*I* am convinced that nothing over 300GB works without stuttering.

I have had long conversations with Glyph (for whom I am a beta-test site), who had even l o n g e r conversations with Scientific Atlanta, as well as a certain company who sells the 300GB Maxtor QuickView drives here on AVS.

The concensus is that, for whatever reason - SARA cannot handle all the bits, data compression and HDCP properly when communicating with eSATA drives over 300GB.

Until this issue is addressed at the root OS level, it appears that no amount of hard drive tweaking will solve the problem, nor is one drive manufacturer's >300Gb unit any better than anothers.

-gil
I said all of that over a year ago. That's the main reason I ONLY used the Maxtor Quickview Expander Kits in my installs. The live ram memory requirements needed to actively store and index a large drive conflict with the video memory and processing of SARA apps. Some apps in some areas use more memory than others, compounding the issue.

vegggas

I believe the best hard drives are made by Seagate and Maxtor--who are now one and the same. Get either a Seagate DB35 7200.3 Series or a Maxtor QuickView 500GB SATA drive . . .
FYI, there is no more Maxtor website, nor is there any mention of "Quickview" on the Seagate site. One of the first hits googling Maxtor Quickview is one to a page on Weaknees (http://www.weaknees.com/seagate-db35-hard-drives.php) explaining drives optimized for DVR usage. It is a good read for believers and non-believers alike, though I'm sure it won't sway R_G. :D

You are good to go with nearly any quality drive. Again, I strongly recommend using one that is optimized for streaming video. I also like enclosures with fans, though there's argument on that issue.

Sorry Pepar,

I have to disagree - there have been several reports of Seagate 7200.10s not working on Passport too. I am no longer a believer that SARA has an issue Passport does not until someone posts success using a 500GB or bigger 7200.10 .

Regards,
xnappo

The SARA Compatibility Database will not help you since you are on Passport. As Pepar has already told you, any quality hard drive will work on Passport, and I am a SARA user who definitely believes in "optimized for streaming video" drives, as well as enclosures with fans.
Scarlett

I think we can safely say that a combination that works on SARA is very likely to work on Passport - so you can use it in that regard.

xnappo

Yes, sure!



Thanks for the info - but I meant please add it to the database in my signature below.

xnappo

Sorry Pepar,

I have to disagree - there have been several reports of Seagate 7200.10s not working on Passport too. I am no longer a believer that SARA has an issue Passport does not until someone posts success using a 500GB or bigger 7200.10 .

Regards,
xnappo
Well, the 7200.10 is a desktop storage product, so it doesn't meet my "optimized for DVR" criteria. But I should have been more forceful in qualifying my statement. :o

Ok I just bought a 500gb 7200.3 seagate drive which is optimized for dvr. Which Apricon enclosure would people recommend.

tanks

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=103061&prodlist=nextag

found it

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=103061&prodlist=nextag

found it
Bingo! And eSATA only, too. Keep us "posted!" :)

The database is not helpful regarding 500GB drives, because the pass/fail test is related to recording two programs, one delayed, and comparing it to the internal-drive recorded version.

Several people who have used 500GB drives have noticed that many of the real serious problems - ie, glitches and stuttering during playback, missed or shortened scheduled recordings, crashes, etc - do not occur until AFTER the drive exceeds 70% capacity. The database does not address that, so for me it is useless in helping determine what to buy.

-g

The database is not helpful regarding 500GB drives, because the pass/fail test is related to recording two programs, one delayed, and comparing it to the internal-drive recorded version.

Most everyone here who has used 500GB drives has noticed that the real problems - ie, glitches and stuttering during playback, missed or shortened scheduled recordings, crashes, etc - do not occur until AFTER the drive exceeds 70% capacity.
Can you please cite your source on that? I've been following this forum for over a year and don't remember reading anything that would lead me to make that statement. In fact, my experience on this thread and the SARA one is that if a drive is NOT going to work, it doesn't work immediately.

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=103061&prodlist=nextag

found itOr, you could buy it here http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817362002
and save $5. :)

Scarlett

I think we can safely say that a combination that works on SARA is very likely to work on Passport - so you can use it in that regard.

xnappoYou are absolutely right, and I stand corrected! :o I was in such a hurry to recommend the "optimized" drives that I overlooked that detail.

Thanks!

Scarlett

Can you please cite your source on that? I've been following this forum for over a year and don't remember reading anything that would lead me to make that statement. In fact, my experience on this thread and the SARA one is that if a drive is NOT going to work, it doesn't work immediately.My source? Read though the threads - I am not the only one to have noticed and posted this anamoly.

-g

The database is not helpful regarding 500GB drives, because the pass/fail test is related to recording two programs, one delayed, and comparing it to the internal-drive recorded version.

Most everyone here who has used 500GB drives has noticed that the real problems - ie, glitches and stuttering during playback, missed or shortened scheduled recordings, crashes, etc - do not occur until AFTER the drive exceeds 70% capacity. The database does not address that, so for me it is useless in helping determine what to buy.

-g
Well for me, I noticed the glitches as SOON as I hooked up my original 500GB SATA drive. It was glaringly obvious that the video was not as smooth as it used to be, and I tried to just live with it, but eventually I just got annoyed with it and found a better 500GB drive, which, so far, has worked flawlessly with my 8300HD. Maybe the drive will start to glitch even more as it fills up, but so does the internal drive. It happens. In my experience, if a 500GB drive is not going to work with your STB, you will be able to see as soon as you start recording.

My source? Read though the threads - I am not the only one to have noticed and posted this anamoly.

-g

I disagree - people with severe problems will notice it during the stress test. There were some theories in the thread regarding the drive getting full, but people certainly aren't coming out of the walls with that problem.

Can you link to a couple of posts the have conclusive evidence of this?

I may not remember every post, but I have read every post in this thread and drive filling up causing glitching is not a major theme.

Besides, if people do have long-term problems, I hope they will go in and change their PASS to FAIL and add a comment.

xnappo

New member here. I'm reporting a qualified success. I have no HD display yet, so I cannot test whether recording 2 HD programs while watching a recorded 3rd works. However, setup went fine, and simultaneous SD recording and playback seem to work without glitches. The live buffering and pause seem to work fine as well.

Equipment used was a Maxtor Quickview 500GB drive and Apricorn enclosure. I got a very good price on the drive from Other World Computing. Enclosure fan is nice and quiet, I need to be more or less on top of it to hear it. Box is running Sara, don't know which version (didn't note it when I put the box into diagnostic mode).

Once I get an HD display (hopefully sooner rather than later), I will report back to indicate if simultaneous HD recording and playback work.

Well for me, I noticed the glitches as SOON as I hooked up my original 500GB SATA drive.<snip>In my experience, if a 500GB drive is not going to work with your STB, you will be able to see as soon as you start recording.My experience was the opposite, in that I have used high-quality, 7200-rpm, video-optimized drives each time I tested, from 3 different drive manufacturers. They all worked like a charm in the beginning, and then started to flake out at 65-70% full, and get progressively worse at 80 and 85%.

I disagree - people with severe problems will notice it during the stress test. There were some theories in the thread regarding the drive getting full, but people certainly aren't coming out of the walls with that problem.Diagree all you want, but there are those of us that are having this problem. Of course people with SEVERE problems will notice right away, and good for them. They may never have to experience the frustration of archiving full seasons of their favorite shows and movies and concerts in HD, only to have some key episodes randomly record at 3 minutes or 9 minutes or not at all, or to have the stutter/jitter be so bad as to prove unwatchable.

I'm reporting a qualified success.How can you report "qualified success" when you haven't recorded any HD content yet? I think the problems we (SARA OS STBs) have been experiencing on >300GB drives are related to the HDCP scheme over eSATA, and SARA's handling of it. Please let me know how it goes when you've filled up more than 70% of that drive with HD content.

My source? Read though the threads - I am not the only one to have noticed and posted this anamoly.I do know that there have been posts that have stated “anomalies” occur quite frequently when the 8300’s internal hard drive is closer to full.

These 8300’s do not have an external drive attached.

Perhaps this is where the confusion is? I’m not saying you haven’t read what you claim; I’m just referring to what I recall. :)

My experience was the opposite, in that I have used high-quality, 7200-rpm, video-optimized drives each time I tested, from 3 different drive manufacturers. They all worked like a charm in the beginning, and then started to flake out at 65-70% full, and get progressively worse at 80 and 85%.

In this case, please put the case and drives into the database. This is certainly valuable information. If you want I can make a new failure category called "Long Term".

*EDIT* I went ahead and added "Long Term" as a failure mode.

xnappo

Oh man, I just ordered a Maxtor Quickview 500GB drive! It was only $140. I couldn't find a 300GB for less. I don't need another brick. I guess I will have to keep it less than 70% full.

I called Cox technical support and the only drives they tested are the Maxtor Quickview up to 300GB. They recommend the external drives, unfortunately the only 300GB I could find was $300.

One last try before I add a 1TB of memory to my PC.

GilWave,

It would help if you added your software/version to your sig so we know what you are using when trying to find a common theme. I also recall seeing posts that mention developing problems after filling the drive, but it is not a common complaint IMHO and there could be any number of reasons.

How can you report "qualified success" when you haven't recorded any HD content yet? I think the problems we (SARA OS STBs) have been experiencing on >300GB drives are related to the HDCP scheme over eSATA, and SARA's handling of it. Please let me know how it goes when you've filled up more than 70% of that drive with HD content.

qual·i·fied /ˈkwɒləˌfaɪd/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[kwol-uh-fahyd] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–adjective
1. having the qualities, accomplishments, etc., that fit a person for some function, office, or the like.
2. having the qualities, accomplishments, etc., required by law or custom for getting, having, or exercising a right, holding an office, or the like.
3. modified, limited, or restricted in some way: a qualified endorsement.

He was using #3, but I agree the meaning wasn't clear until I read the rest of his post.
xnappo

He was using #3, but I agree the meaning wasn't clear until I read the rest of his post.Fair enough. I read it as:

qualified

adjective

Satisfying certain requirements, as for selection: eligible, fit, fitted, suitable, worthy.

Fair enough. I read it as:

qualified

adjective

Satisfying certain requirements, as for selection: eligible, fit, fitted, suitable, worthy.

Yep - that is how I read it too at first as I commonly use the term in work as in 'qualifying products' - meaning meeting quality standards and ready to sell... Silly English..

xnappo

My source? Read though the threads - I am not the only one to have noticed and posted this anamoly.
I *have* read the thread. And I must have missed every one of the posts that said "my hard drive worked perfectly until I got 3/4 full and then it became unusable." Perhaps you could point me to just one post like that?

I *have* read the thread. And I must have missed every one of the posts that said "my hard drive worked perfectly until I got 3/4 full and then it became unusable." Perhaps you could point me to just one post like that?You don't have to be sarcastic about it. I am reviewing posts now, I'm on page 54 out of 143, and that's assuming it was in this thread. It was back in Spring 2006. In pages 44-48 there are similar complaints.

-gil

Oh man, I just ordered a Maxtor Quickview 500GB drive! It was only $140. I couldn't find a 300GB for less. I don't need another brick. I guess I will have to keep it less than 70% full.
I don't think you have anything to worry about. I have only 28GB left to fill on my 8300HD with an added 500GB external drive and it works just fine. I won't say that none of the forty-five hi-def movies I have recorded have any glitches, but the appearance of glitches has not been a function of drive space filled. And they are infrequent enough so as to not pull me out of the movie(s).

You don't have to be sarcastic about it. I am reviewing posts now, I'm on page 54 out of 143, and that's assuming it was in this thread. It was back in Spring 2006. In pages 44-48 there are similar complaints.

-gil
Well, excuse me. You stated with utmost certainty "Most everyone here who has used 500GB drives has noticed that the real problems - ie, glitches and stuttering during playback, missed or shortened scheduled recordings, crashes, etc - do not occur until AFTER the drive exceeds 70% capacity" and were challenged on it. You finally said that that was your experience and THAT mean something, but speaking for everyone else like you did just invites people to call you out and ask for specific quotes.

Christ.

You know what? I take it all back. I don't have time to search a years worth of posts across a coupla threads to find the instances of other people who reported the same thing.

I will change my statement to eflect what I know to be true now.

-gil

Christ.

You know what? I take it all back. I don't have time to search a years worth of posts across a coupla threads to find the instances of other people who reported the same thing.

I will change my statement to eflect what I know to be true now.

-gil

Gil, Just reading through your old posts - I definitely understand your frustration! It seems like each time you have bought a more suitable drive, it then worked for a good while and you thought all was good, then all hell breaks loose.

Again - I think it is worthwhile to enter your failures into the database. I myself only have a 300GB drive so I can't offer personal experience here.

I added a comment to the instructions about coming back and updating one's status if trouble begins down the road. Hopefully in time the database will have enough data to make a completely safe decision. As it stands right now it can only safely tell you what not to buy.

xnappo

Hi there!
I'm new to this forum, trying to absorb all this information is tough but thanks! I'm trying to get an external drive for my Sara 8300, as everyone else is. I Found this deal on tiger direct. Would this combination work?


Seagate 320GB SATA-300 Hard Drive with Ultra 3.5" Stackable USB 2.0 E-SATA External Hard Drive Enclosure

Sorry I can't post a link, I just registered and I have to have 5 posts before I can have an active link!!!
So if you go to tigerdirect and click on hard drives on the left, and choose Serial ATA, and then 250-320 GB, then it's on page 2 number 16.


It says eSATA and it also has USB cables incase it doesn't work in the 8300 then I didn't just waste $100
Any thoughts would be very appreciated!!

It's time again to remind people to put their location in their profile and their software version (SARA 1.xx.xx.xx or Passport 2.xx.xx) in their signature. I suspect that some of these issues (70% full, etc.) may be related to software. There are lots of variables in using a computer drive for external storage on a SA8300. PLEASE ALWAYS have your ALL your posts contain relevant information. Doing so prevents misunderstands (and reduces the opportunity for pepar to make sarcastic comments :rolleyes: ).

Seagate 320GB SATA-300 Hard Drive with Ultra 3.5" Stackable USB 2.0 E-SATA External Hard Drive Enclosure



I think this is pretty risky. I can't tell for sure because I can't find the exact model number, but I suspect that drive is a Seagate 7200.10 which people have had problems with. For the 320GB size, there are two failures and one pass.

There are no reports in the database regarding that case.

Sorry you didn't find this thread sooner - but I would suggest studying the database in my sig.

xnappo

...I'm sure it won't sway R_G. :D

At this point (we have spent the past week looking UP to the freezing mark) the only thing that will sway me is a gentle, warm breeze! Or Scarlett Johansson!

I said all of that over a year ago. That's the main reason I ONLY used the Maxtor Quickview Expander Kits in my installs. The live ram memory requirements needed to actively store and index a large drive conflict with the video memory and processing of SARA apps. Some apps in some areas use more memory than others, compounding the issue.

vegggas

But isn't that more because those drives seem to be around the 300G mark more than anything else? Indeed I have found your analysis about the RAM issues as it related to larger drive sizes to be quite cogent. I have always believed that one root issue was choosing to go with a "home-spun" kind of OS rather than some Unix variant, something that really knows and understands paging, AND has been damn bulletproof in dealing with VM!

I do know that there have been posts that have stated “anomalies” occur quite frequently when the 8300’s internal hard drive is closer to full.

These 8300’s do not have an external drive attached.

Perhaps this is where the confusion is? I’m not saying you haven’t read what you claim; I’m just referring to what I recall. :)

Could have been me... although what I have experienced doesn't seem to have any "relationship" with the amount of drive space being used. But it sure does seem to point out that "transmission of the signal from the head end" 100% CAN cause these kinds of glitches. Which can range from very minor to so "heavy" that make whatever show completely unwatchable.

I *have* read the thread. And I must have missed every one of the posts that said "my hard drive worked perfectly until I got 3/4 full and then it became unusable." Perhaps you could point me to just one post like that?

Funny, my recollection is that posts like that or implying that have been made.

Personally, I would only draw a line as to this evidence being the fault of any particular drive.

Gil, Just reading through your old posts - I definitely understand your frustration! It seems like each time you have bought a more suitable drive, it then worked for a good while and you thought all was good, then all hell breaks loose.

xnappo

I too find this issue to be very consist ant with the RAM issue veggas brought to light over a year ago. I very much remember being incredulous at the suggestion the underlying OS kept a directory ONLY in RAM and seemed to have no clue how to read it from disk, but given all of the stuff I see folks facing, what I thought couldn't happen might in fact DOES happen. My issue was that I was making an assumption that it had to work like I know it works... with a real OS!

I have TWC in Kansas City. I read that the SATA expansion option does not work with Passport. Is that true? We currently have Passport but I think someone said we are upgrading. Before I buy a drive I want to make sure. Any Kansas City TWC people out there?

Yes.
Kansas City, MO - HDTV (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=234120)
SA 8000HD & 8300HD w/ Passport software (TWC) (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=453804)

v/r,
C-F

I have TWC in Kansas City. I read that the SATA expansion option does not work with Passport. Is that true? We currently have Passport but I think someone said we are upgrading. Before I buy a drive I want to make sure. Any Kansas City TWC people out there?

Drive should work fine. I advise staying away from Seagate 7200.9 and 7200.10 drives and recommend Apricorn for a case.

