VIP612 external HD transfer to Hopper3?

[ILv2Xrl8]

I finally upgraded my old VIP system to Hopper3 and joeys. The installation tech told me my external HD that I had transferred my shows to from my old receivers will not immediately work with new Hopper3. He stated the Hopper3 will first reformat my drive, then I can use it to archive shows. I had a lot of shows from my old VIP612 and VIP622 that my family would like to still have access to.

Anyone have experience transferring their old external HD data from an old receiver to a new Hopper3?

 

[TheKrell]

Anyone have experience transferring their old external HD data from an old receiver to a new Hopper3?

I had no issue getting the EHD from my 722 working on my H3. That was then, but this is now (much later), and my healthy EHD from my 612 is invisible for reasons unknown. I think an H3 update caused this issue because the disk shows healthy and I can see (but not play) all the files when I boot up a PC on Linux. My old EHD from the 722 still works. Go figure.

 

[tedb3rd]

I've heard as long as it's the same account it will work. I've heard the same thing you're saying (it will get formatted). But regardless, I had a Western Digital EHD connected to our 722 for several years and it worked without a glitch. Later (on a new account) hooked it up to our Hopper 3 and it said the EHD was tied to another account so it would need to reformat so I clicked continue. After initialization, I transferred several shows and movies. The next day it said no EHD found, so I disconnected it and reconnected. Then it said the EHD would need to be formatted, so I lost the transfers. After about 3 times of repeating the process of formatting, transfer recordings, no EHD found, must format/losing recordings I gave up.

So if you DO get it to work the first time, transfer everything to the receiver.

 

[TheKrell]

After about 3 times of repeating the process of formatting, transfer recordings, no EHD found, must format/losing recordings I gave up.

Was this disk dying and is now dead? I never had that experience, fortunately.

I already transferred my recordings from the 1.5TB 722 disk to the receiver, and thereafter to my 6TB USB3 disk, leaving nothing but the right formatting on the 1.5TB. If I ever give up on my 612 EHD, I'll just use Linux to transfer the folders to my 722 1.5TB disk and get them back that way.

 

[navychop]

My ViP622 EHDs worked fine with my ViP722s when I upgraded. Same when I moved to my HWSes. I expect after 2-3 days, your recordings will be just fine on the H3.

 

[tedb3rd]

Was this disk dying and is now dead? I never had that experience, fortunately.

I considered that, but no. I have now been using the EHD on my computer for over a year as backup and it works fine.

 

[ILv2Xrl8]

To update my initial post, my tech was incorrect. In my case with the same account, I had no issues connecting my Monoprice Raidon Safetank USB drive from my old VIP receivers to my Hopper3. The Hopper3 only has 1 USB 3.0 slot taken by my OTA adapter; thus, I had to use the other USB 2.0 slot. My shows all showed up, and was able to transfer some shows from the USB drive to the Hopper3.

Hope this helps the next person upgrading an old VIP system.

 

[pattykay]

...
So if you DO get it to work the first time, transfer everything to the receiver.

That is not necessarily a good idea. Years ago, when I upgraded to a Hopper 1, I transferred all of my recordings from a couple of 722k's to a 1TB external hard drive, and then transferred those recordings to the Hopper. The end result was that it looked like the recordings had been transferred successfully. However, when I selected any of them to try to actually play them, all I got was a black screen. It would stay on that black screen even when I tried to fast-forward at 300x speed, it would never reach the end of the recording to bring up the Playback Complete pop-up. I had to stop the "playback" manually and try again, with the same result every time. So, I basically lost all of those recordings, since they were non-playable.

Now, fast-forward to this year, when I was having issues with DVR functionality on my Wally. Recordings would still play, but all "trick play" features (fast forward, rewind, skip forward, skip back, pause) were disabled. I got a replacement Wally, and hooked up my external hard drive to it. On the replacement Wally, all recordings now had the same issue that I described with the Hopper-transferred recordings above. So, once again, I lost all of my previous recordings, due to them being non-playable. After encountering this issue, I reformatted the Wally's EHD to use it with a Hopper Duo, and those transfers worked (playable by the Hopper Duo) just fine. So, it was not an issue with a dying hard drive. This same hard drive (after being reformatted again) still works just fine with my ViP211k.

 

[navychop]

I’d put the OTA on the USB2 and everything else on USB 3.

 

[ILv2Xrl8]

I’d put the OTA on the USB2 and everything else on USB 3.

Does it impact performance of the OTA adapter to have it on a USB2 port?

So far I've had no issues with transferring files from EHD to my Hopper3, and my wife is happy she got to watch her Shark Week shows we saved on the EHD. That's all that matters. Knocking on wood...

 

[navychop]

OTA transfers are well within USB2 speeds. I understand that USB3 EHDs actually show little improvement over USB2.