DBSTalk Forum banner

eSATA - DIRECTV recommended list

576K views 4K replies 404 participants last post by  mjfoxtrot 
#1 ·
Can I increase the recording capacity of my DVR?

For folks that are adding HDD capacity to their receiverss, DIRECTV has added the following FAQ to their web page:

DIRECTV.com
Yes, you can increase the recording capacity of your DVR or HD DVR simply by connecting an external hard drive with greater storage than the receiver's internal hard drive.

First, make sure you have a compatible receiver. Check the model number inside the small door located on bottom right corner of the front of the receiver. The model number should read either R22 (DIRECTV Plus® DVR) or HR20 or above (DIRECTV Plus® HD DVR).

You'll need an external hard drive that uses an eSATA connection. The following hard drive models are recommended:

  • Western Digital 500GB (model WDG1S5000)
  • Seagate 500GB (model ST30500SCA109-RK)
  • Western Digital 1TB (model WDG1S10000)
  • [STRIKE]Seagate 1TB (model ST31000SCA109-RK)[/STRIKE]

Follow these steps to connect the external hard drive:

  1. Turn off your receiver by unplugging the power cord. (Do not rely on the power button.)
  2. Look for the port on the back of your receiver labeled SATA.
  3. Connect the eSATA hard drive with an eSATA cable. Make sure the cable is firmly connected on both ends.
  4. Turn on the eSATA hard drive and give it several seconds to spin up to speed.
  5. Plug in the power chord of your receiver.

When your receiver reboots, it will automatically see the newly-connected hard drive. The hard drive inside your receiver will be disabled.

You now have expanded recording capacity. With a 1TB hard drive, you can record up to 200 hours of HD programming.

Please note: We offer this tip because we want to help you get the most out of your DIRECTV experience. It is recommended for advanced users who are comfortable working with electronic hardware. This modification of your DIRECTV system is not officially supported by DIRECTV.
 
#3,102 ·
Would this 4TB Seagate drive be fine for an HR34? (The drive inside is actually a ST4000DM000, which is a 5900 RPM, SATA 6Gb/s, 64MB cache) I would take it out and use it in my Rosewill enclosure. I am currently using a 3TB 7200 RPM Seagate drive inside that Rosewill enclosure, so just wondering if this 5900 RPM drive would cause any issues or will be different in any way?

And is it ok to have 2 different external drives associated with one HR34? If I keep swap these 2 drives inside my Rosewill enclosure back and fourth to view certain shows? Would there be any issues?
 
#3,103 ·
xtc said:
Would this 4TB Seagate drive be fine for an HR34? (The drive inside is actually a ST4000DM000, which is a 5900 RPM, SATA 6Gb/s, 64MB cache) I would take it out and use it in my Rosewill enclosure. I am currently using a 3TB 7200 RPM Seagate drive inside that Rosewill enclosure, so just wondering if this 5900 RPM drive would cause any issues or will be different in any way?

And is it ok to have 2 different external drives associated with one HR34? If I keep swap these 2 drives inside my Rosewill enclosure back and fourth to view certain shows? Would there be any issues?
You're sure that's a SATA drive in that thing? It has USB plastered all over the link you posted. You can swap externals back and forth without any problems.

Rich
 
#3,104 ·
xtc said:
Would this 4TB Seagate drive be fine for an HR34? (The drive inside is actually a ST4000DM000, which is a 5900 RPM, SATA 6Gb/s, 64MB cache) I would take it out and use it in my Rosewill enclosure. I am currently using a 3TB 7200 RPM Seagate drive inside that Rosewill enclosure, so just wondering if this 5900 RPM drive would cause any issues or will be different in any way?

And is it ok to have 2 different external drives associated with one HR34? If I keep swap these 2 drives inside my Rosewill enclosure back and fourth to view certain shows? Would there be any issues?
I have one of those Seagates on my Xbox One, it's not eSATA so it won't work.
 
#3,105 ·
#3,106 ·
Rich said:
You're sure that's a SATA drive in that thing?
All, "common" hard rives have a SATA interface.
 
#3,107 ·
RunnerFL said:
I have one of those Seagates on my Xbox One, it's not eSATA so it won't work.
He is referring to removing the SATA drive to put it in a Rosewell enclosure that has supposedly e-SATA. I don't se nothing wrong with this….
 
