Issue with 211Z receiver and external hard drive

[boulderdentist]

Have a purchased 211Z put into service 09-14 with the DVR option and a Western Digital 2TB external hard drive with its own power supply, new in 09-15, so less than one year old. Combination has worked flawlessly until about a week ago. Now each day when turning system on get a message checking hard drive with a green bar. It might get 2/3 to 3/4 done, then starts over, this is an endless loop of checking hard drive, never completing that task. Let it go from 8:30 A.M. to 4:30 P.M. still checking hard drive. I don't believe there is any error code. This started about one week ago. If you reset receiver it acquires signal, downloads program guide and seems fine for the rest of the day. I can then access the EHD to record and watch recorded shows. Next day back to checking hard drive. Wondered if related to what used to be called system integrity check, or the 3:00 A.M. updates? Any thoughts would be appreciated, if I had another EHD could eliminate drive going bad. Possibly receiver? I checked all connections and cords, plugged receiver directly into wall outlet so is not a power strip issue. The 211Z does not have a built in hard drive but with DVR option and own EHD functions as a DVR. Software is L747.

Thanks,
Scott

 

[KAB]

You may have already tried this, but......do a pull plug power down the EHD. Then do a pull plug reboot of the receiver and restart. Following that, power the EHD back up and see what happens.

 

[boulderdentist]

You may have already tried this, but......do a pull plug power down the EHD. Then do a pull plug reboot of the receiver and restart. Following that, power the EHD back up and see what happens.

I did your suggested procedure last night, receiver detected EHD, checked for compatibility, then acquired signal, downloaded program guide worked well last night, this AM back to checking hard drive. I am wondering if the software updated and has a bug???

 

[Bobby]

I did your suggested procedure last night, receiver detected EHD, checked for compatibility, then acquired signal, downloaded program guide worked well last night, this AM back to checking hard drive. I am wondering if the software updated and has a bug???

If the software had a bug we would hear from more than one person about the issue.

 

[boulderdentist]

If the software had a bug we would hear from more than one person about the issue.

That is logical and makes sense. I had done a lot of searching, reading and this seems to be a rare problem. So while there may be little interest in a topic affecting few will offer what I found. I swapped out the WD hard drive for a Seagate and the problem seems to be solved. Something within the hard drive is not allowing the receiver to complete its check. It still functions but will not allow a completed check. With new one solving my problem has to be the WD drive. I wonder if reformatting would have solved it? I think the answer is no but is there any way to transfer recorded content from old drive to new?

Scott

 

[Foxbat]

Hard drives do die sooner sometimes. If you want to play with it, there are ways to boot a PC using a Linux distro and copy events from the old WD drive to the new Seagate drive, but it can take a pretty long time unless you have USB 3 EHDs or can extract the HDDs from their enclosures and mount them directly onto the PC's internal SATA connectors.

The last time I did this was late last year when I upgraded my 640 GB WD to a DIY 2 TB HD & enclosure.

 

[ppappas]

I tried the Linux copy method, but couldn't get the copied drive to work. The best solution I have found is to use a hard drive duplicator. As long as you can get access to the bare drive, no enclosure, this works really well. I have used this to make backup copies of my EHD. It will take several hours to clone a 2 TB drive so be prepared. Not sure this is the model I purchased, but you get the idea. Amazon product ASIN B003WV5DLA

 

[ppappas]

Hmm... Link didn't post correctly from my iPad, but just look on Amazon for HDD duplicators.