VIP 211Z and external hard drive

[boulderdentist]

I know the 211Z is not an admired receiver here but purchased mine in 09-14, paid the one time $40.00 fee and added my own 2TB external hard drive and has worked flawlessly until a week or two ago. I discovered that upon trying to turn on receiver there is a black screen with HDMI 1 displaying. I cannot turn on the receiver with the remote.

If I disconnect the EHD the receiver recognizes a USB device, checks for compatibility, then acquires signal, downloads the program guide and receiver plus DVR function fine the rest of the day. Next day back to black screen, unplugging EHD, acquiring signal, download program guide and functions fine the rest of the day. I left the EHD disconnected for a day or two and receiver functions normally. That makes me suspect something is wrong with the EHD. Any suggestions on settings or whatever welcome.

Fortunately by forcing a restart can watch content on EHD, but obviously do not want to have to force a daily reset. Another question, is there a way to transfer content on present EHD to another? I am probably unwilling to consider upgrade to Hopper and Joey as considering eventual cord cut. The current EHD is a 2TB Seagate with its own power supply. It is getting more difficult to find a 2TB hard drive that is not portable.

Thanks,
Scott

 

[Foxbat]

Another question, is there a way to transfer content on present EHD to another?

Yes, there is. It requires a little work and a spare PC. There are threads in the past on how to perform the transfer which would appear in this site's archives, but the gist is you boot up a Linux distro on your PC. You need to connect the new self-powered 2 TB EHD to your ViP 211z and let it format first before connecting it to the Linux machine along with your old EHD.

You're lucky SatelliteGuys are here to help! Take a look at this response and see if it helps any:
Post #39 from "ViP 211 Warning 981" Thread

If you boot up a Linux CD-ROM, say Mint or Ubuntu (what I use) and use the Demo Mode, you should be able to use the GUI to drag and drop the folders from one drive partition to the other since it runs as "root". If you have a Linux machine, it's best to use the method I used in the linked post as it runs with "root" privileges.

With 2 TB, be prepared to w-a-i-t, especially over USB 2. In my example, I removed the SATA drives from their enclosures and installed them into my Mac Pro which had open SATA bays. Even though they were only 1.5 Gbps SATA bays, it was still faster than going through USB 2. If you had USB 3 enclosures and USB 3 ports on your PC, you should see significant performance improvements.

Final edit: If you want to see the early history of ViP 411/211/211k/211z EHDs, check out this thread from the past: My 211 DVR function is activated and be happy all those pioneers have the arrows in their backs so you can watch TV on your schedule!

 

[boulderdentist]

Hey Foxbat, thanks for taking the time to post all the information for me. Read through all of it including links. Mysteriously Friday A.M. receiver functioned normally without the forced restart. Will have to see over the next few days, but seemed to correct itself. Wonder if something in the nightly 3:00 A.M. update was messing it up???

Scott