# Anyone else experiencing repeated drive failures DVR 625



## TreborG2

I'm on my 4th Dish DVR 625 in 4 1/2 months.

In February, had new house setup for dish, ala dish mover, and upgraded to a 2nd Dish DVR625. We were still living in old house, so after new dish was setup, transported it back to the old house and used it there for month.

The new DVR625 failed while there.. no biggie, I swapped out, left the new receiver at the new house while finishing the move.. so now In March, 2nd DVR hooked up and running.. all good...

End of may ... drive failure 2nd unit to have a drive failure, not sitting in an enclosure, actually sitting on an empty 22" cardboard cube box, beside the TV .. nothign below it, on top of it, or really "near" it except the tv, maybe 12 inches away...

beginning of june, report failure, get new unit, wait till sunday to install .. did that, and right out of the box ... plug it in. get drive failure... unplug it... wait till 10, plug back in.. drive failure gone ...

that week ... two more times, the drive failure comes up... but clears with power off and letting sit for a while... the 4th time... no go.. it failed flat out wouldn't reset.... new box... now my 4th .... 

this time.. 4th box ... its back in the TV cabinet, where my DVR from nearly 2 years ago was sitting for nearly all of those 2 years without failure.. 

So the question I have is.. are the newer DVR's coming with complete crap for hard drives?

I'd like to know how many DVR's you folks have had to replace due to hard drive failure. were they newer units? Older ones? .... have you had multiples fail in a short period of time?

Dish wants to claim that I have a grounding problem, yet in the entire time I've had dish, just like cable and directv before that, I've had my units plugged into UPS's ... 

and why would the 1 Dish DVR that I've had for nearly 2 years *not* have the same problem that these 3 units I've had in the past 4.5/5 months have had, given similar or identical connections, with the one difference being new house, where the old DVR is upstairs and still crankin away.

The only other difference for this unit, is that I operate it in single user mode, and do record using both instances (the sole reason for me to have upgraded to a 2nd dish dvr in the first place!)


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## db7

TreborG2 said:


> I'm on my 4th Dish DVR 625 in 4 1/2 months.
> 
> In February, had new house setup for dish, ala dish mover, and upgraded to a 2nd Dish DVR625. We were still living in old house, so after new dish was setup, transported it back to the old house and used it there for month.
> 
> The new DVR625 failed while there.. no biggie, I swapped out, left the new receiver at the new house while finishing the move.. so now In March, 2nd DVR hooked up and running.. all good...
> 
> End of may ... drive failure 2nd unit to have a drive failure, not sitting in an enclosure, actually sitting on an empty 22" cardboard cube box, beside the TV .. nothign below it, on top of it, or really "near" it except the tv, maybe 12 inches away...
> 
> beginning of june, report failure, get new unit, wait till sunday to install .. did that, and right out of the box ... plug it in. get drive failure... unplug it... wait till 10, plug back in.. drive failure gone ...
> 
> that week ... two more times, the drive failure comes up... but clears with power off and letting sit for a while... the 4th time... no go.. it failed flat out wouldn't reset.... new box... now my 4th ....
> 
> this time.. 4th box ... its back in the TV cabinet, where my DVR from nearly 2 years ago was sitting for nearly all of those 2 years without failure..
> 
> So the question I have is.. are the newer DVR's coming with complete crap for hard drives?
> 
> I'd like to know how many DVR's you folks have had to replace due to hard drive failure. were they newer units? Older ones? .... have you had multiples fail in a short period of time?
> 
> Dish wants to claim that I have a grounding problem, yet in the entire time I've had dish, just like cable and directv before that, I've had my units plugged into UPS's ...
> 
> and why would the 1 Dish DVR that I've had for nearly 2 years *not* have the same problem that these 3 units I've had in the past 4.5/5 months have had, given similar or identical connections, with the one difference being new house, where the old DVR is upstairs and still crankin away.
> 
> The only other difference for this unit, is that I operate it in single user mode, and do record using both instances (the sole reason for me to have upgraded to a 2nd dish dvr in the first place!)


I'm a new subscriber to Dishnetwork as of August 2008. Within 2 weeks, I went through two Dvr 625's. Same problem on both - hard drive failures. I spoke with a knowledgeable tech support person who admitted that there was a current sourcing problem with the box and it is a known issue. The issue was that I had hooked up the box to a power strip with other items, so the unit was not getting enough current since it was split among the other appliances. They recommended I plug it into the wall. On the second box, I did only that and viola.. same problem. After scouring the net and arguing with other DishNetwork support folks who weren't as knowledgeable, I found somewhere that the hard drive failures may be due to "noisy" power. Basically, you rarely get a clean 60Hz power signal from your wall.. you normally get 60Hz power + noise. It seems that the failure electrical engineers who designed the 625 did not account for this. So I went out and bought a Monster Power MPHT700HP from Best Buy and hooked up the 625 to it (as well as the rest of my theater system). So far, for about 2 weeks, everything is working fine with my THIRD DVR 625. If it breaks, I'm reluctantly going back to DirectTv. Hope this helps.


