Hopper HD damage, please any suggestions

[Harveyvictim001]

Greetings all,
I'm going to apologize in advance if this information is covered under other posts, but with everything I'm dealing with I hope most will understand if I'm double posting. I am in Houston, TX and I lost my home to flooding during Hurricane Harvey. While I was still evacuated, I called Dish who was extremely understanding & helpful by "freezing" my account until further notice. Once I was able to return after the flood waters had receded, of course, my Hopper had set under water. Well, I pulled the cover and put it in a container of rice, dumping rice directly onto the circuit board and let it set for about 2-3 weeks. After this, I drained the rice & put the cover back on and plugged it in to power. Lights came on and I had it hooked to a TV, and the Hopper start up screen initiated. I bypassed the no signal and went to DVR and YAY!!

there were my 200-300 movies, videos, shows. I clicked on 1 or 2 and it started playing. I disconnected and took to my temporary home to watch, and when I reconnected:

BOO!! Hard drive is now showing as failed when I run diagnostic check, it won't spin, when I hit reset it gives the quick whir and immediately stops. What have I done, can I recover any of this without spending a fortune? I called Drivesavers who had offered Hurricane victims free recovery but that ended 1 week before I called and they gave me a general quote of $1,500-$2,500. About 10 times what I can currently afford with everything else I'm dealing with. Please? Any suggestions?? Thanks so much!!
Harveyvictim001
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Oct 17, 2017 12:23 pm

 

[charlesrshell]

Greetings all,
I'm going to apologize in advance if this information is covered under other posts, but with everything I'm dealing with I hope most will understand if I'm double posting. I am in Houston, TX and I lost my home to flooding during Hurricane Harvey. While I was still evacuated, I called Dish who was extremely understanding & helpful by "freezing" my account until further notice. Once I was able to return after the flood waters had receded, of course, my Hopper had set under water. Well, I pulled the cover and put it in a container of rice, dumping rice directly onto the circuit board and let it set for about 2-3 weeks. After this, I drained the rice & put the cover back on and plugged it in to power. Lights came on and I had it hooked to a TV, and the Hopper start up screen initiated. I bypassed the no signal and went to DVR and YAY!!

there were my 200-300 movies, videos, shows. I clicked on 1 or 2 and it started playing. I disconnected and took to my temporary home to watch, and when I reconnected:

BOO!! Hard drive is now showing as failed when I run diagnostic check, it won't spin, when I hit reset it gives the quick whir and immediately stops. What have I done, can I recover any of this without spending a fortune? I called Drivesavers who had offered Hurricane victims free recovery but that ended 1 week before I called and they gave me a general quote of $1,500-$2,500. About 10 times what I can currently afford with everything else I'm dealing with. Please? Any suggestions?? Thanks so much!!
Harveyvictim001
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Oct 17, 2017 12:23 pm

WOW, sorry for your loss. There might still be moisture. Maybe try a hair dryer to dry her out some more and try again.

 

[Hall]

I think it was a fluke that it worked at first. Rice can work for a short-term exposure to water (though I would never trust it to be a long-term solution) but not underwater .... for multiple days.

 

[TalonDancer]

Are there any data recovery services that can retrieve data from a damaged Dish formatted hard drive (internal or external) and transfer it to a new drive?

 

[boba]

Kiss the programs goodbye. Call DISH to see what they are offering to Harvey victims. By the lease agreement you are responsible for damages to DISH equipment, but DISH has worked with customers after storm damages.

 

[Hall]

Are there any data recovery services that can retrieve data from a damaged Dish formatted hard drive (internal or external) and transfer it to a new drive?

True - even if they did recover it, nothing can read it. Well, a Dish receiver tied to the original account could, I guess. You'd have to BUY a DVR and swap the drives out though. Not sure if it can be put into an external enclosure and read.

 

[navychop]

No way into an external enclosure, unless plugged in as an internal.

But really, - no. I've done HDD recovery. Not meant for encrypted, not meant for such as Dish internal or external HDDs. And expen$ive!


A moment of silence for the late, great, recordings.

 

[Harveyvictim001]

Thanks for the input, guys. The company "Drivesavers" is out of California and when they quoted me, they assured me they could recover the "data"/video, and that they were experts on every kind of HDD, including the Hopper. So, I believe that I would have had a drive to plug back into the Hopper and felt like that I would have been good to go, since all the other Hopper features seem to be working. But 2 things were mentioned by the phone rep from Drivesavers: 1) that because they are excellent experts at EVERY type of drive, obviously their service is not cheap. My goodness, if I only had a list of all the videos I could replace the videos for a fraction, but unfortunately I had so much and no way I could even scratch the surface of recalling just what I've lost. and 2) that in his opinion I can forget about Dish recovering my stuff, because as he put it, they are simply not equipped to deal with HDD liquid damage. Such is now my lesson for backup, I've been pretty good about my computers but Dish..nope, not at all
Now, the suggestion for another Data recovery service is one that I'm considering. But I feel that if "Drivesavers" is where it is, most service is going to be at least in the general vicinity for competition so I don't see finding anything for a fraction, but who knows? Maybe I'll try to look.
Any other ideas, keep them coming- I certainly do appreciate it. I'm currently staying in a FEMA hotel, and I have to try to deal with my other losses... but since I'm such a movie/tv show nut, I feel like this is 1 of my biggest losses of the storm!! Thanks again ya'll

 

[Hall]

They may very well be able to recover the "data" but it won't be usable unless you buy specific hard drive models that Dish puts in Hoppers, you buy your own Hopper, and activate it with Dish. Then you get this data into the new hard drive and swap it into the Hopper.

The data is encrypted and is only readable by receivers linked to your account.

 

[ncted]

Yeah, you'd have to get the exact same hard drive model, and load whatever custom firmware (if any) Dish loads on the drives, and then do a bit copy of the old drive to the new drive. Even then, the Hopper might notice the hard drive serial has changed, as that is queryable via dmidecode or similar libraries, and not recognize the recordings. Given all the problems with copyright, Dish probably adds some salt based on hard drive specifics.

 

[Harveyvictim001]

I guess the ways that are listed are just not practical for me. I think I was kind of hoping that IF I could get the Data recovered, that Dish would be able to put onto another Hopper. And so, maybe I'm a little naive but I was thinking that Dish would be able to swap Hoppers- they did tell me when I called them during the Hurricane that I wouldn't need to worry about the equipment and they would replace due to the Hurricane. I've been a customer of Dish Network off and on (mainly on) for about 20 years, my current subscription started in 2010, and they generally know how to take care of us long time customers. So, I'm not really concerned with the equipment swap but sure wanted to save my 100's of hours of videos.

 

[dare2be]

When it looked like Irma was going to make a closer approach than it actually did, I spent days beforehand transferring titles I deemed irreplaceable onto my EHD, and then packed up the EHD with all of our other evacuation items. Just in case. I know this doesn't help you now, and I figure you had much less forewarning for Harvey than I did for Irma, but something to consider for next time, and for others.