# Bugs and Feature Request for Ext HD



## WillSad (Dec 15, 2004)

Just got the external HD working today(after enabling yesterday). A few observations on design issues/bugs and some feature requests.

Bugs/Design issue:
USB power output on 622 does not seem sufficent for some external HD devices. I have a 250 GB WD Passport. When the drive is connected directly to the PVR it does not get enough power to start up. Workaround: use USB Hub. USB 1.1 hub was a disaster, USB 2.0 HUB has been working great. option 2: find a Y cable. I did not try it but it seems to be a workaround that WD is aware of. Reading some other posts, I wonder if drive power could be causing some of hte issues.​Timers. If I move recordings over to the external HD my PVR does not seem to be aware that I recorded an event so it will record the episode I just archived onto the 622 the next time it shows up. ​
Features Request:
Let me record directly to the external device
allow me to sort items on the external hd
allow me to move an entire folder to the external hd
allow me to move from the dvr list on the 622

I'm sure I'll run into others. but overall now that I have the usb 2.0 hub I am much happier. Look forward to how you add on to the feature.

will


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

All good suggestions WillSad. As for the sufficient power, my external USB drive is a WD MyBook at it has its own external power. Hmm you might be on to something as I assumed people would be using USB drives that provided their own power. Silly me. As for the 1.1. 

I believe the 622 is USB 2.0 and using USB 1.1 is just asking for pain.


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## shortspark (Oct 25, 2006)

It is my opinion that many of the issues people are reporting with their external hard drives are being caused by insufficient power to the device. I believe each hard drive should use its own AC power adapter and not rely solely on USB power.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

shortspark said:


> It is my opinion that many of the issues people are reporting with their external hard drives are being caused by insufficient power to the device. I believe each hard drive should use its own AC power adapter and not rely solely on USB power.


We have seen threads where some people have DPP44 switches and are not using a power inserter, but rather the ViP is powering that switch. Could even be a handful of External hard drive users are doing that and trying to power the hard drive through USB. I bet that is asking for trouble.


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## Marriner (Jan 23, 2006)

It seems to me that the external hard drive menu could be a little less clunky. You have to "check" an event to play it. The interface should have the look and feel of the dvr controls for the internal hard drive. It would also be nice to be able to record directly to the usb drive when scheduling a dvr event. And last but not least, the usb drive should be accessible by the TV2 user as well as TV1.


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## David-A (Feb 21, 2006)

WillSad said:


> Features Request:
> Let me record directly to the external device


Naturally, we would like the external drive interface to be transparent to the user and allow us to do anything to/from the external drive that we can do currently with the internal drive: record from all three tuners while playing back a previous recording, all at the same time. That would take approximately 4 times the bandwidth it takes just to play back a recording. You'd think that if that could have been done, it would have. Perhaps the USB interface isn't fast enough for that.

On the other hand if they had a function which allowed a choice of either play back or making one recording at a time, but not both, that would seem possible. However, I imagine some people would be confused by that implementation.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

WillSad said:


> Let me record directly to the external device


When the rest of the population howls because you must choose a drive to record to as part of the process, I'll be pointing a finger at you.

What if you set up to record a show to the external drive and it is unavailable?


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## David-A (Feb 21, 2006)

If bandwidth weren't a problem, I could imagine the user specifying an internal/external drive priority which would specify whether you wanted the recording to go to the internal or external drive. However, if there wasn't enough disk space or that drive wasn't on line, it would go to the next lower priority drive. (I'm allowing for multiple external drives.) 

However, I doubt Dish can or will allow recording directly to the external drive. Others have suggested having an option to automatically transfer the recording from the internal to external drive. If the external drive wasn't connected, it would just leave the recording on the internal drive. This would be a very useful option to me and there would be no bandwidth problems as it wouldn't matter to the 622 whether the transfer was done automatically or manually as it is done now.


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## Gary Noonan (Oct 14, 2005)

It would be great to be able to sort the programs on the USB drive the same way one can on the 622.


