# External Hard Drive Unsupported?



## mark069 (Jan 10, 2007)

I just bought a WD Passport 250 GB USB external drive and my 622 does not seem to recognize it. This drive is very compact and uses the USB port for power which is why I got it to begin with. Is that the issue? Is there a list of drive requirements such as power sourse, rpm's etc. posted somewhere by DISH or someone else so when I get a replacement drive, it will actually work? Thanks!


----------



## whatchel1 (Jan 11, 2006)

I think this drive has to be told by the PC to start and run since it doesn't have a separate p/s to spin it up. The E* DVR probably doesn't have this.


----------



## mark069 (Jan 10, 2007)

whatchel1 said:


> I think this drive has to be told by the PC to start and run since it doesn't have a separate p/s to spin it up. The E* DVR probably doesn't have this.


I appreciate your response but I am pretty sure that is not the case. When I plug the drive into the 622's USB port the drive light goes on and blinks for a while before glowing a steady blue indicating to me that the drive probably IS spinning up up the 622. An error message pops up on the screen from the 622 saying "This USB Device is Unsupported by the DVR" or something close to that.....

In other threads there was talk about the 622's USB port not supplying enough power for HD's that get their power from the USB port. Do I really need to get a drive with a separate power supply? I would prefer NOT to if I don't have to because I already have enough power cords coming from my entertainment center.....


----------



## ChuckA (Feb 7, 2006)

I assume, but will still ask just to be sure, you have the EHD facility authorized by Dish and paid the $40 one time fee for it.


----------



## TulsaOK (Feb 24, 2004)

mark069 said:


> In other threads there was talk about the 622's USB port not supplying enough power for HD's that get their power from the USB port.


Maybe?


----------



## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

I though I too had read somewhere that you need to have an external power supply for the hard drive or it will not work.

Supplying power through the USB port to run a hard drive would place a strain on the ViP receiver that already has some overheating issues anyway... so even if it did work, I wouldn't recommend it.


----------



## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

Well I think you are going to need one more.. 

My gut tells me that using a Hardrive without a power supply is not a good thing and most likely is a cause for the error you are seeing. These devices do a lot of data transfer for a sustained amount of time and I would think USB drives without independent power would just be asking for trouble. 

I am not sure if anything official was mentioned about this... But given the application use, even if it did work I still would recommend getting one with an independent power source.


----------



## mark069 (Jan 10, 2007)

ChuckA said:


> I assume, but will still ask just to be sure, you have the EHD facility authorized by Dish and paid the $40 one time fee for it.


Of course.

This drive worked fine on my laptop and is very small - 250 GB and a little bigger than a credit card. It's a shame it worn't work on the 622. Now I have to get a freaken brick.... At least the brick will be a hell of a lot cheaper....


----------



## mark069 (Jan 10, 2007)

mark069 said:


> Of course.
> 
> This drive worked fine on my laptop and is very small - 250 GB and a little bigger than a credit card. It's a shame it worn't work on the 622. Now I have to get a freaken brick.... At least the brick will be a hell of a lot cheaper....


Just got the WD Mybook 320 GB USB hard drive with it's own power source and it works fine with my 622.....


----------



## TulsaOK (Feb 24, 2004)

mark069 said:


> Just got the WD Mybook 320 GB USB hard drive with it's own power source and it works fine with my 622.....


That's the same drive I bought for my ViP622. I've been very happy with it. Excellent transfer rate. I archived a two hour HD movie from my $.01/year Cinemax promotion in 22 minutes.


----------



## HD_Wayne (May 23, 2006)

mark069 said:


> Of course.
> 
> This drive worked fine on my laptop and is very small - 250 GB and a little bigger than a credit card. It's a shame it worn't work on the 622. Now I have to get a freaken brick.... At least the brick will be a hell of a lot cheaper....


You can get an external power supply from WD for 10 bucks if power is the issue. Here is the URL

http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/accessories.asp?ProdID=174

Wayne


----------



## mark069 (Jan 10, 2007)

HD_Wayne said:


> You can get an external power supply from WD for 10 bucks if power is the issue. Here is the URL
> 
> http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/accessories.asp?ProdID=174
> 
> Wayne


That solution won't work with the Passport drive I had.

