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HR21 swapped, not reading eSata drive

835 Views 10 Replies 6 Participants Last post by  Radioactive_Toy
Hey,

I just had my HR21-100 swapped out due to some technically issues with the unit. I now have a HR21-200 installed and I am not able to get my external drive to read on the new unit. I got the new box installed and working, recorded some content to test, powered off everything and removed power cables, connected the eSATA drive, powered the drive on and plugged power back into the HR21, turned on the power and I am still getting the recoded content off the internal drive from the HR21.
The drive was working wonderfully on the HR21-100 when it was installed a few weeks ago and seemed to be using the full amount of the drive setup, 2 750GB WD drives in a Sans Digital RAID enclosure. I wouldnt think there is much difference between the 100 and 200 models to cause the drive not to read. Or is it possible i need to format the drives again to get them to read on the new 200?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions..
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You cannot swap external drives between units. Once used, it is formatted/married to that specific DVR.
It is my understanding that the new HR will not recognize the used drive and format it accordingly, other wise hook it up to your PC and reformat it.
It should work.. however, any recordings on it will be useless.. series links and settings should work..
houskamp said:
It should work.. however, any recordings on it will be useless.. series links and settings should work..
The settings or anything else when it was connected to the other HR21 are not on the drive anymore either, its just not reading it. I think the above post was correct that the drive was married to the other unit and would have to be formatted to work on the new unit, which is a pain, but I can see how that goes with an unsupported feature...
spartanstew said:
You cannot swap external drives between units. Once used, it is formatted/married to that specific DVR.
This is a big problem for those that have to do what the OP had to do. DirecTV needs to come up with a method that would allow an eSATA drive to be remarried to a new unit. Because of copyright issues this should be out of the user's hands.
I would agree with that... But with the eSATA still being an unsupported feature, and from what I understand D* still working on what they want to do with it, it should only be a matter of time before swapping is possible. I think they have come a long way with getting it to work to start with...
Radioactive_Toy said:
The settings or anything else when it was connected to the other HR21 are not on the drive anymore either, its just not reading it. I think the above post was correct that the drive was married to the other unit and would have to be formatted to work on the new unit, which is a pain, but I can see how that goes with an unsupported feature...
I've moved drives before.. sounds like something strange happened.. possibly when the old one was dieing..
houskamp said:
I've moved drives before.. sounds like something strange happened.. possibly when the old one was dieing..
Everything I have read, or seen posted says, the drive will be reformatted when moved from HR2x to a different HR2x.
Ok, I just tried to reformat the external drive and i still cant seem to get it to read... Is there a specific format I need to be using when i reformat the drive? I use a Mac so I had the OS options and MS-Dos, which i used, but its still not seeming to work...
Nevermind!!! I got it working on my own. The San Digital RAID i have has an option to change the RAID Setup from 0 to 1, so i changed it, left it for a few mins, set it back to 0, plugged everything in and VIOLA! So, im a happy camper again, just wish i could have kept my recordings, but ah well.. :)
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