# Unlimited External HDD swaps (External key)



## tnsprin (Mar 16, 2003)

Dish apparently has announced that unlimited swaps between receivers is now possible in a Retailers chat. From what others have been mentioning you need an external household key. Upto now, and probably without the key, you could only swap 3 times.

My receivers don't yet have a non-zero key and I don't have a spare drive to experiment with.

Do you have an external key on your machines? Have you tried swapping the Ext HDD? Respond with comments, especially if you had a zero key but found how to get a non-zero key.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Based on the response I got from E*. my understanding tnsprin is that the keys are being rolled out to customers that have EHD enabled. My personal opinion (read educated guess) would be that if the keys are still 0x0 then I would suspect your keys have not been set and I would assume this feature is not enabled for you. 

I would give it a week or so and if you don't see your keys change then I would call support to try and get your keys set.


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## langlin (Apr 8, 2005)

I have a 612 and a 622, both have keys but they are not the same number.
I have swapped drives successfully. I moved a program from drive "a" to the 622 , swapped the drives and then moved it from the 622 to drived "b".


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## TulsaOK (Feb 24, 2004)

langlin said:


> I have a 612 and a 622, both have keys but they are not the same number.
> I have swapped drives successfully. I moved a program from drive "a" to the 622 , swapped the drives and then moved it from the 622 to drived "b".


How many times have you done the swap?


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## ChuckA (Feb 7, 2006)

By swapping the drive, they mean take the same drive between the two receivers. Not connecting multiple drives to the same receiver.


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## ebaltz (Nov 23, 2004)

I used my EHD with two 622s that were exhanged because they were faulty, and now on a 722 that replaced another faulty 622. The drive has worked perfectly among all three receivers, which I am very thankful for, since I have about 100 HD movies on it. What people should do is order all the movie channels for about one month out of the year. Then record like every HD movie during that month and archive to a drive. Then cancel the channels and spend the rest of the year watching those 100 HD movies. Then either erase and start over or pick up another EHD and do it again. 100 HD movies on Blu-ray would run you about $2500, and a 750GB EHD is like $150. Of course if you rent movies you could probably get 100 for about $500 if rented individually or on a mail plan it might cost about $200 or so, but then you don't have them for good.


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## langlin (Apr 8, 2005)

TulsaOK said:


> How many times have you done the swap?


Only twice so far but both receivers accept the drives without asking any questions or error messages, they just display the content.


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## sledhead 700 (Apr 27, 2004)

tnsprin said:


> Dish apparently has announced that unlimited swaps between receivers is now possible in a Retailers chat. From what others have been mentioning you need an external household key. Upto now, and probably without the key, you could only swap 3 times.
> 
> My receivers don't yet have a non-zero key and I don't have a spare drive to experiment with.
> 
> Do you have an external key on your machines? Have you tried swapping the Ext HDD? Respond with comments, especially if you had a zero key but found how to get a non-zero key.


Can you explain how to view the Key? I have been waiting for the 3-swap to be gone. I have 2 drives that only work on one of my 622s because i swapped too many times.

Dave


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## langlin (Apr 8, 2005)

sledhead 700 said:


> Can you explain how to view the Key? I have been waiting for the 3-swap to be gone. I have 2 drives that only work on one of my 622s because i swapped too many times.
> 
> Dave


On the 612 it's Menu-6-2-counters

on the 622 it's Menu-6-3-counters


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## sledhead 700 (Apr 27, 2004)

Both of my 622s have the same Key number and I can now swap...5 times to make sure ...Now if we can get group to folders on the EHD..


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## TulsaOK (Feb 24, 2004)

sledhead 700 said:


> Both of my 622s have the same Key number and I can now swap...5 times to make sure ...Now if we can get group to folders on the EHD..


And a decent user interface; like the one on the INTERNAL HARD DRIVE !!!


