I have a Scientific Atlanta 8300HD PVR and Rogers is my digital cable service provider. I bought a 500GB Western Digital external hard drive and a Vantec Nexstar 3 enclosure to have more than the 160GB hard drive the PVR came with. Problem is that I am at 90something% used capacity so I need more space.

I wrote about this at another forum and the result seemed to be cloning from the external hard drive to another external hard drive with a larger memory. I found it complicated to do so myself and don't want to spend $150 as I was told it would cost, for the cloning alone.

I then made a suggestion. I don't have a laptop so I thought, what if I bought a laptop with a, let's say, a 320GB hard drive. I felt I could tape shows from the connected TV cable from my Sony LCD TV to my laptop. I knew I would need a Hauppauge software tv tuner or the equivalent. Then I felt I could watch back the shows on my TV or I could take the laptop and watch it downstairs. I even felt I could buy an external hard drive that connects to the laptop, to have backup for the internal drive of the laptop plus more memory. It seemed like a good idea. Anyhow, someone at the forum wrote that a laptop can't act as an external hard drive for my TV and that I should write to this forum and ask about a HTPC instead. Please help. I am unsure what to do. Thanks.

Elaine, Your PVR should have an eSATA port on the back. Just plug in your external drive to it, and it should increase your overall PVR memory size. Laptop will not work, unless you set it up to be a HTPC. See the HTPC forums.