Another mad scientist - 522 drive swapping

[Pepper]

I have a DVD recorder attached to the outputs of the "secondary" 522. I use this to archive stuff while using the "primary" 522 to watch & record new stuff. When the primary gets full, I swap drives again.

I got the secondary at Goodwill for $25. Although it can't be subscribed, it works fine for playback of recordings after swapping in the drive from my subscribed unit.

 

[Stargazer]

I wonder why they did not put encryption on the 522 Hard Drive like they did on the other DVR's.

 

[Smith P.]

They did .

 

[kbohip]

Yes. How dare the lowly customers increase storage capacity by themselves? They must be taught a lesson!

No doubt. Dish sucks! One of the reasons I'm ditching them is because of the non hard drive upgrade issue. Another is because they are a ripoff now with their silly fees.

 

[kbohip]

I've had a 510 for almost 2 yrs, and just got a 522. I've come close to filling the drive, but only because I was too lazy to clean it up. No offense intended, but I have to ask those of you that want bigger drives, how do you find time to catch up to 100 hrs of recordings? And if you just want to preserve them for posterity, wouldn't a DVDR be a better choice now that they are available < $200? (Virtually unlimited storage, portability, almost the same quality, etc.)

I'm a computer geek and a believer in open standards, so I totally understand the desire to be able to do your own upgrades. And having done my share of this kind of no instructions, trial and error reverse engineering, I applaud the time and effort that has been expended. But I wonder if it's really necessary, or more of an exercise just to rebel against the machine?

Just thought I'd stir it up a little!

So what do you do when the drive dies then?

 

[AZCoronaDog]

I can see a huge benefit of having an identically sized spare drive as insurance against failure, and plan to set one up myself. And the idea of swapping a drive to another receiver while archiving to DVD also makes sense since it has to be done in real time.

But no one has answered my first question - which simply put is, do you really need more than 100 hours of online storage?

(But I could completely understand wanting to upgrade an HD DVR to hold more than the current 25-35 hour maximum.)

 

[Pepper]

Yes, because (1) I am lazy and (2) things add up quickly and I only have time to archive stuff a couple times a month. Right now I have only about 30 hours available out of the 200.

I have a third one I have been thinking of selling but I might have to put it into service (or its drive at least).

 

[kbohip]

I can see a huge benefit of having an identically sized spare drive as insurance against failure, and plan to set one up myself. And the idea of swapping a drive to another receiver while archiving to DVD also makes sense since it has to be done in real time.

But no one has answered my first question - which simply put is, do you really need more than 100 hours of online storage?

(But I could completely understand wanting to upgrade an HD DVR to hold more than the current 25-35 hour maximum.)

I actually could have used more than 100 hours once. I recorded a 36 hour marathon of the Twilight Zone so that I could watch it later over the next few months. This was in addition to what I normally record. My wife then recorded a bunch of shows as well. Then we went on vacation and when we got back ten days later the drive was filled up. It would have been nice to have the extra space then. Besides, with the cheap cost of hard drives nowdays it's dumb to go with anything less than 120gb. I REALLY wish I could upgrade the drive in my 510 for space and backup purposes.

 

[SteveC]

But no one has answered my first question - which simply put is, do you really need more than 100 hours of online storage?

I don't need a DVR at all, but it sure is nice. I would have filled up my 100 hours during the Showtime free preview weekend, if I didn't start archiving to DVD on the first day. I'm sure I'll be maxed out on my upcomming 2 week vacation too.

SteveC

 

[Getut]

I need a backup badly

I actually could have used more than 100 hours once. I recorded a 36 hour marathon of the Twilight Zone so that I could watch it later over the next few months. This was in addition to what I normally record. My wife then recorded a bunch of shows as well. Then we went on vacation and when we got back ten days later the drive was filled up. It would have been nice to have the extra space then. Besides, with the cheap cost of hard drives nowdays it's dumb to go with anything less than 120gb. I REALLY wish I could upgrade the drive in my 510 for space and backup purposes.

I'm actually badly in need of swapping hard drives. We had a nasty thunderstorm the other morning and lost power. Ever since, we have had the message about cleaning the system within the next 7 days and it WILL lose all recordings. That was 2 days ago.. I probably have about 3-4 days to attempt to salvage things. I don't want to do the VCR thing except as a last resort... i.e. any direct copy type of salvage fails.

I am actually thinking about buying a drive and putting it in, letting it create all its partitions and then trying to copy my recordings from the "bad" drive to the new one. Does anyone know if this is possible?

 

[Mark_AR]

There was a RAID setup on eBAY about 6 months ago that was supposed to be for DVR's. Not really a help to your '5 days left' dilemma, but this sorta fits the topic too.

IT looks like this:
http://www.synetic.net/Synetic-Products/ARAID99-1000.htm

I wonder if this could really be utilized for backing up a DVR drive? Its kinda pricey at $375.00+ though.

The next generation DVR's(Like 942) will be SATA instead of IDE so it won't be cost effective to buy an IDE one in the long run...