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## BobaBird (Mar 31, 2002)

Marriner said:


> And last but not least, the usb drive should be accessible by the TV2 user as well as TV1.


Absolutely. My main problem is the TV2 user tends to keep and lock everything he likes, a problem just begging for an EHD solution. But since those recordings can't be accessed from TV2, I'm left to move my smaller backlog to an EHD at which point the TV2 user will see free space and fill it to where I again have only a day or 2 of margin before recordings are lost.  But I digress. If there is a limitation of one stream at a time(?), I suggest locking out the other user whenever either is using the EHD.


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## BrianG (Jul 9, 2006)

It looks like Dish didn't do much testing of this external HD feature. If you send a protected event (recording) to the external HD, you cannot remove that event by deleting or transferring back. There's no way to get rid of it. In addition, if you try unsuccessfully to delete the event, you cannot transfer any more events to the external HD. It just give you an error pop-up.

ViP-622 with Seagate FreeAgent Pro 750GB


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## Spike375 (Dec 4, 2005)

BrianG said:


> It looks like Dish didn't do much testing of this external HD feature. If you send a protected event (recording) to the external HD, you cannot remove that event by deleting or transferring back. There's no way to get rid of it. In addition, if you try unsuccessfully to delete the event, you cannot transfer any more events to the external HD. It just give you an error pop-up.
> 
> ViP-622 with Seagate FreeAgent Pro 750GB


Anybody else experience this? I'm using a WD My Book 750GB, but a little wary to try this because I just transferred most of my events and I still want to be able to move events to the external drive, and unfortunately most of my events were protected.


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## BrianG (Jul 9, 2006)

Spike375 said:


> Anybody else experience this? I'm using a WD My Book 750GB, but a little wary to try this because I just transferred most of my events and I still want to be able to move events to the external drive, and unfortunately most of my events were protected.


I unplugged the hard drive and the dish receiver. When everything came back up I was able to transfer events to the external hard drive again. Still can't delete the protected events on the external hard drive though. When I try to transfer the protected events back to the ViP-622 disk they transfer OK, but they leave the original copy on the external hard drive and they still cannot be deleted from the external hard drive.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

BrianG said:


> It looks like Dish didn't do much testing of this external HD feature. If you send a protected event (recording) to the external HD, you cannot remove that event by deleting or transferring back. There's no way to get rid of it. In addition, if you try unsuccessfully to delete the event, you cannot transfer any more events to the external HD. It just give you an error pop-up.
> 
> ViP-622 with Seagate FreeAgent Pro 750GB


Hmmm I will have to give that a try. I am pretty sure I have done that without any issues, but I will give it a try tonight. I know for a fact I have moved Protected shows back and forth and it did not leave the protected show on the external dirve.

I do see a lot of posts about people with Seagate USB drives having issues so what you might be seeing is something specific to your Seagate line.


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## Hunter Green (May 8, 2006)

The biggest thing I'd like to see is the ability to back up your configuration and timers to the external drive.


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## Mike D-CO5 (Mar 12, 2003)

I had similar problems with shows not being able to delete them after viewing them on my SEagate external hard drive. Once I figured out that seagate hard drives are set to turn off after 15 minutes of use, I knew that this was all related to the problems. I went to the seagate website and downloaded the zip file and the utilities menus. I then plugged my external hard drives to my computer and let it find my drive. ONce it did I changed the hard drive to never turn off under utilities options and the problems went away. I can now use my external hard drive just like my internal hard drive and shows now delete off the external drive just like the internal. I also turn the drive off when I am through watching tv because I don't want to wear the drive out prematurely.


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## BrianG (Jul 9, 2006)

Mike D-CO5 said:


> I had similar problems with shows not being able to delete them after viewing them on my SEagate external hard drive. Once I figured out that seagate hard drives are set to turn off after 15 minutes of use, I knew that this was all related to the problems. I went to the seagate website and downloaded the zip file and the utilities menus. I then plugged my external hard drives to my computer and let it find my drive. ONce it did I changed the hard drive to never turn off under utilities options and the problems went away. I can now use my external hard drive just like my internal hard drive and shows now delete off the external drive just like the internal. I also turn the drive off when I am through watching tv because I don't want to wear the drive out prematurely.