Yall are 'upgrading' to TWC Mystro/Navigator 'soon' but I'm sure you don't mind being a 'does it work with external drive' guinea pig for the rest of us to learn? :)

xnappo

Just wanted to say I'm up and working with:

APRICORN EZ-BUS-DTS-EKIT Aluminum 3.5" SATA External Enclosure - Retail

and

Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD2500KS 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

Total: $120.65 shipped

My 8300HD (SARA 1.87.xx.xx) recognized it on the first reboot.

Stress Test went PERFECT. ALL HD recording...no problems. (so far)

Only thing is that I think I'm going to unhook the LED in the enclosure.

Just wanted to say I'm up and working with:

APRICORN EZ-BUS-DTS-EKIT Aluminum 3.5" SATA External Enclosure - Retail

and

Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD2500KS 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

Total: $120.65 shipped

My 8300 (SARA 1.87.xx.xx) recognized it on the first reboot.

Stress Test went PERFECT. ALL HD recording...no problems. (so far)

Only thing is that I think I'm going to unhook the LED in the enclosure.

Where did you buy the hardware? Is your system running Passport?

Thanks,
Don

Only thing is that I think I'm going to unhook the LED in the enclosure.
The LED on mine (Maxtor Quickview) starts blinking when the drive loses contact with the stb. It's nice to know when that has happened (which it has, twice, since I got the drive in October).

Hello everyone. I'm new to this forum. I've scanned it several times in the past month and finally decided it was time to sign up.

I got a Sony KDS-55A2000 for Christmas and last month I traded in my Explorer 8300 for an 8300HD with TWC in Houston. When I picked the 8300HD up I asked the lady behind the counter if I could get a larger hard drive and she told me I get an external eSATA drive.

I quickly decided the hard drive capacity wasn't going to be large enough for the all the shows I wanted to record in HD. We're usually busy during the week and view some on the weekend but it's not unusual to have 8 or 9 episodes of a show waiting to be watched. Writing HD programs to S-VHS tapes seems such a waste.

Anyhow, I did some research on the SA website and found that connecting an external drive was possible and to call the local cable provider for recommended drives. However when I called TWC support on 2 different occasions I was told TWC does support external drives. I started googling and found this forum.

I did some cursory research and decided on the Seagate ST3500601XS-RK, which I got from newegg for $300. Nice little drive, very quiet, and it came with the right cable. I followed the directions I obtained off this forum and after the second reboot of the DVR it was working, or so I thought.

I proceeded to record 15-20 shows, most of which were HD. I successfully recorded 2 HD shows and watched a third successfully several times until this past Tuesday when half way through House and Veronica Mars the DVR suddenly stopped recording (which I didn't notice until Boston Legal came on and saw that this wasn't being recorded either). Tuning Live TV to the HD channel gave me a gray screen. In fact all the HD channels and all the premium channels were gray. I rebooted the DVR twice and still could not view any of these channels.

The next morning before I called TWC support I checked and again and lo and behold everything was working again. I started searching the forums again in more depth. I'm not sure if this problem was caused by the external drive or something else, but I'm cancerned about it happening again.

It seems others have experienced problems with this drive (it's actually a Seagate 7200.9 ST3500641AS according to the diagnostic screen on the 8300), so I'm considering replacing it with another. Scarlett in Austin has reported success with the Seagate DB35 drives but she's running the newer version of SARA. Also the recent thread about the index to recorded shows being stored in a limited amount NVRAM make sense. I tried shutting down the DVR, uncabling the external device, and repowering the DVR. It still reported the same shows as being recorded and the same percentage of available space even without the external drive. I DID NOT try playing a recorded show.

So what I'm asking is with my configuration, would it make more sense to get a Seagate 7200.3 DB35 320GB (ST3320820SCE) for the near term, or wait until TWC upgrades us to the 1.89 version of SARA, or even wait until Comcast takes us over and see what kind they are going to with with the 8300HD DVR's? I'd really like to get at least a 500GB or even a 750GB external drive if I can, but I'd like it to work when I do.

Any and all comments or suggestions are appreciated.

emjay0,

It sure sounds like your problem had nothing to do with the external drive. I suspect that everything will work OK now. One suggestion is to do the HARD REBOOT - same reboot as you did, but hold front panel POWER button in while plugging back in. Keep holding until "boot" appears on front panel.

Drive should work fine. I advise staying away from Seagate 7200.9 and 7200.10 drives and recommend Apricorn for a case.

Yall are 'upgrading' to TWC Mystro/Navigator 'soon' but I'm sure you don't mind being a 'does it work with external drive' guinea pig for the rest of us to learn? :)

xnappo

I'll be glad to guinea pig for everyone. I am getting the drive this week and will let you know how it works before and after Navigator!

Where did you buy the hardware? Is your system running Passport?

Thanks,
Don

I bought it from Newegg.

and

My 8300HD (SARA 1.87.xx.xx) recognized it on the first reboot.

I'll be glad to guinea pig for everyone. I am getting the drive this week and will let you know how it works before and after Navigator!That would be great.

But, please add your location to your profile AND add the fact that you have Navigator and the version of Navigator to your signature line. That way any time you make a posting we all know your situation.

Thanks

Just wanted to say I'm up and working with:

APRICORN EZ-BUS-DTS-EKIT Aluminum 3.5" SATA External Enclosure - Retail

and

Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD2500KS 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

Total: $120.65 shipped

My 8300HD (SARA 1.87.xx.xx) recognized it on the first reboot.

Stress Test went PERFECT. ALL HD recording...no problems. (so far)

Only thing is that I think I'm going to unhook the LED in the enclosure.
i'm going to try this combo as well. thanks

Hey all for those of you that know this box, tell me how to get my laptop connected to it? My laptop sees it, but never makes a connection to it. It shows up as unknown device. firewire connected also. They claim it is not live, I do not believe it. The box recognizes as i said, it is asking for drivers to install? any ideas will be helpful

Hey all for those of you that know this box, tell me how to get my laptop connected to it? My laptop sees it, but never makes a connection to it. It shows up as unknown device. firewire connected also. They claim it is not live, I do not believe it. The box recognizes as i said, it is asking for drivers to install? any ideas will be helpful
What kind of a connection are you trying to make and what do you expect the combination to do?

I JUST discovered this forum tonight -- and apologize for being quite unknowledgeable. I purchased a Seagate 500GB eSATA 7200rpm external drive and have not yet opened the cellophane on it. I was planning on connecting it to a Time Warner supported 8300 HD. From just now reading some of the previous posts, it sounds like I should return the Seagate 500GB while I still can -- and purchase something else. Correct? Thanks!

I JUST discovered this forum tonight -- and apologize for being quite unknowledgeable. I purchased a Seagate 500GB eSATA 7200rpm external drive and have not yet opened the cellophane on it. I was planning on connecting it to a Time Warner supported 8300 HD. From just now reading some of the previous posts, it sounds like I should return the Seagate 500GB while I still can -- and purchase something else. Correct? Thanks!
Not necessarily. It depends on the model in most cases. What's the model number on your Seagate drive? I have a 500GB Seagate drive that works flawlessly. I have the very same drive used in the HD TiVo's, and so far it's absolutely perfect. The drive I had before this one was also a Seagate drive, but that one sucked. If it's a 7200.9 or 7200.10 drive, that is usually not the drive to use in this case. Also, are you running Passport or SARA? You should try to put your info in your profile signature so others might help you out easier.

Not necessarily. It depends on the model in most cases. What's the model number on your Seagate drive? I have a 500GB Seagate drive that works flawlessly. I have the very same drive used in the HD TiVo's, and so far it's absolutely perfect. The drive I had before this one was also a Seagate drive, but that one sucked. If it's a 7200.9 or 7200.10 drive, that is usually not the drive to use in this case. Also, are you running Passport or SARA? You should try to put your info in your profile signature so others might help you out easier.
Thanks for your reply, cuzzin. On the Seagate drive it says ST30000XS. On the box it says ST3500601XS-RK, 500GB External Drive eSATA 3.0, 7200 rpm, 16MB cache. Does that help? How do I determine whether Passport or SARA? Sorry, I am a complete neophyte.

Thanks for your reply, cuzzin. On the Seagate drive it says ST30000XS. Does that help? How do I determine whether Passport or SARA? Sorry, I am a complete neophyte.

There may be a San Antonia thread; if so, subscribe to it!

If you pull the A/C plug and let it re-boot, there are some opening screens that will give you a good hint at what is on it. BUT, you plug it back in, the box will be off, so you must also turn it back on. It usually (may) take a short while from when you plug it back in until you CAN turn it on.

Thanks for your reply, cuzzin. On the Seagate drive it says ST30000XS. On the box it says ST3500601XS-RK, 500GB External Drive eSATA 3.0, 7200 rpm, 16MB cache. Does that help? How do I determine whether Passport or SARA? Sorry, I am a complete neophyte.
To find out whether you are running SARA or Passport, you need to access the Diagnostics screen. The "8300 Tips & Tricks" thread can help you with that. I did some research on the drive you named (I didn't find anything on a ST30000XS) both in this forum and at the SARA database (which you can view here (http://baseportal.com/baseportal/xnappo/main)). First you really need to find out in you are on Passport or SARA because that database only documents successes and failures with SARA users. There is another thread on this site dedicated to Passport users. If you are on SARA, both entries in the database that list the drive you have say it was unsuccessful with their 8300HD. Generally, Passport users have higher success with any good quality drive than SARA users, so someone with Passport just might be successful with this drive. If it works for SARA, it will usually work for Passport.

To find out whether you are running SARA or Passport, you need to access the Diagnostics screen. The "8300 Tips & Tricks" thread can help you with that. I did some research on the drive you named (I didn't find anything on a ST30000XS) both in this forum and at the SARA database (which you can view here. First you really need to find out in you are on Passport or SARA because that database only documents successes and failures with SARA users. There is another thread on this site dedicated to Passport users. If you are on SARA, both entries in the database that list the drive you have say it was unsuccessful with their 8300HD. Generally, Passport users have higher success with any good quality drive than SARA users, so someone with Passport just might be successful with this drive. If it works for SARA, it will usually work for Passport.
Thanks guys. Checked Diagnostics and it appears I have SARA Version OS Home Server Edition 1.8 Flash 1.88.17.a.100. My question, again, is how well would you expect it to work with my new Seagate ST30000XS 500 GB eSATA 3.0 7200 rpm 16 MB cache external hard drive? I can return the Seagate if you don't think it will work OK -- but must return it by tomorrow. Thanks.

Thanks guys. Checked Diagnostics and it appears I have SARA Version OS Home Server Edition 1.8 Flash 1.88.17.a.100. My question, again, is how well would you expect it to work with my new Seagate ST30000XS 500 GB eSATA 3.0 7200 rpm 16 MB cache external hard drive? I can return the Seagate if you don't think it will work OK -- but must return it by tomorrow. Thanks.
You know what, I overlooked something. At the SARA database, a user reports having success with your Seagate drive, and he is running the same version of SARA you are. I'd say it can go either way, honestly. Everyone has different experiences. Most of what I've read about the drive you have report some kind of problem with it, however, I have seen good reviews on it's compatibility as well. You might just wanna hook it up and see for yourself. I understand not wanting to waste money on a SATA drive if it's not going to work, but I learned the hard way myself, having to try different drives and enclosures before I found a successful combination. The SARA dabatase I posted earlier can be helpful, so I would utilize that if I were you. You can also find plenty of help around this thread if you look for it.

Hey all,
I am trying to connect via firewire, the 8300 shows up as a unknown device, it is asking for drivers? are there any drivers that will make it recognize it? i would like to download my movies and shows to my laptop.



Thanks

Hey all,
I am trying to connect via firewire, the 8300 shows up as a unknown device, it is asking for drivers? are there any drivers that will make it recognize it? i would like to download my movies and shows to my laptop.



ThanksThis forum of for connecting an external eSATA drive to the SATA connection on the back of the 8300.

However, this AVS thread (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=593271&page=1&pp=30) is devoted to connecting (or trying to connect) the 8300 to a computer via Firewire. Perhaps you want to check there.

He asked the question here before, but ignored the reply . . .

here (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9756848&&#post9756848)

He asked the question here before, but ignored the reply . . .

here (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9756848&&#post9756848)

Actually, I think that he did answer your questions (What kind of a connection are you trying to make and what do you expect the combination to do?) in this last post and it is now clear that he really wants (or needs) the Firewire post.

Hello everyone,

Okay, I've read this entire thread over the past week and checked out the database and I'm still confused on which drive I should get. :)

I'm in Bristow, VA using Comcast Cable. SARA Ver. 1.88.25.1

I'm thinking Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000KSRTL 500GB along with the APRICORN EZ-BUS-DTS-EKIT enclosure. Any other suggestions before I pull the trigger on my newegg shopping cart?

Thanks!

-David

Hello everyone,

Okay, I've read this entire thread over the past week and checked out the database and I'm still confused on which drive I should get. :)

I'm in Bristow, VA using Comcast Cable. SARA Ver. 1.88.25.1

I'm thinking Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000KSRTL 500GB along with the APRICORN EZ-BUS-DTS-EKIT enclosure. Any other suggestions before I pull the trigger on my newegg shopping cart?

Thanks!

-David

From the data, I would agree that is a good choice. I think the other drive I would consider would be a Seagate 7200.3 - but there isn't much data on it yet because it is pretty new.

xnappo

I have the seagate external st3500601xs-rk connected to sara 1.88 using cablevision. No glitches so far in about 5 days of use. Tested recording 2 hd sources while playing back a third. One thing that is annoying is that the fan never spins down. Even with the dvr off and the drive not in use, the fan is constantly on. It can be heard from 4-5 feet away. Anyone know how to get the fan to spin down when the drive is not accessed for a long periods of time?

Thanks guys. Checked Diagnostics and it appears I have SARA Version OS Home Server Edition 1.8 Flash 1.88.17.a.100. My question, again, is how well would you expect it to work with my new Seagate ST30000XS 500 GB eSATA 3.0 7200 rpm 16 MB cache external hard drive? I can return the Seagate if you don't think it will work OK -- but must return it by tomorrow. Thanks.

Return it. I used the very same drive with 1.87.16.1 sara. You'll see me on the database as turkeyfoot. As far as what to get in its place. For me it was simple, trying to end the agony, I bought the 8300 "solution" at weaknees. Go there and explore their site and decide for yourseld. The tiling has settled for the time being I have maybe 1 minor hit a night. They will accept returns for up to 6 months.
Good luck.

Want to say thanks to the contributers to this thread. I was having problems with my new esata drive not working until I read about the hard reboot, which did the trick on the first try, I had only known to just unplug and replug.

fyi: I just got my 1080p Westinghouse and the 8300HD two months ago. I am using a two year old cheap 250gb maxtor drive that I had laying around. Kept running out of space on the dvr after only a few hd programs so I decided to try and stick in an esata. Got a Vantec esata/usb enclosure and stuck the maxtor in. Worked just fine after I learned how to hard reboot. It's got a god-awful bright blue led lighting the gaudy vantec logo on the front though, I'll probably open it back up and disconnect that. But I have to note this maxtor drive is known for being loud and the vantec keeps it silent; though I worry about the heat, this drive also runs pretty hot, but the enclosure is aluminum, maybe it will be ok.

I haven't posted much about my external drive but I have made some observations over the last few month or so. I have a 320gig 7200.10 Seagate drive in a Kingwin enclosure. I have my details in the database. I have found that most of my glitches happen on ABC channels (ABC and ESPN) and HDnet channels (Hdnet and HDnet Movies). I noticed it real bad when I was watching a basketball game on ESPN. My recording actually cut off and I missed 5 mintues of the end of the first half. I think it has to do with the signal strength that my cable co is feeding me. NBC, CBS, and HBO are perfect. I have watched many shows and movie from these channels and seen little or no glitches. But when I start watching ABC or ESPN (and ESPN is bad) i will get glitches. Sometimes a lot, sometimes just a few.

So it varies from channel to channel and I guess it can be linked to the external drive. But a few glitches isn't that bad. Its worth it to be able to record in HD (that is, when it actually records).

I have the seagate external st3500601xs-rk connected to sara 1.88 using cablevision. No glitches so far in about 5 days of use. Tested recording 2 hd sources while playing back a third. One thing that is annoying is that the fan never spins down. Even with the dvr off and the drive not in use, the fan is constantly on. It can be heard from 4-5 feet away. Anyone know how to get the fan to spin down when the drive is not accessed for a long periods of time?

The problem with these external drives is we don't know what is inside. Seagate changes the internal drive without changing the external drive part number. So you may have gotten a 7200.8 or 7200.2/3 inside, which should work, while someone else might get a 7200.9/7200.10 which probably won't.

I doubt the fan is connected to whether the drive is in use in any way.

xnappo

The problem with these external drives is we don't know what is inside. Seagate changes the internal drive without changing the external drive part number. So you may have gotten a 7200.8 or 7200.2/3 inside, which should work, while someone else might get a 7200.9/7200.10 which probably won't.

I doubt the fan is connected to whether the drive is in use in any way.

xnappo
"What's inside" includes firmware which, I believe, is at the root of all incompatibility issues with external drives. It just cannot be how the 0's and 1's are laid down on the magnetic platters. IMHO.

"What's inside" includes firmware which, I believe, is at the root of all incompatibility issues with external drives. It just cannot be how the 0's and 1's are laid down on the magnetic platters. IMHO.

