Full 8 TB now available on external EHD's

bookworm370

SatelliteGuys Pro
Original poster
Jul 11, 2009
1,152
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Columbus, Ohio
Well, I don't know what they changed, but last week my Hopper started to recognize my 6TB EHD and my 2TB EHD for a full 8TB!

The trick I found out is to get a USB3 hub and make sure the larger one is the first in the chain. If it doesn't see the 6TB one first it won't see the 2TB.

So I'm happy now, I can have my mass storage and Christmas movies for my wife online without cable swapping!

Just an FYI.
 
My 2TB external hard drive is full. I want this to work so that I will have more storage space, but I am not confident in this method and it would be expensive to try.
 
My 2TB external hard drive is full. I want this to work so that I will have more storage space, but I am not confident in this method and it would be expensive to try.

It's not that expensive, and we have a report above that it works. IIRC I bought my Seagate 6TB USB3 (with hub) external disk for $80. That has been working great for months.
 
It's not that expensive, and we have a report above that it works. IIRC I bought my Seagate 6TB USB3 (with hub) external disk for $80. That has been working great for months.
Will this work just using a larger external hard drive with a USB 3.0 hub by itself, or is it necessary have to have the 2TB attached to the same hub with the larger external drive for this to work?
Will a 6TB Seagate USB 3.0 external hard drive model with the USB 3.0 hub built into the enclosure work instead of a dedicated hub or will it be necessary to use a separate dedicated USB 3.0 hub?
If it is necessary to have a 2TB attached to the hub with the larger external hard drive will it get formatted or may an existing 2TB with recordings be used?
These are the questions that I have.
 
My old 1TB is barely half full. What the heck are you guys recording? Just asking.

I record a lot of science programs. :D
Will this work just using a larger external hard drive with a USB 3.0 hub by itself, or is it necessary have to have the 2TB attached to the same hub with the larger external drive for this to work?
Will a 6TB Seagate USB 3.0 external hard drive model with the USB 3.0 hub built into the enclosure work instead of a dedicated hub or will it be necessary to use a separate dedicated USB 3.0 hub?
If it is necessary to have a 2TB attached to the hub with the larger external hard drive will it get formatted or may an existing 2TB with recordings be used?
These are the questions that I have.

I hope somebody with a hub can confirm. But I believe you can hook up two EHDs through a single hub and the Hopper will not attempt to format them. In the case of my Seagate w/built-in hub, my 1.5TB disk was invisible until I rebooted the Hopper, in which case it ignored the 6TB and went with the 1.5TB disk, even though though it was accessing the 1.5TB through the 6TB enclosure.
 
My old 1TB is barely half full. What the heck are you guys recording? Just asking.
I record a LOT of movies, I have the movie pack and also record a lot from TCM. I have probably 8 or 9, 1 and 2TB drives that I have connected to 4 port usb switches so I can change drives to access them all. The Hopper still only sees 3 drives at a time.
 
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Old movies that come around on the cable channels once in a blue moon.:)
I record a LOT of movies, I have the movie pack and also record a lot from TCM. I have probably 8 or 9, 1 and 2TB drives that I have connected to 4 port usb switches so I can change drives to access them all. The Hopper still only sees 3 drives at a time.
Interesting, my answer would be identical.
 
I currently have my AirTV adapter plugged into the built-in USB3 hub in my Seagate. I think the Seagate is plugged into the lower USB3 port on the back of the H3. No issues. Does anybody know if the other jacks are USB3?
 
Will this work just using a larger external hard drive with a USB 3.0 hub by itself, or is it necessary have to have the 2TB attached to the same hub with the larger external drive for this to work?
Will a 6TB Seagate USB 3.0 external hard drive model with the USB 3.0 hub built into the enclosure work instead of a dedicated hub or will it be necessary to use a separate dedicated USB 3.0 hub?
If it is necessary to have a 2TB attached to the hub with the larger external hard drive will it get formatted or may an existing 2TB with recordings be used?
These are the questions that I have.

I think if the integrated hub that you have shows the larger EHD as the first in the chain you should be good to go.

Otherwise, here is the cheap hub I got at Amazon. Both my EHD's have external power so I did not use the hubs power adapter, just the hub itself. I put the 6TB on the 1st switch (the one closest to the USB3 out port) and the 2nd 2TB all the way over to the left away from the other. Only have 2 switches turned on the rest off. Works like a champ

I also have it plugged into the USB3 port on the Hopper as the OTA module can use the other one.