I have no trouble deleting unprotected events from the external hard drive. I have done this a dozen times or so. I only have trouble deleting protected ones. The ViP-622 acts like it is deleting the event, but it remains in the menu. I just tried to delete a protected event and nothing happened. I then successfully deleted an unprotected event. Then I tried to delete the protected event again and nothing happened. This is not a drive spin down issue.


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## eatonjb (Nov 21, 2006)

ok, so heres the problem I am having.

I formatted and copied a few movies to my external drive

I then a few days later whent to view them.. now the 622 is saying that the drive is not formatted . so I lost the few movies that I archived.

anyone else have this problem? Bug, is there a fix that anyone knows of in the works? 

i like this idea, but now it does not work! just for giggles. I found another hard drive .. I am going to test this one, and see if it works for more then a day or so.. archive old shows that I have seen already.

I restarted the external drive, and also the 622.. no come back ..

also, why would I need to format the drive and then REBOOT for it to work..


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## mwsmith2 (Nov 15, 2004)

I'd like to see a button on my DVR recording lists that says "archive" so I can do that right from that menu, rather than going through the menu/multimedia/usb devices/send to device routine.


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## hdaddikt (Jul 2, 2005)

Mike D-CO5 said:


> I had similar problems with shows not being able to delete them after viewing them on my SEagate external hard drive. Once I figured out that seagate hard drives are set to turn off after 15 minutes of use, I knew that this was all related to the problems. I went to the seagate website and downloaded the zip file and the utilities menus. I then plugged my external hard drives to my computer and let it find my drive. ONce it did I changed the hard drive to never turn off under utilities options and the problems went away. I can now use my external hard drive just like my internal hard drive and shows now delete off the external drive just like the internal. I also turn the drive off when I am through watching tv because I don't want to wear the drive out prematurely.


I have a similar problem. Will not delete any event in the ex HD but say it is... the event still shows...Be interested to know what you downloaded. All I found was SeaTools and the Disk Wizard. Does your pc work on Linux? Because the drives are formatted for Linux by the 622. 
I assume you made your changes in Windows? 
Seems like a lot of trouble to have to power down the drive when not in use.
I was going to wait a month before mounting my ex drive to the 622 to see what kind of problems might creep up. Now I am sorry I did not follow my intuition, although it does transfer and archive for the time being.


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## Bill R (Dec 20, 2002)

mwsmith2 said:


> I'd like to see a button on my DVR recording lists that says "archive" so I can do that right from that menu


Just press DVR, item 4 (USB Storage). I think it was put there because there isn't any room for another button on the DVR listings menu.


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## Mike D-CO5 (Mar 12, 2003)

BrianG said:


> I have no trouble deleting unprotected events from the external hard drive. I have done this a dozen times or so. I only have trouble deleting protected ones. The ViP-622 acts like it is deleting the event, but it remains in the menu. I just tried to delete a protected event and nothing happened. I then successfully deleted an unprotected event. Then I tried to delete the protected event again and nothing happened. This is not a drive spin down issue.


Did you try rebooting both the receiver and the external hard drive? I had this problem a couple of times before I did the change by the computer and it was easy to delete once your reboot the receiver and or the external hard drive.


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## BrianG (Jul 9, 2006)

Mike D-CO5 said:


> Did you try rebooting both the receiver and the external hard drive? I had this problem a couple of times before I did the change by the computer and it was easy to delete once your reboot the receiver and or the external hard drive.


Yes. Still did not work.


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## BrianG (Jul 9, 2006)

I noticed that sometimes when I am playing a recorded program from my external hard drive, the pause, play, and stop buttons do not work. Pause can be used to get into pause state, but stops working after that. Jump ahead 30 seconds and jump back 10 seconds works, and will restart the paused program, but the other buttons continue to malfunction. 

