Unrecognized external hard drive!

[Woody469]

I have done some searching on here and can’t seem to find an answer so I’m going to ask it again, I hope I’m just not missing something and there’s 4 million posts on this already! LOL

A year or two ago my dish hopper three took a software upgrade and one of my two external hard drive‘s every since then has not been recognized even though it is completely full of dish network content!

I was told after the software upgrade at the time bye technical support that this was a known issue and it would be resolved soon, needless to say apparently it was never resolved because my hard drive is still coming up on recognized and it tries to format it every time I plug it in!

Is there a solution to this problem? Surely I’m not the only one that had this happen at the time and I feel like I’ve been more than patient waiting on them to recover it and every time I call them I get absolutely nowhere!

Help please!!!

 

[Jim5506]

How can we help you if you give us no details.

What drive manufacturer, size of drive, power source of the drive, have you looked at the file structure with a linux PC to see if the files are still there, etc., etc.

 

[Woody469]

WD My Book Essential WDBAAF0010HBK - hard drive - 1 TB - USB 2.0 Series Specs

WD My Book Essential WDBAAF0010HBK - hard drive - 1 TB - USB 2.0 overview and full product specs on CNET.

www.cnet.com

I don’t have access to a Linux system to check content on drive but it worked flawlessly from day one until the Dish Network upgrade that apparently rendered it invisible!

 

[TheKrell]

WD My Book Essential WDBAAF0010HBK - hard drive - 1 TB - USB 2.0 Series Specs

WD My Book Essential WDBAAF0010HBK - hard drive - 1 TB - USB 2.0 overview and full product specs on CNET.

www.cnet.com

I don’t have access to a Linux system to check content on drive but it worked flawlessly from day one until the Dish Network upgrade that apparently rendered it invisible!

What happens if you unplug it? Does the H3 complain that you disconnected a multimedia device? If so, I have this issue too with one of the drives I formerly had connected to a 612. At least my H3 does not ask to reformat thatdrive.

 

[Woody469]

What happens if you unplug it? Does the H3 complain that you disconnected a multimedia device? If so, I have this issue too with one of the drives I formerly had connected to a 612. At least my H3 does not ask to reformat thatdrive.

No because unless I let it reformat it, it doesn’t recognize it so it doesn’t complain... It really sucks because I have YEARS of MotoGP motorcycle racing programs on it as well as many other irreplaceable programs!

 

[Miner]

No because unless I let it reformat it, it doesn’t recognize it so it doesn’t complain... It really sucks because I have YEARS of MotoGP motorcycle racing programs on it as well as many other irreplaceable programs!

Many years ago my hopper stopped recognizing my drives that I had since my vip-622 days. It took a while (a year or more) for software updates to resolve that. And when it was fixed, I would plug In my external drive and it would take 10-15 minutes before it recognized them. Hopefully Dish will fix it sooner.

 

[olds403]

I have had some success with old hard drives that were active on my 722 by plugging them in, then unplugging them repeatedly until at some point the Hopper recognizes it. It didn't work for all of them but probably 75% of my drives were not recognized initially. Might be worth a try.

 

[Woody469]

I have had some success with old hard drives that were active on my 722 by plugging them in, then unplugging them repeatedly until at some point the Hopper recognizes it. It didn't work for all of them but probably 75% of my drives were not recognized initially. Might be worth a try.

Well I’ve tried this several times thanks to your idea but unfortunately still not recognizing it.... Ugh... I even had Dish send me a new Hopper3 in an attempt to trigger recognition to no avail unfortunately...

Is there anyway to recover these programs somehow and maybe place them on a drive that’s being recognized? Sounds crazy but I’m about out of hope and have pretty much no experience with what you can and can’t do given the right equipment and knowledge! Dish certainly hasn’t offered any help to salvage my precious programs...

 

[jpmarto]

I feel your pain. I've lost at least 9 EHDs since they've been available by Dish. 722, Hopper 2 (two drives trashed simultaneously due to an "upgrade'), Hopper 3, 211z, and a Wally. Each drive was good, in that it was successfully reformatted for FAT32, NTFS, or Dish's format. All I can suggest is Grandma's advice: "Don't put all your eggs in one basket." I now have my dish recordings spread over 6 EHDs to minimize the loss next time Dish trashes one. IMHO, don't leave them connected if you're not actually using them.

 

[Woody469]

I feel your pain. I've lost at least 9 EHDs since they've been available by Dish. 722, Hopper 2 (two drives trashed simultaneously due to an "upgrade'), Hopper 3, 211z, and a Wally. Each drive was good, in that it was successfully reformatted for FAT32, NTFS, or Dish's format. All I can suggest is Grandma's advice: "Don't put all your eggs in one basket." I now have my dish recordings spread over 6 EHDs to minimize the loss next time Dish trashes one. IMHO, don't leave them connected if you're not actually using them.

Damn, you HAVE had some loss!!! I currently use two and I guess eventually I’m going to have to give up and format this one giving me 3! Fortunately this is the first time since I began using EHD’s back on my 721 that I’ve had a problem, just pisses me off it was their update that did it and they promised eventually they would have the problem resolved! Yeah right, over 2 years later it’s still just a paperweight....

