# Time for formatting an EHD



## Bob338 (Jul 11, 2007)

From all the information posted here about EHD's I decided to pick up a Maxtor 750 gig One Tough EHD. Got it a Fry's for $125. Everything worked fine in the connections and I activated with E*. The "few minutes" to format their website, the manual and the screen says it takes to format is turning into several hours. How long does formating the drive usually take?

I have a VIP622. The light on the HD keeps blinking indicating it's working but it's now near 5 hours and nothing seems to be happening. I called tech support and the guy I got was dumber than I am. He couldn't answer and it was obvious he didn't know what he was talking about. I asked for a supervisor and was advised that support group was "not available" at present.

Any information or help would be appreciated.


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## TulsaOK (Feb 24, 2004)

Bob338 said:


> From all the information posted here about EHD's I decided to pick up a Maxtor 750 gig One Tough EHD. Got it a Fry's for $125. Everything worked fine in the connections and I activated with E*. The "few minutes" to format their website, the manual and the screen says it takes to format is turning into several hours. How long does formating the drive usually take?
> 
> I have a VIP622. The light on the HD keeps blinking indicating it's working but it's now near 5 hours and nothing seems to be happening. I called tech support and the guy I got was dumber than I am. He couldn't answer and it was obvious he didn't know what he was talking about. I asked for a supervisor and was advised that support group was "not available" at present.
> 
> Any information or help would be appreciated.


My EHD's are Western Digital 320 gig and it literally took a couple of minutes to format them. I don't know if that helps or not, but five hours seems a bit long. Hopefully, someone with your setup will show up and offer some advice.


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## bluewolverine (Jan 22, 2006)

I've got two drives - one 500gig and the other 750 gig. Each took only a few minutes to format.

Take it from someone who has worked in software for the past 20 years, pull the plug. The dvr may "see it" just fine afterwards or it may attempt to format it yet again. Either way, the drive itself cannot be harmed by stopping the process. If it doesn't work after all that, try it on a pc if you have the access. Else exchange it for a new one.


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## Bob338 (Jul 11, 2007)

Thanks guys! 

Got the issue resolved and for the benefit of anyone else with a similar problem, I can't give a solution but I can say what I did provided a resolution. Still don't know the cause.

I pulled the plugs, all of them and tried again; resets on both the 622 and the EHD. Same song different verse. I then unplugged the USB connector from the back of the box and put it in the front USB port and went through the initial connection exercise for the fourth time. In a very short time the receiver "died" everything but the hard drive in it was dark but the drive kept spinning. After a brief time it shut off, the lights started flashing and the TV set came back on. I presumed then that the rear USB port wasn't working properly initially. Then, to check things, I transferred the connection from the front to the back port again and tried to archive some of my movies. SUCCESS! The archiving is taking place successfully as I write this. 

Thanks again. Still don't know the cause of the problem but everything seems to operate normally and as it should.


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## davethestalker (Sep 17, 2006)

After over 9 hours of formatting time, I finally pulled the plugs and rebooted. Hopefully, it will do what it's supposed to this time around.

EDIT: Yep, everything is Kosher now. I unplugged everything from the My Book and the USB in the back of the 722 and rebooted the 722. Picture came up, when into my multimedia and the format only took about 2 - 3 minutes. DVR shut off and rebooted like it was supposed to.

Dish needs to state instructions on the proper procedure for connecting an EHD.


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## ZBoomer (Feb 21, 2008)

davethestalker said:


> After over 9 hours of formatting time, I finally pulled the plugs and rebooted.


You are one patient dude. 

Glad y'all got it figured out; the EHD feature on the VIP's is da BOMB. 

So cool you can move the EHD's between receivers in the house too!


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## TulsaOK (Feb 24, 2004)

davethestalker said:


> Dish needs to state instructions on the proper procedure for connecting an EHD.


The procedure I use for new drives is to connect the EHD and let it format. I'm not sure, beyond that, what additional instructions would be needed. My 640 took two minutes to format.


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## Jim5506 (Jun 7, 2004)

The linux-ish OS on the 622/722 does a very quick format compared to windows.

Should be less that 15 minutes in almost all cases.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

I'm guessing that all that really happens is a short S.M.A.R.T. test is run and the drive is partitioned.


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## TulsaOK (Feb 24, 2004)

harsh said:


> I'm guessing that all that really happens is a short S.M.A.R.T. test is run and the drive is partitioned.


I lost 45GB after my 640GB drive formatted. That's quite a bit of overhead.


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## RickDee (May 23, 2006)

TulsaOK said:


> I lost 45GB after my 640GB drive formatted. That's quite a bit of overhead.


You didn't lose anything.

The 640GB figure is decimal and the 595GB figure is in binary. They are the same quantity in two different number bases.

Compare 0°C with 32°F - they are the same temperature in 2 different bases.

Compare 80 km with 50 miles - they are the same distance in two different bases.


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## RickDee (May 23, 2006)

TulsaOK said:


> I lost 45GB after my 640GB drive formatted. That's quite a bit of overhead.


P.S.

There are *11* kinds of people in the world, those that understand *binary*, those that don't, & those that think they do.


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## TulsaOK (Feb 24, 2004)

RickDee said:


> You didn't lose anything.
> 
> The 640GB figure is decimal and the 595GB figure is in binary. They are the same quantity in two different number bases.
> 
> ...


