eSata drive won't work after being repaired

[venuslight]

I've got a Cavalry eSata drive that I have used successfully with my HR20-700 for nearly a year.

One day, the fan started making an awful noise. Since it was still under warranty, I sent it off to Cavalry with the express instructions that I wanted to keep the internal drive and to just either replace the enclosure or fix the fan.

The drive came back in a different enclosure (I know this because the new enclosure doesn't have a fan). I plugged it into my HR20 and it refuses to recognize it. I have tried at least a half dozen times and it never works.

Curious as to whether it was the same internal drive or a new one, I plugged it into to my XP box. It recognized it as an external drive, but didn't give it a letter or anything. When I went into Disk Management, it appeared that there were 3 partitions on the drive - which is what the HR20 does, right?

But, I am still unable to get it recognized on the DVR. I'm almost to the point where I would be fine with wiping the drive just to get my 750gb of storage back.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

As always, thanks in advance.

[Davenlr]

Western Digital has an enclose that doesnt power up the drive until it gets a "request" from the PC...green and all that.

Plug the drive in with a dvr powered off and unplugged. If you dont hear it spin up, youll have to put the drive an a non-green case, one that powers up the drive as soon as you plug it in, and doesnt ever power it down.

[venuslight]

Western Digital has an enclose that doesnt power up the drive until it gets a "request" from the PC...green and all that.

Plug the drive in with a dvr powered off and unplugged. If you dont hear it spin up, youll have to put the drive an a non-green case, one that powers up the drive as soon as you plug it in, and doesnt ever power it down.

The drive powers up even when the DVR is turned off or it isn't connected. I can hear the drive spinning.

[Clemsole]

Bad repair job.

[venuslight]

Bad repair job.

I'm not sure how it can be a bad repair job. The actual drive worked fine before I sent it in, and it's in a new enclosure now.

Any other thoughts?

[Richierich]

I have copied two posters comments on how they get their DVR to RECOGNIZE THEIR EXTERNAL DRIVE & RECORDINGS.

If for whatever reason your DVR will not recognize your drive then you have these TWO OPTIONS AVAILABLE to you:

I learned that I could not reset the receiver without losing everything on the external drive.

I experimented a great deal and this is what I came up with:

1) Do a graceful shutdown of the receiver.
2) Before you plug the power cord back in, turn off the external drive.
3) Plug the power cord in and let the receiver restart. When it is done you will have the contents of your internal drive available.
4) Do another graceful shutdown of your receiver.
5) Before you plug in the power cord into the receiver, turn on the external hard drive.
6) Plug in the power cord and let the receiver restart. When it is done you will have all of the contents of your external drive just as they were before the first restart.

This is a bit cumbersome, but I do not need to do a restart that often, but I know that sooner or later I will have to do one. I do not want to lose the contents of a 1tb hard drive and now I can record with confidence that I will find my recordings and settings after a restart.

I haven’t figured out why this happens yet. If you try a restart and leave your external drive connected, you will see the record light come on as it reformats your external drive. It can’t really be a reformat, because it happens too fast, but the contents of the drive are no longer available. It does not do that after a restart from the internal drive which is what should happen. It knows enough to see the data on the external drive and goes there. Maybe there is a timing issue?

ANOTHER METHOD FOR FORCING THE DVR TO RECOGNIZE THE EXTERNAL DRIVE
1. Turn everything off and unplug both power cords. Wait 4-5 minutes.
2. Unplug the eSata connector from the DVR (not the drive).
3. Turn the drive on and let it spin up (1 minute, but Blue LED will still be off)
4. Plug the eSata connector and power cord into the DVR.
5. As soon as the drive's blue led comes on (30 seconds), unplug both the power cord and the eSata connector from the DVR.
6. Almost as quickly as you unplugged the DVR, plug the eSata connector back in quickly followed by the Power Cord (luckily the eSata connector is next to the Power cord connecter on the DVR).

I’ve had to do this a dozen times now (every 3-4 days and the lockups are always due to the back-skip button) and this process hasn’t failed once.

[schneid]

I went through three in six weeks until I realized that bad the ones were replaced with whatever junk they have laying around in Simi Valley. The last one was in a case with the previous 75omb sticker taped over with a 1gb one. Even the "void if removed" sticker was gone.

I gave up and went to an Antec MX-1. Cavalry was just another $240 spent at the school of hard knocks.

[venuslight]

Richie,

Thanks for the suggestions. Unfortunately, neither approach worked and the wife is getting tired of watching me power-cycle the DVR.


Any other thoughts? If I could somehow wipe the drive on a PC, do you think that might increase the chances that I could get the DVR to see it/format it?

[l8er]

Your best bet is probably to scrap the Cavalry drive and move on to another brand that's known to work (eg. Western Digital). DVR will work better and the little lady will be pleased as punch. :eek2:

[schneid]

The companies making the enclosures are buying drives from the same manufacturers so I doubt it is the drive. I bet if you pulled you drive and put it in an MX-1 it will be okay. Cavalry most likely has bad boards with worse quality control. As stated above, I know they replace defective returns with parts from other used drives. I think the drives they sell through Buy.com are all used drives as they are shipped from Simi Valley where Cavalry RMAs are sent. The brown cardboard boxes, xeroxed instructions, and rubber-banded cables are a clue too.