508 disk recovery?

[raul.foonman]

Hi,

First time posting. Sorry if this has been asked -- I haven't found a good way to search yet.

I have an old 508 and just noticed that all recordings older than a day or 2 no longer play.

It behaves as if it thinks it's playing but I just see the previous screen with all of the text missing. If I hit the stop button, it goes back to normal. I'm guessing that a disk directory or file access map got clobbered.

Are there any reasonably easy techniques to run a disk scan/repair utility to try to restore some of the files? By reasonably easy I mean without removing the drive and installing it in a PC...

Thanks!

 

[TheKrell]

I believe there are disk maintenance firmware components that run automatically every so often. But to run one yourself on demand, you're going to have to pull that drive and put it on a PC. Also note that the 508 uses a Dish proprietary file system, so any PC disk repair utility better work on raw sectors, and not on the files themselves. If you just plug it into a PC, in general Windows doesn't recognize it, or asks to format it. Don't do that or you've lost it all! There are also 2 sectors that marry the disk to your 508. These also cannot be touched.

 

[boba]

Have you tried the simplest cure for DISH products? Unplug power.