# 625 Hard disk failed after 2 years



## MTGriz (Apr 29, 2006)

Just wanted to recount my recent experience with a DVR disk failure. The 625 has been having occassional freezeups for several weeks. Then, suddenly, at the most inconvient moment (of course) as I turn on one of the tuners I get greeted with the 0521 error. No access to the HD, but both tuners are intact. After I calmed down I called the customer support number, got to Technical Support and the overseas tech made me go through a few simple steps (turn off and on, disconnect and reconnect power) to make sure the drive was really toast. After about 10 minutes I was told I needed to pay $14.95 for shipping of a new receiver. This was a Friday night. The new unit was received on Wednesday (within the 5-day window I was promised). Replacing it was a matter of half an hour, taking my time, waiting for the firmware update download, testing both tuners. I was pleasantly surprised that I now had 160 hours capacity on the drive - only now did I find out that it's just a repartitioned drive, if you had no recordings at any one time that update was applied automatically starting on October last year. Would have been nice to get that information from Dish then!

Anyway, packed the old unit up and sent to Dish via the prepaid shipping box. So overall a painless experience, of course losing the disk full of recordings was not pleasant and neither was having to watch live TV on a busy sports weekend. You really do get hooked on the DVR.

The drive lasted for just about two years. Hope the new one will hold up at least as long!


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## scooper (Apr 22, 2002)

As always - remember with a DVR - it's not IF they fail, it's when !

It's just too bad they won't let us consumers replace the harddrives when they fail - I'm sure I'm not the only one who could handle this.


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## kf4omc (Apr 11, 2006)

MTGriz said:


> Just wanted to recount my recent experience with a DVR disk failure. The 625 has been having occassional freezeups for several weeks. Then, suddenly, at the most inconvient moment (of course) as I turn on one of the tuners I get greeted with the 0521 error. No access to the HD, but both tuners are intact. After I calmed down I called the customer support number, got to Technical Support and the overseas tech made me go through a few simple steps (turn off and on, disconnect and reconnect power) to make sure the drive was really toast. After about 10 minutes I was told I needed to pay $14.95 for shipping of a new receiver. This was a Friday night. The new unit was received on Wednesday (within the 5-day window I was promised). Replacing it was a matter of half an hour, taking my time, waiting for the firmware update download, testing both tuners. I was pleasantly surprised that I now had 160 hours capacity on the drive - only now did I find out that it's just a repartitioned drive, if you had no recordings at any one time that update was applied automatically starting on October last year. Would have been nice to get that information from Dish then!
> 
> Anyway, packed the old unit up and sent to Dish via the prepaid shipping box. So overall a painless experience, of course losing the disk full of recordings was not pleasant and neither was having to watch live TV on a busy sports weekend. You really do get hooked on the DVR.
> 
> The drive lasted for just about two years. Hope the new one will hold up at least as long!


If you would have kept up on the post here. It was told to us that we could get 160 hours back when the update first came out. Yes dish dosent put out a press release but if most people are like me I dont want to lose the stuff I have on my hard drive for a net gain of 60 hours. I will wait untill the drive fails. And one day it will...


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

scooper said:


> It's just too bad they won't let us consumers replace the harddrives when they fail - I'm sure I'm not the only one who could handle this.


Replacing the drive is one thing. Finding a supported drive may be a horse of a different color. The replacement drive must be specifically supported by the firmware.

The other side of the coin is understanding why the hard drive failed. Was it bad cooling, poor power or just a weak drive? Poor power or cooling are probably more likely culprits than a bad mechanism, so it may not pay to just replace the drive if it is going to fry again.


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## scooper (Apr 22, 2002)

After 2 years ? - it could be just time.

Thinking my idea through - we know they have the ability (at least on the USB2 DVRs) to detect new drives, partition and format them. Why couldn't Dish do something similar for the internal harddrives ? Have them check if a new drive has been installed, and partition/format if it is a new drive. The files on the old drive should be encrypted using info from smartcard / receiver number (and maybe some other receiver unique info). If they need to be a specific drive - well - have Dish ship just a harddrive out instead of an entire DVR ?


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

scooper said:


> Thinking my idea through - we know they have the ability (at least on the USB2 DVRs) to detect new drives, partition and format them.


Not in the case of the 625.


> If they need to be a specific drive - well - have Dish ship just a harddrive out instead of an entire DVR ?


This assumes that you can conclusively determine that the problem is a failure with the drive mechanism. I suspect that isn't a reasonable assumption.


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

scooper said:


> After 2 years ? - it could be just time.
> 
> Thinking my idea through - we know they have the ability (at least on the USB2 DVRs) to detect new drives, partition and format them. Why couldn't Dish do something similar for the internal harddrives ? Have them check if a new drive has been installed, and partition/format if it is a new drive.


