DISH TV: My unit will not read my USB Device that I just plugged in.

Dish TV products allow you to record, transfer and play media on external USB devices such as a Flash Drive or a USB External Hard drive. 

However you may have experienced that your unit couldn't read the USB media. 
Here are a few causes as to why your unit may say 'Media Not Alive', just won't pick up in the devices media settings or can't book recordings (Single Tuner Unit) 

1. The USB device has not been formatted: 
This is a common issue, Dish TV units can only read FAT32 USB media. Dish TV units can allow you to format the USB drive to be certified for use and usually an option is available, or you can plug the USB into your computer and access its properties and format the disk to FAT32

Windows XP and above will not allow you to format any drive larger than 32GB as FAT32 so you will need to use a third party formatting utility such as Fat32Formatter to format the drive.

Please note that formatting will erase everything on the USB device so ensure you back up work or data to another source.

2. The USB device requires external power. 

Some external hard drives require external power in order for the unit to allow USB Media access. External Power is recommended by Dish TV, as you can't rely on the USB power as this is how hard drives are damaged. If your Hard drives can operate without power but also have a another USB attachment for AC power then I recommend to connect to external power for safety.

3. The USB device is damaged

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Hi Joshua,

We recently had a customer with a DishTV T1000 who complained that the picture on their TV froze up and pixillated quite often, even though they had a really strong incoming UHF signal. Then they realised that it only happened when their USB stick (flash drive) was plugged into the T1000 receiver!!!!

I returned the receiver to DishTV who informed me that the processor speed in the T1000 is very fast and when we have a USB hard drive or stick plugged in, the processed signal goes through the USB port (in case we want to record it) before being sent to the TV screen.

So, if the USB stick (flash drive) is a cheap or inferior model, it can't process the information as fast as the processor is sending it, causing a "log-jam" of data, resulting in the picture freezing and pixillating on the TV - You will also get the same effect on your recorded programs for exactly the same reason.

So DishTV recommend only using USB hard drives, or top quality flash drives.

The customer now has a hard drive fitted and no longer experience any of those problems.

Cheers,    Bill.

Cheers for the useful info Bill!

Thats some interesting facts, I have a Satbox S7070r and don't notice the issue but this is probably because of the USB i am using, but in the past, Unbranded type drives cause a few issues with recording and just end up corrupted. 

Cheers!

Joshua 

Hi Joshua,

Yes, DishTV said that it's not such an issue with some of their models, because of slightly slower processor speeds, but it certainly can be a problem with the T1000.

Cheers,    Bill.

You may want to add the below to your post Joshua

Windows XP and above will not allow you to format any drive larger than 32GB as FAT32 so you will need to use a third party formatting utility such as Fat32Formatter to format the drive.

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