HWS Recording Playback Freezing - HDD Failing ?

[DennisL]

I have a HWS with a single Joey 1.0, no EHD. I'm trying to understand the cause of a problem I've started to experience the last couple of days and possible resolutions before going to tech support. Would appreciate any thoughts about what's happening and what I might do to resolve.

Yesterday I found that recorded events would freeze periodically when played back at the set attached to the Hopper, usually locking up for between 3-10 seconds, and then resuming playback at a point advanced about the length of the pause. The problem occurred on any recorded event I tried, regardless of how long ago the recording was made. No problems with freezes watching live TV but, if the live broadcast was paused or rewound and played back, the freezes would occur at the same frequency. Resetting the Hopper (power cord and from the diagnostics menu) a couple of times did not clear the problem.

This morning, while watching live TV, the Hopper froze briefly and went into a reboot loop (tried 2-3 times), eventually displaying a "Hard Drive Failure 311" error and asking for a power cord reset. At that point live TV was OK and system status showed a bad HDD (red X). First time I've ever seen the 311 error.

Did the power cord reset. Hopper came back up OK, HDD did not reformat. Recordings were still intact, but freezes on playback still occurring. The HDD area (field f) of system status was blank just after the reset, but at some point it switched to good (green). I looked at the HDD counters and, except for temps which looked OK, wasn't sure if anything there pointed to a problem.

Am I looking at a developing HDD failure here? That's my best guess. Is the best resolution to replace the Hopper.? Or something else I might do?

I hate to complicate the Hopper problem further, but there's also a problem now on the Joey. I can't see a connection to the Hopper problem, but include it here in case there might be. Recorded events also freeze when played back on the Joey (that's expected). But live TV on the Joey is also freezing in the same way as recordings do. Resetting the Joey does not clear the problem. I wouldn't think that a problem with the Hopper's HDD would affect live broadcasts on the Joey, but maybe so?

Any thoughts and advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

[AbeK@DISH]

I have a HWS with a single Joey 1.0, no EHD. I'm trying to understand the cause of a problem I've started to experience the last couple of days and possible resolutions before going to tech support. Would appreciate any thoughts about what's happening and what I might do to resolve.

Yesterday I found that recorded events would freeze periodically when played back at the set attached to the Hopper, usually locking up for between 3-10 seconds, and then resuming playback at a point advanced about the length of the pause. The problem occurred on any recorded event I tried, regardless of how long ago the recording was made. No problems with freezes watching live TV but, if the live broadcast was paused or rewound and played back, the freezes would occur at the same frequency. Resetting the Hopper (power cord and from the diagnostics menu) a couple of times did not clear the problem.

This morning, while watching live TV, the Hopper froze briefly and went into a reboot loop (tried 2-3 times), eventually displaying a "Hard Drive Failure 311" error and asking for a power cord reset. At that point live TV was OK and system status showed a bad HDD (red X). First time I've ever seen the 311 error.

Did the power cord reset. Hopper came back up OK, HDD did not reformat. Recordings were still intact, but freezes on playback still occurring. The HDD area (field f) of system status was blank just after the reset, but at some point it switched to good (green). I looked at the HDD counters and, except for temps which looked OK, wasn't sure if anything there pointed to a problem.

Am I looking at a developing HDD failure here? That's my best guess. Is the best resolution to replace the Hopper.? Or something else I might do?

I hate to complicate the Hopper problem further, but there's also a problem now on the Joey. I can't see a connection to the Hopper problem, but include it here in case there might be. Recorded events also freeze when played back on the Joey (that's expected). But live TV on the Joey is also freezing in the same way as recordings do. Resetting the Joey does not clear the problem. I wouldn't think that a problem with the Hopper's HDD would affect live broadcasts on the Joey, but maybe so?

Any thoughts and advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

I would recommend if you have not contacted us already to contact us via Facebook or Chat for a resolution.
Facebook: www.facebook.com/dish CHAT: https://www.mydish.com/support/contact you will need to provide us with your Account# and 4 digit Pin#. The 311 is a hard drive error.

 

[DennisL]

I would recommend if you have not contacted us already to contact us via Facebook or Chat for a resolution.

Thanks for the reply, Alex. The disk hasn't failed completely ... yet. Now getting other odd behavior, long pauses on key presses and occasional freezes on live TV. Was able to copy recordings from HDD to EHD, but they still freeze on playback. I've already contacted support and a replacement HWS is on the way. Will post an update when I've got the replacement up and running.

 

[AbeK@DISH]

Sounds good let us know if you need more help.

 

[DennisL]

The replacement receiver resolved the problem. Recordings that were saved to the EHD before the swap still freeze up when played back on the new receiver, no saving them I guess. What I can't explain, though, is that apparently the HDD problem on the Hopper was also causing live TV to freeze up on the Joey - that problem has disappeared. Can't see a connection, but not going to argue with success.

 

[n0qcu]

The replacement receiver resolved the problem. Recordings that were saved to the EHD before the swap still freeze up when played back on the new receiver, no saving them I guess. What I can't explain, though, is that apparently the HDD problem on the Hopper was also causing live TV to freeze up on the Joey - that problem has disappeared. Can't see a connection, but not going to argue with success.

That would be because all "live" viewing is actually played back from the harddrive buffer. That is what allows you to pause live programming./