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Dish Network: Recovering External USB Hard Drive Data After A Power Outage

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MB

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May 1, 2011, 12:27:45 PM5/1/11
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According to the Dish Network web site, if a Dish Network customer owns
a 722 or similar model receiver, the customer can connect an external
USB hard drive (HD) to the receiver; as long as the external HD meets
certain requirements. The document that I retrieved from the Dish
Network website on 17-Mar-2011 says that the requirements include the
following: * The Dish Network receiver can be a 612, 622, 722, 722, or
922. * The storage capacity of the external HD must be between 50 GB
and 2 TB. * The external HD must have its own power supply.
* The external HD must have USB 2.0.

I have a Dish Network 722 receiver (which has a 350 GB DVR built into
it). At this time, I own 8 external USB HDs that meet the Dish Network
requirements; and I connect the external HDs, one at a time, to the Dish
Network receiver. Each of the external HDs is a LaCie unit, and the
drives range in size from 500 GB to 2 TB.

About 3 weeks ago on a Saturday afternoon, there was a brief electric
utility power outage at my house; the outage lasted about 10 seconds.
At the time of the outage, there was a file transfer in progress between
my Dish Network receiver and the connected LaCie 2 TB external HD.

After the Dish Network receiver restarted, I saw that it would not
properly access the connected external HD: I could see the list of
programs on the external HD, but I could not play any of the programs.
I had about 1 TB of programs (movies and TV shows) stored on the
external HD.

In order to have the Dish Network receiver access the programs on the
external HD, I followed the procedure described below. The entire
process took about 1.5 weeks. During that time, I restarted the Dish
Network receiver over 50 times, and I deleted at least 60 programs
(about 100 GB of data) from the external HD. I believe that by
following the procedure below, I deleted the file that the Dish Network
receiver corrupted when the power outage occurred.

Here's the procedure I followed to have the Dish Network receiver once
again access the data on the external HD: 1) Turn on the Dish
Network
receiver. Select any channel. 2) Turn off the external HD.
3) Using a USB cable, connect the external HD to the Dish Network
receiver. 4) Turn on the external HD.
5) After about 15 seconds, the receiver will recognize the external HD
and ask you if you want to manage the HD. Select No. 6) Using the
remote control, select DVR/My Media/My Media/Send To HD. 7) A list of
the programs that are currently on the Dish Network receiver should
appear on the TV screen. Also displayed on the screen should be the
free space on the external HD. (Eg, 828 GB.) If the amount of free
space on the external HD is not displayed on the screen, or if the value
doesn't make sense, the rest of this procedure probably will not work.
8) Using the remote, select Cancel. 9) Using the remote, select
Manage
Media. 10) After a delay of up to 45 seconds (during this time, the
indicator light on the front of the external HD should flash, indicating
that the receiver is getting the list of files on the HD), the list of
programs on the HD should appear on the TV screen. If this doesn't
happen after about 90 seconds: (a) press the Power button on the front
of the receiver for about 6 seconds to command the receiver to restart;
(b) turn off the external HD. 11) In Step 10, if the list of
programs on
the external HD appears on your TV, then select one or more programs to
delete (try to select the program that was being transferred when the
power outage occurred); and select Delete. After about 30 seconds, the
selected programs should be deleted, and the screen should indicate
this. But it probably won't be possible to navigate away from the
displayed screen. So after about 90 seconds, if there's no response
from the commands you enter using the remote control, press the Power
button on the front of the receiver to command the receiver to restart.
After the receiver restarts, see if it will access the programs on the
external HD. If it won't, go to Step 4, and repeat part of the above
process.* 12) In Step 10, if the list of programs on the external HD
did
not appear on the TV screen, and you restarted the receiver and turned
off the external HD: go to Step 4, and repeat part of the above
process.*

*That is, if you have the patience; and if you feel that the programs on
the external HD are important to you.

