Western Digital Purple 2TB for VIP722k?

[bilo]

Would it be a good idea to use a WD Purple 2 TB hard drive in an external enclosure with the Dish Network VIP722k? (I think there's a "K" in there anyway). Not getting it just because it's geared towards DVRs (well..the marketing hype machine says 24/7 surveillance DVRs. Television DVR counts - right?). It was best deal I found on 2 TB drives I have found, which is why I leaned toward it.

Also, what is the file format on an external drive on a Dish DVR? Can they be backed up and archived, then re-copied to the drive to watch at a later date? Would it be best to put the drive in a ventilated enclosure or does that not matter in this situation?

 

[KAB]

Don't over complicate things. Just get this and be done with it.
Amazon product ASIN B00E3RH5W2.
The file system is an an encrypted, Linux based format. Copying/archiving is somewhat complicated, if possible at all. Some people have reported success.

 

[ChadT41]

The harddrive should not matter as long as it is 50gb-2tb, self powered, single disc drive(non flash) , and supports USB 2.0. As long as those are met, it should be fine for a 612, 622, 722(k), 922, and Hopper systems.

 

[harshness]

I don't recommend DIY USB drive configurations. The purpose-built USB drives are often comparable in price to bare drives (although they are getting harder to find in smaller sizes).

The EHD for a DISH receiver doesn't see anything near the type of activity of an internal DVR drive that the Purple series is designed for.

 

[rvvaquero]

The EHD for a DISH receiver doesn't see anything near the type of activity of an internal DVR drive that the Purple series is designed for.

Except for my VIP211K.

 

[harshness]

Except for my VIP211K.

The ViP211 doesn't really have what we commonly know as an EHD; it is simply the one and only hard drive. I've not heard any concerns about USB drives for the ViP211 other than finding one of the appropriate size and power configuration.

Purple drives were developed for cheap security DVRs with 8+ channels that are storing individual digital streams instead of time division analog encodings.

 

[Foxbat]

I have a 211k that I would have been better off getting a complete external HD instead of the drive. I found that none of my external SATA USB 2.0 enclosures would recognize the 2TB WD AV drive I bought, so I had to buy a USB 3.0 enclosure that supports SATA III and drives up to 4 TB capacity.

Those two items were more than the price of a 2TB external hard drive package.

The ViP211 doesn't really have what we commonly know as an EHD; it is simply the one and only hard drive. I've not heard any concerns about USB drives for the ViP211 other than finding one of the appropriate size and power configuration.

The 211's EHD is in a state of constant activity even when the receiver is "off" since, like you said, it acts like the internal HD on a Hopper or 722/622 DVR. That's why I wanted a HD designed for the constant R/W activity.

When I was playing with the EHD on the 211 way back when, it is formatted as a Linux EXT3 partition. The File System isn't encrypted, but the video files are. I was able to migrate programming I had recorded to a larger EHD by using a CD-ROM version of KNOPPIX, but I would use Ubuntu now.

My plan is to let the 2TB drive be initialized by my 211, then take the old 640GB drive I've been using for the past 4 years and attempt the same copy operation I did in the past.

 

[Foxbat]

The files are copying now... 600 GB of files will take many hours, even at 1-2 Gb/sec.

 

[harshness]

At 1Gb/second, that would be an hour and twenty minutes (if transfer rate were the only consideration).

 

[rvvaquero]

600 gb at 1 gb per second equals 600 seconds, which is 10 minutes.

 

[ChadT41]

Is it 1 gigabyte per second or one gigabit per second? Big difference, as there are 8 bits per byte. Not sure how the transfer would be rated for EHD, but the internet would be bits.

 

[harshness]

Is it 1 gigabyte per second or one gigabit per second?

No consideration of context is necessary since Foxbat made the unit of measure clear: Gb is gigabits and GB is gigabytes.

 

[rvvaquero]

No consideration of context is necessary since Foxbat made the unit of measure clear: Gb is gigabits and GB is gigabytes.

How right you are. I missed that.

 

[Bobby]

No consideration of context is necessary since Foxbat made the unit of measure clear: Gb is gigabits and GB is gigabytes.

And we can, of course, guarantee that Foxbat knew the difference or didn't have a typo.... No slight on Foxbat's part intended....

 

[Foxbat]

You guys... Yes, it turned out I had 492 Gigabytes (GB) of media on the EHD partition of my original drive. I'm not 100% sure that the original Mac Pro's SATA bus is the original SATA (1.5 Gigabit/sec (Gb)) and not SATA II (3 Gb/s) rate. That's why I figured on the slower transfer rate.

As it was, the transfer finished up in a few hours, so figure on file system overhead and the fact that my Mac Pro was Folding all the while. The end result was the same (as detailed in my "981 Error" thread); my ViP 211k now has gobs of HD recording time and I have access to all my old programming!