8300HD and External SATA - It Works!! - Page 9

I'm using a Seagate ST3300831AS with 8MB Cache and it works just great! See http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...16#post5548816

Link to Data Sheet: http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/data...cuda7200.8.pdf

Excellent!

Another success story...
I'm in San Diego, CA with Cox, running SARA v1.87.16.1 on an SA8300.

I bought the $34 external SATA enclosure from newegg.com (Item=N82E16817155903) and a
300 GByte Seagate Barracuda SATA drive (Item=N82E16822148064), plus the 221303D cable from Cruz Systems. I asked the very pleasant Terri what the difference was between the C & D cables; she said the C was discontinued; the D was made with heavier cable, and there was no electrical difference. She also said I was the first from San Diego to order a cable ... What's up with that?

Anyway, I plugged in the cable, and powered up the drive while watching the screen. After the drive spun up, a message appeared on the screen saying something to the effect "Your external drive is not connected correctly. Check the cables and connections."

I checked the diagnostic information screens, which didn't show an external drive.

So I rebooted the SA8300, which seemed to take a bit longer than usual (not that I've done it a lot), then a message appeared which noted that the attached external drive needed to be formatted. I told it to go ahead; it didn't take more than a couple of minutes before another message appeared noting that I now had external storage, with a warning that if it was powered off, the recordings on it wouldn't be available. (I'm guessing that the quick format was due to the drive being new; ie, it didn't have to wipe out a previous NTFS or FAT format.)

Checked the diagnostic screens again, where drive 2 now showed up, 279 GB capacity.

Recording time used went from 52% to 18%.

I tried a quick HD recording, which seemed to go fine. Couldn't tell any difference in quality, no dropouts, no glitches. According to the diagnostic screen, a half-hour HD recording used about 2 GBytes of the disk.

you probably wanna stay away from 16meg caches and nqc..or whatever else the new tech of the day is,,,for a external hx box,,the one you mentioned seems good to me,,,but i would go witha 250gig..not much difference in storage,,but big difference in price of the hdrives itselves!

Martin

Martin,

Don't understand why one should stay away from 16meg caches?

so am I wasting my money if I do this?
Ultimately, I cannot really save this content long term since it is married to a box that I rent ...

I am on the fence

silroc, I guess whether you consider it a waste of money or not depends on how full your internal drive is, and how much extra capacity you'd like to have.

If I go on a two week vacation and have a bunch of HD recordings scheduled, I'd like to come home to some assurance that I'll be able to watch them.

I also like to save some recordings for a while, either to show somebody else, or to rewatch occasionally. (I still have some old TechTV "Call for Help" & "The Screen Savers" episodes on my Dish PVR for old times sake. )

I am on my 8th or 9th viewing of Roy Orbison's Black & White Night that I recorded from INHD2 a while back. So far, that is the only program I've kept past the initial viewing, but I can certainly see the advantage of having more storage come vacation time. Fortunately, where I go for vacation (grandkids in North Carolina) generally has HD, so I don't have to record all that much for when I get back.

If, however, you intend to try to archive stuff long-term, then you'd be better off investing in a PC with 1394 ports and renting the SA3250HD with active 1394 ports. Even then, you still need a huge amount of storage capacity and that isn't cheap either. You can probably split files and burn them to DVD's for unlimited storage, but I'm not sure how much cheaper that would be.

PC 1394 storage option is crippled because there are numerous HD channels which DO NOT allow archiving via 1394 copy protection on the SA3250HD box.

Certainly that is very true, but that doesn't negate the idea that the only way to archive authorized recordings long-term is via PC/1394, not via DVR.

well 16 meg cache for what you want it to o is overkill in my book..but hey its your money and your decision!
to each yada yada yada
and the firewire issue s!@#!

Martin

Great thread! Great idea to hold us over 'til Blu-ray or HD-DVD's (at which point I'll start replacing my 500+ DVD collection. lol). HD looks great on my new widescreen (especially up close with "theater lighting", etc.). I can't seem to watch anything less than HD anymore (anything else looks grainy/fuzzy to me now... of course I could back away from the screen a bit. lol).