I completely agree. There are two people out of ten successful with 7200.10 drives, and I have been curious if the firmware revs were different...

xnappo

I completely agree. There are two people out of ten successful with 7200.10 drives, and I have been curious if the firmware revs were different...

xnappo
Blind men touching an elephant have more information available to them about their subject than we do in understanding external 8300HD hard drive incompatibility issues. But yes, can these successful "dot_10" users be contacted and queried? I'm thinking that there are utilities available that would reveal firmware versions of drives, but they would need to be attached (temporarily) to a PC to run.

"I doubt the fan is connected to whether the drive is in use in any way."

If I disconnect the drive from the DVR, the fan does spin down. Spins up again and stays that way once I connect the esata cable back to the dvr and reboot. To me it seems as if the dvr has the drive on constant stand-by mode even when powered off thus keeping the fan spinning. I would have hoped for the fan to go on/off via temperature.

"I doubt the fan is connected to whether the drive is in use in any way."

If I disconnect the drive from the DVR, the fan does spin down. Spins up again and stays that way once I connect the esata cable back to the dvr and reboot. To me it seems as if the dvr has the drive on constant stand-by mode even when powered off thus keeping the fan spinning. I would have hoped for the fan to go on/off via temperature.
I imagine that feature could be implemented by an enclosure-level mod.

is there a way to resume watching a show after exiting the DVR to a live channel? Really annoying. My Dish DVR resumes weeks later if you want.
Brian

is there a way to resume watching a show after exiting the DVR to a live channel? Really annoying. My Dish DVR resumes weeks later if you want.
Brian

You'd probably be better off asking this in one of the threads dedicated to the various software versions on the 8300HD (SARA, Passport, Navigator, etc). Resuming a show after exit really doesn't have anything to do with external eSATA drives.

is there a way to resume watching a show after exiting the DVR to a live channel? Really annoying. My Dish DVR resumes weeks later if you want.
Brian

Wrong thread but I will post a reply anyway. I use the SARA software so yours could be different. If I stop a recording on the DVR channel and then switch channels, it suualy stays in the stop position. Meaning I can tune back to the DVR channel and hit Play and it will continue.


edit: Me tired in morning.

Wrong thread but I will post a reply anyway. I use the SARS software s . . .
Sounds contagious. :D

This is my first post....but I am thankful to this forum for many years of advice and help...now on to my problem.

My config:
SA 8300HD DVR - Time Warner in San Diego
Passport Echo 2.6.002
OS PowerTV 6.14.74.1sp Homeserver Edition 1.8
Internal HD: WDC WD1600BB-56RDA0

Connection via HDMI to Denon 4308 to Vizio GV47L via HDMI

External Drive via eSATA - MAXTOR QV500 with Apricorn EZ-BUS-DTS-EKIT

Before connecting the new external drive , DVR worked fine...mostly recorded HD shows...occasionally a glitch on playback, but might be due to compression artifacts on the particular channels...I seemed to notice more on FOX and ABC, but was still very rare.

Connection to eSATA was simple (I just did it last night)...it did the format, and diag confirmed increase in space available. (For Diag --> Select & Exit on front of box until DIAG shows on display....then tune to 611)

It was set to record several HD shows last night. This morning, playback of newly recorded shows had audio stutter and some video stutter (older shows playback fine)....about once every 5 minutes....then would be fine for 10-15 minutes...and so on. All this without stressing the box (not recording at the same time as playback)...


I would appreciate any help!

Originally Posted by djmoose
Just wanted to say I'm up and working with:

APRICORN EZ-BUS-DTS-EKIT Aluminum 3.5" SATA External Enclosure - Retail

and

Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD2500KS 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

Total: $120.65 shipped

My 8300HD (SARA 1.87.xx.xx) recognized it on the first reboot.

Stress Test went PERFECT. ALL HD recording...no problems. (so far)

Only thing is that I think I'm going to unhook the LED in the enclosure.
i'm going to try this combo as well. thanks
works :D

playback of newly recorded shows had audio stutter and some video stutter (older shows playback fine)....about once every 5 minutes....then would be fine for 10-15 minutes...and so on. All this without stressing the box (not recording at the same time as playback)...
This seems to be the typical performance of Passport with an external drive. You might notice these glitches occur even when watching liveTV. This was my experience with Passport and an external WD5000YS in Vantec enclosure. With Passport you also lose the "trickplay" buffer when using an external drive.

I suspect that if Passport were updated to use a correct implementation of the live buffer, it would solve the trickplay issue and probably solve the glitching issue as well. I suspect the performance glitches are in some way related to the faulty non-implementation of the buffer.

At any rate, external drive support is not ready for prime time on Passport, so I disconnected the external drive. When they update the Passport software or move to Navigator I will try it again, if there are reports that a fix has been implemented.

Please note your older recordings are still on the internal drive, which is why they play back fine. The new recordings and liveTV watching will be on the external drive, which will produce glitches. Well, actually it is the Passport software which is causing the glitches, due to half-baked code for supporting external drives.

well I received my new enclosure and the 500gb seagate drive and I have to say things are going swimmingly. Not one stutter or issue so far. Keep my fingers crossed

Update...stutters only happen on HD channels (live and recorded)...no problems when watching/recording regular cable channels. Maybe I will try the Seagate DB35 500GB...Frys had them on sale for $79 (but they were out last weekend).

This is my first post....but I am thankful to this forum for many years of advice and help...now on to my problem.

My config:
SA 8300HD DVR - Time Warner in San Diego
Passport Echo 2.6.002
OS PowerTV 6.14.74.1sp Homeserver Edition 1.8
Internal HD: WDC WD1600BB-56RDA0

Connection via HDMI to Denon 4308 to Vizio GV47L via HDMI

External Drive via eSATA - MAXTOR QV500 with Apricorn EZ-BUS-DTS-EKIT

Before connecting the new external drive , DVR worked fine...mostly recorded HD shows...occasionally a glitch on playback, but might be due to compression artifacts on the particular channels...I seemed to notice more on FOX and ABC, but was still very rare.

Connection to eSATA was simple (I just did it last night)...it did the format, and diag confirmed increase in space available. (For Diag --> Select & Exit on front of box until DIAG shows on display....then tune to 611)

It was set to record several HD shows last night. This morning, playback of newly recorded shows had audio stutter and some video stutter (older shows playback fine)....about once every 5 minutes....then would be fine for 10-15 minutes...and so on. All this without stressing the box (not recording at the same time as playback)...


I would appreciate any help!

Update...stutters only happen on HD channels (live and recorded)...no problems when watching/recording regular cable channels. Maybe I will try the Seagate DB35 500GB...Frys had them on sale for $79 (but they were out last weekend).
Before bailing on the Quickview drive that has worked nearly universally perfectly for everyone who's tried it, check your connections, including the ones inside the enclosure. Sometimes the stiffness of the cables in tight spaces causes slight misalignment. Reseat everything; even connections that look proper can be dodgy.

External Drive via eSATA - MAXTOR QV500 with Apricorn EZ-BUS-DTS-EKIT
I wonder if the size could be a factor. Rumor has it anything over 320 GB is more likely to be problematic.

Update...stutters only happen on HD channels (live and recorded)...no problems when watching/recording regular cable channels. Maybe I will try the Seagate DB35 500GB...Frys had them on sale for $79 (but they were out last weekend).Are you sure it was the Seagate DB35 500GB SATA drive that Fry's had on sale for $79? The only $79 SATA drive I could find at Fry's was a Maxtor 300GB--still a good deal, but not the Seagate DB35. :)

Scarlett

I wonder if the size could be a factor. Rumor has it anything over 320 GB is more likely to be problematic.
He's on Passport which hasn't had the quirky compatibility issues of SARA.

Are you sure it was the Seagate DB35 500GB SATA drive that Fry's had on sale for $79? The only $79 SATA drive I could find at Fry's was a Maxtor 300GB--still a good deal, but not the Seagate DB35. :)

Scarlett
I doubt it. The drive is still relatively new and it's nowhere to be found on their website. I went to Frys some months back looking for a SATA to eSATA cable and they didn't even have that, so I doubt they would be selling this particular drive for such a low price. Plus, I would be pretty pissed to find it for so cheap after buying it for over three times that price.

as posted the Seagate db35 works like a charm. Doubt its on sale for $79 but if it is I will be mad :)

as posted the Seagate db35 works like a charm. Doubt its on sale for $79 but if it is I will be mad :)I don't think you will find a DB35 on sale for $79 anywhere--and certainly not at Fry's! However, the 300GB Maxtor SATA drive that Fry's advertised last Friday is a good deal, and I have used that same drive in another Apricorn external enclosure with excellent results.

I will be extremely interested to see how your 500GB DB35 performs as it approaches capacity. I had planned to buy one to replace my working 300GB Seagate external SATA drive just as soon as we know whether Navigator will support them. However, I received some disturbing information from a reliable source relative to the long-term performance of these drives:

The DB35 series sounded very promising, I was quite excited when they started marketing them and I saw the specs, however the testing I performed on some didn't quite match the hype for performance. The DB series also are NOT rated for 24x7 operation. I had to explain to our Seagate Rep how DVR's actually work and that at least with Tivo, they are ALWAYS recording 24x7. So I'm not sure if our Technical Reps from Seagate were just misinformed or if they really built a drive marketed for DVR's that isn't really designed for DVR's. There are also a number of features in the DB drives that are only functional if the firmware is written to support them properly.

One thing that does happen as the drive gets more packed with data is that the transfer rate goes down. There's a useful program called HD Tach that will demonstrate it. But as the drive fills up with data writing from the outside of the platter towards the inside, your rotational speed goes down because you're getting closer to the spindle. This means that the data that lives closer to the spindle is going to be much more prone to sputtering and glitches.

A lot of what the DB drives are supposed to do is improve performance by skipping any retrys. So instead of making a second attempt and a read it will just skip to the next frame. It sounds good in principle and works for video, but sucks for any other kind of data that is also on the drive.

For 24x7 type applications there are the Seagate SV35 drives which are built for disk-based surveillance systems where they are always recording. This drive might actually be better for DVR use reliability than the DB35.This information bears out what another Forum member has repeatedly stated, and we won't know for sure how the DB35's perform until they are 80-90% full. The observation has been made that problems start occurring around 70% capacity.

The SV35 series sounds intriguing, but I am wondering if they also would be subject to the stuttering and other glitches as recording gets closer to the spindle. My source has not responded to that question yet. Does anyone have any experience with these drives? I am tempted to buy one and try it, because we do have a surveillance system that could use it if it didn't work with the 8300--not to mention the fact that I'm always looking for a better mousetrap! :)

Scarlett

If the DB35 drives were a big problem, TiVo users everywhere would be experiencing problems, as these are the drives used in the Series 3s. Also, the assumption that a SV35 series drive would work better is purely a guess on the reviewer's part. No one here has ever used that drive, so there is no evidence to support a claim that they would be any better for DVRs.

A lot of what the DB drives are supposed to do is improve performance by skipping any retrys. So instead of making a second attempt and a read it will just skip to the next frame. It sounds good in principle and works for video, but sucks for any other kind of data that is also on the drive.
Isn't video the most important factor in finding a drive that can be considered "working"? What other kind of data is this person referring to, audio? That would be my guess, as I don't know what other data there is to consider besides audio, however, they don't mention any problems with the audio at all in this review.

When I first hooked up my previous SATA drive, immediately there were glitches galore in my recordings, and sometimes even while just watching live HD. As of yet, I have not noticed any flaws with my current drive. I believe that if you are going to get glitches with your SATA drive, you will notice them early on. Any drive that starts to fill to capacity will not playback as smoothly as it did when the drive was new. Even the internal drive of the 8300HD experiences this. That's just the way it goes. I am extremely skeptical of that review, but even so, I will keep a close eye on this drive as it starts to fill up to the 70% range(If I even let it get that full).

Do you think this drive will work (samsung SATA III 500 GB) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822152052&CMP=AFC-Bensbargains&CMP=AFC-C8Junction

quick question: Do you have to subscribe to the DVR service to use the firewire port on the 8300HD? I have Comcast HD package but I didn't get them to activate the DVR function so I was wondering if I would be able to copy HD movies onto my computer.

Thanks for all these posts. I need to know about this question because I was having problems with my On-Demand service and a Comcast tech is coming out tomorrow so it might be a good time to get this

I will keep a close eye on this drive as it starts to fill up to the 70% range(If I even let it get that full).Why in the world would you have an expensive 500GB drive if you don't intend to fill it up? At less than 70% of your 500GB drive, you could have bought that 300GB Maxtor at Fry's for $79 and had the same recording capacity--and I know the 300GB Maxtors work fine with the 8300's, because I have had one running since last August.

I hope you change your mind about filling that drive up. You know how I feel about the DB35 Seagates, and nothing would make me happier than to hear they are reliable past the 70% mark. But I'll make a deal with you: If you will keep recording on your DB35 until it gets to 90%, then I will buy a 500GB SV35 and fill it to 90% capacity. At that point, we can report the performance of each drive and see whether either or both of them can live up to their hype.

Just let me know. :)

Scarlett

Do you think this drive will work (samsung SATA III 500 GB) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822152052&CMP=AFC-Bensbargains&CMP=AFC-C8JunctionDo you have SARA or Passport, who is your provider, and where are you located?

One SARA user has reported success with the 300GB version of this Samsung drive. Did you read the reviews at Newegg? The first one said that this drive runs hot, and the third one said that it is not good for "multiple transaction" scenarios. Given the difficulties that many of us have had with larger-than-300GB drives, and the report that the drive runs hot--which is NOT good for a drive than runs 24/7--and that it has problems with "multiple transactions," I wouldn't think that it would be a good candidate for an external SATA drive.

Passport is more forgiving with the larger capacity drives, but I don't think that any drive known to run hot should be subjected to 24/7 use. If you really want a 500GB drive, then get one that is known to work. Check the SARA compatibility database--if it works on SARA, it almost surely will work on Passport. :)

Scarlett

Why in the world would you have an expensive 500GB drive if you don't intend to fill it up? At less than 70% of your 500GB drive, you could have bought that 300GB Maxtor at Fry's for $79 and had the same recording capacity--and I know the 300GB Maxtors work fine with the 8300's, because I have had one running since last August.
I bought a 500GB as a "just in case" precaution. I wanted to be sure I have all the memory I need and then some. 300GB I felt would run out too quickly. 750GB I thought was just too excessive. The majority of my memory is taken up with season-long recordings of four shows, the only TV shows I really watch devotedly. I like to archive these shows until they come out on DVD, so at an hour per show, I would accumulate about 90 hours of recorded HD material. With that number of hours, the memory should be about full. I recently had to exchange set top boxes however, so I won't have as many hours from these shows at the end of the season as I planned. Other than the four shows, most else of what I record is only to watch maybe one time and then I erase it. I don't really store up too many recordings "just 'cause." I record a movie every now and then that I may keep, but only if it's a really good movie.

I hope you change your mind about filling that drive up. You know how I feel about the DB35 Seagates, and nothing would make me happier than to hear they are reliable past the 70% mark. But I'll make a deal with you: If you will keep recording on your DB35 until it gets to 90%, then I will buy a 500GB SV35 and fill it to 90% capacity. At that point, we can report the performance of each drive and see whether either or both of them can live up to their hype.
Yeah, I guess I can do some pointless recording just to fill my drive up. Why the sudden confidence in these SV35 drives though? And what "hype" are you referring to regarding that drive? They are practically unheard of around here and they are not designed for set top box DVRs. The recommendation of the SV35 in that review was baseless. I would feel safer going with something that has at least some sort of following (which is why I was eager to get a Maxtor Quickview before I learned of the DB35). But if you feel confident in that drive, it's your money and I guess you could always try it out. As far as my drive goes, I guess the quickest way to fill it up would be to just record a lot of pointless stuff and save it. I will do my best to reach 90% soon.

Rob,

Thanks for the link. However, as I and others have pointed out, the application of 5C controls effectively leaves you with only being able to record local HD channels. If you look at the notes on the DTVR tab, that is what it says too (unencrypted movies/content only). What I and others would jump at is a PC that can legally function as an complete HD DVR eliminating the need for an STB and allowing for virtually unlimited storage capacity. My DVR can record any program/any channel. Your PC with that software can still only record unencrypted content, a very small part of what's available. Don't get me wrong, it would still be useful to be able to record the local channels on a PC, but you'd still need a cable DVR to record HBO-HD, etc., and you'd still be subject to their limited storage capacity, etc.

BTW. If you find out something different during your tests, be sure to let us know.

After reading numerous recent pages in this thread, it seems to me that using the SA 8300HD to an external harddrive is possible but it only works for channels such as NBC or ABC or CBS. It sounds that if you try copying movies from HBO, Showtime or Starz that it will not work. This is the main reason I want to get the DVR function enabled from Comcast on my 8300HD today but if I can't copy HD movies from premium channels to my PC, then it is not worth the time. Is this what I am understanding here?

