 The key term is recently. TiVo never meant this to be a holding place.
That really is micromanaging and would not the TiVo have simply deleted the stuff that had been in recently deleted anyhow without you having to go an manually delete them



MPSAN said:


> ...and it is nice to get rid of them before upgrading the hard drive!


That is the one time to definitely do that and then the manual process will have to be used.
You can record an 8 hour block like others suggested and then just delete that and let TiVo knock out all the other shows
or
if you hit clear on a show in RD Folder then it will ask if you want to permanently delete. I think you can just hit select and the next show is highlighted - repeat for profit.


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## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

MPSAN said:


> ...and it is nice to get rid of them before upgrading the hard drive!


If you do a block copy (with dd) from the old hard drive to the new one it will copy exactly the same number of blocks including the blocks that contain parts of shows _and_ the blocks that contain parts of shows that were deleted.

Iknow. Many of the Tivo MFS tools like WinMFS copy at the file level so they don't copy deleted shows.


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## steve614 (May 1, 2006)

ZeoTiVo said:


> if you hit clear on a show in RD Folder then it will ask if you want to permanently delete. I think you can just hit select and the next show is highlighted - repeat for profit.


I did this yesterday just to see how 'bad' it is to have to delete one by one.
It's not THAT bad. Hit clear followed by select one right after the other. There is a delay while the Tivo deletes the show, but it is minimal.
I think it helps that, when the Tivo asks if you want to delete, the selection is defaulted to "Yes, delete the program".


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## MPSAN (Jun 20, 2009)

netringer said:


> If you do a block copy (with dd) from the old hard drive to the new one it will copy exactly the same number of blocks including the blocks that contain parts of shows _and_ the blocks that contain parts of shows that were deleted.
> 
> Iknow. Many of the Tivo MFS tools like WinMFS copy at the file level so they don't copy deleted shows.


Well, my point was that when I do a copy from the 160GB drive to a new 1 TB drive, I do not want it to spend time on the deleted shows...so a delete is worth while by doing the clear, before removing the drive from the TIVO. It should not be too bad if going from the stock 160GB drive.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

ZeoTiVo said:


> The key term is recently. TiVo never meant this to be a holding place.
> That really is micromanaging and would not the TiVo have simply deleted the stuff that had been in recently deleted anyhow without you having to go an manually delete them


You don't understand.

Yes, the Tivo would eventually delete them all.

But I put several "I don't care TOO much if these items go away" items in the trash/recently deleted. But I manually deleted ones I had ALREADY watched to make sure they were the ones that "went away" first... Then I could potentially recover the other item(s) from the recently deleted if they weren't needed for recordings while I was gone.

BTW, this was already on a 1 TB S3 Tivo!


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## Jaze (Dec 21, 2003)

I don't watch steamy movies on TiVo (that's why God gave us the Internet), but would LOVE to be able to clear deleted programs. Over the last couple of months, I began to have stuttering, pixelation and sound drop out in recorded programs to the extent that they became unwatchable. Since my TiVo and its external HD are still both pretty new, I was sure it was a cable service issue and scheduled an appointment.

However, I wondered if maybe the HD was filling up, and when I went through my recorded programs, I thought "What the heck", and deleted a couple hundred programs from the DELETED PROGRAMS file. Now, it's certainly not an *onerous* process, but try deleting 200 and you'll be howling for a Clear All button. 

To my surprise, clearing out the deleted programs completely fixed my problem. Since then, I've had no stutter/pixelation/sound drop-out. If I were truly scientific, I'd let it fill up again and see if the image problems recurred, but I don't want to have to go through the hassle of discovering that I've got messed-up recordings, and also have to delete 200 programs one by one again.

I think it's interesting that often when someone makes a suggestion that TiVo might be improved by adding feature X or Y, there's a rush of replies questioning why a person would even want that. *I* want to be able to clear the deleted folder with one click - or, if that's a difficult software fix, the option of having a Delete be permanent. I can't imagine that either would be particularly hard to implement, and it would both shut up whiners like the OP and me!


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

Jaze said:


> ...To my surprise, clearing out the deleted programs completely fixed my problem. Since then, I've had no stutter/pixelation/sound drop-out. If I were truly scientific, I'd let it fill up again and see if the image problems recurred, but I don't want to have to go through the hassle of discovering that I've got messed-up recordings, and also have to delete 200 programs one by one again...


It's possible that you have a bad spot on one of your harddrives (internal or external). Did you attempt to watch a recording that exhibited the stuttering/pixelation after you cleared out the deleted programs, and have no issues?


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## maryyugo (Oct 20, 2007)

I recall that this issue (clearing recording problems by permanently deleting all items from the recently deleted folder) has been mentioned before. I'll try to find it. I distantly remember talking to someone who had to do this any time the folder reached 80-100 items. Maybe it was a hard drive problem but everything else seemed to work fine. Anyone recall?


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## Tipperton (May 23, 2017)

Here's a good reason to empty out the RDF. I noticed that there were some programs to be stuck, they should have been deleted but were still in the RDF while shows that were more recently were being permanently removed. Wasn't the auto delete supposed to delete the oldest recordings first? So I figured that somehow the RDF got corrupted and that the only way to correct it is to manually delete everything that is in it.


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## Tipperton (May 23, 2017)

Also: I know this is off topic, but I don't know what else to do. Why can I reply to a thread, but cannot create a new topic or edit one of my already posted messages? The forum just refuses to respond when I click the "Create topic" button after filling out the create topic form. And just doesn't respond at all when I click the "edit" link or button.


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## H2ZX (May 19, 2021)

What browser and OS are you using?


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## Tipperton (May 23, 2017)

I am running 64 bit Windows 10 Home and my browser is Microsoft Edge Chromium edition.

I also use the MVPS hosts file to block ad servers. You can learn more about it here:
Blocking Unwanted Connections with a Hosts File

Thanks!


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## Tipperton (May 23, 2017)

I should probably add that my version of Windows is a fully patched 20H2 and that Edge is also up to date with all of its released updates.


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