522-Hard Drive Wipe

[saturk]

I got prompted that hard drive needed to be cleaned and it did it and wipe out all recorded events.
I called Dish and they offered to replace it right away.
My question is- should i stick with the one i got, since it has not been that buggy or go with the new one. Will this keep happening now that it has happen d once?

 

[mudder1310]

There's nothing wrong with that receiver. Once in a while it will clean and defragment itself, especially if you keep the hard drive full of recorded events. Erasing or transferring out old recorded events will help prevent wiping.

 

[GetMeABeer]

Saturk, a new receiver will not help you because this is a common problem on all 522s. The 522 sometimes thinks there's a "problem" on the drive and then for NO GOOD REASON completely erases your recorded programs and timers. This is something I have complained about a lot before and is completely unnecessary. Since I complained about this before I will copy/paste to save me from typing it all over again. As I said recently about this in another message:

"Here's a secret about the 522 and drive diagnostic...it's all bogus. When the 522 starts running low on memory or having some other bug or problem, that's when the drive check could pop up on you out of the blue. Now, sometimes after the check is done, the 522 thinks there's a problem and says, "Hey, I think there's a problem, you have 7 days to erase your recordings and timers and if you don't do it after 7 days, I will do it for you." But then, MAGICALLY, the 522 works PERFECTLY FINE for (at least) 7 more days. So, then, WHY, WHY, WHY can't it just go on working that way forever? Why does it, after 7 days of working fine, go and erase your hard drive?"

And with all due respect to our fellow member mudder1310, pretty much everything he said is wrong. This doesn't happen "Once in a while to clean and defragment itself." It says right on the message screen, "errors have been detected." Yeah right, errors, then why, like I said above, do the errors have ZERO impact for at least 7 days? There are NO errors, the 522 is just crap sometimes. And if it was doing it once in a while to "clean and defrag," it could defrag like a computer and NOT ERASE ALL YOUR SHOWS...and certainly, AT THE VERY LEAST, not erase your timers. What do the timers take up, a few KB of text on the drive? Why couldn't THEY be saved like the favories, preferences, and locks are??? As I said in an earlier message:

"And Dish are LIARS, LIARS, LIARS and HORRIBLE software developers for the following reason - after the drive is wiped clean for you, ALL recorded shows, ALL timers and schedule, and ALL search string history will be GONE, but guess what? SURPRISE, SURPRISE, SURPRISE, all of your channel locks, and customized favorite lists will be SAVED!!! So, obviously, 522 does not really wipe ALL of the drive except for the OS, it just wipes the parts that are really important to you. If there's part of the drive that gets saved and not erased - locks and favorites lists - then why not your recordings that are not on the part of the disk where there are errors? Or why not, at the very least, your timers and schedule?

No, Dish software developer makes sure to save the unimportant locks and favorites, and erases all the important recorded shows and timers. Proudly brought to you by Mickey Mouse software, Inc."

CaesarC77

 

[GetMeABeer]

Saturk, a new receiver will not help you because this is a common problem on all 522s. The 522 sometimes thinks there's a "problem" on the drive and then for NO GOOD REASON completely erases your recorded programs and timers. This is something I have complained about a lot before and is completely unnecessary. Since I complained about this before I will copy/paste to save me from typing it all over again. As I said recently about this in another message:

"Here's a secret about the 522 and drive diagnostic...it's all bogus. When the 522 starts running low on memory or having some other bug or problem, that's when the drive check could pop up on you out of the blue. Now, sometimes after the check is done, the 522 thinks there's a problem and says, "Hey, I think there's a problem, you have 7 days to erase your recordings and timers and if you don't do it after 7 days, I will do it for you." But then, MAGICALLY, the 522 works PERFECTLY FINE for (at least) 7 more days. So, then, WHY, WHY, WHY can't it just go on working that way forever? Why does it, after 7 days of working fine, go and erase your hard drive?"

