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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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Western Digital My DVR Expander 500 GB eSATA External Hard Drive
Customer Review: Works well
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought one of these in September 2009. Very simple to hook up, works fantastic. It's made my extensive time-shifting a breeze. In fact, I've gotten so used to it hooked up to my Comcast Scientific Atlanta 8300 HD-DVR, that I forget it is there. Which is a bad thing. Last night I had a problem with another device in my media room and I had to access the connections on the back of my TV. I had put the Expander behind my TV and forgotten it. Well, I moved my TV and caused the Expander to drop to the floor 3 feet below. I was horrified at my idiotic move, but relieved that it appeared to have not been damaged. Tonight my wife and I sat down to watch some DVRed programs. I could not access anything! I freaked out a bit. After finding the instruction booklet, I followed the disconnect instructions, and then the connection instructions. After the (seemingly endless) DVR reboot process, the DVR recognized the Expander and all our programs were back. I was really impressed that this unit recovered from my stupid mistake. I felt the need to post a review.Customer Review: Excellent and very quiet. UPDATE: NOT!
Summary: 2 Stars
After a couple of reboots of the TiVo HD, the expander is up and running which adds up to 60 hours of HD. When I record a one hour HD TV Show, it only takes 1% of the total space according to the show info. The unit is very quiet, you will not be able to hear it from your couch. I noticed however that it feels a little warm so do not put this on top of your TiVo or Xbox...lol. It was the only option to me because I have TiVo HD and not series 3. I hope TiVo and WD release a 1TB drive later. Overall, it is a good price for what you get. One thing I did not like however was that you only get one year warranty.
UPDATE: Unit went bad yesterday, 8 months after my original review. The TiVo was rebooting in an infinite loop. I disconnected it and it fixed the problem. Lost all my shows though :(. Luckily, I am still under warranty. I will try to get in touch with customer to see how that goes. I tried to run Data LifeGuard which is a hard drive check utility for WD drives but it would never finished. It would just get stucked.
Customer Review: ReviewToday
Summary: 4 Stars
Probably through no fault of Western Digital, makers of this unit, I had to try a couple of re-starts before the unit appeared as a storage extension to my DVR, a Scientific Atlanta HD8300. The sequence of events necessary to make this Expander work with the DVR were written into the guide, but it took those re-starts/re-tries to finally hit the magic combination.
I was always having to erase recorded TV shows before watching them to make room for new recorded shows prior to this unit being installed, commonly running at 93 to 98% full. Now I am recording shows more easily, without deleting shows so quickly, and only running at about 30% capacity. I think this was a GREAT investment.
Based on previous reviews, it wasn't clear if my adding the Expander to my DVR would result in losing my recordings I had so far (though it seemed that the issue was with TiVOs). I will report that after successfully adding the Expander on my Scientific Atlanta DVR, old recordings were still there and fully viewable.
Customer Review: Great gadget!
Summary: 5 Stars
Western Digital WDG1S5000VN 500GB My DVR Expander eSATA
Greatest piece of hardware I have ever purchased. I was forever getting "not enough space" warnings when trying to record HD programs. That is now gone. I didn't even need a "geek" to install it for me. Anyone with a Tivo HD DVR should make this a must have! You also have much more time to retrieve programs that you screwed-up and deleted. Following added about 4 months after above.
Whoops...I bought it in September, and it died on December 21...So far it looks like I will get a replacement at no charge, but that seems to up to the discretion of Western Digital who charges your credit card until they receive your defective drive and decide that indeed it is no good?
I did receive a replacement within 3 days, and everything is working fine, just like described above. The only thing it cost me was 5 bucks to send the old one back.
Customer Review: Works like a champ
Summary: 5 Stars
Mine showed up yesterday and I hooked it up with no problems at all. I shut down my Tivo, as instructed, then hooked up the drive and power and restarted the Tivo. The only annoying part of this is that the Tivo will request to restart itself again, a good 5 minute process, but once this is done, the drive is good to go.
I'm now set with over 80 hours of HD recording and tons of digital hours. This is a very good buy for this storage device and hooks up to the Tivo 3 effortlessly.
One word of caution, that is not disclosed in the product description. *This drive is not portable.* Once it is paired with your Tivo 3, it needs to stay there. Removing it will erase all of your recordings and you'll have to either re-pair it, or move it to another Tivo 3. This obviously has something to do with the paranoia over DRM as well as the way Tivo breaks up the recording.
Other than that one warning, I'd say this product is highly recommended! Good price, easy installation.