EHD questions for Hipkat/Boston or any experienced member

[sktrus]

My Hopper3 is almost 90% full. I am struggling to delete some recordings (that I may rewatch). So, I am thinking about getting a powered external hard drive. Before I spend my money I have 3 questions that I am hoping you members will be able to answer.

1- Before I switched from Hopper2 to H3 I moved recordings to 250GB powered Seagate brand ehd. For some reason Hopper3 wouldn't recognize(read) files from this drive. I couldn't find a solution and gave up.
How do I make sure a newer Hopper in the future (or the current hopper3 I use) won't have the same problem if I move some recordings from Hopper3 to new ehd I will purchase? I know the files are encrypted and unplayable with computers. That's not my intention.

2- Seagate or WD? Does it matter? I want to stay away from obscure brands. I mostly buy from Amazon.

3- When EHD is connected to one of the 3 usb ports (I currently use one port for an antenna) do Joeys recognize the recordings from EHD? Or, do I need to use the tv connected to Hopper3?

My daily tv works with Joey2. Since it is a new tv, I am able to use many apps such as Youtube directly installed to tv. I want to make sure that this new big screen tv (with Joey2) will be able to let me use ehd. If it won't I don't see a reason to go through this hassle.
I had my house wired behind the drywalls (during construction) before HD required HDMI cables. I cannot swap Hopper3 and Joey2 easily. I have a what you call a home run room where all the cables from different rooms and outdoor satellite come.

4- I know hard drives spin unlike SSDs. Should ehd be kept unattached to Hooper3 when it is not used?

Thanks for all the suggestions.

 

[Bobby]

My Hopper3 is almost 90% full. I am struggling to delete some recordings (that I may rewatch). So, I am thinking about getting a powered external hard drive. Before I spend my money I have 3 questions that I am hoping you members will be able to answer.

1- Before I switched from Hopper2 to H3 I moved recordings to 250GB powered Seagate brand ehd. For some reason Hopper3 wouldn't recognize(read) files from this drive. I couldn't find a solution and gave up.
How do I make sure a newer Hopper in the future (or the current hopper3 I use) won't have the same problem if I move some recordings from Hopper3 to new ehd I will purchase? I know the files are encrypted and unplayable with computers. That's not my intention.

2- Seagate or WD? Does it matter? I want to stay away from obscure brands. I mostly buy from Amazon.

3- When EHD is connected to one of the 3 usb ports (I currently use one port for an antenna) do Joeys recognize the recordings from EHD? Or, do I need to use the tv connected to Hopper3?

My daily tv works with Joey2. Since it is a new tv, I am able to use many apps such as Youtube directly installed to tv. I want to make sure that this new big screen tv (with Joey2) will be able to let me use ehd. If it won't I don't see a reason to go through this hassle.
I had my house wired behind the drywalls (during construction) before HD required HDMI cables. I cannot swap Hopper3 and Joey2 easily. I have a what you call a home run room where all the cables from different rooms and outdoor satellite come.

4- I know hard drives spin unlike SSDs. Should ehd be kept unattached to Hooper3 when it is not used?

Thanks for all the suggestions.

1 - I wouldn't waste my time with a 250GB drive. I've been using the same 1TB drive since the 722 days. Drives are so cheap these days that it make little sense to go smaller. Just don't go over 7TB. There are no guarantees but transferring that drive to a new Hopper works 99% of the time.

2 - I use WD but many use Seagate as well. Either works, just be sure that that the drive is single disk.

3- Joeys recognize the EHD attached to the Hopper. You select it the same way you do with the Hopper itself.

4 - I have had my EHD attached continuously to the Hopper (and the 722 before it) without ill effect.

 

[charlesrshell]

I have been using two 500MB WDs since 722 days. Have one attached to my H3 and the other to my Hopper Plus. I leave both plugged in full time. I think WD is the way to go.

 

[arlo]

Not a dish subscriber. Most importantly you will need a hard disk drive. Not SSD.
From other recent posts here. Unless they cleaned up their act I would shy away from Seagate. WD is reliable for me now.
And 1, 2TB capacity is just too affordable.
Random plugging in/unplugging external storage usually is not a great idea unless there is a utility to "unmount" it first. Powering down the device its plugged into before detaching the usb cable is the safest way if no Windowsish version of 'safely remove hardware' menu is not available.

