522 Issue

[errett]

When I wnet to bed last night, all was well with the 522. When I woke up this morning, it is like a brand new machine. All timers and previously recorded shows are gone. This includes PPVs that had not been watched. Has anyone seen this happen before? I don't know what software version I was running before, but has there been a new update being sent?

Any help is appreciated.

E

 

[ralfyguy]

Software should be L255. Press Menu twice and it should show you. Seems like you had one of those famous 522 reformat-the-harddrive issues going. Sorry about that, this sux, especially for the PPV which were already been paid for. That would make me so mad...

Go to: Menu-6-3-Counters and in the left hand field page down to line 26 and see what it says there about "Reformat Partition". On a "Virgin" machine like mine it should say: 0x0000. Also check and see on line 27 where it says:
FSCK: 11-24-05 3:03 am. That's what it says on mine. FSCK stands for LINUX File System ChecK and a normal 522/625 does this every night as a part of HD maintenance, IF the receiver is turned off! All receivers from Dish should be turned off over night as even they say in the manual, that it increases the performance. (the installer told me back in the day, to just leave it running all the time, because it wouldn't matter...IDIOT! )

There's a few people on this board that experienced the same, I didn't have the problem yet *crossing fingers*. But If you haven't turned BOTH tuners of receiver off at night, then you might try to do so in the furure, do a hard reboot and start over in the hope it won't happen again. Unless you want to call Dish and complain and ask for an replacement, especially because of the loss of PPV that was paid for and not watched yet.

 

[errett]

My reformat partition says 0x0300 and line 27 ran at 3:11AM this morning. Under line 28 the FSCK cause says 1.

Don't know what happened, but it sucks. I spoke to Dish and asked them about it and they weren't much help. The girl did tell me to turn it off at night, which I haven't done since I got it in April. Never had to do it with my Tivo, which I pointed out to her and she said this has to be done because unlike the Tivo, the 522 has a hard drive AND a modem. I laughed and said okay.

I will give it one more chance and if it takes a dump like this again, I am back to Tivo.

Thank you for the help...

E

 

[ralfyguy]

My reformat partition says 0x0300 and line 27 ran at 3:11AM this morning. Under line 28 the FSCK cause says 1.

Don't know what happened, but it sucks. I spoke to Dish and asked them about it and they weren't much help. The girl did tell me to turn it off at night, which I haven't done since I got it in April. Never had to do it with my Tivo, which I pointed out to her and she said this has to be done because unlike the Tivo, the 522 has a hard drive AND a modem. I laughed and said okay.

I will give it one more chance and if it takes a dump like this again, I am back to Tivo.

Thank you for the help...

E

errett if it says 0x0300 instead of 0x0000 on line 27, that confirms the reformat of the harddrive. The FSCK cause :1 means it's the regular scheduled File System ChecK. That's normal. There's something mentioned in the owners manual book that came with the receiver, that turning off the receiver will improve performance. See it is like on a PC. The hardrive there gets defragmented every now and then, or running scandisk to eliminate bad clusters and sectors. The 522/625 uses the same kind of HD. It is like a computer. It has LINUX operating system on it. A HD needs to be maintained. The performance depends on it. So if yours is on now continously since 6 months, that means the HD runs since 6 months too. Because of the pause live tv feature and such, it automatically records anything you watch, permanently. It doesn't get a break. If you just turn off your TV, it still records. If it wouldn't record all the time, you couldn't pause live TV or skip back. It is a MUCH harder use on the HD, than if it were in a PC. Additionally you record shows with timers, so it basically records two things at a time. You will always get bad clusters and sectors on A HD, no matter if it's in a PC or in a Dish receiver. Same difference. It just happens. If you don't turn it off, what it does is it tries to run a FSCK at night and record at the same time. On PC's, if you run a check disk you can't or shouldn't use the computer while it's doing it. So what the problem is here, is the receiver needs to do it's maintenance in "peace". There's a bunch of 522/625 users that don't have problems, and I bet those are the ones that turn it off when not watching TV.
I might be wrong, but I belive that's what causes it. Like I said, even the manual recommends it! I really don't know how TIVO's run, never had one. Maybe they know how to circumvent these things, or maybe they are less sophisticated that Dish receivers...I don't know.
If I were you, I would try this, and turn it off when not in use, and see over the months if it happens again.