I'm going to order the stuff above but wanted to check if there's a final verdict (sorry this is redundant), if my cable box with Passport software might work or not? (I have Time-Warner cable in Columbus, Ohio).

Thanks, Dallas.

Latest info that I've seen posted is that the SATA port is NOT active on the Passport boxes yet. So for the time being, you're out of luck.

So far the cable companies have not been promoting the external drive feature. Perhaps the principal reason is that the 8300HD uses a SATA II connector and that is a bit ahead of time. So far there are no commercially available external drives with a SATA II connection. As a result, the cable companies do not perceive that the external drive is "ready for prime time". Of course, they probably view those of us participating in this forum (that DMILANI lead) as "hackers" or something. At least, we are not the mainstream customer. This means that they are not pushing the developers of Passport software to add this "feature".

From Cox's web site:

http://www.cox.com/fairfax/DigitalCa...ddvr_1.3.1.htm

IOW, they haven't figured out a way to keep you from buying your own and forcing you to rent one from them.

i ordered an addonics drive enclosure, the sata->esata cable and a 400gb seagate; i am a cablevision subscriber (long islan, ny)...can't wait to increase my capacity as i have been at capacity for some time and haven't had the time to watch some things and purge (although they are mostly movies that i would like to archive for a while). good thing i have two 8300 boxes.

will report back on my success but based on what i've read here, i shouldn't have any problems.

Success with NewEgg enclosure and 300GB Seagate drive. It didn't recognize the drive at first. I had to do a cold reboot. Works great now. Thanks everyone.

OK, 400GB Seagate SATA drive (bought from Newegg), Addonics Saturn drive cradle and e.SATA cable (Comax brand) purchased from Addonics...

Successfully working...went from 100% space used to 26% used

anyone know of a really nice firewire box capabel fo taking say 8 drives??
preferebly even have a network 10/100 connection?

I knwo this is off topic but still had to ask...at least it is another solution! right?

anyhow good luck to all with their sa8300hd and serial harddrives...although i personally would not buy a 400gig drives at this time...the money to gig ratio is way high!
i ll stick with a 250gig for now...maybe even a 300gig soon...why? because there is more value per gigs gotten!
unless someone wants the biggest drive and has gotten money from a dead uncle he/she never met..there is no reason to do so..

to each his/her own...i only wish some fo these politiquing polititians (and yes bush too...) could understand that!

Martin

Assume one has gotten an external SATA drive working with an 8300 and it has some programs on it. What happens if you then connect it to a different SA 8300?

nothing..i dont think you could see it...at least from what i have gotten out of the workers at the cabel company..which they also have no idea! i tried scientifc atlanta by email..no ansswer yet to speak of!
i do hope that it will work with another sa8300hd from the same cable com-pany and area! since 5they would propapby have different encyption based on which company ends up with which batch of teh same brew! i would think! (correct me if i m worng folks!!!)

Martin

They can't be viewed, they are tied (encoded) to that specific 8300 and it appears that if you have to replace your 8300 or SATA, there is no way to recover any recordings still on them. I believe someone speculated that you could swap SATA drives and archive that way, but I don't recall if anyone posted that they have done that.

FWIW, one of our local members has a setup with about 1,000 titles archived, but he uses an SA3250HD via Firewire to the following equipment:

Apple Dual 1Ghz G4 (Dual Gig), 1.75GB RAM, 2 internal 80GB hard drives, running a dual boot system (10.3.7 system for everyday use, recording and a separate 10.3.7 boot drive for HDTV playback), 22" Apple Cinema Display.

Apple eMac 700Mhz G4, 640MB Ram, 40GB internal hard drive running OS X 10.3.7

HP Celeron 2.8Ghz running XP Pro with 2 80BG drives (for editing out commercials, diving transport streams, and for burning DVD-r's).