The problem may be related to simultaneous recording of another event, but I can't say for sure.


ViP-622 with Seagate FreeAgent Pro 750GB


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## whatchel1 (Jan 11, 2006)

I've had the HDD on my system since the 15th. It has been able to transfer to it and watch from it. Now for the problem. Yesterday the 622 lost some of my sats and had to do switch check didn't work. So did hard reboot. Then it came up to tell me I needed to call E* to authorize the ext. HDD. It wouldn't go past that screen. So called E* and was told that it is a 441 problem . Went thru a bunch of hoops w/ the CSR and is being fixed w/442. Got it working again, & didn't loose anthing on the HDD. Was afraid that I would wind up having to reformat and loose the 14 hrs of things transferred to the ext HDD. Today the 622 has rebooted itself twice. Hope 442 get to all the 622's soon for the fix. Yes this is also in the 441 bugs thread.


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## BrianG (Jul 9, 2006)

whatchel1 said:


> I've had the HDD on my system since the 15th. It has been able to transfer to it and watch from it. Now for the problem. Yesterday the 622 lost some of my sats and had to do switch check didn't work. So did hard reboot. Then it came up to tell me I needed to call E* to authorize the ext. HDD. It wouldn't go past that screen. So called E* and was told that it is a 441 problem . Went thru a bunch of hoops w/ the CSR and is being fixed w/442. Got it working again, & didn't loose anthing on the HDD. Was afraid that I would wind up having to reformat and loose the 14 hrs of things transferred to the ext HDD. Today the 622 has rebooted itself twice. Hope 442 get to all the 622's soon for the fix. Yes this is also in the 441 bugs thread.


I wonder if there is a firmware problem with external hard drive support? I had a satellite signal lost screen yesterday. It was cycling through the transponders and couldn't find a signal anywhere! Nothing was blocking my dish or the sky view. I unplugged my ViP-622 and everything has been fine since. Signal strength has always been great on my system (a DP-500 and a 24" HD dish), and still was after rebooting. This has not happened to me before.

ViP-622, Seagate FreeAgent Pro 750GB, two dish solution (DP-500 for 110/119 and a 24" dish for 129).


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

BrianG said:


> I have no trouble deleting unprotected events from the external hard drive. I have done this a dozen times or so. I only have trouble deleting protected ones. The ViP-622 acts like it is deleting the event, but it remains in the menu. I just tried to delete a protected event and nothing happened. I then successfully deleted an unprotected event. Then I tried to delete the protected event again and nothing happened. This is not a drive spin down issue.


Well I have does this about 10 times and been successful all ten times. Copy protected show over, delete show from the USB drive and show gets deleted. I don't see what you are seeing BrianG, but based on a number of Seagates reports I have read here it appears that some seagate users are seening strange behavior.

I am going to start a thread to localize this issue and make it stand out and also make it easier to see if there are patterns.


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## chriscpmtmp (May 13, 2006)

I'd like to be able to see the episode number on the USB drive without hitting info. I'd really like to have a folder that is sorted by episode on the USB drive. Chris


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## hmcewin (Jun 30, 2006)

BrianG said:


> I noticed that sometimes when I am playing a recorded program from my external hard drive, the pause, play, and stop buttons do not work. Pause can be used to get into pause state, but stops working after that. Jump ahead 30 seconds and jump back 10 seconds works, and will restart the paused program, but the other buttons continue to malfunction.
> 
> The problem may be related to simultaneous recording of another event, but I can't say for sure.
> 
> ViP-622 with Seagate FreeAgent Pro 750GB


I have the WD 500 My Book Essentials and here is how mine behaves.

Transferred several "Protected" programs from the VIP 622 to the external HD. They showed up as not being protected. After watching one of the movies today, I deleted it with no problems.

Also restored a movie from the External HD to the internal VIP 622. It showed up as a "Protected" recording as it was before I transferred it.