 

[TheKrell]

Is there anyway to recover these programs somehow and maybe place them on a drive that’s being recognized?

Yes; I've done it using Linux. If the GUI you use does not give you root access, then a simple drag/drop will not work and you would have to follow that up with a chown command. Note that there will be several large partitions on your disk, a small one (don't mess with that one!) and one intermediate sized partition depending upon the size of your disk. Copy all the folders in the DishArc folder from one partition to another of equal (or greater) size.

 

[jpmarto]

Dish got even with me! This morning, when my wife turned on the Wally in our RV, she got the message "EHD not recognized". Of course, she chose the reformat option before consulting me. UPDATE: I turned off Wally in the middle of it reformatting. Upon powering up, it mentioned it couldn't use DVR feature without a hard drive. Powered it off again, and upon startup the EHD seems to be working again. For now.

 

[Margo 19]

I have done some searching on here and can’t seem to find an answer so I’m going to ask it again, I hope I’m just not missing something and there’s 4 million posts on this already! LOL

A year or two ago my dish hopper three took a software upgrade and one of my two external hard drive‘s every since then has not been recognized even though it is completely full of dish network content!

I was told after the software upgrade at the time bye technical support that this was a known issue and it would be resolved soon, needless to say apparently it was never resolved because my hard drive is still coming up on recognized and it tries to format it every time I plug it in!

Is there a solution to this problem? Surely I’m not the only one that had this happen at the time and I feel like I’ve been more than patient waiting on them to recover it and every time I call them I get absolutely nowhere!

Help please!!!

I recently lost all my content on 3 external hard drives. I did several hard resets but nothing worked. All my drives worked before this--this happened about a month ago. Help please!

 

[TheKrell]

Sorry to hear that Margo.

The 1st thing I would do is boot up your favorite version of Linux on your PC, connect up these EHDs, and see if Linux thinks they are healthy. The Dish EHD has some number of ext3 partitions on them. When I do this on a good EHD, Linux mounts each partition and pops up a window showing me the contents.

 

[Bobby]

I recently lost all my content on 3 external hard drives. I did several hard resets but nothing worked. All my drives worked before this--this happened about a month ago. Help please!

Let’s start from scratch. You have three external hard drives. Now what receiver do they attach to? You say you’ve done several hard resets. I am assuming that means you unplugged the receiver from power. That is a good start. Now, assuming once again that you have a Hopper or 622/722, Unplug all EHDs from the receiver and then unplug the power from the receiver. Wait 30 seconds and then plug the receiver back in. Let it fully boot up. When it has fully booted, plug one of the EHDs into a USB port. Do you get a pop up that says you have connected a device to the USB port? Let’s start there and see what might come next. A big thing is to tell us which receiver you have.

 

[TheKrell]

Does anybody know if any Dish receiver can unwind the ext3 journal? What exactly is an ext3 Journaled Filesystem?

 

[Margo 19]

Let’s start from scratch. You have three external hard drives. Now what receiver do they attach to? You say you’ve done several hard resets. I am assuming that means you unplugged the receiver from power. That is a good start. Now, assuming once again that you have a Hopper or 622/722, Unplug all EHDs from the receiver and then unplug the power from the receiver. Wait 30 seconds and then plug the receiver back in. Let it fully boot up. When it has fully booted, plug one of the EHDs into a USB port. Do you get a pop up that says you have connected a device to the USB port? Let’s start there and see what might come next. A big thing is to tell us which receiver you have.

722 receiver. I've done everything you mentioned. I don't keep the EHDs plugged in. I think The Krell said his EHDs took a long time to come online. I tried one my newer ones today and after 30 minutes it showed up. The hopper got really confused after I removed it (didn't recognize that it was missing) but I'm going to try this with my other EHDs and see what happens. After the recent software update I tried all of my EHDs and only one worked.

 

[Margo 19]

722 receiver. I've done everything you mentioned. I don't keep the EHDs plugged in. I think The Krell said his EHDs took a long time to come online. I tried one my newer ones today and after 30 minutes it showed up. The hopper got really confused after I removed it (didn't recognize that it was missing) but I'm going to try this with my other EHDs and see what happens. After the recent software update I tried all of my EHDs and only one worked.

 

[Bobby]

722 receiver. I've done everything you mentioned. I don't keep the EHDs plugged in. I think The Krell said his EHDs took a long time to come online. I tried one my newer ones today and after 30 minutes it showed up. The hopper got really confused after I removed it (didn't recognize that it was missing) but I'm going to try this with my other EHDs and see what happens. After the recent software update I tried all of my EHDs and only one worked.

Sounds like a good start!

 

[Bobby]

I'm lost. You can't have a 722 on the same account with a Hopper. If you can, I'd like to do likewise. If your 722 has been off your account for as long as you had the Hopper, then how can it do anything with an EHD? I thought they stopped "seeing" the EHD as soon as they were no longer on the satellite feed.

I think you are mixing up Margo with Woody, Woody is the OP for this thread. Margo came in a little later with similar issues. Margo has a 722, as she just told us, and Woody has a Hopper.