Hard drive failure on fairly new, rarely used Hopper?

ChairBound

SatelliteGuys Pro
Original poster
Jul 26, 2012
205
28
Spotsylvania, VA
Got an upgraded Hopper in July 2013. It is kept in the guest bedroom, and is the least used in the house. I tried to turn it on today, only to see no programs, timers or anything listed on it. Since there was about 10% of the hard drive taken up by recordings, and about 15 timers (some seasonal, so not all in use), I can safely assume the hard drive has suddenly decided to crap out. Of course, it could be a few other issues (I am a computer nerd as a hobby), but the HD is the most likely culprit in a quick troubleshoot. This unit has been kept on top of a laptop cooler in an open-shelved cabinet, so I am a little Pd that it has died this quickly. i have been advised in these forums in the recent past to contact DIRT rather than the dreaded DISH customer service when having an issue, so here I am. How do I get a DIRT member to help with what looks like a need for a replacement Hopper that I got on July 27, 2013. Darn it all to heck! I had a good library of stretching shows, and my "The Originals" shows on there to binge-watch! Grrrr!
 
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The hard drive is dead, dead, dead. Yes, I tried all mentioned several times before I posted here. This is not my first tech rodeo. :p After I posted my first post, the poor thing finally threw up a message on the screen stating the hard drive has failed.
 
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Pic of message...
Hopper HD Failure.JPG

And yes, the attempt to unplug the receiver was made three times. The sounds the hard drive makes, the behavior of this Hopper for the last few weeks, and the way it displays information now (or doesn't depending on what you are looking at) all combined with the message popping up, are all very clear hard drive failure indicators. I really did not need the message to pop up, but it is nice to have for the tech or customer service, who would insist on asking me to power down and unplug multiple times.
 
OK, contacted DISH via tech support chat and for once, process was relatively painless. I logged in and pretended to be my husband, so they only asked me twice if I had unplugged my receiver after I had already told them about the message stating there is a hard drive failure. If I had logged in as a GIRL, I would probably still be getting tortured. :coffee

Anyway, replacement unit supposedly on its way to be traded out. Thank goodness for DISH being amenable to learning good customer service (unlike COMCAST).
 
Not sure what brand is in the Hopper but Western Digital is having a problem with high drive failures, just like Seagate had and continues to have. There seems to be a race to the bottom for ALL hard drive manufacturers these days. Drives are very cheap these days and that is showing in the build quality and trying to pack more megabits into a smaller space. I'd pick up an EHD and start keeping backups.

I have a ThermalTake BlacX that I use with both my computers and my Dish 722. This is just a dock that connects to USB or eSATA port and allows one to insert bare drives into it like old Nintendo cartridges. I stick the drives back in their little ESD baggies when they are full and put them on a media bookcase. USB transfer is very slow since it is only v2.0 but eSATA is much faster... if Dish has activated the port for EHD use yet. I have other drive enclosures but haven't tried them with the Dish DVR since they are RAID and most-likely aren't supported with my older 722.
 
Not sure what brand is in the Hopper but Western Digital is having a problem with high drive failures, just like Seagate had and continues to have. There seems to be a race to the bottom for ALL hard drive manufacturers these days. Drives are very cheap these days and that is showing in the build quality and trying to pack more megabits into a smaller space. I'd pick up an EHD and start keeping backups.

I have a ThermalTake BlacX that I use with both my computers and my Dish 722. This is just a dock that connects to USB or eSATA port and allows one to insert bare drives into it like old Nintendo cartridges. I stick the drives back in their little ESD baggies when they are full and put them on a media bookcase. USB transfer is very slow since it is only v2.0 but eSATA is much faster... if Dish has activated the port for EHD use yet. I have other drive enclosures but haven't tried them with the Dish DVR since they are RAID and most-likely aren't supported with my older 722.

jevans64...totally agree with you about hard drive quality in general these days. It is a real crap shoot as to whether you will get a rock solid drive that lasts over ten years or a POS that craps out in two.....brand no longer matters. Reading the customer reviews on places like Amazon, NewEgg, Frys and TigerDirect among others will show a wide range of drive failures across a spectrum of manufacturers. I have had Seagate and Western Digital both screw me after the two to three year mark, while my old Hitachi and Samsung drives from 1998-2000 still run great. I suspect the size, speed and heat generated by drives has a lot to do with it. I refuse to buy larger than 750 GB to 1 TB for my desktop PCs now, but that hasn't protected me. The drives that failed were 750GB. Tech quality in anything these days (and by these days I mean since about 2008) is hard to come by in what I consider the reasonably priced range of things.

So, all this being said, I am not surprised a hard drive has failed in one of my Hoppers. I have had good service from my DISH products over the years for the most part. What I am though is disappointed. From what I see in the forums on this same topic of hard drive failures, even the regulars here think that hard drive failures after a few years should not be unexpected, and that is just not ok. Perhaps I am showing my age, but in my day...... :D
You know, when we walked five miles in the snow to school and hard drives lasted twenty years....LOL.

Anyway, a Hopper hard drive failing after being put into service in July of last year? Nope...not good enough. But, things happen. What I really wish some forward thinking, uber-techie here knew is how to hook up the failed Hopper drive to a computer running a Linux distro and pull off the recordings that are lurking on the failed drive. That's the last thing I think I remember right? That these DVRs from DISH are based on a Linux operating system? It should not be hard to pull off the recordings and move them to an external drive then plug that drive into the new Hopper, but I am not a Linux nerd so I need steps. I guess I could mess with it myself, but I have to send the Hopper back, so opening the unit up to remove the drive, even briefly (I have the Thermaltake dock too) is probably a bad idea. Wonder if I could cheat it via one of the USB ports?

Oh, and no....last I heard, the e-SATA port is still disabled. Anyone else on that?
 
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