Adding a self-powered USB drive to upgrade a Wally to a DVR

[JJinVista]

With regards to adding DVR capabilities to a Wally receiver:
Dish states that if you want to turn your Wally receiver into a DVR, you need a USB 2.0, 500 GB - 2 TB capacity, and self-powered or internal-powered (not pulling power off the USB connection).

I've seen a few comments on this forum indicating that you may not want to skirt the self-powered issue and use one of the slim "passport" sized USB drives. The kind that rely on the USB cable for the power supply.

Ok, I can understand we're probably dealing with a marginal power supply in the Wally, but there's not a lot of competitively-priced external USB drives to choose from in the marketplace which require a power plug to go into a wall outlet.

I've got a spare SATA to USB enclosure, the type that you drop a desktop hard drive into and the powered enclosure turns it into a USB drive. And for $50-$60 I can get a 1 or 2TB SATA drive to place into the enclosure and I believe I've met their requirements.

Does anybody see anything wrong with this approach?

 

[HipKat]

Nope, a dock or enclosure should be no problem

 

[rvvaquero]

Nothing wrong at all with it. I've got one I started using about four years ago.

 

[charlesrshell]

I got the 2TB version of this EHD for my Uncle's Wally and it works good. Have it attached to this 4-port hub.

1 TB DVR Upgrade Expansion
D-Link 4-Port USB Hub For Wally®

 

[Brussam]

A simple fix is a powered USB hub. The hub powers the disk. As low as $10

 

[charlesrshell]

A simple fix is a powered USB hub. The hub powers the disk. As low as $10

This EHD has built in power. There is a 2TG available.

1 TB DVR Upgrade Expansion

 

[Cheddar_Head]

This EHD has built in power. There is a 2TG available.

1 TB DVR Upgrade Expansion

Quote " it has its own built in power supply, which means no extra power cords to plug in." Meaning that DishRV is recommending a drive that is powered off the USB port. I thought Dish explicitly recommended NOT using a drive that used USB power. SMH

 

[dweber]

This EHD has built in power. There is a 2TG available.

1 TB DVR Upgrade Expansion

The fact that it has no power cord means that it is getting its power from the Dish receiver. Dish wants drives to have their own power supply rather than using the Dish receiver internal power. The ad claims that the this drive has its own power supply but this is a false claim. It gets its power through the USB cable. You could get by with a powered USB hub. If you do not use a powered USB hub the Dish receiver is supplying the power.


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[reubenray]

I am looking at the Seagate expansion desktop hard drives on Amazon. They have a power supply. I tried to post a link, but I could not. The 3 TB version is $90. The portable versions are powered by USB.

 

[charlesrshell]

The fact that it has no power cord means that it is getting its power from the Dish receiver. Dish wants drives to have their own power supply rather than using the Dish receiver internal power. The ad claims that the this drive has its own power supply but this is a false claim. It gets its power through the USB cable. You could get by with a powered USB hub. If you do not use a powered USB hub the Dish receiver is supplying the power.

This EHD works just fine with the Wally thru the non powered 4-port hub. This 4-port hub also has attached to it a Bluetooth adapter, Wi-Fi adapter, and a OTA adapter. All these things are in the DISH RV site and there is no mention of needing a powered hub or EHD.
DISHForMyRV: DISH Mobile Satellite Systems & Pay As You Go TV for RV, Camping, Tailgating, & the Great Outdoors

 

[dweber]

I don’t doubt that a nonpowered drive will work but since the Dish receiver is supplying the power, you could risk overheating the Dish receiver. I don’t have the specifications of what Dish has used for their power supply. I do know that the Dish web site still states “The external hard drive must have its own power supply.”
It could be that the power supply on the Wally is ok since there is no internal drive. But again Dish does not sanction this.


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[NYDutch]

This EHD works just fine with the Wally thru the non powered 4-port hub. This 4-port hub also has attached to it a Bluetooth adapter, Wi-Fi adapter, and a OTA adapter. All these things are in the DISH RV site and there is no mention of needing a powered hub or EHD.
DISHForMyRV: DISH Mobile Satellite Systems & Pay As You Go TV for RV, Camping, Tailgating, & the Great Outdoors

DISHForMyRV is not a DISH owned site. It's owned by DISH retailer Pace International.

 

[HipKat]

I am looking at the Seagate expansion desktop hard drives on Amazon. They have a power supply. I tried to post a link, but I could not. The 3 TB version is $90. The portable versions are powered by USB.

