8300HD and External SATA - It Works!! - Page 244

I understand! Thanks for your consideration and explanation.

I completely agree with xnappo and adding my views.
Software differences:
There are certain elements that some consider a failure or a problem because of the differences in the operating system. This does not mean a drive combo is a failure, just that the software created for that particular system focused on things other than esata connectivity.
Hardware differences:
The differences between the HD and HDC are due to cable co's running different software on the two boxes, most notably Time warner. Those using the original SARA code don't see any difference between the two boxes. The esata connector and chipset is the same across the platform and revisions.
Drive combos:
Certain drives and cases will never work, no matter what version of box or software are used. Finding a good combo or prebuilt purpose made DVR unit will have the best success regardless of the OS used, but you may not like the tradeoffs associated with your particular version.
Broken Hardware:
Some boxes have had their esata ports broken by cables at bad angles due to weight or bad installation practices. These cables are stiff and do not offer any support or strain relief, so all of the weight and strain is on a very thin and fragile circuit board and their connectors. Some have been damaged by static discharge during installation or pulling and pushing during boot or power up. Others have been damaged by trying to force a SATA cable into a esata connection. Those types of bad boxes will never be recovered but will still work as a standard DVR with the internal drive. This is what the cable co's support and provide to customers.

vegggas

my 250 GB external died. I have Comcast and am wondering what's the largest size hard drive I can use my 8300HD with.

thanks

anyone?

I have 1TB drives hooked up to our 8300HD & 8300HDC from BHN.

Anyone ever ever had any problems with the "save time" settings for your recordings? I have some shows that I record and save every episode of (Save: All Episodes) and others shows where I only save the most recent episode (Save: 1 Episode). Lately, my save time settings keep changing on their own, with some of my "All" shows changing their displayed save time to "1 Episode" and some of my "1 Episode" shows failing to erase the previous week's episode. When this happens, rather than risk shows I want to archive from being erased, I always go into the menu and manually change the save time to "Until I Erase." Not a huge deal, but it's irritating when the DVR isn't saving like it is supposed to. Is this a problem anyone else has had with these boxes?

I just got the Western Digital MyBook Home Edition 500GB working properly for recording purposes, but I lost my live buffer in the process. Had to disconnect the drive and hard restart the 8300HD to get it back. I don't want to record a show every time I flip to a channel for casual viewing just to work around the loss of the buffer.

I am in Columbus, OH, using Time Warner. Am not sure of my Navigator version number, but the color scheme changed about a week ago, so I assume it's their latest push. I'll get it when I get home from work.

My question is this: Are there any confirmed successful pairings of a SA 8300HD (not HDC) and an external drive for the Columbus area using Navigator (Mystro) and the most recent update to the box that does not result in the loss of the live buffer?

Thanks in advance.

I recently connected a Western Digital WD6400AAKS/Vantec Nextstar combination to my 8300HD. Most of the time it works fine. But occasionally PVR does not see the drive, until I reboot it (then it tells me PVR recognizes the drive, please hit exit). The symptom I see is, when I try to play a recording residing in the external drive, I directly go to the green PVR playback screen and nothing plays (Shows residing on the internal drive is OK). I really can't tell what is causing the problem. I tried different things. I thought it is happening when I leave STB at the PVR channel, but that is not the case. Suddenly (usually overnight) I loose connectivity to the HD. Both the PVR and case are connected to UPS. This is started getting really on my nerves. Happened many times. Any help really appreciated.
Thanks

Cable company?
Software/Version?

SARA v1.89.22.2
Rogers Cable (Canada)

My external SATA drive seems to have gotten corrupted, and will play nothing back from my SA 8300 HD. The play list seems to have gone back in time to a few weeks ago, showing items that I had erased. The diagnostic screen says that it is about empty, so it seems that it has erased everything. I reformatted.

Anyone else have this issue? Hope the HD isn't failing...now it seems to record and play back new shows fine.

Anybody have this happen?

Try rebooting the drives. 1. Turn off the cable box. 2. Unplug cable box from outlet 3. Wait 1 minute and unplug DVR expander drive at outlet. 4. Disconnect cables from external drive and cable box. 5. Reconnect SATA cables 6. Connect power connector to external drive 7. Connect power adapter from external drive to outlet. 8. Wait 1 minute and plug in Cable box into power outlet. 9. Cable box should show "boot" and after a while show time. 10. Turn on cable box (there may be a delay in turning the switch and seeing any response on the box - wait. You should get a message on screen that the external drive works with the cable box. List the programs to see if things have changed and corrected to what is actually on the drive.

Sorry if that question have already been ask. I used the search fonction without much success.

The last time I bought an enclosure I bought a double one.

A vantec
http://www.vantecusa.com/front/product/view_detail/277

I have setup so far with 1 TB HD that work fine. I was curious to know if anyone was able to have two 1 TB work with the 8300HD. I know that it was suggested that two external HD was not possible but with the latest firmware upgrade it may be possible now.

Anybody runnning 3.1.0_11 and still have functioning external DVR. If so please give me the specific model numbers of your box and hard drive. Mine died with the new upgrade. Why TWC?!?

Search for a forum member named xenophonite in the database. He reports that he had no trouble with his external drive when his system upgraded to 3.1.0_11.

Has anyone had problems with incomplete recordings? I added an external hd on Thursday and since then I have gotten 2 incomplete recordings. When I select the show to watch it looks like the whole show should be there but only part of the bar is yellow and the rest is red. Once it hits the red it stops and I can't get the rest of the show.

nbourbaki, did you (or anyone else) get an external drive to work with an SA8240 and TWC latest software? I've got 3.1.0_11 on my 8240 from TWC Cinci, and I cannot get it to recognize or format the drive.

