# Lost all of my recording on USB HD :(



## Zvi (Feb 2, 2006)

I've had western digital 750gb HD connected to VIP 622. Formatted last week, transferred pretty much everything to archive. 
Last night I've set transfer of 3 movies, estimated time 3 hours. Later on I went back to watch recorded show and noticed that 2 movies were still on DVR, and external HD leds weren't flashing. 
Attempted access to external HD resulted in the same msg: External device needs to be formatted to be used with Dish DVR. Restartign/resetting DVR and HD gave no results. So was my call to tech support. I was told that if I transfer files from DVR to external HD too many times it may fail. Which of course is complete BS.
Anyway, I've lost all my recordings for last 1.5 years. For now I am saving that HD, may be sometimes later dish or someone else will come up with recovery tool. But in general it sucks royally. Oh well, that's always the risk with being the early adopter.


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## Paradox-sj (Dec 15, 2004)

Zvi said:


> I've had western digital 750gb HD connected to VIP 622. Formatted last week, transferred pretty much everything to archive.
> Last night I've set transfer of 3 movies, estimated time 3 hours. Later on I went back to watch recorded show and noticed that 2 movies were still on DVR, and external HD leds weren't flashing.
> Attempted access to external HD resulted in the same msg: External device needs to be formatted to be used with Dish DVR. Restartign/resetting DVR and HD gave no results. So was my call to tech support. I was told that if I transfer files from DVR to external HD too many times it may fail. Which of course is complete BS.
> Anyway, I've lost all my recordings for last 1.5 years. For now I am saving that HD, may be sometimes later dish or someone else will come up with recovery tool. But in general it sucks royally. Oh well, that's always the risk with being the early adopter.


So where was the failure? Is the HDD OK or was this a softwr glitch?


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Also Zvi.. Do you have multiple 622s? if so, was this drive moved between multiple 622s?


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## HDlover (Jul 28, 2006)

Hate to add insult to injury but you paid $40 to be a beta tester. You must feel like you paid for and are running windows Vista. My condolences and thanks for the post confirming why I'm not buying into this. Comcast with firewire to D-VHS is looking better and better.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

I hate all this "paid beta tester" stuff. No technology is guaranteed 100%, ever... so even 5 years down the road if this is "perfected" technology... you could still lose all your movies. There is no remedy for losing all your movies, they would just be gone.

I understand frustration... but this is always going to be one of those "use at your own risk" deals, no matter how good it gets. Hard drives fail, computers have glitches... That's how things work.


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## Zvi (Feb 2, 2006)

DVR is ok. HDD is not. At least DVR doesn't recognize my external HDD as dish formatted HD anymore and if I try to access HD from dish multimedia menu it asks me to refromat it. For now I don't do that because that'll erase all data on it. I still hope that sooner or later either Dish provides some recovery service or tool or someone out there will crack their encryption and I can recover my recordings.

HDD was always connected to the same VIP-622. Never disconnected, moved to other DVR or computer. So, it was purely DVR software glitch that caused the loss of data. In other words Dish screwed up and damaged my data.


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## Zvi (Feb 2, 2006)

HDMe said:


> I hate all this "paid beta tester" stuff. No technology is guaranteed 100%, ever... so even 5 years down the road if this is "perfected" technology... you could still lose all your movies.


Agree, but in the beginning there's always more bugs to deal with.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Zvi said:


> Agree, but in the beginning there's always more bugs to deal with.


Yep... That is most always the case. The fact that in this case you are adding external factors even adds more to the variablity of the release.

As for the Beta testing comment, obviously we all have our definitions of what a beta tester means. To me, one can always argue if a particular release was pushed before its time, but I tend to refer to beta testing as the act of actually testing code labled as Beta rather than in a derogatory way when someone feels they have received software that was not tested as thoroughly as it should have been. Even in the latter case, unless the person was actually beta tester than the statement is purely based on their own personal perception which may or may not mirror reality.

As for the discussion of if this feature was tested as well as it should have been or was it released before its time, the general forum is the place for that type of discussion.


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## kinglerch (Aug 29, 2007)

Zvi said:


> In other words Dish screwed up and damaged my data.


Is there no possibility the HD failed? A search for any HD manu and model yields a percentage of failed drives.


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## Jim5506 (Jun 7, 2004)

Where were these guys complaining about being Beta testers when everyone was complaining about how long it was taking to bring this feature out?

Did you just assume it would be perfect right out of the box?:lol:


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## HobbyTalk (Jul 14, 2007)

What happens if the HD fails in the 622? Of course you'd lose the programs. At least there is now a chance to have backups. Remember, it's called an "archive" drive.


