HR2x / HR34 External Hard Drive FYI/Support (eSATA)

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The Seagate FA's drives work fine, I've been using one for a year or so.
There were some issues with certian HR21 set ups ...

Jimbo

The FA's work find with HR20's. I also had a 750 for several months with ZERO issues.

ONLY reason I went with the WD this time around was in case I get stuck with a HR21.
 
I hooked up a WD 1tb to my hr21...it did not reformat the hd...what it did was lock up the receiver...I wonder if it was the cable or incompatible drive?..any info would be appreciated
 
I hooked up a WD 1tb to my hr21...it did not reformat the hd...what it did was lock up the receiver...I wonder if it was the cable or incompatible drive?..any info would be appreciated

You need to mentions the model number of the drive and the enclosure to get a definitive answer. If it is a MyBook, I think it won't work. Did you search? There is a lot of info already here.
 
Help...I have a 1TB drive that is starting to whine and make some noises. I think it's going to go. Is there any way to save my programing before it fails?

Can I hook it and a new drive to my PC and do a ghost copy to the new drive? I have 500meg of saved programming on the drive.

Any help is appreciated.

If you have Vista, just plugging it in will modify it enough to cause your HRXX to reinitialize it losing everything. I think there are instructions here on how to do it although they appear daunting.
 
I got a Free Agent Xtreme 1.5 TB drive and have it hooked up to my HR21-700. It's only been on there for 2 days but so far everything is working great. It's a pain to switch back and forth to internal while I finish watching the stuff I had recorded on there, and I still don't have my shows all set up to record yet. But it looks like I'm going to love the room.


Newegg.com - Seagate FreeAgent XTreme ST315005FPA2E3-RK 1.5TB 7200 RPM USB 2.0 / IEEE 1394a / eSATA Black External Hard Drive - External Hard Drives
 
Help!! I just purchased a 1TB Segate FreeAgent Pro external drive, hooked up the eSATA cable, reset my HR21-700 and it seems to hang at the "Step 1 of 2: Checking Satellite settings..... This will take a few minutes". I thought it may be taking a while to format the 1TB drive, so I let is sit for an hour .... still hung at Step 1 of 2.

The HR21 seems to recognize the drive during the boot process as the yellow light alternates between on and off several times. Once it hangs at Step 1 of 2, the center part of the yellow light strip on the external drive pulsates slowly (I noticed this pulsating when I hooked it up to my computer but only did this just prior to the computing booting).

I've read through this thread several times and it seems most of you guys simply plugged your external drives in and things just worked.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

I had the same problem. I switch eSata cables to one that is used in the My DVR hard drive and it worked perfectly. Very strange.
 
I am absolutely no tech geek...but have always just followed the directions that somebody has posted. I had the FreeAgent Pro 750G with an HR20 before.
I was thrown for a little while with the Xtreme. At first...just plugging it in would not seem to make it come "alive". I felt it turn on but then it seemed to just go to sleep right away and the light never came on. I retried this a few times with the same "no results".

I then figured out that it also need to be connected to something "live". When I plugged it in, and connected it to my laptop with the USB cable...it came right on. I did this after going to Seagate.com and reading that it is supposed to go to sleep after 15 minutes and that you could use the Seagate Tools to set it not to go to sleep. I have no idea if you really need to do this or not...but that's what I did.

It then took about 3 tries of connecting it to my DVR and rebooting the thing before I got it to work. I knew from the FreeAgent that I should have the Xtreme "on" first...before plugging it into the DVR.

For awhile It wasn't turning on first. I just kept rebooting the dvr hoping it (Xtreme) would turn on before the DVR needed to recognize it (I had the DVR plugged in already). After a few minutes of this not working...I uplugged the DVR and saw that now, the Xtreme was still "on" (I don't know why it was suddenly staying on...and didn't care).

Coming a bit late to this dance - trying to fire up a 1TB Xtreme with no luck to this point. Trying to follow Aztecs script and can't seem to get to the part where the Xtreme is "seen" by the HR21. Connected to my laptop and changed the sleep settings on the device as described above. Have reset/unplugged multiple times to no avail - do not hit a point where the light on the Xtreme stays on while the HR21 is going through its reset cycle. The light on the Xtreme always comes back during the power cycle on the HR21, but the HR21 still boots to the internal drive. Advice/experiences anyone?
 
Still no setup for this...?