And with all due respect to our fellow member mudder1310, pretty much everything he said is wrong. This doesn't happen "Once in a while to clean and defragment itself." It says right on the message screen, "errors have been detected." Yeah right, errors, then why, like I said above, do the errors have ZERO impact for at least 7 days? There are NO errors, the 522 is just crap sometimes. And if it was doing it once in a while to "clean and defrag," it could defrag like a computer and NOT ERASE ALL YOUR SHOWS...and certainly, AT THE VERY LEAST, not erase your timers. What do the timers take up, a few KB of text on the drive? Why couldn't THEY be saved like the favorites, preferences, and locks are??? As I said in an earlier message:

"And Dish are LIARS, LIARS, LIARS and HORRIBLE software developers for the following reason - after the drive is wiped clean for you, ALL recorded shows, ALL timers and schedule, and ALL search string history will be GONE, but guess what? SURPRISE, SURPRISE, SURPRISE, all of your channel locks, and customized favorite lists will be SAVED!!! So, obviously, 522 does not really wipe ALL of the drive except for the OS, it just wipes the parts that are really important to you. If there's part of the drive that gets saved and not erased - locks and favorites lists - then why not your recordings that are not on the part of the disk where there are errors? Or why not, at the very least, your timers and schedule?

No, Dish software developer makes sure to save the unimportant locks and favorites, and erases all the important recorded shows and timers. Proudly brought to you by Mickey Mouse software, Inc."

And also I have seen this happen on more than one 522 and sometimes with lots of recording on the drive, sometimes with almost no recording. So don't believe that it has anything to do with too much crap on the drive, sorry.

 

[maximum]

2nd Opinion

The reason it wiped your drive clean is because it couldn't read from or write to part of the disk. This could be an early sign of that your HDD is going bad. If your receiver is still under warranty you might as well get it replaced now. If you wait until after the warranty is up you'll have to pay shipping charges to replace it when the HDD dies.

 

[maximum]

"And Dish are LIARS, LIARS, LIARS and HORRIBLE software developers for the following reason - after the drive is wiped clean for you, ALL recorded shows, ALL timers and schedule, and ALL search string history will be GONE, but guess what? SURPRISE, SURPRISE, SURPRISE, all of your channel locks, and customized favorite lists will be SAVED!!! So, obviously, 522 does not really wipe ALL of the drive except for the OS, it just wipes the parts that are really important to you. If there's part of the drive that gets saved and not erased - locks and favorites lists - then why not your recordings that are not on the part of the disk where there are errors? Or why not, at the very least, your timers and schedule?

No, Dish software developer makes sure to save the unimportant locks and favorites, and erases all the important recorded shows and timers. Proudly brought to you by Mickey Mouse software, Inc."

Don't other (non DVR) receivers have locks, favorite lists and an OS? If so then it seems logical that this information is not saved on the HDD and, thus, why they don't get erased.

 

[GetMeABeer]

Don't other (non DVR) receivers have locks, favorite lists and an OS? If so then it seems logical that this information is not saved on the HDD and, thus, why they don't get erased.

Yeah, but those other receivers you are talking about that are not DVR also have timers (record by VCR, auto tune, and reminder timers) and also have search string history, too. So if what you are trying to say is that the 522 doesn't lose the favorites, locks, and preferences because it keeps that data on memory chips and not the hard drive (like non-DVR models), then how do you explain that the 522 loses the timers and the search string history? Why are the non-DVR models able to keep that data but not the 522?

Those non-DVR models keep the data on memory chip and not hard drive because that's all that's available to them...they have no hard drive to use. But the 522 does, so it just makes no sense that the things that do not get erased (favorites, locks, preferences) would be stored on chips and not the drive...the 522 has disk storage, so why would they offload anything like that to chips?

I think what the 522 keeps or erases when it "cleans" the drive is just arbitrary. There is no method to E* software guy's madness. As I have said before, even if there were serious errors on a hard drive, there is NO reason to erase all that important data. No computer/OS in the world would do such a thing. If there are "errors" on the drive, the OS should be able to try and fix those errors, write movable data to other part of the disk, salvage something for you. To just erase everything shows how thoughtless and brain-dead the software designer was.

And again, why does it work perfectly fine for at least 7 days (sometimes longer even, depending on what mood the 522 is in)? How critical could the errors be if it keeps on working great for 7 days like nothing is wrong? I have had 522s give the error/clean warning before and have literally accessed and played with every single timer, recorded program, and menu option available in the 7 day period. EVERYTHING worked fine and without problems, but 7 days later...BOOM! Everything gone. There is no reason for it.

 

[mudder1310]

And with all due respect to our fellow member mudder1310, pretty much everything he said is wrong.

Whenever someone says "with all due respect" I'm waiting to get kicked in the shins.

