Upgrade the Hard Drive in your 921?

[Faw]

I recall kyo's experiments with PVR721 ( at DBSTalk.com ) - as he discovered there is no way to change binary componenets - DishLinux doing sanity checks based on MH5 signatures or so.

Well, I would like to check anyway, curiosity, you know. I checked the dbstalk forums and all it said was that copied files, or adding files didn't worked. The thing is that we don't know what the secure loader does. What if the receiver signs the executables before installing them from the Downloads.tar archive? That is what I'm going to test today. Take the Downloads.tar file, add a script and let the 721 recreate everything to see if it boots.

 

[David_Levin]

Faw:

Ok, I'm humbled. You're WAY over my head. I appreciate the heck out of what you're trying to do.

 

[mike123abc]

Dish would probably gain a ton of happy customers if they were to support add on external drives. They could encrypt them as much as they felt like, I do not want the info off the drive (except of course to see it on TV). I just would like to add 600 more hours of recording time!

 

[Faw]

Dish would probably gain a ton of happy customers if they were to support add on external drives. They could encrypt them as much as they felt like, I do not want the info off the drive (except of course to see it on TV). I just would like to add 600 more hours of recording time!

Funny thing is that I'm not really interested much in increasing storage size, 120GB in my 721 seems enough for me. Installing a program to do named based recording myself, now that would be cool.

 

[David_Levin]

mike123:
I with you. Was gonna re-express my rant but bit my tongue. Dish only listens to our wallets.

Maxtor is already shipping external boxes for Scientific Atlanta. No expandable storage for Motorola, but I've herd it mentioned.

DirectTV's upcoming media center has an option for 500 gigs (haven't herd anything about external storage).

Currently, I prefer the programming at Dish. But, I'm almost happy whenever I hear about a customer leaving. I think the loss of customers is the only thing Charlie will respond to.

 

[TheForce]

David- I'm sure you know this but for any who are on the fence- The HDTIVO supports both dual 300G drives as well as swapping out duals and singles. It's a slam dunk. For me there is nothing now keeping me with DishNetwork except for the sick feeling I have about the 921 that cost me one kilo buck a year ago and already E* is saying it is being replaced because they really can't fix all the problems. While I am not as disappointed as some here are about the software restrictions to 250G drives, the fact that it is possible now to use swappable 250's seems to me that I will have a tougher time dumping my account with E*. E* should thank the people here as it just may save at least my money flow into their pockets a bit longer. That and the problems with Voom and their DVR. However, I can assure you and E* that as soon as the VOOM DVR is available for rent, I'm gone from Dish even if it means sitting the 921 on the shelf in storage!
Again I would like to thank all who have pioneered this bit of know-how.

 

[Faw]

I recall kyo's experiments with PVR721 ( at DBSTalk.com ) - as he discovered there is no way to change binary componenets - DishLinux doing sanity checks based on MH5 signatures or so.

I'm still looking around in my 721. The files in the Download.tar are PGP signed with a detached signature. I also think that the "hht" file (which is also signed) has a list of all the files that trigger a reinstall.

 

[dfergie]

What about Max blast the maxtor copy utility or the Seagate version?

Won't work, neither will the Seagate utilily... And the 921 will not format a "blank drive" on its own... I did hook the new drive to the other Ide slot and the 921 booted up, but would not recognize and it murdered the new drive....(wont spin up on pc's acts like no power)

 

[bytre]

Adding a little info to the thread from my own experience..

You cannot move a hard drive from one 921 to another. Well, you can, but any recorded programs will be unwatchable.

 

[Smith P.]

That's well known fact - those BCM chip in 721/921 doing encryption/decryption of all recordings and a key is unique for each receiver.

 

[SimpleSimon]

That's well known fact - those BCM chip in 721/921 doing encryption/decryption of all recordings and a key is unique for each receiver.

As I always suspected. So why the frell is E* so paranoid about letting us muck around with drive expansion, etc. - we couldn't do anything with the content except play it back in the same box? That of course sucks if the box itself dies.

 

[Smith P.]

Finally, we have some sort of relief - you can always make full copy of your disk. Yeah, the 250 GB still expensive, but in a year or two it could change.

 

[Smith P.]

We have more good news - that guy found a way to archive 921's recordings ! Actually, he's using FTP, but not disclosed any details for this method, instead provided just a simple description of using Linux for move the files from/to DVR disk.

 

[Sean Mota]

That's a big one!

 

[mdonnelly]

We have more good news - that guy found a way to archive 921's recordings ! Actually, he's using FTP, but not disclosed any details for this method, instead provided just a simple description of using Linux for move the files from DVR disk.

OK, archive is a good thing. But, if it's encrypted in hardware, you still have to play it back in the same 921, right? What happens to your library when the box dies, or gets traded in for MPEG-4?

Oops, sorry Simon, I just saw that your post says the same thing.

 

[SimpleSimon]

FTP to copy the files is all well and good, but I suspect that the 921 keeps an index of what's SUPPOSED to be there. Deleting the data files via FTP will lead to the dreaded ZSR bug. Adding a data file back probably won't work - unless the index database is hacked.

 

[Smith P.]

<skip> Adding a data file back probably won't work - unless the index database is hacked.

He did the test as I got it without changing the metadata, it's works.

 

[j5races]

how do we do this? i have a brand new 250gig drive sitting in the box.....

Jon

 

[Mark_AR]

My big worry is that the 21 hours of HD movies I have stored on my 921 will magically someday disappear when the MAXTOR QV inside pukes as it did once when I had to RA my 522 for a bad tuner.

Sure, (according to Maxtor) there is only about a 3% failure rate, but eventually bearings wear, read head actuators fail and all that programming goes to the big bitbucket in the sky. :river

I would love to be able to yank out the drive and plug in another 250gig. (Hot swappable would be awesome for that empty slot in the front *hint*hint*)

Even with the single box encryption only, I can live with that. I don't want to hack files/trade drives with my friends, just not lose what I have and/or be able to have higher capacity without deleting my much cherished movies.

Thinking out loud, I would even go so far as to have an external RAID drive setup or rack of drives(in a case/box) that, at the push of a button, I could select what bank or drive would be active to the 921. (Like a KVM)

I look forward to more progress in this and hope that E* would see that it isn't a threat.

 

[David_Levin]

Well, I'm ready to give drive swapping a try. I'll be out of town and need some breathing space for the season primeres.

Has anyone been playing with this?

I picked up a 300 gig drive on sale for $99.
Also have ghost 9.

What's the easiest way to get it going?

Should I first plug it into the 921 and let it automatically set up the partitions, or just do it all in Ghost?

Is there any risk of losing recorded programming while I'm messing around (or otherwise messing up the 921)?

Will timer events follow the hard drive as I swap back and forth?