I've recently encountered a problem with my DVR not detecting my external HD (WD MyBook Essential Home 1 TB).

I had the two working fine, and then I think there was an update, which rebooted the DVR. Since then, i've lost my recording on the external drive (just disappeared one day), and now, the DVR won't detect the drive.

I've hooked it up to my PC, and even formatted the drive, but still no luck. When the DVR turns on, I see the HD light turn on, but no HD activity, it keeps going back to the internal drive.

I'm not sure what to do at this point and have tried countless reboots, and even another DVR in the house with the same results. The only thing I can think of is a bad eSata cable, but the drive does turn on after about 30 seconds when connected to the DVR, so i'm not sure.

I have a similar problem. I have an HR-20 and I have tried two different Hd/enclosure combinations with no success. First I bought a WD hard drive and a generic USB/SATA enclosure and that didn't work. I went to the DBSTalk forum and they recommended the Antec enclosure, so I bought one of those and a different WD HDD. The HR-20 won't recognize either combination. I took the generic enclosure and hooked it up USB to my PC and I was able to format and use it, so the hardware is working. Any help appreciated.

Thanks,

Al

I actually got it working last night, here's what i did:

1. Plugged in both the DVR and HD and let it run for about 5 minutes.
2. Unplugged the DVR power cord, and the eSata cable from the DVR
3. Plugged the eSata cable back in almost immediately followed by the power cord.

Then it recognized the hard drive at startup, and reformatted the drive (i had wiped it). Its been working fine since, i'm wondering if the cable or the DVR is just very sensitive.

Just when i thought it was working, my DVR locked up, and now its not detecting the HD anymore...

diablo900t -- First of all you really need to subscribe to DBSTalk, since these and all DirecTV (and Dish) subjects are well covered there. The extensive thread on eSATA drives is here: http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=66201.

Secondly, you are being too aggressive in your connections. The correct method is to:
1. Unplug your HR2x DVR from the AC power.
2. Plug your external SATA drive, eSATA cable, (unpowered too) into the back of the DVR.
3. Power up the external drive and wait at least a minute to make sure the drive is up to speed and has completed all handshaking with it's controller.
4. After 15 minutes (total) you can plug the HR2x back into the AC power line (it takes that long for the all internal capacitors to completely discharge and all pre-saved information to disappear).

If you don't wait the full 15 minutes in step #4, you could wind up losing all programs stored on both the internal and external drives.

When the DVR powers beck up it should be with the external drive only. Remember that you will have to reset all of your programming (if the drive has never been used with your HR2x).

Another factor is that the WD MyBook and other "xxxxBook" drives (and the FAP) have been flaky with the DirecTV DVRs (and it also varies by model). The combination that most DirecTV uses have is an Antec MX-1 case with a WD10EADS 1TB drive (most DirecTV DVRs cannot support larger than 1.5TB drives). The WD10EADS replaces the older WD10EACS drive which most of us started out with.