He asked if replacing the receiver was a good option. I simply told him what I've seen in the field.

What it does: wipe and defragment
When: Sporadically, inconsistently, intermittently, however you want to word it.
What variable seems to set it off: The amount of stored shows. It seems to happen when the hd get near full.
How to avoid it: clear out your hd yourself

If I was wrong about something it was saying "nothing is wrong with your box". Clearly there is a design flaw, but nothing that would be addressed with a new one. The only thing I left out was your tirade against E* software guys.

 

[saturk]

Thanks guys, I guess I'll hang on to it for now. It may be messed up because sometimes it will show a certain amount of hours left for dvr events then when I go back into it will change. Other than that-it has had no major problems.

Also, this unit is plugged into an outlet that is turned on and off by a wall switch and a couple of times all power has been shut off to the unit when the switch was turned off by accident. Do you think this would have any affect?

 

[maximum]

Also, this unit is plugged into an outlet that is turned on and off by a wall switch and a couple of times all power has been shut off to the unit when the switch was turned off by accident. Do you think this would have any affect?

Oh yea, I think that would have a major affect. Kind of like a PC that you don't shut down properly. It's not a good thing to do, especially when it's writing to disk (which the 522 does continuously).
I have my 522 connected to a UPS to prevent sudden power losses.

 

[maximum]

Yeah, but those other receivers you are talking about that are not DVR also have timers (record by VCR, auto tune, and reminder timers) and also have search string history, too. So if what you are trying to say is that the 522 doesn't lose the favorites, locks, and preferences because it keeps that data on memory chips and not the hard drive (like non-DVR models), then how do you explain that the 522 loses the timers and the search string history? Why are the non-DVR models able to keep that data but not the 522?

I don't know. Have you ever seen what happens to non-DVR receivers that get user preferences reset to default values? They probably lose these settings too but they won't lose locks to prevent people from using a reset function to bypass the locks. Maybe when the 522 does a HDD clean it also resets user preferences.

Those non-DVR models keep the data on memory chip and not hard drive because that's all that's available to them...they have no hard drive to use. But the 522 does, so it just makes no sense that the things that do not get erased (favorites, locks, preferences) would be stored on chips and not the drive...the 522 has disk storage, so why would they offload anything like that to chips?

Maybe the 522 has less available memory than the other receivers and makes up for it by storing these other things on the HDD.

I think what the 522 keeps or erases when it "cleans" the drive is just arbitrary. There is no method to E* software guy's madness. As I have said before, even if there were serious errors on a hard drive, there is NO reason to erase all that important data. No computer/OS in the world would do such a thing. If there are "errors" on the drive, the OS should be able to try and fix those errors, write movable data to other part of the disk, salvage something for you. To just erase everything shows how thoughtless and brain-dead the software designer was.

Or it could mean they were limited by time and/or hardware constraints when they designed it.

And again, why does it work perfectly fine for at least 7 days (sometimes longer even, depending on what mood the 522 is in)? How critical could the errors be if it keeps on working great for 7 days like nothing is wrong? I have had 522s give the error/clean warning before and have literally accessed and played with every single timer, recorded program, and menu option available in the 7 day period. EVERYTHING worked fine and without problems, but 7 days later...BOOM! Everything gone. There is no reason for it.

Just playing devil's advocate here.
I'm guessing they didn't design it to be a bullet proof system capable of elegant recoveries from bad sectors on the hard drive. An oversight on their part? Yes, but they probably were not expecting very many HDD problems and figured the cost of implementing such a recovery into the system outweighed the cost of frustrated subscribers like you and me.

 

[saturk]

Oh yea, I think that would have a major affect. Kind of like a PC that you don't shut down properly. It's not a good thing to do, especially when it's writing to disk (which the 522 does continuously).
I have my 522 connected to a UPS to prevent sudden power losses.

So, what is your opinion then- should I stick it out awhile or get a new one. I'm on the free DHA plan since I went through a local retailer.

 

[maximum]

Since you already lost all of your recordings go ahead and get a replacement just in case your HDD is going bad. Don't wait until your drive is loaded with recordings and it wants to clean it again.

