I need to replace the HD in my 721

[tangential]

I bought a 721 off of EBay several years ago and it has run just fine for me, until today.

It locked up and eventually told me that my hard disk had failed.

I unplugged it for about an hour, plugged it back in and it reinitialized the drive.

I am in the technology business and it seems likely to me that some sectors failed on the drive and it substituted in spare blocks, but since the contents of those sectors were trashed and were apparently importatnt, the system had to reinitialize.

That would indicate that the drive is beginning to fail and I'd like to go ahead and replace it.

My question is, what should I know before I put a new drive in? Can I slap any IDE PATA drive in it? Are there size constraints? Small IDE drives are getting hard to find. I don't feel compelled to save anything off of my freshly reinit'd drive, so can I just swap it out?

Thanks
John

 

[Jim5506]

Look to the dishmod group on Yahoo groups. Most Dish DVR's require drives that are listen in their tables of approved drives. That list is at the above named group.

 

[drdroo]

I took the easier way out and just paid the 5.98 for the Dish insurance and exchanged my 721. There's a metal seal on the tray that the drive is in. If you remove that, they probably won't want to see it in the future if you have a bigger problem than drives.

They sent me a replacement unit in a few days time.

I didn't have much success plugging in another drive into my dead 721 either.. Just unplugged the cables and plugged it into a drive sitting on top and it would never fully prep it or get things working.

 

[rjousuf]

Try this and see if it starts workign again.
http://www.satelliteguys.us/dish-network-forum/101636-trick-revive-your-721-a.html

 

[Smith P.]

<...>I didn't have much success plugging in another drive into my dead 721 either.. Just unplugged the cables and plugged it into a drive sitting on top and it would never fully prep it or get things working.

You didn't do your home work and came to wrong conclusion.
721/921 had disk based OS systems. You can't use blank HDD in there.

 

[drdroo]

Some units like the old UltimateTV would actually reload the OS without having the previous drive in there.

When the drive won't spin, using an imager isn't an option. At the same time, getting an image from someone else opens another dimension of legal issues that would exceed the 6$ for DHPP.

 

[Smith P.]

Please, we're talking about DishLinux based 721/921 models.
What legal issue you brought here ? And why ?
OP bought it from eBay, as you can read it.

 

[drdroo]

Not all assets of DishLinux are GPL and it does count as modifying the device. Also, the system image is still licensed to the device (because as I said, it's not entirely GPL).

Buying it off ebay doesn't matter, can still qualify for DHPP. I bought mine off Ebay.

EDIT: If there's no legal issue, where's the Satelliteguys Dish System Image download forum?

 

[Smith P.]

Man, scholastic was you favorite class .
Do you know the image size ?

 

[drdroo]

What's that matter? Make it pub members only, sell a 1 week access to that forum, or set up a torrent server.

When you are using phrases as "What legal issue you brought here ?", it is amusing to me that you bring up these words you've used in your previous post.