Western Digital My DVR Expander 500 GB eSATA External Hard Drive
by Western Digital
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List Price: Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Western Digital My DVR Expander 500 GB eSATA External Hard Drive
Customer Review: Fantastic product.
Summary: 5 Stars
Congratulations to Amazon for prompt delivery: 21hrs delivery time between Nevada and Montreal, Quebec. I installed the 500gb model on Jan1st. No problem but it took 2 attempts to connect the drive with the Scientific-Atlanta 8300HD+. I had 18 saved programs taking 76% of the internal hard drive; after installing the expander, it now shows 29% ! Excellent. This means I went from a capacity of 40hrs of HD-1080i recording to 103hrs of HD-1080i (820gb total now). Again excellent. As of today (Jan.9th), the drive has been perfect. All the features of the 8300HD+ work as before, including pause, FF, RW, on LIVE programs. I suggest plugging the DVR and the Expander on a UPS (battery backup). This way, if you get a power failure or hits, the DVR and Expander will not have to be reconnected together and the drive will have less chances of getting damaged. Playback (video/audio) of recorded programs has been excellent, in fact, I did not notice any difference.
UPDATE:20-Feb-2010 - A few weeks ago, I wrote to WD Cust.Svc enquiring about the way programs are recorded on the DVR/expander and when does it go into IDLE Mode: this is their answer:
"The unit will go into idle mode after 20 minutes of no use, or signal input from the DVR machine. DVR machines usually set the recording manner, so the first and last few minutes of the recording go into the internal drive on the DVR machine, and the rest into the DVR expander, in order to retain full control of header, lead in/out information. Once the internal drive has become full, it will record fully on the external expander".
UPDATE: March-14th-2010: On March-11th-2010, coming back from work I noticed my DVR was in trouble as the screen was showing: ER-01 and ER-00 in a loop. DVR crashed due to a memory problem. Was replaced no charge. DVR Expander not at fault here.
UPDATE: April-24th-2010: Expander working 100%, no problem at all. New DVR also perfect.
UPDATE: Oct. 12th 2010: No major problems with the unit. Recorded data sometimes has a few glitches on video but this could be a bad channel reception. If you have a problem and the dvr freezes but if you can still use your remote (UR-5U-8400A), there's a way to rebooth/restart your DVR without going thru the whole process: press PAUSE for 10sec. or more until you see the 'message' icon on the led display flashing; press PAGE - once; press STOP 3 times; you will see
'r - 2' on the display. Do not touch the remote after that. After 15-30 sec. the DVR will rebooth. After about 5 min., you should see the time on display. Start the DVR & you should see a message on TV 'this external hard disc works or is compatible with this DVR'. Press EXIT on remote and all should be ok. This procedure is for the Scientific-Atlanta 8300HD+. Good luck ! Cheers.
Customer Review: Couldn't Be Easier - Works With Scientific Atlanta 8300
Summary: 5 Stars
What can you say - for a device like this, "scoring" is it easy. It either works as advertised, or it doesn't - this thing works as advertised. It's easy to hook-up/install, or it is not - the directions couldn't be clearer, and it was a snap to hook-up.
I have a Comcast DVR Scientific Atlanta 8300HD. I was constantly running into low space issues. No matter how hard I tried to keep up with "house keeping" it always seemed to run at or near capacity. And with the 2008 Summer Olympics coming up, I was finally motivated to find a solution.
I did few Google searches, and yielded some promising results. Other users of the SA-8300HD had the same problem and came up with varying solutions - build you own eSATA external drive, or buy an out-of-the-box device. I'm pretty tech savvy, having built a number of PCs and external USB drives. The cost of DIY-ing a similar device was about $100-110, delivered. For $40 more, I could get a pre-built and certified device. I didn't want any hassles, so I went with this.
It looks like and is the same size as any of the WD MyBook external drives. It's a little smaller than a hard covered book. It comes with an external power supply and an eSATA cable, and a Quick Install guide.
Total time to install - 15 minutes, tops. I could have done it in less than ten, if I read the install guide fully. I jumped the gun and instead of pulling the plug on the DVR, I just turned it off. YOU HAVE TO UNPLUG THE DVR BEFORE CONNECTING THE EXPANDER. Which is what the directions says, but I skipped.
So, to install, you:
1) Check Capacity of your recorder (mine was at 62%)
2) Unplug the DVR
3) Plug in the Expander
4) Connect the Expander to the DVR with the eSATA cable
5) Plug the DVR back in.
The DVR will go through its boot process. When the clock reappears, turn on your TV and then your DVR. A message will appear:
"Detected an external DVR Expander - do you want to format it for use with this DVR?"
Hit Yes and the message disappears. There is nothing to tell you it is performing the install/format. A few minutes later, a new message appears:
"The DVR Expander is ready to use"
Go to the recording section and check capacity. Mine dropped to 16%!
My recommendation - do not hesitate, buy this. Even if you are tech-savvy, is your time/effort worth $40? This is certified and guaranteed to work. WD drives are typically sturdy, and their MyBooks are highly rated.
Hurry - the Olympics start August 8!!
Customer Review: Western Digital screws consumers
Summary: 1 Stars
First of all, Western Digital gives 3- and 5-year warranties on almost all their hard drives when you buy them as OEM drives. When you purchase anything from them as the retail packaged products they push on consumers at big box retailers and even here on Amazon, they give you a 1-year warranty and charge you more for it.