I'd give your integrated one a go. I bet it will work as I'll postulate that the internal HD will take priority.

Amazon Hub

I got it a while ago and it's been on my basement shelf. It currently shows unavailable but Amazon points to one that looks pretty much like the same one.
 
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Too bad I repurposed the 8 TB Seagate hard drive I bought for my Hopper 3 to be my Thunderbolt EHD on my iMac for external storage and a Time Capsule (backups) duty. I couldn’t get it to work on the H3, so I swapped out the 4 TB drive I had in the Thunderbolt enclosure to use that on my H3.

There was quite the experimental thread months ago trying different combinations of EHD drives and sizes. I think I managed 4, 2, and 1 TB all at once.
 
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Hooray! Now I can connect my second 1.5TB disk from my 612 and start transferring. :D Or maybe I'll just leave it connected so as not to put all my eggs in one 6TB basket.

So far so bad. I now cannot see my old 1.5TB disk or any programs on it. I tried rebooting the H3 multiple times, pulling the plug on both disks, and nothing works. I will have to diagnose on my computer. Huh. I didn't boot up Linux yet, but from W7 I see 4 healthy primary partitions: 1GB , 500GB, 500GB, and 396.26GB. I think the disk is probably fine. Now, why won't it show up?

I am trying the old 1.5TB disk from which I already laboriously moved (via the H3) programs onto that Seagate. That formerly took over if I had both the 1.5TB disk and the 6TB disk connected simultaneously. And just now it did the same thing as before. So... I see no change in behavior with my 6 and 1.5TB disks: it's one or the other. My older 1.5TB disk must have another issue because it does not show up or take over for the 6.
The trick I found out is to get a USB3 hub and make sure the larger one is the first in the chain. If it doesn't see the 6TB one first it won't see the 2TB.

I plugged my 1.5TB disks into the built-in hub on my 6TB disk, so IMHO that should make the 6TB the first one in the chain. Am I following what you did?
 
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I didn't boot up Linux yet, but from W7 I see 4 healthy primary partitions: 1GB , 500GB, 500GB, and 396.26GB. I think the disk is probably fine. Now, why won't it show up?

For anybody who cares, I hooked up my 1.5TB disk last working on a 612 and booted up Linux. All partitions show just fine and the disk is healthy. I was hoping that doing this might unwind the log file (ext3 is a journaling file system) but alas that did not help. I plugged it back into the front of the Seagate w/built in hub, and it still fails to show up or take over for the Seagate. :( I am suspicious that Dish removed the ability to read EHDs from VIP receivers. :crying An earlier version of the firmware did just fine using the EHD from my 722.

Bookworm, you may be the only one to have success with your 8TB (in total) disks. Did you check on your firmware?
 
For anybody who cares, I hooked up my 1.5TB disk last working on a 612 and booted up Linux. All partitions show just fine and the disk is healthy. I was hoping that doing this might unwind the log file (ext3 is a journaling file system) but alas that did not help. I plugged it back into the front of the Seagate w/built in hub, and it still fails to show up or take over for the Seagate. :( I am suspicious that Dish removed the ability to read EHDs from VIP receivers. :crying An earlier version of the firmware did just fine using the EHD from my 722.

Bookworm, you may be the only one to have success with your 8TB (in total) disks. Did you check on your firmware?
I have a bunch of old external drives that were hooked up to my old VIP receivers. They were filled to capacity. They don't show up through the Hopper 3. If my memory serves me correctly the oldest external drives that were connected to the oldest VIP receivers didn't show up anymore on the later generation VIP receivers. Sadly, I would like to be able to see those old recordings.
I never used an external hard drive with Dish larger than 2TB because Dish doesn't support it..
My current external and internal drives are full.
It would be great to get an external drive larger than 2TB. I am going to try a Seagate larger than 2TB like you have and see if it will work.
Thank you.
 
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If my memory serves me correctly the oldest external drives that were connected to the oldest VIP receivers didn't show up anymore on the later generation VIP receivers.

I never had EHDs on anything other than my 722 and 612. When the H3 arrived the tech captured the two 612's and replaced them with Joey 3's. He claimed the EHD on the 612 would work on a J3 which it did not. The other one connected to my 722 worked great on my H3 from day 1. I think a firmware update removed the ability to see those older EHDs. Maybe we can get Dish to fix it so these older EHD's will work again.
 
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