After reading numerous recent pages in this thread, it seems to me that using the SA 8300HD to an external harddrive is possible but it only works for channels such as NBC or ABC or CBS. It sounds that if you try copying movies from HBO, Showtime or Starz that it will not work. This is the main reason I want to get the DVR function enabled from Comcast on my 8300HD today but if I can't copy HD movies from premium channels to my PC, then it is not worth the time. Is this what I am understanding here?
The point of a DVR is to timeshift content to watch later. With a DVR and even with an attached eSata drive, you can timeshift and watch anything you are subscribed to, regardless of the premium content and copy protection flags. That is what this thread is all about - adding storage capacity to our DVR's.
What YOU want to do is to make digital copies of digitally protected content for archive purposes outside of the copy protection scheme. That is best left to D-VHS machines that follow the HDCP copy protection standards, since PC's are not HDCP capable devices. There are sticky threads dedicated to those topics, but the gist is that you should use the 3250 box for firewire recording.

vegggas

After reading numerous recent pages in this thread, it seems to me that using the SA 8300HD to an external harddrive is possible but it only works for channels such as NBC or ABC or CBS. It sounds that if you try copying movies from HBO, Showtime or Starz that it will not work. This is the main reason I want to get the DVR function enabled from Comcast on my 8300HD today but if I can't copy HD movies from premium channels to my PC, then it is not worth the time. Is this what I am understanding here?


Dont know where you heard that but its utterly untrue. I have no problem recording anything I want with my add on 500gb drive!!!!!!!

Dont know where you heard that but its utterly untrue. I have no problem recording anything I want with my add on 500gb drive!!!!!!!

Correct, but lets say that you later get rid of your Comcast or whatever DVR box and their entire service all together. Would you be able to play those movies from your 500GB harddrive? Same question for right now, are you able to hook that drive to your PC and watch movies on there?

Correct, but lets say that you later get rid of your Comcast or whatever DVR box and their entire service all together. Would you be able to play those movies from your 500GB harddrive? Same question for right now, are you able to hook that drive to your PC and watch movies on there?
No, and No. The external HD is intrinsically linked to the individual DVR STB. It will not cross units within the same brand(8300 to another 8300 box), cross brands(8300 to a Comcast box), nor work with a PC.

No, and No. The external HD is intrinsically linked to the individual DVR STB. It will not cross units within the same brand(8300 to another 8300 box), cross brands(8300 to a Comcast box), nor work with a PC.Just to expand on this: in the United States, the 8300HD DVR is the property of the cable company that provided it, so if you discontinue the DVR service you are no longer paying for it and therefore should no longer have the right to use it.

You are raising some interesting points though. It is not normal for cable companies to provide 8300HDs as just set-top box. But I've heard of it before. In most locations these HD DVRs are in short supply and the regular HD STBs (typically the SA3250HD) are more plentiful. I know that in Buffalo last year that Adelphia was supplying 8300s for everyone - but I suspected that was some sort of "scheme" that Adelphia had to inflate the cost of the infrastructure before Time Warner took it over.

subwoofer - You're missing the point/purpose of expanding DVR storage space.

subwoofer - You're missing the point/purpose of expanding DVR storage space.

I guess so. I just hate the fact that I have to pay a monthly fee to use the DVR. I can build my own system and use open source code to manage it but I believe that I still can't get HD material using that method. But with this way I believe you can only record over the air HD material where I want to capture HBO or Starz. So the only way to record these is to use the cable box that the provider gives you. But haven't there been advances with HDMI capture cards for PCs?

update: Here is a card with HDMI ports http://w.engadgethd.com/2007/01/13/blackmagic-intros-decklink--hd-studio-worlds-first-hdmi-ana/

But in order to save or copy HBO-HD, wouldn't you be able to capture the video with this?

Yeah, I guess I can do some pointless recording just to fill my drive up. Why the sudden confidence in these SV35 drives though? And what "hype" are you referring to regarding that drive? They are practically unheard of around here and they are not designed for set top box DVRs. The recommendation of the SV35 in that review was baseless. I would feel safer going with something that has at least some sort of following (which is why I was eager to get a Maxtor Quickview before I learned of the DB35). But if you feel confident in that drive, it's your money and I guess you could always try it out. As far as my drive goes, I guess the quickest way to fill it up would be to just record a lot of pointless stuff and save it. I will do my best to reach 90% soon.I didn't say I had "sudden confidence" in these drives--I have great "interest." I do respect the information I have been given, as well as the source. That was not a "review" in the strictest sense of the word. It was an opinion rendered by someone who has real-world experience with Seagate drives and subjects them to far greater intensive applications than we do with our external drives.

If I remember correctly, I was the one who told you about the DB35 drives, and at the time, no one here had used one--you were going to be the "pioneer." But in order to make an informed judgment about the DB35 and its suitability for use with the 8300HD, it will be necessary to push it to its capacity to see when, or if, it quits performing flawlessly. I will do that with the SV35--its "claim to fame" is that it is designed to record "multiple data streams simultaneously," and in a 24/7 environment. It makes no representations relative to audio, so that will be another test for it under our self-designed "stress test." (And I believe that "audio" was the other "data" referred to by my source, although I cannot be positive about that.)

I agree that there has been no mention of the SV35 in this thread--but there also was no mention of the DB35 before I brought it up. As I said before, I am always looking for a better mousetrap, and I think the SV35 is a relatively new series--the first mention I have seen of it was in November 2006--but I could be mistaken, and it wouldn't be the first time. :) I simply want what everyone else here wants--the largest capacity, most reliable, and glitch-free external SATA drive for recording HD content from the 8300HD. You mentioned the TiVo S3 with regard to the DB35 drives, but you have to remember that TiVo is a completely different beast with completely different software! We are "crippled" by our SARA software, and who knows what is going to happen with Navigator. If you recall from the quote I posted, the comment was made that the DB35 has features that are limited by the software driving it. In addition to my two 8300HD DVRs, I have four TiVos, and I can assure you that the software is much more sophisticated than SARA. Therefore, I would suspect that the TiVo software is capable of taking advantage of the DB35 features that SARA cannot. That, of course, is mere speculation on my part. I am neither a programmer nor an engineer, and I rely on their observations and opinions to draw logical conclusions. I am told that the DB35 was not designed for 24/7 operation, whereas the SV35 was. I have no reason to doubt that statement, since the person who made it consults with the Seagate engineers and should be in a position to know. But I also can state, from my own experience and observation, that my 300GB 7200.8 Seagate SATA drives have operated in a 24/7 environment for over a year and with no problems. They will fail at some point, and probably before the 5-year warranty has expired, but so far, so good. Of course, I have no idea how that will compare with the longevity of the DB35 and the SV35 drives.

My 400GB 7200.10 Seagate SATA drive failed immediately, just as you pointed out, and from the experience of others here, we know to avoid the 7200.9 and 7200.10 series of Seagate drives. Your DB35 drive is from the 7200.3 series, and the SV35s are based on the 7200.1 and 7200.2 series. Initial success is important, yes, but in order to say that it is a complete success, you have to fill the drive to capacity, and no one using SARA has filled a 500GB drive and reported its behavior at that point. That's what I want us to do--you fill the DB35, and I will fill the SV35, and then we will see if either of them does what it has been "designed" to do. It's not a competition--it is an experiment and evaluation of two different drives for the express purpose of identifying which, if either, of them is best suited for use as a 500GB external drive with the 8300HD. Hopefully, it will benefit everyone with SARA software. :)

Scarlett

I guess so. I just hate the fact that I have to pay a monthly fee to use the DVR. I can build my own system and use open source code to manage it but I believe that I still can't get HD material using that method. But with this way I believe you can only record over the air HD material where I want to capture HBO or Starz. So the only way to record these is to use the cable box that the provider gives you. But haven't there been advances with HDMI capture cards for PCs?
We haven't begun to see the DRM issues when HDMI video cards hit the scene. You can be sure that HDCP will be enforced and Windows Vista will support the content providers and NOT the content recorders(you and me). :(

DVRs are really a no nonsense approach to quickly and accurately(for the most part) recording cable content - whether HD, or SD. Any HTCP recording capability not withstanding, DVRs are simple to use for kids and family with the press of 2 buttons. Nothing could be simpler.

^I'm use Linux or another OS besides Windows will have a work around I guess. I just don't like the fact that I have to pay a monthly fee to record shows or movies even if I don't use it. Sure it is easy and compact but VHS tapes weren't that bad and you didn't have to pay a fee to copy something on them. Its just too much big brother for me and I'm hoping someone knows how to get around it in a legal way. Please PM me if you know.

I guess so. I just hate the fact that I have to pay a monthly fee to use the DVR. I can build my own system and use open source code to manage it but I believe that I still can't get HD material using that method. But with this way I believe you can only record over the air HD material where I want to capture HBO or Starz. So the only way to record these is to use the cable box that the provider gives you. But haven't there been advances with HDMI capture cards for PCs?

update: Here is a card with HDMI ports http://w.engadgethd.com/2007/01/13/blackmagic-intros-decklink--hd-studio-worlds-first-hdmi-ana/

But in order to save or copy HBO-HD, wouldn't you be able to capture the video with this?
"Capture" refers to transferring SD/HD video from a digital camera, not a cable or SAT STB. Additionally, a device that outputs protected content via HDMI also has DRM, in this case HDCP. No HDCP handshake, no HDMI signal for you.

IMO, ~$8/mo is a puny sum to pay to record and play hi-def content.

^True. But its just lame that you never actually own the content and if you switch providers or the area, you can't take it with you or view it on your PC whenever you wish.

I know its only $10 a month for the Comcast DVR, but I just hate giving that company or any other company more money for a product that should be out of their hands.

^True. But its just lame that you never actually own the content and if you switch providers or the area, you can't take it with you or view it on your PC whenever you wish.

I know its only $10 a month for the Comcast DVR, but I just hate giving that company or any other company more money for a product that should be out of their hands.
It is what it is. The only reason we can record and time-shift - near "archive" even - hi-def programming is because of the unbreakable encryption and the restrictions placed on what we can do with it. You can buy BD/HD-DVD discs if you want "ownership" and even then there are restrictions.

I don't know how you figure you own it just because you subscribe to cable/satellite. Your subscription gives you the right to view it and your DVR agreement gives you the right to time-shift it, not record for posterity instead of buying the DVD, etc. While it's somewhat true that your could "own" it with a VCR in the past, that is really only because they never figured out a cost-effective way to defeat recording and the VCR actually helped build their subscriber base. Now that cable/satellite is part of the landscape and they know how to defeat copying, at least for the majority of subs, content owners are able to retain more control over their product, it's as simple as that. If you want to own it, you'll just have to buy into yet another format, HD DVDs. :)

^True. But its just lame that you never actually own the content and if you switch providers or the area, you can't take it with you or view it on your PC whenever you wish.
You are only licensed to view the content, not own it. Even if you buy the DVD, you are buying the license to view it. You are not legally allowed to copy or use the content anyway you want. If you want to take it with you, go buy the license agreement on a DVD so that you can view it when you want. If you can't buy it on DVD, buy a movie theater and license the movie from the studio.

I know its only $10 a month for the Comcast DVR, but I just hate giving that company or any other company more money for a product that should be out of their hands. If it was not in their hands, you would not be able to view it at all. If not for cable, sat and other providers, your only outlet for movie content would be movie theaters and DVD's.

vegggas

Wow, 3 quick posts at the same time, basically saying the same thing...
Great minds think alike
vegggas

...

IMO, ~$8/mo is a puny sum to pay to record and play hi-def content.
I agree. It's a very reasonable fee to me too.

One other note... Just because you own a DVD, or HD/BD, does not give you the right to have a party at your home and charge everyone $10 to watch the movie in your spanky new HT. For profit is prohibited as well. Of course, we all know that... :D

Wow, 3 quick posts at the same time, basically saying the same thing...
Great minds think alike
vegggas

Even a broken clock is right twice a day....

...thanks for the posts everyone but I guess I just don't like Big Brother looking over what I am doing all the time and its not the $10 a month that matters, it just the principle of it. It could be a penny a day and I still don't like the fact that they can charge you for something that was basically free when we had VHS. Its a dangerous path to go down when you keep letting the RIAA or MPAA or other organizations control too much. Just my two cents...

Even a broken clock is right twice a day....

...thanks for the posts everyone but I guess I just don't like Big Brother looking over what I am doing all the time and its not the $10 a month that matters, it just the principle of it. It could be a penny a day and I still don't like the fact that they can charge you for something that was basically free when we had VHS. Its a dangerous path to go down when you keep letting the RIAA or MPAA or other organizations control too much. Just my two cents...
That hasn't changed. You can still copy anything for "Free" to VHS. You are asking for premium features that come at a premium price.

vegggas

Even a broken clock is right twice a day....

...thanks for the posts everyone but I guess I just don't like Big Brother looking over what I am doing all the time and its not the $10 a month that matters, it just the principle of it. It could be a penny a day and I still don't like the fact that they can charge you for something that was basically free when we had VHS. Its a dangerous path to go down when you keep letting the RIAA or MPAA or other organizations control too much. Just my two cents...
It's a contractual relationship that requires two willing parties. If you are unwilling, simply do not enter into the contract. You'll get neither disagreement nor sympathy here when you complain about Big Brother. It's old news that's not going to change. :)

subwhoofer,

The problem is that it's their content and they have every right to control it's use. Like vegggas said, it's either that or we go back to movie theaters or wait for it to come on the national networks with all the cuts and commercials.

FWIW, that's the same argument I and others use when we discuss the Sinclair deal making cableco's pay for local content. However, the fact that it's free OTA and that you could record with a VCR doesn't seem to count for anything. You can still record with a VCR, just not HD, so they really haven't taken anything away.

BTW. Did you know that you can't even have a "Superbowl" Weekend on the radio without paying the NFL a fee to use the term "Superbowl"? We had a "Super-what-you-eat-cereal-in" Weekend here on our local Oldies station. We sure showed them! :)

1) Has anyone tried to clone their external Hard Drive (via Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image) that handle multiple formats and O/S structure to see if it works?

If #1 is successful, I wonder if

2) Could you clone the external Hard Drive to increase size, such as moving a 300GB External Drive that is mated to the SA8300 to a 500GB External Drive so the material would still be intact with the same unit - but give you more room for additional storage?

It seems that it should be possible in theory - I am just curious if anyone has tried it?

I've have a 500GB External HD and would try it in the future when the 750GB hard drives are common - but curious if anyone has experimented with it now?

1) Has anyone tried to clone their external Hard Drive (via Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image) that handle multiple formats and O/S structure to see if it works?

If #1 is successful, I wonder if

2) Could you clone the external Hard Drive to increase size, such as moving a 300GB External Drive that is mated to the SA8300 to a 500GB External Drive so the material would still be intact with the same unit - but give you more room for additional storage?

It seems that it should be possible in theory - I am just curious if anyone has tried it?

I've have a 500GB External HD and would try it in the future when the 750GB hard drives are common - but curious if anyone has experimented with it now?
I'm pretty sure that this has been covered quite a few times. A drive formatted by the DVR will look unformatted to a PC.

Did you know that you can't even have a "Superbowl" Weekend on the radio without paying the NFL a fee to use the term "Superbowl"? We had a "Super-what-you-eat-cereal-in" Weekend here on our local Oldies station. We sure showed them! :)

Just wait, I'm sure one day soon, someone will get a patent for air past the patent bureau and you'll be getting a notice of fees you have to pay to license it's use!

Besides, that station could be hauled in front of a court for brand dilution.

Just wait, I'm sure one day soon, someone will get a patent for air past the patent bureau and you'll be getting a notice of fees you have to pay to license it's use!

Besides, that station could be hauled in front of a court for brand dilution.
I think that a case could be made that this was fair use as a parody.

1) Has anyone tried to clone their external Hard Drive (via Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image) that handle multiple formats and O/S structure to see if it works?

If #1 is successful, I wonder if

2) Could you clone the external Hard Drive to increase size, such as moving a 300GB External Drive that is mated to the SA8300 to a 500GB External Drive so the material would still be intact with the same unit - but give you more room for additional storage?

It seems that it should be possible in theory - I am just curious if anyone has tried it?

I've have a 500GB External HD and would try it in the future when the 750GB hard drives are common - but curious if anyone has experimented with it now?

Actually ("looking unformatted" isn't an issue for a true bit copy program) IMO you can NOT do a real clone from a 300G drive to a 500G drive. At the very simplest level, the area reserved for the directory has to be different, the addressing could be very different. And that's only a general, informed kind of comment, none of us has clue one as to how they really format the drive, other than the fact that we accept it has to have SOME form of formatting.

Actually ("looking unformatted" isn't an issue for a true bit copy program) IMO you can NOT do a real clone from a 300G drive to a 500G drive. At the very simplest level, the area reserved for the directory has to be different, the addressing could be very different. And that's only a general, informed kind of comment, none of us has clue one as to how they really format the drive, other than the fact that we accept it has to have SOME form of formatting.
If it could be imaged, then it could be cloned irregardless of the format. But that's not an area in which I am knowledgeable.

edit: But just what purpose a cloned drive would serve is beyond me. It could still only be used on the box that "recorded" it.

I think that a case could be made that this was fair use as a parody.

Ha, yes and no. I sure as hell could drone on about patents being given to things that may not be "air" but sure as hell are just as absurd. I DID take out a line I actually DID write about how you were first in line, so we had to be extra special towards you!

Just wait, I'm sure one day soon, someone will get a patent for air past the patent bureau and you'll be getting a notice of fees you have to pay to license it's use!

Patent and Trademark Office would reject the application based on prior art. :p

Could it possibly be the cable? I am using the SATA cable that came with the Apricorn enclosure...do we know what SATA version is on the 8300HD? Maybe there is an incompatibilty...there was also a switch setting on the hard drive...we left it on the higher speed setting thinking that it would be backward compatible if it were connected to the slower device connection.

This is my first post....but I am thankful to this forum for many years of advice and help...now on to my problem.

