I have a HWS and today while watching a few recordings I have noticed that occassionally the recording/hopper will freeze for between 1 and 10 seconds and then will start working again. It will also do it when trying to access the guide, show info, anything at all. I checked the counters and the high hard drive temp is 116F and the average temp is 111F. I worried the hard drive is going bad, so I hooked up my external harddrive that I've always used with it and it won't recognize it at all. The light on the EHD won't even flash to show communicating. I tried one of the rear USB ports and the same thing. So, I plugged the EHD into my other hopper (not hws) and it boots up and recognizes it and everything is great on that front. So, does anyone have any ideas? I really don't want to lose my recordings due to a bad hard drive. I'm confused as to why the EHD won't connect to the HWS like it always has before. Also, does the HWS automatically occassionally backup the timers on the remote? If not, how do I manually do that? I've had to replace a hopper in the past and for some reason the timers weren't backed up and I had fun with that... I have tried unplugging the hopper for a while and plugging it back in, that didn't fix it. I am out of ideas. Thanks in advance for any info that I can get!