I have not taken my free agent extreme 1tb out of the box yet hoping these issues would have been cleared up by now, so its still a little shaky even on these? :confused:
 
As an update, I've been able to get the HR21 to see the Xtreme twice out of dozens of power cycles. Tinkering with varying time lapses between power down/unplug of the HR21 and the Xtreme. I can't yet produce standard process that reliably gets me to the device of choice, and I'm hesitant to move forward until I get to that point.
 
So far I've switched between internal and my Xtreme about 10 times as I slowly watch the stuff I have recorded on my internal drive. I just leave the Xtreme plugged into power all the time. When I'm ready to watch something on the internal drive, I unplug the esata cable from the drive, and do a reset from the remote. Come back in 10-15 minutes and it's up and ready to watch. When I'm ready to switch back, I just plug the esata cable back in, and do the reset again, and it's always come up for me. Have you tried a different cable? The first one I tried, a cheap one from best buy didn't work. I ended up getting one from work and replacing it later. The ones we use at work are these: For only $3.25 each when QTY 50+ purchased - 6ft SATA External Round Cable - eSATA to eSATA (Type I to Type I), Black | External Serial ATA / SATA Cable

PS - loving it so far. Looks like I'll be looking at around 250+ hours of HD with the 1.5TB drive.
 
Can someone please answer a few questions for me?

  1. Can someone recommend an external hard drive for my bedroom that will be extremely quiet?
  2. When you have an external hard drive; does the internal hard drive power up at all; currently my internal hard drive is making lots of noise?

Thanks guys.
 
Can someone please answer a few questions for me?

  1. Can someone recommend an external hard drive for my bedroom that will be extremely quiet?
  2. When you have an external hard drive; does the internal hard drive power up at all; currently my internal hard drive is making lots of noise?

Thanks guys.


1) Free agent pro is quiet, but does not work well with the HR21 and HR22 (i think) My WD 640gig is a tad noisy

2) Depends on whether you have a HR20/21/22 (i think again) :D
 
Free agent pro then (just use tape to cover the yellow lights)

Ive heard debates on whether the internal shuts off or not, I do not think it does in the HR20.
 
I just upgraded my h21-700 with and external hard drive. The Western Digital "My DVR expander series" ( WDG1S5000VN 500 GB) also works with Tivo dvr. Now do I have to leave my DVR on for the drive to get the guide and firmware updates, or can i just power it down like I always do when not watching?:confused:



This feature is officially considered a test/beta feature - CSR reps cannot help with questions on external hard drives.

That said, we can!

I've been using esata drives on two HR20s for months now, and loving it!

Here are some things you should know:

1. Not all cables are the same, not all work, and most drives don't come with one. Here is a reliable cable I am using that only costs $16 with 2 day shipping:
Product Details

2. One drive solutions are available up to 750gb, trippling your as-built storage. Seagate has a reliable line called FreeAgent that also has a 5 year warranty and good pricing:
Seagate Technology - FreeAgent™ Pro

3. Larger multiple drive solutions are possible using a drive enclosure. Two 750gb drives would be 1.5TB! These are setup usinga RAID-0 configuration. It is important to ensure any enclosure uses eSATA and the internal drives 'should' be SATA.

Lets hear other's solutions, or any questions for those considering the drive upgrades.
 
The saga continues. Plugged the Xtreme back into my notebook, thinking I'd reformat it as NTFS and start the whole install process over. Downloaded Seagate's disk utility, and when it showed the Xtreme as being formatted in Linux native, changed plan.

Next tested the Xtreme with my HR21-700 in my bedroom, and it works like a champ - booted to the Xtreme and back to the internal multiple times without issue. It would appear something's funky with the e-SATA port on the HR21-100 in the living room. I'm assuming our friends at D* aren't going to be showing a whole lotta sympathy if I call complaining about a bad e-SATA port.

The thing to do would be to swap boxes, but the 700 in my bedroom has a decent sized collection of stuff-that-will-put-me-to-sleep that I really don't want to lose. I read the post on DBSTalk about how the copy process works - it's certainly not beyond my technical comfort zone, but now I start to wonder if I can get really clever and start to use the Xtreme as a "bridge" between the two HRs? Obviously the big concern is rendering the internal drive unusable by such a copy operation, but "in theory" it's still just a copy process between two Linux drives, right?
 
If I understand what you mean by bridge, you won't like the results.

If you take a hard drive from one receiver, and plug it into a different receiver, the first thing it does is check the receiver ID number on the drive/receiver. If it doesn't match, it formats it.

Basically, every time you move it the drive is wiped clean.
 
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Genie How Do You Recover a Deleted Show

AM21 dropped reception that was set to record

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