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## Frodo301 (Sep 15, 2007)

I am able to switch my external 500 gig w/o problem. Switched 4 times.


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## TulsaOK (Feb 24, 2004)

Frodo301 said:


> I am able to switch my external 500 gig w/o problem. Switched 4 times.


Between what kind of receivers?


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## AVJohnnie (Jul 27, 2004)

Need one more option on the poll:

_* Keys are non-zero, have not tried swapping drives.*_

Which would describe my situation. I considered voting the first selection, but decided not to because I don't know if the drives will move without incident and I didn't want to skew the results.


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## phrelin (Jan 18, 2007)

sledhead 700 said:


> Both of my 622s have the same Key number and I can now swap...5 times to make sure ...Now if we can get group to folders on the EHD..





Frodo301 said:


> I am able to switch my external 500 gig w/o problem. Switched 4 times.


This is great news! Almost time for me to start asking for a second 722 to replace my 508's.


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## ShapeShifter (Apr 21, 2008)

Just had my service installed and activated today, with three DVRs: a 722 in the living room, a 612 in the bedroom, and another 612 in the motorhome.

Looking at the diagnostic counters, I do have a household key, that is the same on all three DVRs. When I first plugged in the EHD to the first DVR, I got the message that the drive needs to be formatted before use, as I expected. Then I tried this:
Plugged into bedroom DVR, archived some shows onto EHD.
Plugged into living room DVR, restored some shows from EHD, archived some others onto EHD.
Plugged into motorhome DVR, restored some from EHD, archived some to EHD.
Plugged into living room DVR, restored some shows.
Plugged into bedroom DVR, restored some shows.
At no time did I have the EHD empty (which is said to reset the move counter) and at no time did I get any messages about EHD moves. I think I've done enough moves to show that the household keys are working and that I don't have to worry about the three move limit? Cool! :glasses:


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## Ken Green (Oct 6, 2005)

ShapeShifter said:


> ....restored some shows from EHD, copied some others onto EHD.


Unless there's been a recent change, just so everyone is clear, the function of moving any events either:
-From the DVR HDD to the EHDD (archive)
-From the EHDD to the DVR HDD (restore)
is a transfer-only function. Events can only be moved, and never "copied."

I'm certain that is what you meant, SS, but the EHDD is a confusing feature to many, so I wanted to clarify.


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## Henry (Nov 15, 2007)

sledhead 700 said:


> ...Now if we can get group to folders on the EHD..


And fix the (Seagate FreeAgent) wake-up problems when connected to a 622.


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## ShapeShifter (Apr 21, 2008)

Ken Green said:


> Unless there's been a recent change, just so everyone is clear, the function of moving any events either:
> -From the DVR HDD to the EHDD (archive)
> -From the EHDD to the DVR HDD (restore)
> is a transfer-only function. Events can only be moved, and never "copied."
> ...


You are absolutely correct! All EHD operations are indeed MOVES, and not COPIES. I had originally typed all of the operations as copies, then went back and changed them to the official terms of archive and restore. Looks like I missed one, oops! :bang

Good catch, thanks for the correction. I will fix the original post.


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## Ken Green (Oct 6, 2005)

How went the install? We were discussing it in a different thread, yes?
What did you end up with in the motorhome?


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## ShapeShifter (Apr 21, 2008)

Ken Green said:


> How went the install? We were discussing it in a different thread, yes?
> What did you end up with in the motorhome?


Install went well, put a 612 in the MH. Details are HERE.


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## tnsprin (Mar 16, 2003)

AVJohnnie said:


> Need one more option on the poll:
> 
> _* Keys are non-zero, have not tried swapping drives.*_
> 
> Which would describe my situation. I considered voting the first selection, but decided not to because I don't know if the drives will move without incident and I didn't want to skew the results.


Actually that one is included in my choices. But I certainly could have added a bunch of other choices, but decided it would have gotten too complicated. E.g. Non-zero keys but no other machine to swap to.


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