EHD options for HWS

[tennisnut]

Surely these questions have been asked and answered before in The Hopper Zone, but I can't find any relevant threads. Like others we have a rental HWS that is starting to act like it has a failing hard drive. These questions are driven by my need to prepare for that situation.
1. Do any of the "portable" EHDs that draw power from the USB connection rather than a wall wart work with a HWS?
2. Has anyone ever successfully backed up an EHD with Dish's proprietary format as an image to a Linux network? I'm not trying to hack anything here - just trying to protect against corruption of the EHD by making multiple backups.
3. The HWS functions involving an EHD include transferring between IHD/EHD and playing from an EHD, but not copying between IHD and EHD. Is there a way to copy instead of transfer, like on the predecessor VIP DVRs?

Sorry if none of these are new topics, but I don't see how to do nested searches with the current forum software.

 

[thomasjk]

1. AC powered EHD's are all Dish supports. USB may or may not work.
2. Can't answer.
3. Transfer is the only option using the Hopper.

 

[Tron2012]

While very technical, I've never been eyeball deep into system architecture details and protocols. So not sure if an SID (Security Identifier) might hinder an image useless.

At one point a few years ago before my Hoppers, I had a 211k (non-DVR) with an EHD attached. My pseudo-DVR if you will. The drive was starting to fail really fast so I brought it up to a Linux machine (think I had on my Mac in VMWare). I could recognize the drive at times but because it was failing it was hit or miss connecting or actually transferring data so I never could recover what I needed to and wrote it off as a loss. What I do recall was that there were two files for each recording. A data/info file and the actual encrypted recording itself.

Now, I'm not sure if you try to image the EHD you have now with recordings if it will retain the original drive's machine ID. I do not think it will. So, if you put that image onto another EHD and hook it up, the Hopper may not recognize it as an already authorized and formatted EHD and prompt you to reformat it.

Reason I mentioned the part about my experience is that maybe you can just dump the data files and whatever else is on there manually as backup files then maybe if the original EHD you have now goes South you might be able to hook up a new one, format it then move those copies back. Do not know if the recordings actual bind to an EHD or just the main Hopper they were saved from. Or neither. But have to think for security reasons there has to be a binding of devices and/or data somewhere.

Good luck! Try it and post back on the results.

 

[Tron2012]

UPDATE: I just remembered (if I'm not just rewriting history!) that for that 211 I did hook up another EHD and formatted it. I then tried putting some of the files I could recover onto it and I THINK it did kind of work. I do remember that I saw a number of recordings listed on the EHD when watching on the 211 but some did not play back. Got an error message. But I know some did play. So, maybe just the raw file backup may work if the image does not.