# 921 Hard Drive failed



## AJStevens (Apr 3, 2007)

Hi all,

I'm currently starring at my Father-in-law's dish network 921 HD DVR, it's not very healthy as I believe alot of 921's are or have been at one time another according to all my google research.

Unfortunately, he bought this ages ago from a store, not dish, and doesn't really want to pay them mega bucks to fix or replace it.

Me being the IT wiz had hoped a new hard drive would rectify the problem, or at least with the help of the Internet I could get it going again (I've heard of people replacing hard drives in Sky equipment, that's the Satellite provider in the UK, yes I'm British, so thought this would work).

Unfortunately, it's much the same as with the original hard drive, the symptons are and switch between:
1. Flashing front panel lights, the Power, Recording, HD and SD lights flash in a pattern, sometimes the Power lit is on or off and the screen is usually always blank.

2. The screen displays a Dish Network DVR logo, and sits there for ages, not seeming to do anything.

3. A bright screen with lots of info, mostly blank about the PVR and Disk Failure at the top of the screen, but it says you have limited services and says to use the remote info, or the sys info button or buttons 0 - 9, however the remote does not seem to do anything, despite having new batteries, except that it does lit when pressing the power off button.

4. A mostly blank screen with a Linux bootloader message saying it failed at stage 2, and please wait, after which it goes to 1.

Please can anyone give me any advice on self-repairing these things, or is it doomed to the scrapheap definately?


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## SteveB (Aug 18, 2004)

Contact dish. They sent me a replacement. They may charge shipping. But the replacement they sent seemed to have a bad hard drive, flashing lights, bad pause and play, bad recording. I reinstalled my old 921, it is working ok. Probably the new L321 software was causing my problems. Make sure the box is running L322.


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## AJStevens (Apr 3, 2007)

I believe he already has spoken to them, and they wanted to charge him for a new unit. He bought it from a store, and not from dish so they probably don't want to know.

Anyway... you're saying the replacement you got was the same as this one is presently? What was the problem with your original one and how come it worked again?


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

Here's the thread that you should have searched for: http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=59265&highlight=replace+hard+drive


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## AJStevens (Apr 3, 2007)

You know, I'm just reading that one, and yes interesting, but I don't have a computer with linux, and not sure if there's anyone else we know with another 921 to copy from.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

AJStevens said:


> You know, I'm just reading that one, and yes interesting, but I don't have a computer with linux...


Many competent Windows partitioning programs can create Linux partitions.

There are some pretty cool CD based Linux distributions that you can boot on any Pee Cee. Ubuntu is popular for this kind of activity. It is amazing what can be done if you're not gumming up the works with Windows.


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## AJStevens (Apr 3, 2007)

Yeah, I'm sure that'll be the easy part, in fact the 921 may have done that part, from what I read. I'm guessing stage 1 is the device formating the drive, stage 2 is the installation of the OS, which it's failing on as the Dishlinux file isn't in the partition to begin the process as that comes up around "third silver dish medalion" onscreen.


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## SteveB (Aug 18, 2004)

AJStevens said:


> I believe he already has spoken to them, and they wanted to charge him for a new unit. He bought it from a store, and not from dish so they probably don't want to know.
> 
> Anyway... you're saying the replacement you got was the same as this one is presently? What was the problem with your original one and how come it worked again?


The original problem was black overlay, freezing up, spontaneous reboot - all ramdomly. It has done the black overlay and once since I reinstalled it. Other than that (knock on wood) it is working ok.

I bought mine from a web site, not Dish. I subscribe to the everything package. They sent me the replacement free, including shipping.


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## GFloyd (Jun 3, 2003)

He could sign up for the monthly mtnc plan (5.99 / month) and then call back a week or so later and report the problem.


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## Michael P (Oct 27, 2004)

Don't ever open a 921! My 921 is also "store bought" yet they have already replaced it (Eight Times!!!) even after the 1 year warrantee is up. 

They know that the 921 has it's problems so they keep on replacing it. However once you crack it open all bets are off! I hope you havn't opened it up yet.

When you call E* ask for advanced technical support. The "advanced" people know how to handle 921 issues.


