DVR recordings disappearing

Check the settings for your series recordings. I just had shows disappear on me and it seems that either behind my back or due to a bug, my series have had their "KEEP" setting changed to "1 latest episode" when I had them manually set to one of the "All episodes" options. I was waiting to to get around to the last 2 episodes of "The Flash" but since the new episode dropped tonight, my prior 2 recordings got automatically deleted. I've checked settings on some of my other series and they are marked as "1 episode" only. I don't see an option to change them all back in bulk so I am going to have to waste time manually editing each show setting and there is no guarantee they won't switch them back without my knowledge, so I'm a bit ticked off. I don't know if they did an update that ended up toggling the KEEP default to the unfortunate choice of only 1 episode, or an event like coming close to capacity triggered the event, but when even a shows worth of space is available, they shouldn't automatically change the setting to keep one only across the board.

This is happening to me, even though my settings are set to not erase until I erase, and like noted above, I have 80% of my recording space available.  I only had about a dozen single recordings, and now only 3 are there.  Did anyone ever figure out the issue at AT&T?

We are here to help you get those recordings back, tkrose7.

Here is more information on why are U-verse recordings being deleted.

A normal feature of the DVR is to delete content to make room for new recordings. If the DVR is used often, you will see an increase of deleted recordings. Keep in mind, the DVR has a limit of how many recordings it can store.

There are some other reasons that those recordings may be deleted:

• Power Related - Surge protectors and power strips have been known to cause issues with recordings as they are not rated for electronics. Plug it into a wall outlet. This may prevent your recordings from being deleted.
• Hardware Related – A bad hard-drive may prevent your favorite show(s) from being recorded properly or from being recorded in the first place.

A simple fix could be restarting your DVR. Just press and hold the power button on the DVR for 10 seconds. In some instances, you may need to restart the modem and other receivers. 

Let us know if this helps.

Marc, AT&T Community Specialist

It could be a bug.  Or it could be a string of bad dvrs, which sadly is actually quite common.  All of uverse dvrs are "refurbished" at this point, and usually "refurbished" quite poorly/not repaired at all. and the newest dvrs  as far as I know are from 2015 (7+ years old). and I've never seen one with a hard drive actually replaced, and hard drives are consumable items that don't last forever (the ones at&t buys come with 1-3 year warranties) even super expensive hard drives don't exceed 5 year warranties. and dvr hard drives run basically 24/7.

You can check the age of dvr by looking at bottom for an original manufactured date, you'll see another date on box it comes in that is the "refurbishment" date that'll usually be quite recent, but is meaningless.  The hard drive dates take more work to see since you need a flashlight to look in the air vents and usually have to decode a manufacturing code.  

The only other problem I could see is if your login password has been stolen and someone is logging into u-verse app and deleting recordings, but I don't know why any would bother, but it might be worth changing at&t login password just to be safe.  

@scholar  Thanks...this is a fairly new box, as just replaced in last 3-4 months, but now knowing they are refurbished, maybe that is why.  They are sending me a new box again.

The recordings have been there for a few days, and over the weekend a few disappeared, and I didn't think anything about it, but then almost a dozen disappeared overnight.

So annoying.  I will try to pay attention to the hard drive date if I can, when the new box comes.

I hope no one is hacked my account, but I did have to reset my password just today to even log the issue!  But boy, I can see how you could make someone crazy just randomly deleting their recordings!

Thank you for the info!

@tkrose7 My process is as soon as I open the box I look for any signs of a bad refurbishment/ nobody bothered to even try.  Is it dusty? does it still have cat hair inside it from the last person who sent it back because it stopped working?  Then I check the bottom date which again if you get anything newer than 2015 let me know, lol.  Then hard drive depending on dvr model, can be tricky.  Even if you can spot the date often hard drives date codes are in a special format.  You have to google the brand of harddrive (my current one is a seagate)  and then date code decoder or something to see at how they handle date codes (often it's something related to what week out of the year it was manufactured or letters might correspond to specific years) instead of a standard american MM/DD/YYYY

But to be clear, I gave up trying to get a new one my current one is a 2015 with the original hard drive although luckily its at least the 1tb pace iph8010.  the iph8005(500gb) and iph8010 are the best possible models in my opinion

I have been dealing with the issue of disappearing recordings for years.  I have had numerous new boxes, numerous techs come out, and to no avail.  I have NOT mistakenly erased these recordings and the cache is NOT full.  I think it's a bug in the system that ATT refuses to admit to or correct.  Just tonight, it happened again, and it usually happens around this time of the year for some odd reason.  I wish, just once, an ATT agent would say "Yes, there is a bug and your recordings will mysteriously erase".  Just be honest!!

@cytruffle just to be clearly your talking about recordings you've already recorded deleting themselves? you are talking not recordings that are scheduled not recording when they are supposed to correct?  

FYI:

The system will start deleting episodes that are set to "keep until space needed" before you hit 0% usually 3% but sometimes as high as 5-10% if you have a lot of upcoming recordings.  and if you set a show to keep a certain # of episodes obviously those will only record until you hit that number and then start erasing older ones, the system will also delete any of those series when you start getting low on space.

