Defective power supply! How can I rescue my recorded shows?

[cutrock]

Hello All,

Here's the situation. My 922's power supply is on the fritz, and my unit can't stay on for more than 5 minutes before it shuts down, likely due to a faulty the power supply. So it doesn't give me enough up time to transfer all the new shows from this season from my internal HD to my external HD before the power supply crashes again. Dish has arranged to send me another 922 as a replacement and I wondered if I could simply swap my hard drives between units to save my programs, or swap the power supplies. I'm an engineer, and have built my own DVR's before, and made repairs to other brands of DVR's, too. I know Dish has a policy that if they detect that you've opened your dvr, they'll charge you for the unit. But I think that policy is really more about people who abuse the unit. In this case, I'd just swap one of the defective parts to get my programs downloaded. What do you think? Would Dish really stick it to me for fixing my own unit? Is there any other work-around I haven't thought of?

 

[manteca]

i don't think is a power supply issue, some of us already had the same problem, read this topic with suggestions on how to maintain the receiver alive to let you extract the recordings:

http://www.satelliteguys.us/threads/283050-922-loud-fan-and-black-screen

swapping the hdd will erase the contents

 

[harshness]

Since you're leasing, you should probably settle for learning a lesson about archiving stuff you want to keep.

You would need to swap at least the power supplies (and/or maybe the fan) and it probably isn't what you would call "modular".

 

[navychop]

If it IS the power supply, check to see if power is delivered via a connector. If so, you can easily run wires from the new to the old and perhaps get plenty of time to move stuff to an EHD.

 

[Teehar]

Sounds like an overheating issue to me but,I'm no expert.

Dish has arranged to send me another 922 as a replacement and I wondered if I could simply swap my hard drives between units to save my programs,

That definitely won't work,as soon as the receiver starts to process the data to activate it would reformat the hdd.That's assuming that the replacement receiver would even accept the old hdd.

 

[cutrock]

Update on issue

i don't think is a power supply issue, some of us already had the same problem, read this topic with suggestions on how to maintain the receiver alive to let you extract the recordings:

http://www.satelliteguys.us/threads/283050-922-loud-fan-and-black-screen

swapping the hdd will erase the contents

Hello manteca and all the others, thank you VERY MUCH for your support! I read the thread that manteca referred me to, and tried the first suggestion of placing the 922 on its side, then running an external fan aimed at the bottom of the unit to maximize air flow. It appears to be working. I've been migrating my recordings to the external hard drive for about an hour now without interruption. So, I'm confident I'll be able to at least pull off all my "must save" shows first, and maybe everything else too. Thanks again, what a relief!

BTW, I will also say that prior to this, I was using a method whereby I would simply reboot the dvr and tell it to download only one show at a time. The dvr was staying on long enough for me to capture one episode at a time of an HD show before it would crash. Last year my 922 had crashed with the same symptoms and when I had tried this same method, I later found that some of the shows that were in mid-transfer when the dvr would reboot were lost completely. The icon showed up for the transferred show, but the file was corrupted. Now a year later, using the same method, it appears the programs caught up in a reboot mid-stream simply remained in full on the dvr. It appears there's been an software improvement in the way it transfers files so that it first copies the file to the external, then erases the original.

 

[Teehar]

Good to hear its working.Keeping them as cool as possible is the best thing you can do.I would check the vents to make sure they aren't clogged up as well.

 

[harshness]

If it IS the power supply, check to see if power is delivered via a connector.

In consumer electronics, it is pretty rare to have anything but the hard drive and maybe the fan wired. Wiring (and the associated connectors) is considered labor intensive and unreliable.

 

[navychop]

In consumer electronics, it is pretty rare to have anything but the hard drive and maybe the fan wired. Wiring (and the associated connectors) is considered labor intensive and unreliable.

I would think the PS would have to be connected via wires, with or without connectors.

 

[3HaloODST]

I would think the PS would have to be connected via wires, with or without connectors.

You would be correct, take a look at the top right.



(Thanks Scott for the pic)

EDIT: Just don't get yourself killed touching the power supply parts.

Now a year later, using the same method, it appears the programs caught up in a reboot mid-stream simply remained in full on the dvr. It appears there's been an software improvement in the way it transfers files so that it first copies the file to the external, then erases the original.

Not sure about how the 922 used to work, but the 722K had a "trick" that you could do in which if you disconnected the EHD's USB cable at the right time before the transfer completed it would leave the original on the internal drive and the copy would remain intact on the EHD as well. I haven't done it in a long time because I don't want to risk corrupting anything.