# Moving Dish Internal Hard Drive data to an External Hard Drive



## artcal (Sep 28, 2010)

Hi!
Its my understanding that when you initially plug in a new external hard drive (EHD) into your Dish VIP 622 and/or VIP 722 (after you pay Dish’s one-time enablement fee), all of your movies and TV shows that you previously saved in the internal hard drive are deleted as the EHD is reformatting the data for your supported receiver. I am aware that Dish now allows you to share EHD among multiple receivers on the same account.

I have two VIP 622’s (contemplating upgrading to a 722). My question is if I plug in the EHD into either VIP and it reformats deleting the old data to that supported receiver, can I then move the EHD to the other VIP and the movies and TV shows on that VIP will be retained and transferable to the EHD? Or is the data on the second VIP deleted as well? 

Thanks in advance!


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## phrelin (Jan 18, 2007)

If you activate the EHD feature, the only impact it has on your internal hard drive is to write a code number to it that is the number associated with your account. That same number is written to all ViP DVR's on that account.

You can then move ("archive" as Dish calls it) anything already recorded or recorded in the future on the internal hard drive to the external hard drive and then unplug it from that ViP DVR and plug it into another ViP DVR on the same account and watch the recording or move it to the second ViP DVR's internal hard drive.

If you activate the feature, do the following on each of your ViP DVRs:

menu, 9, 3, counters,

then use these buttons to scroll up and down









scroll down until you see "Household Key seq num", write that number down and make sure all your ViP DVRs are showing that number as that is the number associated with your account.


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## Dish97 (Dec 19, 2009)

Nothing is deleted from the internal drive when formatting the EHD. The EHD needs to be formatted only once and not each time connected to a different Vip recvr on your account. Only data on the EHD is deleted when formatting.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

I'm not sure where the OP got his understanding (I HOPE it wasn't from a Dish CSR)...

As others have noted... plugging in an EHD doesn't do anything to your internal drive or existing recordings.

Perhaps, though, the confusion comes in here... When you archive to the external drive it is a move and not a copy... so you move content from the internal drive to the external (or vice-versa). You cannot have the exact same recording in both places at the same time.

You can record something, move it to archive, then record it again... but then it's not the "Exact" same recording.


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## mountaintop (Oct 2, 2010)

I have one 722 and two 622 with EHD now. I haven't tried move them around yet but this menu 9,3,counters I can't seem to find. Sorry but I really have looked and can't find it. Does it matter now? I have paid my $40.00 already.
I don't have anything really on any of the EHD yet but want to make sure they are setup right.

Have people used the external USB toaster docking station unit? These hold just the HD but I wonder about cooling long term. I have them on my imac but don't use them 24 hours a day.

http://www.amazon.com/Thermaltake-B...2?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1286479545&sr=8-2

Thanks again.


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## mountaintop (Oct 2, 2010)

I found them. A lot of good information. I'll check the household numbers on the other receivers.
Thanks


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