I'm not going to try to respond to everything because that would probably just muddy the waters. I think we can acknowledge, and JRiver has via Yaobing, that it is possible to get orphaned directories containing TV recording files. That needs to be understood and fixed.
However, I gave an example of the quantity of orphaned files that I have experienced. It was 6GB of files, accumulated over one year of pretty consistent TV use, lots of PVRing, and lots of Time Shifted TV watching. I had never cleaned up the orphaned files and directories before you started this thread.
Your issues, Adlelare, are way bigger that that, I understand, so why is your installation so different to mine?
Well, first and foremost to me is that you have your "Save on stop" setting set to "Always save". When you do that,
every time you watch TV or channel surf, MC will save what you were watching. The saved files are not associated with TV programs, because they were not "PVRed". They are just saved broadcast time. I think the directory names do not even reflect program names, just channel, date and time, or similar. A recording of a two hour program broadcast at 1080i (1440x1080) will consume about 6.2GB of space for the stations I receive. That is going to quickly add up.
You don't like Time Shifting, and yet you save what it does, every time you use MC for watching TV. The default setting is "Do not save", so you have turned it on at some stage, possibly when you misunderstood Glynor's advice.
If you only changed that setting in the last few days, then it couldn't be the cause of the 175GB of "orphaned files" that you observed, but it will be filling your 2TB drive now. MC is doing what you asked it to do. Saving every time.
So
please,
please, change the "Save on stop" setting to "Do not save", and eliminate one confusing part of the problem.
Now, you don't like Time Shifting, and PVR everything that you may want to watch, now or later. I PVR a lot as well. But I love time shifting, especially when I do not want to record a program, but I want to watch it more or less as it is broadcast. You see if I PVR a program, I need to manage that recording. At some stage I will have to go into MC and delete the recording, once I have finished with it. Of course I could have MC delete it after X days, or if it is a series, have it keep Y episodes and delete older episodes. But I have no idea when I may get around to watching recordings, so I usually set MC to "Keep Forever". Therefore it needs manual deletion later.
However, if I am watching something more or less as it is broadcast, and don't care to save it for later viewing, Time Shifting is great. I can pause the program at any time to go and get a coffee, or perhaps even have dinner, and come back to watch the rest of it when I am ready. If I do need to walk away from the TV for a few minutes, and pause the program, when I come back I have a buffer of recorded TV so I can skip forward over commercials, in just the same way I can if I PVR the program. I can also skip back if I miss a bit of the dialogue, or just want to view a section again. I use this a lot watching the MotoGP broadcasts.
So I personally think Time Shifting is fantastic, and makes watching TV so much better! I have used it ever since I bought my first PVR, many years ago. I set my Time Shift buffer to 4 hours, which means that I can time shift a whole movie if I need to. If I decide I am not going to watch it then, I have the option in MC to save the Time Shift buffer anyway, for later viewing, using the OSD menu (arrow up to see the option).
Time Shifting only records the current channel that you are watching, and not all available channels. My understanding of the MC design is that it is Time Shifting that allows you to watch a program while you are also PVRing that program. Let's not go into details, but you need it if you want to watch programs while you record them. This is particularly true as you record in TS format. I record in JTV format, which behaves slightly differently. This thread is worth reading:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=68402.msg460818#msg460818So in addition to setting the "Save on stop" setting to "Do not save", I recommend that you change the amount of Time Shifting MC manages back to 4 hours. You will then be able to PVR fewer programs, and also get all the advantages that PVRing gave you, without the maintenance overhead.
Now, the huge 41 and 45GB files. It appears that they were created on your original disk, which was running at 100% some of the time. You said the RAM use also went up to 100% at the time you noticed the hard disk usage. I think Windows was trying to save the files that MC was creating, either due to recordings or time shifting. Windows couldn't save the files, but probably did write some data to the disk. Something went wrong and the files were corrupted. The File Allocation Tables of the disk were probably also corrupted, or at least had errors in it, as it indicated that a 1/2 recording was 45GB in size. The fact that you had to uninstall the disk from the PC in order to have Windows release the file, and allow its deletion, is a very strong indicator that this is what happened. Windows (or MC I guess) may even have tried to write the file to a second, temporary location, rather than lose it altogether, which may be why what appeared to be a second copy of the file reappeared elsewhere on the disk.
Whatever happened, the cause was almost certainly the fact that your disk was 100% full. There may still be some errors on your first disk. I advise that you run Chkdsk or another good disk utility over it when MC is not running and repair any errors.
I'm not sure if you still have one of the huge files, but if you do, you should be able to delete it after running Chkdsk. Before you do though, could you post the full name of the file? That may help Yaobing understand if it was a Time Shifting file, or a PVR file. Or at least if Windows thought it was part of such a file.
