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: Excellent quality external HD for DVR expansion...
Summary: 5 Stars
I have the Scientific Atlanta 8300HD cable box and quickly realized that recording HD programming would fill the internal HD on the 8300HD very quickly. Then I found out that Scientific Atlanta was using only a 160GB hard drive!! Kinda cheap if you ask me. HD programming fills up space VERY quickly. So, I was relieved to find out that an external (eSata) drive could be connected. But which one?
Well, the Western Digital MyDVR Expander 500GB was cost effective and I have been very happy with Western Digital products in the past (I am a Computer Consultant and have replaced many a hard drive with WD ones and they all work well..... now Seagate, that's another story!). So, I gave this MyDVR a whirl.
I was pleasantly surprised to see how easy it was to install. Literally... power down the 8300HD (by unplugging it), plug in and power up the MyDVR expander drive, replug in the 8300HD, after the LONGGGGG boot time for the 8300HD a message pops up saying that an external drive was found do you want to use it?, click yes. And voila! Now recording space is increased MANY fold.
I was worried that the MyDVR expander would continuosly run, but I was happy to find out that when the Scientific Atlanta 8300HD is in standby mode (off), the MyDVR expander would spin down also into a standby mode, therefore reducing stress by running continuously.
So far, so good. In fact, I would swear that the recordings have stabilized somehow and are better. But that's probably just psychological.
One IMPORTANT NOTE: When you add the MyDVR expander you LOSE the ability to pause live programming. In other words, the buffer that used to happen automatically is gone. But I never really paused live programming anyway. And if I want to leave while a show I'm watching is on, I just hit the RECORD button and record the rest of the show. So it all works out in the end.
Customer Review: Forget It!--5 stars for Amazon's RMA Service, zero for the unit
Summary: 1 Stars
I purchased this unit from Amazon, and it was defective out of the box. The symptom is that the TIVO will not boot up with the drive attached (freezes indefinitely on the "Welcome...Powering Up" screen). If you boot up the TIVO without attaching the drive, then try to configure the drive after the fact, it shows "no external storage device connected".
I returned it for an exchange for another unit, and had the replacement in my hands within 2 days (GREAT RMA service from Amazon). The second unit had the exact same problem. Skeptical that it was actually two bad drives, I contacted TIVO tech support again. They gave me instructions on how to run a diagnostic test on my TIVO box, and it passed. You could't even launch the test if you had the expander drive attached.
I was afraid to try a 3rd drive from Amazon because I didn't know if they would process another RMA if the 3rd one failed as well, so I did a refund instead. Since TIVO tech support was so adamant that the TIVO box itself was good, I decided to buy a 3rd expander drive from Best Buy. This one worked properly (recognized the drive and showed that the HD recording capacity had increased from around 20 hours to 93 hours) BUT note the following:
(1) It did not go to the configuration screen on its own as the instruction manual had stated. Instead, it booted up a normal. I went into the messages and setup menu and had to start the setup myself, which re-starts everything again. ALSO (2): The drive is now making a loud, high-pitched noise (intermittent, not there all of the time). I don't know if this is normal operation or not. I doubt it because you can hear it from the other side of the room, even with surround-sound audio playing. I also had one freeze-up and lost all control of the TIVO (had to pull the power and set up again).
I cannot recommend this product. Again, AMAZON has been GREAT!
Customer Review: An easy expansion to my DVR (unless you have Time Warner Cable)
Summary: 5 Stars
UPDATE 5/19/2010 -
I have Time Warner Cable. They just changed their software (Navigator), and prior to the software change, I was perfectly happy (See "Previous review" which follows).
This external disk does NOT work with Time Warner Cable anymore. This has been confirmed by a Time Warner Technician who visited my home this morning.
This solely a Time Warner Cable software problem, not a problem with the disk per se.
If Time Warner Cable fixes their new software to work with an external disk, I will update this post.
Previous review:
I have owned this for about 9 months now, and am extremely happy with it (that is to say that I have had 0 problems with it, it just sits there and works).
I am using it on Time Warner Cable's Scientific Atlanta 8300 HDC DVR.
The cable that came with it was the correct one for my DVR.
Installation was easy. Unplug the DVR, attach the cable to the DVR and Drive, plugin/power up the drive, plugin the DVR, and follow the instructions when they show up on the TV (drive needs to be formatted).
Voila, about 5 times as much memory. The new problem is that it takes a while to scroll throught all of the recordings to find the one you want to watch.
My only real complaint is that you can't move the drive to a different DVR. If you do, the new DVR will not recognize it and ask if you want to install/reformat it.
Also, you will lose most or all of your recordings if you reboot your DVR w/o the drive once it has been in use.
Evidently, (at least with Time Warner Cable's DVR) the recordings are split between the DVR and the Drive so that neither is whole. This is not the drive's fault, so I can't detract from the drive review.
Customer Review: Trying again
Summary: 4 Stars
I hooked up the unit as per the directions and started the process (even checked my Tivo's firmware). Upon the first start it it said that the unit was not setup to work with my Tivo and wanted to know if I wanted it to do so. I said yes and we were off. After the restart it asked me the same thing again, so I said sure if you want to redo that, go ahead. After another restart it wanted to do it a third time it was having so much fun, then my Tivo Green Screened and said it needed 3 hours to fix itself. Thankfully it was more like 15 min. During most of this time I was waiting for someone at Tivo to pick up my call. When they finally did I told them everything I just told you and they said it sounded like a hard-drive issue, but then said that from their end they could see that my Tivo and hard drive were "married" and me with no cake. Sadly my Tivo was stuck on the "Only a few more min..." screen for over an hour so I had to reset and then we could have started this whole fun time over again, but alas I contacted Amazon and we are going to try a different one, hoping that maybe, just maybe I received some sort of fluke.
I'll let you know how that one works out when we try and get my Tivo married for real. I don't think this one counts, there didn't seem to be any consummation.
*** Called Amazon and they replaced super fast, free ship and everything. I pluged the new one in as per instructions and... amazing, all works wonderful. 4 stars for WD nt getting it 100% the first time, quality control shouldn't be so lacking in a company that has such a good rep. Very hapy now though.
Customer Review: I cannot get this to work with my Scientific Atlanta 8300HD
Summary: 3 Stars
I know these things can be dicey with all the different brands of hard drives and dvrs. However, I purchased this with confidence because the product description specifically said, "Designed for use with Scientific Atlanta 8300 series eSATA-enabled DVRs".
I have a Scientific Atlanta 8300HD dvr and I plugged this drive in and... nothing.. No error message, no extra space was given to me, nothing. The troubleshooting section of the manual walked me through exactly the correct sequence in which to unplug, unpower, plug, and repower the dvr and hard drive in this event, alas I still get nothing after several attempts.
I don't know whether I got a bad one, or whether my dvr is an old one. I even heard rumors about the cable not working so good.
Other customer reviews report this working fine with their TIVOs, but as of the time of this writing I can't find a customer review from someone who has a 8300HD.
SO...if YOU have an 8300HD, I would recommend waiting until a few reviews pop up confirming that it indeed does work with the 8300HD before purchasing; or at least be very careful unboxing it in anticipation of having to rebox and return it.
Just though I'd report my experience, hopefully for the benefit of others. If you have an 8300 or 8300HD and found that this drive does work for you, please post a review to let us all know!