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## Blowgun

db7 said:


> I spoke with a knowledgeable tech support person who admitted that there was a current sourcing problem with the box and it is a known issue. The issue was that I had hooked up the box to a power strip with other items, so the unit was not getting enough current since it was split among the other appliances.


That's a new one.



db7 said:


> They recommended I plug it into the wall. On the second box, I did only that and viola.. same problem.


No surprise there. 



db7 said:


> After scouring the net and arguing with other DishNetwork support folks who weren't as knowledgeable, I found somewhere that the hard drive failures may be due to "noisy" power. Basically, you rarely get a clean 60Hz power signal from your wall.. you normally get 60Hz power + noise. It seems that the failure electrical engineers who designed the 625 did not account for this. So I went out and bought a Monster Power MPHT700HP from Best Buy and hooked up the 625 to it (as well as the rest of my theater system). So far, for about 2 weeks, everything is working fine with my THIRD DVR 625.


The landfill would be filled with dead 625 receivers if it was an inherent problem. My guess would be a grounding problem. Perhaps the DISH side of things isn't tied properly to the building ground or maybe there's a ground loop. Perhaps your new surge protector is creating an isolation between the devices?


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## TreborG2

Unfortunately .... the Dish DVR 625 I have is plugged into a UPS ... While here in the new house its been on a brand new UPS (purchased in march) and while at the old house it was in one of my other ups's which was about 2 years old. 

Dish DVR's failed on BOTH UPS's ... are you going to try ... like DISH to claim that two different UPS's are causing grounding problems?  When my OLDEST DVR 625 still pounds away like no one's business without failure one? (and on the now 2.5 year old ups)

If the problem were gounding then ALL the DVR's should be having problems.. not only the ones that are brand new... unless the grounding problem is internal to the NEW units only and they've royally screwed them up ... if that were the case they should NOT be blaming the customer! they should be fixing their INTERNAL issues.. 

I've been half tempted to pop the drive out of this unit and mirror it onto one of my Western Digital or Seagates ... last I knew they were using Maxtor's in these systems and I've never had good luck with Maxtor drives... 

in 1995 I went to work for a small computer integrator (builder) and in my 5 years with them, the highest failure rates were with maxtor drives ... especially when their new models came out.. while WD & Seagates generally held up about the same.. have even had WD & Seagates fall from 6+ feet to survive for an hour or more to move data off them before they died. Ever since then, with experiences with Maxtor's I've never liked nor trusted them..

I still suspect the drives are bad, or the problem is the 625 *NOT* anything external to them unless its caused by shoddy assembly.


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## puckwithahalo

> the problem were gounding then ALL the DVR's should be having problems.. not only the ones that are brand new... unless the grounding problem is internal to the NEW units only and they've royally screwed them up ...


It could be the grounding of the one satellite line coming in to that particular receiver.


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## BattleZone

There have been a high number of 625 failures, and lots of reman 625 and 522s are being installed, and have been over the last few months. Unfortunately, we are at the mercy of Dish's suppliers.

As a subcontractor, these defective receivers generate Trouble Calls, which adversely affects my stats and ranking, reducing my job count, while at the same time tying up my inventory (I have to replace bad ones in the field) AND running up my shipping bills to ship the defective ones back to dish.

Lots of fun...


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## TreborG2

puckwithahalo said:


> It could be the grounding of the one satellite line coming in to that particular receiver.


Second Satelite dish... first unit failed on a completely different dish, the same dish that was used for 2 years with my other dish dvr which is still running fine on the new dish.

also doesn't explain why the "grounding" problem would come and go, nor when put through a UPS why it would still cause problems (cable goes through UPS).

internally these units are pc like. If they succumb to a "grounding" problem then it means quite simply that the unit wasn't designed properly, or wasn't assembled properly, or has an item that reacts with the ground that is failing prematurely.

The DISH is grounded the same ground as the house, there is no noticable ground difference or current found when going between ground at the outlet and ground of the antenna wire.

