Dish DVR Hard Drive unlock?

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castiel

castiel

New Member
Original poster
May 9, 2010
2
0
DFW, Texas
I had a Dish DVR broke on me, and the company didn't take it so I am moving now and I found this old box. I opened it up and found that it had a Western Digital 500GB Hard Drive. Well since the box is broke I thought I take it out and use it. But it seems that it may be locked? I plugged it in to my computer and it doesn't show up in the BIOS nor in Hardware Manager in Windows.

Is there a way to unlock it? Because the box was completely working before it broke and in the accident the hard drive wasn't even touched.

So am I screwed to use it? Did Dish put a lock on the hard drive so I cant use it?

Thanks for the help.
 
Get the diagnostics tool for ATA drives from Western Digital. Then load that software with the drive installed. It should see the drive and allow you to low lever format the drive so that it is essentially blank like a new drive.
 
If it has a 500Gb drive in it, it can't be that old. DISH will more that likely want it back at some point. $500 is a lot of money for a 500GB hard drive.
 
Not a windows drive

castiel said:
I had a Dish DVR broke on me, and the company didn't take it so I am moving now and I found this old box. I opened it up and found that it had a Western Digital 500GB Hard Drive. Well since the box is broke I thought I take it out and use it. But it seems that it may be locked? I plugged it in to my computer and it doesn't show up in the BIOS nor in Hardware Manager in Windows.

Is there a way to unlock it? Because the box was completely working before it broke and in the accident the hard drive wasn't even touched.

So am I screwed to use it? Did Dish put a lock on the hard drive so I cant use it?

Thanks for the help.
Click to expand...

1st it's a Linux HDD & 2nd it takes a spin-up command from the DVR for it to run. What Mike H suggest may work.
 
i'm not sure what software it is. I haven't bought a new hard drive in a long time that I needed to mess with. but all the hd people have software that you can run and accesses the hard drive at the device level to check for physical problems, as well as reset things like controller behavior. You've started yourself down a path where I think you should be able to figure it out, if not, you didn't want to be on that path anyway.
 
How To Unlock a Dish Network Hard Drive for use in Computer

See Attached ISO Files Use Either one:
Here is the software to unlock Dish Network Hard Drive. It is an .ISO format so you have to burn it to CD or DVD or use ALCOHOL 120 or put it on a memory stick. You Then have to set your CD\DVD Drive as your Boot Drive. Connect the Hard Drive to your system and boot up your computer with the CD\DVD that you burned the ISO to. The software will "Unlock" the drive (It removes the zero state it is set to and allows the BIOS to see it and it will spin up") Then follow directions from there. All you really have to do from there is a soft reset (reboot computer on and off without powering off )
You can then format the drive and install whatever OS you want. Or use Linux to try and get your movies off in one piece.

The site is not allowing me to upload the ISO's email me and i will send them to you: The Files are about 1.4 mb each
cdennis39@ymail.com

Have Fun !
sklawz :rant:
 
Will the drive still work in the receiver after this "unlock" procedure? (Obviously I don't intend to format the drive.)
 
TheKrell

TheKrell,
You should be able to use the drive in the receiver after unlocking it. I don't know what type of drive you have. Different manufactures (Western Digital, Hitachi) have different firmware and different security features. This is to keep the info on the drive secured (i.e - movies, proprietary software etc.) The drive will operate in a PC and should work in the reciever. I don't understand why you need to unlock the drive for use in the reciever though. You could always set the lock feature back to on "on" using the ISO software and use it that way again. It is my understanding that Western Digital Drives have well implemented security.
Hope this helps.
 
The only "security" I know about on the internal drives is the use of a proprietary file system which has already been reverse engineered. So what stopped me from copying my programs was the inability to get the drive to spin up. (Obviously I could be wrong about that!) I was thinking your "unlock" programs might fix that problem, while allowing me to reinstall the drive in the receiver and continue normal operation.
 
TheKrell said:
The only "security" I know about on the internal drives is the use of a proprietary file system which has already been reverse engineered.
Click to expand...
The filesystem is not proprietary at all; it just isn't something that Windows can do natively (along with 90% of the other filesystems out there).
 
harshness said:
The filesystem is not proprietary at all; it just isn't something that Windows can do natively (along with 90% of the other filesystems out there).
Click to expand...
well on a 722k .. the first & second partitions seem to be ext3 .... the 3rd & 4th partitions that I had on my 722k don't mount and are "unknown" ... I'd read somewhere that the largest partition was a virtualized file system .. somethign along the lines of a giant file where a virtual driver knows how to read/write into the "file" but its gibberish to the outside world without the virtual filesystem driver loading....
 
Could you send me the unlock software...got a seagate hard drive out of a dish box that shows up in the bios but nothing else. Thanx if you can help.:
M
 
Burroughs said:
Could you send me the unlock software...got a seagate hard drive out of a dish box that shows up in the bios but nothing else. Thanx if you can help.:
M
Click to expand...
Shows up in the bios.. and then you did what? or what were you expecting? and what were you thinking to do?
 
In Windows go to control Panel, admin tools, computer management, disk management. You should see it there. If you do not are you sure the drive is spinning? If you do see it right click on it. Work with the choices. Create simple drive, delee volume and so on, if it says . Help, whats this , post back. Peace
 
I wouldn't trust that drive in my computer.

#1 Dish probably uses the cheapest drives they can get ahold of. More then likely you got are refurbished drive.

#2 As that DVR that the drive was taken from was under non stop use. Any DVR will just beat the crap out of the drive.

The point I'm making is that I wouldn't trust the drive, as its more likely to fail
 

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