Hopper 3 hard drive swap?

Lee Rose

Active SatelliteGuys Member
Original poster
Jun 30, 2016
20
3
Los Angeles
Looks like yet another Hopper 3 has died. This one is stuck in a boot up loop. I have 1tb of recordings (including a pile of my wife's Christmas movies) on the drive. Is there any way to swap that drive into a new Hopper 3?
 
Not without voiding warranty and some nasty communication from Dish.
 
Looks like yet another Hopper 3 has died. This one is stuck in a boot up loop. I have 1tb of recordings (including a pile of my wife's Christmas movies) on the drive. Is there any way to swap that drive into a new Hopper 3?

Only if there is not a hard drive or power failure, you can transfer the recordings to an external hard drive.
The drive should be:

  • no smaller than 50 GB and no larger than 2 TB
  • have its own power supply
  • must support USB 2.0
  • must not use flash memory and should only be a single-hard disk drive
 
Only if there is not a hard drive or power failure, you can transfer the recordings to an external hard drive.
The drive should be:

  • no smaller than 50 GB and no larger than 2 TB
  • have its own power supply
  • must support USB 2.0
  • must not use flash memory and should only be a single-hard disk drive
Yes. No power failure, can't tell if it's a hard drive issue because the system won't get past the "starting up" portion of the boot. Question? Is the OS for the hopper on the hard drive? I thought it was on memory in the unit and the hard drive was just for DVR.
 
Yes. No power failure, can't tell if it's a hard drive issue because the system won't get past the "starting up" portion of the boot. Question? Is the OS for the hopper on the hard drive? I thought it was on memory in the unit and the hard drive was just for DVR.

If it's stuck on "starting up" we would want to make sure that the Hopper has good ventilation and is on a hard surface. Our next step would be to unplug the power cord and bypass the surge protector (if it's plugged into one). If this doesn't correct the issue, we would need to set up a replacement. The OS is on the hard drive, just on a different partition.
 
Just got off with Executive Escalations. They are telling me that this Hopper 3 receiver is dead, that my DVR recordings can not be salvaged as the internal hard drive encryption is tied directly to the firmware of that receiver. It was on a solid surface in a well ventilated area. They are shipping me my 3rd Hopper 3 (after having them ship me a couple Hopper 2's last year) and we'll have to try again. I just need to make sure that any DVR stuff I really care about is on the external hard drive and that I do a sector by sector backup of that drive to an exact duplicate drive every 6 months. After all this I'm really thinking it's time to dump Dish and look at other options.
 
Do it the easy way, like me. Set up a hardware RAID array for an EHD. Then you don't have to bother with sector copying.

Keep in mind, Dish is pretty much it, the best, when it comes to EHDs. DirecTV ties theirs to the receiver, not the account. So if the STB goes bad, the EHD is useless.

Or get a Haupaugge.
 
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Just got off with Executive Escalations. They are telling me that this Hopper 3 receiver is dead, that my DVR recordings can not be salvaged as the internal hard drive encryption is tied directly to the firmware of that receiver. It was on a solid surface in a well ventilated area. They are shipping me my 3rd Hopper 3 (after having them ship me a couple Hopper 2's last year) and we'll have to try again. I just need to make sure that any DVR stuff I really care about is on the external hard drive and that I do a sector by sector backup of that drive to an exact duplicate drive every 6 months. After all this I'm really thinking it's time to dump Dish and look at other options.

couple of hopper 2's and 3's in such a short time?
there had to be an external factor.
 
couple of hopper 2's and 3's in such a short time?
there had to be an external factor.

Not sure what it might be. System is in a fan cooled entertainment center. Running on surge protector backed up by UPS. Single straight RG6 cable run to the splitters <15' from the receiver. No issues w/Roku, Netflix on the Sharp 70" tv. Did have a Netflix issue on the Hopper that turned out to be a need to limit the bandwidth on the LAN to the receiver IP at < 35mbps.
 
Have you had power outages where the UPS kicked in? If so the Surge Protector plugged into the UPS is not a good idea. Excerpt from an article bythe maker of APC UPS

Plugging a surge protector into your UPS:
The noise filtration circuitry in a Surge Protector can effectively "mask" some of the load from the UPS, causing the UPS to report a lower percentage of attached load than there actually is. This can cause a user to inadvertently overload their UPS. When the UPS switches to battery, it may be unable to support the equipment attached, causing a dropped load.

Surge protectors filter the power for surges and offer EMI/RFI filtering but do not efficiently distribute the power, meaning that some equipment may be deprived of the necessary amperage it requires to run properly causing your attached equipment (computer, monitor, etc) to shutdown or reboot. If you need to supply additional receptacles on the output of your UPS, we recommend using Power Distribution Units (PDU's). PDUs evenly distribute the amperage among the outlets, while the UPS will filter the power and provide surge protection. PDUs use and distribute the available amperage more efficiently, allowing your equipment to receive the best available power to maintain operation.


Short version using a surge protector between the UPS and your equipment might not be a good idea.
 
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