Hi folks,

Having Dish come out tomorrow, and am considering purchasing a few external drives for more capacity.

Looking to go to Office Depot, and wanted your opinions as to which seem to work best, and have the least amount if quirks.

What external drives are you guys using to store your shows? I'm probably going to store HD content ONLY on it.

Stieger

You'll first need to call them to have that feature activated. It's a $40 fee. The WD drives work great.

Great, I use WD in my theater right now for a ton of movies. Can I plug in my current WD unit and watch movies (content that was NOT recorded from the DVR) on the unit and view the content, or Must it be recorded from the DVR in order to work or pass through the unit?

Thx,

Stieger

It has to be from the DVR.

WD drives seem to almost universally recommended, but I found mine to be too noisy. I am now running a seagate mechanism from Lacie.

-Ted

I am running 3 WD mybook essentials 1T drives connected to my 722 with a USB switch. They work flawlessly, I have had no issues with them at all. I can store about 190 HD movies on a 1T drive give or take.(depending on movie length)

I can tell you what NOT to get. Don't get a Maxtor OneTouch 4. The case has next to no ventilation, and fits tightly around the drive. This causes the drive to run smoking hot.

This is ok for occasional use, like using it for an hour once a week to backup your PC, but is horrible for a DVR, especially when used as the main recording drive, like on a ViP 211.

I had one laying around and began using it as a DVR drive on a 211, and quickly found it was running way too hot. I took the drive out and put it in an Antec Veris case and all was well. When I needed another USB drive for a different 211, I found an old WD 250GB drive that I was willing to sacrifice, and put it in the Maxtor One Touch 4 case. It took all of about two days to cook the drive and destroy it.