My config:
SA 8300HD DVR - Time Warner in San Diego
Passport Echo 2.6.002
OS PowerTV 6.14.74.1sp Homeserver Edition 1.8
Internal HD: WDC WD1600BB-56RDA0

Connection via HDMI to Denon 4308 to Vizio GV47L via HDMI

External Drive via eSATA - MAXTOR QV500 with Apricorn EZ-BUS-DTS-EKIT

Before connecting the new external drive , DVR worked fine...mostly recorded HD shows...occasionally a glitch on playback, but might be due to compression artifacts on the particular channels...I seemed to notice more on FOX and ABC, but was still very rare.

Connection to eSATA was simple (I just did it last night)...it did the format, and diag confirmed increase in space available. (For Diag --> Select & Exit on front of box until DIAG shows on display....then tune to 611)

It was set to record several HD shows last night. This morning, playback of newly recorded shows had audio stutter and some video stutter (older shows playback fine)....about once every 5 minutes....then would be fine for 10-15 minutes...and so on. All this without stressing the box (not recording at the same time as playback)...


I would appreciate any help!

Could it possibly be the cable? I am using the SATA cable that came with the Apricorn enclosure...do we know what SATA version is on the 8300HD? Maybe there is an incompatibilty...there was also a switch setting on the hard drive...we left it on the higher speed setting thinking that it would be backward compatible if it were connected to the slower device connection.
Try forcing SATA150 operation with the jumper. And re-seat the SATA cables, inside and outside of the enclosure.

preliminary success!

Western Digital WD3200KS 320G SATA2 16MB cache
Apricorn EZ-BUS-DTS-EKIT enclosure

No apparent stuttering or macroblocking or pixellation.

Fan in the Apricorn is too noisy for my taste. I might try the fanless Vantec Nexstar, or maybe I'll modify the Apricorn with a Zalman fan speed controller. Based on what I've read, the Westerm Digital WDXX00KS drives run relatively cool.



Cox San Diego, CA
SARA 1.88.19.1
8300HD internal drive is listed in diagnostic pages as WD1600BB

Segask,

I noticed you are also in SD with COX and the same 8300HD SARA I have.

I just wanted to know if you have experienced any problems with this combo yet...? I'm hovering over the Newegg purchase button, but you are the first person I've seen with the exact same config as I have....

Thanks!

I'm on BHN in Orlando with an SA8300HD on Passport Echo V2.6.002. I just purchased a Western Digital My Book Premium ES external hard drive (500GB, model WD5000F032) and connected it to the 8300HD using an eSATA-to-eSATA cable purchased from monoprice.com (actually bought two cables from them). I've tried several variations (found in this thread) for connecting it to the 8300HD (including rebooting several times), and the DVR still does not see the drive. The most I've been able to get it to see is disconnecting the drive error in diagnosticsm, so it would seem to know something is there, but not getting very far. I've tested the drive on my PC and it would appear to be working fine (at least WD Diagnostics thinks so).

Anyone tried this combo and have it working?

no one using SARA has filled a 500GB drive and reported its behavior at that point.


I just bought-

Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
newegg com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822136073


and one of these-
AZiO ENC311SU41 Aluminum 3.5" eSATA + USB 2.0 External Enclosure - Retail
newegg com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817106097


I have a brand new 8300 with SARA 1.89.17.1
I live in/around Buffalo NY and have Time Warner- it was Adelphia before. I have a 52" Sharp Aquos LCD hooked up to the box via HDMI cable.

I hope I don't need any other cables to hook up the external HD enclosure to the box.... I should have the things next week, and I will post back with the results.

I'll be trying to fill it up to see what happens. In that database the exact same setup worked with no glitches, I hope I am that lucky.

My external drive stopped being added to my TW DVR after a power outage. Nothing helped. Today I took the HD box apart and put it back together. Did the power down thing once again and it worked. Strange but true.

Richard.

My external drive stopped being added to my TW DVR after a power outage. Nothing helped. Today I took the HD box apart and put it back together. Did the power down thing once again and it worked. Strange but true.

Richard.

Could expand a bit on the part about taking the HD box apart? Are talking about disassembling the 8300HD Explorer set-top box? After opening it what exactly did you do?

This could be very helpful for others that find themselves in a similar situation, worried about data loss, due to power failures. I personally am one who fears this. I have filled up ~65% of the combined 650GB and would be very frustrated if a simple power failure could erase all of that. Of coarse everything is plugged into a surge-arresting power block but I know how abrupt loss of power could easily contribute to drive corruption. Any tips on how to recover from this would be great.

I think when he said "HD box" he was referring to his external hard drive not the 8300. :)

Yep; the HD box, not the 8300 (instructions for playing with that would be fun too mind you). I was surprised that the software bug that will not let you record a live program with the external drive installed is still with us.

Richard.

My external drive stopped being added to my TW DVR after a power outage. Nothing helped. Today I took the HD box apart and put it back together. Did the power down thing once again and it worked. Strange but true.

Richard.
Not necessarily so strange. Disassembling and reassembling reseated all of the SATA connections. SATA connectors seem to be very finicky and slight (read: not visually obvious) misalignment partially breaks the connection. Vibration, perhaps, loosens them. There've been many posts where re-doing the cabling has returned the external drive to proper operation. Of course, if that was the case for you, the power outage was coincidantal.

Could expand a bit on the part about taking the HD box apart? Are talking about disassembling the 8300HD Explorer set-top box? After opening it what exactly did you do?

This could be very helpful for others that find themselves in a similar situation, worried about data loss, due to power failures. I personally am one who fears this. I have filled up ~65% of the combined 650GB and would be very frustrated if a simple power failure could erase all of that. Of coarse everything is plugged into a surge-arresting power block but I know how abrupt loss of power could easily contribute to drive corruption. Any tips on how to recover from this would be great.
The brutal truth is that our recorded content could be lost at any time and for various reasons. I have about forty-five hi-def movies on one of my 8300HD/ext drives and while I'd be mightily bummed if I lost it, that possibility is built into my expectations. All you can do is use a high quality surge protector on both AC and RG cable and hope for the best. I've gone through several power losses and only lost data on one box (out of three) on one occasion.

Picklepot: did you ever get your problem corrected? I have been experiencing the same exact symptoms. I solved it by disconnecting the external drive, but this is not a good permanent solution for me.

Below is an interesting post from pm47 at our Northern sister thread over at digitalhome.ca(interesting part is the SARA diag overflow info):
xnappo
---------------------

I've been following this thread for a while -- here's what I've seen with my SA8300HD, WD 5000KS 500GB drive and Vantec Nexstar NST-360SU-BK enclosure.

* I see glitches every 5 minutes or so when recording 2 HD channels and watching one of them. Just watching one HD show and not recording, the glitches seem to happen a little less often.
* Without the drive connected, there are no glitches.
* The glitches must be happening on the path towards the drive, since they are recorded on the disk. Whenever there's a glitch, if I rewind a bit and re-play, the glitch is there in the same spot.
* Bypassing the enclosure's circuit as suggested by post #891 didn't help.
* Inserting the drive's jumper to limit it to 150MB/s didn't help or make it worse. Without the jumper, it's supposed to be 300MB/s.
* I watched the "QAM Channel Status" diagnostic page (pg. 15) while recording two HD shows, and the "Overflows" counter on channel 5 or 6 or both incremented whenever there was a glitch. According to this page, this indicates DMA buffer overflows.
* When playing back a recorded glitch, the Overflows counters don't increment.

All of this suggests that the glitches are happening inside the PVR when a DMA buffer overflows, presumably because some part of the datapath between the QAM tuners and the drive isn't keeping up or is bursty. I don't think it can be as simple as the drive being too slow, or it would have gotten worse with the 150MB/s jumper (unless the PVR isn't really pushing 300MB/s to the drive anyway).

So I haven't got a solution and I'm out of ideas. Maybe somebody who knows more about QAM tuners and the 8300HD can make sense of this. Any other ideas of things to try, or do we need to just wait and hope some future firmware upgrade fixes this?

Thanks.

All of this suggests that the glitches are happening inside the PVR when a DMA buffer overflows, presumably because some part of the datapath between the QAM tuners and the drive isn't keeping up or is bursty. I don't think it can be as simple as the drive being too slow, or it would have gotten worse with the 150MB/s jumper (unless the PVR isn't really pushing 300MB/s to the drive anyway).

So I haven't got a solution and I'm out of ideas. Maybe somebody who knows more about QAM tuners and the 8300HD can make sense of this. Any other ideas of things to try, or do we need to just wait and hope some future firmware upgrade fixes this?

Thanks.

Someone over in my location thread labeled this "skippage." As I've said before, I see a variable amount of this even without any external drives, which seems to indicate the external drive is NOT the root cause, but may contribute to it. The fact that sometimes I see little or no skippage and occasionally it's SOOO bad as to make it completely unwatchable that I conclude the head end CAN play a role. Wild ass guess, but I'm thinking 80-20 for where the problem lies (DVR-head end).

So I am doing an experiment. First, I think I need to do this for a while before I can validate any conclusions, but I already am kind of a channel twirler, so I normally keep the remote very handy. I am trying to minimize what is going on. Which means to keep the second tuner (when not in active use) tuned to a non-buffering channel (the VODs, or the music choice channels).

Now I already realize this "experiment" has flaws, but it seems to be one of the few ways we have to actually try and "lessen the load" on the DVR. So I KNOW a few months of doing it may give me some seat of the pants impressions. After the first week, I CAN see glitching/skippage watching live with the other tuner not buffering (the head end involvement) but I do seem to see ever so slightly less issues.

I mentioned this a long, long time ago, It's a memory issue.
As applications and events use and fragment memory, the buffers can get smaller and cause skipping and errors. The addition of an external drive requires specific mapping for allocation of space on the drive and even more space for markers for space for recorded events. So, the addition of a larger drive, strains the memory requirements for use. It was surmised (2003?) that under normal circumstances with average applications loaded on the DVR by the local franchise that 300GB would be considered a theoretical limit to external storage. In real world use, sometimes the addition of more applications can reduce the available overhead and cause more problems, even for a single drive. The act of rebooting can clear some memory fragmentation issues and help some of the other known issues, but can't replace insufficient menory allocation. Keep in mind that this product was being developed back in 2002/3 and was availalbe for order at the start of 2004.

vegggas

I have a question that may have been answered before (but I couldn't find the answer by searching on this forum):

I have two external hard drives, both formatted by my SA8300. So far, when I switch from one to the other, I do a hard reboot. That takes some time, 10 minutes or more. Is there any other way to switch drives? Since both drives are already formatted, can I switch the drives simply with power off, or does the SA8300 require a reboot to see a different drive?

Also, as a point of information, one of my drives is actually a RAID 0 array, using the Sans Digital MS2UT and a pair of Seagate drives. The SA8300 sees it as just another external eSATA drive. The only drawback is that its fans are too noisy for bedroom use.

I have a question that may have been answered before (but I couldn't find the answer by searching on this forum):

I have two external hard drives, both formatted by my SA8300. So far, when I switch from one to the other, I do a hard reboot. That takes some time, 10 minutes or more. Is there any other way to switch drives? Since both drives are already formatted, can I switch the drives simply with power off, or does the SA8300 require a reboot to see a different drive?

Also, as a point of information, one of my drives is actually a RAID 0 array, using the Sans Digital MS2UT and a pair of Seagate drives. The SA8300 sees it as just another external eSATA drive. The only drawback is that its fans are too noisy for bedroom use.
You are a pioneer and as such should expect some arrows in your chest. I think the 8300HD is barely suited for one external drive, much less swapping two (or more) of them. Congrats, though, on coming up with a RAID array that "looks" like one SATA drive to the 8300HD. Personally, I'd load that up with two big honkers and consider myself lucky.

Someone over in my location thread labeled this "skippage." As I've said before, I see a variable amount of this even without any external drives, which seems to indicate the external drive is NOT the root cause, but may contribute to it. The fact that sometimes I see little or no skippage and occasionally it's SOOO bad as to make it completely unwatchable that I conclude the head end CAN play a role. Wild ass guess, but I'm thinking 80-20 for where the problem lies (DVR-head end).
I agree that transmission problems can relate to "skippage", but it seems unlikely to me that the head-end causes much of this. The obvious way to prove/disprove this is for someone with a non-DVR HD box validate whether they get skippage or not. I used to have a non-DVR HD box and would have VERY occasional skippage, but it was nowhere near as frequent as I get with the HD box.

Signal clarity can have a huge effect on "skippage" though -- if your signal is not strong enough or your lines are getting a lot of interference (S/R ratio), this could have a huge influence. But errors at the head-end would seem to be few and far between (though TWC does in fact transcode our channels to compress more channels into less space -- so it could be introducing errors).

I like the "memory fragmentation" theory vegggas proposes on this thread -- the reason that I can buy this is that from my own personal observations, the "skippage" factor seems to grow the longer I wait between reboots. So when the memory is "cleaner"/"fresher" after a reboot, the less likely it is to glitch. But as time goes on and the memory gets more fragmented, the more likely glitches become.

This can also somewhat explain why there is more skippage when you've got both tuners set to HD channels (it takes more memory/processing to decode 2 HD video streams), and why it seems so much more likely there will be skippage when tuning an HD channel vs. a SD channel.

Sounds logical to me.

STILL, it is inexcusable to me that the developers overlook this fact and allow the skippage to continue. The basic functionality of this thing is to display video cleanly, and it is not doing its most basic function correctly. This functionality should never be broken.

Just imagine if TIVO were having this problem -- their customer service department would be immediately overwhelmed with complaints. Unfortunately for us there is nobody who has to answer to our complaints!

I have read many post and pages in this thread. Cutting to the quick is the best option still a 300G eSATA drive, since it seems the 500g drives have glitch issues? Interesting that when the 500g gets to around the 300g mark or 70% they start glitching.

IS there any drives anyone would recommend whether one over the other or can definitively say they have no issues with?

Can someone also give a brief summary of what I would need to get if I decide to get an external drive if I have nothing yet except of course the SA 8300HD DVR? Meaning all the necessary hardware.

I apologize but sometimes reading through all the threads and posts I do get information, but get overwhelmed and confused and a brief summary of what I need would be helpful and expedient.

Thanks in advance.

Hugh

I have read many post and pages in this thread. Cutting to the quick is the best option still a 300G eSATA drive, since it seems the 500g drives have glitch issues? Interesting that when the 500g gets to around the 300g mark or 70% they start glitching.

IS there any drives anyone would recommend whether one over the other or can definitively say they have no issues with?

Can someone also give a brief summary of what I would need to get if I decide to get an external drive if I have nothing yet except of course the SA 8300HD DVR? Meaning all the necessary hardware.

I apologize but sometimes reading through all the threads and posts I do get information, but get overwhelmed and confused and a brief summary of what I need would be helpful and expedient.

Thanks in advance.

Hugh

The drive and case at the bottom of my signature have worked perfectly, no glitches. The combo came with everything I needed.

If you have SARA software, things are different.

I do have SARA, but things don't look that different for what I need it to work going by the SARA eSATA database link.

The reference to SARA is that SARA "seems" to have some problems with larger drives that Passport doesn't.

Unfortunately, no one can tell you "for certain" what will work. The database gives you a good indication of what others have gotten to work; some just plug & play, others through trial & error. Many folks find that what works well for one is too noisy, etc., for someone else. No matter what you do though make sure there is a good and liberal return policy.

^^ thanks.

I mentioned this a long, long time ago, It's a memory issue.
As applications and events use and fragment memory, the buffers can get smaller and cause skipping and errors. The addition of an external drive requires specific mapping for allocation of space on the drive and even more space for markers for space for recorded events. So, the addition of a larger drive, strains the memory requirements for use. It was surmised (2003?) that under normal circumstances with average applications loaded on the DVR by the local franchise that 300GB would be considered a theoretical limit to external storage. In real world use, sometimes the addition of more applications can reduce the available overhead and cause more problems, even for a single drive. The act of rebooting can clear some memory fragmentation issues and help some of the other known issues, but can't replace insufficient menory allocation. Keep in mind that this product was being developed back in 2002/3 and was availalbe for order at the start of 2004.

vegggas

The pisser is that my general use, Unix based OS probably has far better memory management that these RTOS based systems seem to have! I've come to the conclusion that there are other things beyond memory management at play; it seems part of the issue is doing basic i/o to more than one volume.

Ah, it WAS Scott who was the person who first used "skippage." I though veggas post was about memory fragmentation relating to the size of additional storage space.

Here's another kinda odd one. At your suggestion, I have been trying to "reduce the load" by setting the second tuner to a non-buffering channel, even though you just pointed out that my choice might NOT be a non-buffering channel (the music channels). I think I have seen a slight difference in skippage, as in not quite as much. I also see a difference in the "kind" of skippage. Before I got video freeze and audio dropout. Now I see a scant second of major pixellation with a shorter audio drop out.

Every time I check, I'm getting on spec signal strength and s/n ratios. Yet I have seen skippage so bad as it's unwatchable, switched to another channel that was fine, switched back to the same horrors. I think of head end issues, although it certainly IS possible it's not from TWC but the channels delivery to TWC.

Still, I agree 100% with you that no matter what the causes, we are not getting the kind of service for the amount of money we pay for it. AND I have no alternative... I CAN see Direct's bird, but it's framed between two tall buildings so I have no idea if that means I can get as clean a signal as can be gotten by others. There ARE areas where I see Direct dishes, but I do not see even one in my hood. AND it's a pisser because I live on the top floor with terraces south and west!

