# Hard Drive Failure?



## Slordak (Dec 17, 2003)

Has anyone experienced failure of the hard drive in the 921? Either shortly after the unit was received, or later in its life cycle?

My 921 is now apparently suffering from this, or at least from something going wrong here. When one turns it on, the hard drive makes a repeated "clunking" sound, but one can often eventually view the channel which was last tuned. However, if one changes channel, the 921 again makes a clunking sound and locks up for a period of time before the channel actually is tuned. In general the mechanical portion of the unit seems unhappy in some way.

At this point, I'm afraid to set timers and use "trick play" features, since the last time I tried to watch paused TV, the 921 wound up locking up when it was about 10 minutes behind real time, and hence this portion of the program was essentially lost forever as I scrambled to view the programming on another (non-921) receiver. This of course renders the benefits of having a PVR/DVR completely moot.

Has anyone else experienced this? Was there any way to resolve the issue, or any sort of work-around which can be done? Does the 921 have to be replaced or repaired, and since it's more than a year old, what's the price for doing this?


----------



## Allen Noland (Apr 23, 2002)

I haven't experienced it with the 921, but the sound you describe does sound like the HDD is going to fail.


----------



## jergenf (Mar 31, 2005)

If you believe that your hard drive is starting to fail you'll need to have it repaired immediately. First obtain a quote from dishnetwork or your local satellite dealer. If they service your unit you will probably loose all your saved programs so ask what your options are.

If you want to fix it yourself I believe the Linux OS is on that drive so just swapping it with another 250GB may not be as easy as you think. I heard that if a new drive is inserted in the firmware will create partitions but will be unable to reboot because of the lack of the OS. You'll need a PC preferably Linux to copy the OS and your hd8 partition (contains your saved programs) to the corresponding partitions of your new drive. The cost of a new drive starts around $110 have no idea what the labor is.


----------



## Michael P (Oct 27, 2004)

Don't try to fix it yourself. It's probably still under warrenty, opening up the box will void the warrenty. Get ahold of advanced tech support at Dish, they should be able to help you. They have a special team just for 921 issues.


----------



## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

Yes they do. That's the team that I send people directly to when they ask me.


----------



## Slordak (Dec 17, 2003)

How long is the warranty? 12 months? In that case, it's no longer under warranty, I'm afraid, since this unit is from January of 2004. I had to beg and plead with the local dealer, and take a day off from work to go pick the beast up, so I have one of the very first available 921s, but alas, it's showing its age.


----------



## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

12 month warrenty. If you're not already on the extended warranty plan, I'd call today and add it. And then hope that your 921 makes it another month, at which time you can make a claim for replacement.

Or, maybe we can work together and talk the 921 support team into replacing it for you under warranty, even though it's a little outside. If you want to try that route, email me all of the information (same stuff that I always ask for).


----------



## jergenf (Mar 31, 2005)

If you find the cost for a hard drive replacement for a unit off warranty please post it. Also find out if they will they save your programs to the new drive.

PS: One other thing that can make your drive chug away is if the drive is fragmented. Since you can't defrag the drive without using a PC your only other option is to erase many of your programs to restore more space.


----------



## Slordak (Dec 17, 2003)

Fragmentation making the hard drive "chug away", yes, but make a repeated mechanical clunking sound from the drive? No. It's not that the drive is having to seek a bunch, it seems more that the hard drive is having some issue with the heads not being where they're expected to be. The clunking appears to be the unit doing some sort of reset or re-calibraton in an effort to become operational again. After a few tries, it does often succeed, but this adds a delay every time one changes channels and one can't do things like watch live TV while recording something particularly well.

Mark, thanks for the offer. I'm going to keep using the unit until it finally gives up the ghost, but once it does, I may take you up on the "warranty negotiation" offer.


----------



## jergenf (Mar 31, 2005)

That's makes sense but you should really consider the replacement before you loose everything. At least ask your local dealer for a price quote and also find out if dishwork will allow a warranty extension (without mentioning your problems).

PS: When my unit is off warranty I'm going to clone a backup disk just in case something like this should happen to me.


----------



## rixhd (Jul 14, 2004)

My 721 hard drive went out after a year, so I called Dish to check my options. They said that they would sell me an extended warrantee eventhough it was over 12mo old, and then they would replace the 721 for free. :eek2: My 921 is included under the warrantee also. If I'm lucky, my 921 will go out and they will give me a 942....NOT! :nono2: 

Good luck..


----------



## Nova Guys (Apr 4, 2005)

Our 921 developed the same problem within a month or two of purchasing it. When I called dish they replied that as long as you could get it to restart, than it was fine. I returned it to Costco and received another one. But, we were told by dish, if you lease any other DVR's from dish then any receiver you use in the house is under extended warranty. I've not tested that promise out.....


----------



## Slordak (Dec 17, 2003)

Well, my 921 is still restarting and its mostly running, but it's really not in good shape now. It regularly locks up while waiting for the HD to become responsive again, i.e. you press the "Guide" button, the HD goes "whirrr... whunk" 3 or 4 times, and then the guide comes up.

I watched a movie recorded back from when the unit was still healthy and even that was having problems, with the playback seizing up and stopping every couple minutes. Towards the end of the movie, it was behaving more normally, but it started making noises again after I stopped playback. Blah.


----------