Honestly.. were it that I had opened this unit and left something off.. I could agree there's a potential for ground..

but everything else being equal, and this 4th dish unit now lasting several months with the 3rd one being bad out of box and failing permanently within 1 week of use, points to something other than a ground problem that is fixed *external* to the DVR.

It could just be my bad luck to have several failed units. The number of posts in this thread haven't increased greatly... so either people don't find it or aren't having the same numbers of problems..

but I keep hoping others will report.. and will find the same results..


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## puckwithahalo

Fair enough, not grounding in your case. 625's aren't bad about overheating, but could be that. Most likely though, its sounding like you just had some bad luck. I will say, I have a 625 and haven't had a peep out of it in 2 years.


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## TreborG2

puckwithahalo said:


> Fair enough, not grounding in your case. 625's aren't bad about overheating, but could be that. Most likely though, its sounding like you just had some bad luck. I will say, I have a 625 and haven't had a peep out of it in 2 years.


See .. and that too is the thing for me.. my other 625 .. I've had that for more than 2 years.. although it was the second one .. the first was replaced after an "upgrade" went bad and the thing stopped working..

but its been 2 years for that one.. and like yours... never a bad word out of it. The only reason I don't have that one as mine downstairs is my greedy "mine mine mine" for the "newer" gadget .. LOL.


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## Sleepylazy2006

Just recently I'm having the same problem too. I can't record anything at all, the DVR feature is now broken. I unplugged it for over an hour and still not fixed. Is there anything I can do to fix this?


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## TreborG2

Sleepylazy2006 said:


> Just recently I'm having the same problem too. I can't record anything at all, the DVR feature is now broken. I unplugged it for over an hour and still not fixed. Is there anything I can do to fix this?


Its been another two months for me (since last post) where I'm still working with the same last DVR unit ... grounding must really be crap in my house since this one's lasted 6 to 7 months now?

With yours, if you power off.. and unplug.. then when you plug it back in ... do you hear the unit making any extra noises? any clunking or clicking? any whirr noises when you power it back up.. anything to implicate the moving drive in there??

All are signs that the drive is having physical issues.. how old is your unit.. and do you own it or is it a rental/leased unit? If you owned the DVR ... I would certainly have gotten new drives at a local computer store or online through something like newegg ... and copied the drive over to a larger one... giving more space.. before this started happening.. thus allowing you some control and backup in the event of failure...

-R


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## Sleepylazy2006

TreborG2 said:


> Its been another two months for me (since last post) where I'm still working with the same last DVR unit ... grounding must really be crap in my house since this one's lasted 6 to 7 months now?
> 
> With yours, if you power off.. and unplug.. then when you plug it back in ... do you hear the unit making any extra noises? any clunking or clicking? any whirr noises when you power it back up.. anything to implicate the moving drive in there??
> 
> All are signs that the drive is having physical issues.. how old is your unit.. and do you own it or is it a rental/leased unit? If you owned the DVR ... I would certainly have gotten new drives at a local computer store or online through something like newegg ... and copied the drive over to a larger one... giving more space.. before this started happening.. thus allowing you some control and backup in the event of failure...
> 
> -R


Yes I do hear the unit making extra noises, it does sound like clunking and clicking. I thought I might had heard some whirr noises too but not sure about that.

My DVR is maybe a year or 2, and I'm renting it from Dish.


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## kf4omc

I have had mine for over 2 and a half years and not one problem.....


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## TreborG2

kf4omc said:


> I have had mine for over 2 and a half years and not one problem.....


and my other one... its only the 2nd one I'd had for nearly 2 years too..

just seems to have been the newer units about 8 months ago maybe..

By the way ... SPATULA CITY Spatula city SPATULA City!!


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## kf4omc

TreborG2 said:


> By the way ... SPATULA CITY Spatula city SPATULA City!!


You are the first person to get it.... Classic Movie!!!! LOL...:lol:


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## TreborG2

kf4omc said:


> You are the first person to get it.... Classic Movie!!!! LOL...:lol:


 Actually... I have a wav of the commercial.. use to play it on friday when I'd get stuck at the office on after hours support.. the office being 1/4th office spaces, and 3/4ths computer parts warehouse ... and over the intercom one could hear "My where did you get that lovely spatula?" One friday my boss was still in the building.. came back laughing but still made the point to tell me not to do that anymore.. 

Then the next friday we started a "movie night" using the training room, projector and my pc (after all we had to test/demo Creative's PC-DVD gear) and anyone left over not on a support call or just after would mosey on over or would show up just when the food arrived..


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## satexplorer

I place a phone line with the DVR and it cut all my recordings. I see two new recordings one should of been 2 hours and 30 minutes showing corrupt recording and one hour on them.


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