What's the formula that converts 640GB to 595GB?


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## TulsaOK (Feb 24, 2004)

RickDee said:


> P.S.
> 
> There are *11* kinds of people in the world, those that understand *binary*, those that don't, & those that think they do.


I understand binary.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

TulsaOK said:


> What's the formula that converts 640GB to 595GB?


The Madison Avenue Formula.

The manufacturers themselves grudgingly admit that their version of a platter based gigabyte is 1,000,000,000 bytes. A gigabyte is actually 1,073,741,824 bytes so if you divide 640,000,000,000 by 1,073,741,824 you get just over 596 gigabytes. Taking out some for overhead, you get 595GB yield out of a "640GB" hard drive.

I love it when the math works out.

ps: This is related to the backup tape formula that declares the capacity of a storage tape to be exactly twice the physical capacity of the tape. Everybody knows that you average 50% compression when backing up data.


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## RickDee (May 23, 2006)

TulsaOK said:


> I understand binary.


If you understood binary then you would know that 2^10 or 1024 binary is equal to 1000 decimal, and you would know how to convert between binary and decimal.


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## Jim5506 (Jun 7, 2004)

2^10 is 10000000000 binary which equals 1024 decimal and is not equal to 1000 decimal.


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## ChuckA (Feb 7, 2006)

Jim5506 said:


> 2^10 is 10000000000 binary which equals 1024 decimal and is not equal to 1000 decimal.


Correct. And therein lays the problem. We, and computers, know what a K, M, G and T are truly multiples of 1024. But the drive makers think they are multiples of 1000 and advertise the capacities that way. When the computer sees the amount of free space or used space it reports it correctly and that causes the confusion.


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## RickDee (May 23, 2006)

Jim5506 said:


> 2^10 is 10000000000 binary which equals 1024 decimal and is not equal to 1000 decimal.


You're right. What I meant was that the figure we see for disk capacity is a multiple of 1024 vs the advertised size being a multiple of 1000. That's why when you look at the disk Properties page it has the advertised size, a multiple of 1000 and the binary size, a multiple of 1024 on the right.

My 320GB drive capacity is 320,070,287,360 in decimal but 298GB in binary. The point is that those 2 figures are exactly the same amount of space on the drive in 2 different number bases. The manufacturer advertises it as a 320GB and the computer tells you it is 298GB.


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## TulsaOK (Feb 24, 2004)

RickDee said:


> If you understood binary then you would know that 2^10 or 1024 binary is equal to 1000 decimal, and you would know how to convert between binary and decimal.


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## TulsaOK (Feb 24, 2004)

I hope this isn't too far off topic; Buy.Com is advertising a 1Tb Western Digital for $99.99 with free shipping.


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## RickDee (May 23, 2006)

TulsaOK said:


> I hope this isn't too far off topic; Buy.Com is advertising a 1Tb Western Digital for $99.99 with free shipping.


That's a good deal, but you only get about 935GB when you put it in and check the space. I say about 935GB because I don't have mine handy to check the properties. The other 65GB gets lost in the mail!:lol:


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## HobbyTalk (Jul 14, 2007)

Thiis is common for hard drives. From Wiki:

Since the early 2000s most consumer hard drive capacities are grouped in certain size classes measured in gigabytes. The exact capacity of a given drive is usually some number above or below the class designation. Although most manufacturers of hard disk drives and flash-memory disk devices define 1 gigabyte as 1,000,000,000 bytes, the computer operating systems used by most users usually calculate size in gigabytes by dividing the total capacity in bytes (whether it is disk capacity, file size, or system RAM) by 1,073,741,824. This distinction is a cause of confusion, as a hard disk with a manufacturer-rated capacity of 400 gigabytes may be reported by the operating system as only 372 GB large, depending on the type of report.


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## TulsaOK (Feb 24, 2004)

RickDee said:


> That's a good deal, but you only get about 935GB when you put it in and check the space. I say about 935GB because I don't have mine handy to check the properties. The other 65GB gets lost in the mail!:lol:


Referring to post #11 in this thread; aren't you the one who said I didn't lose anything when I formatted my 640Gb drive and ended up with only 595Gb?  Maybe HobbyTalk can give you a lesson in _binary_. :lol:


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## RickDee (May 23, 2006)

TulsaOK said:


> Referring to post #11 in this thread; aren't you the one who said I didn't lose anything when I formatted my 640Gb drive and ended up with only 595Gb?  Maybe HobbyTalk can give you a lesson in _binary_. :lol:


I guess some people just don't know when to take a joke.


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## JeffN9 (Apr 14, 2007)

RickDee said:


> That's a good deal, but you only get about 935GB when you put it in and check the space. I say about 935GB because I don't have mine handy to check the properties. The other 65GB gets lost in the mail!:lol:


That's about what mine said that it had for space when I first hooked it up. I didn't know why at the time it was missing some space but I do now, errr sort of.


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## TulsaOK (Feb 24, 2004)

RickDee said:


> That's a good deal, but you only get about 935GB when you put it in and check the space. I say about 935GB because I don't have mine handy to check the properties. The other 65GB gets lost in the mail!:lol:


My 1TB WD Essential formatted to 930.3. I guess my mailman took more than his share.


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