Moving external hard drives?

Can't move at this time.

Currently if you move it, it will get reformatted.

dennisj00 said:

Can't move at this time.

Currently if you move it, it will get reformatted.

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They don't get re-formatted in my experience. They have all the shows, and the series manager is fully intact, just none of the recordings are playable unless they were OTA from an H/HR20 or an AM21-equipped other model. I've done it many times in the last several years.

"topgun80" said:

Hello all, I was just poking around in the Dish forum. It appears that Dish users can move external drives from receiver to receiver! Why can't we do that? And is it ever going to happen for DTV users? My greatest concern is that my receiver is going to die and I'll have a 2T hard drive that is full and can't be used.

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Will it ever happen? It certainly is possible, but no one here would be able to tell you if it will, or when. It is certainly a feature that is in a lot of demand on here. That and backing up at least series links.

I think technically external drives are considered unsupported.

I read about the copyright issues but I guess I don't understand why moving your recordings to another receiver if the old one dies is a problem, legal or otherwise. It doesn't seem to bother Dish, they let their customers do it.

topgun80 said:

I read about the copyright issues but I guess I don't understand why moving your recordings to another receiver if the old one dies is a problem, legal or otherwise.

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I don't see why they do it this way, either, but they do. Your recordings are encoded with the receiver number so that only that unit can play them back. Many of us for years have been pleading to have them encode to your account rather than your receiver, which would still meet all copyright issues but allow more flexibility. So far it just falls on deaf ears.

No doubt because they fear people would exploit the ability to pirate movies.

From the POV of someone who pays for what I watch many times over, though, I find it ridiculous.

I don't know all that much about the digital world but how would moving my external hard drive to a new or another box on my account allow me to pirate movies? I'm not talking about connecting it to my computer.

CCarncross said:

They don't get re-formatted in my experience. They have all the shows, and the series manager is fully intact, just none of the recordings are playable unless they were OTA from an H/HR20 or an AM21-equipped other model. I've done it many times in the last several years.

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I've moved a lot of large HDDs due to HRs failing and I've never had one reformatted. Just moved three of them in the last month.

Rich

topgun80 said:

I read about the copyright issues but I guess I don't understand why moving your recordings to another receiver if the old one dies is a problem, legal or otherwise. It doesn't seem to bother Dish, they let their customers do it.

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We've been trying for years to allow all HDDs to be read by all HRs within an account and it seems futile. You'd be better off developing a backup plan than waiting for D* to allow us to freely swap HDDs within an account.

Rich

topgun80 said:

I don't know all that much about the digital world but how would moving my external hard drive to a new or another box on my account allow me to pirate movies? I'm not talking about connecting it to my computer.

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Trust me, you're not the only one puzzled by this.

Rich