#3,110 ·
Daybreak said:
Howdy,
New Genie HR44-500 using a WD 4TB Purple drive internal without issue. (initialized on Win 7 PC prior to use)
HR24-100 with Antec MX-1 with a 1TB WD AV-GP drive circa 2010 (used on HR20 before this)
All drives and DVR's working good here. :)
Welcome to the forum. Please let us know if any issues arise.

Rich
 
#3,111 ·
Hi All,
I've googled around and haven't really found anything. Found some reports early on in this thread that sounded similar to my problem ,but that was 5 years ago so not sure how to react to that.

Here's my saga-- any pointers greatly appreciated.

I've been using my trusty HR20-700 for just over 7 years. I figured the HDD was due to go soon and I've been having problems keeping up with the shows. So I went out and bought a Fantom GF3B2000EU for about $100 in hopes of upping to a 2TB drive that wasn't 7 years old.

It wen tin fine and rebooted. I reset my season passes. The video was good, but occasionally while watching it seemed to stop listening to the remote control. I'd have to wait 5-10s for the remote to continue working. Everything else was fine. After doing research I learned I should have perhaps gotten one with 64MB cache or possibly an AV drive. Finally I decided to buy a WD20EURS which seemed to be recommended and I picked one up for $80. I decided to void the warranty on the FD by removing the original HDD (Hitachi it turned out) and putting the new WD AV-GP drive in its place.

The first reboot took *forever* (30-40minutes) and it was hung on self-check. Each reboot after also took exceeding long at self-check.

Viewing video had a pronounced stutter every 3-5s and one show failed to record properly. It was in the now playing as recording, but when you would try to play it would immediately pop ou. It was still recording and when I went to live it looked like everything was fine. But when I tried to skip to start of show, it jumped back to 8AM (this was like 8:30pm) and it had no content. After invoking double play I was able to get back to the live show, but could never rewind to the start. After show was done, I rebooted machine and after reboot it was no longer in my play list.

I stopped using the disk after this and pulled it out and mounted it in a PC and tried running spinrite on it. It kept crashing with an unexpected error. I booted into vista and ran data lifeguard tools from wd on the drive and it gave me a test failed on short test.

Even though I had bought the drive new, it only had 145 days left on the warranty, but I ordered an RMA which arrived today-- WD20EURX. This one is looking like it is behaving just like the other.

Where do I go from here? Advice? Now I'm questioning if mounting it in the FD enclosure is messing up the WD drives, but I would presume it's only supplying power and a pass-through from the Esata to sata port. Anyway, I'm extremely frustrated and would appreciate any pointers.
 
#3,114 ·
cstelter said:
I stopped using the disk after this and pulled it out and mounted it in a PC and tried running spinrite on it. It kept crashing with an unexpected error. I booted into vista and ran data lifeguard tools from wd on the drive and it gave me a test failed on short test.

Even though I had bought the drive new, it only had 145 days left on the warranty, but I ordered an RMA which arrived today-- WD20EURX. This one is looking like it is behaving just like the other.
If you connect the newest drive to the computer mainboard (not through the Fantom) and it gags in Spinrite as well, you probably have another bad drive.

It would seem extraordinary that the enclosure could damage the drive unless the power supply is marginal and causing the drive to somehow soil itself.
 
#3,115 ·
it would be extraordinaire problem inside of USB HDD enclosure what would physically damage a drive - it's more likely sci-fi scenario, not a real case

try self-bootable CD with MHDD to pull any info about the drive and it's health; hint - pull full SMART and post it here
 
#3,116 ·
cstelter said:
Hi All,
I've googled around and haven't really found anything. Found some reports early on in this thread that sounded similar to my problem ,but that was 5 years ago so not sure how to react to that.

I've been using my trusty HR20-700 for just over 7 years. I figured the HDD was due to go soon and I've been having problems keeping up with the shows. So I went out and bought a Fantom GF3B2000EU for about $100 in hopes of upping to a 2TB drive that wasn't 7 years old.

Finally I decided to buy a WD20EURS which seemed to be recommended and I picked one up for $80.

Where do I go from here? Advice?
What you should have done is come here and just ask the question. No real need to suffer thru pages of posts.

First, we haven't heard much about the Fantom enclosures, but what I've read hasn't been good.

Second, I wouldn't buy an EURS if they were selling them for a buck. We've had far too many complaints about them. (Now several people will pop up and say their EURS is working wonderfully. That's great for them, but I still wouldn't buy one.)

If you really need an enclosure, you might try one of these. We do recommend them. For an HDD I use the EZRX model from WD. I've had no problems with them. Here's a link.

