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

[armchair]

Thanks cfb,

I saved the link and your post for a project for when my drives are too full.

I still have a 50% capacity and the budget is tight right now. With costs coming down, maybe by the time I need to do this, it won't be so expensive!

What is that gPart CD (not sure about spelling) about? Is that a separate purchase or did it come with drive?

 

[cfb]

The gparted cd is made by burning a cd disk image to a blank disk with a cd burner. Its a small standalone linux image that is made to allow a user to boot their regular computer up into a linux environment that will let you do stuff like image a couple of hard drives or transfer linux based file systems/data structures from one drive to a bigger one.

All freeware.

Download the gparted live .iso image here
GParted -- Download

And use windows 7 or imgburn to burn the .iso file to a blank cd, set your system to boot from the cd drive, and off you go.

There might be tools to do this stuff from Windows, but then you'd need to leave your windows system hard drive in the machine, you might stomp on that by accident, there are some circumstances from tivo-land where windows decided to write something onto the dvr's drives that hosed them, etc.

Just a lot easier to boot into a well-known environment with the right tools to do the job and with your regular computer drives unplugged.

After that, the only hard part is typing in all those long command strings and getting them right. I always screw up one letter. Just like typing in microsoft product activation codes...

Surely with 1.5tb drives selling around $80 these days, it wont be long before 2tb DVR drives are kicking around <$100. Whether the dvr can drag all that data around while recording and playing back 5-6 streams is another matter...

 

[jman123]

external drive erased with software updates

Well unfortunately my 1TB Seagate Showcase got overwritten again over the weekend. Not much else than to try to return it and get a replacement.

I have the same problem you are having SundayTicketRocks. I have a Calvary 1TB external drive with a HR21-100. The drive worked out of the box with the enclosed sata connector. Over the labor day weekend I noticed the hard drive was wiped cleaned. I thought this was an anomaly. It happened again on Oct 27th. I discovered both of these occurences were with directv automated software updates.

Anyone out there have any solutions?

jman123

 

[Smith P.]

Dish ? Cable ? Internet ?

 

[cfb]

The receiver only wipes the drive if its unreadable (but responds to a format command), or if the file system is irrevocably messed up.

So there might be a problem with the drive, the enclosure, or the cable...or the receivers esata port.

 

[Big Dawg 23]

The gparted cd is made by burning a cd disk image to a blank disk with a cd burner. Its a small standalone linux image that is made to allow a user to boot their regular computer up into a linux environment that will let you do stuff like image a couple of hard drives or transfer linux based file systems/data structures from one drive to a bigger one.

All freeware.

Download the gparted live .iso image here
GParted -- Download

And use windows 7 or imgburn to burn the .iso file to a blank cd, set your system to boot from the cd drive, and off you go.

There might be tools to do this stuff from Windows, but then you'd need to leave your windows system hard drive in the machine, you might stomp on that by accident, there are some circumstances from tivo-land where windows decided to write something onto the dvr's drives that hosed them, etc.

Just a lot easier to boot into a well-known environment with the right tools to do the job and with your regular computer drives unplugged.

After that, the only hard part is typing in all those long command strings and getting them right. I always screw up one letter. Just like typing in microsoft product activation codes...

Surely with 1.5tb drives selling around $80 these days, it wont be long before 2tb DVR drives are kicking around <$100. Whether the dvr can drag all that data around while recording and playing back 5-6 streams is another matter...

Have you done this via the USB Creator way? I just installed Ubuntu 9.10 via USB by dumping the ISO with software Unetbootin. I wish my HR22 was owned because I would be doing this in a heart beat.

 

[cfb]

I havent. My big honking desktop has two optical drives in it and a brazillion sata ports, so it was an extra step I didnt need to take.

 

[GregLee]

My Seagate FAP 750Gb eSATA drive stopped working after 2 years (may just have been the power supply), so for my HR20-700 I just replaced it with a WD Green 1.5Tb ($110) drive in an Antec MX-1 case (I paid $51, but it's now $40) from Amazon. After 2 weeks it seems to be working okay. I have seen a little pixelization and a few video freezes, occasionally, but no consistent association with HD video, e.g., that suggested to me a problem with the drive.

(For instance, my wife just called me over to see a video glitch, which I had asked her to watch for, in her recording of last night's Leno show, but I told her that if the glitch recurs at a specific place in the recording, that associates it with the recording and not the drive. I hope that's right.)

I chose these parts after reading lots of user comments on dbstalk and concluding that this case and one of the WD Green drives was least likely to give me a problem. So far, so good. (I'm running the current CE firmware.)

 

[cfb]

Recurring glitches in the same spot could be a problem with the sat signal or could be a bad spot on the disk drive.

 

[Big Dawg 23]

So after reading through this thread again. I have a question. When hooking up a E-SATA driving does:
A) Does it disable the internal from being used except for additions, however it still allows you to view programs on there
B) Eliminate the complete use of the Internal which means no ability to view saved programs on there.

