Yet again ... No Hopper-compatible EHD available

[Luddite by Choice]

I've spent at least 8 hours with the internet, this and other forums, brick & mortar stores, and Dish techs and tech service trying to find an EHD compatible with my Hopper 3 w/Sling. EVERY source says it must be a 2TB, self (110-VAC brick) powered, gen-u-wine spinning-disk hard drive, but NO ONE can actually point to one. Amazon's two-part alternative is no longer available. So how DO we externally archive a buggy Hopper, replace it, and dump the archived content onto the new Hopper?

 

[navychop]

Go bigger. Try 6TB. If you MUST, go bigger. Might not recognize max capacity

 

[Luddite by Choice]

Go bigger. Try 6TB. If you MUST, go bigger. Might not recognize max capacity

Every thread I've seen on this topic has two downsides to that: we have to partition anything bigger into 2TB chunks, and even then the resulting kluge is reportedly highly unwieldy and very unreliable in Hopper-land. People complain of losing part or all of their archived content immediately or within a few weeks.

 

[RTCDude]

I've spent at least 8 hours with the internet, this and other forums, brick & mortar stores, and Dish techs and tech service trying to find an EHD compatible with my Hopper 3 w/Sling. EVERY source says it must be a 2TB, self (110-VAC brick) powered, gen-u-wine spinning-disk hard drive, but NO ONE can actually point to one. Amazon's two-part alternative is no longer available. So how DO we externally archive a buggy Hopper, replace it, and dump the archived content onto the new Hopper?

Yes, self powered hard drives are becoming rare. And the USB ports on a H3 can't supply enough power for most drives (a design flaw in my option). So that leads to the issue you are seeing.

The solution is to get a USB 3.1 or better powered hub. A USB 3.1 hub will give you all the bandwidth you might need. The powered hub provides the power for the hard drive the H3 can't give. Then any USB powered hard drive will work through the hub to the H3 (SSD drives aren't compatible with the H3).

I would stick with 2 TB drives to avoid the partitioning issue. But with a hub (say a 4 or 5 port to keep the cost down), you can have multiple hard drives connected at the same time and switch between them from the H3 UI.

This is the setup I use and it works fine, except for the annoyance of H3 occasionally forgetting it has hard drives connected. Either a H3 reboot or repeatedly unplugging and replugging the hub will remount them.