# Can I clone my EHD?



## lbeck (Jun 27, 2006)

I have a vip722 with a 750 GB external HDD that is practically full. This evening I went to play something and the "My Media" list was blank! I unplugged the power and USB cord and replugged to reset the unit and it was very noisy. I did get my programs back (for now) but I'm practically certain that the EHD is very close to going bad.

I plan to buy a new 1 TB EHD tomorrow. Can I easily clone my existing EHD programming to a new EHD?

I know of course that I can transfer the programming to the DVR and then onto the new EHD, but that will take several sessions and many hours. I've never looked at the file system on the EHD that is hooked into the 722. I'm thinking that I will see several proprietary files, or is there one large file? 

If there are several files the ideal situation will be the ability to copy the individual files to a folder on my desktop machine and then move them to the new EHD. I have enough internal/external storage capacity to move a large e.g., 700 GB file but it will mean moving some stuff around.

Has anyone tried moving program files from a 722 EHD to a new HDD? Will I need to hook it into the DVR first to have the DVR format the HDD to its proprietary file system?

Thanks for your help.


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## lbeck (Jun 27, 2006)

Pardon my answer to my own question, but this may be helpful to someone else. I contacted Dish tech support by chat session and the chat guy didn't seem to know what I was talking about. He referred to his supervisor and the super said that it couldn't be done. I posted to a forum for Dish technical support and got the response



> In order to transfer the recordings to a new EHD, you would have to put them on the receiver. Once they are there, then you can transfer them to the new HDD. We do not have a way to transfer recordings between EHD's at this time.Tommy Faust
> DISH Internet Response Team
> Tuesday-Saturday 6A-2:30P


I got advice elsewhere that I can use free software from Minitool Partition Wizard Home edition. Tried it last night and it worked. I still have some tweaking to do, but it performed my most relevant and urgent need. It cloned my EHD and all the programming is now available on both the dying EHD and the new one.

The tweaking needed is to free up additional space in the new EHD. The cloning did exactly that - it made the new drive look like the old one. Problem is (and it's not a real problem) the cloned EHD is 750GB and the new one is 1.5 TB. The new EHD shows in Windows Disk Management as having 4 partitions. One is labled "Unallocated" and is about 700GB. Interesting since this is less than half the rated capacity of the new drive and the old drive had about 100GB available for additional programming.

Looking at the new drive on the 722 the programming and other information appears EXACTLY like the old one, with the same 100GB available for additional programs. So it did "clone" the old drive.

I'll work with this some more to see if I can free up the unallocated space for programs. But I did learn that transferring programming from one EHD to another is possible. I'll also look at the dying EHD in Disk Manager to see what partitions it shows. It could be that one of the smaller partitions in the new drive is needed for some Dish information on encryption and other management routines.


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## Jim5506 (Jun 7, 2004)

Yes, you can clone the EHD, with drive cloning software like Ghost or Acronis, etc., but why not just plug the new drive in to your receiver and have 2 EHDs.

Just disconnect and swap with reboot and you can change to the other.

Have you heard of putting all your eggs in one basket, well don't put all you programs on one drive.


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## lbeck (Jun 27, 2006)

Thanks, Jim. I agree that I was at risk for losing all my eggs, but I had over 300 programs on my EHD, many of which were movies that I didn't want to burn to DVD but still wanted to have in my archive. Starting a new EHD wouldn't accomplish my archival objectives and swapping out EHDs would be a little messy with my home theater setup since I have the EHD tucked away in the innards of some cabenetry with cords snaked around to keep everything out of sight.We're all different with different obsessions/compulsions. Keeping multiple EHDs might work for some folks, though.


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