"The black WD Passport portable drives do not have a port for this power supply"

Anyway, I got the Mybook 320 GB and I already got used to it's brick like size...lol


----------



## ronr48 (Aug 8, 2006)

I purchased the Maxtor One Touch 4 Plus 750GB ext. drive & then contacted Maxtor Tech support. They told me that I did not have to load the Maxtor software, because the Dish receiver would overwrite it. He said the Maxtor drive would work fine with the Dish receiver. So, I connected the ext. drive to the receiver. It asked me to format. I did.
Formatting worked fine & receiver recognized the drive. Archived 3 large files to ext. drive. Have not tried moving the files back to the internal drive. However, I cannot record directly to the ext. drive. It will only record to the internal drive. This is even after setting all the flags that I am suppose to. Like “enabling recording to the ext drive, etc.”
Called Dish tech support. They were poor. She did not even know that you could record to the ext. drive. She said she would send the problem to their eng. dept. She did not know if I would get an answer within the 30 days I have to return ext. drive.
I called Maxtor & told them of the problem. He said the drive meets Dishe’s requirements of a single disk & it’s own power supply. He said the ext. dive is just a dumb box & gets it’s instructions from the Dish receiver. He said the problem has to be on the Dish end. He asked me if their were any choices to be made during the formatting process. I was not watching the screen, so I don’t know. He suggested that I move the 3 files back to the int. drive & hookup the ext drive to my computer & load the Maxtor software. Then reconnect it to the Dish receiver & watch for any messages during the formatting.
Can someone offer me some ideas as to what is wrong & how it can be fixed?


----------



## HobbyTalk (Jul 14, 2007)

You can not record directly to the ext. drive. You record on the internal driv e then move it to the ext. drive.


----------



## ChuckA (Feb 7, 2006)

The External HDD (EHD) is not the same device as you see labeled EXT in the receiver timer setup. The EXT device is a PocketDish not an EHD. As HobbyTalk said, you do not record directly to the EHD. Record to the internal HDD on the receiver and archive to the EHD. You can playback directly from the EHD however.


----------



## TulsaOK (Feb 24, 2004)

ChuckA said:


> The External HDD (EHD) is not the same device as you see labeled EXT in the receiver timer setup. The EXT device is a PocketDish not an EHD. As HobbyTalk said, you do not record directly to the EHD. Record to the internal HDD on the receiver and archive to the EHD. You can playback directly from the EHD however.


Slightly OT, but the interface to the EHD has to be the worst I've ever seen. It seems to me that at least *some* of the code for accessing your recordings could have been used or at least served as an example of how to do it. Not friendly at all.


----------



## ChuckA (Feb 7, 2006)

This is still failry new support. I'm sure we will see improvements in the future. There have been a number of enhancement requests made for this interface.


----------



## ronr48 (Aug 8, 2006)

I purchased the Maxtor One Touch 4 Plus 750GB ext. drive. Formatting went fine. Set all the flags. Archived some files over from int. drive to ext. drive. Files played fine on int. drive. However, they do not play well on the ext. drive. The playback freezes, the audio is intermitent & sometimes the picture moves forward in little jumps.
I don't want to call Dish, because the last time I called them, they knew little or nothing about ext. drives.
Can someone tell me what is wrong?


----------



## ChuckA (Feb 7, 2006)

I use the One Touch 3 750gb and have never seen those problems. Mine is working fine. I don't know what the difference is between the 3 and 4 models but I assume the 4 is newer.


----------



## alangant (Jul 25, 2005)

ronr48 said:


> I purchased the Maxtor One Touch 4 Plus 750GB ext. drive. Formatting went fine. Set all the flags. Archived some files over from int. drive to ext. drive. Files played fine on int. drive. However, they do not play well on the ext. drive. The playback freezes, the audio is intermitent & sometimes the picture moves forward in little jumps.
> I don't want to call Dish, because the last time I called them, they knew little or nothing about ext. drives.
> Can someone tell me what is wrong?


A common problem with some external hard drives is a "power saver" mode. The one touch 4 has such a feature. You may have to reformat your drive to windows or mac to access the control features so that you can disable this feature; check your documentation. if the drive goes into "power saver" mode, it will keep trying to spin down. this can cause significant delays (multiple seconds).


----------



## bobukcat (Dec 20, 2005)

Did you try to access the USB Storage option under the DVR menu? Everytime I connect one of my drives (also a WD but with power supply) I get the "Unsupported Device" error, but it still works like a charm.


----------

