Thread: Replacing hard disk in 721

My 721 died a few days ago with the "Hard disk failure" message and I'm out of warranty. I was going to wait until Feb 1 to see if I can upgrade (or downgrade) to a 522 but I was told that since I was in PR the offer wasn't available (same as Alaska). Why can't they just ship the receiver? Is there anything I can do?

Anyway, since my 721 is out of warranty I decided to test another hard disk that I had lying around but it seems that the drive must be 120GB because the 60GB Maxtor I installed gave me another failure. The only good thing is that I went to Maxtor site and the drive that was in the 721 was still under warranty so I'm sending it. If it doesn't work at least I get a new hd. Has anyone replaced the hard disk on their 721? Does it work?

I've never done it, but word is you'll need to clone the new drive from a working one (so your probably SOL).

Doesn't the unit reformat the drive, and write the OS to it, when it sees a damaged or blank hdd?

Faw - Couldn't you sign up for theit $5.99/mo warranty plan, and get a refurb 721 that way? You can always cancel it, after you receive the new one.

From my personal experience:
The only E* box for sure that could ever easily format a hard drive was the Legacy Dishplayer.

The 501/508/510 will only format/marry a hard drive if loaded with a special firmware load.

Word in these forums and at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dishmod/

is that the 721 and 921 no longer require a special hard drive mating process (like the 501), but need a preloaded drive. Remember, these are Linux boxes - they need a hard drive to boot up.

People have reported that the 522 will format a blank hard drive when installed, but installing a larger drive does NOT provide extra space.

I guess we'll find out when Faw gets his new drive.

Originally Posted by David_Levin

Word in these forums and at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dishmod/

is that the 721 and 921 no longer require a special hard drive mating process (like the 501), but need a preloaded drive. Remember, these are Linux boxes - they need a hard drive to boot up.

If true about the 721/921, couldn't one just copy files to a larger drive, and drop it in there? I don't think anyone has had any luck with that.

I heard different - Ghost copy all partitons works fine.

Smith:

Have you herd anything about people putting in larger hard drives?

Originally Posted by David_Levin

.... the 721 and 921 no longer require a special hard drive mating process (like the 501), but need a preloaded drive. Remember, these are Linux boxes - they need a hard drive to boot up.

People have reported that the 522 will format a blank hard drive when installed, but installing a larger drive does NOT provide extra space.

If the 921 and 721 are anything like the 522, I seriously doubt that they execute anything from the HDD. Putting executables on the hard drive would have made these devices a hacker's playground (huge security no-no).

From what other's have reported, putting a drive in the 522 with a partition table that doesn't match what the firmware expects to see will cause the unit to re-partition and format. I suspect it uses fixed values for the partition sizes (in sectors), so going to a different geometry / smaller drive would likely cause problems.

Faw: keep us posted on what happens with yours.

When I tried to install the 60GB hard drive it displayed a message saying "Installing System Image, Stage 1...", then rebooted and displayed another saying "Installing System Image, Stage 2..." and then it gave me the "hard disk failure" message. So I'm guessing that it does repartitions the hard disk, but since it was a 60GB instead of a 120GB it didn't worked (I hope). I guess I'll find out...