External Hard Drive Archive Bug Thread

[gadgtfreek]

Guys, keeping in mind Ive not had a 722K with OTA tuner and EHD since they first came out, I have a question.

There was a small bug, and I think it was that if you deleted a recording off the EHD, while something was recording live, it would blank it. There was some problem like that in the beginning, is it fixed?

 

[tomeckle]

I just purchased a WD elements 1 TB drive to use as an ehd to my 722 dvr. I am unable to consistently copy or archive programs. Occasionally, a program transfers, but most end up locking the receiver, requiring a reboot. the DVR software is L676...so far I am able to generally watch recorded programs, though in the past some have locked up the receiver. I am afraid my dvr is crashing and want to watch or archive as many programs as possible. Any assistance, would be much appreciated...
Tom

 

[gadgtfreek]

Will all the ViP's now handle a 1TB EHD?

 

[BobMurdoch]

I have a 2 TB drive on my 722. As long as it is a single disk housing (not two drives linked inside a single form factor), then it should work. I don't know if it can handle larger than 2 GB, but I have a 2 TB Western Digital box that works like a charm. GADS of space.

 

[KAB]

The 9, 7 and 6** series can take 2T. The 211/K is still at 1T.

 

[gadgtfreek]

The 9, 7 and 6** series can take 2T. The 211/K is still at 1T.

Thanks guys.

 

[mmcl26554]

Just authorized a 211k to replace one that died. It wants to reformat the EHD from the 211K it replaced. Says it can't use a hard drive from another account, but the account has not changed, I only have one account. Called and the CSR who did not seem to have a good grasp of the problem said to wait 24 hours. I have replaced other receivers (622, 612 & 722k) but not had a problem of the old EHD not being recognized. Anyone know anything about this?
M

 

[MattG@DISH]

Just authorized a 211k to replace one that died. It wants to reformat the EHD from the 211K it replaced. Says it can't use a hard drive from another account, but the account has not changed, I only have one account. Called and the CSR who did not seem to have a good grasp of the problem said to wait 24 hours. I have replaced other receivers (622, 612 & 722k) but not had a problem of the old EHD not being recognized. Anyone know anything about this?
M

PM your account number please

 

[3HaloODST]

The 9, 7 and 6** series can take 2T. The 211/K is still at 1T.

Not 100% on this, but it seems I read somewhere that the 211/211K recently received an update to support 2TB drives.

 

[mmcl26554]

Hooray for Matt, he fixed the problem and all is great. DIRT is wonderful!

 

[hdflsts2002]

Harshness is absolutely correct here. Neither the FS or Coms care about fragmentation. There is no "True" defragmentation program for EXT3 FS, however EXT3 does a very good job of limiting fragmentation. KKlare's analogy of the half brick holes is a good way of thinking about fragmentation however the FS knows of these half brick holes and just chops your bricks in half to fill them. While it may slow read and write times ever so slightly as your heads dance across the platters looking for those half brick holes, it will still use them now there will be some waisted space as the FS now needs to keep track of the location of each of those half bricks, but that's it's job and the way every os and fs has worked for many, many, many years.

 

[KKlare]

Some file systems in olden times used a link list of block pointers. You could add more until the whole disk was filled.

(This resulted in even worse problems. In writing a program to fix this problem circa 1973 I ended up with fragments lost, i.e., not linked to anything, for say 90% of the 256kB fixed-head disk--finally straightened it out and recovered all the space. Now my smallest disk is 750GB, 3 million X. And that work disk cost more than my TV and 10 new drives.)

The Dish EXT3 system sometimes is able to get larger files into multiple holes but I still have some drives with plenty (well, a little extra) space that will not accept a file smaller than the "available space."

I do wish they would report the sizes and space without actually mounting a drive--one less power up and down while I decide if the new copy is an improvement.
-Ken

 

[dangue]

I'm having a problem with my 722 and my EHDs. I have two Seagate FreeAgent Desk 1.5 TB drives that I have used in the past with this receiver (one full and one 2/3s full). I just plugged each of them into the rear USB port and the receiver does not recognize that anything has been plugged in. When I plug them into the front USB port I get error code 850 ("you have connected an unsupported device to the USB port"). For the sake of thoroughness, I got a few of my older Dish EHDs out of storage (Maxtor 500GB drives) and got the exact same result.

A hard reset changed things slightly. The rear USB port still does not recognize that any drives are plugged in. The front USB port now recognizes the Maxtor, but gives error 852 saying that it is tied to a different receiver and needs to be reformatted to work. The Seagate still comes up with error 850.

I should also note that the 722 detects my Sling Adapter when I plug it into the rear USB port (so I have no idea what the deal is with that port not even recognizing that an EHD is plugged in). This is honestly driving me nuts. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[MattG@DISH]

Has the receiver been disconnected or anything like that?

Will you PM your phone number or account number? I'll try something on my end

 

[TheKrell]

Just for grins, are you also swapping out the cable and power supply when you try different EHDs? If you are, I'm suspicious somebody with a Windows computer plugged them all in and "helped".

 

[dangue]

Has the receiver been disconnected or anything like that?

Will you PM your phone number or account number? I'll try something on my end

MattG,

Thanks for the quick response. I'll PM you the account info directly. I'm not sure what you mean in asking if the receiver has been disconnected. I did unplug it to power it down to see if that would fix the problem. It did not. It has been in service with Dish (no disconnection) for several years. I have not had any EHDs connected since I acquired a Sling Adapter this past Christmas.

Just for grins, are you also swapping out the cable and power supply when you try different EHDs? If you are, I'm suspicious somebody with a Windows computer plugged them all in and "helped".

I've swapped out the power supplies, but not the USB cable. I'll try that now. None of the EHDs have been formatted for PC (they are in my sole possession).

 

[MattG@DISH]

Sometimes receivers can lose their "home key" (similar to authorization) which is what tells the receiver what account it's on. I'm hoping a "hit" updates that home key so the receiver reads the EHD's again, without requiring a format

 

[dangue]

I'm embarrassed to say that the simple solution of swapping out USB cables fixed the issue with my Seagate drives. Thanks TheKrell! Next time I'll be sure to try and cover that step before posting here. MattG, I'm guessing that if the receiver is recognizing the Seagate drives but still wants to reformat my Maxtor drives that the Maxtor drives will likely have to be reformatted? If there's still hope for the Maxtor drives, let me know and I will PM you the account info. If not, I think I might call it a day on those and set them up to work with my PC. 500GB in the world of video archiving isn't all that much anyhow.

 

[MattG@DISH]

Were the Maxtor drives hooked to this same receiver before? Or were they on a different receiver family/account?

 

[dangue]

Were the Maxtor drives hooked to this same receiver before? Or were they on a different receiver family/account?

This is the only Dish account I've ever had. However, I can't be sure if the Maxtor receivers were ever hooked up to this 722 (it was a replacement for one that went bad a couple of years back).