An 8-bay Firewire 800 tower (media server) with 8 250GB drives connected to the Dual Gig tower via Firewire 800.

wow thats is quite some hardware.,..
i would think that this 3250hd box should be availabel form companies like charter! right? (since i already ahve th esa8300hd from them and it isnt exactly what i signed up on for!)
and i already have 4 250 gig crives..(among various other 80gig 120gig and 160gig drives..but my main archiving ones are the 4x250gig) but no firewire case yet!
is there a difference (i mean a huge one between firewire 400 or 800..(is there too much difference between the two?)
How much do you know if the specifics of the set up for such a system but say using a intel or amd64 based fiewire set up! i mean as long as the firewwire works on the htpc/ archiving machine it should see the sa3250hd..correct!

i already have a g4 that i might be abel to use is such as case..also a icg7 intel pentium4 3.0 mobo/cpu combo in the box..maybe i could built a p4 solution to captuer and archive what i what..mostly hostory/science and discovery channel with a pinch of combat on the action channel...all of which (combats!!) i already have on my sa8300hd...i tried paying andcapturing to teh amd64 htpc i got set up with a hauppage card,,,but it was a little raw..and havent attemted again!

What methode/route do you think is the simplest and most cost effective based on the hardware at hand!

Thanks for any help in advance!

Martin

Martin,

Rather than tie up this thread, I've PM'd you a website where you can check out the system in further detail and email the owner if you have questions.

Cheers, Dave

thanks
DoubleDaz
i just went to firewire depot and looked at their 4 and 8 hd enclosures like the oxford..but they all seem to have that paralell to firewire converter deallie..in that case why cant i just buy the converters and make a rackmountable enclosure for it out of a server case!
...but thanksfor the link will check it out..

Martin

Whew...close call.

I have been concerned about the consequences of losing power to my 8300 and external hard drive given the ominous warning message displayed when first connecting and formatting the external and the minor problems I had initially getting it working (it required me to have the hard drive powered up and spinning prior to powering down/up the 8300 (i initially had the external hd connected to the outlet port on the back of the 8300 but that wasn't working)). Anyhow, the wife (or the kids, but they blame my wife ) for some reason powered down my surge protector/line conditioner which caused my 8300 and hd to lose power. I was petrified that since it wasn't powered down and disconnected in accordance with the message displayed by the 8300 that I was going to lose all the programming that was now sitting on the external 400 (which btw i managed to fill up in about a week since install). So, I hit the power switch on the surge protector/line conditioner, observed the external hd and 8300 power up and waited to see what message would be displayed on the screen.

Thankfully, the 8300 went through a normal power up, never displaying any kind of message about the external drive, and when I instructed it to list the DVR programs, everything was there just as I left it!!!

I guess I should be able to put together another one of these and swap it out with the existing drive if I wanted to have a library of material (understanding that it isn't a stable archive since it is married to that particular 8300 and authorization card combo).

hi bendover!! (cool name!!)
i also use a sa8300hd and archive shows to a external hd!
you do know that whatever you save to this drive, will only be accessed by that (and by that..i mean that extact dvr..no other in the world..jsut that one!) DVR/STB..so if that one bites the dust and you get another one from the telco..cable comany..you have to seset everything and everything that was saved in there will be gone!

that is the onbly thing that has started me lloking for alternatives such as the firewire and sa3250hd!!

Anyhow

Martin

Re: Discussion of swapping the external hard drive as an archive tool.

I believe that DILAMI originally proposed that. I don't believe that he, or anyone else, has ever done it. I would think that the program directory (list) is on the internal drive and it would have a problem locating a program on the external drive if that drive was swapped.

Any actual experience here?

while reaseeching i have seen different setups..but so far havent tried to go that route..from the pics i would say it is possible!
my first step would be to look into the sa3250hd box and see if the firewwire is on! then i l go forward and set up a firewire terrabyrte plus storaye area..all i will need are three more 250 or 300gig drives and a 8xhd firewaire cage...i already have firewire capabilities on both my machines!
i have ssen this set up with a dual mac g5 and it looked promising! this was some dude in arizona...

anyhow

any ideas/thourghts ...feel free to post!

thanks

Martin