Still, I agree 100% with you that no matter what the causes, we are not getting the kind of service for the amount of money we pay for it. AND I have no alternative... I CAN see Direct's bird, but it's framed between two tall buildings so I have no idea if that means I can get as clean a signal as can be gotten by others. There ARE areas where I see Direct dishes, but I do not see even one in my hood. AND it's a pisser because I live on the top floor with terraces south and west!
If you can see the bird, the bird can see you. :cool:

Anybody else with Mystro software able to connect a esata hard drive? I have a Western Digital Mybook ES that I tried but no luck. I live in Lincoln, NE and we too are lab rats for this horrid software.

Anybody else with Mystro software able to connect a esata hard drive? I have a Western Digital Mybook ES that I tried but no luck. I live in Lincoln, NE and we too are lab rats for this horrid software.

That is not what those of use with TWC want to hear!

Did you have an external drive before the update? What procedure are you following to connect the drive? Since you can't see the amount of free space on Mystro Navigator (from what I understand) how do you know if it is working? Is there a diag screen for the drives?

Sorry - lots more questions than answers.

Regards,
xnappo

That is not what those of use with TWC want to hear!

Regards,
xnappo

In spades! By public statements from TWC, us TWC Passporters seem to be first in line for Navigator. Still, I'm pretty sure I've read posts from some of the test area folks who have successfully used external HDs w/Navigator. AND did not someone in Lincoln say he got Nav. on his non DVR box, but not on his DVR box?

The trick play bug was bad enough for how I wanted to use it that I opted to modify my habit. I'm very much trying to stick to a "watch it within 3-5 days" and that is working OK. Sure I'd prefer to have a much larger library of what to watch, but I always DO have something to watch.

Anyone tried an external storage device with 1 or 2 TB capacity??

I was thinking of getting this Lacie HD (2TB capacity): LACIE Bigger Disk Extreme 300801U 2TB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache USB 2.0 / IEEE 1394a / 1394b External Hard Drive -


Anyone know if you can use the firewire or do you have to use an eSATA connection on the back of the 8300?

Anyone tried an external storage device with 1 or 2 TB capacity??No.

I was thinking of getting this Lacie HD (2TB capacity): LACIE Bigger Disk Extreme 300801U 2TB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache USB 2.0 / IEEE 1394a / 1394b External Hard Drive -I would think again if I were you. Success with anything greater than 500GB is rare.


Anyone know if you can use the firewireNo, you can't.

... or do you have to use an eSATA connection on the back of the 8300?Yes, you do.

Read the very first post in this thread and follow all the links. If you still have questions after that, come back with your location, provider, firmware and version.

Good luck!

Scarlett

No.

I would think again if I were you. Success with anything greater than 500GB is rare.


No, you can't.

Yes, you do.

Read the very first post in this thread and follow all the links. If you still have questions after that, come back with your location, provider, firmware and version.

Good luck!

Scarlett

Thanks Scarlett! I was about to pull the trigger on the 2TB HD... you saved me some cash. :D

Any ideas on how to pressure TW and others to permit live recording with the external HD connected? I assume this is a minor software bug.

Richard.

Thanks Scarlett! I was about to pull the trigger on the 2TB HD... you saved me some cash. :D

AFAIK anything with a capacity of 1T and better has to use multiple drives (I know 1T drives are in the pipeline, but haven't heard that any are actually shipping quite yet).

I assume you are talking about a "prebuilt" 2T drives that has hardware RAID (that "presents" itself to the host as a single drive)? I have been doing arrays since long before most folks even knew one COULD do such things, so my first thought when the issue of external drive support became a reality was to such units. However, pretty much all the ones I come across are FW, not SATA for external connections.

Any ideas on how to pressure TW and others to permit live recording with the external HD connected? I assume this is a minor software bug.

Richard.
You know your SATA port is not active?

AFAIK anything with a capacity of 1T and better has to use multiple drives (I know 1T drives are in the pipeline, but haven't heard that any are actually shipping quite yet).

I assume you are talking about a "prebuilt" 2T drives that has hardware RAID (that "presents" itself to the host as a single drive)? I have been doing arrays since long before most folks even knew one COULD do such things, so my first thought when the issue of external drive support became a reality was to such units. However, pretty much all the ones I come across are FW, not SATA for external connections.

Yes the prebuilt models:

2TB model with eSATA interface: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822101049

1TB model with USB interface (can use USB to eSATA adaptor):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822204022

Every time I see someone post about using RAID on the 8300HD, my pulse quickens. And then I investigate and come back down to earth. Re the Cavalry product - did anyone happen to notice the specs that say "One SATA RAID Controller card with PCI Express, 2 channels"?

I don't know about your 8300HD, but mine has no PCIe slots into which I'd install this item.

:)

Every time I see someone post about using RAID on the 8300HD, my pulse quickens. And then I investigate and come back down to earth. Re the Cavalry product - did anyone happen to notice the specs that say "One SATA RAID Controller card with PCI Express, 2 channels"?

I don't know about your 8300HD, but mine has no PCIe slots into which I'd install this item.

:rolleyes:

RELAX! Sorry I should have done more research.

RELAX! Sorry I should have done more research.
:rolleyes: changed to :)

Thank you. I am relaxed now. ;)

I bought a couple SATA(1) to eSATA(2) cables but cannot plug the SATA end into my 8300 HD. The eSATA plug ends work though.

I bought a couple SATA(1) to eSATA(2) cables but cannot plug the SATA end into my 8300 HD. The eSATA plug ends work though.
Yep, the 8300HD has an eSATA port.

Yep, the 8300HD has an eSATA port.And there has NEVER been just a SATA port on the SA8300.

The eSATA connector seemed to spring up after folks started putting SATA drives external to their main cases and ran "standard" SATA cabling using the regular SATA connectors, which were designed to essentially plug in once and forget. The difference is actually very subtle, but the eSATA connector is specced to handle a lot more "insertions" that any internal connector would.

I happen to think they didn't make the best kind of connector they could have. Much like the HDMI connector, neither have any mechanism to provide AMY measure of security (as in having a good feeling the connector would stay connected). I'm talking about things like the admittedly cumbersome wire bails of the SCSI connectors. More up to date, and an example of a very well designed connector, is the dock connector on iPods. Once connected, it's very secure as there are two tiny pins that sort of "lock" it in.

Just purchased the Maxtor Quickview drive from here: https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Maxtor/3H500F0/

and the apricorn enclosure here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817362002

Looking forward to their fast arrival. I'll post results once I build!!

Not working. I've got stuttering. Gonna try the kit from Weakness (300gb).

I'm on Comcast in Morgantown WV (SARA 1.88.25.1).

Every time I see someone post about using RAID on the 8300HD, my pulse quickens. And then I investigate and come back down to earth. Re the Cavalry product - did anyone happen to notice the specs that say "One SATA RAID Controller card with PCI Express, 2 channels"?

I don't know about your 8300HD, but mine has no PCIe slots into which I'd install this item.

:)

Actually, there is no technical reason I'm aware of that says one can't have a hardware RAID chip enabled enclosure based on SATA drives with a eSATA connector on the back from "presenting" itself as a single volume to any connected equipment. Such a beast WILL eventually happen, but my guess not for a few years. FW was around for a good 5+ years before such a thing came into being. Remember the whole concept of SATA natively connected external drives is actually pretty new.

I recall pissing all over Apple when it became clear they had little interest in bringing FW to ever faster i/o speeds (most folks have no clue they first specced it out almost 20 years ago with a viable plan to go to 800, then 12600, then 3200). My guess is they knew external SATA was going to come and that would stomp all over FW as a storage device i/o.

And there has NEVER been just a SATA port on the SA8300.

Ha, that makes me think of the 8000DVR that had a port labeled "1394" on the case with NO electronics behind it!

Ha, that makes me think of the 8000DVR that had a port labeled "1394" on the case with NO electronics behind it!
Yes, and my current 8300HD (with an eSATA port in use) has NO Firewire ports at all (yes, I've had it several years).

I just bought-

Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
newegg com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822136073


and one of these-
AZiO ENC311SU41 Aluminum 3.5" eSATA + USB 2.0 External Enclosure - Retail
newegg com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817106097


I have a brand new 8300 with SARA 1.89.17.1
I live in/around Buffalo NY and have Time Warner- it was Adelphia before. I have a 52" Sharp Aquos LCD hooked up to the box via HDMI cable.

I hope I don't need any other cables to hook up the external HD enclosure to the box.... I should have the things next week, and I will post back with the results.

I'll be trying to fill it up to see what happens. In that database the exact same setup worked with no glitches, I hope I am that lucky.


Just an update- this combo works PERFECTLY.
I can even pause live TV, not sure if that is still a problem for some people, I thought I read earlier in this thread that some people could not pause live TV if they had an external drive connected.

I can also record TWO HD TV shows while watching a previously recorded HD program no problem.

It basically work exactly the same as before the external drive was installed except I have way more space. I went from having about 15 HD recordings at 77% capacity, to having 15 HD recordings at 17% capacity.

One note- I had to reboot the box TWO times for it to work.
On the first reboot, the 8300 saw my HD and formatted it- I also saw it on the internal pages after hitting "select", then "info" on the front of the 8300, but I did not see any extra space when checking my recordings.

I turned the 8300 off, pulled the power again, pulled power from the external drive- then waited a while. After that I plugged in the external drive, then plugged in the 8300, then turned the 8300 on, and presto, it went from 77% to 17% HD capacity used.

Now I have about 27 HD programs/movies recorded, ranging from 1 hour to 2.5 hours, and have used about 32% of the combined drives' space, which is 660 GB before formatting.

I'm a happy camper, it all worked perfectly.. If anyone wants to try a 500GB drive, I'd go with the same equipment I got. Only time will tell if it works well if the 500 GB drive gets over 300GB of recordings on it.

I'm so glad I found this forum, and this thread.

Yes, and my current 8300HD (with an eSATA port in use) has NO Firewire ports at all (yes, I've had it several years).

Holy smokes! Mine has 2 of them, with internal connectors in place. Still, AFAIK, I have read that the last Passport update (2.5.066) apparently interfered with some other folks' ability to use them to record to D-VHS decks. Which seems to imply they are totally useless.

Just an update- this combo works PERFECTLY.
I can even pause live TV, not sure if that is still a problem for some people, I thought I read earlier in this thread that some people could not pause live TV if they had an external drive connected.

That issue is specific to Passport users and generally called the "trick play bug."

Is it possible to purchase the 8300HD?

I have comcast in baltimore, md and all i have seen is motorola boxes.

thanks so much!

Is it possible to purchase the 8300HD?

I have comcast in baltimore, md and all i have seen is motorola boxes.

thanks so much!No - the cable boxes have to integrate with the particular cable system that they are used on. It appears that your specific system is set-up for Moto boxes. I know that SA stuff is used in Howard County while Moto stuff is used in Montgomery county. My son-in-law had a SA8300 in Howard county but now has to suffer with a Moto 6412 when he moved to Olney.

Hi All,

I just hooked up an external sata drive to my 8300HD, sara 1.89.17.1 box and it recognized the drive and formated it. As mentioned in an earler post the disk space was not recognized until the second reboot. I do get short bursts of microblocking and audio dropouts (about 5 times an hour on average) when watching one hd program and recording 2 other programs. My hard drive is a Western Digital Caviar RE WD3200YS 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s and the enclosure is an epower EP-301SA tied together with a SIIG 3.28 ft. eSATA to SATA I Cable. I also bought an AZiO ENC311SU31 3.5" eSATA + USB 2.0 External Enclosure which i intend to use on my PC. I elected to use the epower enclosure because I needed somthing with a fan because I have the drive in an enclosed space. I was wondering if anyone has an opion on weather the AZiO enclosure would make a difference. Or if there are any other thoughts on what I can try to reduce or eliminate this microblocking.

Just wanted to give one other observation. I noticed this microblocking for the most part is not recorded on the hard drive. I can rewind and play the scene again and there will be no microblocking.

Just an update- this combo works PERFECTLY.

It basically work exactly the same as before the external drive was installed except I have way more space. I went from having about 15 HD recordings at 77% capacity, to having 15 HD recordings at 17% capacity.

Only time will tell if it works well if the 500 GB drive gets over 300GB of recordings on it.



Hi BWX,

I was wondering. Now that your HD has been installed and used for a few days. Have you gotten any higher then ususal microblocking or audio dropouts.

Hello all,

I've had my 8300HD from WOW Cable for about 1.5 years. From what I understand WOW in IL uses SARA.

I'm about to get this enclosure:

APRICORN EZ-BUS-DTS-EKIT Aluminum 3.5" SATA External Enclosure - Retail

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16817362002

and this drive:

Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD3200KS 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16822136003

This is all I need, correct?

The Apricorn listing is a little vague about being eSATA, but so many here have it I can assume it's got the right connections. The Newegg listing shows two SATA cables coming with it, so I'm guessing the right cable to connect to the 8300HD is in the box.

I see that these DVR's have multiple versions, but in the long run, would combo drve/case work with most of them?

TIA...

The Apricorn listing is a little vague about being eSATA, but so many here have it I can assume it's got the right connections. The Newegg listing shows two SATA cables coming with it, so I'm guessing the right cable to connect to the 8300HD is in the box.
Not necessarily. (And most likely not from what I'm reading.) The external connector is SATA and not eSATA. Not that that won't work, you just need to be sure you purchase the correct cable. An external SATA connector instead of eSATA dates this design (in my mind).

Thanks for the reply.

I'm thinking about this case since it does seem to have the proper cable and port:

AZiO ENC311SU41 Aluminum 3.5" eSATA + USB 2.0 External Enclosure - Retail

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16817106097


Also, the 400GB WD drive has some kind of poor user reviews, and the 320Gb seems to have much more positive history. I'm hesitant to go 500GB as I've gotten the impression some DVR's might not handle that size too well?

Thanks for the reply.

I'm thinking about this case since it does seem to have the proper cable and port:

AZiO ENC311SU41 Aluminum 3.5" eSATA + USB 2.0 External Enclosure - Retail

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16817106097


Also, the 400GB WD drive has some kind of poor user reviews, and the 320Gb seems to have much more positive history. I'm hesitant to go 500GB as I've gotten the impression some DVR's might not handle that size too well?
Your chance of success with SARA and a drive (much) over 300GB seems slim based on what I've read here. I'm on Passport as my sig indicates. (You might want to read the first post in this thread, follow ALL of the links and investigate your software/software version and place that info in your sig as it will be helpful to the members here - and by extension to you :) - going forward.)

The only possible issue with enclosures that have outputs in addition to eSATA/SATA is that if the other output(s) have circuitry "in between" the drive and the eSATA/SATA port, it could interfere with data flow to the DVR.

It gets convoluted. One of the links you'll find at one of the links on the first post here is to a SARA compatibility database (http://baseportal.com/cgi-bin/baseportal.pl?htx=/xnappo/main) that is a valuable resource for anyone with SARA looking to expand their recording space.

Thanks again for the reply. I will work on getting that info whe I am at home later.

I just need to find the steps on checking that-I believe I've seen them in the limited browsing I've done in this thread.

The only possible issue with enclosures that have outputs in addition to eSATA/SATA is that if the other output(s) have circuitry "in between" the drive and the eSATA/SATA port, it could interfere with data flow to the DVR.

It gets convoluted.

Boy does it ever! I doubt an external SATA connection will have a FW or USB bridgeboard "between" the drive and the connector, that makes little sense. Couldn't swear by that as I don't have a drive, but you DO realize it's a serial bus?

Boy does it ever! I doubt an external SATA connection will have a FW or USB bridgeboard "between" the drive and the connector, that makes little sense. Couldn't swear by that as I don't have a drive, but you DO realize it's a serial bus?
Serial ATA - Universal Serial Bus. OK. There's a difference other than a connector, right?

No one knows what makes SARA so finicky. Perhaps another output merely being "parallel" is enough to upset SARA. I prefer to have only SATA for an output from an enclosure and then there's absolutely no possibility of that being an issue.

How many of the "successful" enclosures on the compatibility list have other outputs?

Hello all,

I've had my 8300HD from WOW Cable for about 1.5 years. From what I understand WOW in IL uses SARA.

I'm about to get this enclosure:

APRICORN EZ-BUS-DTS-EKIT Aluminum 3.5" SATA External Enclosure - Retail

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16817362002

and this drive:

Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD3200KS 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16822136003

This is all I need, correct?

The Apricorn listing is a little vague about being eSATA, but so many here have it I can assume it's got the right connections. The Newegg listing shows two SATA cables coming with it, so I'm guessing the right cable to connect to the 8300HD is in the box.

I see that these DVR's have multiple versions, but in the long run, would combo drve/case work with most of them?

TIA...You will be better off with the Apricorn enclosure than with the AZIO enclosure, because the AZIO does not have a fan to cool the hard drive. Also, the proper external, shielded, SATA/eSATA cable is included with the Apricorn enclosure. I have three of these enclosures that have been running 24/7 for over a year and have had no problems with any of them. I do open them from time to time and blow out any dust (minimal) that has accumulated. There have been far more SARA users who have reported success with Apricorn enclosures than with AZIO. Both the Apricorn and AZIO enclosures are SATA/USB, and either will work, but in my opinion, the Apricorn is the better choice.