Soon after the electric utility outage 3 weeks ago, I purchased and
installed an APC brand UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply). The UPS
provides at least 20 minutes of battery run-time for the devices I have
connected to it. The connected devices include my Dish Network
receiver, its external HD, and a Sony HDTV. I installed the UPS prior
to performing the time-consuming steps described above, because I didn't
want a second power outage to create another corrupted file on the
external HD.

I have a comment to Dish Network: Would you please fix the Dish Network
receiver's firmware (hardware and software) SO THAT IT WORKS PROPERLY:
so that if a power outage occurs when a file transfer is taking place
between the receiver and an external HD, the receiver will still access
the data on the external HD, after the receiver restarts.

I talked to a Dish Network supervisor over the phone yesterday, and I
provided him a brief account of the problem I had with accessing my
external HD; and I said, Would you please have Dish Network fix the
above problem. The supervisor told me that this is a problem with any
device that uses an external USB hard drive, including PCs.

But this is not true, because 3 weeks ago, when the above-described
power outage occurred (while a file transfer was in process between my
Dish Network receiver and its external HD), my IBM PC was, at the same
time, transferring files between its internal HD and its connected LaCie
external HD. The PC had no problem with recovering from the power
outage: as soon as the PC restarted, I was able to access all the files
on the external HD. I DID NOT NEED TO RESTART THE PC OVER 50 TIMES TO
GET IT TO PROPERLY ACCESS ITS EXTERNAL USB HARD DRIVE.

MB

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May 1, 2011, 12:40:02 PM5/1/11
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Dish Network: Recovering External USB Hard Drive Data After A Power
Outage

Char Jackson

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May 1, 2011, 4:38:07 PM5/1/11
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On Sun, 01 May 2011 16:27:45 GMT, MB <mb...@altair-4.net> wrote:

>About 3 weeks ago on a Saturday afternoon, there was a brief electric
>utility power outage at my house; the outage lasted about 10 seconds.
>At the time of the outage, there was a file transfer in progress between
>my Dish Network receiver and the connected LaCie 2 TB external HD.
>
>After the Dish Network receiver restarted, I saw that it would not
>properly access the connected external HD: I could see the list of
>programs on the external HD, but I could not play any of the programs.
>I had about 1 TB of programs (movies and TV shows) stored on the
>external HD.
>

>I talked to a Dish Network supervisor over the phone yesterday, and I
>provided him a brief account of the problem I had with accessing my
>external HD; and I said, Would you please have Dish Network fix the
>above problem. The supervisor told me that this is a problem with any
>device that uses an external USB hard drive, including PCs.

What he said is true, but he didn't go far enough. The problem isn't
limited to external USB hard drives. Internal drives are equally
susceptible to data loss in the scenario you described.

When power is lost during a write operation, data corruption to some
degree is virtually guaranteed. It may be minor, such as a number of
sectors on the target drive being marked as 'used' but not able to be
read since the directory information hasn't been written, or it can be
major and result in serious data loss. It depends on what was
happening when power was lost.

I can't speak specifically to the Dish receivers since I don't have
one, but what I said applies to PCs and I'd be willing to bet it
applies equally to Dish DVRs. With a PC, you'd typically run some kind
of 'check disk' routine, (such as the chkdsk command), to get
everything back in sync. I don't know if Dish DVRs have something
similar. Note that the drive you were reading from during the power
outage is usually OK afterwards.

>But this is not true, because 3 weeks ago, when the above-described
>power outage occurred (while a file transfer was in process between my
>Dish Network receiver and its external HD), my IBM PC was, at the same
>time, transferring files between its internal HD and its connected LaCie
>external HD. The PC had no problem with recovering from the power
>outage: as soon as the PC restarted, I was able to access all the files
>on the external HD. I DID NOT NEED TO RESTART THE PC OVER 50 TIMES TO
>GET IT TO PROPERLY ACCESS ITS EXTERNAL USB HARD DRIVE.

At a minimum, I would expect the external drive to have some lost
clusters, and I would run chkdsk on it before doing any more writes.

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