 

[bookworm370]

Not a dish subscriber. Most importantly you will need a hard disk drive. Not SSD.
From other recent posts here. Unless they cleaned up their act I would shy away from Seagate. WD is reliable for me now.

Yes, and you can't use an SSD because the Hopper does not support the TRIM command to force the SSD controller to clean up its allocation tables. So eventually, the drive will just wear down and die as it can't be load leveled.

And 1, 2TB capacity is just too affordable.
Random plugging in/unplugging external storage usually is not a great idea unless there is a utility to "unmount" it first. Powering down the device its plugged into before detaching the usb cable is the safest way if no Windowsish version of 'safely remove hardware' menu is not available.

It is not an issue on the EXT 3 file system as they are a journaled and recoverable file system. EXT3 and EXT4 journaled are resilient to sudden electrical disconnects as it won't commit the final pointers until everything else has been flushed.

 

[arlo]

Yes, and you can't use an SSD because the Hopper does not support the TRIM command to force the SSD controller to clean up its allocation tables. So eventually, the drive will just wear down and die as it can't be load leveled.

It is not an issue on the EXT 3 file system as they are a journaled and recoverable file system. EXT3 and EXT4 journaled are resilient to sudden electrical disconnects as it won't commit the final pointers until everything else has been flushed.

wormy. it is never acceptable nor a good practice to remove usb storage before properly preparing it for the operation. i believe you have countered that it is okay to do so several times. i don't really care to hear your rebuttal. i deal with just too much usb stroage that is corrupted either by removal in a mounted state or power failure in write states. if you do not use the proper practies, please don't impart them on others because it so far has worked for you.

 

[sktrus]

I love you all. I knew I could depend on you.

2 things to mention. That 250 GB Seagate. I bought it many years ago and it was the maximum size you could get. There was no portable ehds back then.
Also, when I mentioned SSD I meant the longetivity. I know SSDs are no good for Dish. That's what I have been reading everywhere.

Time to shop! Surprisingly, there aren't many options at Amazon. Will check other sites.

 

[Bobby]

I love you all. I knew I could depend on you.

2 things to mention. That 250 GB Seagate. I bought it many years ago and it was the maximum size you could get. There was no portable ehds back then.
Also, when I mentioned SSD I meant the longetivity. I know SSDs are no good for Dish. That's what I have been reading everywhere.

Time to shop! Surprisingly, there aren't many options at Amazon. Will check other sites.

You could go with this one.
Amazon product ASIN B06VVS7S94
View: https://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Elements-Portable-External/dp/B06VVS7S94/ref=sr_1_5?crid=K3NAFOTKHUEL&keywords=1tb+external+hard+drive&qid=1695601371&sprefix=1tb+%2Caps%2C157&sr=8-5&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.006c50ae-5d4c-4777-9bc0-4513d670b6bc Mine is the powered version of WD Elements that may not be available any longer. I bought mine in 2010 and it has been rock solid all these years. The Hopper may very well be fine with using the simple USB power. Many here are using non powered EHDs with no issue. If you are uncomfortable with that all you need to do is add a powered USB hub into the mix and it works fine.

 

[Almighty1]

I'll just briefly answer as I need to do other things...

1) The reason it doesn't recognize most likely isn't the hard drive itself but the ATA to USB bridge or controller chip that sits between the actual internal HDD and the USB connector as I had the same issue with a docking station
which worked on the Hopper 1 and not the Hopper 3. When I changed to a USB to PATA/SATA Coverter cable, the same HDD worked fine. I still had the Hopper 1 at that time to transfer the recordings to the Hopper 3 before shipping
the Hopper 1 back using their shipping pre-paid box. So you actually won't know in advance you won't have the same problem until you actually try it which is the only accurate way to know. So even a external drive, you basically
would need to take the drive out and use a enclosure, dock station or USB to SATA connector cable that works.