But it does bring up interesting possibilities for mirroring drives(for data integrity only) if the Dish Network IDE drive DVR's would work with it.

A RAID-5 setup (3 identical drives) would be the ultimate, since one drive could fail and be yanked/replaced while the other two maintained data and rebuilt the 3rd drive on the fly.

But... That would be for people with more money than sense.

Boy, I wish I had time to learn more about Linux...

 

[phat_bastard]

I am actually thinking about buying a drive and putting it in, letting it create all its partitions and then trying to copy my recordings from the "bad" drive to the new one. Does anyone know if this is possible?

Possible, yes. Easy, no. Actually what I'd do before buying a new hard drive is to mount the dvr disk in a working linux box and fsck it to see if it has sector errors or not.

e2fsck -n -v /dev/hdb1 [partition one of second ide drive - timers, dvr listing, etc.]
e2fsck -n -v /dev/hdb3 [partition three of second ide drive - recordings]

b would need to be exchanged with c or d if you have the dvr disk connected as the secondary master or secondary slave.

If you don't see unrecoverable errors you can probably do e2fsck -a [/dev/hdXN] on both partitions and you should be all set.

If you do have unrecoverable errors you're probably going to lose some or all of your recordings. If setting up a pc with linux scares you away you're probably going to lose all of your recordings.

 

[Getut]

Possible, yes. Easy, no. Actually what I'd do before buying a new hard drive is to mount the dvr disk in a working linux box and fsck it to see if it has sector errors or not.

e2fsck -n -v /dev/hdb1 [partition one of second ide drive - timers, dvr listing, etc.]
e2fsck -n -v /dev/hdb3 [partition three of second ide drive - recordings]

b would need to be exchanged with c or d if you have the dvr disk connected as the secondary master or secondary slave.

If you don't see unrecoverable errors you can probably do e2fsck -a [/dev/hdXN] on both partitions and you should be all set.

If you do have unrecoverable errors you're probably going to lose some or all of your recordings. If setting up a pc with linux scares you away you're probably going to lose all of your recordings.

Has this actuallly been done already to fix this specific problem? I have no fear of Linux... I'm not ultra proficient but have and do use it (mainly for testing Scribus). I have an old machine here that is loaded with Mandrake 10 used as a Scribus testing platform.

I'm just afraid that after doing this that the 522 won't accept the drive again... or more likely that even if the fsck fixes errors, that the 522 has written to a log somewhere that the wipe needs to be done and will do it anyway even though the errors are already fixed.

I have two hard drives laying here already that larger than 120GB, but neither of them are on the list that someone wrote that the 522 will accept (bummer).

 

[phat_bastard]

Has this actuallly been done already to fix this specific problem? I have no fear of Linux...

I've not had the 'drive will be cleaned' error so I don't know for sure if this will resolve your issue. I have had it fix a problem where I inadvertently cancelled a drive diagnostics (fsck) where the dvr came up showing no recordings in the list.

I'm just afraid that after doing this that the 522 won't accept the drive again...

The only time I've seen the unit 'not accept' a drive is when it's not large enough to hold the partitions that the firmware wants to see.

or more likely that even if the fsck fixes errors, that the 522 has written to a log somewhere that the wipe needs to be done and will do it anyway even though the errors are already fixed.

If you're that 'afraid' then you might as well kiss your recordings goodbye. These type of things are not supported by E*, so perform them at your own risk, your mileage my vary, etc.

I have two hard drives laying here already that larger than 120GB, but neither of them are on the list that someone wrote that the 522 will accept (bummer).

If you haven't at least installed them to see, then I'm going to guess you're not the adventurous type and you probably have already wiped the original drive. If you do install one and get it partitioned and formatted by the DVR, you can then set them both up in your linux box (mount the original dvr drive read only) and copy all the files from the original dvr partitions to the 'new' ones. Then you can safely wipe the original drive and have it reformatted by the dvr.

 

[larrystotler]

I'm just afraid that after doing this that the 522 won't accept the drive again... or more likely that even if the fsck fixes errors, that the 522 has written to a log somewhere that the wipe needs to be done and will do it anyway even though the errors are already fixed.

So long as you mount the drive Read Only it will not mess up the drive. Linux is much more strict about how it habdles drives than WinDoZe.

 

[bucsbowlbound]

DVR 522 share from USB?

I know that the drive is LINUX based, I'm in no way familiar with LINUX, is there a way to share out the Partitions to access from the USB on the back so you don't have to swap drives?

 

[SimpleSimon]

I know that the drive is LINUX based, I'm in no way familiar with LINUX, is there a way to share out the Partitions to access from the USB on the back so you don't have to swap drives?

No.

 

[bucsbowlbound]

software being used to burn

I've mounted the drive see the recorded movie file sets, People I know have Tivos and use nero express to burn the movie files onto DVD's to view at later times. What works with these different file format for dvr522???

 

[Smith P.]

Nothing.

 

[bucsbowlbound]

software to burn

Don't tell me there's nothing....
Am I now realizing what a mistake I made going with dishnetwork...