I have a 622 with a Maxtor 360GB HD attached. Its too small so I want to replace it. I'll probably hook it up to my 211. I'm trying to decide between the WD My Book Essential 1TB and the WD Elements 1TB droves. Both are roughly the same price. Which one is better?
Which WD EHD is better?
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I don't know which one is better; all I can say is that I have a 622 to which I added the Essential 1TB model and it's worked flawlessly (albeit a bit slowly). Since it seems that the Dish receivers are finicky about which model drive you use I would suggest confirming (through a search on WD Essential) my experience and going that way.
I think the elements does not have the power save feature so you won't have to disable it.
The new essentials have power save software so you will need to disable it so it works correctly with your dvr.
I am using the Western Digital My Book Essential 1TB EHD.
I have it hooked up to my VIP211 and it has worked flawlessly so far. I Am planning on buying another one.
The unit I have is no longer available so I will have to decide which is the best one to purchase in the "My Book Essential" line also?
I have it hooked up to my VIP211 and it has worked flawlessly so far. I Am planning on buying another one.
The unit I have is no longer available so I will have to decide which is the best one to purchase in the "My Book Essential" line also?
I have two WD Book Essential 500 GB, they both have worked flawlessly for a couple of years. I know it's not the same size that you're looking at but wanted to share my results with the WD Essential EHD.
Do you have to do anything with the software first, or just plug it in, and it's ready to go?
Plug it in and your receiver will ask if you want to format the EHDD, let it format and reboot and you should be set. 
Plug it in and your receiver will ask if you want to format the EHDD, let it format and reboot and you should be set.
I meant disabling the power save feature. Do I need to doing anything with that?
Not to contradict a previous poster (well, yes, I am contradicting, but with "all due respect") but I don't think the Essential has a power save feature. Regardless, I did absolutely nothing with the software, just plugged the drive in, formatted and started archiving.
I'm thinking about picking this one up:
Western Digital - My Book Essential 1TB External USB 2.0 Hard Drive - WDBAAF0010HBK-NESN
It does have the WD SmartWare control center software but those that posted reviews that used it for a Dish DVR said it worked perfectly.
Any other ideas anyone?
Western Digital - My Book Essential 1TB External USB 2.0 Hard Drive - WDBAAF0010HBK-NESN
It does have the WD SmartWare control center software but those that posted reviews that used it for a Dish DVR said it worked perfectly.
Any other ideas anyone?
You might have an older version, the older ones I have do not have the power save. There was a post in the tech forum that talked about the new ones having it and needing to be disabled. I actually have a Seagate with a similar feature and it worked much better after i turned it off, the formatting does not remove the software on the WD or Seagate. Or I might be wrong and its not true for all models, just know that my Seagate locked up after being on for awhile since it went into hibernation and i could not move stuff on to it without a reset, but since i turned off the software this has not happened. I have read posts with similar experiences with the new WDs.
I have 4 My Book units (650MB, 1TB, 2TB) and they all work fine. Format and go.
I have seen posts state that you can only use 1TB of a 2TB EHD. I'm at 25% on my 2TB and it shows 1.5TB of space remaining, so i'm curious to see what happens when I hit the 1TB remaining mark.
BTW, what is a good way to switch between EHDs? I'm currently moving the power cord and USB from unit to unit. Has anyone tried tying multiple EHDs together w/ a USB hub and then powering up only one unit at a time?
Multiple EHD hub support would would be a great feature to have on a receiver.
I have seen posts state that you can only use 1TB of a 2TB EHD. I'm at 25% on my 2TB and it shows 1.5TB of space remaining, so i'm curious to see what happens when I hit the 1TB remaining mark.
BTW, what is a good way to switch between EHDs? I'm currently moving the power cord and USB from unit to unit. Has anyone tried tying multiple EHDs together w/ a USB hub and then powering up only one unit at a time?
Multiple EHD hub support would would be a great feature to have on a receiver.
I have bought 6 WD 500GB MyBook drives for my 622 and I've had considerable problems with them. I get the occasionally problem transfering a recording back and forth and have lost a couple of shows in the process. I have also on two occassions had a drive no longer be able to delete recordings which required me to copy everything off of them and reformat them.
Recently I have lost all the recordings on two of them although I'm in the process of manually recovering them. On one drive it shows the drive as empty but I can see from the amount of available space that the files are still there. On the other drive my receiver freezes when I try to access it. Both have reported file system errors when I ran e2fsck on them. I don't know if it's the drive or E*'s software just sucks.
I would argue that you should go for smaller instead of larger drives. Then if you lose a whole drive, you limit your loss. I'm a big fan of Dish, but the EHD stuff seems incredibly flaky to me.
Recently I have lost all the recordings on two of them although I'm in the process of manually recovering them. On one drive it shows the drive as empty but I can see from the amount of available space that the files are still there. On the other drive my receiver freezes when I try to access it. Both have reported file system errors when I ran e2fsck on them. I don't know if it's the drive or E*'s software just sucks.
I would argue that you should go for smaller instead of larger drives. Then if you lose a whole drive, you limit your loss. I'm a big fan of Dish, but the EHD stuff seems incredibly flaky to me.
Thats part of what was happening to me, just would not let me do anything and lost some recordings while transfering, I reset the receiver and unplugged the usb and replugged and worked. I then disabled the power save and this stopped happeing. Also if you ever just cut power to the drive this can runin it, happened to one i had connected to a 211.
WD Product Update
If you get a seagate just get the freeagent software off of download.com and in there is an option to disable the power save, it does not reformat the drive so you can do it after you hook it up to the dvr and you won't lose any recordings if you want to test it out first. Not sure what the WD one does so I would do that before formating it for the DVR.