2) It might or might not since even your obscure brands will still use a drive inside from one of the few remaining drive manufacturers which includes Seagate, Hitachi, WD, Toshiba, Fujitsu but like mentioned in #1, the other
variable is they need to use a ATA to USB Bridge that is compatible which you won't know until you tried as even WD or Seagate can change what they use for a ATA to USB bridge. As for brands, each brand can be good or bad because it all depends if that brand has a bad product during that time or not like in 1997-1998, one would avoid Maxtors because of the high failure rate while in the 2000s, Maxtor was cheaper than the other brands but they have another problem, they have lower tolerance than other brands as they ran hotter than other brands so the failure rate was also high. Western Digital also had failures during a time period recently where there was a high failure rate. And IBM now Hitachi for example in 2001, where their DeskStar 75GXP which came in different capacities where every drive will eventually die from a click of death issue giving them the nickname of DeathStar. I noticed that Western Digital, not sure of others, they now sell data recovery protection when you buy a HD from them like this for example, the Black is supposed to using a extremely fast internal drive from their Black series...

For question 4, it probably will last longer if it's unattached or turned off as there are some USB hubs that have individual on/off swiches for each port that others are using so
if you can't turn off the EHDD and it's powered from the USB Hub, you should probably turn off that USB port. The only bad thing is that the EHDD might or might not get detected
when you want to use it while the Hopper 3 is running which sometimes will require unplugging, rebooting and plugging back in after rebooting if a rebooting doesn't fix the problem.

I also remembered something else, while it is not wise to go over a 7TB drive as you can only connect 3 drives in total that does not exceed 7TB. There is another reason to use smaller drives because as someone else had discovered, the Hopper 3, not sure about other Hopper models will only let you access up to 999 recordings so if you had more than 999 recordings, I do not know how to decides which recordings will be part of that 999 and one would have no way to watch, transfer or delete anything over the 999 either until the x amount in the first 999 is gone either by transferring or deleting so to even see recordings 1000-1005 for example, you would first need to transfer or delete 6 recordings. So by using a smaller drive, the chances of you hitting over the 999 recordings is lower.

 

[Almighty1]

wormy. it is never acceptable nor a good practice to remove usb storage before properly preparing it for the operation. i believe you have countered that it is okay to do so several times. i don't really care to hear your rebuttal. i deal with just too much usb stroage that is corrupted either by removal in a mounted state or power failure in write states. if you do not use the proper practies, please don't impart them on others because it so far has worked for you.

Better to be safe than sorry is another way to say it. With that being said, I noticed that there are times I transfer to external HDD and the process hanged at 70% for example that only a reboot would fix and give access again to a working EHDD, the original recording is still on the internal HDD so I guess the Hopper 3 does not delete the recording from the source until it is 100% completed.

 

[Almighty1]

I love you all. I knew I could depend on you.

2 things to mention. That 250 GB Seagate. I bought it many years ago and it was the maximum size you could get. There was no portable ehds back then.
Also, when I mentioned SSD I meant the longetivity. I know SSDs are no good for Dish. That's what I have been reading everywhere.

Time to shop! Surprisingly, there aren't many options at Amazon. Will check other sites.

For longetivity, just like anything else, it's a YMMV as the MTBF ratings is only synthentic testing so even if it said 100,000 hours. Yours could fail 2 days later or 2 years later or never fail at all. I can tell you that even the Samsung 850Pro SSD which is 2.5", I had a pair and one of them developed bad sectors after 1.5 years. I still have a 250GB Western Digital HDD that is powered 24x7x365 that is still running from early 2000's to now. So it depends on your personal luck as each individual unit can be different. Not sure if one can still use the old rule where for products, if it doesn't break within the first 72 hours, it usually will last forever.

 

[Almighty1]

You could go with this one.
Amazon product ASIN B06VVS7S94
View: https://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Elements-Portable-External/dp/B06VVS7S94/ref=sr_1_5?crid=K3NAFOTKHUEL&keywords=1tb+external+hard+drive&qid=1695601371&sprefix=1tb+%2Caps%2C157&sr=8-5&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.006c50ae-5d4c-4777-9bc0-4513d670b6bc Mine is the powered version of WD Elements that may not be available any longer. I bought mine in 2010 and it has been rock solid all these years. The Hopper may very well be fine with using the simple USB power. Many here are using non powered EHDs with no issue. If you are uncomfortable with that all you need to do is add a powered USB hub into the mix and it works fine.

