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Well, I stood in line this morning for 1.5 hours before Circuit City opened at 5:00am and I did get the 500 GB Seagate FreeAgent for $79.99 (of course it's after a $50 mail-in rebate.)

I hooked it up and called the number (it's automated by the way. You don't have to talk to a human. It's just a series of "yeses".) I've already moved over 20 hours of HD video over to the new drive. Works like a champ.

The only thing I've noticed so far is that I was hit by the "sleep mode" bug. How can I turn it off on the drive?
 
ChetK said:
Well, I stood in line this morning for 1.5 hours before Circuit City opened at 5:00am and I did get the 500 GB Seagate FreeAgent for $79.99 (of course it's after a $50 mail-in rebate.)

I hooked it up and called the number (it's automated by the way. You don't have to talk to a human. It's just a series of "yeses".) I've already moved over 20 hours of HD video over to the new drive. Works like a champ.

The only thing I've noticed so far is that I was hit by the "sleep mode" bug. How can I turn it off on the drive?
Click to expand...
Here is how to turn off sleep, but I wouldn't since Dish is supposedly going to fix the problem with an upcoming software release. Just turn it off when not using it.

http://www.satelliteguys.us/993126-post136.html
 
Gave up on getting the Circuit City deal yesterday, but managed to snag one of the WD 500GB HDs at local BestBuy around lunchtime today for $99.99. I was lucky...the whole display of them was empty and I started to leave...looked up at the backstock area and just happened to see one "500" staring back at me from a sea of the more expensive 750GB and 1TB drives.
 
ChetK said:
Well, I stood in line this morning for 1.5 hours before Circuit City opened at 5:00am and I did get the 500 GB Seagate FreeAgent for $79.99 (of course it's after a $50 mail-in rebate.)

I hooked it up and called the number (it's automated by the way. You don't have to talk to a human. It's just a series of "yeses".) I've already moved over 20 hours of HD video over to the new drive. Works like a champ.

The only thing I've noticed so far is that I was hit by the "sleep mode" bug. How can I turn it off on the drive?
Click to expand...

I got the same one yesterday but ordered it online at 6 am, went back to bed and picked it up in the afternoon. You have to go to support.seagate.com. Download the 'Drive Manager' software for the Free Agent. With the hard drive plugged into the computer, open up the 'Drive Manager' program where you can change the power settings to 'Never' sleep.
 
I just got a 500GB WD Elements drive for $87 (no rebates) - a Black Friday deal at Target. Connected to my vip622: works fine! What I like about this drive is that it doesn't have any blinking lights on the front panel (only in the back).

Also got a $199 1TB My Book from CC, but will use this one for computer backup.
 
edpkp81 said:
I got the same one yesterday but ordered it online at 6 am, went back to bed and picked it up in the afternoon. You have to go to support.seagate.com. Download the 'Drive Manager' software for the Free Agent. With the hard drive plugged into the computer, open up the 'Drive Manager' program where you can change the power settings to 'Never' sleep.
Click to expand...
I downloaded the Drive Manager software onto the downstairs PC's local harddrive and configured the FreeAgent to Sleep "Never". The link a few post back said to load the software on the FreeAgent drive itself, but I think that's kind of pointless as it will be wiped out when you connect it to the ViP receiver and the drive gets formatted for HD Archiving. I also saw that there is a Mac OS X version of the Drive Manager, but it said the version support for OS X is between 10.3 and 10.4.10, so whether it works under Leopard would be questionable. Others have said that you can take the FreeAgent drive off the ViP receiver and change the Sleep setting without affecting the recordings on the drive, but I figured I'd do it ahead of time just to be safe.

I transfered about 80G of programs to the FreeAgent last night (it said it would take over 5 hours) and I think it finished sooner than that (I wasn't up when it finished, but it had only one 1hr program to go when I went to bed). The yellow power bar isn't too intrusive where I have my FreeAgent located, and the fade to dim and back to bright is very unintrusive. You can tell it's doing something, but your eyes are not drawn to a flickering LED like a normal activity indicator would be.

So far, the only downside I have with the 500GB FreeAgent drive is that you can't change the mounting orientation; it stands up taller than the shelf that I have my ViP 622 on, so I had to put it behind the entertainment center. Fortunately, Seagate gives you a 6' USB 2.0 cable, so that wasn't a problem.
 
Did they ever say when household keys were coming? I.E. move a drive between receivers in the same house without the limit of 3 times?
 
1 Terabyte ehd drive deal $179 - These enclosures are very good and have not been a problem for anyone that I know of.

EagleBit engineering team has launched an External 1TB USB 2.0 Hard Drive powered by Western Digital WD10EACS 1TB 7200rpm SATA2 16MB Buffer Hard Drive (3-yr warranty) and assembly with Eagle Consus E-Series ET-CSESU2-BK 3.5 inch SATA to USB 2.0 External Enclosure (Black).

EagleBit.com - Eagle Consus E-Series 1TB 7200rpm 16MB Buffer USB 2.0 to SATA External Hard Drive - Retail w/ 3-yr warranty
 

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