 

[GetMeABeer]

What it does: wipe and defragment

No, it does NOT defragment. I have seen it wipe the drive several times on different 522s and the whole thing takes place in a matter of seconds. Defragmenting involves moving data around to put chunks of the same files back closer together. If you've ever defragmented a computer that had a hard drive that was quite fragmented, you know this is a loud, long task that isn't easily mistaken for anything else. When the 522 "cleans" the drive, there is ZERO hard drive thrashing. Even less than when you might delete a long movie or recording. The 522 pops up a message that says something to the effect of "Please wait while your drive is being cleaned," and then like less than 10 seconds later it reboots and everything is gone. This is part of what is so frustrating to me, that it doesn't even really delete or zero overwrite what was there, it's like it just erases the files from the index.

What variable seems to set it off: The amount of stored shows. It seems to happen when the hd get near full.
How to avoid it: clear out your hd yourself

With all due respect (), this is not accurate. I have never had less than 30 hours free space left (and usually it's much higher) and I have seen it happen five times on three different 522s over nearly the past year. No matter how tidy you keep your 522, when it arbitrarily decides to do it, it does.

Have you ever seen what happens to non-DVR receivers that get user preferences reset to default values? They probably lose these settings too but they won't lose locks to prevent people from using a reset function to bypass the locks. Maybe when the 522 does a HDD clean it also resets user preferences.

When the 522 wipes, it doesn't reset the preferences to defaults. Preferences are preserved but it erases the recordings, timers, and search strings. I'm with you on the locks, but again, why preserve the custom favorites lists and erase the timers? It's just completely illogical.

Maybe the 522 has less available memory than the other receivers and makes up for it by storing these other things on the HDD.

The 322 runs with 32 megs. I find it hard to imagine the 522 working with less than that. On the contrary, with the nine day guide, buffer and recorder management, Dish Pass timer system, etc. the 522 probably has double or quadruple the memory of the non-DVR receivers.

even if there were serious errors on a hard drive, there is NO reason to erase all that important data. No computer/OS in the world would do such a thing. If there are "errors" on the drive, the OS should be able to try and fix those errors, write movable data to other part of the disk, salvage something for you. To just erase everything shows how thoughtless and brain-dead the software designer was.

Or it could mean they were limited by time and/or hardware constraints when they designed it.

Like that's my problem. If it wasn't ready for the big time, it shouldn't have been released. And they've had well over a year to get their sh*t together with software updates, and the thing STILL has many of the same problems it had the day it came out.

Just playing devil's advocate here. I'm guessing they didn't design it to be a bullet proof system capable of elegant recoveries from bad sectors on the hard drive.

But if there really were bad sectors on the drive, why do they have no effect for (at least) 7 days? That's what I'm trying to say here, I don't believe this is an issue of there really being a problem on the drive. If there really were a problem, it would say your drive will be "cleaned" in 7 minutes, not 7 days. The fact that the receiver works fine for 7 days tells me there isn't really anything wrong with the drive. And even if there was, there's no reason the software can't tell the system to keep on working fine after the 7 day period until it really reaches a point of no return, and THEN erase the drive, not to just do it arbitrarily on the 7th day.

Since you already lost all of your recordings go ahead and get a replacement just in case your HDD is going bad. Don't wait until your drive is loaded with recordings and it wants to clean it again.

I agree with this idea, but he's going to get a refurbished receiver as replacement that might have a hard drive in worse shape than the one he's sending back.

 

[phat_bastard]

No, it does NOT defragment. I have seen it wipe the drive several times on different 522s and the whole thing takes place in a matter of seconds. Defragmenting involves moving data around to put chunks of the same files back closer together. If you've ever defragmented a computer that had a hard drive that was quite fragmented, you know this is a loud, long task that isn't easily mistaken for anything else. When the 522 "cleans" the drive, there is ZERO hard drive thrashing. Even less than when you might delete a long movie or recording. The 522 pops up a message that says something to the effect of "Please wait while your drive is being cleaned," and then like less than 10 seconds later it reboots and everything is gone. This is part of what is so frustrating to me, that it doesn't even really delete or zero overwrite what was there, it's like it just erases the files from the index.