Scarlett

You will be better off with the Apricorn enclosure than with the AZIO enclosure, because the AZIO does not have a fan to cool the hard drive.
Scarlett

I'm not convinced that fan is necessary; but it sure is loud. I'm disconnecting mine as soon as I get a chance to frack with it (I'm using that WD 500 GB drive in it). The aluminum enclosure should radiate any heat away, and HDD's really don't get that hot anyways. We're not talking processors here.

I'm not convinced that fan is necessary; but it sure is loud. I'm disconnecting mine as soon as I get a chance to frack with it (I'm using that WD 500 GB drive in it). The aluminum enclosure should radiate any heat away, and HDD's really don't get that hot anyways. We're not talking processors here.

I agree. Especially in this application. As long as you don't keep all your A/V equipment couped up in a closed cabinet I doubt heat will be an issue.
The 8300 itself (stuffed with more than just a 24/7 running HDD) is designed with no active cooling devices installed and works fine.

Hi BWX,

I was wondering. Now that your HD has been installed and used for a few days. Have you gotten any higher then ususal microblocking or audio dropouts.


Right now it reads 49% full on the DVR page on my box, with about 42 HD recordings, some very long 3+ hour movies. It all works exactly like the box did without the external HD hooked up.

I have some micro blocking when there is a lot of action or motion on the scene- but I did before the external enclosure, with 3 different 8300 boxes. That is a problem with Time Warner, which they need to fix. My Signal is fine too, Time Warner compresses the image from what I have read because they either do not have enough bandwidth or they are trying to save bandwidth for HD channels. I don't have any more of that tiling on the recording than I do watching the movie live, or before the external enclosure. I don't have any of the audio dropouts either, I guess I got lucky.

As to the conversation about the eSATA cable, I am just using the cable that came with the enclosure and it works perfectly. The aluminum case of the external drive does run a little warm, that tells me it is radiating heat away from the HD, which is a good thing. I have it on an open shelf though too.. laying flat with a couple of pieces of wood holding it up off the shelf surface. I would not put that Azio enclosure in a confined sealed-up spot, I think it needs some airflow over it. The drive/ enclosure is silent too, which is a plus.

Time Warner compresses the image from what I have read because they either do not have enough bandwidth or they are trying to save bandwidth for HD channels. This business about TW compressing is more an "Urban Legend" than factual. I've checked the bit-rates used by TW here in Rochester, NY and they are not compressing beyond what are normal rates or what they receive. Now the situation might be different on your system -but I doubt it.

Oh, by the way: why not put something other than just "NY" for location in your profile? NY is a big state!

This business about TW compressing is more an "Urban Legend" than factual. I've checked the bit-rates used by TW here in Rochester, NY and they are not compressing beyond what are normal rates or what they receive. Now the situation might be different on your system -but I doubt it.


Well something is going on with Time Warner, because it only happens when there is a lot of action on the screen.. a good example is when there are a lot of flashbulbs from cameras going off in a movie or news cast. It only lasts as long as the fast action then looks normal again. It is annoying, but they were out here 3 times and my signal is fine and it happened with 3 separate 8300's before I even had an external enclosure.

I do also have two other regular 3100 digital cable boxes, and a cable modem for high speed internet. The signal on all the cable boxes and the modem is fine though, so I am not sure if that is the problem or not. I am in an apartment building with 4 units, but the cable guy said there was a tap on the side of the building and that it was basically the same as if I had my own house (which I will soon hopefully). I am not sure I even believe the guy though, Time Warner/ Adelphia have lied to me so many times in the past I can't even keep track of them all.. so who knows. I'll have to go look on the outside of the building to see what is out there, but if it is covered up, I am not going to tamper with it, and I will not be able to see anything. Maybe I will take a picture of what is out there and find the correct place on this forum and post the pic, and see if anyone can tell me what it is.

This might be getting off the subject, but I might go down stairs and disconnect everything but the cable going into the 8300 temporarily to see if it makes a difference. I mean disconnection all the splitter, not just disconnecting the cables, I know that would make no difference.. I have a little double sided male cable adapter so I can bypass the splitters. If it helps, maybe they will run a separate cable from the tap specifically for my 8300, or give me some other solution.

Well something is going on with Time Warner, because it only happens when there is a lot of action on the screen.. a good example is when there are a lot of flashbulbs from cameras going off in a movie or news cast. It only lasts as long as the fast action then looks normal again. It is annoying, but they were out here 3 times and my signal is fine and it happened with 3 separate 8300's before I even had an external enclosure.I'll bet if you looked at these programs OTA, you'd find exactly the same defects - they are the natural result of MPEG-2 compression that is necessary for any broadcast HD. I'm pretty sure the situation in Buffalo is the same as here. PM me for more info if you are interested in finding out for yourself.

I am not sure I even believe the guy though, Time Warner/ Adelphia have lied to me so many times in the past I can't even keep track of them all.Adelphia used a lot of contractors who didn't know much at all. Might still be the situation. The TW field guys here in Rochester are pretty good, but the folks on the phone tend to be "clueless" (I call them "script buddies" - they are only as good as the script that they read from).

I'm not convinced that fan is necessary; but it sure is loud. I'm disconnecting mine as soon as I get a chance to frack with it (I'm using that WD 500 GB drive in it). The aluminum enclosure should radiate any heat away, and HDD's really don't get that hot anyways. We're not talking processors here.
But we are talking 24/7/365. Over time, how much does ten or twenty degrees shorten the life of a hard drive? I don't know, but why take a chance is my philosophy. Heat shortens component life. Any disagreement there?

But we are talking 24/7/365. Over time, how much does ten or twenty degrees shorten the life of a hard drive? I don't know, but why take a chance is my philosophy. Heat shortens component life. Any disagreement there?
If it was designed to work at a given temperature I don't think "heat" will shorten it's life if the temp. is within range. Of course some harddrives fail for no reason 3 days after you install them, some arrive DOA, and some last for 7 years while being "abused" with dust collecting on them in a sealed up case. It's hard to say if one variable such as a slightly higher temperature will make that much difference. That's just the other side of the coin on the argument that higher temperature will definitely shorten HD life.

I'm not convinced that fan is necessary; but it sure is loud. I'm disconnecting mine as soon as I get a chance to frack with it (I'm using that WD 500 GB drive in it). The aluminum enclosure should radiate any heat away, and HDD's really don't get that hot anyways. We're not talking processors here.I guess I must be losing my hearing in my old age and advancing senility, because I have never felt that the fans in these enclosures are loud--and I have one of them in our bedroom! Now, on the other hand, that orange light....

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, certainly, and mine is that you are better off with a fan. I also am biased in favor of Apricorn enclosures. As I said, more SARA users have reported success with the Apricorns than with the AZIOs, and that is at least a reference point. In the final analysis, you just pay your money and take your chances. :)

Scarlett

Well I ordered the AZIO and the 320 GB WD drive, so we'll see how it goes. I can always exchange it for the Apricorn.

But we are talking 24/7/365. Over time, how much does ten or twenty degrees shorten the life of a hard drive? I don't know, but why take a chance is my philosophy. Heat shortens component life. Any disagreement there?

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, certainly, and mine is that you are better off with a fan. I also am biased in favor of Apricorn enclosures.

I cannot disagree with either of these comments. Yet, I really want silence back in my living room. And, as ketamine says, if a fan is so all-fired important, why does the 8300 itself, having both a HDD and a processor not have a fan? I was hoping to hear from other members who have disconnected the Apricorn fan and hear their impressions, but haven't noticed anyone posting about such a bold, visionary move. That's okay; I've never been afraid to blaze new trails, to..... go where no AVS'er has gone before! :)

I cannot disagree with either of these comments. Yet, I really want silence back in my living room. And, as ketamine says, if a fan is so all-fired important, why does the 8300 itself, having both a HDD and a processor not have a fan? I was hoping to hear from other members who have disconnected the Apricorn fan and hear their impressions, but haven't noticed anyone posting about such a bold, visionary move. That's okay; I've never been afraid to blaze new trails, to..... go where no AVS'er has gone before! :)
I understand your point, but I would not hold the 8300HD out as an example of superior design. ;)

I understand your point, but I would not hold the 8300HD out as an example of superior design. ;)Plus, the 8300 is a lot bigger enclosure with less heat buildup around the drive itself, isn't it?

As far as design goes, I've seen enough pictures of the insides of DVRs and they all look pretty much the same to me; circuit-boards, chips, cables, etc. Now, quality control might certainly be an issue. :)

I cannot disagree with either of these comments. Yet, I really want silence back in my living room. And, as ketamine says, if a fan is so all-fired important, why does the 8300 itself, having both a HDD and a processor not have a fan? I was hoping to hear from other members who have disconnected the Apricorn fan and hear their impressions, but haven't noticed anyone posting about such a bold, visionary move. That's okay; I've never been afraid to blaze new trails, to..... go where no AVS'er has gone before! :)
The fan in my Apricorn enclosure is 'louder' than any other piece of equipment I own, but not unreasonable so. I wish it were a little quieter though.

To your other point about the 8300 and no fan. Obviously it is a much larger enclosure with a lot more room inside for the air to circulate and more importantly - get out. The entire top of the 8300 is vented for this purpose. Nothing should ever sit on top of the 8300 that would block the ventilation.

The fan in my Apricorn enclosure is 'louder' than any other piece of equipment I own, but not unreasonable so. I wish it were a little quieter though.

To your other point about the 8300 and no fan. Obviously it is a much larger enclosure with a lot more room inside for the air to circulate and more importantly - get out. The entire top of the 8300 is vented for this purpose. Nothing should ever sit on top of the 8300 that would block the ventilation.

The Apricorn is vented front and back. Hot air can get out, and heat is radiated out from the aluminum body. And, this is really more to the point, I don't believe the HDD would get hot enough in that enclosure to affect its performance negatively. With no processor to generate copious amounts of heat, I just don't see how it's possible. While I agree in theory that a fan is a good thing, I just don't believe it's a necessary thing.

That said, has nobody monitoring this thread disconnected the Apricorn fan? Am I really going to be the guina-pig here? ;)

The Apricorn is vented front and back. Hot air can get out, and heat is radiated out from the aluminum body. And, this is really more to the point, I don't believe the HDD would get hot enough in that enclosure to affect its performance negatively. With no processor to generate copious amounts of heat, I just don't see how it's possible. While I agree in theory that a fan is a good thing, I just don't believe it's a necessary thing.

That said, has nobody monitoring this thread disconnected the Apricorn fan? Am I really going to be the guina-pig here? ;)
Even though my Apricorn runs 24/7 (with the fan), it barely gets even warm. However, after I power down my 8300, a few minutes later I believe I hear my external drive park the head and power-down as well. Although the fan continues to run. I'm not at home at the moment so I can't test this with certainty, but I believe it to be true. In this case, the fan is just running needlessly. It's more likely the fan in the enclosure will go belly-up before the HD does. :D I have other external computer drives in aluminum enclosures that have been running without fans for a couple of years. But they are not in a continuous duty-cycle either (but then neither is the Apricorn),and don't spin up until needed. While running though, they do get much warmer than does the Apricorn case.

I'm not convinced that fan is necessary; but it sure is loud. I'm disconnecting mine as soon as I get a chance to frack with it (I'm using that WD 500 GB drive in it). The aluminum enclosure should radiate any heat away, and HDD's really don't get that hot anyways. We're not talking processors here.

100% agree, no fan necessary. A typical HD these days run as much as 50 degrees cooler than it's maximum operating spec for heat. Tightly coupled with an all aluminum enclosure is a VERY standard way of bleeding heat off. I have 2 drives stacked one on top of the other in my computer, running 24/7 and the temp around them runs about 80F.

Where a fan SHOULD be considered is if the drive is placed in a place where there is little or no air circulation. I've seen folks putting them inside cabinets that close up. I've seen them placed on top of big heat generators (I once saw someone who placed it on top of a very powerful AVR!).

For any truly motivated members among us, Radio shack has a hand held thermometer (http://www.radioshack.com/sm-non-contact-infrared-thermometer--pi-2103171.html) that is simply aimed at a heat source and shows the (surface) temperature. I've thought about getting one of these myself and running some tests, just haven't got a roundtuit.

As to the conversation about the eSATA cable, I am just using the cable that came with the enclosure and it works perfectly. The aluminum case of the external drive does run a little warm, that tells me it is radiating heat away from the HD, which is a good thing. I have it on an open shelf though too.. laying flat with a couple of pieces of wood holding it up off the shelf surface. I would not put that Azio enclosure in a confined sealed-up spot, I think it needs some airflow over it. The drive/ enclosure is silent too, which is a plus.

Thanks for the reply,

I think I'll try the AZiO case this weekend and see if it makes a difference. My epower case runs a little to hot for my likeing even with the fan running.

The SA 8300HD DVR recognizes my Maxtor 500 in Cool Gear enclosure, but diagnostics don't show any increase in starage space. Any ideas? Is there a foolproof installlation procedure? I've scoured this thread. Drive works fine connected to a PC.

Passport 2.602 Bright House

The SA 8300HD DVR recognizes my Maxtor 500 in Cool Gear enclosure, but diagnostics don't show any increase in starage space. Any ideas? Is there a foolproof installlation procedure? I've scoured this thread. Drive works fine connected to a PC.

Passport 2.602 Bright House
Have you done a cold reboot? Remove AC from the box - unplug it. Wait 15 seconds and restore AC - plug it back in. When the display again shows the time, turn it on. When normal operation resumes, do the two-finger salute to enter DIAGs and check the DVR AVFS page for total storage space.

You probably mean passport 2.6.002 . . .

what is a "cold reboot"? What is an "AC"? (Mensa member)

what is a "cold reboot"? What is an "AC"? (Mensa member)
cold reboot = restarting the box from a completely de-powered state

AC = Alternating Current, the stuff that runs through the wires connected to your appliances, lights, air conditioning (A/C :) ) and your A/V gear.

Just put in this drive.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822136032

with this case

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817362002

and it works great so far. TW cable useing passport software in Milwaukee, WI.

Just replaced the internal HD with a new 7200 rpm 16 meg buffer 500 gig HD (an ST35000630A). It produces pix even on live programs suggesting that the units output is always from the read side of the HD even when you don't intend to be recording. Guess not all HD's are compatible for this use.

Richard.

Just replaced the internal HD with a new 7200 rpm 16 meg buffer 500 gig HD (an ST35000630A). It produces pix even on live programs suggesting that the units output is always from the read side of the HD even when you don't intend to be recording. Guess not all HD's are compatible for this use.

Richard.Did you actually open up the 8300HD and replace the internal hard drive? If so, do you own, rather than rent, the STB?

Scarlett

Just replaced the internal HD with a new 7200 rpm 16 meg buffer 500 gig HD (an ST35000630A). It produces pix even on live programs suggesting that the units output is always from the read side of the HD even when you don't intend to be recording. Guess not all HD's are compatible for this use.
I thought the internal interface is IDE; isn't that an SATA drive.

I thought the internal interface is IDE; isn't that an SATA drive.The internal interface is IDE, and the Seagate model that he listed is an ATA drive--it would be SATA if the suffix were "AS" rather than "A." I still can't get over the fact that he opened the box! Isn't he the first to attempt this?

Scarlett

The internal interface is IDE, and the Seagate model that he listed is an ATA drive--it would be SATA if the suffix were "AS" rather than "A." I still can't get over the fact that he opened the box! Isn't he the first to attempt this?

Scarlett

ATA is abbreviation for "Advanced Technology Attachment." It is the standard interface for most storage devices.

"Many synonyms and near-synonyms for ATA exist, including abbreviations such as IDE and ATAPI. Also, with the market introduction of Serial ATA in 2003, the original ATA was retroactively renamed Parallel ATA (PATA)." - Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Technology_Attachment)

I'm pretty sure he's not the first to replace the 8300's internal HD. I remember when I first started researching adding additional storage to my 8300 running into a site with a how-to on it.

The internal interface is IDE, and the Seagate model that he listed is an ATA drive--it would be SATA if the suffix were "AS" rather than "A." I still can't get over the fact that he opened the box! Isn't he the first to attempt this?
Looks like the OP put an extra 0 in the number. I googled it and came up with one Japanese site and my Japanese isn't very good. ;) Now I see it's an infamous "dot-ten" model.

I think he's the first to admit attempting it. :)

I still can't get over the fact that he opened the box! Isn't he the first to attempt this?

ScarlettBelieve it or not: About a year ago Popular Science (http://www.popsci.com/popsci/how20/0ad08278d3daa010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html) published an article on how to do this!

Yes, but he can always swap the drive back when he turns the box in.

Believe it or not: About a year ago Popular Science (http://www.popsci.com/popsci/how20/0ad08278d3daa010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html) published an article on how to do this!

Yes, but he can always swap the drive back when he turns the box in.Dave, I knew about that article--a friend here in Austin sent it to me last year. At the time, he said that he didn't think he wanted to risk TW's wrath by trying it, but thought that "having 600GB of space to play with" was the ultimate dream come true. Also at that time, we believed--as mentioned in the article--that 300GB was the maximum capacity for an external drive. What a difference a year makes! :)

I had forgotten about the Pinnacle Dazzle DVD Recorder! Has this been mentioned in response to the many questions posted here about whether it is possible to transfer the 8300HD recordings to PC? The article makes it sound like a no-brainer.

Obviously, the hard drives can be swapped back, but wouldn't the cable company take a rather dim view of someone's tampering with its equipment? Also, when I picked up my cable boxes, it took a phone call to the cable company to get them "authorized." I don't know what the authorization process is, or what it affects on the individual boxes, but would re-authorization be required in the event you installed a new internal hard drive?

