Hopper 3 internal hard drive issues

[Altitudinous]

Well, I finally experienced issues with an internal drive. My owned H3 came with a Seagate ST2000VM003 drive with a 2019 build date. Suddenly one morning the DVR functions were unavailable and the screen showed "HDD Warning 760 - The content on your hard drive has become corrupted and will cause your receiver to function improperly. In order for your receiver to function properly all content on the hard drive will need to be deleted at this time. We apologize for the inconvenience." with an OK button. Well, at least they apologized. Instead of pressing OK, I tried a few power cord reboots as well as restarting through the diagnostics menu, but no change. I also tried running the system checks inside of diagnostics and it instantly reported a status of 100 on the hard drive test. In this case scoring 100 is bad. Finally I decided to press the OK button and I got a message about the hard drive being successfully "cleaned". I felt comforted now having a clean hard drive.

A couple of observations:
1. Despite not having any hard drive functions, multiple tuners remained available on the Hopper 3 and on the 4K Joey that I use frequently. Kudos to Dish for that.
2. It would be nice to have more information about the unclean hard drive and possibly be able to clean just the "dirty" parts instead of losing all recordings.
3. It would be nice to have information about the code 100 reported for the hard drive on the diagnostics with a red X and the ability to run some non-destructive checks and repairs on the drive.
4. After the "cleaning" the drive seemed to function normally.

Of course, now I didn't trust that drive. I ordered a "new" ST2000VM003 and installed it. This drive turned out to have a 2012(!) build date. I hear those were the good ones. No issues, H3 started right up and the new drive was available. Additional kudos for how easy this is. I'll now keep the old drive on the shelf as a spare. I might try putting it in an enclosure and running some tests on it, but I don't want to do that now.

Just to test things out, I tried transferring some recordings from an EHD to the H3 with the new drive. I got this helpful message: "The transfer completed with errors." None of the recordings appeared to have been transferred. Not knowing how to see what these errors were, I tried running the system check and of course it reported that the hard drive was OK. Some kudos were retracted.

I then tried making new recordings on the DVR, transferring to the EHD, and transferring them back. These completed without error.
It seems that maybe the H3 prevents transfer of recordings from an EHD to a Hopper 3 with a different drive than the one that was used to transfer them to the EHD originally, but I don't know.

The internal hard drive diagnostics and reporting functions on the H3 could use some work. Should I hold my breath? Maybe some Satellite Guys out there have some insight.

 

[SandFarmer]

I learned to hate Seagate ages ago. Major failure rate. It cost me a fortune to replace all the drives in all the Apple gear who used them exclusively back then. Now I only use Western Digital and have a "Black" ready for my owned H3 since it's been whining and making noise since I got it. This being the second one, since the first H3 made the same noises and it was exchanged. It's only a matter of time. . . . .

 

[Altitudinous]

Thanks for the reply. So when you say "Black" you're saying a WD20EURX? That seems to be the only other drive model than the Seagate that I've seen (in the forums) as supported by the H3. Or do you have more current info that you're willing to share?

 

[Jim5506]

WD Black drives are designed for video gaming, perhaps the WD Purple Surveillance drives would be better for DVR purposes.

IIRC the drives in the Hopper 3 are not limited to certain model numbers as they were on earlier machines, they are more plug and play.

 

[SandFarmer]

What Color do I need?

 

[Altitudinous]

IIRC the drives in the Hopper 3 are not limited to certain model numbers as they were on earlier machines, they are more plug and play.

Interesting. I hope SandFarmer or someone else will report back on what models other than the ST2000VM003 and WD20EURX work in the H3.

 

[jerryez]

Try moving the programs on the EHD a few at a time. I got "the transfer completed with errors and none transfered" notice on my working H3, when trying to transfer a large group of recordings, but transfered all of them a few at a time.

 

[Altitudinous]

WD Black drives are designed for video gaming, perhaps the WD Purple Surveillance drives would be better for DVR purposes.

IIRC the drives in the Hopper 3 are not limited to certain model numbers as they were on earlier machines, they are more plug and play.

We were away for a month, with the H3 active and doing its thing, just a couple of Joeys deactivated for that time.

Upon my return on Jan. 23...the H3 was stuck in a "Starting up" status. Multiple reboots and power pulls, no change. It looked like the "new" ST2000VM003 that had been in service since November 12 had apparently failed. I put the previous ST2000VM003 that I had kept as a spare back into the H3 and I was back in business. I returned the new ST2000VM003 that I had bought in November.

I was encouraged by Jim5506's statement about the H3 not being limited to certain model numbers. I went rogue and ordered a Western Digital Purple model WD22PURZ, 2TB with 256MB cache. Installed it today. Nope. The H3 came up without hard drive functions, with hard drive error 311 with Reference: 4ee. Multiple reboots and power pulls resulted in no change.

Thinking I might have a bad WD22PURZ, I put it into an enclosure and attached it as an EHD to the H3. It formatted fine and was made available. So it's not the drive. It's that the H3 doesn't seem to support this particular 2TB drive as an internal drive.

I called Dish support and asked for a list of internal hard drives that will work with the H3. Not surprisingly, the answer was that they didn't have such a list. The reason? Because they don't recommend customers opening an H3 and replacing a hard drive. That answer of course makes sense for leased H3s, you know, just send it back and we'll send another one. It would seem that somebody at Dish would know what hard drives have ever been put into an H3 and are known to work, to be able to help out us poor sots who actually own our H3.

Anyone know possible hard drives that will work as the internal drive in an H3 besides the Seagate ST2000VM003 and the WD WD20EURX? Perhaps drives more current than 2012 vintage?

 

[MikeD-C05]

We were away for a month, with the H3 active and doing its thing, just a couple of Joeys deactivated for that time.

