522 Hard Drive Diagnostics/Cleaning

[JayBob]

Last week, I turned on my TV to find that my 522 was running a process to examine the hard drive. It said it would take about 45 minutes to run, but at that point had been running for 255 minutes! I managed to get it to stop the process (pressed the power button) and when it came back up, it had an even nastier message. Now it informed me it had found errors on the hard drive and it needs to be cleaned (message #526). The cleaning process, it says, will delete all recorded programs. AAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!

Dish tech support was basically useless. I found this forum and have done some searches and found 3-4 threads by other people with the same problem. Some of the ideas were:
Power-off (pull the plug)
"Protect" programs you don't want deleted.

I've done the pull the plug test and it didn't work.

Has anyone tried the "Protect" idea and did it work?
Has anyone found any way to prevent recorded programming from being deleted by the "Hard Drive Cleaning" process?

Does anyone know what this really means? What does the 522 think is wrong with the hard drive (we've noticed no degredation in performance) and what does it actually do in the cleaning process?

The original message said the cleaning would be done in 7 days if I didn't initiate it. It asks us every morning if we want to do it and we keep selecting no or cancel. If I go to the Diagnostics menu page, the Hard Drive button is selectable and it brings up the same cleaning message. We're trying to put off the inevitable for now.

One kind of interesting thing is that the 522 downloaded L233 a day or two after this error message first appearred.

Also, we have never had less than 30 hours available for recording, so I struggle to believe there is a real fragmentation issue here, but who knows. We've had the unit about 8 months and have noticed significant improvements (less software quirks) as the newer software loads have shown up.

Appreciate the help.

JayBob

 

[Shadowtester]

It sounds like the 522 found some hard disk sector error and need to map them out of the alocation table and reformat the drive. If that is the case then I doubt that protecting the programs will do any good since the unit will be doing a format of the hard drive then rebuilding the hard drive. So far I have been lucky I have not had to go though that yet but I have DVD backup of the protected shows I want to keep that are on the hard drive.

 

[GetMeABeer]

Sorry JayBob, but you're screwed. Get out your VCR and some tapes and transfer anything important to you to tape. I've seen this several times on different 522s. There is no reason for it and there's nothing you can do about it. Also, don't wait for the 7th day because many times it doesn't even go that long and you wake up on the 5th day and the whole drive has been wiped out for you.

This is part of a problem with horrible Dish customer service and software developers. This problem on 522 has been around since the thing was released and they never did anything to really fix it - more than a year. In fact, it's been made worse under the L232 and L233 softwares. Starting with L232, always disk diagnostics comes up for no reason - especially when doing certain search situations - and this ends up leading to "hard drive errors, needs to be cleaned within 7 days."

And also, don't let anyone lie to you and give you the business that this is an anomaly or that after this time you have nothing to worry about, because it could easily happen to you again a couple months from now. Basically, don't count on keeping anything important to you on the 522, and write down on paper all of your timers and favorite search strings.

And Dish are LIARS, LIARS, LIARS and HORRIBLE software developers for the following reason - after the drive is wiped clean for you, ALL recorded shows, ALL timers and schedule, and ALL search string history will be GONE, but guess what? SURPRISE, SURPRISE, SURPRISE, all of your channel locks, and customized favorite lists will be SAVED!!! So, obviously, 522 does not really wipe ALL of the drive except for the OS, it just wipes the parts that are really important to you. If there's part of the drive that gets saved and not erased - locks and favorites lists - then why not your recordings that are not on the part of the disk where there are errors? Or why not, at the very least, your timers and schedule?

No, Dish software developer makes sure to save the unimportant locks and favorites, and erases all the important recorded shows and timers. Proudly brought to you by Mickey Mouse software, Inc.

 

[JayBob]

I was afraid of this. Looks like I'm breaking out the old VCR and feeling like I need to start looking at a DVDR more seriously. The kids are going to be mad about loosing their favorite Jimmy Neutron episodes.

My history with hard drives is that if they have random problems once (like bad sectors), they will have them again and again.

Why can every OS I use on a computer have a file system check that prevents (for the most part) loosing content and the 522 not be able to do anything but a re-format? not to mention a backup capability?

Come on, guys. There are free utilities out there to do this better.

JayBob

 

[ibleedblue]

Just be glad it gave you a warning message! My 522 'cleaned' itself once with no warning whatsoever. About 30 hours of programming was gone. It has since cleaned itself 2 more times, for a total of 3 over 10 months. I tried protecting the programs, but that did nothing. Come the 24th of this month, I am 'cleaning' myself of the 522 and all its stupid little problems!! It's actually been unplugged for a month now, I'm just waiting on the 1 year date so I can cancel with no penalties.

