8300HD and External SATA - It Works!! - Page 288

Uh oh. I hope mine hangs in there. Running really well for about a year now. Does the newer Black work?

I have been running the WD1002FAEX 1TB 64MB Cache SATA III 6.0Gb/s without an enclosure since 8/27/10 without any issues (other than the new Passport IPG issues of not recognizing a new Ext HDD).
The WD1002FAEX behaves for me just like the WD1001FALS. But I have seen posts especially from Canada were the WD1002FAEX does not work well compared to the WD1001FALS in an enclosure. The WD FAQs say placing a jumper on pins 5 & 6 is supposed to drop the WD1002FAEX HDD to SATA II specs.

The WD Store, NewEgg and Amazon are showing a new model # WDBAAZ0010HNC-NRSN as a 1TB 32MB Cache SATA II 3.0Gb/s.

Not sure what the difference between the two model #'s are, WD1001FALS (Retail Box WD10000LSRTL) vs. WDBAAZ0010HNC-NRSN

Time Warner Cable SA8300HD running MDN Mystro software will not work properly with the 1TB Western Digital Drive Expander. I got this drive for Christmas and the set top box recognized and formatted the drive but the video was unwatchable because of pixelation and audio glitches. I bought a quality esata cable as well which made no difference. I sent both back to newegg and got a refund minus a restocking fee of 15%. So you take a chance trying this drive expander with TWC SA8300HD.

Bryan, in reading your post above, am I right to conclude that the WD1001FALS is the same thing as the WD10000LSRTL? Fry's Electronics had the WD10000LSRTL on sale last week at $87 and now has it at $99. Thanks.

Yes, The WD1001FALS Bare Drive is the same drive you will find inside the WD10000LSRTL - Retail Box, When you open the Black Box inside the drive model is a WD1001FALS. I purchased a couple at Fry's Electronics within the last year. I am assuming this has not changed.

But I am still wondering and unsure if WD has discontinued this model.
EDIT: NewEgg was showing the model as Deactivated but now is showing it as Out of Stock, so maybe it has not been discontinued????
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136284

EDIT2: NewEgg Now showing In Stock, Wish they'd make up their mind. Now: $87.99 Free Shipping.

EDIT3: This is crazy NewEgg Out of Stock again, and shows Deactivated???

EDIT4: The WD1001FALS showed up briefly as Out of Stock again. I signed up for Auto Notification. Now it is showing Deactivated again, and my Auto Notification is gone from my NewEgg profile.

I have contacted WD twice now and they will not confirm nor deny whether the WD1001FALS has or will be discontinued. Doesn't seem like a difficult question to me.

I had the IDENTICAL experience and returned the W-D ESATA HDD....
Still not sure if it was a problem in the W-D HDD, my 8300HD or firmware,
cuz my old Apricorn ESATA Expander HDD was experiencing the same issues
on my OTHER 8300HD....

WD Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136533

$79.99 w/ Promo Code EMCKJHC22 (Free Shipping) - Save $10.00 off regular price $89.99
(must be subscribed, or subscribe to email promos)

Just ordered this and the other items from your DIY guid, Byran. I'm on TWC in NC, with an 8300HD. Hoping everything works, cause I've had it for less then a week and i'm already at 45% full.

Hi, I have been reading this forum for months with much interest. I'm now ready to take the plunge into an external drive, but first I'd like to know if anybody has had any success with an external drive on a Cablevision of Raritan Valley 8300HD? If so, can you list the specifics? Thanks!

I'm running on Videotron / Montreal

A friend had a Caviar Green (WD10EARS) in a NexStar CX case bran new
and he loan it to me for a try.
Most of all "pauses" ended with a back screen, so it did not work properly.

after reading all the info here, I decided to go with the WD1001FALS and the NexStar3 case.
Seemed to be a win win combo...

it is all working well, until you turn off the 8300HD..
As I read -afterwards - in the compatibility table / comments
when the 8300 goes off internally, the enclosure goes in a strange mode,
and never recovers.
The 8300HD still shows that the is lost of room, but it can no longer access the drive.
You have to reset the enclosure. not practical.

I went the "direct way" to the drive (direct power and Sata to eSata) and no longer have the issues of no response.
I still use the enclosure case, for better heat sink (hopefully),
but removed the control board, and have the wires going in directly.