Upon my return on Jan. 23...the H3 was stuck in a "Starting up" status. Multiple reboots and power pulls, no change. It looked like the "new" ST2000VM003 that had been in service since November 12 had apparently failed. I put the previous ST2000VM003 that I had kept as a spare back into the H3 and I was back in business. I returned the new ST2000VM003 that I had bought in November.

I was encouraged by Jim5506's statement about the H3 not being limited to certain model numbers. I went rogue and ordered a Western Digital Purple model WD22PURZ, 2TB with 256MB cache. Installed it today. Nope. The H3 came up without hard drive functions, with hard drive error 311 with Reference: 4ee. Multiple reboots and power pulls resulted in no change.

Thinking I might have a bad WD22PURZ, I put it into an enclosure and attached it as an EHD to the H3. It formatted fine and was made available. So it's not the drive. It's that the H3 doesn't seem to support this particular 2TB drive as an internal drive.

I called Dish support and asked for a list of internal hard drives that will work with the H3. Not surprisingly, the answer was that they didn't have such a list. The reason? Because they don't recommend customers opening an H3 and replacing a hard drive. That answer of course makes sense for leased H3s, you know, just send it back and we'll send another one. It would seem that somebody at Dish would know what hard drives have ever been put into an H3 and are known to work, to be able to help out us poor sots who actually own our H3.

Anyone know possible hard drives that will work as the internal drive in an H3 besides the Seagate ST2000VM003 and the WD WD20EURX? Perhaps drives more current than 2012 vintage?

Add the insurance for DISH and then call in and get the owned hopper replaced. I owned all my receivers and have done replacements for any of them , including the hopper if they crapped out. Then you can drop the insurance when you have the new replacement in place and you send the old one into DISH in the same box they ship you the replacement.

 

[Altitudinous]

Add the insurance for DISH and then call in and get the owned hopper replaced. I owned all my receivers and have done replacements for any of them , including the hopper if they crapped out. Then you can drop the insurance when you have the new replacement in place and you send the old one into DISH in the same box they ship you the replacement.

Good idea. I asked about the insurance on my call to request the model numbers of drives that work in the H3. He said it's a 6 month minimum on the insurance. For that same $60, I can have a spare hard drive on the shelf in case of failure. Then, as happened to me, I get home and the H3 won't even start up, I was able to be back and operational in 15 minutes by swapping hard drives instead of waiting some days for a replacement H3.

However, since I'm paying the DVR fee but not using a leased H3, it seems to me that Dish owes me an H3 as part of my package. Then I could keep my owned H3 on the shelf as a spare and be able to fairly quickly be back operational if something happens to the leased H3. I'll probably go ask about that.

 

[charlesrshell]

Good idea. I asked about the insurance on my call to request the model numbers of drives that work in the H3. He said it's a 6 month minimum on the insurance. For that same $60, I can have a spare hard drive on the shelf in case of failure. Then, as happened to me, I get home and the H3 won't even start up, I was able to be back and operational in 15 minutes by swapping hard drives instead of waiting some days for a replacement H3.

However, since I'm paying the DVR fee but not using a leased H3, it seems to me that Dish owes me an H3 as part of my package. Then I could keep my owned H3 on the shelf as a spare and be able to fairly quickly be back operational if something happens to the leased H3. I'll probably go ask about that.

DISH Loyalty department told me one time that some States do not allow the DISH insurance 6 months requirement. It is one month instead of six.

 

[Altitudinous]

DISH Loyalty department told me one time that some States do not allow the DISH insurance 6 months requirement. It is one month instead of six.

Interesting. They told me 6 months but it's worth checking back on. Thanks.

 

[charlesrshell]

Interesting. They told me 6 months but it's worth checking back on. Thanks.

It is six months for majority of States. But some States only one month is required to keep the insurance. That is what the Loyalty folks told me about a year ago. I guess the CSR will tell you or ask the Loyalty department for your State. I think Texas is one month.

 

[navychop]

I wonder if Right to Repair factors into this.

 

[ethanlerma]

I think Texas is one month.

Being in Texas and never hearing about this 6 month rule, I think you are correct.

 

[charlesrshell]

Being in Texas and never hearing about this 6 month rule, I think you are correct.

So you have started the DISH insurance before then cancelled it in a month? Didn’t have it going on for six months like DISH says you have too?

 

[ethanlerma]

So you have started the DISH insurance before then cancelled it in a month? Didn’t have it going on for six months like DISH says you have too?

Yep, about a year ago one of my Hopper 3’s “failed” ( I say that, but it worked perfectly until you launched youtube and youtube only, it would do weird stuff like lose audio when returning to live tv among other things), chatted in to have it replaced and was given the run around with stuff like “your internet is too slow” (it’s actually not but every device in the house is limited to 5mbps), or “have you tried unplugging it?”. Finally convinced the rep that the Hopper was faulty given that my second one worked perfectly fine. Rep said that I could drop the insurance in a month, which I did right before the next bill was issued. No mention of a 6 month rule by the rep or the website when I took it off.

 

[TheKrell]

So you have started the DISH insurance before then cancelled it in a month? Didn’t have it going on for six months like DISH says you have too?

I'm thinking that VA also has a 1-month requirement, because I had to replace my owned 722, and I was able to turn off the protection program after about that long. (In my memory, it was only 2 weeks.) I had to replace both 612's as well at about the same time, but they were leased and so required no addition of the protection plan.

 

[ewindowman]

Just wondering if my hard drive is ready to quit. It will show everything that I recorded but when you click on if there’s nothing available. After a reboot it’s working but it has happened several times.

 

[bookworm370]

I've been seeing that a log on H316. 317 was just released today, hopefully there will be a fix.