Yet again ... No Hopper-compatible EHD available

[Luddite by Choice]

I've spent at least 8 hours with the internet, this and other forums, brick & mortar stores, and Dish techs and tech service trying to find an EHD compatible with my Hopper 3 w/Sling. EVERY source says it must be a 2TB, self (110-VAC brick) powered, gen-u-wine spinning-disk hard drive, but NO ONE can actually point to one. Amazon's two-part alternative is no longer available. So how DO we externally archive a buggy Hopper, replace it, and dump the archived content onto the new Hopper?

 

[navychop]

Go bigger. Try 6TB. If you MUST, go bigger. Might not recognize max capacity

 

[Luddite by Choice]

Go bigger. Try 6TB. If you MUST, go bigger. Might not recognize max capacity

Every thread I've seen on this topic has two downsides to that: we have to partition anything bigger into 2TB chunks, and even then the resulting kluge is reportedly highly unwieldy and very unreliable in Hopper-land. People complain of losing part or all of their archived content immediately or within a few weeks.

 

[RTCDude]

I've spent at least 8 hours with the internet, this and other forums, brick & mortar stores, and Dish techs and tech service trying to find an EHD compatible with my Hopper 3 w/Sling. EVERY source says it must be a 2TB, self (110-VAC brick) powered, gen-u-wine spinning-disk hard drive, but NO ONE can actually point to one. Amazon's two-part alternative is no longer available. So how DO we externally archive a buggy Hopper, replace it, and dump the archived content onto the new Hopper?

Yes, self powered hard drives are becoming rare. And the USB ports on a H3 can't supply enough power for most drives (a design flaw in my option). So that leads to the issue you are seeing.

The solution is to get a USB 3.1 or better powered hub. A USB 3.1 hub will give you all the bandwidth you might need. The powered hub provides the power for the hard drive the H3 can't give. Then any USB powered hard drive will work through the hub to the H3 (SSD drives aren't compatible with the H3).

I would stick with 2 TB drives to avoid the partitioning issue. But with a hub (say a 4 or 5 port to keep the cost down), you can have multiple hard drives connected at the same time and switch between them from the H3 UI.

This is the setup I use and it works fine, except for the annoyance of H3 occasionally forgetting it has hard drives connected. Either a H3 reboot or repeatedly unplugging and replugging the hub will remount them.

 

[Foxbat]

I must not be seeing what everyone else is, or I'm just a lucky guy. I got a 6 TB Seagate SATA III drive many moons ago and found a Sabrent powered USB 3.0 enclosure that would see the whole 6 TB drive (my older enclosures did not recognize anything drive over 2 TB). The external drive (just the one) is connected to the Hopper 3's USB 3.0 port direct, no hub. I also have the dual-tuner OTA dongle from AirTV (white plastic instead of black that Dish used on theirs) plugged into the other USB 2.0 port. It's been in this configuration for years. I'm at 55% Full.

 

[Strega]

I plug these into a powered USB hub:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06W55K9N6

 

[TheKrell]

I must not be seeing what everyone else is, or I'm just a lucky guy. I got a 6 TB Seagate SATA III drive many moons ago and found a Sabrent powered USB 3.0 enclosure that would see the whole 6 TB drive (my older enclosures did not recognize anything drive over 2 TB). The external drive (just the one) is connected to the Hopper 3's USB 3.0 port direct, no hub. I also have the dual-tuner OTA dongle from AirTV (white plastic instead of black that Dish used on theirs) plugged into the other USB 2.0 port. It's been in this configuration for years. I'm at 55% Full.

I've had a 6TB Seagate with USB hub for many years working fine with about the same amount full. I had a whilte OTA adapter plugged into the Seagate hub also working fine even when the disk itself was not visible. Then all of a sudden the disk isn't recognized.

I diagnosed on a PC running Linux and it has 12 500GB partitions (in addition to two dinky ones), one of which had a corrupted ext3 file system. I repaired it and repaired it and repaired it, but still the disk was not recognized by the Hopper.

So I bought another 6TB Seagate and it formatted and is visible OK on the Hopper and has been for about a week. I intend to copy the remaining presumably-OK 11 partitions, via Linux, onto the new disk. Wish me luck.

 

[Foxbat]

I diagnosed on a PC running Linux and it has 12 500GB partitions (in addition to two dinky ones), one of which had a corrupted ext3 file system. I repaired it and repaired it and repaired it, but still the disk was not recognized by the Hopper.

So far my Seagate has been fine, I haven't seen any indications that there's a problem. I'd be curious to see if Gibson Research Corp's SpinRite would find something on your hard drive that it could find and repair.

I lost access to my copy when I retired. No PC, either.

 

[HipKat]

I've spent at least 8 hours with the internet, this and other forums, brick & mortar stores, and Dish techs and tech service trying to find an EHD compatible with my Hopper 3 w/Sling. EVERY source says it must be a 2TB, self (110-VAC brick) powered, gen-u-wine spinning-disk hard drive, but NO ONE can actually point to one. Amazon's two-part alternative is no longer available. So how DO we externally archive a buggy Hopper, replace it, and dump the archived content onto the new Hopper?

Sigh...

From our Tech portal (meaning for technicians):

EHD sizes for Hoppers

IHS iQ
For Hopper family receivers, here are the External Hard Drive (EHD) size requirements:

• Minimum size: 320 GB
• Maximum size: 7 TB

Important note: If a customer is using more than 1 EHD with their Hopper, they cannot exceed more than 6TB combined total storage.

 

[HipKat]

Every thread I've seen on this topic has two downsides to that: we have to partition anything bigger into 2TB chunks

Wrong. Where the heck are you getting this information?