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External Hard Drive Discussions - See Facts Link in Post 1.

477K views 1K replies 351 participants last post by  kilohertz 
#1 · (Edited by Moderator)
I'm new to this so please bear with me. I've tried searching with no success.

I just upgraded to a 9241 because my kids gave me an external hard drive for my BD.

Anyway, it formated just fine so here is my question.

As I keep recording movies etc, does the external drive become an overflow when the 9241 is full?? If this isn't the case, do I have to archieve shows to the external drive manually??

Once movies etc are in the hard drive do I just access them for watching the same as if they're on the 9241 drive.

I hope I explained properly but I'm sure somebody will let me know if not. :p

Here's the link to the eHDD facts thread. Read it to find the appropriate eHDD, etc.

Bell External Hard Drive Facts - Canadian TV, Computing and Home Theatre Forums

Do not ask questions in the Facts thread. Use this thread for questions.
 
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#82 ·
The purpose of the PVR is to time-shift. Although I can certainly understand why someone would have a large HDD and wish to put lots of stuff on it, it should never be considered secure storage. That can only be accomplished via offloading the recordings to still another device, like a DVD recorder, Hauppauge HD PVR, HTPC, etc.

One should therefore "expect" data loss on the PVR itself and not use it as the primary archive if you wish to archive.

My understanding is that with the BTV units, you can keep programming on both/several drives, but as you see, even that may not be secure since you're dealing with the same device for playback.
 
#83 ·
Most of the stuff on my EHD were things I was planning to watch during the spring and summer when shows go off the air. I had 2 recordings that I was saving until I could offload them to something else. Anyway they are ALL gone.

I just finished plugging the drive into the 9242 and it came up stating it needed to be formatted. It took about 5 minutes to reformat the drive and I was happy to at least get the drive back. The 9242 rebooted, but much to my surprise and disappointment, when it came back up, it's the same issue.

"To manage Bell TV recordings on your External Hard Drive this feature must be activated. To activate please call 1-888-SKY-DISH (759-3474)."

Calling them only leads to a waste of an hour. They have no clue about this error or what to do about it. Yet someone at Bell must have coded this error message. Someone must know what would cause this error 787 to appear.
 
#84 ·
I called them again because I had a couple of hours to spare. They've got me on hold right now. The lady I'm speaking with now thinks she found a problem with my revision number. She asked me to go to the menu, then 6 for setup, then 1 for installation, then 3 for system info then click Next and Next again. She asked for the Rev number located under DNASP. I show:

240 Rev906

She thinks it should be Rev904. Are you guys still on 904?

My upload of the new firmware happened many days after I started reading about the firmware upgrade.
 
#85 ·
No- we actually ended up taking the EHD back to the store and buying one that was 500GB, turns out the 1TB was the problem, so now at least we can download our recordings.

We are still having issues with the receiver flipping out though and the level 2 Bell Techie yesterday had us adjusting backlights etc on the TV, so they are obviously aware of the problem. The level 1 guy did'nt know anything about it and I had to ask him politely to escalate me to a higher level who could tell me the truth!!!
 
#87 ·
The Info on STB says 184- you know the one thats causing the STB to flip out!!!

I am just at a loss quite frankly. I am pleased I have managed to get the recordings off. We got a Lacie box 500GB- so its ok for our needs.

I would just like Bell to admit that they have cocked up on the 184 update cos our TV and box was working fine together before their upgrade!
 
#89 ·
Any luck getting the external HD working yet? I wonder if it only work with a 1.5 TB drive only, has anyone try that???. There are a few people with the same problem asking for activation when the external hard drive is selected. One person mentioned to me that his 9242 is at firmware 184 with rom 240 Rev 904 and still having the same problem. Let me know if you fine a solution because no one seem to know the fix right now.
 
#90 ·
I called Bell again. They said they are not getting many calls regarding the error message I'm receiving in regards to my EHD. They will be exchanging my 9242 for another one. I unhooked my 9242 and unpacked my 9241 that was in the closet. The 9241 does work with the EHD just like the 9242 used to. Mind you the 9241 is still on the old firmware V232. It may download the new firmware tonight. It should be interesting to see if the drive still works tomorrow.
 