I remember reading somewhere this is how it is supposed to behave. It makes sense since you can not record directly to the EHD. So you would not have to protect a recording. I assume when your EHD gets full, it would warn you that you do not have enough room to move the recording.

I sounds to me like the Seagates (at lease some) are the issue.

One thing I have noticed as have others, the WD 500 My Book Essentials does not wake up after I have turned it off. When I hit the "Manage" it indicates the USB device needs authorizing. But with selecting "Manage" again the drive comes alive and displays the appropriate menu.


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## hdaddikt (Jul 2, 2005)

Here is the link to the FreeAgent software for changing the sleep time for the drive.
I think it is only necessary to set it to the number of hours you expect to view any programming or archive and restore events on a daily basis. Say 10 hrs, etc.
Scheduled recordings should have no effect.
While this software is called 'FreeAgent Pro' it will work the same with the Go model for setting sleep time.
Hope this helps someone. I was able to get it from a similar topic at sat. guys.

Let's hope Dish at least puts in a link for this download as well as info on the problem at their website.

My only problem was deleting archived events on the ext drive. When I powered off the Seagate, then powered it up again, it worked fine. Symptom of the 'sleep' problem.

http://www.satelliteguys.us/dish-hd...xternal-hard-drive-archive-bug-thread-14.html

Post 136^

Here's more info on the problem:

http://forums.moxi.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=306


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

BrianG said:


> It looks like Dish didn't do much testing of this external HD feature. If you send a protected event (recording) to the external HD, you cannot remove that event by deleting or transferring back. There's no way to get rid of it. In addition, if you try unsuccessfully to delete the event, you cannot transfer any more events to the external HD. It just give you an error pop-up.
> 
> ViP-622 with Seagate FreeAgent Pro 750GB


Wow...I can't believe you said that. If you had any idea what it took to get it to work as well as it does for most people...

Your problem is the brand of drive you have, most likely.


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## BrianG (Jul 9, 2006)

Mark Lamutt said:


> Wow...I can't believe you said that. If you had any idea what it took to get it to work as well as it does for most people...
> 
> Your problem is the brand of drive you have, most likely.


I'm sorry. I thought the number one external USB drive from Seagate was in the category of "ANY High Quality off-the-shelf single disk USB 2.0 between 40GB and 750GB". With the Seagate Director of Marketing in the Dish Technical Chat, I assumed that this would be a good choice. Why was it that the extensive testing that you refer to did not involve the Seagate drive?


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Not a bad assumption BrianG but the fact some users are having issues with the Seagate drives does not equate to Dish not doing much testing of this external HD feature in my opinion. Given that new USB drive products are released weekly and firmware changes do occur and there is a wide variety of drives on the market, these type of issues are bound to happen and not ever drive/hardware combination can be tested. 

It is a bummer that some Seagate owners have ran into an issue and I think at this time the root cause is not known. At this point I am not even sure that the Seagate issues are effecting all Seagate users and if this is the case it is possible that it was tested on Seagate drives and appeared functional or was functional on Seagate drives supplied to Dish from Seagate themselves. Hard to say since I was not there, but I definitely would not equate end user experiences posted here to lack of testing. Just a rather large jump in my book. 

If you have not done so BianG, please post your experiences in the Seagate thread. That way we have the details all in one location. Thanks!


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## kckucera (Aug 1, 2005)

IF you have ExHD enabled and when in DVR mode, it would be nice to have link button the regular DVR menu (sort Group Edit etc) to the External HD Menu rather than having to click Done then 4, 1 or scroll down to USB Storage then click Manage. While they are at it, a couple of more line entries for DVR would be nice too. 

A slicker setup would be nice too, after enabling I kept getting the enable call 800 number message till I figured out the I could format in photo mode.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

Ron Barry said:


> Not a bad assumption BrianG but the fact some users are having issues with the Seagate drives does not equate to Dish not doing much testing of this external HD feature in my opinion.


That would be a better supported opinion if the family of Free Agent drives weren't mentioned by name as having been tested.


