Dish 721 Validating Hard Drive

[fire_317]

I have had my 721 since September. When I received it new, it would not work out of the box and Dish swapped it. On this swap unit, since the beginning of December, I have noticed about every 2 weeks, when I power it on in the morning (it is set to auto turn off after 4 hours of inactivity), I get the message that the hard drive is validating. Two times in the past, it has wipped out the recorded programs on the hard drive (and one time even said I had a bad hard drive, that fixed itself after validating again), but in most cases it goes through validation and then Sat receiver startup and then it is fine and the contents of my hard drive is still there. Any thoughts?

thanks
Dan

 

[Randy_B]

That is certainly not normal. It shouldn't validate the HD that frequently and certainly not on its own. That occurs after a reboot, not a power down/standby. The unit is self healing in that if it detects corruption in the code it automatically downloads the entire software load, thus wiping the drive clean. I had that happen once after the unit locked up. Call advance tech support and get an RMA and replace it before you get a lot of stuff recorded and loose it all.

 

[DishSatUser]

Sounds like the HD is "dying". Many new drives support S.M.A.R.T, a method to detect and report a failing drive, so that the customer has a chance to replace before data loss.

Wonder if the 721 receives this information and reports the above mentioned error messages based on that.

Contact E* and see if you can do this under warranty before it expires (the drive as well as the warranty).