I need to do something. My wife is getting backed up on so shows(Wish I never convinced her to record everything in HD). I would like to keep more of Big Bang and Two and Half but space if getting small. I don't like to dwindle under 25% as the DVR gets sluggish like all other PC with shortage of space.

 

[cfb]

Its one or the other. If you boot with the external connected and powered up, it uses the external exclusively. If you boot with the external unplugged or turned off, it uses the internal exclusively. When you first fire up the external, you'll have no shows, no configuration except the defaults, and no series links.

 

[Big Dawg 23]

Its one or the other. If you boot with the external connected and powered up, it uses the external exclusively. If you boot with the external unplugged or turned off, it uses the internal exclusively. When you first fire up the external, you'll have no shows, no configuration except the defaults, and no series links.

So if I follow. Once the HD is hooked up and then the system is rebooted(HR22) I will no longer see anything on the Internal drive? Sorry for the many questions.

 

[cfb]

You're correct. Its as though you're starting fresh with a new hard drive, because you are.

If you reboot the unit and unplug the external while its rebooting, it'll go back to using the internal drive. So you can leave the external on while its recording, and when you're in a patch of the day when there are no recordings, you can reboot without the external and watch stuff off of the internal.

 

[Tom Bombadil]

Is there any 750GB or 1TB drive that is almost certain to work with the HR21? Specifically the HR21-200.

This company claims theirs works:
HR20, HR21, HR21 Pro, HR22 and HR23 DirecTV HD DVR Upgrades

I've read so many reports of drives working and not working, some of them being the same drives. Some report that the ACOMDATA PURE drive with a high quality cable works (but not with the cable that ships with it). But the sample size on this recommendation is quite low.

Some report that a Calvary drive works, but again that sample size is very small.

More report that they go with an Antec MX-1 external enclosure, use the cable that comes with it, and can put pretty much any ESATA drive into it.

Nothing seems definitive.

 

[cfb]

I didnt have much luck with the cavalry. Had mixed luck with the mx-1 depending on which drive I ran in it.

Weaknees is just putting a regular drive into a garden variety external case.

If you want something that directv recommends, the 1tb seagate showcase or 1tb western digital dvr expander is the way to go. They're certain to work. They might even be supported by directv some day.

 

[olc]

I didnt have much luck with the cavalry. Had mixed luck with the mx-1 depending on which drive I ran in it.

Weaknees is just putting a regular drive into a garden variety external case.

If you want something that directv recommends, the 1tb seagate showcase or 1tb western digital dvr expander is the way to go. They're certain to work. They might even be supported by directv some day.

I have had success with the MX-1 using Samsung drives, both 750GB and 1TB. The MX-1 is a good choice because it has a silent cooling fan and I leave the drive on all the time.

 

[Mark0525]

I have had success with the MX-1 using Samsung drives, both 750GB and 1TB. The MX-1 is a good choice because it has a silent cooling fan and I leave the drive on all the time.

How expensive are they? I read somewhere on here that even if you download movies to store on the hardrive that they eventually expire and you wont be able to view them. Is this correct? If it is then why would you need that big of a hardrive?

 

[Ramy]

How expensive are they? I read somewhere on here that even if you download movies to store on the hardrive that they eventually expire and you wont be able to view them. Is this correct? If it is then why would you need that big of a hardrive?

Only Pay-per-view movies expire that I know of.

 

[cfb]

A lot of the VOD stuff has expiration dates on it as well.

The large hard drive DVR model seems to have three basic viewing paradigms.

With the small drive dvrs (14-30 hour) many people just do a little timeshifting and watch everything thats on it within a few days.

With a medium size dvr (30-80 hours) you may record entire series and watch 10-12 episodes at once. You've got a good selection of viewing what you're in the mood to watch and have enough room that you can let things slide for a few weeks.

With a larger one (80-250+hours), you've pretty much garnered your own video on demand setup. My wife records about 10 hours of shows a day and may decide she's in a mood to watch some show in particular and can watch several at a pop. My son has about 20 series links for shows he likes, so whatever he's in the mood for, we have at least 4-5 episodes of each. I've got 25-30 movies on their at any given time, bunch of football games, etc.

To be honest, my preference would be to have all of this on someone elses box somewhere else and just get it over the internet with video on demand. The process of beaming all this content over satellites and cable on a scheduled basis and having to capture it on a computer in my home so I can view it when I want seems out of date.

 

[dfergie]

I bought a 1 TB WD My Book Model WD10000H1CS-00 before Christmas and just got around to trying it, my HR20 won't work with it as it defaults to the internal(I did use a WD 500 Gig a couple of years ago that got blanked) looks like I have a new drive for my Dish dvr or to use with my WDTV box... ( I tried different cable & power supply)