External hard drive question

[kpip99]

I went to the dish site awhile back and it had 2 different western digital external hard drives you could buy directly from dish one was a 1TB and one was a 2TB. I went to the dish site today and couldn't find them. Does anyone know the model number of the 2TB one ?

 

[thomasjk]

You can buy any WD external hard drive as long as it is externally powered. I have a 1TB Elements that is 5 years old.

 

[kpip99]

Ok thanks

 

[garywiley]

I went to the dish site awhile back and it had 2 different western digital external hard drives you could buy directly from dish one was a 1TB and one was a 2TB. I went to the dish site today and couldn't find them. Does anyone know the model number of the 2TB one ?

I have a Seagate 3 TB drive, I purchased from Costco, that has been working great for about a year.

 

[toricred]

Is it recognized as a 3TB by the Hopper?

 

[KKlare]

Yes that is the question as the optimum price point is now 3 or 4TB drives. The unanswered question for me is does Dish provide enough directory space internally for files of 1/2 or 1 hour length. Given smaller drives work for 1000 to 1500 files, then the larger drive may only work with 2 hour programs, keeping the number of files to say 1000. So who is pushing the limits?
-Ken

 

[dke]

Yes that is the question as the optimum price point is now 3 or 4TB drives. The unanswered question for me is does Dish provide enough directory space internally for files of 1/2 or 1 hour length. Given smaller drives work for 1000 to 1500 files, then the larger drive may only work with 2 hour programs, keeping the number of files to say 1000. So who is pushing the limits?
-Ken

That would have no bearing the number of files since dish divides the drive into 500MB partitions. I don't know if the full 3 or 4TB capacity would be used, dish for what ever reason may arbitrarily limit the size.

Dan

 

[thomasjk]

Dish officially supports up to 2TB drives.

 

[toricred]

I have a couple of 3 TB drives. I may try them out later today to see if I have any luck.

 

[thomasjk]

They may work. I guess the question is what capacity does the Hopper report.

 

[charlesrshell]

I went to the dish site awhile back and it had 2 different western digital external hard drives you could buy directly from dish one was a 1TB and one was a 2TB. I went to the dish site today and couldn't find them. Does anyone know the model number of the 2TB one ?

Check this out. http://store.westerndigital.com/sto...tegory.67750000/parid.13092400/catid.13094600

 

[thomasjk]

Check out Bestbuy for better pricing.

 

[KKlare]

Charles, why would I pay $140 for what can be bought for $80 +-$10? Today the rate of ~$40 per TB is the higher end. It goes as low as $30 but I don't buy Seagate for some forgotten reason of many years ago. I have and might again buy a noisy Fantom, but likely not although cheaper. Mostly I have WD.
-Ken

 

[ChadT41]

Not that I am saying to buy one of these, but just to answer the question of what happened to the EHD's through the Dish website, at the bottom of the page, you have 2 options
http://www.mydish.com/upgrades/products/expand-dvr-storage#external
It is not purchased through Dish, it appears, but Dish is saying these 2 are specifically compatible.

 

[charlesrshell]

Check this out. http://store.westerndigital.com/sto...tegory.67750000/parid.13092400/catid.13094600

I purchased two of these models when WD first came out with the 500G models. They have been performing flawlessly so far.

 

[charlesrshell]

Charles, why would I pay $140 for what can be bought for $80 +-$10? Today the rate of ~$40 per TB is the higher end. It goes as low as $30 but I don't buy Seagate for some forgotten reason of many years ago. I have and might again buy a noisy Fantom, but likely not although cheaper. Mostly I have WD.
-Ken

As thomasjk stated in post #12, you can shop around for better prices.

 

[navychop]

2TB is an awful lot to lose when it fails.

 

[toricred]

Losing 2 TB wouldn't bother me all that much. I've actually had two occasions where I lost 16+ TB of recordings when I was running my own PVR and had a catastrophic power failure that killed all the drives. I have much better power protection now and since my recordings only stick around for a week or two before they are watched by the family member that recorded them it wouldn't be all that much of a risk.

 

[Jim5506]

Those huge hard drives present another problem - there is a 999 program limit to the EHD program listing, if you transfer #1000 it can't be seen until you delete another program off the EHD.

If your programming is about 2GB per movie, the 999 program limit just about fills a 2 TB hard drive.

 

[toricred]

I never heard of the 999 program limit. I know I had heard that the max HDD that would work was 2TB. I guess I was working on the theory that if that had been changed then any other limits might have changed as well. I'd really like to see all recordings listed in one screen without having to know which drive/Hopper they are on.