Transfer options for an "unsupported" Dish 722 DVR EHD

Dish2

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Oct 19, 2020
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New York
Can newly "unsupported" EHD for a Dish 722 DVR be transferred to another blank EHD, PC or anything else in order to view its data? If I try to use it on my dvr it will only allow me to reformat it and thus lose all the files in the process..... thanks Dish2
 
I'm missing something here... What exactly is unsupported about your EHD?
 
Well . . . Yes, it is designed to reformat any EHD that has not yet been formatted for your Dish account and encryption system. So, no, the Dish EHD can ONLY be used for Dish transfers and not other purposes. One can not have multiple uses for a Dish EHD.

However, if you decide you no longer want to use the EHD as a Dish EHD for transfers, you can use your PC to reformat the EHD and then use it as you would any other EHD for Windows or whatever OS.

The content providers and owners have required Dish to design the transfer feature in such as way as to prevent any other way to access the recordings, decrypt the recordings, or transfer them to any other place than the Hopper/s on the account from which they came (or replacement Hopper tied to your account), and all transfers are tied to the original ONE account. So, NO. No one of typical consumer ability is capable of circumventing these restrictions, otherwise, the content providers/owners would NEVER allow such a great archiving/transfer feature.

There is no hack talk here, so you are on your own from this point, but such circumvention is a violation of the terms of agreement.
 
Anecdotally, you can transfer the recordings from one Dish formatted hard drive to another Dish formatted hard drive by copying the Disharc folder from the source drive to the destination drive while both are connected to a PC running linux. Reports say this method can recover recordings from a failed drive if linux can read the drive and the Disharc folder. Be sure the destination drive has no recordings on it, or the folder copying might overwrite that whole folder on the new drive.

I presume the "unsupported" EHD wants to be reformatted but you know that will wipe all programming recorded there.

Do your other EHD's still work properly?

Have you tried having Dish send a rehit to your new receiver just in case it doesn't have the proper code for your account in its memory? This would be useful if all your EHD's fail to be recognized by the receiver.

If there are other drives that are OK, then it is a drive problem, possibly only rectified by the linux copying method detailed above.
 
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I'm missing something here... What exactly is unsupported about your EHD?
The EHD was formatted for my Dish 722 dvr and worked fine. I used it one night, turned it off. The next day when I tried to access the EHD I got a message from Dish saying I couldn't attach to media because the EHD was "unsupported" and I had to reformat it or close it. I didn't want to reformat it because then I would lose everything that's on it. I tried attaching this EHD to the front of the receiver and on another receiver in another room and all times I get the same error message "You have connected an unsupported device to the USB port. Select "Help" for more information." with an error code of 350 or 365. "Help" says "The attached USB device is currently not supported by DISH Network". Then it asks me if I want to reformat the EHD.which I don't. My question is if there is any way to copy or transfer the data from the "unsupported" EHD to another blank EHD in order to access the files and watch them on my Dish DVR or if there are any other options for accessing the files from "unsupported" EHD. In other words, access the EHD without reformatting it and losing everything in the process. I assume the files on the "unsupported" EHD are still encrypted in the Linux format. Thank you.
 
My question is if there is any way to copy or transfer the data from the "unsupported" EHD to another blank EHD in order to access the files and watch them on my Dish DVR or if there are any other options for accessing the files from "unsupported" EHD.

I have successfully used Linux to copy files from a 1.5TB disk with a bad parrtition to another 722-formatted disk that is (other than formatting) otherwise blank. See Jim's comments above. If I were you, I'd spin up a LInux distribution of your choice and see if you can fsck it. This might complete the transaction journal on the ext3 file system (if there are any entries) and make the original EHD work. Otherwise, it might tell you if some partitions are corrupted or if the disk failed completely.
 
First paragraph of post #4. Files on the drive are encrypted and cannot be played, but they can be copied to another dish formatted drive.
 
Anecdotally, you can transfer the recordings from one Dish formatted hard drive to another Dish formatted hard drive by copying the Disharc folder from the source drive to the destination drive while both are connected to a PC running linux. Reports say this method can recover recordings from a failed drive if linux can read the drive and the Disharc folder. Be sure the destination drive has no recordings on it, or the folder copying might overwrite that whole folder on the new drive.

I presume the "unsupported" EHD wants to be reformatted but you know that will wipe all programming recorded there.

Do your other EHD's still work properly?

Have you tried having Dish send a rehit to your new receiver just in case it doesn't have the proper code for your account in its memory? This would be useful if all your EHD's fail to be recognized by the receiver.

If there are other drives that are OK, then it is a drive problem, possibly only rectified by the linux copying method detailed above.
Anecdotally, you can transfer the recordings from one Dish formatted hard drive to another Dish formatted hard drive by copying the Disharc folder from the source drive to the destination drive while both are connected to a PC running linux. Reports say this method can recover recordings from a failed drive if linux can read the drive and the Disharc folder. Be sure the destination drive has no recordings on it, or the folder copying might overwrite that whole folder on the new drive.

I presume the "unsupported" EHD wants to be reformatted but you know that will wipe all programming recorded there.

Do your other EHD's still work properly?

