# External HDD Format question



## gmgraves2 (Aug 27, 2007)

Dish Tech Supports tells me that External HDD for 622 uses a proprietary Linux HDD Format and that the receiver will reformat any disc connected to it. Is this true? If so, what is the format? XFS? I suspect that its plain ol' NTFS. Any insights on this? I can't get the silly thing to work even though I paid my (expletives deleted) $39!


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

Yes, the receiver will need to format a drive to get it to work. The format is some kind of linux flavor, but beyond that, I don't know specifics. It's definitely not NTFS, or any other DOS/Windows format. 

What problems are you having that you can't get to work? Hard to help you out much without more details - what kind of drive, etc...


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## TBoneit (Jul 27, 2006)

Not working sounds like your enclosure is not compatible with the 622/722 USB chipset.


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## boylehome (Jul 16, 2004)

gmgraves2 said:


> Dish Tech Supports tells me that External HDD for 622 uses a proprietary Linux HDD Format and that the receiver will reformat any disc connected to it. Is this true? If so, what is the format? XFS? I suspect that its plain ol' NTFS. Any insights on this? I can't get the silly thing to work even though I paid my (expletives deleted) $39!


I had this problem. I just formatted the EHDD back to FAT32 by removing all of the partitions by using Windows computer management. After the format, I just plugged it back into the 622. The EHDD was then formatted by the 622 without any problems.


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## Gary Noonan (Oct 14, 2005)

Format is clearly not windows. After a 750 gig Seagate FreeAgent Pro had problems with 622, moved it to computer for backups there. Windows reported 3 non-windows partitions, 1gig, ca 500 gigs, and197.6 gigs. About 700 gigs of the drive were reported by 633 as available for program storage.


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## Bagman (Aug 14, 2004)

Gary Noonan said:


> Format is clearly not windows. After a 750 gig Seagate FreeAgent Pro had problems with 622, moved it to computer for backups there. Windows reported 3 non-windows partitions, 1gig, ca 500 gigs, and197.6 gigs. About 700 gigs of the drive were reported by 633 as available for program storage.


I added a new WD Essentials 500gig to the 622 and it would not automatically format. I connected it to my PC and re-formatted the drive to NTFS (it came as FAT32) and all was well. I have since upgraded to a 722 and the WD connected without a hitch.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

I have not bought an external drive yet nor paid for the enabling of the feature... but in some shopping around, I notice that many external hard drives come at least partially pre-formatted with a partition that contains software for the drive. Western Digital, for example, was one that I noted came with drivers and such installed on it already. I gather that means it came with probably a 1GB partition pre-formatted and installed with software... then the rest non-partitioned.

I wonder if some of this preformatting could be causing problems with the ViP receiver in some cases. If intended for use on the ViP perhaps connecting a computer briefly to remove all partitions would be prudent? I wonder if that is something Dish tested... i.e. testing off-the-shelf configured drives vs drives that had no partitions when first connected.


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## Gary Noonan (Oct 14, 2005)

My 750 gig Seagate Freeagent Pro came with a single large NTFS partitiion and some utilities in directories. WD drives have come with the old FAT32 and a single partition with some utilities in a directory.


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## TBoneit (Jul 27, 2006)

The two new 500gig WD EHDs I used didn't have problems, The 622 said they needed to be formatted and that worked. I believe it wipes the drive to new most likely by zeroing the first few tracks, to a never partitioned state and then creates its partitions and sets up the file allocation tables as a linux drive type and does no scanning of the drive for bad sectors. It is to quick to be otherwise.


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## jmiahman (May 5, 2008)

gmgraves2 said:


> Dish Tech Supports tells me that External HDD for 622 uses a proprietary Linux HDD Format and that the receiver will reformat any disc connected to it. Is this true? If so, what is the format? XFS? I suspect that its plain ol' NTFS. Any insights on this? I can't get the silly thing to work even though I paid my (expletives deleted) $39!


It's Ext3


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## etzeppy (Feb 16, 2007)

I just added a 750GB WD MyBook. It was formated by the ViP622 to just under 700GB. Is that normal? Is there something I should have done to capture the full 750GB?


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## etzeppy (Feb 16, 2007)

etzeppy said:


> I just added a 750GB WD MyBook. It was formated by the ViP622 to just under 700GB. Is that normal? Is there something I should have done to capture the full 750GB?


I think this question is answered here:

http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=147703

It would seem that this is unrecoverable overhead.


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## nicktripp (Dec 1, 2008)

etzeppy said:


> It was seem that this is unrecoverable overhead.


Not quite, but it's better explained in the other thread.


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## etzeppy (Feb 16, 2007)

nicktripp said:


> Not quite, but it's better explained in the other thread.


I should have remembered that 1024 bytes equals 1 Kilobyte. I did not realize that manufacturers took so much liberty with their definition of "GB". I just assumed that 750 GB was indeed 750 Gigabytes.


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## hentom (Nov 20, 2013)

Most of you must not be computer savy. Even on a computer, a 750 GB does not produce 750 GB of usable space. To format a disc. it uses up some of the space. This is space reserved for the name, operating system, format, directory, etc.


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## TBoneit (Jul 27, 2006)

Allow me to say :welcome:

Congratulations on digging up a 5 year old thread.
Nothing to do with space lost to partitioning and formatting.
From Here Hard drives use 1000 bytes as a Kilobyte. Microsoft uses 1024 Bytes for 1Kilobyte


> Base 10 definition 1 GB = 1000000000 bytes (= 10003 B = 109 B) is the definition recommended by the International System of Units (SI) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC).[3] This definition is used in networking contexts and most storage media, particularly hard drives, Flash-based storage,[4][5] and DVDs,


as for Microsoft's definition


> Base 2 definition
> 
> 1 GiB = 1073741824 bytes (= 10243 B = 230 B) is the definition used by Microsoft Windows in reference to computer memory (e.g., RAM). This definition is synonymous with the unambiguous IEC standard name gibibyte.


As a example my 1Tb external has 1,000,203,833,504 bytes of storage.
Or as Microsoft calls it 931 Gigabytes.








I must not be computer savvy since I believe this. After All I have only been using, building, upgrading and repairing them since the 80s.


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

isn't time to lock the thread ?


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