I got the dreaded "all recordings lost" message today

[Tony S]

Yesterday night all was OK, but today I got the dreaded "Your timers have been saved but any recordings have been lost" message on my HWS. The receiver wants to reformat the hard drive.

I don't think there is anything I can do, but I thought I ask if anyone knows a way to avoid reformatting? I already tried pulling the AC plug and letting the receiver reboot.

 

[Partysox]

Try unplugging and let the hopper completely cool off and see if that works, have a EHD handy for transfers. A shot in the dark at best, your probably SOL though.....

 

[Kizzer]

Is this the kind of thing that happens often?

 

[Tony S]

Is this the kind of thing that happens often?

Well, this is the forth time this has happened to me, but I have been with Dish for over 18 years! I lost all recordings with my 722 then upgraded to 722K. After a few years, that hard drive crapped out and I replaced it with the HWS. After a few years that drive died and Dish replaced it with another refurbished HWS. That refurbished receiver had a brand new WD hard drive in it (I opened the case and looked at the manufacture date). That is the receiver that just reformatted my hard drive.

I tried some test recordings and everything appears to be working normally, but I would not be surprised if I have some other hard drive problem in the next couple of weeks.

 

[KAB]

Is this the kind of thing that happens often?

If not placed in well ventilated area, yes.

 

[dishstaller]

Events like this is why I always tell my customers that if they want to protect their dvr recordings, it is always best to buy a good quality ext hd and move those recordings to it. I've got two ext hds on my HWS, we put regular shows on one and movies on the other.

If ventilation is an issue, I had a customer put one of those laptop cooling pads under his dvr and it seemed to work. Personally, I installed two 12v brushless cooling fans in the back of our cabinet.

 

[Tony S]

In my case, ventilation was definitely not what caused the reformat. I have one of those Thermotake USB fans pulling air out the right side of my HWS. I have used the diagnostic menu on the HWS to look at the hard drive temperatures, and they were very low (high: 114F, low: 97F, average: 107F). That is well within spec.

I was out of the house when the initial problem occurred. When I came home, I noticed that our digital clocks were flashing, indicating that the AC power had gone out (there were flash thunderstorms in the area). I am wondering if that is what might have caused the problem.The Olympics might have been recording at the time of the power outage (not sure).

Anyway, the HWS hard drive has been working normally since the reformat. I sure hope that I do not get another reformat. I lost over 140 recordings this time! Luckily, I have been able to find episodes of the shows that I really wanted to watch on the internet. As I said, this has happened to me before, so usually, I transfer shows that I do not want to lose to my EHD, but I guess I got a little lazy this time.

EDIT: Corrected the values for low and average temperatures.

 

[navychop]

I recommend using a good quality UPS for receivers. I in fact have both of mine plugged in to line conditioners.

I'd say to expect the HDD to eventually fail no matter what. And because a replacement unit will likely have the original HDD, which might not have a lot of life left, I tend to look at that as the time to upgrade to the newest box

But not this time. I'm not moving to the H3, not until OTA and a few other things are fixed. Maybe skip that generation of box completely.

 

[Troch77]

In my case, ventilation was definitely not what caused the reformat. I have one of those Thermotake USB fans pulling air out the right side of my HWS. I have used the diagnostic menu on the HWS to look at the hard drive temperatures, and they were very low (high: 114F, low: 107F, average: 114F). That is well within spec.

I was out of the house when the initial problem occurred. When I came home, I noticed that our digital clocks were flashing, indicating that the AC power had gone out (there were flash thunderstorms in the area). I am wondering if that is what might have caused the problem.The Olympics might have been recording at the time of the power outage (not sure).

Anyway, the HWS hard drive has been working normally since the reformat. I sure hope that I do not get another reformat. I lost over 140 recordings this time! Luckily, I have been able to find episodes of the shows that I really wanted to watch on the internet. As I said, this has happened to me before, so usually, I transfer shows that I do not want to lose to my EHD, but I guess I got a little lazy this time.

My lost and corrupt recording also had absolutely nothing to do with ventilation.
Has more to do with Dish Corrupt software.
Some people just feel they need to make an excuse rather than pin point and address issues properly.

There have been numerous reports unrelated to Heat issues.


Samsung Galaxy S6 Active

 

[Tony S]

My lost and corrupt recording also had absolutely nothing to do with ventilation.
Has more to do with Dish Corrupt software.

Yes, I wonder if it was really necessary to reformat the whole drive. The reformat occurred quickly, so it was a quick format rather than a complete reformat. A quick format will not repair bad sectors, so why would Dish do a quick format if it had detected bad sectors? If there was file or directory corruption, it most likely could be fixed with something like Windows chkdsk. Did Dish take the easy way out by just reformatting the whole drive instead of repairing the drive? Maybe it was impossible to repair whatever caused the problem? We will never know!

 

[KenSoren]

I've lost all recordings once in my 16 plus years with Dish, and that was on the original Hopper with sling "free" upgrade. That HWS lasted a little over a year then completely stopped working, so all recordings were lost. The replacement HWS was fine until I replaced it with the Hopper 3 "free" upgrade in February of this year. So far that one hasn't had any problems - knock on wood.
I do have the receiver set in the open so no heat problems and it has always been on a good UPS so power spikes or outages aren't problems either.