That's correct assumption, at Satguys I saw ppl made that way 625 from 522.


> The files on the old drive should be encrypted using info from smartcard / receiver number (and maybe some other receiver unique info).


Nope.


> If they need to be a specific drive - well - have Dish ship just a harddrive out instead of an entire DVR ?


The list posted in Internet. No problem to buy, but huge problem is lease and void sticker - you will have hard time to replace the disk by yourself and could void your lease agreement with Dish.


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## scooper (Apr 22, 2002)

P Smith said:


> The list posted in Internet. No problem to buy, but huge problem is lease and void sticker - you will have hard time to replace the disk by yourself and could void your lease agreement with Dish.


Come on - I'm talking Dish SHIP THE DRIVE to the end user to install - how difficult could that be ? And if DISH shipped the drive, they would know if this unit had been authorized.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

scooper said:


> Come on - I'm talking Dish SHIP THE DRIVE to the end user to install - how difficult could that be ? And if DISH shipped the drive, they would know if this unit had been authorized.


Would you (scooper) authorize me (harsh) to replace a drive in your (scooper's) DVR? You're asking for a pretty substantial leap of faith on DISH Network's part since it isn't a matter of hot plugging the replacement drive.

Any bets on how many of the first 100 customers that tried this would do so with the receiver still plugged in?

Combine the various cost factors and DISH Network is way ahead swapping out receivers. That is why they don't (and will not in the future) do what you're proposing.


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## flatus (Aug 18, 2006)

harsh said:


> Replacing the drive is one thing. Finding a supported drive may be a horse of a different color. The replacement drive must be specifically supported by the firmware.


IIRC they put that 'feature' in place to prevent people from replacing the drives.


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

I would say not, just to cover their a..ahh back to reduce number of complains in cases of fast dying cheap HDDs.


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## jerry downing (Mar 7, 2004)

If a fan failure caused the drive to overheat, you would be replacing it again before long.


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## flatus (Aug 18, 2006)

I would like to see dish allow/provide solid state hard drives for use in thier DVR's. Prices are falling rapidly -- by this time next year they should reach the price/performance/capacity threshold to make them a viable replacement.

No noise. Heat tolerant. Shock/vibration tolerant. Small form factor. Greater reliability. Even if they only offered the SSDs as an option, I would bet many people would pay extra for them just for the silence. But hopefully they are testing these drives and will have everything ready to go when the price drops. 

Of course, if I could get a SSD replacemnt for my 721, I'd never buy a new receiver.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

SSDs max out at what, 128GB? Not nearly large enough.

I'm sure the memory itself is quiet, but I'm far from convinced that the support system doesn't involve some serious cooling. I'd need to see some power consumption numbers to even entertain the idea.


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## Grentz (Jan 10, 2007)

SSDs still have limited writes as well, not good for a DVR that is writing CONSTANTLY 24/7.

The amount is high, but still limited, and on something as 24/7 as a DVR it would be tough to overcome...


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## flatus (Aug 18, 2006)

Power consumption numbers are better than everything but some of the 1.8 inch drives. I'm pretty sure they run cooler than any mechanical HD, but I am not sure on that. The operating temperatures for SSd's is much higher than mechanical drives. This fact, plus the vibration tolerance is why these get used in industrial settings all the time. 

The wear leveling issue is pretty much a non issue with current drives. A DVR running 24/7 doesn't stress a hard drive as much as a drive in a heavily used server. 

The only thing keeping SSDs back is the price. You can get 640GB and 1TB drives today, but their price is even more outrageous than the 128's. But by this time next year you should be able to get a 640 drive for half the price of a 128 today. Still not a bargain, but that would certainly be in the range where I personally would consider putting one in my DVR.


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## flatus (Aug 18, 2006)

Just saw this press release today 


> The OCZ Technology Group is betting on flash as it has now revealed a new series of solid state drives that offer are claimed to have a price per gigabyte that's 50% lower than that of other similar offers. Coming in a 2.5-inch form factor, the Core series SSDs have SATA 3.0 Gbps interfaces and are available in 32, 64 and 128 GB capacities.
> 
> "SSDs offer higher performance, reliability, and energy efficiency than conventional HDDs but the cost variance has limited adoption of vastly superior SSD technology, until now," said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology. "It is our mission to deliver the highest performance products to consumers at reasonable prices, and with the release of the Core Series SSDs we have done exactly that."
> 
> The new SSDs have a MTBF (mean time before failure) of 1.5 million hours and feature read and write speeds of 120 to 143 MB/s and 80 to 93 MB/s respectively. Backed by two years worth of warranty, the 32, 64 and 128GB Core drives have recommended price tags of $169, $259 and $479.


128GB drive for $479 isnt quite the price needed, but the previous generation with similar size/performance was around $2000.


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