# ASK DBSTalk: ViP622 hard disk size?



## cwgilroy (Oct 29, 2007)

I need to replace my 622. I think the only way save my recordings and transfer them to the new DVR is via an external hard disk. My question is how big a disk do I need to save the contents of a full internal drive?


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## Wildman63 (Dec 23, 2006)

VIP 622 hard drive is 360 GB. VIP 722 is 500 GB.


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## cwgilroy (Oct 29, 2007)

Wildman63 said:


> VIP 622 hard drive is 360 GB. VIP 722 is 500 GB.


Thanks Wildman. I assume you are speaking of total drive size. I understand that Dish keeps part of the drive for its purposes. Do you know how big the user partition is?


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## ChuckA (Feb 7, 2006)

Get the biggest drive you can up to 750 gig. You will fill it up pretty quick once you have it available. You won't have more than a few hundred gig on your internal drive.


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## ssmith10pn (Jul 6, 2005)

HD is about 7000 MB per hour. SD is about 1000 per hour.


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## zlensman (Jan 15, 2006)

ssmith10pn said:


> HD is about 7000 MB per hour. SD is about 1000 per hour.


To answer the original poster's question, I believe the user partition is about 210 GB which fits with the 30 hr HD recording time and the 7 GB/hr size suggested above. So, a 250 "GB" hard drive (which is about 238 real GBs) would be the minimum you could get away with. Still, I believe in the old axiom that you should buy the largest hard drive you can afford comfortably. If you find you are recording lots of programming in HD, the internal drive will fill up fast. When you start archiving, the external drive will fill up fast, too.

Is the 622's internal hard drive really _360_ GB, or 320 GB as it says in the EKB?

In the real world, the size of an HD recording will vary widely, but 7 GB/hr is a good worst case number. It works out to a bitrate of around 19 Mbps which is a good number for MPEG-2 broadcasts in 720p, and passable for 1080i. A better bitrate for 1080i would be 25 Mbps (9 GB/hr), but I haven't seen that in broadcast. My OTA recordings are typically 6.4 - 6.8 GB/hr. Dish channels in MPEG-2 HD clock in around 4.8 - 6.1 GB/hr. And, Dish MPEG-4 HD is a real space saver at around 3.4 - 4.0 GB/hr.

There are many factors that affect the real world size of HD recordings. Resolution (including downrezzing), compression algorithm, compressibility of the source, and amount of SD mixed in such as commercials in network TV.


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## cwgilroy (Oct 29, 2007)

Thanks everyone!


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