Found the source of the problem, not anything I had expected. Ran out of disc space. Partition being 1TB I thought I had ample space. But numerous video files took their toll. Was confused as my warning label might say failed after 16 minutes or so. Failed because insufficient space remained to complete the task. After some major purging and moving of files all is working well now.
Many thanks to all for the suggestions.
Although not funny at the time… It kinda sounds funny reading it.
I know, we never want to start with the “basics” when trouble-shooting.
Been There Done That 
aka - Video Hoarding …lots of us here
Ultimatly – awesome you’ve got Tablo Tools working!
Easiest thing would have been to not even say the solution was found. Far better for others to see that faults are not always as they appear. If it helps another user someday to consider the “basics” I’ll be happy.
Can you plug the hard drive directly into the laptop where TabloTools is and export that way?
No, TabloTools (and most/all 3rd party tools) are meant to operate over the network.
I’ve not plugged in an external drive from a Tablo, but imagine you’d find a directory structure similar to the web listings. You can find that via TabloTools by opening an episode, clicking Info, and looking for/clicking on the green web url (similar to http://192.168.1.56:18080/pvr/1265176/) . At the very least, in the segs folder you’ll find .ts files that could be combined. I believe all the metadata you’d want about recordings is stored on the internal flash and would still have to be pulled over the network at some point.
Exporting directly from the drive via PC is more or less a last resort if you’re tablo died -
As @jesse points out, all the DB data referencing the shows is stored internally on the tablo, so the drive alone just recordings segments and thumbnails
Sounds like you’re playing with fire if try to do it directly from the drive. I asked because I’m trying to move some shows and they each take quite a while moving/exporting when doing it over the network. I have a nice, fast router and it still takes about 33 mins to export a 22 minute show.
What tool are you using? I expect that it’s a transcoding or compression step that’s making it so slow. Not the network access.
Tablo Tools
I just ripped a 2 hour SD movie using Tablo Ripper and it took approximately 6 minutes 15 seconds to transfer from my Tablo to my PC and a 2 hour HD movie took approximately 14 minutes 15 seconds to rip. The file created was 1.44 GB for the SD movie and 6.87 GB for the HD movie. Unfortunately, Tablo Ripper only runs under Windows, so if you are using something other than Windows it won’t work for you.
You should probably post in the thread for that tool.
Both Tablo tools and Tablo Ripper use ffmpeg to do the actual work. Depends if you’re WiFi’ing or using a wired network. Then, less likely, an old PC.
My recordings max out, via tablo settings, 5mps and a HD recording (without looking) 2 at a time within 4 minutes or less. Whatever tool I use, or just straight streaming via ffmpeg. Depending what parameters or qualifiers they pass to ffmpeg they all work the same.
I know SuLa Tablo is about the one (maybe only) which lets you adjust or choose what to pass.
I had been looking for a while and investigating third-party apps to do what Tablo Tools does. None of them had very good reviews so I visited the Community for more information. Found this thread and Tablo Tools and I’m delighted that it’s available. The current Version 0.2.4 (0.2.4) works amazingly well on my 2012 Mac-mini Server running OS X 10.12.6. I d/l the .dmg file, installed the application and launched it. After reading/viewing the included help webpage I exported a 1hour 44minute movie to my SSD in 3minutes 34seconds. Thanks community members for this thread.
Here’s a link to the info webpage:
and a link to the d/l webpage:
It does ask twice to make sure but then it does not refresh the screen to show it is no longer there, using 0.2.4. It seems a that can be confusing.
Tablo Tools seems to run faster then Tablo Ripper. I think it may have to do with Tablo Ripper compresses the audio more.
Mine take about 3 minutes and I use 10MB for my recording rate.
That’s actually define the maximum video resolution (SD 480, HD 720, or HD 1080) and bit rate (2 – 10 Mbps) at which your Tablo OTA DVR transcodes your live TV streams and your recording streams.
Recordings are not upscaled ie) a 480i nor a 720 won’t be upscaled to HD 1080 - 10Mbps 720@60fps. It’s the maximum allowable, not every show will necessarily be broadcast at that rate.
Yeah, it seems about the same as the highest streaming available for 1080. One problem with Tablo Tools is it does not erase failed files like Tablo Ripper does so I have to go and clean up after it is done. I have still not figured out how to export more then one show at a time. There seems to be no obvious button unlike individual shows. I really like how you can tell if a recording is clean from the icons without having to check each one. 480 is real fast, a 3GB files take quite a while. I kind of wish there was an option to not re-encode but just do any needed merging like MKV tools do. It would run so much faster.
Apparently you need to run it from a command prompt. I can find nothing in the GUI to export more than 1 episode at a time with version 0.2.4.
From Browse Recordings > Shows and Series select any show and click the +All Episode doesn’t work for you?
From the search tab 
If you really wanted to do every single one… this didn’t work?
Again from the search tab, clicking the check circle for each shows it increments the number in the cart
allows for simultaneous streams for exporting.
