I almost threw my 721 out the window tonight!

[Patrick G.]

I just got back from a 10-day vacation and had set the 721 to record numerous programs while I was away. I just finished watching my first recorded program when the PVR menu froze and locked up the whole thing. It then began to reboot itself and after a few seconds a message came up that read "Hard Disc Failed..." and something about contacting support. Well, I immediately walked up to the receiver and held the power button in for 5 seconds to reboot again. This time it reboots to:

Validating System...
Please wait....
System Installation Phase 1

and then onto

System Installation Phase 2

and then

Installing New Drive Image

Sure enough, once it was finished, it had deleted everything I recorded, as I knew it would once I saw the "System Installation" message. I can't tell you how close I came to drop-kicking the damn thing. Any idea why it did this?

[Ken Seeber]

Plain and simple, the hard drive failed. Although it may appear your 721 is functioning properly now, the hard drive is toast and will fail again in a matter or days or hours (with mine it could last two days). You need to call Dish for an RMA replacement of your 721.

[Bob Haller]

Reminds me of my DP days:(

[Inaba]

And people wonder why I harp on what a piece-o-crap the 721 is. So many fatal problems for no apparent reason.

You'd think they would store recorded programs on a JFS volume that doesn't get nuked when the system decides to restore itself...

[Bill R]

Ever since I got my 721 I have been reading on this board how much more stable the "next" software release was going to be. Even though there has been several releases, that just hasn't happened yet and the 721 is still not nearly as stable as it should be. One has to hope that the 721 won't turn out to be another DishPlayer.

[Randy_B]

Plain and simple, the hard drive failed. Although it may appear your 721 is functioning properly now, the hard drive is toast and will fail again in a matter or days or hours (with mine it could last two days). You need to call Dish for an RMA replacement of your 721.

That is not necessarily the case. Our 721 did this exact same sequence about 6 months back (the old thread is out there somewhere). Nothing has ever ocurred again. No one at Dish could come up with an explanation, I wasn't using the DVR when the freeze first occured, so I do not know what triggered it. But the 721 has been fine ever since. I chalked it up to some corrupted segment in the software, that resolved with the download.

But this was a huge reason why I have been asking to see some sort of undelete capability added to the Dish DVR line!!!

[Bob Haller]

Bill R the 721 is out of production. How many resources do you think E will put in making the 721 better.

There probably more interested in the NEW FEE BASED DVRs......

BTW Metro confirmed the 721 is out of production

[Bill R]

Bob,

I not sure that your and Metro's information is correct. Just a couple of weeks ago I was told that the 721 is NOT out of production.

[Patrick G.]

Well, I talked with tech support today when the "Your Hard Disk Has Failed" message came up again this morning. He had me cut the power to the receiver for 15 seconds and then turn it back on. Once I saw all 3 lights lit at the same time, I was to cut the power again for 10 seconds. Then, when I restored power, it went thru the usual boot process and starting working normally again. He noted my account and told me that if this happened again, they would replace the receiver.

[Jacob S]

If it comes up a second time I would say that its definitely time for getting it replaced as it would just happen again and again and continue to be an aggervation.

[Patrick G.]

She failed again last night and I had to reboot. They are sending me out a replacement today. Hopefully I'll get more of a life out of this one.

[Bob Haller]

I am on my 3rd 721:(

[Bill R]

The high number of failures that I'm reading about on the 721 on this and other forums and newsgroups bothers me a lot. I wonder what kind of failure rates we are going to be seeing 2 or 3 years from now.

[Mike D-CO5]

Well the 921 is based oon the same chip set and design ,so I wonder how many of those are going to fail? :confused:

[Chris Blount]

You guys bring up an interesting question and I have started a poll here:

http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=17910

[Jacob S]

Why pay $1,000 + $5 a month for a DVR that is going to have such a high failure rate? The 921 is what I am referring to.