Rich
 
#3,117 ·
cstelter said:
Hi All,
I've googled around and haven't really found anything. Found some reports early on in this thread that sounded similar to my problem ,but that was 5 years ago so not sure how to react to that.
Here's my saga-- any pointers greatly appreciated.
I've been using my trusty HR20-700 for just over 7 years. I figured the HDD was due to go soon and I've been having problems keeping up with the shows. So I went out and bought a Fantom GF3B2000EU for about $100 in hopes of upping to a 2TB drive that wasn't 7 years old.
It wen tin fine and rebooted. I reset my season passes. The video was good, but occasionally while watching it seemed to stop listening to the remote control. I'd have to wait 5-10s for the remote to continue working. Everything else was fine. After doing research I learned I should have perhaps gotten one with 64MB cache or possibly an AV drive.
So the only issue you had with the Fantom was the documented slow remote issue?
How much you want for it?
 
#3,118 ·
A real (new?) question:

I am presuming that a drive taken out of an owned unit cannot be used as an external, that is, without losing the use of all recordings and SLs thereon. Nor can an external be swapped in as an internal without rendering what's on the drive inaccessible? Are these assumptions backed by someone's real experience?
 
#3,119 ·
Laxguy said:
A real (new?) question:

I am presuming that a drive taken out of an owned unit cannot be used as an external, that is, without losing the use of all recordings and SLs thereon. Nor can an external be swapped in as an internal without rendering what's on the drive inaccessible? Are these assumptions backed by someone's real experience?
Confusing question. I can see you struggled with it. Yes, you can remove the internal drive, insert a bigger drive and put the original drive in an external device and use it on the same HR that you recorded the content on. I have done that several times. I have also taken 2TB drives out of TT docks and put them in the HR that it was used on and it played as it did when used externally. I did that because of the difficulty involved in putting a larger drive in a 24-100. I was having problems with the TT dock and just gave up and put the drive inside the owned box. Not a pleasant or easy job, I can tell you that. But no matter what you do, the marriage between HDD and HR cannot be dissolved. In other words, if it was recorded on one HR you can't use that HDD on another HR.

Rich
 
#3,121 ·
Rich said:
Confusing question. I can see you struggled with it. Yes, you can remove the internal drive, insert a bigger drive and put the original drive in an external device and use it on the same HR that you recorded the content on. I have done that several times. I have also taken 2TB drives out of TT docks and put them in the HR that it was used on and it played as it did when used externally. I did that because of the difficulty involved in putting a larger drive in a 24-100. I was having problems with the TT dock and just gave up and put the drive inside the owned box. Not a pleasant or easy job, I can tell you that. But no matter what you do, the marriage between HDD and HR cannot be dissolved. In other words, if it was recorded on one HR you can't use that HDD on another HR
Thanks, but it's not clear from the above that I will retain and be able to access recordings by moving the internal to an external position. (Of course on same box. I am very clear that there's no chance I can access anything on a different IRD.)
 
#3,122 ·
Laxguy said:
Thanks, but it's not clear from the above that I will retain and be able to access recordings by moving the internal to an external position. (Of course on same box. I am very clear that there's no chance I can access anything on a different IRD.)
Yes you can but why on earth would you? Seriously curios why it's even a thought?
 
#3,123 ·
Laxguy said:
A real (new?) question:

I am presuming that a drive taken out of an owned unit cannot be used as an external, that is, without losing the use of all recordings and SLs thereon. Nor can an external be swapped in as an internal without rendering what's on the drive inaccessible? Are these assumptions backed by someone's real experience?
You can move the drives from internal to external and external to internal all day long and not lose content as long as you are using the same DVR each time.
 
#3,124 ·
RunnerFL said:
You can move the drives from internal to external and external to internal all day long and not lose content as long as you are using the same DVR each time.
Thank you.

Why do I want to, Inky? Because I have a lot of shows on the internal that I may not be able to re-download. The internal HD is going bad, so I will replace it with a 2 TB drive. If I am not able to get those shows again, I can just external the wonky internal and hope for the best. At least I know now I'll have a shot at it.
 
#3,126 ·
hdtvluvr said:
How will you boot into the external if the internal is still in place? Won't the DVR boot to it first? Why not copy the programs from the internal to the external before installing it into the DVR?
Apparently not, but I have never had occasion to use an external till now. I am pretty sure I've read that getting it to boot off the external is automatic, just have to make sure it's spun up when you reboot.

Copying would be good, but I have only Macs and am under the impression I need Windows or Linux to do so. If I could use Terminal or an app, that'd be very handy.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top