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

[Ramy]

is there any way to combine the original hard drive and a new hard drive in an enclosure and keep the recordings on the original drive?

Nope.

 

[bigbandjohn]

My DVR Plan

Hey all.

Wanted opinions. Plan to get the HR-21 and attach a 3 Tb Cavalry eSata Array. It's a 4x750, with optional raid 5 (2.25 TB then), and it runs around $850. Any ideas if this will work with it?

 

[jcrandall]

I thought I remember reading a post that the HR2* wasn't using any space beyond 2gb or so. Not 100% sure, I'll try to find it.

WELCOME to the site, sorry for the delay in responding.

 

[Smith P.]

Yes, tested, proved - details at dbstalk.
2 TB is max usable space.

 

[willwork]

Plugging the drive into the HR21

Can anyone tell me what kind of adapter you need to plug into the SATA plug in the back of the HR21? I just got a hard drive enclosure, but it only included firewire and USB - and I have no idea how to find what is probably a firewire or USB to SATA plug...
I'd love specific hardware info so I can replicate the success others have had.

 

[Smith P.]

It's in a topic - eSATA, plus your HDD enclosure MUST have the eSATA connector/interface.

 

[schneid]

$215 1TB eSATA Drive

Don't know anything about this drive other than the price is right:

SimpleTech 1TB SimpleDrive Pro Duo USB 2.0 - CompUPlus Direct

I NexTaged it and prices elsewhere are much higher. Looks like you can drop in another 1TB drive for a total of 2TB. Doesn't seem to include an eSATA cable.

Edit:

I read some reviews at NewEgg. The drive works fine but many have arrived with broken plastic housings;

Customer Reviews Of SimpleTech Duo Pro FP-UFE2/1TB 1TB 7200 RPM USB 2.0 / eSATA External Hard Drive - Retail

 

[redsox9]

I did a lot of reading on multiple forums trying to find an eSATA for my HR21 DVR. I hooked up a Cavalry CADA002SA2-H 7200RPM 2TB USB 2.0/eSATA External Hard Drive $505.68 from Amazon.
It was simply plug & play. Turned on the HD first then plugged in the HR21 and it recognized it right away. Have been recording HD like crazy for the last month with no trouble. Have over 35hrs. of HD with 82% available space.

 

[Jimbo]

I did a lot of reading on multiple forums trying to find an eSATA for my HR21 DVR. I hooked up a Cavalry CADA002SA2-H 7200RPM 2TB USB 2.0/eSATA External Hard Drive $505.68 from Amazon.
It was simply plug & play. Turned on the HD first then plugged in the HR21 and it recognized it right away. Have been recording HD like crazy for the last month with no trouble. Have over 35hrs. of HD with 82% available space.

ESATA Hard Drive info is all over the forum. Many have used the Seagate brand ESATA with great success, others have used a variety of makes, many working, some not.

Jimbo

 

[Smith P.]

It's eSATA.

 

[hypervista]

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!

 

[Smith P.]

Try to use Seagate utility and disable sleep mode or power saving mode.

 

[hypervista]

Try to use Seagate utility and disable sleep mode or power saving mode.

Thank you Smith, P. Your suggestion makes a lot of sense, but unfortunately I'm still hanging at the "Step 1 of 2: Checking Satellite settings.... This will take a few minutes." message.

I'm using a PNY eSATA cable I bought at BB. That may be the culprit. I ordered the cable recommended by this forum's moderator and should have it tomorrow or Tuesday. I'm hoping the cable is the problem.

Thanks again for your help.... any other suggestions?

 

[Smith P.]

I would play with settings while the EHD connecting to PC. If it will do long delay to response to click on right button of mouse ( after a few minutes inactivity), then I would definitely disable power safe mode.

 

[hypervista]

I would play with settings while the EHD connecting to PC. If it will do long delay to response to click on right button of mouse ( after a few minutes inactivity), then I would definitely disable power safe mode.

Thanks Smith, P. I did disable the power save (sleep mode) settings per your previous suggestion and get the same result.

Your suggestion got me thinking about the EHD state during boot and I'm beginning to think the EHD is trying to install the Segate utilities on the DVR and is sitting there waiting for a response from the DVR to one of the utility install dialogs. I'm thinking that a format of the EHD will get rid of the utility auto install feature and eliminate this as a possibile reason it's hanging. I'm going to format the EHD tonight and I'll let you know the outcome.

Thanks again for your assistance.

 

[Smith P.]

I don't think formatting will help here - the DVR's CPU have different instructions set, then your PC, different OS and different mount process.
At least it will not harm . But instead formatting, I would just zero all sectors - pure cleanup.

 

[hypervista]

Thanks (again) Smith, P. I haven't had the opportunity to try the reformat or zeroize all sectors test yet because I've been traveling. I thought reformating might get rid of the AutoPlay applications, presenting a nice flat FAT32 disk for the DVR to latch on to.

I'm curious, has anyone else had problems with getting Segate FreeAgent Pro external hard disks working with a H21-700 DVR? Specifically, the DVR freezes at the "Step 1 of 2: Checking Satellite settings..... This will take a few minutes" step. I suspect it's because the Seagate drive is trying to install the utilities on the DVR, which requires various replies to installation prompts that the DVR isn't / can't reply to and it's just sitting there waiting .... (this is just speculation on my part). I'm hoping that by reformatting or zeroizing the entire drive as Smith, P. suggested will solve the problem. I'd appreciate any insight those of you have installed Seagate FreeAgent Pro external hard drives with your DVR.

Thanks!

 

[Smith P.]

The drive can't install anything into DVR, as 1) the host is DVR 2) only host can do that 3) DVR by design will not install anything from EHD 4) DVR have different CPU/OS and can't install PC [Intel] programs from EHD 5) etc.

 

[hypervista]

The drive can't install anything into DVR, as 1) the host is DVR 2) only host can do that 3) DVR by design will not install anything from EHD 4) DVR have different CPU/OS and can't install PC [Intel] programs from EHD 5) etc.

I understand that and agree with you and what you state is the foundation of my speculation as to the reason it's hanging. What I'm suggesting is the EHD is recognizing that it's attached to a "PC" that it hasn't "seen" before and the EHD is spinning up the AutoPlay utilities installation app (I'm not saying the DVR is attempting to install the app, I'm saying the EHD is blindly spinning up the installation and hanging because it's not getting the expected response). The first thing the AutoPlay utilities installation app does is presents a dialog box asking the user to proceed to the installation set-up. Naturally, as you point out, the DVR can't and won't reply and therefore won't install anything, hanging as a result. I'm hoping that by formatting or zeroizing the EHD will blast the AutoPlay and utilities on the EHD and therefore allow the DVR to get to a state where it will format it to it's own needs.

I fully admit I may be all wet with this theory and hope to prove or disprove it this evening when I finally get an opportunity to format the darned thing and give it a try.

 

[sd-hdtv-fan]

Hypervista,

I can assure you from my own personal experience that the Seagate will not run any kind of autoinstall when connected to the DVR. I have connected a Seagate FAP 750 to my iMac, and no autoinstall ran, no dialog box popped up, just an empty hard drive mounted. Same thing will happen with the DVR (except the DVR will format the drive). The only time any kind of autoinstall will run is if you connect the drive to a windoze peecee.