In case you did not know already, when you formatted your drive while attached to your PC, I believe it needs to be formatted in FAT 32 not NTFS. However, I would think that the Hopper would recognize that a drive is attached, regardless of formatting, and thus the message displayed that asks if you want to format the drive (when everything works as it should). If you did not format it in FAT 32... Maybe try that? Also, I could have sworn that I read somewhere that the external drives need to be connected to the Hopper by the eSata connection, not the USB connection. I could be wrong on that one, but I thought I read that either in a manual, on the support section at Dish, or on this board or another satellite board. I have been all over all of the above in the last four weeks researching.