Yet another External Harddrive issue

[DNSTrainer]

I'll try and keep this short as I don't want anyone drifting off while reading it. :ranger:

I just had two Hoppers (with Sling) and one Joey installed at the end of last month. The installation (SecureTel) was a really good experience. Being a twelve year subscriber and a former DNS Technician/Trainer, this was the first person other than myself to work on the Dish equipment in my home. He even replaced my aging 1000+ with a 1000.2 to eliminate the DPP44 Switch, and got things up and running in about two hours. And though I was supposed to get the original hopper, due to lack of inventory at his office, I ended up with two HWSs.

So, here's where the External HDD issue comes in. I previously had two 722s, both using external drives for overflow storage (I'm a bit of a movie hoarder). Before the install date, I moved everything from the 722s to two external drives. The same evening as the install, I tested both drives on the Hoppers, and found all of the content available, though one or two shows were not viewable (blank screen only). I also noticed that pausing and 'trick play' were problematic from the external drives. I would get a strange icon on the screen when pausing (see attached screen shot), and would have to press stop, then press play to resume. Not an insurmountable problem, but it did make me want to move the content to the internal drive for a better viewing experience.

I had read here that there were problems transferring data back to a Hopper after an upgrade, so I chose a number of 'throw away' recordings to transfer as a test. Took about an hour to move the content to the internal drive, and everything worked fine. I powered down the external and disconnected it from the Hopper, as I always do when not using it, and shut everything down for the night. The next day, I plugged the same external drive back into the hopper to view some of the programming on it, and I got the popup 865, which asks if I want to reformat the drive to support Dish DVR functionality. Of course I don't, as there are Gigabytes of shows on there that I would very much like to view. I even tried removing the drive from its enclosure and using a generic USB adapter (that I use for some of my other externals) to no avail. I have also tried this same drive on the other hopper, with the same result. I've then tried leaving the drive attached and doing both a soft and hard reset, with no luck.

I have since tried some of my other six externals on my hopper, and it appears that all the content is available, though I still get that strange behavior on playback when pausing. I have also moved all the content from one small drive to the second hopper, and it went well. Everything is there, and the playback issues are gone. But I still want to get at the remaining shows on the problem drive (BTW its a 1TB Hitachi SATA drive in a USB 3.0 enclosure) as there are some very important (to me) items on there.

I have read several posts here that state you can manipulate the files on these drives using a computer with a Linux operating system. I realize you can't view the shows, but can you move them? I was wondering if it would be worth trying to move the files from the problem drive to a known working drive. Unfortunately I know next to nothing about Linux, so I would appreciate any suggestions on how to set that up, if it would work.

So, I did not succeed in keeping this short : , but I wanted to try and avoid a lot of back and forth by attempting to answer some questions before they are asked. Anyone else out there with a similar experience? If so, were you able to recover the files somehow? :

And lastly, I thought I read somewhere here that you could attach two external drives simultaneously, and have them both appear on the drop down menu, as well as being able to transfer from one to the other. Did I misunderstand? I've tried it a couple of times, and only one drive shows available (I believe the second one connected).

Thanks to anyone who has taken the time to read this far. Any suggestions will be appreciated.

 

[KKlare]

Regarding multiple drives: you can have 3 drives on ports or (even unpowered) hubs from them transferring to/from the external drives on my 2000. I have not tried powering more. You cannot do as much on the third--just transfer to/from IHD, not EHD to EHD. They can all be going at once, though. Before the last few weeks, the date recorded got messed up and set to 02/06/2106 11:28pm (MST) on mine and the same for all moved--flawed software. BTW, the EHD numbering is related to the order of powering/USB connecting. I am having a new problem with pulling the power/USB while recording and transferring: it will sometimes reboot.

Regarding some unrecognized drives, the 722 etc. solution was to ask for a "hit" but if some are still working, that is less likely the solution. The hit changes the household key for all DVRs on your account--they may differ in the last digits for one or so, have all powered. It takes only a couple of minutes once you get someone to do it. If it came from a non-account system then it's no go, no cheating.

-Ken

 

[DNSTrainer]

Thanks for the reply Ken. I was finally able to get two externals connected and viewable at the same time. And yes, I too see the 2106 date on all my recordings. These are all shows that were originally recorded on a 722 and transferred to the external drive. Maybe that has something to do with it?

Still hoping for a solution to the one drive that my Hopper no longer recognizes. Has anyone run across this? Once again, the drive worked fine the first time I tried it. Then I moved a few shows to the internal drive, and the next day, the drive was no longer recognized. Any thoughts would be appreciated. I'd really hate to lose all those recordings.

And I'm also still having the pausing issue when playing back recordings directly from external drives. When I press pause, I see the symbol pictured in my original post - a red dot with a line through it. I cannot do slow motion or frame-by-frame, and to resume, I must first press stop, then play. I have not seen mention of this behavior anywhere on here. Most have said that playback from external drives works just the same as from the internal. Could it be because these drives were used on a 722?

 

[kwindrem]

I suspect that EHD that isn't recognized by Hopper has died or is corrupted in some way. A unix OS or a third-party EXT file system extension for Mac OS or Windows may have disk recovery utilities to repair the drive. Otherwise, it's replacement time and all is lost.

It's hard to say why the drive failed. You said you powered the drive down prior to disconnecting but that's not guaranteed to prevent file system corruption if the EHD is being written to at the time. Most drives have some form of activity indicator and it's a good idea to make sure the drive is idle before disconnecting or powering down.

While not supported, RAID does work on Dish receivers. I'm running a WD RAID in mode 1 mode which mirrors data on both drives and prevents loss of data should one drive fail, and rebuilding a new drive replacing the failed one. Unfortunately RAID will not guard against corruption that occurs during interrupted write operations (power failure, disconnection, Hopper crash, etc.). RAID won't help you recover your "important" shows but is something to consider if you consider your EHD content critical.

You can also "clone" EHDs if you have a unix OS or third party EXT file system extension. That's another way to provide redundant storage and may be less expensive than a RAID.