I assume that's not your problem though.  It could be a strange bug in the system, but without knowing more specifics you'll have zero chance of getting at&t to look at it.  (me and a bunch of other customers just dealt with a bug with scheduling and it took over a month of calls/emails/letters/dms to get someone to finally look into it and that was with me identifying it was a previous bug that had been previously solved and I narrowed down the exact situations it occurred).  I'd try to pay attention when it happens to see if you can nail down any pattern.  I'd also change my password on my att account just to be safe to make sure someone isn't using the app to delete them, maybe even accidentally if they think it's their account.  For the most part at this point at&t is fairly incompetent with anything more complicated than replace box and unplug and plug back in.  It's absurdly frustrating.  

madmax988:

Yes these are shows that I have already recorded and was saving to watch later.  I have been checking regularly, and there is always enough space under the "Recording Space" section.  This issue happens about once per year, usually at the beginning of summer, like now.  The recordings I have already made and have been waiting to watch mysteriously delete themselves, and there is no rhyme or reason as to what is deleted and what is kept!  Older recordings will be kept and newer ones will be deleted!  

I will consider changing my password, although I honestly don't think that anyone else has access to my account because nothing else occurs that would indicate that.

And I definitely agree with you regarding the competence of ATT.  Whenever I have called and reported this issue, they act like they've never heard of such a thing, and surely I must be deleting my own recordings!  I may be an old lady, but I do know what the "delete recording" button looks like!!

Thank you for your comments and advice!

We'd be glad to help you find a resolution for the deleted recordings, cytruffle.

In addition to trying the password reset option, try restarting your AT&T gateway, then restarting the receiver.

To restart the gateway, unplug the power connection behind the gateway for ~15 seconds, then plug it back in, and wait for the Broadband light to turn green. If you have the BGW320 model, wait for the light on the front to turn solid white. To restart the receiver, press the oval button on the front until it starts flashing.

If recordings are still being deleted, let us know, and we'll figure out what your next steps should be.

We'll be awaiting your response.

Aminah, AT&T Community Specialist

OK I restarted the gateway and the receiver.  I have the BGW210 model, so the light turns green.  None of the lost recordings were restored (I don't know whether this was supposed to happen, but it didn't...).  

Now I guess I'll have to wait until something else is deleted, but by that time, this post will be buried and I'll have to explain this all over again.  Like I said in the other post, this usually happens about once or twice a year, but I never know when it's going to happen and it's extremely frustrating when it does and the recordings mysteriously disappear without any warning.  Seems like an ATT engineer should be able to explain this occurrence.

Thank you for your response and suggestions.

Yeah....your recordings are gone and no amount of rebooting will bring them back.  Sorry.

@cytruffle with a relatively intermittent issue like this your odds of getting this solved at&t are next to zero. Again it took a medium sized group of us over a month to get a bug ruining all of our scheduling for recordings.  Corporate at&t told me in no uncertain terms that they basically aren't supporting uverse tv anymore. Are you 100% sure none of the series are set to keep only a certain number of episodes?  The only reason I ask is because you probably build up episodes over the course of the fall/spring tv seasons and catch up during summer.  So beginning of summer is when you might have more episodes then the limit you set and start losing episodes. The limits are also a maximum so essentially they are u protected so if the dvr decides for any reason it would like more free space it'll delete them even if you haven't hit # of episodes limit. 

At the end of the day you have to decide how much it's worth banging your head against the wall to get this solved.   Unless you are going to invest hours and call everyday for weeks/months.  It's probably not going to happen.  

And @skeeterintexas is correct.  Nothing you or at&t does is ever bringing back and deleted episodes.  They are gone forever the second they dissappear.  When was the last time they replaced/swapped your dvr? Not the bgw210 gateway but the dvr set top box attached to tv.

tkrose, this whole thing stinks and I feel and share your pain. FTR, this NEVER happened to me until about 6-7 months ago, and I was still using the original, silver Motorola DVR box! But some specialist told me there was some known issue with scheduled recordings causing this and the so-called solution was to delete the scheduled recordings and then recreate them. I left the recordings there that did not get deleted/disappeared, and rescheduled. This seemed to work for about 4-5 months until late last month it occurred again. Sent off for a new DVR box since the other was so old. Had it up, got 10 recordings on it and they started disappearing again!

One real oddity on this new PV2622 or whatever model it is. Whether I had the first recording or 10 recordings, the available space stayed at 89%. 89% after one show recorded and 89% after 10 more! This looks like a problem with the hard drive waiting to happen and maybe it was. It's probably AT&T's dirty tricks to steer everyone to that streaming service so they can phase out Uverse, while not perfect, was pretty good most often, or it has been.

So I just plugged in the new DVr box today and it has 2 new recordings....for now!

@Redraider1990 my suggestion when receiving a "replacement" dvr is to inspect it throughly.  They are ALL refurbished and rarely if ever have had their hard drives replaced so the hard drives are all living on borrowed time.  There are no "new" dvrs.  

Check the bottom of the dvr and you'll see the date it was actually manufactured not the refurbishment date that comes on the box att ships in.

Then if you can depending on model shine a flashlight into the bottom of dvr and you can sometimes read the manufactured date code for hard drive.  Converting date code to date can take some google or you can post it here with the hard drive brand and I can help you figure it out.  But be warned I've yet to see anything newer than 2015 at best.

I've also never seen pv2622 as a model # for dvr are you sure you have that correct?