Adding an external hard drive to a vip722

[chris971]

I would appreciate any advice on which brands of external hard drives work best. I'm looking for a large capacity unit, I see many advertised online, TigerDirect, etc. What specs besides max storage capacity should I be looking for? Dish is promoting a (rather low capacity) WD 1T unit for 99.95, but I would like something bigger. Thanks! :

 

[navychop]

WD Expander or other WD seem popular. I recommend "black" series drives over "green" for greater reliability.

You can go up to 2TB last I heard. But the larger the EHD, the more you lose WHEN it fails.


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[kwindrem]

WD Expander or other WD seem popular. I recommend "black" series drives over "green" for greater reliability.

You can go up to 2TB last I heard. But the larger the EHD, the more you lose WHEN it fails.


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The WD series Black drives do specify higher reliability. I run WD black for mission critical (system and essential data) and WD Green series for backup. ALL data on my computer is backed up because regardless of the reliability a disk will eventually fail.

Unfortunately, Dish receivers do not support using an external drive as a backup to the internal (you can only MOVE programs back and forth, you can't COPY). So an external drive provides additional storage but not redundancy. Moving programming to an external does guard against loss should a receiver swap become necessary however. I keep little on my internal for that reason, but Sling access (Dish Anywhere) can not access programs on the external drive (at least on Hopper).

While not officially supported, hardware RAID drives work fine with Dish receivers. I have a Western Digital (I forget the model) set to RAID-1 (mirroring) so if one external drive fails, the other one will function as a backup. Of course you need to monitor the drive to detect drive failure and replace it before the second one fails. After replacement, the enclosure will rebuild the mirror. This is completely transparent to the Dish receiver which is why it works.

 

[TheKrell]

Based on my personal experience, the blacks are much less reliable than the greens. I've had 3 or 4 (lost count!) out of 8 2TB black ones fail, while only 1 out of 8 greens have failed. I think this may be due to the fact that the blacks run all the time, and a Dish receiver wouldn't spin it down, ever. The greens, on the other hand, aggressively spin themselves down and don't do anything unless my Dish receivers need to use them, at which time they spin up and do the job admirably well.

 

[chris971]

How do you tell the difference between the black and green w/d's? Is it the package? I don't want my external running all the time.

 

[navychop]

Clearly labelled.

I generally keep mine off when not in use.

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[inazsully]

I've had the WD Element for 4 years now and never had a problem. I don't know if it's black or green but the Element is the older model and the Essential is the newer model. At least that was the case 4 years ago. BTW, I use mine a lot.

 

[navychop]

I just checked mine. It's a WD DVR AV Expander.

I have 6 EHDs, all different. One did not bounce too well so I don't trust it. Another went to the great circuit in the sky.

They are all self powered but 4 are on a powered USB hub.

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[jsaturn]

Seagate

I have two Seagate Passport 1-TB drives, and both are small, transportable (I have a box in my RV and at home, 722 to be specific) and neither has failed in two years. I use one for movies, and the other for series such as Breaking Bad, etc. Wish I could back up these little drives, but only way to do it, looking at this forum over time, would be to tsf. the EHD's programs back to the 722, then to a new drive. I await the failure of either drive with great trepidation, since these programs, if lost to drive failure, would only be replaceable in their serial 1,2,3,4 form, by I suppose, buying the DVD series....or hoping/waiting for a "marathon" showing of all episodes, say , of MadMen, such as AMC sometimes will do.

?Sure like having the disk space on the box, though, and so far, any glitches with the Passport are cured by rebooting the 722; it only takes about five minutes.

 

[TheKrell]

Do you mean Western Digital My Passport? Regardless, it is possible to duplicate the programs on those drives. The easiest method I have found is to let your 722 format two drives, boot up a liveDVD of your favorite Linux, log in as root, plug the drives in and let Linux automount, and then drag/drop program subfolders in the DishArc folder from one drive to another.

 

[jsaturn]

Uh oh; it's a Seagate Backup Plus 1TB. Thx for the advice, though. I'll try to figure out the tech jargon and try a backup.

 

[harshness]

Don't spend extra on a 2.5" drive. You'll get nothing for the extra expenditure.

I have some Seagate drives, but my daily drivers are all Western Digital.

Costco is a great source if you have access.