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: Lasted 45 days
Summary: 2 Stars
I bought the external HD and it worked great, for about a month and a half. Then one day the Tivo DVR started acting strangely. Losing signal, randomly rebooting, hanging. I called Tivo, who said the external hard drive might be bad. Try unplugging it, and if there are no more problems, the external drive was bad. But, I'll lose all my recordings. I had no choice, as the DVR was unusable at that point. I unplugged it, restarted the DVR and haven't had any problems with it since. Yes, I lost my recordings. First, I was ticked that Tivo has such a bad design that it has to dump everything just because you disconnect your external drive. Why can't they design the software to put some programs on the main drive so you'd lose only the ones that were on the external drive? Second, I was very disappointed in the life span of the external drive. It should have lasted years, not weeks. BTW, I called Amazon (good luck finding their customer support number), and they authorized an RMA and I got my money back -- thanks Amazon. I'm hesitant to order another one for fear of running into the same problem. My wife was not happy about losing all her Biggest Loser episodes. I don't wanna go thru that again!Customer Review: Two Years Old and Running Strong - TiVO HD
Summary: 5 Stars
The critical question everyone should have, will this drive last? This exact model has been connected to my TiVO HD now for 2 years with absolutely no failure. Because a TiVO stripes the data across both the internal and external drive, any failure of either drive will cause all your recorded shows to be lost. To me, this is absolutely a no brainer consideration - it's television, it's not irreplaceable family memories. The loss would somewhat hurt, but dang you can go to Hulu and watch almost everything you've recorded.
Installation on a TiVO HD couldn't be easier. Turn off your TiVO, plug it in, turn on your TiVO. Follow some instructions on the screen and you are finished.
The added space is incredible. That original TiVO HD only had 40 hours of HD programing. I filled that up within the first week of use. This adds 60 hours of HD, for whopping total of 100 hours. I've never ever filled this TiVO up. There's almost inifinte standard def recording with this addition.
To me, this is a perfect addition to a TiVO series 3 or HD. There's an orange light on the front of this drive. Just point it to the back of your television, or masking tape over it.
Customer Review: Works perfectly
Summary: 5 Stars
My plan was to eventually get this expander all along. I have always been a fan of Tivo, and when the right deal came my way I got the new Dual tuner HD Tivo that only recorded 20 hrs in HD. Tivo at the time was selling a larger Tivo with I believe 40 hrs recording in HD for $400-$500. 20 Hours is definitely not enough in my house, and if you are considering this, it's probably not enough in your house either.
At the moment they are selling a beast with 150 hrs in HD recording for $600!
Bottom line is that this expander worked perfectly right away. Setup to the device is as easy as plugging it in. Then setting up the Tivo to work with it was quite simple as well. Now I can record 86 hours in HD which for us is way more than enough. We went on a 2 week vacation and still had room to spare when we got back.
In my opinion it is much more economical to buy the standard 20hour HD Tivo and just get this expander to go with it. 86 full HD hours is huge and in just standard digital I think it's in the 500+ hour range. But if you are like me, if it's not in HD now, I don't watch it.
Definitely worth buying.
Customer Review: Bigger is better!
Summary: 5 Stars
We have the Scientific Atlantic HD8300 DVR through Cablevision. When recording in HD, it holds a measely 20 hours of recording. Not much when you have a family of four recording things right and left! To keep peace in the kingdom, I gave this DVR Expander to my husband for his birthday, which added an addtional 60 hours of HD recording time! Yeah! Follow the instructions and set up is no problem. It works seemlessly with the DVR and all functions on the remote work just fine. Prior to purchasing, I did contact Western Digital because I had concerns about power outages. Many reviews and the instructions state that the Expander must remain powered at all times and that not doing so could risk losing recorded programs. We live in the north east and are subject to storm related power outages. The tech support person said that so long as the DVR and the Expander are powering back up at the same time, there should not be an issue and you should not lose any recordings. We'll see. Haven't encountered that problem yet. The drive does get a bit warm, so make sure all vents are in open air. Now if the price would just come down like regular hard drives...Customer Review: Inexpensive but makeshift solution.
Summary: 2 Stars
Use of a combined TiVo and My DVR Expander is relatively inexpensive, but it's somewhat of a makeshift solution. It's more complex and subject to pitfalls than simply plugging in an external hard drive. You can learn about the pro's and con's by going to the TiVo Community Forum and searching under "My DVR Expander."
My first DVR Expander failed after six weeks, and it took the better part of a weekend to get the TiVo to work with the replacement DVR Expander and vice-versa. Unfortunately, replacing or permanently removing a DVR Expander destroys all previously-recorded programs on both the TiVo and the DVR Expander.
Probably, the best solution is to pay the increased price of a TiVo with a larger recording capacity in the first place.
For the more technically savvy, the TiVo's internal hard drive can be upgraded in size, which increases the recording capacity without the pitfalls of using a My DVR Expander. There are a couple of online companies that offer upgrade kits, or will do it for you. Also, be aware that upgrading the hard drive will void the TiVo's one-year warranty, but it won't affect your TiVo subscription service.