Dish DVR Hard Drive unlock?

[KAB]

In Windows go to control Panel, admin tools, computer management, disk management. You should see it there. If you do not are you sure the drive is spinning? If you do see it right click on it. Work with the choices. Create simple drive, delee volume and so on, if it says . Help, whats this , post back. Peace

YES!!! I don't believe it's locked at all...it's currently Linux and not Windows recognizable. You just have to take the above steps

 

[KAB]

I wouldn't trust that drive in my computer.
#1 Dish probably uses the cheapest drives they can get ahold of.

Hmm, I wonder why the replacements are so expensive.

 

[Claude Greiner]

Hmm, I wonder why the replacements are so expensive.

Define expensive

 

[KAB]

The 722 replacements, 500GB, were just at or over $100.00, before Malaysia floods.

 

[TG2]

I wouldn't trust that drive in my computer.

#1 Dish probably uses the cheapest drives they can get ahold of. More then likely you got are refurbished drive.

#2 As that DVR that the drive was taken from was under non stop use. Any DVR will just beat the crap out of the drive.

The point I'm making is that I wouldn't trust the drive, as its more likely to fail

While I might agree the use of the drive to be less trustworthy .. I wouldn't agree with number 1.

You're making a unit.. that has to perform, as reliably as possible. Needs to withstand shocks & jolts from shipping (like UPS and FedEx would ever handle electronics with kid gloves) and that's nearly nothing compared with the thrashing of recording 2, 3 or 5 streams at once plus playback at the same time.. etc..

So I don't believe they are the cheapest .. inexpensive because of the bulk purchasing power Echostar has? maybe..


To our O.P.

As an experiment for playing with the drive and data.. sure.. go for it .. but as a thing of value? like any data that you'd put onto it and you wanted to keep safe.. make sure you have a backup (on DVD's or some such) as a safety.

... doesn't do anything ...

• Can you hear it power up?
• do you feel the vibrations as you apply power?
• in the bios - you see the drive .. do the specs there match the label? (cylinders sectors heads, LBA)
• what os?
• fdisk?
• format?
• already into an external enclosure? have you tried directly connected (sata or ide, with hardwire, not via emulation through USB "anythings")

To the "U" of it all...

• Built a pc before?
• comfortable in your own computer case?
• installed an OS from scratch?
• any dabbling with Linux/*Nix?

Please keep in mind.. most of us don't have a clue about you, so we dont' know if those are childish assumptions (like ..."no duh I tried fdisk already from windows 7 but it doesn't see..." etc) or if you have never opened the case before and got the bug to play with this thing.. so .. seriously.. more detail than the usual "it don't work" would help us help you. <:mmph:/end very slight snarkishness flung OP's way>

 

[TG2]

The 722 replacements, 500GB, were just at or over $100.00, before Malaysia floods.

aside from that .. and the bulk purchasing power of a maker the size of Echostar and its subs .. that's why I can't get a grasp on why a company would so tie itself to drives of a certain size for so long..

I mean surely someone there at echostar would have said.. "Hey ... maybe we could switch to *these* newer drives, with larger sizes.. since the public is also buying them this big.. and get away from the proprietary-ness of code that only see's X gigs .." thus turning it from a hardware limitation of X gig's of storage.. into the more profitable "user wants more storage? user pays additional fee" ... meanwhile dish need only send command 'YY Sized Storage Enabled' to collect another dollar or two per month...

and of course the same could be said of Directv .. stupid were the thoughts "external drive? disable internal drive" lol.

 

[Claude Greiner]

You got to ask yourself what the average lifetime of a satellite subscriber is.

The average churn is 1.6% per month, or about 20% of their entire customer base per year. When you factor that in with customers who want to upgrade their equipment, Dish is potentially getting the receiver and its hard drive back in its possession ever few years.

I don't think there is any incentive for Cable or any satellite company to put a good hard drive inside their DVR Receivers. If the customer would stick around 10 years, I think we would be at the point right now where we would start seeing DVR's come with solid state drives.

 

[navychop]

SSDs have too limited R/W cycles to be practical for AV use, and would be an extra expense with no return.

 

[TG2]

... I don't think there is any incentive for Cable or any satellite company to put a good hard drive inside their DVR Receivers. If the customer would stick around 10 years, I think we would be at the point right now where we would start seeing DVR's come with solid state drives.

10 years? on an SSD? don't think so.. with the number of read/write cycles that the drives go through.. and the potential for the ssd to just "die" without warning .. as opposed to standard hard drives which can start logging bit errors, smart prediction errors, and just the sound (I've had one that you could clearly hear the drive was dying) you get to the point of.. which is better for the device maker as a whole...

could SSD be better in terms of multiple recordings, low latency, and simultaneous access over regular? sure.. but in a life time of 2, 3, or 5 years (on warranted SSD's) on a medium that is 8 to 10 times more expensive.. replace that 1TB hard drive every year and in 3 years.. its still not as expensive as 1 ssd of that size..

in Jan someone announced a 1tb drive that comes in at about 600 bucks.. still 1tb standard drives are at 69 bucks (regular you & me price) what's the price for the same to someone like Echostar or Motorola? and given that they could still pay 50 to 70 for a hard drive, that could still bring them in on budget with a better drive than the avg 60 dollars would get you or me.

couldn't see it much of any other way.. too cheap to use current well established technology ... even with a 5 to 1 failure rate.. still cheaper than 1 SSD.