what size ehd should I get

[navychop]

Yes.

 

[Jim5506]

And remember, with very large drives, there is a 1000 program limit (may be 999) on the EHD, so if you record 1000 30minute programs and it only fills 1TB of the drive, that is all you can record until you delete something.

A 3,000MB drive recording a 2GB per hour could theoretically hold 1,500 1 hour programs, but there is that limit to how many programs you can record.

Perhaps Dish will raise that number if they can recognize a 3TB drive.

Then again if you record 2 hour movies, you could put 750 of them on that 3 TB drive and when it finally goes belly up - they are all gone at once!

 

[dangue]

And remember, with very large drives, there is a 1000 program limit (may be 999) on the EHD, so if you record 1000 30minute programs and it only fills 1TB of the drive, that is all you can record until you delete something.

A 3,000MB drive recording a 2GB per hour could theoretically hold 1,500 1 hour programs, but there is that limit to how many programs you can record.

Perhaps Dish will raise that number if they can recognize a 3TB drive.

Then again if you record 2 hour movies, you could put 750 of them on that 3 TB drive and when it finally goes belly up - they are all gone at once!

That's honestly no different than if any drive were to go belly up. It is what it is.

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[mbolack]

Which brings me to the question... is there any way to back up this drive so I don't lose its contents when it eventually dies? Seems like that would be a great new function we could request... the ability of the hopper to *copy* a recording from one drive to another, or back to its internal HD, rather than only being able to move them.

 

[TheKrell]

This unfortunately is not a feature that will be added in our lifetime. DRM issues dictate only ONE COPY of the program is supposed to exist. Copying is no longer allowed.

I get around this prohibition by mounting the EHD on my computer, e.g. with a Linux LiveCD distribution, and then copying the folders to somewhere else. You can't play back the programs on a PC due to encryption. But at least you can save it for future restoration and playback on another EHD on the same account.

 

[navychop]

Which brings me to the question... is there any way to back up this drive so I don't lose its contents when it eventually dies? Seems like that would be a great new function we could request... the ability of the hopper to *copy* a recording from one drive to another, or back to its internal HD, rather than only being able to move them.

This unfortunately is not a feature that will be added in our lifetime. DRM issues dictate only ONE COPY of the program is supposed to exist. Copying is no longer allowed.

I get around this prohibition by mounting the EHD on my computer, e.g. with a Linux LiveCD distribution, and then copying the folders to somewhere else. You can't play back the programs on a PC due to encryption. But at least you can save it for future restoration and playback on another EHD on the same account.

Or run a RAID setup. Pricey. But I've done it for the more important stuff.