I have been thinking about doing the external drive on my Dish 722. Dish says that the max size is a 750gb. But they can't give me an answer as to why that is. Especially since a 1tb costs about the same as a 750gb. I had heard in the past when the 722 first came out that the reason was that the 1tb drives were actually two physical drives of 500gb each and they were just in a case together. But I know that the new drives are not like that. So what can the 722 actually do? How big has anyone gone?
Max Size For External Drive For Dish 722
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I heard the same reasoning on the two separate physical drives. DISH CSRs told me 750GB but there were just citing their literature.
I emailed a friend at Western Digital and off the record he thought their 1TB drives would work just as well as the 750GB ones as the secondary drive, but he knows of no one who has tried it. Western Digital is a formal DISH partner, so you are likelier to have better luck with that flavor of drive.
My thought would be if the Dish VIP series HD DVR sees it, you should be OK, but if you had an issue in the future, some DISH tech support guy could always say we warned you that it was only to 750MB support. But then again, you are not likely to get any help form DISH on a secondary archive hard drive anyway. You may only be limited to 750GB off the drive because of some internal software issues with DISH.
Its possible that DISH can also do a firmware update to formally support bigger drives in the future.
Keep us posted. I'm considering either size myself.
I emailed a friend at Western Digital and off the record he thought their 1TB drives would work just as well as the 750GB ones as the secondary drive, but he knows of no one who has tried it. Western Digital is a formal DISH partner, so you are likelier to have better luck with that flavor of drive.
My thought would be if the Dish VIP series HD DVR sees it, you should be OK, but if you had an issue in the future, some DISH tech support guy could always say we warned you that it was only to 750MB support. But then again, you are not likely to get any help form DISH on a secondary archive hard drive anyway. You may only be limited to 750GB off the drive because of some internal software issues with DISH.
Its possible that DISH can also do a firmware update to formally support bigger drives in the future.
Keep us posted. I'm considering either size myself.
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There are several reasons why Dish does not "support" 1TB drives, including the vertical recording techniques used to get to 1TB. The question is, when your 750GB drive fails in some way, what support do you really expect to get from Dish? If they answer is "none" (which is the most correct answer), then all your decision really amounts to is whether you have another use for a 1TB drive if it does not work with your DVR. Most people would say that they do have another use.
People posting on other forums have reported getting 1TB drives to work with no issues. I personally got a nice quiet 750GB drive as I have friends in the storage business who say don't use 1TB drives without a really good filesystem, like ZFS, otherwise you are likely to lose some data at some point. For the record, Dish does not use ZFS as their filesystem. Last time I checked, it was XFS. I guess I just assume Dish's implementation of an open source technology from a company (SGI) who would be bankrupt without the federal government's involvement doesn't make me feel very secure about my data to begin with. YMMV.
Ted
People posting on other forums have reported getting 1TB drives to work with no issues. I personally got a nice quiet 750GB drive as I have friends in the storage business who say don't use 1TB drives without a really good filesystem, like ZFS, otherwise you are likely to lose some data at some point. For the record, Dish does not use ZFS as their filesystem. Last time I checked, it was XFS. I guess I just assume Dish's implementation of an open source technology from a company (SGI) who would be bankrupt without the federal government's involvement doesn't make me feel very secure about my data to begin with. YMMV.
Ted
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You will eventually loose the formatting on an external USB drive at some point regardless of the file format.
eSata was the smart move that everyone except Dish used.
You will eventually loose the formatting on an external USB drive at some point regardless of the file format.
eSata was the smart move that everyone except Dish used.
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Not sure I follow that. Seems to me the advantages of eSATA are performance and possibly using disk spanning to extend the volume across multiple spindles. I have never heard that USB hard drives lose formatting faster or easier than any other host interface. Do you have a reference?
Thanks,
Ted
Not sure I follow that. Seems to me the advantages of eSATA are performance and possibly using disk spanning to extend the volume across multiple spindles. I have never heard that USB hard drives lose formatting faster or easier than any other host interface. Do you have a reference?