When it comes to this specific device, I had purchased one to hook up with my TivoHD in Feb 2008. This device was always problematic since the Tivo is so finicky about how to hook this up and how it's not hot-pluggable, meaning every time the cable comes loose due to digging around the back (as you hook up new components like a Wii, or dusting for example) you have to reboot the Tivo, plugging this drive in first, then wait for the 10-minute boot-up process to complete. The fact that there's no power button on this drive means you HAVE to unplug the AC power cord if you need to turn it off (again, due to moving components, rewiring, etc.). This is a BIG NO-NO for hard drives, as anyone who's ever used a computer should know. Suddenly stopping power like that for a drive in this way is a surefire way to damage the surface platters of a hard drive.
Western Digital's response to this might be "Why would you ever turn it off?", which is ridiculous if you've ever been a Time Warner customer with a Tivo, since it most certainly means having to reboot the stupid thing periodically. The Tivo also has this design flaw, meaning that the Tivo died on me eventually after multiple rebooting problems, and in January 2009 I had it replaced by Tivo under warranty. During the holidays and most of January, as you can imagine, the DVR Expander was useless without a Tivo to hook it up to. Once I got the Tivo back and hooked up the DVR Expander, the Tivo would not recognize the drive. After wrestling with it for a week, I called Western Digital, and they said the warranty was up on the drive. I told them it still the rest of the month at least, but since I couldn't find my receipt, they said - and I quote - "Too bad, but in that case we go by the manufacture date, and it's over warranty, and there's nothing we can do for you."
Way to treat the consumers you're trying to woo with these craptacular DVR Expanders. For what it's worth, if you are interested in a Tivo, go buy one from Weaknees.com, where they basically put a terabyte drive into a Tivo so you don't need one of the pieces of crap from Western Digital, which only cares about taking your money and treating you like the raw sewage they think consumers are.
Customer Review: Don't waste yoru money or your sanity
Summary: 1 Stars
I am extremely disappointed with this device. I bought it to expand the recording capabilities of my Tivo HD. Although it worked fine at first, after 14 months I started having all sorts of problems with my Tivo recording partials shows and locking up, even while trying to watch live tv. I called Tivo a number of times and they assured my the lock up issues were because my catv signal was 'too hot'. Comcast made several visits to my home for this issue and assured me everything from their end was fine. Like other reviewers, after months of missed programs, Tivo lock ups and reboots, I finally disconnected the expander drive and lost over 60 hours of programming. After disconnecting the drive Tivo started working fine again. I can't tell you how angry and frustrated this whole issue made me. I paid top dollar for an expander drive sanctioned by Tivo and it failed shortly out of warranty. I find that unacceptable. Read the Tivo Community Forum (google it). You'll find many other folks who've had the same issue with this drive. Wester Digital stinks. I will never buy another WD product again.
If you want to expand your Tivo's recording capabilities you're best off upgrading the internal drive. You can find the detailed procedure at the Tivo Community Forum. They even provide lists of drives that are known to work with Tivo's. You can get a decent (NON WESTERN DIGITAL!) 1T SATA drive for less than 100 these days. I bought the Hitachi Deskstar HD31000 and plan to upgrade my Tivo internal drive to that. You can find the drive here at Amazon.
Bottom line: DON'T DO IT - you'll regret it!
Update: 1/15/11
In my original review I mentioned my plan to upgrade the internal drive to the 1T Hitachi Deskstar. If you're at all technically inclined this procedure is a snap. In addition to the Hitachi SATA drive I had to purchase an additional SATA cable and SATA power supply cable to temporarily hook up the Hitachi drive to my desktop PC to program it. Both cables can be had for < 10 at monoprice.com. The instructions at the Tivo Community Forum were clear and concise. Now, 1 year later we're still enjoying our HD Tivo with it's new 1T internal drive. We record everything in HD and never run out of space. Ahhhh!
Customer Review: Solid DVR expander
Summary: 5 Stars
As a Southern California of Cox Cable's HD service, I have a Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8240HD DVR. And I like to record stuff. The problem with that is, of course, that the only way to save the stuff I record is to output it to a VCR. Kinda dumb, to go from a digital signal back to outdated analog equipment. But those DVR drives fill up quickly, particularly if you record a lot of HD content.
I was about to give up and go TIVO, but I really didn't want yet another monthly subscription fee. So, I went looking for a solid drive to increase my DVR's capacity, and after a fair amount of research, found that this Western Digital My DVR 500GB expander would work with my DVR. Of course, Cox doesn't support it, meaning that if you have a question or a problem, you're on your own. However, the 8240HD does support eSATA, and I can find my way around most problems, so I gave it a shot.
Amazon's price was good, and the drive arrived in perfect condition.
Installation was simple. Connect and power each component up in the right sequence and that's about it. One important note: BEFORE hooking this drive to your DVR, make a note of the space already used for existing recordings on your DVR. There's usually some setting that shows you the amount of recorded space. Once you hook up this drive, the only way to tell if it installed correctly is to go back and check the recorded space again. If the first reading said, for example, 25% used, then when you install this drive, the new percentage should be quite a bit smaller, thus letting you know of the increased capacity.
The drive is virtually silent, not inordinately hot, and the soft amber light on the front is not distracting, even when watching the TV with the lights out. Can't speak to its longevity, because I've only had it in service for a few months. But, I've had great luck with other WD drives on my Mac, so I expect this drive to last.
If you need a high capacity drive for your DVR, take a serious look at this one.