can I rob a 510's hard drive?

[Stacy A]

I had an old Dish 510 DVR that went bad a couple of years ago. I think it was just the sat tuner in it that went bad. I think the hard drive was okay. I have removed the hard drive in the hopes that I can reformat it, put it in a case and use it. Is that possible? If so, how do I do that? It's a Maxtor 120GB.

 

[Van]

Shouldn't be anything more than just right clicking the drive and selecting properties and format.

 

[navychop]

Tiny drive, by today's standards. Of limited use.

 

[Agonizing Fury]

Not sure if it existed yet in the 510s, but I'm pretty sure dish's current DVRs lock the hard drive and it can only be unlocked by the firmware sending a security code to the drive. This was because the DVR events on the internal drive are not encrypted. There is (was) a way to get around this, but I believe going into it would be beyond the scope of the satelliteguys' TOS.

 

[Smith P.]

Totally off subjet, AF.

501/508/510 with PATA/IDE 40/80/120 GB disks NEVER been locked or protected from taking out the recordings.

Perhaps you will be glad to know more?
622/722 had SATA disks with non-encrypted content but with disabled spin-on after powering up. Ppl found way to spin-up it by booting from LinuxCD and run ex2fsck for restore corrupted internal and EHD disks.

 

[Stacy A]

Not interested in any hacking... just wanted to use the drive. I own the 510. It's small and is of a good size to carry with us to off load digital pics on when on vacation, etc... My wife is an avid photographer and routinely fills her laptops tiny (80GB) drive up with pics. When I buy an enclosure what can I use to make it a USB drive? I took the ribbon cable as well as a 4 wired connector on the drive. Will I need these?

 

[Smith P.]

Usually not - those IDE USB enclosure had both cables inside, interface (flat) and power (4 wires).

 

[Stacy A]

Thanks, Smith.

 

[Pepper]

Better idea might be to sell the unit as is, to someone who wants to use it for parts. There seem to be a few 50x users still out there. Use the profit to buy a bigger drive.