522 Hard Drive problems

[jameskris]

I have had my 522 for about three months now. Yesterday when we got up we had to allow the dvr to delete all of our programming because of diagnostics or something. This morning when I got up it was running diagnostics on the hard drive and said it should be done in 45 minutes, but the minutes elapsed said 154!! I think I heard the hard drive making a clicking noise like a computers hard drive when it is stuck on a sector. Should I give dish a call and have them replace my dvr?

 

[maximum]

That sounds bad. I would defiantly call if I were you.

 

[jameskris]

I just spoke with DISH and they said this is normal. I guess the reason it was taking so long was because everything was being deleted. The deleting is part of the clean-up performed regularly by the 522. They told me it was important to make sure I protect things so they will not be deleted when the 522 does its clean up. I was assured by the CSR that the hard drive is not failing. Everyone who reads this, make sure you protect whatever programs you don't want the DVR to delete!

 

[maximum]

Hummmm I wonder how often it does its cleanup? Does it delete everything that is not protected?

 

[boba]

I've had a 522 in my showroom since December and I have never seen this. I have seen alot of other crap with this receiver but never "diagnostics".

 

[Hall]

Never heard of this supposed "cleanup" before either....

 

[Bizzach]

It's totally understandable. Just like your computer's HD, the DVR needs to 'defrag' once every so often. I've never seen it either, but it is a fairly new box. I just couldn't see it deleting anything you hadn't protected. It should just be cleaning up all the fragments from shows deleted a long time ago - basically just freeing up more space.
I bet Jameskris records and deletes programs a lot...?

 

[Stargazer]

The 522 (and no other Dish DVR) should require you to protect your recordings in order to prevent them from being erased if you have enough hard drive space for the programs that are on there and do not go beyond your limit.

 

[stratguy]

The 522 (and no other Dish DVR) should require you to protect your recordings in order to prevent them from being erased if you have enough hard drive space for the programs that are on there and do not go beyond your limit.

I agree with stargazer I have never heard of that. As a matter of fact I have never seen the protection feature on my 721 even work. I have protected recordings and then deleted them while they were protected. Now unless the protection feature is for protecting them from E*'s software clean up system it is worthless.

Bob

 

[Hall]

Hummmm I wonder how often it does its cleanup? Does it delete everything that is not protected?

Mine's doing this right now... I'll let you know if it does *delete* everything.

 

[Hall]

Okay, it's done already.... sure didn't take (45) minutes though. More like 20-30. Checked my DVR menu and ....... all events are still there. Shewwwww !!!

 

[Eastern OR]

I have had my 522 for about three months now. Yesterday when we got up we had to allow the dvr to delete all of our programming because of diagnostics or something. This morning when I got up it was running diagnostics on the hard drive and said it should be done in 45 minutes, but the minutes elapsed said 154!! I think I heard the hard drive making a clicking noise like a computers hard drive when it is stuck on a sector. Should I give dish a call and have them replace my dvr?

Discovered this fine feature when I received a software upgrade(to 168) about 3 weeks ago. At 3 in the morning(or when you have it set to do it's daily upgrade,etc.) The 522 will check your hard drive for errors. This process takes 15-30 minutes during which you can't watch TV. It gives you the option to cancel this check but informs you that the diagnostic process should be done regularly. If it finds an error it will ask you if you want it repaired at that point in time or whether you want to do the repair later. The catch is, when it repairs your hard drive error(s) it deletes all your recorded programs, timers, caller id history, and other after factory info you have so painstakingly placed in your 522. So your only resort is to watch all your recorded programing in the next 48 hours then let it repair the error in the hard drive. I let our 522 delete 30 hours of 'Quantum Leap' and received the severe wrath of my wife. Got to love dish software

Don't know if this feature behaves the same under software '201' as it did under 168 as I just got 201 a couple of days ago and have not been up at 3AM to watch the amazing process.

Why can't it be like a computer hard drive where you can repair errors without deleting everything on the hard drive? Or would that make too much sense?

cheers all.

 

[RedHat39]

That would suck if it deleted all of the timers. I don't see why it would do that though. Unless that was the file on the HD it saw an error in. Otherwise I see no reason to delete the timers. I sure hope this isn't the norm...

 

[Hall]

Mine did the diagnostics again today, after doing it just (3) days ago. So I called Dish and got a tech who sounded pretty competent. Definitely didn't sound "foreign". He said it's detected a corrupt "bit" and it's simply trying to fix it. He said it would NOT delete all of my recordings though I might lose one if it contained this bad "bit". That makes sense...

He didn't recommend backing things up to VCR if they're important to me.

He also said he'd note my account that it's done this twice recently. Presumably, if the HDD dies anytime soon, they'll see that I've reported this happening.

 

[Jahntassa]

Mine's been doing the diagnostics every morning at 3am. Though it seems it can be changed to any time through the menu..

 

[jameskris]

my diagnostics run nightly as well. I was getting error messages nightly and then the receiver deleted all of my recorded programs whether they were protected or not. The deleting of my programs happened twice in a week. I have not had this problem since we got the new 201 upgrade.

 

[ignition]

My 522 has performed diagnoses 4 times that I have witnessed since I have had it. Probably more instances which I have not witnessed. Never lost anything, and average time has been 15-20 minutes.

Of course, I always keep my 522 lean and mean by actually deleting programs I no longer have any use for. I am not one of those people who have posted in other threads in this forum who are proud (or just too lazy) to have filled their 522 hard drive 100% to make it start writing over older programs.

Although I have never lost anything, I do use "protect" on programs I want to convert later to mpeg and burn on DVD. Protect feature works perfectly for me as there is no way I can delete a protected event unless I unprotect it.

NOT having to wait an inordinate amount of time for the 522 hard drive to do frequent maintenance seems to me like yet another reason to delete programing data you no longer need.

 

[Jahntassa]

I've never had it delete my programming. I generally have about 39 hours of record time remaining.

 

[Hall]

Has anyone noticed that this started occuring after the update to L201 ?? I'm 99% sure that's when mine started doing it....

Looks like they messed something up in this rev where it kicks in the HDD diagnostics *instead* of a guide update. We've replicated this TWO TIMES: Set an update to take place in a few minutes (if it's 8:10pm, set it for 8:15pm). At 8:15, you'll get a prompt about it needing to do a program update and you have Yes, No, Cancel options. Pick "Yes". The HDD diagnostics kick in...

If you're seeing this behavior, CALL DISH AND REPORT IT. The last rep I spoke to took my receiver ID, smart card ID, s/w version, and bootstrap version. I also told him that all of a sudden a bunch of people here are seeing the same thing.

 

[maximum]

I noticed it doing the HD diagnostics before 2.01. I think one of the new versions (1.68 or 1.69) started the function of doing the diagnostics every time it does an update.