My Hopper 3 hard drive failed after about three weeks' use. However, it happened during a blizzard when the power flickered on and off continuously throughout the morning and was eventually off for well over an hour. When it came back on, I got the same error you did (311). Live TV was normal, but there was no DVR, pause, rewind, or anything else that depended on the hard drive - even channel icons in the guide.
The message said that sometimes the problem can be resolved by unplugging the Hopper from the wall and plugging it back in. After three failed attempts, I contacted Dish support via chat, who in turn had me call by phone and request Advanced Support. The tech had me try another power cord reset, followed immediately by a red button reset, but to no avail. He immediately made arrangements to send me a new H3, advising me that my recordings would be lost (which, of course, I already knew). He did mention that if it should happen to start functioning again before the replacement arrived, I could always back up my recordings on an external drive. (Yeah, right, I thought to myself.) He did not offer any credit, nor did I expect it.
Later that night, I tuned to Channel 370 to watch Netflix, not even thinking that it, too, depends on the hard drive. The Hopper froze on the Netflix splash screen. It was totally unresponsive and I had no choice but to do a red button reset. When it came back on, everything was back to normal. All my recordings were there and everything functioned properly. Dish had already shipped the replacement, so I went ahead and went through with it. I decided I'd rather not take a chance on a hard drive that had already failed once, even if only temporarily.