Replace hard drive on 501

[crones]

Hello everyone,

I've recently purchased a 501 DVR from a friend and after browsing the threads it seems that there have been quite a few people that have had issues with the hard drive on their units dying or making too much noise.

I can see that my unit has a 40 GB WD hard drive.
Now my question is, since the only difference (besides monthly fees) between the 501 and 510 is the bigger hard drive, couldn't the hard drive simply be removed and replaced with a larger capacity drive after making a ghost image of the original WD hard drive?

Big hard drives have come down in price and by buying a 120 GB drive you'd have the same advantages and recording time as the 510 units.

Thanks.

 

[Neutron]

One thing you will learn about DISH's DVRs is you cannot upgrade the hard drive. I believe it has something to do with the firmware in the DVR itself.

 

[JP Threw]

Unless you have a 7100 or 7200. You can put in a larger HD.

 

[Stargazer]

Dont you mean -- Unless you have a 7100 or 7200 you cannot put in a larger HD? In other words the 7100 and 7200 are the only ones that allow you to do so unless you do some complicated things in which is in a Dishrip group somewhere on Yahoo Forums.

 

[SimpleSimon]

Go to http://groups.yahoo.com/dishmod for info on upgrading 50x hard drives. The dishrip group is for dumping the video files off the hard drive into your PC.

 

[crones]

Thanks for the input.
But as a an IT guy it seems very logical to me that it could be done, now with that said I can understand why Dish would have a problem with it obviously they would lose sales on the 510 series.

Now what about putting in another 40GB drive from a different manufacturer like Maxtor or Seagate? Without talk of hacking as far as Dish is concerned I am still able to record as many hrs as the Western Digital drive in 501's.

 

[SimpleSimon]

Again I refer you to the Dishmod group - they've been there, done that, know what works and what doesn't. I don't know the details, but swapping different types and sizes of drives can be done - under various resstrictions due to E* software.