HMC Set-up with External HD

[shaudods]

I am currently a Dish customer that had my 922 crap out on me this week. The only thing keeping me from switching to DirecTV and the new HMC was the almost 2 TB worth of shows i had saved on my 922 and external HD... Since i lost half of that (and the most current recordings at that) with the box crashing, i figured it was a good time to make the switch..

Anyways, my question pertains to an external hard drive set up with DirecTV's HMC box. I am aware that external hard drives do not run along side the built in hard drive like they do with Dish (which is somewhat disappointing, but oh well.. 5 tuners outweighs that!). But my question is, with Dish, even though the 922 had a 1 TB HD, dish partitioned half of that TB to their "on demand" movies and shows... really only giving you half of the built in HD for my own recordings. I assume DirecTV does the same thing with its on demand things as well... so if that is the case, if I connect my 1 TB external HD to the HMC, will all the on demand movies and such go on my external HD, or will they stay on the main drive. What i am getting at is that if its going to end up on the external HD, there is no point in using it since my EHD is the same size as the built in one... if the on demand content stays on the built in drive, that will give me a full 1 TB to record to without having their on demand content using some of the drive.

Thanks!

 

[Smith P.]

Nope, DTV has simple rule - one drive per box. Connecting external would eliminate using internal, totally. But it will be powered anyway. By some reports the reserved space (not physically - logically) is 100-200 GB.

BTW, the device has other name: HR34-700. No more "HMC" - it was a prototype name.

 

[gadgtfreek]

And FYI, I have a 2TB WD EARX drive connected right now, and its been working well. Lotta recording space.

 

[shaudods]

BTW, the device has other name: HR34-700. No more "HMC" - it was a prototype name.

If you go to DirecTV's website and go to "technology" and then "receivers", the 5 tuner box is still referred to as the "HMC HD DVR".

 

[shaudods]

Also... so say I start out using the internal one and a couple months down the road, realize that its not enough space and i'd rather add a 2 TB external... I assume there is no way to transfer my recordings to an external HD? And if not, is it fairly simple to just disconnect and reconnect the external drive, so that i can watch what was left on the internal, or does it need to reformat/erase the drives everytime you switch between the two?

 

[gigahurtz]

You should be able to unplug external drive and restart receiver and then have access to the internal drive. It will not erase the drive each time.

 

[JohnL]

There is a rumour the HR34 may in the future be able to use both the Internal Hard Drive as well as an external Drive. This is likely down the road as DirecTV is still trying to port the new HD UI to the HR34. The HD UI is available via the CE downloads but as of yet not as a national release.

John

 

[gadgtfreek]

There is a rumour the HR34 may in the future be able to use both the Internal Hard Drive as well as an external Drive. This is likely down the road as DirecTV is still trying to port the new HD UI to the HR34. The HD UI is available via the CE downloads but as of yet not as a national release.

John

That would be cool.