And yes I just purchased it 2 weeks ago from TigerDirect.ca
As I write this, it still shows "In stock"

follow up: i got everything yesterday, and assembled it all. Turned off the 8300, plugged the drive in, powered it back on. After the 8 minute boot process, it recognized the drive immediately, asked if I wanted to format. Formatting took approx 15 seconds. My % of space used dropped from 61% to 8%!

I'm hoping someone can help me out here. My external drive doesn't seem to be working with my 8300HD anymore. Anything I record with the external drive connected will only record about one minute of actual content. I also seem to have lost the ability to rewind live tv. With the external drive disconnected, I have no issues. I am trying to figure out whether the enclosure (Apricorn ez-bus-dts) or the hard drive (750 GB Seagate DB35) is the problem. I have ruled out the power supply as the issue after swapping out a new one.

I recently tried hooking up the external drive to another 8300HD in the house, replacing the 750 GB drive inside the enclosure with a 500 GB drive (also a Seagate DB35) so that I would not lose the data on the 750 GB drive. I did a test recording and didn't have any issues; the whole show got recorded. Is this enough to conclude that the 750 GB drive is faulty? It seems that way to me right now. I'd appreciate input from anyone with more knowledge on this.

The fact that you were able to swap the drives and still use the same enclosure likely points to a drive failure.

Why not swap in the 500G drive and hook it to the same DVR that had the 750G on it? That will be a better test. If it works, then you have a clear answer.

There is no harm in hooking up another drive to your DVR -- you will not lose the programs that it knows about from the first drive (they will just be "unavailable") temporarily.

I was having drive issues at one point and just figuring that the enclosure was a cheaper thing to test, I bought a new enclosure (like $20) and swapped the old drive into the new enclosure and everything went back to normal.

Oh. For some reason I was under the impression that once you format a new drive for the 8300HD, the previous one would no longer work with it. I thought I read that around here a long time ago, but I could be wrong. Well in that case, that does sound like a better test. I will try hooking up the 500 GB drive later today and see what happens.

Nope it should not be an issue. At least before I was navigatored, what would happen on the 8300HD if you removed the drive and installed another one is that all of your shows would remain in the program list when you remove the old drive drive and the programs you record on the new drive will get added to the list of recorded programs w/o losing the old ones. You could in theory build up a whole library of recorded shows on various drives that you could swap in and out if you wanted.

Well, the 750 GB drive looks to be the problem. I used Seagate's "SeaTools" software to run a diagnostic on the drive and it failed the test. Luckily the drive is still under warranty through them so they are sending me a replacement. Too bad I have to lose whatever DVR content was backed up on the drive, but oh well. Thanks, scott, for weighing in.

I have had just a "great" week with my TV and now my DVR...

I have had a 1TB external hard drive hooked to my 8300HDC for a couple years now and recently a few of the recordings were "ghost" recordings meaning that when I tried to play them, nothing played. I recently power-cycled my DVR and I went from 94% full on my DVR to 12% and it looks like all of the data on my external hard drive is now inaccessible.

I went to the diagnostic screen and it says almost all of the 947GB is free. Am I SOL? The DVR has always recognized the hard drive and it never gave me a notice that it was reformatting it or anything.

Thoughts?

Your sig does indicate where you are located. If you are a Rogers customer in Ontario, this is a known and frequent problem with the recent SARA firmware upgrade. Complain to Rogers if you are a customer. Try another reboot or two, but you are likely sol.

I noticed you wrote you had a "8300SDC" Is this a Standard Def 8300 DVR? or did you mean to write 8300HDC? If it is Standard Def, Why do you even need an Ext HDD?

A very similar incident happened to me where my Recorded List index became corrupted, and every recording would no longer play. I do not think this is recoverable.
My posting about what happened to me.

I simply erased all the recordings and then rebooted a few times. The DVR and Ext HDD returned to normal operation, but all my recordings were gone.

I would have liked to have reformatted the Ext HDD on a PC, but my DVR, an 8240HDC w/ Passport IPG will no longer Format a New Ext HDD so I could not.

If you are running the SARA IPG on your DVR, I would recommend a fresh formatting of the Internal and External HDD so you can start fresh. Also run a check disk utility on your Ext HDD to see if there are any bad sectors.

Has anyone had the S25.2 Cisco/SA SARA guide update yet on Comcast? If so how did the external eSATA continue to function after the new guide was pushed to your 8300HD? I have been assured by Comcast that the eSATA port will continue to function after S25.2, but wondering how smooth the transition went. Of course, I can always wait until March , here in Vermont, and see for myself.

