[fantinocsny]

Has anyone tried buying a $30 esata external enclosure and a $110 750 gig Sata 3.0 drive? Does it work?

 

[grizzly]

Has anyone tried buying a $30 esata external enclosure and a $110 750 gig Sata 3.0 drive? Does it work?

yes

 

[fantinocsny]

Sounds like the way to go with more than buying a regular one in a store, this way is a lot cheaper isnt it?

 

[schneid]

No one is complaining about this solution:

Okay, here are some good graphics of the Antec MX-1 for the do-it-yourself-to-do-it-right folks:

http://www.geek.com/antec-mx-1-hard-drive-enclosure/

To go the Antec MX-1 route you need:

A 3 1/2" bare drive of your choice and size (1TB recommended as the price is sweet right now)
An Antec Mx-1 enclosure (comes with an adequate eSATA cable and power supply)
A small screwdriver

You remove one screw anchoring the top. Slide off the top. Engage the drive to the board. It can only go in one way. Secure it with the supplied screws. Slide the top back on. Replace the anchor screw. Done. Follow the instructions here to power up and take control of your HRX-XXX.

WD 1TB GP, WD10EACS, drives at these sites:

http://www.google.com/products/catal...sult&scoring=p

http://www.nextag.com/Western-Digita...94/prices-html

Amazon still has the MX-1 for $36.48.

 

[bmacaluso]

I've had the antec MX-1 and a WD 1TB drive working for about 6 months now. Not a single problem. I would recommend this setup very highly.

 

[billgrayny]

I've been using the Antec enclosure and a 1TB from Hitachi for quite some time - no problems.

 

[SFNSXguy]

I have a HR20-700 with an external eSATA drive (Antec MX-1 enclosure with a 750 gig Segate ST3750640AS Barracuda drive). This combination has worked flawlessly since June of '07. The MX-1 is virtually silent and its built-in fan keeps the drive happy.

 

[slumkid]

MX-1 works great. I am using it on my HR20 with a Seagate drive. You might also want to consider other enclosures. I looked for an alternative to the MX-1 for my computer backup drive because the MX-1 doesn't support SATA II (that doesn't seem to relevant for the DTV DVRs).
I came up with the Thermaltake MAX4 . Looks great, works great, and was really easy to assemble. It is actively cooled, like the MX-1
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817145029

 

[schneid]

MX-1 works great. I am using it on my HR20 with a Seagate drive. You might also want to consider other enclosures. I looked for an alternative to the MX-1 for my computer backup drive because the MX-1 doesn't support SATA II (that doesn't seem to relevant for the DTV DVRs).
I came up with the Thermaltake MAX4 . Looks great, works great, and was really easy to assemble. It is actively cooled, like the MX-1
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817145029

Who says it won't support SATA II although Wikipedia says that term is a misnomer:

"SATA II Misnomer

The 3.0 Gbit/s specification has been widely referred to as "Serial ATA II" ("SATA II" or "SATA2"), contrary to the wishes of the Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO) which defines the standard. SATA II was originally the name of a committee defining updated SATA standards, of which the 3 Gbit/s standard was just one. However since it was among the most prominent features defined by the former SATA II committee, the name SATA II became synonymous with the 3 Gbit/s standard, so the group has since changed names to the Serial ATA International Organization, or SATA-IO, to avoid further confusion."

The Antec site says the enclosure transfers at 3gbs:

"Dual output interface - USB2.0 and eSATA (external Serial ATA) allows you to transfer data up to 480Mbps or 3Gbps respectively."

It appears a 3gbs transfer rate makes it SATA II.

 

[Sirshagg]

Amazon still has the MX-1 for $36.48.

Darn you!!! :lol:
Just bought another.

 

[Reliant]

and it seems the 32mb cache hard drive, preformed better on the 10 sec rewind and just overall video playback. Ill always put 32mb cache drives in my dvrs. I also have the am21 connected to the hr21-700 and replaced the usb cable that came with the am21 with this http://www.cyberguys.com/templates/SearchDetail.asp?productID=10027&ta=prod_info because of poor playback quality, and when viewing recorded OTA shows the playback improved, must be cause its a shorter higher quality cable, and its cheap to!! Im happy

Ok, I'm new to the forum, new to HD, not new to DVR (long time DTivo), not new to hi-tech (decades in IT), so that's where I'm coming from -- and I've been scouring the forum for a while now looking for configurations that people are using to extend their HD DVRs, and it just seems to me to make sense to use a fast rotational hard drive and one with a large buffer cache, as opposed to some of the drives that I've seen recommended that use slow or variable rotational speed and little or no on-board buffer cache. All of that would make good sense with the possible exception of an application that is specifically written to avoid hardware cache and utilize its own memory cache (e.g., an OLTP database application), so unless somebody can tell me that DirecTV's DVR application does such a thing, I would think that this type of disk would help to validate atigod's report of good performance with his Seagate disk. Can anybody from the WD GP side of the story have something different to tell me? This forum is great, I appreciate all the open input. Like I said, I'm new here.

Thanks,
Scott

 

[Mike Bertelson]

Has anyone tried buying a $30 esata external enclosure and a $110 750 gig Sata 3.0 drive? Does it work?

I put my 750GB drive in an Antec MX-1 enclosure and it works flawlessly on my HR21-100.

It originally was the Seagate FreeAgent Pro 750GB. I had to remove the drive and put into another enclosure. The FAPs seem to have a problem with the HR21's.

Once it was in the MX-1 it had no problems.

Mike

 

[Reliant]

Everyone here, keeps talking about MX1, cavalry, FAP, enclosures. I know there proven to work, and thats why everyone here recommends them. but has anyone tried something new, tried to find a better external drive setup. I treat this dvr for what it is, a set top box running linux, and really seeing if the Directv software utilizes the 32 mb buffer, the proof is in the playback. the faster seagate with 7200 rpms and 32 mb buffer for me really had a performance increase on video playback. Im after the highest quality performance and cooling out of this dvr, and im very happy so far

From what I've been reading, some people have experienced some problems trying to use the FAP drives on their DVRs, and at first glance I would guess that's a misapplication of the type of drive. Everybody is looking for the cheapest solution rather than the best, most practical solution. Not that I blame them, budget is certainly a factor for me, too, or I would run right out and buy a screamin' fast 2 TB, RAID 10 HP solution immediately with 3-year on-site support, and never look back. But I haven't done that... In any event, the proper application of good quality hardware (especially when it comes with a decent warranty) goes a long way. The 7200 rpm Seagate with the 32 mb cache and the 5-year warranty looks like a good drive to me, and in a different performance class than the GreenPower drives being recommended by some. Not that I have anything against cool and quiet, but I guess my question is, if you prefer Western Digital to Seagate, the Caviar series of SATA drives has a really nice comparable drive in terms of performance metrics, but it's the WD Caviar Black (http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=488#jump11), not the Green: 7200 rpm, 32 mb cache, 5-year warranty, and it's at a price point that's very comparable to the Seagate Barracuda. For my money, I prefer Seagate, but my point is that you can find the higher performance drives in WD, it's just not where people have been going in the DVR space -- not even WeaKnees -- and I'm not quite sure why not. The application -- streaming video & audio -- seems ideally suited to a high capacity drive with as large an on-board cache as you can afford to squeeze in there (the buffer should even out whatever blips you run into, in theory, maybe, I guess...). Will somebody help me out here?

Thanks,
Scott

 

[seanmcgpa]

Does anyone have suggestions for a 2 TB setup? Looking for a quiet eSATA case that will hold 2 TB drives for my new HR21. Thanks.