Hopper 3 becomes unusable when storage capacity reaches high 60%

[SCDave]

I see a pattern that when the hard drive reaches high 60% the hopper starts acting up the higher it gets the worse it acts to the point that a simple reboot doesn't help I can't use the DVR or live programming, the "fix" is to move a bunch of shows to the EHD.

Is anyone else having this issue?

 

[lakebum431]

That is not normal. My Hoppers constantly stay in the 75-90% full range.

 

[navychop]

Possible HDD decline. Time to call Dish. Might be time for another Timmy err- H3.

 

[SCDave]

Possible HDD decline. Time to call Dish. Might be time for another Timmy err- H3.

Hmmm it's only a month old.

 

[DISH Support]

I see a pattern that when the hard drive reaches high 60% the hopper starts acting up the higher it gets the worse it acts to the point that a simple reboot doesn't help I can't use the DVR or live programming, the "fix" is to move a bunch of shows to the EHD.

Is anyone else having this issue?

Hello there! We would be happy to take a closer look into this with you. 60% DVR usage should not be causing any issues to your receiver. This certainly sounds odd. Let's take a look into what could be causing this and find a resolution.

Can you tell us a bit more about the symptoms your receiver is showing? Are you seeing any sort of error message on the screen? If not, how is the receiver acting differently?

 

[SCDave]

Hello there! We would be happy to take a closer look into this with you. 60% DVR usage should not be causing any issues to your receiver. This certainly sounds odd. Let's take a look into what could be causing this and find a resolution.

Can you tell us a bit more about the symptoms your receiver is showing? Are you seeing any sort of error message on the screen? If not, how is the receiver acting differently?

Everything works fine until it reaches high 60 low 70% full after that it becomes either slow to respond or stop responding to everything. I have tried resetting but nothing seems to help until I offload the shows to an EHD.

 

[DISH Support]

Everything works fine until it reaches high 60 low 70% full after that it becomes either slow to respond or stop responding to everything. I have tried resetting but nothing seems to help until I offload the shows to an EHD.

There is some information from the Hopper that we would want to look over. There is a partial reset that can be done to help with slow responding or no responding scenarios. You should only need to do this once. To process a partial reset:

1. Press the MENU button twice or the Home button three times
2. Select "Tools"
3. Select "RESET TO FACTORY DEFAULTS"
4. Select "PARTIAL RESET"
5. Select "Reset" on the Reset Warning pop-up

This will not affect your timers or any DVR content. If you try this reset and the issue continues, please chat with us online at https://my.dish.com/support/contact. Our chat support team is available every day between 8am-midnight ET to help.

 

[DishSubLA]

OK, gotta say that mine is between 66% and 72%consistantly for last few years with no problems---BUT . . .

I have found that almost any DVR that has very little space left (say at 85-90's% for some time) and even at my lower 66-72% over a LONGER time is going to stress the HDD as far as a lack of wear-leveling will occur to the point of the HDD crashing, and I am seeing what I believe to be the effects of no proper wear-leveling on the same portion of the HDD I keep on hammeing away for "disposable" recordings whilst I am keeping the long ago recordings on the HDD that has not seen new action in years. I have experienced this MANY times over the years as a Dish DVR subscriber.

OP, the fact that the problems seem to clear up after creating more HDD space by transferring recordings does seem to suggest that the portion of the HDD where the DVR places new recordings is likely to fail in the not too distant future and I would suspect for not being able to apply proper wear-leveling.

This is the bane of DVR's. We all either want to keep recordings for repeat viewing or we keep them for a very long time (as in YEARS because it takes me that long sometimes to get the time to watch that movie or TV series), yet stuffing that HDD and leaving about a third--or LESS--of the HDD for repeated new recordings and deletions means we are battering the heck out of a small portion of a pretty big HDD and we lose the benifit of wear-leveling. I've learned my lesson to never let the HDD get up to the 80's or 90's %, and while my self imposed limit of 70% filled HDD has gotten me further along than in my earlier 90% filled Dish DVR HDD years, I can see all the signs of HDD problems rearing their heads, but when I did dump a fair amount of content that I had finally watched or decided the shows really weren't worth waiting to see, I also noticed improved HDD performance--fresh HDD territory to use now for wear-leveling, but filling it back up to 66-72% has brought back the minor problems.

And let's remember that the DVR is also writing to the HDD even when we watch Live TV each day for hours at at time, so relatively small portion left on the HDD for writing data gets beaten up just watching Live TV and the DVR attempts wear-leveling there as well, but can only do so much with the restricted space left for writing. Curses, all these HDD's fail at some time.