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## JoelZe (Jan 23, 2004)

my overall experience is that the ext HDD feature is well implemented

however...



WillSad said:


> Features Request:
> Let me record directly to the external device
> allow me to sort items on the external hd


agreed, the lack of ability to sort the shows on the hdd drastically reduces its useful as an archive tool. with already 100+ shows on the drive, it takes way to long to find any specific one.



David-A said:


> ... You'd think that if that could have been done, it would have...


i don't think this rationale holds up. what prevented them from implementing the sort feature?

if bandwidth is the issue, we already have mechanisms for conflict resolutions, just allows to only record one show to the hdd at a time. regardless, this feature would save a lot of time.



harsh said:


> When the rest of the population howls because you must choose a drive to record to as part of the process, I'll be pointing a finger at you.


we already have _optional _options, could we not implement it that way (as far as user interface). no extra step required


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## kckucera (Aug 1, 2005)

JoelZe said:


> my overall experience is that the ext HDD feature is well implemented...Agreed, the lack of ability to sort the shows on the hdd drastically reduces its useful as an archive tool. with already 100+ shows on the drive, it takes way to long to find any specific one.


Concur on the sort issue, goes back to my origional point that merging the the XHDD menu with DVR (at least for viewing) somehow would allowing sort would be convienent. Maybe some flashing banner like the guides (just kidding).


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

harsh said:


> That would be a better supported opinion if the family of Free Agent drives weren't mentioned by name as having been tested.


Well.. the only thing I will say based on my experience is that not all hardware is created equal and I believe External USB Drives fit int that catagory. Even though you have two of the exact same products, there is always that likelyhood that something internal or external was changed over the life the product.

I am not saying this is the case here because I don't have all the details, but I am also saying that is not always as simple as "They must not have tested this drive because we are seeing issues". Given that it was mentioned by Dish makes me feel that this drive was tested in some way, however the circumstances of how it was tested are unknown and based on reports in the wild my guess is there was something different in what Dish tested vs. what some are getting in the field.

Ofcourse each person is to draw their own conclusions, but this is the conclusions I have drawn based on the fact the drives were mentioned and the reports in the wild.


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

BrianG said:


> I'm sorry. I thought the number one external USB drive from Seagate was in the category of "ANY High Quality off-the-shelf single disk USB 2.0 between 40GB and 750GB". With the Seagate Director of Marketing in the Dish Technical Chat, I assumed that this would be a good choice. Why was it that the extensive testing that you refer to did not involve the Seagate drive?


Well, for me personally, it was because the WD MyBook 250 was on sale for a decent price more than a year ago when we started working on this. As for the other testers, I don't have an answer for you. There are a lot of testers, but there are are also a lot of drives on the market.


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## TiVoPrince (May 10, 2007)

*Testing*
so very often involves repeatedlty testing the designed in functions. Testing some of the 'real world' abuses we users commit is probably not part of the testing phase. Early adopters should get the equivalent of the Disinguished Service Cross for Valor...

Dish Network could provide a 'best practices' checklist for the drive/series/model that were part of the extensive testing. The model numbers may be outdated but a little insight would help us make a wise and informed decision...


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## BrianG (Jul 9, 2006)

1) Model of your USB drive - FreeAgent Pro 750GB ST307504FPA1E3-RK (from Costco)
2) How old is your USB drive - A few weeks old
3) Has the drive been used for anything other than your 622/722 - No
4) Are you experiencing any issues - See below
5) How many events do you have on your drive - Several (at the time of my problems)

ViP-622 w/software version L4.41

__________ PROBLEMS __________ 

My first problem was when the E* added my $40 HD service and asked me to copy a program from the 622 to the external HD. After hanging up the phone, I copied several more programs to the external HD and then watched one of them. I then tried to delete the program I had just watched. It looked like the program was going to delete (got the "are you sure message", and no errors), but it just stayed there in my list of recordings. I tried to transfer the program back to the 622, but it just made a copy and still could not delete from the external HD. I found that protected programs that were copied to the external HD could not be deleted, while non-protected could. 

