NS_E_RECORDQ_DISK_FULL: Free Up Disk Space Fast

Quick Answer

Your recording drive is out of space. Delete old recordings or move the recording folder to a drive with at least 10GB free.

What's Going On

NS_E_RECORDQ_DISK_FULL (0XC00D1BA3) hits you when Windows Media Center tries to write a recording and finds the target drive has less than 1GB free. This usually happens on a system drive (C:\) that's also bogged down with Windows updates, temp files, and cached recordings. I've seen it most often on Windows 7 Media Center PCs with a single 120GB SSD — those fill up fast when recording two HD shows per week.

The culprit here is almost always the default recording folder on the same partition as Windows. Media Center doesn't give you a "disk low" warning until it's too late. It just fails the recording with this error.

Fix Steps

1. Check free space on the recording drive. Open File Explorer, right-click the drive, choose Properties. If free space is under 10GB, you're in the danger zone.
2. Delete old recordings. Open Media Center, go to Recorded TV, highlight old shows, press Delete. This frees up space immediately. Don't bother deleting through Windows Explorer — Media Center's built-in deletion is faster.
3. Clear temporary files. Run Disk Cleanup as admin (search for it in Start). Tick Temporary files and Recycle Bin. Also check System files — that clears old Windows Update caches, often reclaiming 5-10GB.
4. Move the recording folder. In Media Center, go to Tasks > Settings > TV > Recorder > Recorder Storage. Click Change next to the current recording path. Pick a drive with at least 50GB free — an external USB 3.0 drive works fine for this.
5. Reduce buffer size. In the same Recorder Storage screen, set Maximum TV buffer size to 2GB (default is 4GB). This saves space for recordings without affecting live TV pause.

If That Doesn't Fix It

Sometimes the error persists even after clearing space. Here's what to try next:

• Restart the Media Center service. Open Command Prompt as admin, type net stop ehrecvr && net start ehrecvr. This resets the recording queue.
• Check for corrupt recordings. In Recorded TV, look for files with sizes like 0KB or 1KB. Delete those — they're corrupt and block new recordings.
• Run chkdsk on the recording drive: chkdsk D: /f (replace D: with your drive letter). A corrupt filesystem can report wrong free space.
• Turn off System Restore on the recording drive if it's not the system drive. In System Properties > System Protection, select the drive, click Configure, choose Disable system protection. This can free up 3-5% of the drive.

Prevention Tips

Once you've got it working, don't let it happen again.

• Set a recording limit. In Recorder Storage, check Stop recording when disk is full — throws a warning instead of failing silently.
• Schedule weekly cleanup. Use Task Scheduler to run a script that deletes recordings older than 30 days. Example PowerShell: Get-ChildItem "D:\Recorded TV" -Recurse | Where-Object { $_.LastWriteTime -lt (Get-Date).AddDays(-30) } | Remove-Item
• Use a dedicated drive. Recordings should never live on the system drive. A cheap 1TB USB drive costs $40 and eliminates this error permanently.