Hello all,
My QIP7232 will not power on. I have been sent a replacement DVR. Having some very important programming saved on the old DVR, I was hoping it would be possible to swap out the hard drive (HD) on the dead DVR and plug it into the new one and be able to retain all those shows and movies.
While the new DVR with the old HD in it does display the show information for the shows that were recorded, when I play any of them, there is no feed. The screen blacks out. If I record something new onto it, I am able to play back that feed just fine.
I noticed that the replacement DVR they sent me is 3 years older than the dead one I have, and the board is stamped with numbers that reflect it's a revision behind the one I had.
My question is, has anyone successfully swapped out HDs on DVRs in a scenario like this one? Is the issue that the boards are not identical? Or is every single DVR uniquely encrypted so that HDs cannot be swapped, regardless of boards being identical?
I greatly appreciate any advice and assistance you all can provide. Hopefully, this will be helpful to others as well.
Thanks in advance,
Alex
Solved! Go to Correct Answer
Thank you, CRobGauth.
Indeed, it appears each DVR has its own encryption it uses to record to the hard drive. That means that if you were to put in your own hard drive, the DVR would record onto the hard drive in a format that is readable by that DVR and only that DVR. If you then took out that hard drive and put it in another DVR, that second DVR would not be able to play them back. However, anything recorded onto that hard drive by the second DVR would be playable by it, and again, if you then took that hard drive and put it back into the first DVR, the first DVR would be able to play the recordings that it did, but it would not be able to play the recordings by the second DVR.
I know Verizon is in the habit of having a DVR stop working and they just send out a replacement. They have no concern for a customer having lost what was on the DVR. However, those boxes are repairable, and in many cases, the recordings on the hard drive are still intact. It is certainly possible for them to repair a DVR and send it back to the customer, allowing the customer to retain their recordings and not have to start from scratch. For all I know, they repair and refurbish their broken boxes and send them back out rather than scrapping them. (Actually, given that I never get a new box when I need a replacement, I'd suspect this is the case.) And certainly, if that is the case, then this is a possibility. Given that it may take a few hours of work for a repair technician to complete, I could understand if they wanted to charge a fee to do this, but I'd think they'd be happy to do that if it was another source of revenue.
It's 2017. We should be able to do this.
Stbs are property of Verizon.
Users are not authorized to open them up.
Given that external drives were matched to the box, I could see the same being true for internal drives.
Thank you, CRobGauth.
Indeed, it appears each DVR has its own encryption it uses to record to the hard drive. That means that if you were to put in your own hard drive, the DVR would record onto the hard drive in a format that is readable by that DVR and only that DVR. If you then took out that hard drive and put it in another DVR, that second DVR would not be able to play them back. However, anything recorded onto that hard drive by the second DVR would be playable by it, and again, if you then took that hard drive and put it back into the first DVR, the first DVR would be able to play the recordings that it did, but it would not be able to play the recordings by the second DVR.
I know Verizon is in the habit of having a DVR stop working and they just send out a replacement. They have no concern for a customer having lost what was on the DVR. However, those boxes are repairable, and in many cases, the recordings on the hard drive are still intact. It is certainly possible for them to repair a DVR and send it back to the customer, allowing the customer to retain their recordings and not have to start from scratch. For all I know, they repair and refurbish their broken boxes and send them back out rather than scrapping them. (Actually, given that I never get a new box when I need a replacement, I'd suspect this is the case.) And certainly, if that is the case, then this is a possibility. Given that it may take a few hours of work for a repair technician to complete, I could understand if they wanted to charge a fee to do this, but I'd think they'd be happy to do that if it was another source of revenue.
It's 2017. We should be able to do this.
I think part of it is that DVRs aren't intended for long term storage.
Just to delay watching something.
Hence the reason for no long term storage or recovery
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