Transfer or archive recordings from Satellite receiver to another device

[Rick-b-45]

PVR 9241 - trying to archive recorded shows

looked online - got the following:

On your Satellite TV remote control, press MENU.

Scroll to and select Multimedia.

Scroll to and select External Hard Drive.

Scroll to and select Archive recordings.

Select the recording you want to transfer and pick Archive Events.

A message will appear on the screen with the estimated transfer time. You can watch TV while the transfer is in progress. Simply select View TV.

I have tried the above by hooking up my computer via USB cable to (a) the front usb port and (b) the back usb port. Also tried using a flash drive (in both locations). My problem is, when I click on MULTIMEDIA, I do NOT get "EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE" displayed. How to I get that to display? When I hook up the computer and the PVR, the system states that there is no multi media device attached.

When I put a flash drive in, I am able to transfer pictures from the flash drive to the PVR. I am trying to go the other way - move my stored shows to a flash drive or my computer.

[dks]

Generally you can’t transfer shows to a USB stick or another computer for viewing. You can only plug in a hard drive to add storage, to view through your receiver on that TV. 

[BellNick · Accepted solution]

Hi there @Rick-b-45 
Thank you for your post and welcome to the Community.
Moving recorded programs from your receiver can be done through an external hard-drive with the following specs:

• Requires a USB 2.0 connection
• Enables attachment of an unlimited number of USB 2.0 Hard Drives, with only one drive being attached at any given time
• Hard Drive capacity: from 50 GB to 2TB
• 7200 RPM rotation speed
• Must have only one physical hard drive inside - enclosures holding two disks are not supported
• Must be powered by an AC adapter, not by the USB port
• Hard drive has no sleep mode (cannot power down when idle)

After moving the content, the content can only then be viewed through an equivalent receiver. For further information, please check out our help article How to expand the recording capacity on my Bell Satellite TV HD PVR Plus
If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact the Community.

[Rick-b-45]

Thank you for this info.  I have ordered am external hard drive and will try this out as soon as it arrives.  One question - does it have to stay attached and constantly running, or can I disconnect it when not being used? (question arises due to the comment - hard drive has no sleep mode).  We have quite a few power outages up here - so what effect, if any, will that have?  Once again, thanks for the reply and thourough explanation.

[BellNick · Accepted solution]

Hi there @Rick-b-45 
The hard-drive does not need to stay constantly connected. You can transfer recordings over and once completed you can disconnect it and when you plug it back it you'll have access to the recordings that were moved to it.
When power outages occur there's a slight chance that whereas the device was not properly shut down that the hard-drive could become corrupted and need reformatting which will result in a loss of the content on the hard-drive (as for a majority of other devices). Please note that once you have plugged the external hard-drive into the HDPVR and if you attempt to connect it to another device that is not the HDPVR, you will most likely be prompted to reformat the disk to be compatible with the new device resulting in the loss of content on it.

[BMan33]

I have a 9500 and hooked up an external hard drive with no issues. I was able to take that same hard drive and hook it up to my 9242 so I could watch it in another room. The 9242 did not reformat that hard drive and all the recordings were there. The main reason I liked this feature was that you could edit names when hooked up to the 9242. Bell seems to not understand that when they offer free channels, they rename all titles with "(info)" in the title. If you are already subscribed to the channel you now have TWO groups of the same title when recording to the PVR. I was able to fix that with the 9242 and then transfer back to the hard drive now with ONE group by renaming. And when I hooked up the external drive back to the 9500, there was no formatting needed.  However, sadly, my 9242 doesn't work anymore and now cannot switch any hard drive from one PVR to another. But according to this article, you can switch the hard drive from one pvr to another pvr if on the same account. But I can't make it work now.

https://support.bell.ca/tv/receivers/how_to_expand_the_recording_capacity_on_my_bell_tv_hdpvr_plus

[Rick-b-45]

Just finished receiving a Nexstar tx 3.5 Hard drive Enclosure and a Western Digital 1 tb external drive.  Have everything hooked up. Go to Menu, select multimedia but am not seeing EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE.  Does the hard rive need to be formated> If so, is that done on my computer?

[germitch14]

I have two 6131 receivers that are connected to external hard drives. Most recently when I turn on either of these TV's I get a message on the screen saying that the hard drive needs to be formatted for the new up to date pvr settings to take place. When I do this I lose everything that has been recorded. All cables are secure, no ventilation problems, This is obviously a Bell problem, as what are the odds of this happening on two different TV's in different rooms. I've also replaced one of my hard drives & the problem still persists. This even happens when nothing is recorded on the hard drive. 

[BellPatricia · Accepted solution]

Hi @Rick-b-45 & @germitch14 

Thank you for reaching out to the Bell Community.

If your PVR does not recognize an attached external hard drive or if you experience any errors, you may need to reset the hard drive to its factory default state. For a bit more information check out the article posted above How to expand the recording capacity on my Bell Satellite TV HD PVR Plus.

Let the Community know how everything is going.

- Patricia

[Lake of Bays guy]

That is exactley what happend to me.  I was wondering how to recover the data on the original PVR? Someone has suggested attaching the drive toa LINUX computer and do some file manipulations. My fried has a a LINUX based OS on his device. Any idea if this is worth pursuing?

[Lake of Bays guy]

Resetting formats the external hard drive and wipes out whats recorded - I want to preserve what's recorded. Now what?

[dks]

Thank you for your question. To the best of my knowledge, the only answer to your idea is “you can’t “. Please read the responses marked as Most Helpful in this thread. That will give you some idea of what is possible and what is not. I suspect the reason for such copy prevention is to protect against creating bootleg or illegal copies of movies and shows. The side effect is that you can’t use storage drives to move programs from one receiver to another.