Well it looks like the problems are related to the external drive. I am using a gd1000eu external hard driver which is supposed to be compatible with SARA but the recorded video stutters and is producing partial recordings. I don't know if it could possibly be the cable, I bought an eSata to eSata cable from meritline. The dvr recognizes the drive and formatted it. In addition to the recording problems I was also having problems with booting where I would get "advanced options are not available".

I'll post this query in the Navigator thread as well.
Thought it may be appropriate since I'm using an Antec MX-1/WD6400.

Watching Sportscenter this morning, the box (8300HDC) shuts
off, then goes into a rapid countdown type screen (on the box).
Not the usual soft/hard boot screen normally seen.

After turning the box back on, the audio is noticably lower, and
the DVR now reads 0%, even though the shows are still listed.
This is with an Antec-MX1/WD6400 combo connected.

When trying to play a show that is on the list, there is only
black.

I cannot remember the previous version of Navigator that was running, or if there is a new version now. This combo was working for about 9 months without issue.

Has anyone experienced this issue? Are the shows listed in
the DVR screen FOOBAR? Any hope of recovery?

Thanks,
Skid

It looks like you've just been upgraded and my guess is you've lost your recordings. My suggestion would be to shut everything all the way down (turn off the dvr, wait a couple of minutes, and unplug the dvr and external drive), plug in your external drive and let it spin up, then plug in your dvr and let it boot up. This may allow it to recover.

Please check and report your release number. We've been getting inconsisent reports about the success/failure from an upgrade to version 3.1.x_x.

Version number as of this moring is:
ODN 3.1.0_11

I'll try your suggestion out when
I get home.
Thank you,
Skid

Tried reading through most of this thread (over the course of three days) with no luck coming up with an answer...

WD5000AAKS
Vantec Nextar3 Enclosure

Which, from what I'm reading in the thread, should be a solid problem free combination.

I'm getting glitches at least once every 5 minutes and the weird thing is during every recording of the series Lost, I get a glitch right when the main title screen should be displayed... every time.

Where can I start to resolve this problem? THX.

Maybe it is a flaky cable or a flaky eSATA port on the DVR. I had a similar situation with 3 different drives, then I replaced the DVR and the same drive that was having glitches every couple of minutes became glitch-free. So, replacing the DVR might be worth a shot. I kept the old one a few days until I finished watching some of the recordings on it, and TWC charged me just a fee for the second DVR prorated for the several days.

I am having a similar problem with the:
8300HDC
SARA 1.90.5a110
Flash DVR1.53_8300HDC_LR_F.P.3601
Apps: nvia2v1.95.70
Wide Open West (WOW) Cable
with a Western Digital My DVR Recorder (eSATA) external drive.

Things have worked flawlessly for about 2 years until I had a hard freezeup. The DVR would not respond to either the remote or on the box controls. I unplugged the DVR only (without unplugging the external DVR) and got a digital countdown display that lasted forever upon plugging in the DVR. After a proper reboot, with all drives powered down and cables removed and reconnected, the DVR and external drive operates as intended with full access to all recorded programs until either the DVR is turned off or the DVR goes through it's nightly reset by the cable company at 3:00 AM. (I tried leaving the DVR on all of the time, but the nightly "pause/update" happens without fail). After the reset or power off of the DVR, internally recorded programs play back fine, but programs recorded on the external drive give one the green DVR screen when playback is attempted. But all programs show up on the "Recorded Programs" listing. A reboot of the DVR and external drive brings things back. When the confirmation screen shows up indicating that the external drive works with this DVR, one can hear the external drive heads actuating.

When there is no playback from the external drive, the diagnostic screen shows that there are 0KB recorded on the external drive, but its existence and total capacity is noted correctly. Thanks for any insight or assistance in resolving this problem.

I can vouch for the DVR being the problem. I recently borrowed a friend's WD My DVR Expander. It had worked for him fine (on a different cable company, but same cable box), but he thought it crapped out. I fixed it, then connected it to my DVR (which has a perfectly working internal drive). It was almost as glitchy as my Fantom GreenDrive (sometimes 4 glitches/minute). So I got two boxes from the cable company, an 8300HD and an 8300HDC. Both worked great with the My DVR Expander. No issues whatsoever. I am not ready to change out my box yet, as I still have a lot of recordings on the external and internal drives. But I'm confident that's the fix. Although, it is still possible my Fantom will be glitchy on the new cable box. I just hope not.

hi,

I've been using my setup for over two years now. Suddenly, things are acting up.

It seems the cable box recognizes the external hard drives but will no longer write to them.

Is this happening to anyone else.

I still need to run some tests, but my gut is saying a recent upgrade messed up the ability to record to an external hard drive.

If you too are having trouble let's get it posted here so we can figure out what was done, or it's just a fluke.

Thanks

Rob

Can you confirm what version of ODN your box is currently running?
2.4.10_11?
3.1.0_11?
I'm in a neighboring borough so I'm interested if 3.1.0_11 is being pushed out regionally.

Hi. I have an SA 8300HD and a Seagate 500GB My DVR Expander. No matter that I do, the external drive is not recognized by the DVR. I have tried about every combination of things and not even a twitch from anything. Has anyone else had any issues with this combination or have any ideas for me? Thanks, Joe

My DVR was working wonderfully for a year an a half, now with ODN 3.1.0_11, I got nothing. I tried everything also, including two other hard drives, another enclousre, etc. I am so ticked with TWC, why did they have to mess with that! I've only heard one person say their's works under the new software. I miss my extra storage....and all my saved stuff....argggh.