There is a technique that allows you to transfer all your programming that you want to protect to an EHD, take the EHD to a computer running Linux, make an image copy of the EHD, attach the original EHD back to your Hopper, and finally transfer the programming back to the Hopper. If your Hopper dies, you can create a restore EHD from the backup image and transfer the programs you want to restore from that.