I did mean HDC, I guess I was so flustered I couldn't type. I think I've accepted that all my recordings are gone, but I better start clean like you said so it hopefully won't happen again.

Keep us informed after you get the new i-Guide version "S25", developed by the GuideWorks joint venture between Comcast and Rovi Corp. Currently I cannot find any post one way or the other.
Some Additional Links:
http://blog.comcast.com/2010/05/new-...ble-boxes.html
http://www.multichannel.com/article/...isco_Boxes.php
http://hd.engadget.com/2010/05/19/co...ng-the-iguide/
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r235...-on-SA-systems

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The new Rovi Corp Passport Echo 3.1.085, that Cox is using no longer accepts a new eSATA Ext HDD on the 8300HDC or 8240HDC. The same guide does still work with an eSATA Ext HDD on the 8300HD (no C=CableCARD). The major difference being the OS Version of PowerTV.

Sure will. March 2 is the big day for us here according to a conversation I had last night with a Comcast Rep. I have been assured by more than one techie that eSATA functionality WILL continue for those of us getting the S25 iGuide update on the 8300HD (with Comcast). No one seems to know how smooth that transition, concerning eSATA, will be however. Losing recordings, it sounds like, should only be the worst of it though. Stay tuned.

Received the S25 guide update on March 9, one week later than originally planned.

I am utilizing a WD MyDVR Expander with a SA 8300HD DVR with Comcast.

System is now NOT working properly. All recordings will operate correctly with no glitches, however live TV is a no go. No more ability to pause a live show FF or REW. When I attempt to do so, I will get a black screen.

I was assured by a New England regional Comcast tech that all would be fine. I have a call out to the above mentioned rep to see what his input is. Maybe a swap to a newer 8300HDC may help. If he calls me back I will mention this. Problem is, regular Comcast CSR's will not be in the loop over this and it is a waste of time to even try.

Anyone else who gets this upgrade and is running an external, your input would be appreciated.

You might also consider a post to Comcast rep Ted Hodgins' blog on the new SA guide software, here. I suspect you'll get a response along the lines of "Sorry, this is an unsupported feature and you use it at your own risk," (regardless of who you talk to at Comcast), but Ted has elevated a couple of issues to folks who can address them so you might get lucky.

I have already been speaking to Ted on this site (I am listed as ButchSS) and he assured me that while not publicly supported, external hard drive functionality was extensively tested with the new software and is supposed to work!! This post is dated Feb 3 on ComcastVoices. The same info was given to me by another Comcast techie who actually called me for info on running external hard drives. He got my number from Ted. This is all good info to have to show any Comcast naysayers who will try to tell you this doesn't work.

My buddy who is running a Cisco RNG200 has had no problems and is cruising along with the new update. There is hope. So I have Comcast coming tomorrow to swap out the box and check some signal levels and such, although my signals were great when they were checked last Sept. for digital phone.

I rebooted my 8300 again and then plugged in the HD and now it is working again! That is what I had to do yesterday to get it to work for a short while, then this morning nothing.

We'll get it sorted out, just wanted to keep everyone updated.

Hello there , I thought you may find this interesting - not Comcast
but tonnes of issues with the firmware upgrades in the fall on 8300
boxes in Canada on Rogers - here is the link to the Canadian Digital forum

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=131572

many answers , updates and suggestions

I for one changed mine on warranty to cisco 8642 and have no apparent
issues with the external drives since(yet)yet I -am using vantec with wd 1tb on one
and the iomega extender 1 tb on the other .

Robin

Thanx Robin!! Good read and lots of info. Great!

Well, the Comcast rep came as scheduled. Said in the ten years he has been doing this he has never seen an external hooked up to the cable box. Admitted to me he would have been skeptical of making this right without a prior conversation with his immediate boss telling him it should and will work.

He replaced my box with a Cisco RNG200. It took a while for the new guide to be pushed through. We both agreed to wait until that happens before plugging it the HD. Once the new guide downloaded we plugged in the HD and it formatted in about 5 seconds. So far so good, sort of. Still working this morning, but few minor glitches last night have me holding my breath.

Then I discover, to my horror, my trusty old Pronto 7000 cannot learn the IR codes from the Cisco remote! I guess I missed that memo. A quick trip over to remotecentral and I found them. They work OK, but the IR receiver on the Cisco sucks. Nothing like the 8300. All my channel icons are basically inoperative now as multiple commands don't always complete the macro.

Stay tuned.