While some people have reported otherwise, Dish specs EHD's @ no larger than 2 TB's

 

[KAB]

While some people have reported otherwise, Dish specs EHD's @ no larger than 2 TB's

And some LARGER only format to 2T.

 

[NYDutch]

I noticed that Dish has modified the EHD power requirements on their support site to include some units with a built-in power supply:

"The external hard drive must have its own power supply. (Some external hard drives, like the Seagate® 1 TB DVR, may have a built-in power supply.)"

External Hard Drive | MyDISH | DISH Customer Support

 

[dweber]

The Seagate 1 TB DVR still comes with a power adapter. The power adapter outputs 12 volts at 1.5 amps.


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[charlesrshell]

Just got this email from the DISH RV site. No powered EHD for the Wally. I guess DISH knows what Pace International is up too!

Wally DISH Receiver with 1TB DVR Upgrade Expansion Bundle

 

[MikeD-C05]

I just saw on dishdepot.com website you can get a Wally for $69.99 and add to that a 2tb external hard drive for $119.00= $188.99.

 

[JJinVista]

Be aware of powered hard drive enclosures. The one I just bought had some type of energy-saving feature which spun down the drive when the Wally powered down after it's 4 hour default time.

In this state, the Wally (or even my Windows computer when I tested the drive there) once powered back up would NOT "wake up" the drive. One would have to cycle power on the USB drive to get it to spin back up and be useful and active again.

This caused me fits on the initial installation. The initial format went just fine since I hotplugged the USB drive in and manually powered it on. But then the Wally asked to reboot, which resulted in the drive spinning down (power still on to the drive, just not spinning). Upon reboot, the drive did not come back online automatically and the Wally behaved like a non-DVR Wally.

And if you recognize the situation and manually cycle power to the drive at this point to get it to start spinning, you're in a circle; you go back to the Wally saying that a drive has just been plugged in and you have to reboot if you want to use it.

The only workaround for an energy-saving drive like this is to do a hard boot on the Wally (unplug and plug in the receiver) and then power on the drive between the first and second Wally splash-screens, which is late enough to keep the drive powered on through the Wally boot process, but early enough that the Wally won't recognize that you just plugged it in and put you into the recursive mode of having to reboot again to use it.

This really wasn't a workaround for me at all, since I'm using the Wally in my RV with a Playmaker and a 20 minute boot routine to check switch, acquire, program download, etc.

I found an old drive enclosure which I had laying around which had a physical on-off switch, moved the internal hard drive to that, and tried it. With the enclosure's switch kept in the "On" position 24/7 it works just fine. So it appears to be a characteristic of the enclosure, not the internal bare drive triggering the spin-down sleep mode.

 

[charlesrshell]

Be aware of powered hard drive enclosures. The one I just bought had some type of energy-saving feature which spun down the drive when the Wally powered down after it's 4 hour default time.

In this state, the Wally (or even my Windows computer when I tested the drive there) once powered back up would NOT "wake up" the drive. One would have to cycle power on the USB drive to get it to spin back up and be useful and active again.

This caused me fits on the initial installation. The initial format went just fine since I hotplugged the USB drive in and manually powered it on. But then the Wally asked to reboot, which resulted in the drive spinning down (power still on to the drive, just not spinning). Upon reboot, the drive did not come back online automatically and the Wally behaved like a non-DVR Wally.

And if you recognize the situation and manually cycle power to the drive at this point to get it to start spinning, you're in a circle; you go back to the Wally saying that a drive has just been plugged in and you have to reboot if you want to use it.

The only workaround for an energy-saving drive like this is to do a hard boot on the Wally (unplug and plug in the receiver) and then power on the drive between the first and second Wally splash-screens, which is late enough to keep the drive powered on through the Wally boot process, but early enough that the Wally won't recognize that you just plugged it in and put you into the recursive mode of having to reboot again to use it.

This really wasn't a workaround for me at all, since I'm using the Wally in my RV with a Playmaker and a 20 minute boot routine to check switch, acquire, program download, etc.

I found an old drive enclosure which I had laying around which had a physical on-off switch, moved the internal hard drive to that, and tried it. With the enclosure's switch kept in the "On" position 24/7 it works just fine. So it appears to be a characteristic of the enclosure, not the internal bare drive triggering the spin-down sleep mode.

What brand and model EHD did you just buy?