External Hard Drive Archive Bug Thread

It would be nice if Dish could make a player that would be tied to your account to play the EHDD programs...

I recently upgraded from a 622 to a 722. I asked the question about transferring the hard drive permissions part to the new recevier and I was told that this was automatic because service was activated on my account - not on any specific receiver. I would think that since both receivers are under the same account that you should be able to switch it between receivers, but I would definitely talk to tech support before trying.
 
My buddy at work had his 722 go bad, and Dish shipped him a replacement. He moved his external drive to the new one and was able to access his recordings without any problems too.
 
Yes, you can move the EHD to any USB 2 receiver on your account. The $40 enabling fee was for that. The catch is that moving the drive could against a 3 strikes quota, whether you move it to see it in another room or to replace a failed receiver. Each EHD, I assume, has its own 3 count. Of course, they said they would allow moving the EHD to any receiver on the account SOMETIME.

If you have multiple failures or moves, you will need to unload the content onto the 622/722/?, thus emptying the EHD and getting it to reformat itself on the reload. This should be easy enough for smaller drives, say less than 330 GB. But it will require multiple unloads and stores to another EHD for large drives like my 2 750GB, one full and the other getting there, because of the smaller available drive in the receiver. This would require a fair amount of real time to do, too.

My current complaint is that I can't get the last of the drive space on the EHD--if it says I have 7 GB left, it will not move a 5 GB file to it, saying the drive is in use by the other TV. The real problem is probably that the disk space is fragmented and they must not have included linking of fragments in the code nor a background defragmenter as would be found on a "real" computer. BTW, the error message goes to both outputs even if the other is turned off. It then gets hung in waiting to dismiss the error message on the output you are not looking at.

-Ken
 
The first problems I had was accidentally stopping a transfer, thus causing corrupted data on the EHD. Over time, the 622 no longer recognized it.
I went ahead and did the re-format.
Now, I have recently had to replace my 622 with a different one. It seemed to recognize my EHD without a problem. I could even see, and delete movies from it. I can NOT however View any movies on it, and I can not transfer movies to it. WTF?
I was planning on doing a re-format again, but have decided to wait until 449 rolls out to me. Because I Just KNOW that if I re-format now, the 449 (With my luck) will just render all my recordings with the 448 useless.
How can the 622 be so weak, that it see's a program, allows it to be deleted, but refuses to play it, or allow a transfer to it????
When I try to transfer to it, it just gives me an error.
When I try to play a movie on it, it quickly gives me the information display of the show I was just watching, and then the screen just goes black and nothing happens. If I unplug the EHD and plug it back in, and go into USB connections, a screen comes up saying the USB is currently playing a movie, you must stop play to access. I have to do a reboot just to have access to the EHD again. Of the 67 movies on my EHD, I can play ONE of them near the bottom of the list, but the rest just go to black screen. This Really doesn't make any sense to me. Anybody have an idea????
 
Just a thought:

Are you using the original USB cable that came with the drive??

I had similar errors like yours with the same EHD, but I was using another USB cable that I had lying around because the supplied one wasn't long enough for where I wanted to put it. When I used the original cable, it worked great!! I went out and bought a long enough proper cable for high-speed data transfers and it's been working flawlessly since....
 
I have a 622 box and recently bought a Western Digital MyBook external drive model WDH1U5000N. Hooked it up without any trouble using the USB cable it came with and transferred programs successfully. When I have tried to play programs from the external drive, it will freeze up. Using the skip back/forward buttons doesn't do anything. The receiver will stay frozen for a few mins then finally reset itself. On a few occasions, the external program listing is blank and I have to reset the receiver to get them to show up. I called Dish Tech Support and they are "working" on a software upgrade.

Any ideas? I believe this MyBook is a newer model so I'm wondering if it is having issues or if it is the receiver. I have had this 622 for about 18 months.
 
Using LINUX, has anyone successfully copied one external hard drive contents to another external hard drive? It would be nice to backup these drives.
 
wasnt sure where to post this but how many hours do you get for hd and for sd programming with a 500gb and 750 gb?
 
490gb for 75 hd movies... wouldn't have a clue in hours as size varies. You will find that size is important, ranges from 4gb to 11gb per movie. Hours at best would be a fuzzy figure. But if you average at 2 hours per movie, that would be approx. 150 hours of HD.
 
I have 88 HD movies on one of my 750gb drives, with 92gb left on it. Compression amounts seem to vary greatly, but on average, it's been my experience that a 2-hour HD movie takes between 4-7gb of storage.

I have two Cavalry 750's. They work great and have given me no problems at all, thankfully.
 
Bad experience with WD 1 TB My Book Home Edition and 622

WD 1 TB My Book Home Edition, triple interface (USB 2, FW 400, eSATA). I connected the drive, formatted it, archived 33 programs from the 622. Programs would play from the EHD for ~ 4 minutes and then freeze for several minutes, play another minute or so and freeze again. Completely unusable. I reset the drive, the receiver, no change. I tried to transfer the recordings back to the 622. Approximately 10 minutes into attempts to transfer any recording, the process would stop and generate an 855 error. Conversations with Dish technical support were less than enlightening. After wasting a couple of days swapping cables and resetting the devices dozens of times, I reached a point (I have no idea how) where I was able to transfer recordings at a terribly slow pace. A 30 minute program (HBO In Treatment --HD) would take well over an hour. It's taken a week to "unarchive" the recordings. Needless to say, I'm not too happy with my $39.99 investment....
 
Welcome, KSeago. Sorry to hear about your difficulties, 1TB drives aren't "officially" supported. Some may work (like some Buffalo models), but only up to 750gb drives are supported at this time. I'm surprised that the dish tech didn't tell you that........then again, maybe I'm not that surprised.
 
Kseago, for what its worth,I had the same problems with my LaCie Porsche drive with a Samsung hdd. The problem was that the power cable was not pushed in firmly enough. thus a loose connection.
Dan
 

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