Hopper Internal Replacement Drive List

[BBCInc]

First some caveats... I know the Hopper is fairly new, most are leased, and it's easy to get a replacement from Dish whether owned or leased. I bought a HWS and want to be proactive by setting aside a replacement internal hard drive now while they're still available on the market (admittedly conjecture, but 722 and 722k replacement drives are very scarce now and as I said, I want to be proactive). I have had bad experience with the quality of Dish refurbs and estimate that after the a year has passed without failure that 5 or so years down the road the most likely point of failure for my Hopper will be the hard drive. I don't want to take the risk of getting an otherwise defective refurb should I experience a diagnosable hard drive failure with my current non-refurbed unit.

What I've learned by Googling is that the hard drive used in the Hopper and HWS is likely a 2TB Seagate Pipeline hard drive. No specific model number has surfaced. Looking online for that generic drive spec leads to only sale listings stating this drive has been discontinued.

So, finally!, my question is whether there is any expertise out there as to available hard drive models that will serve as workable (I know the Dish Hopper firmware will only recognize certain drives) spares for my HWS internal drive?

 

[dwarren2]

If your worried about the internal HD crashing, just move all your recordings to an ehd as you record them, Then if your Hopper dies, you will still have access to all your recordings. Trying to replace an internal drive will void any warrantee.

 

[garys]

Even if the Hopper is owned, Dish will replace it very quickly. I wouldn't be concerned about replacing an Internal Hard Drive, let alone having one on hand as a replacement.

 

[Bobby]

Even if the Hopper is owned, Dish will replace it very quickly. I wouldn't be concerned about replacing an Internal Hard Drive, let alone having one on hand as a replacement.

Unless your name is Haller...

 

[TheKrell]

There is a list available for DVR receivers prior to the Hopper over on the Yahoo group DishMod. But I have not seen the list updated any time recently, and definitely saw no mention of suitable disks for the Hopper in email messages themselves. Good luck!

 

[DWS44]

I'm just trying to imagine keeping the same Dish receiver for 5+ years.

 

[KKlare]

I kept a 501 for a long time. The 811 for a short time, bought the sucker 921 but it went off-line with the 622, which I kept a long time. That augmented by a 722 and then another. I like the Hopper, leased just before Sling, but it could still use some menu work on timers and general user interface--still better than any prior one.
-Ken

 

[garys]

I'm just trying to imagine keeping the same Dish receiver for 5+ years.

I kept a couple of 7100 for many years, 6000 for several, 921 from the day it came out (replaced with a 722) and also still have a 622 from the first week it was released. It's not too hard for me to imagine.

 

[Stujol]

The hopper takes a Seagate Pipeline HD hard drive which is available at amazon for $59.00. I replaced mine in my purchased hopper. It was pretty simple, about 10 screws total. Started the hopper back up and it formatted the drive and we were good to go. I did try a 750 GB seagate hard drive that I had and that would not work. Live tv worked fine and my joey quit pausing but no recording ability. The model number of the 2 TB pipeline drive is
ST2000VM003.

 

[bwexler]

Is there some reason why a Western Digital drive wouldn't work?
Maybe even a 3 or 4 terabyte?

 

[Voyager6]

Is there some reason why a Western Digital drive wouldn't work?
Maybe even a 3 or 4 terabyte?

Dish has a list of drives in its software that are the only drives that will work in their equipment.

 

[BBCInc]

And so far the only drive on that list for the Hopper is the aforementioned ST2000VM003.

What would be cool would be for Dish to implement some sort of mirrored RAID design so the MTBF could be staggered over multiple drives. With the 3TB Hopper drive, lots of recordings are at risk during a HD failure and the external HD route is ok but problematical considering its one-way nature. Although I could foresee some technical difficulties with getting pipeline/multiple stream drives working well in a RAID scheme.

 

[ChadT41]

And so far the only drive on that list for the Hopper is the aforementioned ST2000VM003.

What would be cool would be for Dish to implement some sort of mirrored RAID design so the MTBF could be staggered over multiple drives. With the 3TB Hopper drive, lots of recordings are at risk during a HD failure and the external HD route is ok but problematical considering its one-way nature. Although I could foresee some technical difficulties with getting pipeline/multiple stream drives working well in a RAID scheme.

I'm sure it was just a mistyped number, but correction to the size of the HDD. It's only 2 TB, not 3.