 

[Stargazer]

I thought the 522/625 receivers turned off themselves after an x amount of hours of inactivity? After it does this it shows the Dish logo with press SELECT to turn the box on or continue. I know that if I had a lot of PPV's, movies, and shows on the hard drive and I did not get to see them and they got wiped out, I would be asking for a major credit on my bill. That right there is enough for some to switch providers regardless of credit on the bill or not. It would be nice to have an option for an external hard drive or backup to the laptop or something for it to record to two hard drives in case one fails. This is one thing that IPTV would have an advantage over, it would not be stored on your end but be stored on their end.

 

[ralfyguy]

I thought the 522/625 receivers turned off themselves after an x amount of hours of inactivity? After it does this it shows the Dish logo with press SELECT to turn the box on or continue. I know that if I had a lot of PPV's, movies, and shows on the hard drive and I did not get to see them and they got wiped out, I would be asking for a major credit on my bill. That right there is enough for some to switch providers regardless of credit on the bill or not. It would be nice to have an option for an external hard drive or backup to the laptop or something for it to record to two hard drives in case one fails. This is one thing that IPTV would have an advantage over, it would not be stored on your end but be stored on their end.

I thoght that too and tried it out. I left the receiver on, because of that feature. When I got up in the morning , it was still running, even though I checked that the turning off feature was enabled. I was surprised. Well now the question is, why did errett never mention that he had to turn it back on in the morning. He said it was always on...so what?? AND...why does the manual tell you to turn it off for perfomance issues, IF it should turn off automatically? I know the auto off feature is supposed to be there, but then why does it not do it? Maybe it just turns off for a few minutes, for doing it's thing, and then comes back on. I dunno...

 

[Stargazer]

I think mine turns off by itself (the green light). The Dish Network logo screen saver asking you to press SELECT will show up anytime that it is off.

 

[ralfyguy]

Mine does too, but that one time I left it on overnight, it was still on in the morning. I checked and it said it was to turn off by itself at 3.00am in the morning...strange.

 

[errett]

Mine does turn itself off every night at 3AM, but the Dish CSR said that does not count. You need to manually turn it off when not using it, both tuners. I don't know if I believe that though.

My Tivo ran 24 hours a day for 4 years and never had a problem, in fact I may put it back in the loop as a backup. When you "turn off" a Tivo, it just kills the outputs, the HD stays spinning.

I don't know what to think, it is very disappointing. Also, no refunds on PPV, that is Dish policy.

 

[wasii]

I was fortunate until recently..

I have had very few problems with my 522 (only the occassional glitch/audio dropout/pixelization/etc...) until the past month.

I woke up Saturday morning about 3 weeks ago and found all of our recordings and timers erased. I wrote it off as my 2 year old playing with the remote, but it happened again LAST Saturday.

I know it wasn't the kids, as they were still asleep, and the recording were definitely there the night before.

No warning, no prompts, no "Are you sure you wish to format...". Nothing.

Luckily, we didn't have any PPV movies, but we did have about 50 hours of recording, and who-knows how many timers (over 40...).

This is the second time in 3-4 weeks that we had to recreate the timers.

Like I said, we've been lucky 'til now. Suppose it's something with the new software release? Or did the basic fact that we own this POS finally catch up with us?

Anyone else experience this lately?

 

[Fire Dances]

I had a similar problem recently, too, and I turn the 522 off every night (actually, I turn it off whenever I'm not watching the TV).

It's been about 15 months with my 522 and no problems until the other night. I woke up to find all of my saved shows deleted. Weird thing is, though, my timers were *not* erased (thankfully). But in my history of recorded shows, everyone said "deleted by user." The funny thing was it actually listed a couple different times that said shows were "deleted by user." Thankfully no unwatched PPVs were on, but a few classic soccer matches that I had locked and intended to burn to DVD for posterity were lost. But completely deleted shows without deleting the timers seems like a funny hard drive wiping, doesn't it? I haven't looked through the reformat partition log described above yet...I will do that when I get home.

Because I read up on the 522 when I got it and read about some of the glitches (my options were limited so I pretty much had to accept the 522 and hope for the best), I had crossed my fingers and counted my blessings that no catastrophes had happened until now. I'll post again if any more problems arise (or recur).