#93 ·
Thanks Dave. I wish I knew about that. My 9241 did get the firmware update. It's at version V234 now and yes I've got to use component now. Bell broke the HDMI signal in this unit. Likely has something to do with HDCP.

Boy what a huge mess they've made with the upgrades to both machines.
 
#95 ·
I'm beginning to see a lot of dissatisfied customers with Bell after this update. I'm still getting the same:

"You have connected an unsupported device to the USB port. Select help for more information"

error message whenever I turn on my hard drive, I know it's not the drive as when I plug it into my MacBook Pro it's recognized and I've used Disk Utility to format it in both FAT and Mac OS, still get the same error message with the 9242 no matter how the drive is formatted. I'm waiting to hear from ScaryBob and/or to see how their EHD's are working after this update as they've got pretty much the same set-up as me. Good luck to us all...

dave
 
#96 ·
Well they are sending me a new 9242 which I assume will be a refurb. I've only bought this current 9242 4 months ago at The Source. It was brand new. It seems ridiculous a 4 month old machine has to be replaced. The replacement may have the same problem or even more. If it does I'm returning the replacement.

I'll keep you posted.
 
#99 ·
Bell sent me a new 9242 today. I really didn't think it would fix my EHD issue because my original 9242 appeared to have a deliberate message when plugging in the drive - call Bell to get the EHD authorized. However, this 9242 is working fine with the EHD. In fact, it is allowing me to watch shows I placed onto the EHD while it was connected to my 9241 (weird). It would not allow this before.

I discovered something. My old 9242 had a Rev906 revision number. This one came with firmware V184 pre-loaded, but it's revision Rev904. I'll bet anything Rev906 is not fully implemented yet as far as the EHD goes. I know others have received this revision as well. You can check by pressing MENU twice.

I'm very pleased that it's now working. I got a scare at first because my channels were flipping all over the place and my unit was turning off and on. I realized that my next door neighbor must have his remote set to the default "1". I switched mine to something else and the issue went away.
 
#101 ·
Today when I checked my firmware version, it's still at V184 but the Revision has switched from Rev904 to Rev906. I was scared to check my EHD but when I did it seemed to work. What's nice is that I have 4 recordings that were captured on my 9241 and the 9242 recognizes them. It seems we are now able to swap EHD between devices.

I decided to restore all 4 recordings to the 9242 internal HD. About 5 minutes into the restore my EHD light turns off, and the 9242 states that I've removed the EHD. So weird! I tried copying just one show. 5 to 8 minutes later it shuts off. It never did this before. Then I tried copying Lost. 8 minutes later the EHD shuts down.

Right now I'm watching Lost directly from the EHD. I'm 30 minutes into it and so far so good. I just cannot restore it back to the PVR. Maybe because it originally was recorded using the 9241. It's just a guess.
 
#102 ·
Glad to here things are getting back to normal. Scary thanks for the information, maybe I got a little greedy when I heard Dong was using the 1.5TB WD drive instead of the 1 TB. I don't know if Tiger Direct will allow me to return the 1.5TB drive for a 1 TB drive, hope so as I'm still having no luck at all with the 1.5TB. Dong, is yours still working fine?

dave
 
#103 ·
My 1 Tb drive keeps shutting down every few minutes now. I've been trying to watch Lost and it has shutdown 6 times on me. When I start it back up it doesn't remember where I left off. It starts at the beginning of the show again.

Once I endure watching everything this way, I'll reformat it and hope for the best.

The drive is the Western Digital WD10EADS. It's mounted in an external casing.
 
#104 ·
Boneheaded question, when you say firmware version is that the "Software Version" when you hit menu twice? It's the only thing I get that's close to V number (V185RFPD-N), does this mean I have firmware 185 & am still waiting for an update? I do see I have Rev 906 for whatever that's worth...

dave
 
#105 ·
If you are at version V185 then you received this week's update and there aren't anymore that I'm aware of. Firmware is software. It usually refers to the program that makes a particular device work.

My hard drive is shutting down to the point I cannot use it in the 9242. However there are no problems with it when I plug it into the 9241. There has definitely been a change to the way the 9242 works with EHDs.
 
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