Have you tried having Dish send a rehit to your new receiver just in case it doesn't have the proper code for your account in its memory? This would be useful if all your EHD's fail to be recognized by the receiver.

If there are other drives that are OK, then it is a drive problem, possibly only rectified by the linux copying method detailed above.
My other EHD's work properly, it's just the one EHD that's not working, thankfully. Would I have to go online and find a legitimate website for Linux and download it onto my computer? I'm not very computer savvy. I understand that each EHD would have to be plugged into a power supply to run them and then I'd have to download them onto my computer. I have a blank EHD (let's call it EHD 2) that I can format for copying the files, but is the currently "unsupported" EHD with files I can't access (let's call it EHD 1) still formatted if it won't play on the Dish DVR? How do I get them to interface with Linux, assuming I do a proper job of finding and downloading Linux into my computer?
 
I have successfully used Linux to copy files from a 1.5TB disk with a bad parrtition to another 722-formatted disk that is (other than formatting) otherwise blank. See Jim's comments above. If I were you, I'd spin up a LInux distribution of your choice and see if you can fsck it. This might complete the transaction journal on the ext3 file system (if there are any entries) and make the original EHD work. Otherwise, it might tell you if some partitions are corrupted or if the disk failed completely.
You're talking to someone who is not computer savvy... but willing to learn. How would I spin up a Linux distribution and where would I find it?
 
You're talking to someone who is not computer savvy... but willing to learn. How would I spin up a Linux distribution and where would I find it?

You don't need to install it; you just boot off a DVD or thumb drive to accomplish what you want to do. I'm a scientist so I prefer Scientific Linux, which is based on Redhat Enterprise Linux just like Centos. Many of my co-workers prefer Ubuntu. I don't have that much experience with different distributions, so maybe somebody on the forum who has tried them can give us their favorite.

Note that the files that you copy from one disk to another must be owned by root:root. Many modern Linux distros don't let you log in as root, which means that the GUI (whatever it is) is running as an unprivileged user and it will change ownership of files you move via drag/drop. The last distro I used that allowed you to log in as root was Scientific Linux 5.x.
 
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You don't need to install it; you just boot off a DVD or thumb drive to accomplish what you want to do. I'm a scientist so I prefer Scientific Linux, which is based on Redhat Enterprise Linux just like Centos. Many of my co-workers prefer Ubuntu. I don't have that much experience with different distributions, so maybe somebody on the forum who has tried them can give us their favorite.

Note that the files that you copy from one disk to another must be owned by root:root. Many modern Linux distros don't let you log in as root, which means that the GUI (whatever it is) is running as an unprivileged user and it will change ownership of files you move via drag/drop. The last distro I used that allowed you to log in as root was Scientific Linux 5.x.
 
I have a blank DVD-R with 4.7 GB of space. Should I look for Scientific Linus 5x online and download it onto the DVD-R? Is 4.7 GB enough for the Linux?
 
I have a blank DVD-R with 4.7 GB of space. Should I look for Scientific Linus 5x online and download it onto the DVD-R? Is 4.7 GB enough for the Linux?

Yes; go here. Index of /linux/scientific/obsolete/511/iso pick 32 or 64-bit DVD and burn that. They are all smaller than 4.7GB. If they are not, there's a stripped-down CD version too. Boot off your DVD, log in as root, and then plug in your two EHDs and see what happens. Scientific Linux should automatically mount your EHDs and pop up separate windows for each partition. You should be able to drag/drop the DishArc folders from one partition to another.
 
Hi, I'm just now trying to do this and when I tried to save the 64 DVD version to my DVD by right clicking on it and using "save to" and I started the formatting process but I got an error message that "Windows could not format the DVD". What else can I do?
 
I'm going to take an educated guess and say the reason the drive suddenly became "unsupported" is because it failed and it's unlikely it can be recovered. Your best bet is to find someone locally that is computer savvy to examine the drive and determine if there's any chance of recovery before you end up messing up your own computer trying something you admit you're not well versed in.
 
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I'm going to take an educated guess and say the reason the drive suddenly became "unsupported" is because it failed and it's unlikely it can be recovered. Your best bet is to find someone locally that is computer savvy to examine the drive and determine if there's any chance of recovery before you end up messing up your own computer trying something you admit you're not well versed in.
Hi This is Dish_2's 'DOS Dinosaur' Boyfriend, Very little classroom experience with Linux (10 yrs ago, maybe it was RedHat I'm not sure). I need to get an understanding of the Structure of a Linux 'identifiable' "fat table/Vtoc" so I can I Audit the Drives if I can, Maybe ever Partition-ize a Linux formatted HDDs. Can You offer some insight, then I can try & pick-up where Dish_2 got lost, I think she is still lost, For Real!!! :)
 
You don't need to know anything about the structure. Format a fresh EHD with your Hopper3. Mount your "bad" drive and the fresh drive to a computer running Linux and simply copy the disharc folders from the "bad" drive to the fresh drive while logged in as root. If linux cannot read the "bad" drive then it is truly bad.

Again, you must be logged in on linux as root - similar to administrator on Windows. Ask a friend if you need linux help.

Note: videos are encrypted and can be copied but cannot be played on a PC.
 
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