One thing to note, when I started getting the 'you have 7 days to clean your drive or it will automatically be cleaned' daily nag screen, it never did clean itself. I got that screen for nearly 6 weeks before I tried a suggestion I found on this forum to get around it, but wound up forcing it to clean (by accident). One time it got down to having 5 days, but the next morning it was back up to 7.

 

[Pablo_New]

The kids are going to be mad about loosing their favorite Jimmy Neutron episodes.

Dude, get real. That show is on like 5 times a day and they play the same eps about twice a week.

 

[JayBob]

The inevitable has happened. I thought I'd let you all know what we experienced.

For almost two weeks we got the "your hard drive has errors and needs to be cleaned within 7 days" every morning when we turned on the TV. We always selected "Cancel" or "No" and just kept on like nothing was wrong. To my knowledge, we had fine system performance except for 1 recording which was full of video/audio glitches. As far as I can tell, the 7 day warning is not enforced automatically.

This morning, my 9-yr old selected "Clean" and wham! it is all gone. We had tried a few of the ideas people suggested ("Protect" valued recordings, etc.), but none of them worked. We now have 100 hrs. of empty hard drive.

Interestingly, the "Clean" process took not more than 1-2 minutes, the system rebooted, reaquired the transponders, and was happy. All the recordings are gone and all our timers are gone. Everything else (preferences, blocked channels, password, etc) is still intact.

Can anyone guess what the system did to the hard drive in such a short period of time? I'm not an expert on Linux file systems, but I would guess it did little more than delete the file system, mark whatever bad sectors it had found, and re-mount a new file system. It sure didn't have time to do much more.


JayBob

 

[Bizzach]

UH-OH. I had an hour-long show record last week with those audio and video problems, but mine is running just fine other than that. My 'hard drive' button is greyed out though. Does that mean mine's about to bite the bullet?

 

[n0qcu]

THe button should be grayed out. if its not you have a problem.

 

[davesbedroom]

I just got a new 522 and I am excited to have a hard disk problem.

I will take the drive out and connect it to one of my linux machines and run fsck on it and see if that solves the problem.

 

[Sky King49]

I have never had any problems with my 522.

 

[maximum]

Sky King
How long have you had your 522? I've gone through six 522s in less than a year of service and every one of them had problems with playback (audio/video glitches). If you've had yours for more than a month or two and still doesn't have any problems I'm jealous.

 

[Slyster]

Wow- this happened to me tonight for the first time.. in the middle of a guide search.. I remembered seeing this thread title and came here.. learned a thing or two.. and just minutes later.. the 522 stopped doing it's thing and everything was ok... was sure worried I was going to lose my 40+ timers and 30 hours of stored programming. Wasn't as worried as I read this post and saw that others were experiencing the same thing. Crazy. Took only 4 minutes or so and didn't lose a thing! Even continued recording the current timer event after reaquiring the satellite.

 

[N7OR]

I have never had any problems with my 522.

NOW THAT'S A GOOD ONE !

I NEEDED A GOOD LAUGH !

 

[Shadowtester]

I want Sky King49's 522 never had any problems WOW!!! The only real problems I have had lately has been the Hard Drive diagnostic problem if you use the search function and the Audio freezes and drop outs but they are not that bad on my box so far I have been able to live with them.

 

[Briant73]

One thing I have seen mentioned on 501/508/510 threads is heat levels can really effect the DVR unit and how it functions. I be this applies to the 522 just as well if not more so. If you can, try placing your unit somewhere where it's open to air from both sides and the top, instead of being in an entertainment rack or on top of other equipment that can generate heat. I know that dish has a fan on these units but the only time I ever hear it on is when the unit is rebooting.

Since I took the glass door off of TV stand where my 508 is located it doesn't seem to get half as warm as before.

 

[Shadowtester]

My 522 sets on the bottom shelf of a open glass entertainment rack its the only component on that shelf the sides front and rear are open about 4in off the floor. Its in about the coolest place in the house except for maybe the unfinished basement. I still have the audio drop outs and the hard drive diagnostic problems. Heat may increase the problem however without doing some modifications to the unit I don't think I could get it to run much cooler. I wonder what Dish Network would think it we opened up there leased units and added water cooling or larger fans to the units. I doubt that they would like that very much but that way we could make them run cooler or I guess since the remotes are RF maybe we could get a small drink refrigerator and put the 522 into that to keep it cool. I know mine runs hotter than I would like and the fan never runs except durring a reboot I think a average hard drive temp of 116-120 F is a little hotter than I would like I would prefer a hard drive temp below 100 F.

 

[Foxbat]

What would be handy would be if Dish gave you an option to back up your Timers/Schedules/Favorites/Channel Locks to a USB memory dongle. Since we're talking Linux here, I'm sure it could be done, and it would a nice feature for users so they wouldn't have to recreate hours' worth of DishPasses after the hard drive reformats itself.

Of course, it would be best if the drive didn't get corrupted...