Thanks,
Ted
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I'm not even sure what this means?
Any external HDD is simply that, a 2.5" or 3.5" HDD. Up unilt recently, they were all the standard IDE HDD interface and now SATA. The USB cased HDD that the typical Consumer purchases is nothing more than a run-of-the-mill HDD housed in a case which has a circuit board to facilitate the conversion from SATA to USB. That's it.
I personally do not use external HDD cases. Why pay extra for that case? Makes no sense to me.
Simply purchase a single USB adapter (like this one : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16812101003 ) for $15 bux and use ANY HDD one has. Use that HDD from that PC you never use anymore. Use that HDD you have laying around, or simply purchase a new/refurb'ed HDD for ultra cheap. With SSD hitting the market, platter based HDD are becoming so cheap, it's ridiculous.
I'm not even sure what this means?
Any external HDD is simply that, a 2.5" or 3.5" HDD. Up unilt recently, they were all the standard IDE HDD interface and now SATA. The USB cased HDD that the typical Consumer purchases is nothing more than a run-of-the-mill HDD housed in a case which has a circuit board to facilitate the conversion from SATA to USB. That's it.
I personally do not use external HDD cases. Why pay extra for that case? Makes no sense to me.
Simply purchase a single USB adapter (like this one : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16812101003 ) for $15 bux and use ANY HDD one has. Use that HDD from that PC you never use anymore. Use that HDD you have laying around, or simply purchase a new/refurb'ed HDD for ultra cheap. With SSD hitting the market, platter based HDD are becoming so cheap, it's ridiculous.
yeah going the uncased route works fine. But if you want to be able to just grab the drive and move it from room to room like i do. From my dvr to my wifes I want something durable.
It does work with a 1TB, now. their website says so, and my 1TB works. A 2TB would too. But I didn't want to spend the extra money and a 1TB is plenty big enough for now.
Does anybody know if I can split the outgoing signal from this drive so I can access it from both dvrs. That way I don't have to move it from room to room, and dont have to wait for it to transfer a one hour show, which takes about 15 min. it is about 2 gigs.
It does work with a 1TB, now. their website says so, and my 1TB works. A 2TB would too. But I didn't want to spend the extra money and a 1TB is plenty big enough for now.
Does anybody know if I can split the outgoing signal from this drive so I can access it from both dvrs. That way I don't have to move it from room to room, and dont have to wait for it to transfer a one hour show, which takes about 15 min. it is about 2 gigs.
Some people on the DBS talk forums have tried using the 2T drives but without much success. I don't remember all the problems but it seems that I remember that the 2T drives were only recognized as 1T by the 722's. You might check out the hard drive threads over there to see what exactly happened before investing in one.
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On a tech Forum a while ago they said the real size limit was that the drive had to be one tine or platter. Some of the bigger drives have two. Usually if there are more than one tine or platter the box will be more than the normal 2" thick.
They said on the Tech Forum that if there were more than one tine or platter it would only use one of them.
Rick R
They said on the Tech Forum that if there were more than one tine or platter it would only use one of them.
Rick R
It has to be a single drive in a single enclosure, some of the 2T drives are 2 1T drives in a single enclosure. It has nothing to do with number of platters. I haven't heard/read about anyone getting a single 2T drive to work yet, but dish is supposed to remove drive size limitations so that may get the 2T drives to work correctly.
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I would expect a reputable magazine or website, such as CNET, to get it right. Bloggers on the other hand frequently are only passingly familiar with the technologies about which they are writing. More platters can actually be a benefit as more platters=more read/write heads, so that can mean faster throughput. As a result some confused blog reader will go looking for drives with 1 platter and might be unhappy with the outcome.
I would expect a reputable magazine or website, such as CNET, to get it right. Bloggers on the other hand frequently are only passingly familiar with the technologies about which they are writing. More platters can actually be a benefit as more platters=more read/write heads, so that can mean faster throughput. As a result some confused blog reader will go looking for drives with 1 platter and might be unhappy with the outcome.
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