Successfully replaced my 721 hard drive

[Rob Relf]

My 721's hard drive failed the other day after years of faithful service. 70 hours of programming down the drain, of course. I called Dish and found out I could get a refurbed 721 for $20 but with no way to know if it had a NEW hard drive or not. I chose to fix it myself and know that it would have a brand-new drive with a long potential lifespan (Seagate 160GB, 7200 RPM, 8MB cache, 5 year warranty, $50 after rebate at CC) I was able to connect the old and new drives to my PC and used Ghost 9.0 to copy all but the last partition from drive to drive. That was enough for the receiver to accept the drive and repair the installation. It is now up and running and seems to be working just fine.

Rob

 

[Kaydigi]

Did you get more recording hours with the new HD?

 

[Rob Relf]

No, it only utilizes the first 120GB and ignores the rest. I knew this would be the case but the 160GB drive was cheaper than the 120!

Rob

 

[Kaydigi]

Cool congrats on the find.

 

[Smith P.]

Seen this at Yahoo groups, ppl did restore 721 long time ago.

I would say, if you did remap bad sectors before ghosting, then last partition with your recordings will be copied too.

 

[drdroo]

Better idea than what I did.. I'm up to a 3rd replacement unit.

1. My original I bought 2 years ago.
2. Replacement I received 2 weeks ago, died 4 hours later, drive failure.
3. Replacement I received 1 week ago.. They had problems activating it because it was 'new and not in the computer'.. Drive failure 2 days later.

Step 4 should come Tomorrow or Monday. I should've kept #1 that I bought outright and did what you did. Ah well, hindsight. This is a reminder I really want a HDTV and a 622..

--Droo, @Network