My second problem was the loss of function in the stop, play, and pause keys while watching an event from the external HD. Someone suggested it was related to sleep time, but I was watching an event at the time and the external HD was hardly in sleep mode. Upon further inspection, I did notice that these keys worked after a reboot of either the 622 or the external HD. 

My third problem was an error message pop-up that prevented me from using the external HD. Don't recall the error number (maybe 855?). Unplugging the USB connector and plugging it back in would resolve this issue. 

My fourth problem was a sudden loss of satellites. This only happened one time. I don't recall what prompted this, but my other 622 with no external HD was fine. The failing 622 kept searching for transponders and could find no signal on any of them. I reset the 622 and everything came back up fine. 

__________ RESOLUTION __________ 

I finally got around to installing my second FreeAgent Pro on my second 622, but first I set sleep time to "never". All functions have worked flawlessly for about a week now. Then I downloaded the software (as discussed in another forum), installed it on a PC, connected my first FreeAgent Pro drive and set the sleep time to "never". All of the issues I had with the first 622 are now gone. I can even delete the protected events that I could not delete before. My drives are connected to switched outlets on my receivers because there's not much use for the drive being powered up when I'm not watching TV. I didn't want to give up on the FreeAgent drive because it's very nice looking, has a 5-year warranty, and has no fan. A fan is just another mechanical part to fail.


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## TP715 (Jan 15, 2007)

I'd like a direct "Delete" option in the menu you get when you finish playing back or stop a USB program (like you get when you finish or stop an internal HDD program). Instead you have to exit, go to manage, try to remember the name of the program you were just watching, select it, and then select delete, and then find out you just deleted the next episode instead of the one you watched. 

I'd also like, as others have mentioned, a direct "Archive" option in the record menu, but that is way more problematic as the machine would have to try to decide _when_ to archive the show it just recorded and not let that mess up other actions (like recording other shows or playback) and it would have to decide what to do if the USB drive wasn't there or turned on.


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## JimD (Apr 8, 2005)

hmcewin said:


> One thing I have noticed as have others, the WD 500 My Book Essentials does not wake up after I have turned it off. When I hit the "Manage" it indicates the USB device needs authorizing. But with selecting "Manage" again the drive comes alive and displays the appropriate menu.


I have experienced this same annoyance on my 750 GB WD MyBook Essentials drive. It happened once after resetting the 622, and also once immediately after the 622 crashed. I never turn the drive power off, so that's not the trigger in my case. Apparently reset or crash of the 622 will also induce this behavior.


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## wase4711 (Jun 21, 2007)

Ron Barry said:


> Well.. the only thing I will say based on my experience is that not all hardware is created equal and I believe External USB Drives fit int that catagory. Even though you have two of the exact same products, there is always that likelyhood that something internal or external was changed over the life the product.
> 
> I am not saying this is the case here because I don't have all the details, but I am also saying that is not always as simple as "They must not have tested this drive because we are seeing issues". Given that it was mentioned by Dish makes me feel that this drive was tested in some way, however the circumstances of how it was tested are unknown and based on reports in the wild my guess is there was something different in what Dish tested vs. what some are getting in the field.
> 
> Ofcourse each person is to draw their own conclusions, but this is the conclusions I have drawn based on the fact the drives were mentioned and the reports in the wild.


Remember, these ext hd's were NOT designed to archive data from satalite recievers, so, the firmware that is written on them most likely is what is causing some of these drives to act flakey at times,,as using them for Satalite reciever external storage becomes more mainstream, you can bet there will be firmware changes that will be made..remember, at least 99% of these things are NOT making their way to satalite recievers at this point.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Yep.. could point wase4711 and that is part of what I am saying. Also along with firmware differences comes minor hardware differences, component changes for cost savings reasons etc. Guess the story to take home is even though you have the same model and make there is always a possibility inside things might be slightly different. 

Excellent example of this is the LCD Displays for computers. It is very common for them to change panel types without a model number change.


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