And I wanted to add, that for the Elements, My Passport, My Passport Ultra of the same product year, they will all use the same exact internal HDD inside. The only difference is the Ultra has cloud backup so you are paying for external features. They will all have the same 256-bit AES hardware encryption. The portable model called the Black is probably faster as it appears to be based on the Black version of the internal drive with the same capacity as far as WD is concerned. I have 2016 purchased My Passport Ultra 2TB EHDDs which only talks about Windows 8 on the box and I have one from last week which is named exactly the same but a newer model. The difference is the former and I have 6 different ones takes 5+ minutes after plugged in or the Hopper rebooting before it will say it's connected after watching the HDD enclosure light flash accessing it while the new one takes 1-2 seconds. All of them are self-powered but plugged into a Radio Shack USB 3.x hub which is powered.

 

[dishdude]

This is my go to enclosure, it doesn't require external power. I buy new take outs of 500 gb laptop hard drives on ebay. Works like a charm in multiple installs.

Amazon product ASIN B0B2D1ZKD8
View: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B2D1ZKD8/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1

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[Almighty1]

This is what I use which provides power for any internal drive and works on both EIDE/PATA as well as SATA internal drives... I has worked for 4TB drives from my testing...

 

[bookworm370]

wormy. it is never acceptable nor a good practice to remove usb storage before properly preparing it for the operation. i believe you have countered that it is okay to do so several times. i don't really care to hear your rebuttal. i deal with just too much usb stroage that is corrupted either by removal in a mounted state or power failure in write states. if you do not use the proper practies, please don't impart them on others because it so far has worked for you.

Well, then, I won't rebutt. But as a Chief Information Officer for a 2B corporation (my day job and maybe the reason I got a personal invite for the Zoom call from the Dish management staff), my tech and operations staff would love to discuss it with you.
And I don't just unplug; I have one of the USB hubs with switches for each port so I can just switch out one drive and cut in another so if the light on the drive is not blinking, just cutting out the USB port has worked for over 14 or so years now without a single failure. I have multiple EHDs separated by Christmas Movies (Happy Wife), news and specials, concerts and music and then the 6TB drive that is the catch-all for all the other movies.

So, of course, you are correct. 'You' have screwed up drives. I in the last 2 decades have not. Two data points does not make a proof.

 

[arlo]

wormy. it is never acceptable nor a good practice to remove usb storage before properly preparing it for the operation. i believe you have countered that it is okay to do so several times. i don't really care to hear your rebuttal. i deal with just too much usb stroage that is corrupted either by removal in a mounted state or power failure in write states. if you do not use the proper practies, please don't impart them on others because it so far has worked for you.

So I see we have a soap-boxer with speed dial to the person on the highest floor of the building who sits in the softest chair.
It irks me to have people who should know better suggest poor practices that although have worked well for them for how ever long, that its ok to carry on with them. He had to rebut.
Its common sense. Perhaps something needing a refresher. To unmount first then remove. If in a heavy r/w state and storage communications are severed. Or in a stalled state with no response but heavy activity annunciations.
Pull power, unplug the drive. Not cool.
As for 'me'. You have mistaken me with the customers I have with cereal bowls of USB memory. Corrupted but largely recoverable. Or not. Or the Windows 32 bit only applications to rewrite flash memory to at least restore their use. Yeah.
The big guys don't care about the subscribers. Its $$$ they do. The support ends at the box. Not the things you plug into them. And certainly why they boot the receivers with the internal storage in spin down mode. Your external drive will spin 24/7. So Everybody. Yank that new usb HDD and put it wherever you want to. Yank that flash card from your phone and put it in the card adapter and transfer your photos to your pc-du-jour. Yank it and slap it back in the phone.
I'm sure we have the same guy who runs the pee out of his turbo beamer on the interstate so it looks like a bar-b-que pit under the hood and pulls into a Starbucks and slaps it in park and shuts it right off to run in for confab with the fellers. Works for him. The dealer service dept. favorite. Unmount that sob first dudes and dudettes.

 

[Almighty1]

I think the thing is that there is no such thing as unmount first on a DISH DVR compared to a computer like Windows where there is the Safety Hardware Remove and Eject media so there really isn't the choice except there is always a risk of data corruption so even on Windows, sometimes using the Safety Hardware Remove and Eject media fails to work so all you can really do is wait to make sure there is no activity one way or another on the storage device in question, then you should be able to safely take it out but there is always the risk of data loss regardless if the storage was actually active or even connected as there was a time when the 200GB SanDisk MicroSD card was the largest available and I had one where without even taking it out, it went into read only mode which is what it does when the card is failing but the data didn't get corrupted. So in any case, maybe when responding there are times where one really needs to put the standard disclaimer that what one writes works for them and everyone else is at their own risk should they decide to try it and they are not liable should anything goes wrong.