It's an intriguing idea; however, if I tried it, I would use Seagate DB35 hard drives for both the internal and external hard drives, but I don't think I would try to push 500GB for each of them--although a terabyte of storage is appealing! :)

Scarlett

It's an intriguing idea; however, if I tried it, I would use Seagate DB35 hard drives for both the internal and external hard drives, but I don't think I would try to push 500GB for each of them--although a terabyte of storage is appealing! :)

Scarlett

It is interesting to me that the IDE version of the 7200.10 also causes pixelation... Don't know if what it means, but it is interesting :)

xnappo

I had forgotten about the Pinnacle Dazzle DVD Recorder! Has this been mentioned in response to the many questions posted here about whether it is possible to transfer the 8300HD recordings to PC? The article makes it sound like a no-brainer.Now that I have 2 new HP dv9220us notebooks with Lightscribe DVD recorders, I plan on ordering a Dazzle this week. It has the capability to go directly to DVD, so it seems like it could even be used with Copy-To-VCR to make DVDs directly or capture to HDD. I plan to use it to convert my VHS home videos, but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be able to capture recorded content from the 8300 in SD mode, including Dave Hancock's anamorphic mode.

Can anyone confirm that the output from the box always comes from the playback head in the hard drive and never directly from either of the tuners? I assume that this must be the case since the hard drive is always active, the hard drive is always recording the live program (since you can start to record up to an hour after the program started), and that my display now enjoys stutter and pixilazation that were not present with the OEM hard drive.

I guess we should start a list of internal drives that work in this box.

Richard.

Can anyone confirm that the output from the box always comes from the playback head in the hard drive and never directly from either of the tuners? I assume that this must be the case since the hard drive is always active, the hard drive is always recording the live program (since you can start to record up to an hour after the program started), and that my display now enjoys stutter and pixilazation that were not present with the OEM hard drive.

I guess we should start a list of internal drives that work in this box.

Richard.

Actually this is not the case. You can tell because when you watch an analog program live it looks better than the recording due to the fairly poor digitizer.

The box is, of course, always recording the tuned channel though. My only guess is that some sort of error processing from the recording task is causing an interrupt which disturbs the processing bandwidth for the live viewing task.

Many DVRs report problems with Seagate 7200.9 and 7200.10 series drives. I think you will have better success with ANYTHING else.

xnappo

I guess we should start a list of internal drives that work in this box.
Beyond the one that's already there, it will be a list of, what, ZERO drives at this time? :rolleyes: On top of that, most of us wouldn't consider attempting to mod a leased DVR. Reality check here, please.

Beyond the one that's already there, it will be a list of, what, ZERO drives at this time? :rolleyes: On top of that, most of us wouldn't consider attempting to mod a leased DVR. Reality check here, please.

There multiple people who have done this over on the explorer_8000 yahoo list(including lot of Canadians who own the box). Also there is a thread about it here: http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=15719. Plus - as was pointed out, someone at Popular Science has it working since they wrote an article on it :) I don't exactly consider Popular Science to be 2600... This is pretty tame stuff.

I don't know *why* one would do this on the 8300 when you can so easily just use an external drive though.

xnappo

I don't know *why* one would do this on the 8300 when you can so easily just use an external drive though.
Especially without researching the thread to find out what drives DON'T WORK externally. :eek:

I don't know *why* one would do this on the 8300 when you can so easily just use an external drive though.

xnappo
Because it's there! :D You also eliminate a SATA interface and have a broader choice of drives.

The internal interface is IDE, and the Seagate model that he listed is an ATA drive--it would be SATA if the suffix were "AS" rather than "A." I still can't get over the fact that he opened the box! Isn't he the first to attempt this?

Scarlett

Far as I have read, the only folks to even attempt this are Canadians... and they actually OWN their 8300s, apparently they are not restricted as we are to only "renting" the box from TWC/Comcast, etc.

I had looked at this option when I first got my 8300HD. While there is TONS written about replacing the internal drive on a TiVo, I found zilch on the 8300.

I don't know *why* one would do this on the 8300 when you can so easily just use an external drive though.

xnappo

Because us Passport folks have what some of us consider a deal-breaking bug, AKA the "trick play bug (pause, FF and RW from the buffer)."

As I vaguely remember from some of the TiVo stuff I quickly glanced at, while it seemed well documented, it was not a simple "replace the drive." You had to use a procedure to copy some stuff from the regular internal drive to the new one first. Logic says their OS had to be pre-installed on the drive, that program data and MAYBE OS updates got downloaded, but not the basic OS.

So if Richard actually got that drive in and it functions after a fashion, that should tell us that the whole OS kit and caboodle does come down. AND that there are no authorization issues.

I believe Albany NY be TWC territory.

Richard, can you confirm what I think happened with your experiment? It sounds like maybe trying another drive might be useful.

One other important point is whether there were security stickers. Or anything like paint dabs on the screw tops, essentially telling the next guy that you HAVE been inside the box and have at the least undone a screw.

Actually, I would be real happy to pop a 320 Maxtor in there (they ca be had for 85 bucks). I'd double my available space AND avoid the trick play bug. STILL, there DO seem to be potential issues on the overall amount of content; some speculation has it that it must keep the entire directory in RAM only (as opposed to reading from disc when needed) and that COULD explain why size may matter.

Believe it or not: About a year ago Popular Science (http://www.popsci.com/popsci/how20/0ad08278d3daa010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html) published an article on how to do this!

Yes, but he can always swap the drive back when he turns the box in.

Unless security stickers, paint on screw/tops... I guess I should bite the bullet and at least take a peek inside it...

Ha, they dont SAY it's an 8300, but the picture sure looks very much like a SciAtl box.

Believe it or not: About a year ago Popular Science (http://www.popsci.com/popsci/how20/0ad08278d3daa010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html) published an article on how to do this!

Yes, but he can always swap the drive back when he turns the box in.

It's interesting that the article says only SARA equipped boxes can do this swapping of the hard drives; not Passport.

Some responses:

Yes, it is a TW box.

If you can change out a HD in a PC you can change out a HD in this box; but you need a security T-10 tool, just like a conventional torx T-10, but with a hole in the center. A kit of these tools can be purchased for under $15.00 in many hardware stores.

Yes, the OEM drive has a security sticker going from the drive to the metal support. It is heat sensitive so I merely used the tip of a small tool to move it off the OEM drive and onto the new drive while keeping the other half still attached to the metal support.

TW in my area uses SARA not Passport.

It was a simple power disconnected swap and then power connected reboot taking about 30 min (it went through the cycle twice). It came back on and worked!

Richard.

If you can change out a HD in a PC you can change out a HD in this box.
Feirstein, I mean this in the most constructive way possible; a little bit of knowledge can be dangerous. :)

There are zero comparisons. There may be files critical to the operation that are pre-loaded onto the internal drive. If they are not there, it may not work. And we have no way of getting them from the OEM drive to the replacement.

Some responses:

Yes, it is a TW box.

If you can change out a HD in a PC you can change out a HD in this box; but you need a security T-10 tool, just like a conventional torx T-10, but with a hole in the center. A kit of these tools can be purchased for under $15.00 in many hardware stores.

Yes, the OEM drive has a security sticker going from the drive to the metal support. It is heat sensitive so I merely used the tip of a small tool to move it off the OEM drive and onto the new drive while keeping the other half still attached to the metal support.

TW in my area uses SARA not Passport.

It was a simple power disconnected swap and then power connected reboot taking about 30 min (it went through the cycle twice). It came back on and worked!

Richard.
I wonder if there's any software from the CO that checks to see that the HD assigned to the box is still the same(using some firmware ID tag, or some such)? And if so, could disable your DVR operations? Wouldn't put it past the big servers in the sky! Also, just remember to remove the drive should you have to replace your STB for any reason. :eek: But, I'm sure you're well aware of that.

Edit. I could just see some technician... Whoa, looky here Fred. Somebodys put a big ass 500gb drive in their 8300!... What should we do? Do you want to send it that self-destruct routine we developed last month? :D

pepar, you need to pay closer attention. The internal OEM disk does not contain any pre-loaded data. The replacement drive is formatted by a program that is contained on a chip in the box. The new drive is thus loaded with any necessary data during this formatting process; nothing is lost.

However, this is not a mere plug and play operation since, it has been suggested, the current load of the new drive should not greatly exceed the current drive on the OEM drive or damage to the power supply may result.

Richard.

pepar, you need to pay closer attention. The internal OEM disk does not contain any pre-loaded data. The replacement drive is formatted by a program that is contained on a chip in the box. The new drive is thus loaded with any necessary data during this formatting process; nothing is lost.
Ok, that sounds plausible, especially the part about me paying closer attention. But how do you know this?

Can anyone confirm that the output from the box always comes from the playback head in the hard drive and never directly from either of the tuners? I have always believed live did come from an immediate playback from the HD. The TV with a DVR is a couple seconds behind one without. It also pauses immediately live TV which tells me it pauses the delayed signal from the drive and continues to record. Just observational guess.
/Dan

Has anyone tried a "lower performance" drive in an external enclosure and had it work properly? I haven't read through all 150 pages of the thread ;), but I'm looking to buy a shiny new drive to replace one of my gaming PC's older drives (a 250GB Western Digital Caviar 7200RPM 2MB cache PATA drive), and then toss the 250GB into the enclosure for the 8300HD to use. Would this work, or is it likely to be far too slow? I don't know how critical performance is to this machine, though I assume that since I can record HD to it now using an HDhomerun through my computer's PVR software (SageTV), that it would be fit for this task. Am I correct :)?

Ok, that sounds plausible, especially the part about me paying closer attention. But how do you know this?Maybe from reading this thread:

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=15719

I spent most of today researching the possibility of doing what Richard has done, and in addition to the Canadian forum, I found this thread in another AVS Forum:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=483092&page=1&pp=30

and this thread in the AVS Archives:

http://archive2.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=526865

This thread was particularly interesting, because it described a method for duplicating the contents of the internal drive onto a larger drive. It occurred to me that if he is correct, the external SATA drives might also be similarly duplicated onto larger external SATA drives, thereby preserving recordings. It's a logical assumption, because the external SATA drives are formatted with the same file system that the internal drives use, are they not? Might be worth a try in any event.

So, obviously Richard is not the first to try this, and someone in Canada was successful installing a 500GB internal drive in an 8300HD. I have written to ask him how the upgrade has stood the test of time. No response yet.

Of course, those folks in Canada own their 8300's. Here is an interesting excerpt from a post in one of the other AVS forums concerning the cable company's reaction to tampering with the rented DVR's:

I got a letter with my HD DVR stating that opening or tampering with the DVR is prohibited and doing so will incur a charge ($749 for HD DVR, $589 for DVR). I asked the cable guy that installed my SA8000HD about this and he said yes, if they determine that a turned-in box has been opened they will charge you, and will also make you sign an agreement and leave a large deposit before they'll rent you another cable box of any sort if you remain a customer or try to re-activate service. He seemed very knowldegeable so i have no reason to doubt him.I'm not sure if the cable company he mentions is TWC, but for some reason I got that impression. This is the reason I couldn't believe that a TWC customer would take such a chance by opening the 8300HD and replacing the internal hard drive! I would love to try it, for the same reason that someone else mentioned earlier--because it's there--and because it's a challenge. But I don't think I want to gamble $750 of my husband's hard-earned money and/or jeopardize my account with TWC. The actual modification is simple, so if they ever allow us to buy our own 8300's......:)

Scarlett

Excellent research, Scarlett! I have googled MFSTools (http://www.tyger.org/MFS/2.0/howto.html) and it seems genuine. There has long been talk of our DVR's being Linux-based and this seems to lend credence to that. MFSTools appears to be an imager or bit copier - I didn't look that closely - and that would allow a PC to copy a drive without "knowing" what was on it.

Still, I have zero interest in fiddling with my DVR. It is just not worth the risk - or the $$$ I would be charged if found out.

Maybe from reading this thread:

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=15719

I spent most of today researching the possibility of doing what Richard has done, and in addition to the Canadian forum, I found this thread in another AVS Forum:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=483092&page=1&pp=30

and this thread in the AVS Archives:

http://archive2.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=526865

This thread was particularly interesting, because it described a method for duplicating the contents of the internal drive onto a larger drive. It occurred to me that if he is correct, the external SATA drives might also be similarly duplicated onto larger external SATA drives, thereby preserving recordings. It's a logical assumption, because the external SATA drives are formatted with the same file system that the internal drives use, are they not? Might be worth a try in any event.

So, obviously Richard is not the first to try this, and someone in Canada was successful installing a 500GB internal drive in an 8300HD. I have written to ask him how the upgrade has stood the test of time. No response yet.

Of course, those folks in Canada own their 8300's. Here is an interesting excerpt from a post in one of the other AVS forums concerning the cable company's reaction to tampering with the rented DVR's:

I'm not sure if the cable company he mentions is TWC, but for some reason I got that impression. This is the reason I couldn't believe that a TWC customer would take such a chance by opening the 8300HD and replacing the internal hard drive! I would love to try it, for the same reason that someone else mentioned earlier--because it's there--and because it's a challenge. But I don't think I want to gamble $750 of my husband's hard-earned money and/or jeopardize my account with TWC. The actual modification is simple, so if they ever allow us to buy our own 8300's......:)

Scarlett

OK; I have done some more research and Seagate makes the DB35 Series just for use in a DVR. The 7200.3 ST3500830ACE - hard drive - 500 GB - ATA-10, Part number: ST3500830ACE was found for sale at an online store for $152.88. The DB35 series is not available from most retailers. It is designed to have low current draw and to reduce playback defects. I can't confirm that 500 GB is the right size, but the non-DB35 Series Seagate 500 GB I am currently using seems to work perfectly except for the playback defects.

Richard.

As for being able to purchase your own DVR box in the States, Federal regulations require the cable companies to get out of the business but the industry has been able to hold off implementation of this requirement. Once security becomes a pure software feature TV sets and boxes will be able to take over the function now reserved by the cable industry, [control over pay, interactive and related services].

Richard.

As for being able to purchase your own DVR box in the States, Federal regulations require the cable companies to get out of the business but the industry has been able to hold off implementation of this requirement. Once security becomes a pure software feature TV sets and boxes will be able to take over the function now reserved by the cable industry, [control over pay, interactive and related services]..
Exactly. And one millisecond after that happens cable companies all across the country will find themselves buried in unwanted cable boxes. We only have these kludges because of the monopoly.

I thought I'd report that with TWC NYC (Passport) I've installed an Apricorn EZ BUS DTS EKIT (with included eSATA cable) and Seagate ST3500830SCE (Seagate DB35 Series 7200 3 C) 500GB drive and its been working extremely well for 2 weeks having recorded to and played back recordings from both drives.

It did take me a little while to get the DVR to recognize the drive. The unplug the power thing didn't work. I actually had to unplug the eSATA cable from the DVR while it was on and then plug it back in. Only then did I get the prompt to format the new drive.

I thought I'd report that with TWC NYC (Passport) I've installed an Apricorn EZ BUS DTS EKIT (with included eSATA cable) and Seagate ST3500830SCE (Seagate DB35 Series 7200 3 C) 500GB drive and its been working extremely well for 2 weeks having recorded to and played back recordings from both drives.

It did take me a little while to get the DVR to recognize the drive. The unplug the power thing didn't work. I actually had to unplug the eSATA cable from the DVR while it was on and then plug it back in. Only then did I get the prompt to format the new drive.
That's the way it works with Passport - hot-plugged. That's been posted quite a few times and is in the link in my sig.

Congratulations!

I've been using my SA 8240 (is this the same as 8300HD?) with a WD 320GB SE16 drive and AZIO enclosure for a few weeks. It still stutters every 5-10 minutes, especially during HD viewing.
I tried switching to the Apricorn enclosure. I had horrible results with it. This was with the same drive. I couldn't even get that combination to play live HD. It would go for a few seconds, then begin to stutter and finally get completely screwed up. After 15 seconds, there was no discernable picture. I tried several different jumper settings on the drive, but nothing seemed to help.
For now, I'm just going to deal with the AZIO enclosure. It's bearable.

Does anyone know if there is a big problem switching a drive that's already formatted for the DVR to a new enclosure? Should I have reformatted it with the Apricorn enclosure before trying to use it? I am wondering what I might have done wrong, since so many others seem to claim good results with that enclosure (which is why I bought it).

I've been using my SA 8240 (is this the same as 8300HD?) with a WD 320GB SE16 drive and AZIO enclosure for a few weeks. It still stutters every 5-10 minutes, especially during HD viewing.
I tried switching to the Apricorn enclosure. I had horrible results with it. This was with the same drive. I couldn't even get that combination to play live HD. It would go for a few seconds, then begin to stutter and finally get completely screwed up. After 15 seconds, there was no discernable picture. I tried several different jumper settings on the drive, but nothing seemed to help.
For now, I'm just going to deal with the AZIO enclosure. It's bearable.

Does anyone know if there is a big problem switching a drive that's already formatted for the DVR to a new enclosure? Should I have reformatted it with the Apricorn enclosure before trying to use it? I am wondering what I might have done wrong, since so many others seem to claim good results with that enclosure (which is why I bought it).
You should not have any problem moving the drive to a new enclosure - provided it's an enclosure that reportably works. There's nothing that ties the enclosure to the STB(software wise). You should NOT need to reformat it either. Operative word, should. :D