A newbie with a newbie question, if you will indulge.

I have a Scientific Atlanta 8240 HD DVR through Cox. I want to connect an external SATA drive to this box to increase storage capacity. Depending upon which Cox person I speak with, I either can, can't or can't confirm that I can probably do this.

I've read the 8240 manual, and it says it should work. Cox will confirm that the SATA port is live.

My question to you good people is simple: if you have this model DVR, have you successfully added an SATA external drive, irrespective of your cable company? And, if so, would you mind sharing the name of the drive? I am told (again, by Cox) that Seagate, WesternDigital or Maxtor should work, but they can't really say for sure because they officially don't support external drives.

Any help or comments will be most appreciated.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136073

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371008

Been using these with my 8240 or about a 1 1/2 years.


Drew

I received the Iomega 34508 DVR Expander 1TB yesterday after trying for days to install Seagate Freedom drives I had previously use with DIRECTV HR20-100’s that would not work with my Explorer 8240HDC. From reading this and other threads I was concerned that I may have wasted my money on the IOMEGA drive for all I could find said the IOMEGA drive worked with the Explorer 8300. No mention that it worked with the Explorer 8240HDC. I am using COX in Oklahoma Ciity.

I followed instructions and installed the IOMEGA. Instructions did not mention that the Explorer would come up saying Network not found and a one would appear on the front of the Explorer. It did say that I should hit the info button when I saw the mail indicator on the front panel flashing. This took about 15 minutes to happen. The Explorer came up after several minutes and asked to format the IOMEGA drive by pressing the yellow "A" button on the remote. Instructions said that the Explorer would tell me when formatting was complete. I never saw this message and after waiting for the message for an hour plus I displayed amount of disk space available and it had gone from 40 percent to 2 per cent. This is the only indication that I have that the Explorer was using the IOMEGA drive.

I like the small size of the IOMEGA drive and it came with a eSATA cable that I used in connecting to the Explorer 8240HDC. I do not know how will the IOMEGA is working for I will have to wait several days to see recorded material that may have been placed on the IOMEGA drive.

I have now ordered a second IOMEGA 34508 drive for my other Explorer 8240HDC and thought the price for the IOMEGA was very reasonable for 1TB of additional storage.
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can you transfer recordings from external drive to PC in HD ???

No you can't since they're encrypted and the drive uses a proprietary FS. Plus the recordings are tied to that unit. They aren't going to let you get away with that.

No you can't since they're encrypted and the drive uses a proprietary FS. Plus the recordings are tied to that unit. They aren't going to let you get away with that.

Thanks for the reply mate. "get away" with it? like it's a bad thing :rolleyes:

You can however do it on the TIVO HD, correct me if I'm wrong?

Thanks for the reply mate. "get away" with it? like it's a bad thing :rolleyes:

You can however do it on the TIVO HD, correct me if I'm wrong?

Yes but it's dependent on the CCI flag. If a show is copy once or copy never then forget it.