Oh, it's even simpler than that. From my observations, there are two possible outcomes of disk diagnostics. Whenever the filesystem is shut down dirty (and this happens a lot for some ppl) the firmware runs fsck (linux equivalent of chkdsk). If it can recover all the files it does, and everyone is fat and happy. If it can't you get the warning message. After your 7 days are up, the firmware treats the drive like a new, unformatted disk and recreates the original partition table, quick formats and you're ready to roll again (sans all your recordings and timers). It's not particularly thoughtful to the customer's recordings and whatnot, and I'm sure with some additional and better thought-out code the unit could minimally store the search strings and timers in memory and re-create the files after format, but the software guys at Dish didn't exactly ask us for ideas now, did they?

With all due respect (), this is not accurate. I have never had less than 30 hours free space left (and usually it's much higher) and I have seen it happen five times on three different 522s over nearly the past year. No matter how tidy you keep your 522, when it arbitrarily decides to do it, it does.

It doesn't really matter how much disk space is left, it all depends on whether the filesystem was being written to at the time of the last search of death, arbitrary reboot, power outage, kids turning off the surge strip, etc. Personally I wouldn't have chosen ext3 for a STB's filesystem, but again, they didn't ask our opinion.

But if there really were bad sectors on the drive, why do they have no effect for (at least) 7 days? ....

I agree. In some cases the infamous disk cleaning event is triggered by failing sectors, but I would guess based on past experiences with EXT3 and other STB type applications (MythTV) that a large percentage of them are caused by the filesystem getting shut down dirty.

I agree with this idea, but he's going to get a refurbished receiver as replacement that might have a hard drive in worse shape than the one he's sending back.

Same sentiments here. Requesting a replacement receiver is a crapshoot if you're not sure the disk is really dying, and odds are it's not.

On a side note GetMeABeer, I'd like to _get you a beer_ (or six) to hopefully calm your nerves. It's just television.

 

[blabber]

Sheesh!!!

....It doesn't really matter how much disk space is left, it all depends on whether the filesystem was being written to at the time of the last search of death, arbitrary reboot, power outage, kids turning off the surge strip, etc.... In some cases the infamous disk cleaning event is triggered by failing sectors, but I would guess based on past experiences with EXT3 and other STB type applications (MythTV) that a large percentage of them are caused by the filesystem getting shut down dirty.

Gawd, even WINDOWS doesn't do THAT to its users... well, usually.

 

[haertig]

No, it does NOT defragment. I have seen it wipe the drive several times on different 522s and the whole thing takes place in a matter of seconds.

I might suggest that defragging can be accomplished near instantaneously if the wipe left no files on the drive to reorganize! :shocked

 

[haertig]

If it can recover all the files it does, and everyone is fat and happy. If it can't you get the warning message. After your 7 days are up, the firmware treats the drive like a new, unformatted disk and recreates the original partition table, quick formats and you're ready to roll again (sans all your recordings and timers).

If it's a problem in their OS partition, fine, reformat and recreate everything. This shouldn't hurt the user's data partition (recordings, timers, etc.) If the problem is in the user's partition, the 522 shouldn't need that to be 100% perfect to function. Sure, you've maybe got a bad sector out there. Map it out. That will nuke the recording that was unlucky enough to have been using it. All the other recordings should still be perfectly sane. You don't need to reformat the entire partition if all's you need to do is map out a bad sector or cleanup some filesystem corruption. Some severe cases of filesystem corruption may be best handled by a reformat, but those type of problems are rare, even with a dirty shutdown. A case for lots of partitions to seperate logical functions from each other could even be made here. So corruption in the timer partition could be kept isolated from the recordings partition, which itself would be seperate from the 2-hour spooling partition. Other than a true harddisk failure wiping out the world, you'd at least have some protection from the run of the mill software errors wiping out everything. [edit]OK - you COULD have corruption in your partition table, and that would be somewhat difficult to work around!!![/edit]

 

[Pepper]

What haertig said, plus my concern: if the box just wipes out the partitions and recreates them, any bad sectors would still be out there just waiting to cause the same problem again.

 

[phat_bastard]

If it's a problem in their OS partition, fine, reformat and recreate everything....

There's no OS partition on the 522. It's all user data. The OS exists in flash afaik.

...You don't need to reformat the entire partition if all's you need to do is map out a bad sector or cleanup some filesystem corruption...

It's too bad the software guys didn't have this take on it. I have the feeling that this was billed as a too tough a task to be worthwhile, and moved on.

...So corruption in the timer partition could be kept isolated from the recordings partition, which itself would be seperate from the 2-hour spooling partition...

Seems remedial from our perspective, doesn't it?