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## SingleAction (Apr 29, 2005)

HDlover said:


> Hate to add insult to injury but you paid $40 to be a beta tester. You must feel like you paid for and are running windows Vista. My condolences and thanks for the post confirming why I'm not buying into this. Comcast with firewire to D-VHS is looking better and better.


I hope you have better luck with Comcast, but how does spending $40 bucks relate to using the Vista OS?

I was invited by Microsoft to be a Beta tester for over 8 months using Vista Ultimate 64 bit(rc1, rc2)and it was great, using the right hardware, of course! After the trial, I bought the retail version, that's what I'm typing this post on right now.

I installed an external HDD(WDG1SU5000N) this morning, and it worked flawlessly on my VIP 622.

So jump in the water is fine:lol:


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## HDlover (Jul 28, 2006)

Jim5506 said:


> Where were these guys complaining about being Beta testers when everyone was complaining about how long it was taking to bring this feature out?
> 
> Did you just assume it would be perfect right out of the box?:lol:


No, that's why I didn't get it.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

HobbyTalk said:


> At least there is now a chance to have backups. Remember, it's called an "archive" drive.


Technically, not really... since the programming can only exist on either the receiver OR the external hard drive... but not both at the same time. Of course you can move to the external drive and then record the same program again on the internal drive if you want a backup, but that involves more than just archiving to the external drive.


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## ViP9999 (Aug 24, 2007)

Thats why i record to my 622internal HDD, move to external archive if it's something i really like otherwise i just delete after i watch it once. Once there I use my standalone DVD recorder to make a copy and transfer to my video iPOD. That way if my drive does fail i'll at least have the DVD I recorded. Maybe not the best solution fro everyone, and i'm sorry to hear you lost all your data. i've had glitches/drive errors happen in the past multiple times with computers over the years, not with my DVR so far (knock on wood). Did you select more than one recording to move to external drive? I mean did you attempt to transfer all your recordings at once?


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## 4HiMarks (Jan 21, 2004)

HDMe said:


> Technically, not really... since the programming can only exist on either the receiver OR the external hard drive... but not both at the same time. Of course you can move to the external drive and then record the same program again on the internal drive if you want a backup, but that involves more than just archiving to the external drive.


That's not really helpful. As an IT guy, I beleive in the old mantra "incremental backup daily, full backup weekly". I'm not at all happy with the fact that I have been unable to preserve/backup my recordings against the possibility of disk failure.

And given the nature of the Dish DVRs, it wouldn't even need to be a disk. Failure of ANY component would likey result in an RMA of the whole box and loss of recordings. When the box has already died, it's a little late to archive your recordings...

-Chris


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Actually it is. Depends on the use case. Based on how it works the USB Drive supports intent is not to provide backup it is to provide a means to archive a show that you later want to watch so that you can free up internal drive space. 

By doing this it achieves the goal of space expansion. And it is in this area that it is most helpful and it is in this area that the largest need is served (Not enough space for my shows). 

It would be nice if it added the ability to copy vs. move so that you could then used as a back solution, but still in its current state I think it is very helpful in address people who were feeling the space pinch.


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## normang (Nov 14, 2002)

While for whatever reason, USB2 drives have dominated what's on the shelf, they are slower and less reliable than Firewire based external drives IMHO. 

Additionally it seems that USB drivers are constantly being reworked for some reason in every OS, and USB connectivity is a constant issue in Virtual software, such as Parallels, or VmWare.

I wish that a FireWire port were available on Dish or any DVR.. I would rather pay a few extra bucks for a FireWire Enclosure or Dual FireWire/USB enclosure for the performance and reliability that I think FireWire provides over USB..

Ultimately it is the reliability of the drive


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## zlensman (Jan 15, 2006)

4HiMarks said:


> That's not really helpful. As an IT guy, I beleive in the old mantra "incremental backup daily, full backup weekly". I'm not at all happy with the fact that I have been unable to preserve/backup my recordings against the possibility of disk failure.


Just thinking out loud here but, in theory, there may actually be a way to do a backup.

Moving recordings to the EHD accomplishes the goal of space expansion, but also makes that data accessible. What if you were to image the data on the EHD, somehow? Then you would have a backup of the data. It would still be encrypted and tied to your receiver, but there is the possibility of doing a restore if the EHD crashed.

Since Windows doesn't recognize the file system, you might need a Linux box to do the images. The imaging software would probably need to do sector-by-sector reads. Also, you would need lots of space to store the images -- say on that RAID server you have in the back corner of your raised-floor room.