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## motrac (Jan 5, 2003)

Michael P said:


> Don't ever open a 921! My 921 is also "store bought" yet they have already replaced it (Eight Times!!!) even after the 1 year warrantee is up.
> 
> They know that the 921 has it's problems so they keep on replacing it. However once you crack it open all bets are off! I hope you havn't opened it up yet.
> 
> When you call E* ask for advanced technical support. The "advanced" people know how to handle 921 issues.


opening it won't matter, the only seal is on the harddrive bracket.
pulling the cover for a look won't have any negitives results from dish.


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## AJStevens (Apr 3, 2007)

Yeah, no I've opened it and can see the sticker attaching the drive to the drive plate, which I have sitting beside my computer which I've now hooked up, and I can see several partitions on there, one primary (with a single logical drive of 251MB), a secondary that contains 4 more partitions(1GB, 1GB, 133MB, and 231.37GB).
Can anyone recommend a tool to check disk on this drive as a whole as these logical drives don't show up in Windows (duh, it's Linux), or something to enable me to read Linux on Windows (even then, a linux or drive diag tool would be best).


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

You will need Linux with XFS support for run fsck; but before that your first step is download from Internet HDD.EXE image, make a floppy, boot from it and run diag (F4 + remap=ON).


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

AJStevens said:


> Can anyone recommend a tool to check disk on this drive as a whole as these logical drives don't show up in Windows (duh, it's Linux), or something to enable me to read Linux on Windows (even then, a linux or drive diag tool would be best).


Regrettably, Windows is one of the few operating systems out there that doesn't support binding of alternative filesystems.

If you' just want to check drive integrity, you might try SpinRite. If you want to run fsck on the drives, try booting your Windows machine with a CD-based Linux distro as I suggested earlier.


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## AJStevens (Apr 3, 2007)

Where can I get HDD.exe from?
Can I download Ubuntu and use Microsoft Virtual PC to load it up inside windows?
This would be great because A. At this precise moment I don't have a spare CD-R to burn to (I'm on holiday and not at home), and B. would speed things up a bit and it may come in useful later.

PS. I'm currently a little tipsy, but want to get somewhere with this as I'm going back home in 6 days time and really really REALLY want to "magically" fix this for my in-laws before I go.


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

Google it (http://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?t=5 if you cant  )


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

harsh, no one distro by default have XFS support


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## AJStevens (Apr 3, 2007)

Ok, got Ubuntu working inside of vmware, now to get it to see the drive, guess I need to install XFS support.


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

Guess again - good gess - no more guesses. Done ! 

Seriously, you start akwards - first step must be - is check of PHYSICAL CONDIFTIONS of your disk - start from MHDD.EXE ! Wanna beat my 25+ year experience ?


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## AJStevens (Apr 3, 2007)

Smith, I'm running off an HP laptop, I don't have a floppy, but I did download the MHDD iso image and ran it, but I don't believe it saw the drive because I have it hooked up to my laptop via a usb adaptor.


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

You will need to modify the ISO first - add the DOS USB driver. 
Anyway what the problem with USB floppy drive ? - check Fry's .

Actually, I'm wondering if you came to semi-professional level of support and don't have right equipment ... Well, I would say - gain the necessary stuff or give it to someone else (Dish ?).


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## AJStevens (Apr 3, 2007)

I'm used to the far superior technology available at home, and certainly the satallite receivers are alot more stable and able to self repair or an advanced home user could repair themselves.
If I was doing this at home, I'd have USB Floppy drive, and a hundread other things in my workshop, but when you're in another country, there's no sense spending on buying all that again, and was hoping that by now someone would have a clear cut procedure for dealing with these 921 since the net is full of complaints of them failing, but I guess when it comes to USA electronics, people just ship it back or buy another one, yet this is the same country that has people cracking PSP code.... where's the sense.


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## peano (Feb 1, 2004)

My buddies 921 has the hard drive error. I have read the threads here and about using MHDD first. But if I understand MHDD, when it remaps bad sectors it erases data and if there are more than 100 bad sectors it won't work successfully. Then what?

Also, reference is made in the other thread to Clone MAXX. I downloaded that and made the boot disk and it recognizes the 921 HDD as being 128 gig in size?

I would really like to fix this without messing with Linux.


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## garebdoan (Sep 6, 2007)

Good post send!


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