Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Greymouse on January 18, 2014 at 17:51

yep that was the first thing I tried, I plugged it in then formatted using free view box

Permalink Reply by Greymouse on January 18, 2014 at 18:25

yep, that's the first thing I tried, i then formatted the 2tb with free view box

Paul said:

Have you tried formatting as a single partition rather then dividing into 2 , the dishtv may not work well with 2 partitions.

Permalink Reply by Alan Douglas on February 12, 2014 at 12:41

Just a thought.. Your external hard disk is obviously working because you say that you used the DishTV unit to format it, and I am guessing that the formatting completed OK?? 

During the 4-5 minutes of the unit working, have you ever managed to record anything??

I ask the question (I may be completely on the wrong track here.) because the external hard drive may be powering itself down due to x number of minutes of inactivity. (My external hard drive on my PC certainly does this.) It maybe, once the disk has powered down, the DishTV unit is incapable of kicking it back into action (At all, or quickly enough.) and the fantastic (NOT!) firmware has a hissy fit and the unit locks up.

You may be able to test this theory by powering everything on, and in your 4-5 minute working window, press the 'record' button to start the unit recording. As the record operation is continuously writing to the disk it should never get to power down. If you can record a program for over 4-5 minutes then this will be the problem and you will have to look at the destructions of your external hard disk to see if you can disable its time to power down. (You will have to do this via a PC or laptop with the disk connected.)

Also, if you haven't sussed this out already. If the unit locks up, you can turn it off by holding down the power switch on the front panel for about 10 seconds. Saves switching it off at the wall.

BTW. Yes Flash Drives do have a limited life span. They can only be written to a certain number of times. This number depends on the drive itself but it is upwards of 10,000 write cycles. With the amount of decent TV on our screens at the moment, you should be recording for a long time.

Hope this helps.

Alan

Permalink Reply by Greymouse on February 12, 2014 at 14:03

hiya thanks for your advice,

i hadn't looked into this issue for awhile but i have done a couple of tests as you suggested

here are some more details:
Seagate
Expansion Desktop
STBV2000300 2TB
Regulatory Model: SRD00F2
PN: 1D7AM2-570
DOM: 11/2013

and it looks like its the idle time, when i left the unit a few mintues after detecting the 2TB HDD it hung, so then i turned the unit off and on again, but this time i hit record straight away after the HDD was detected and it hasn't hung yet!

so the HDD powering down seems to be the issue

the other evidence is that I have noticed that at times the 32GB USB Stick flashes now and then (because i leave it connected to the unit all the time) when its not recording, maybe a wakeup check from the freeview box?

so i guess the next job is how to stop the HDD from powering down..

Gordon

Permalink Reply by Alan Douglas on February 12, 2014 at 14:57

Good news Gordon, it is nice to be getting closer to a solution.

I would certainly report this fault to DishTV support, via their website, and also give them the details of the USB disk and they should be able to get the firmware developers to look at it for potential inclusion in any new firmware releases.

How often does your 32GB USB stick flash?? Probably a longer time period than 4-5 minutes, I'll bet. If you can change the power down time out of the USB HDD, you may be able to set it to a delay slightly longer than what you see occurring on the USB stick. Then the HDD will not be continuously spinning when the DishTV unit is on standby.

Good luck.

Alan

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