Costly and time-consuming, yes. But still possible, right? I don't believe this suggestions violates the posting rules, but if I'm talking heresy here just nuke the post.


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## zlensman (Jan 15, 2006)

normang said:


> While for whatever reason, USB2 drives have dominated what's on the shelf, they are slower and less reliable than Firewire based external drives IMHO.


Good observations, Norm, and here's my theory to explain them. USB 2 drives have dominated the shelves, probably due to cost. Modern computer motherboards come with 6 or more USB ports, but usually 2 or fewer firewire ports. Laptops primarily use USB for expansion and hubs are available to add more ports. The electronics are probably cheaper and the USB consortium may be throwing more weight and money behind their standard than the firewire group.

The average consumer is unlikely to understand the pros and cons of the 2 technologies and sees that USB 2 devices are less expensive than similar devices with firewire. There is a snowball effect and USB 2 becomes more ubiquitous.

The drive makers, knowing that firewire consumers are more savvy, choose more reliable drives for those enclosures. For USB enclosures, there is a need for more drives, and lower cost, plus the consumer base is less savvy. As a result, less expensive, less reliable drives go into USB enclosures. It's a kind of "drive sort" and also a recipe for more failures. QED.

P.S.: To Zvi (OP), sorry you lost your recordings. The same happened to me when the internal drive on my 622 went belly up. _C'est la vie_.


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## Teran (Mar 16, 2007)

Does the hard drive power on at all?

There are various Linux live CDs that specialize in hard disk testing/recovery that you could use to possibly fix the problem with the drive.

There are also drivers for Windows that will let you see the EXT3 partitions on the drive, though the tools available for Windows for fixing any problems are going to be limited.

For other people, you can create a sector perfect copy of your external hard drive. For instance, the Linux 'dd' command will let you copy all info from one drive to another as long as the empty drive is the same size or larger than your Dish activated drive. (You can also use 'dd' to copy sector-by-sector to a compressed archive on a network attached drive that can later be restored -- it doesn't have to be drive to drive). The only question would be whether or not the 622 uses the drive's serial number for validation (I would expect not). Again, you don't need to install Linux on your computer to do this -- just about any Linux live CD will do.


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## Teran (Mar 16, 2007)

zlensman said:


> The drive makers, knowing that firewire consumers are more savvy, choose more reliable drives for those enclosures. For USB enclosures, there is a need for more drives, and lower cost, plus the consumer base is less savvy. As a result, less expensive, less reliable drives go into USB enclosures. It's a kind of "drive sort" and also a recipe for more failures. QED.


Do you have any supporting evidence for this claim?


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## zlensman (Jan 15, 2006)

Teran said:


> Do you have any supporting evidence for this claim?


No. I said it was a theory. It's my attempt to explain the information that we can observe. Only an industry insider could tell us if it's true and I doubt that they would want such info to get out. I put "QED" as a jest -- it's not a proof, just a theory.


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## 4HiMarks (Jan 21, 2004)

normang said:


> While for whatever reason, USB2 drives have dominated what's on the shelf, they are slower and less reliable than Firewire based external drives IMHO.
> <snip>
> 
> I wish that a FireWire port were available on Dish or any DVR.. I would rather pay a few extra bucks for a FireWire Enclosure or Dual FireWire/USB enclosure for the performance and reliability that I think FireWire provides over USB.


Don't forget eSATA. I'm starting to see some of them on the shelves, and I think there is at least one STB with an eSATA port, although I don't recall if it has been activated.

-Chris


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## zlensman (Jan 15, 2006)

The Scientific Atlanta 8300 HD DVR has an eSATA port that allows an external drive to be connected, with the proper firmware. My Dad has one of these for Cox Cable in Arizona. Last Xmas, we added a 500 GB eSATA drive to his 8300 and greatly expanded his storage. It's nice because the eSATA spec is fast enough to record HD and it adds to the internal storage. So it's not an archive, like the current Dish EHD, nor does it disable the internal drive, like (some? all?) DirecTV HD DVRs.


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## ITSec_Guy (Sep 23, 2007)

I had the exact same problem... I flipped over to the Ext HDD and saw NOTHING there! I freaked a bit... but what's the FIRST RULE OF TROUBLESHOOTING (after you check the physical layer)? REBOOT! It's important to note the order in which I did this.. it may be a fluke, but I wouldn't bet on it!

- Reboot the Ext HDD (unplug power and plug back in)
- After the system has recognized the USB Device, reboot the DVR (with the HDD still plugged in to it)

Whola!


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