 

[sktrus]

Sipping my coffee and reading all the responses. Learning a lot. I sure appreciate you all.
I checked Bobby's recommendation. Thread # 8. A nice one. Portable.

I need to ask few questions regarding a usb hub (with its own power cable.)
Good idea because.......

1- You have several ehds that you can connect all to a hub. No more swapping them to make it easier. I assume Hopper 3 will recognize (hopefully) them and give them numbers 1,2, etc. If that's the case you need to either randomly choose one and see what the recordings are or you write what you have on ehds on a piece of paper and choose accordingly.
2- A powered usb is a good idea for portable ehds to Hopper3 because Dish recommends (or requires a powered ehd). Perhaps, that extra power is necessary to spin the drive. I am making an assumption here.

Am I correct with these assumptions?

Any good recommendation for a powered usb hub? Something won't break the bank?

Good day to y'all.

 

[RTCDude]

I love you all. I knew I could depend on you.

2 things to mention. That 250 GB Seagate. I bought it many years ago and it was the maximum size you could get. There was no portable ehds back then.
Also, when I mentioned SSD I meant the longetivity. I know SSDs are no good for Dish. That's what I have been reading everywhere.

Time to shop! Surprisingly, there aren't many options at Amazon. Will check other sites.

Let me add some additional perspective to HD longevity issues.

When I worked at a large PC company, we did some studies on HD failures. Putting general quality issues aside, we found three common reasons for most HD failures:

#3 was vibration, shock movement, or quick twisting motions. Repeated vibration or hard shock movements can cause the head to impact the spinning data platters and gouge them or ruin the head. For quick twisting motions, the gyroscopic effect of the spinning platter can cause the platter to wobble into the head. And while a hard enough shock or twist was virtually 100% guaranteed to cause a head crash, this reason was third place because it didn’t happen that often. Mostly only when a laptop got dropped or a PC got knocked over.

#2 was heat. Heat can always cause components to fail over time. However, the biggest heat related failure was the bearings for the spinning data platters and the head arms. While high quality sealed bearings are used, they still have some kind of lubrication in them and high heat can cause the lubricant to swell and leak, compromising the bearing. This was less true for laptops which tend to run cooler. But PC towers can get quite hot inside without proper cooling.

However surprisingly, the #1 HD failure was repeated power off/on cycles. This is not the controlled spin up/downs commanded by the by the PC/laptop, these are staged by the controller inside the HD to avoid head crashes. Rather, full sudden power loss or power reconnection. Power reconnection wasn’t as susceptible, but sudden power loss during head seeks could cause a head crash. If a HD is turned off at just the wrong time, the spinning data platter can wobble slightly, kind of like a warped record (only a few microns) but sometimes enough to crash the head. However, in recent years HD manufacturers have included means to make this much less likely. So this isn’t quite as big of a problem as it use to be.

Again, this wasn’t so much of an issues with laptops, but PCs (towers) have that single switch that kills all of the power and could be very susceptible. In our studies we could actually cause a head crash within ten minutes by turning the power off and on repeatedly every second or two. That’s not the normal situation, but just think how many times a PC is turn on and off in the course of its life. It was a numbers game.

So, the general advice is:

- Don’t move the HD abruptly while in use, or very slowly and gently if needed.

- Keep the HD as cool as possible. In particular, don’t keep it in an enclosed cabinet with other heat generating equipment or shut away in a drawer. Warm is OK, hot is not.

- Don’t turn the power on/off as much as practical.

When you need to disconnect power, always disconnect the USB cable first. Make sure the HD isn’t being used before pulling the USB plug (but on Dish receivers with no official “disconnect” process you have no choice but just pull the USB plug). This will cause the HD to do a safe head retract or spin down. And then after turning off the power, don’t move the HD until you hear (or feel) it fully spin down.

P.S., You make sure the HD you want to power off isn’t used by setting the current HD in the DVR menu to a HD other than the one you want to power off.

Hope this helps.

 

[sktrus]

At Amazon. Looking at Bobby's WD. 2 TB is only $15 extra compared to 1 TB at $55. It makes sense to me, doubling the size.

Also a hub with individual on/off buttons. Only $15.

Amazon.com

Do I get 'Go for it'?