I’m a new Dish customer and I think I just killed my 4TB hard drive when I tried to connect it to my Hopper 3. It said it began the formatting process and an hour later I came back, saw no indication that formatting was continuing, and tried to move some recordings to the new drive. It said there was none connected. I waited a while longer, unplugged the drive and tried it in two laptops, which could not see it. The Hopper doesn’t see it either when I plug it back in. Did I unplug it too soon? How long does it take for a Hopper 3 to format a 4TB drive and is there any indication when it is done? The drive was working this morning before I tried this. Thanks!
Did I kill my EHD?
- Thread starter paulman182
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I think you interrupted the formatting thereby messing up one or more partitions.
I recommend plugging it back in to one of your laptops and reformatting it there (even if for Windows), and then plug it back into the Hopper and it should be able to format it to the Dish standard.
What exactly does that mean? If your laptops cannot understand ext3 file systems, then that might explain the partitions not showing up. But in Disk Manager, you should still see the drive assuming it's still healthy.
I recommend plugging it back in to one of your laptops and reformatting it there (even if for Windows), and then plug it back into the Hopper and it should be able to format it to the Dish standard.
Thanks for the reply. What I meant was, the laptops do not even show that a disk drive is plugged in, but it lights up and shows that it is getting power.
I bought a 4TB My Book and it ended up working great, taking only a few minutes to format, so I don't think I interrupted the procedure on my original drive. I think the problem was either that it was about to die anyway (it was a few years old although not used much) or it did not have an external power supply (although that is not supposed to be a requirement anymore, maybe it can matter sometimes.)
So even though I don't know what happened to my first drive, the new one is great and all is well.
I bought a 4TB My Book and it ended up working great, taking only a few minutes to format, so I don't think I interrupted the procedure on my original drive. I think the problem was either that it was about to die anyway (it was a few years old although not used much) or it did not have an external power supply (although that is not supposed to be a requirement anymore, maybe it can matter sometimes.)
So even though I don't know what happened to my first drive, the new one is great and all is well.
Don't give up on that external drive yet. Did you try turning your laptop off completely, attaching ehd to usb port directly (no hub!) and turning laptop on? Windows may recognize it when it is booting. Just an idea. Is it a well known brand? usually obscure brands die unexpectedly.
Definitely open disk manager and see if it shows up there. Sometimes they won't show up in a windows explorer window, but they will in disk manager.
This. I've seen plenty of USB drives that want to be assigned a certain drive letter, and if that letter is already taken, it won't show up in Windows Explorer. You have to go to disk manager and manually assign it a letter.
Or, if your Hopper started the format, that could explain why the computer doesn't show it. Look in Disk Manager.
I found it in Disk Manager, thanks for the advice, but it doesn't seem to want to let me do anything with it, such as partition it or format it.
All the options are grayed out.
It is a Seagate 4TB.
All the options are grayed out.
It is a Seagate 4TB.
Did you reboot the computer when ehd was connected to one of the usb ports? I know it helped me in the past. Some usb ports gradually lose their functionality over time. They don't recognize certain thumb or external hard drives. I also notice that very old thumb drives with 1-2-6 gb storage slowly die and not worth keeping them around in the long run.
My 8 year old Asus laptop always uses the same letters (F and G) when I attach external drives. It has C and D internal drives. ( It came that way. I didn't partition it's HD at all.)
It might be helpful to reach Seagate and ask for advice. I use bunch of 4 TB seagate ehds. I love them. It is always my first choice.
Is it possible to try another computer?
My 8 year old Asus laptop always uses the same letters (F and G) when I attach external drives. It has C and D internal drives. ( It came that way. I didn't partition it's HD at all.)
It might be helpful to reach Seagate and ask for advice. I use bunch of 4 TB seagate ehds. I love them. It is always my first choice.
Is it possible to try another computer?
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