EHD issue with Hopper 3?

[blackjackmark]

Just got a new EHD and a new Hopper 3. Every time I turn the H3 on the screen shows "you have connected an external hard drive" and I have to hit OK to get rid of the screen.

The EHD is a Western Digital desktop (i.e.powered) 3 TB HDD. I know the 3TB isn't really supported but could that be the issue? From others on the forum it sounded like the only limitation when running larger that 2TB was the risk of exceeding the limit for recordings stored on the EHD and to date I haven't actually transferred anything into the EHD so I know that isn't the issue.

I wonder if the EHD is sleeping and wakes up when I power up the H3? Then again it always has power so that doesn't make sense either.

Whatever the cause I need to make it stop, it's annoying me!

 

[Partysox]

Just got a new EHD and a new Hopper 3. Every time I turn the H3 on the screen shows "you have connected an external hard drive" and I have to hit OK to get rid of the screen.

The EHD is a Western Digital desktop (i.e.powered) 3 TB HDD. I know the 3TB isn't really supported but could that be the issue? From others on the forum it sounded like the only limitation when running larger that 2TB was the risk of exceeding the limit for recordings stored on the EHD and to date I haven't actually transferred anything into the EHD so I know that isn't the issue.

I wonder if the EHD is sleeping and wakes up when I power up the H3? Then again it always has power so that doesn't make sense either.

Whatever the cause I need to make it stop, it's annoying me!

My advice is if your EHD is new return it and get a 2TB or if you got a power button use it until you need the EHD. Just my opinion but I have read the Hs can be picky about working right with anything over 2TB I do believe....

 

[xfoneguy]

Seems like whatever the exact reason. there has to be something between the H3 and EHD. The only time I ever see that message is when/if I turn the EHD off (and back on) or reboot the H3. I'd be trying a different drive but that's just me.

 

[KAB]

I wonder if the EHD is sleeping and wakes up when I power up the H3? Then again it always has power so that doesn't make sense either.

Most EHDs go to sleep, by design. But in your case, the Hopper thinks it has been turned off or disconnected, then back on.
What model EHD? Do you have another USB cable?

 

[navychop]

I leave my EHDs off unless I am using them.

 

[evilsofa]

I have the same sort of issue with my 2 EHD's however sometimes my hopper just displays the message even though I do not have either of them plugged in. I think the USB stack on the H3 is buggy at best as I can NOT use both my EHD's at the same time, I can play from either one but if i need to copy to either one it fails, if i unplug the one i do not want to send the program to then it will move it without issue.

 

[LotsOfEHDs]

I have successfully connected both a 4TB and 5TB drive to my new Hopper 3. For my previous Hopper 2000 it *appeared* that 3TB was the actual limit regardless of what Dish claims to support. Having done a bit more investigation I think there was a chance that the Hopper 2000 might have supported these drives as well. The key difference has to do the enclosure used for the EHD. The older enclosures report 512 byte blocks or sectors because that is granularity reported by older drives. However some of the new enclosure, to work with newer drives that use 4096 byte blocks or sectors, report all attached drives with a 4096 byte granularity. This means that for a equivalent capacity, drives with or reported with 4096 byte granularity end up using Logical Block Addresses (LBAs) that 8 times smaller magnitude than the older enclosures. Large drives in older enclosures reporting 512 byte granularity overflow the partition tables used to carve up the drives in to multiple partitions by the Hopper and essentially fail to work. The trick to getting newer / larger capacity drives to function with a Hopper is to use a new enclosure. I have tested up to 5TB successfully. I suspect that even larger drives can work as well. I have it loaded with ~800 movies and still have about 1.8TB free. It still remains to be seen if the 999 recording limit is still in effect. I'm hoping that limit may have been raised on the Hopper 3.
For those that might want to try a larger drive, here is the enclosure I purchased from Amazon that appears to support the larger capacity drives successfully. There is another version that has a built in fan thats a few bucks more. I've tried both and they work fine.