Comments on: Add an SATA drive to your 8300HD DVR

By: Laurence

Laurence — Thu, 03 May 2007 23:13:58 +0000

Cablevision – Bklyn, NY

I have been thinking about doing the upgrade for a few months and bookmarked this page for the simple instructions.

Saw a good deal on a 7200rpm 500GB Seagate External (to Ken, Post #19 – No Product Name – but Model Number is ST3500601XS-RK) for $179 (included an eSATA PC card) – CompUSA closing a store in Queens, NY – LAST external drive in the WHOLE store.

Tried the cable supplied with the drive, followed the directions. Initially, it saw the drive but said there was an error in the connection? Unplugged the DVR from the wall, repeating the whole process 3X, and finally my recorded space went from 97% to 21%! Sweet! Haven’t had an issue since. Now I have to buy another drive for my computer to archive “Planet Earth” in HD.

By: Paul

Paul — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 20:08:04 +0000

I used a Segate 300GB external HD pn ST3300601XS-RK from pcmall.com item #7118780 for $110.

I am in San Diego with TWC and Passport 2.6.002

It told me the drivce wasn’t working properly the first time–so i just turned off the dirve and tried again–the next time it asked to format after a minute or so and is working great so far.

By: Jason

Jason — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 18:02:43 +0000

Question:

Does this work in areas where the cable company says the Sata port is disabled?

Sorry, if this seems obvious in either case, but I cant’ tell if everyone is excited because they got it to work, and it was just difficult, or if they got it to work, and the cable company told them it was impossible.

By: Brett

Brett — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 23:19:33 +0000

I owe my perfect upgrade to Steve (post#18)! YOUR THE MAN!!! I followed his setup to the tee! First let me tell you what I have, I use Time Warner Digital Cable in Fayetteville North Carolina (NC). It runs the Passport Echo software, version 2.6.002. I have the HD package from them too. I made all purchases from new egg which included their item #17-121-020 the External Enclosure by Kingwin, model KH-350SE-BK and their item #22-136-053 the Western Digital 320G 7K 16M SATA2 model # WD3200YS Hard Disk Drive (HDD) (I didn’t need 500GB, I opted for 320GB). I got both items and put them together for just under $110.00 (with S/H). I decided to see if these would be plug and play so I left everything running and just plugged in the external HDD. The first 5 second the screen froze, then it unfroze and displayed the message, would you like to format this drive. I accepted and about two minutes later it said done. I then turned to channel 999 and scrolled down to the DVR AVFS and now my AV Capacity is 426.2GB…there’s the proof, upgrade successful!!! I’m so glad I found this post and I hope my post helps others. If I experience any problems I will be sure to re-post so everyone will know. Wow this is great, and so easy!!!

By: ken

ken — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 23:42:40 +0000

Why is this soooooo complicated? I bought a WD My Book™ Premium ES Edition 500 GB HDD and a cable. Using all the advice I could and a call into SA, I could not get this drive to be formatted by the 8300. The SA tech, whom seems very unknowledgeable, was absolutely no help. The price was $169 which is fantastic. I have since returned it and am now looking for success stories using the Seagate FreeAgent Pro esata, ST307504FPA1E2-RK, 750GB HDD. Why should I have to buy and enclosure and drive? What makes the WD DB35 HDD more compatible with DVRs? I heard about pixelation with the home made setup.

By: Steve

Steve — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 21:57:19 +0000

After encountering the same problem Chris (at comment #8) experienced during installation, I followed his instructions and was able to get the drive recognized and formatted without further problem or uncertainties!

The drive is a 500gb Western Digital 7200, $125 w/ free shipping from memorylabs.com. The enclosure is a Kingwin — black with long (disconnectable) orange and blue lights, NO USB port (the model with USB ports reportedly has more DVR connectivity problems), available at newegg for $26 shipped. The eSata cable that came with the Kingwin enclosure works fine.

To answer Chris N’s (at comment #11) question, my service is Time Warner, Central Ohio, and my drive & enclosure setup works fine with their 8300HD and Passport/echo operating system.

By: Kelly Miller

Kelly Miller — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 23:00:32 +0000

So I just connected a 500GB Seagate Barracuda in a Rosewell enclosure to my 8300HD, the message came up on the box asking if I wanted to format it. I said “yes”, the message went away.

Now something curious; everything I’ve read here and other places says that the available space indicator should now drop to show the total amount of space available. That’s not happening; it’s still showing the same as it was before I plugged in the HD. I’m recording something now to see what effect it has.

Thoughts?

By: Mike Roberts

Mike Roberts — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 22:59:45 +0000

Jon,

The drive needs to be on whenever you record. Drives are designed to spend a lot of time spinning, but you might want to check the manufaturers web site to see if you can fine the “mean time between failures” (MTBF). FYI there are 8760 hours in a year.

By: Jon

Jon — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 04:02:02 +0000

I just purchased a cavalry 300 gb external hard drive on newegg for $100 with $20 rebate. It came with a cable and works perfectly. I have a question, the manual says to leave the drive on all the time. Is this going to use alot of power and will it wear out too fast. Should I shut it off and reboot everytime I want to use the device?

By: Mike Roberts

Mike Roberts — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 02:52:31 +0000

I attached a 400 GB Samsung eSATA drive to my Kansas City area Time Warner SA 8300HD with great success. A friend asked me to do the same for them. I found a 500 GB Seagate SATA and enclosure and installed it. It works, but there is some annoying pixelation every few minutes that goes away when we disconnect the drive.

I found that Seagate makes a DB35 series drive specifically for DVR storage and says it is tuned differently than the Barracuda 7200 10 that I used.

Anyone have any comments?

By: xnappo

xnappo — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 21:51:05 +0000

See my database for successful/failing drive/enclosure combos:

http://www.baseportal.com/baseportal/xnappo/main

By: Grant

Grant — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 20:20:54 +0000

Yes, Chris N. I have a SA8300HD from Time Warner. I live in Apex, NC. I just hooked up a Seagate 300GB SATA External Hard Drive (ST3300601XS-RK) from Circuit City. It took a few times powering up before it asked me to format the drive. It comes with the eSATA cord that you need. (It is an eSATA drive even though it is not clear on the Circuit City website)

My only question is will this model work with the 500Gb hard drive? Does anyone know? (According to the Popular Mechanic article referenced by Sam, 300Gb is the maximum)

By: Sam

Sam — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 04:19:58 +0000

Found it…..

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/how20/0ad08278d3daa010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html

By: Sam

Sam — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 04:12:41 +0000

I saw somewhere an article about replacing the original hard drive on SA83000HD (in my case 160 gig) with a drive up to 300 gig for extra storage on the original box. Apparently it’s only possible on SARA boxes and is as easy as replacing the drive and rebooting the system. As far as I remember the article was in “Popular Mechanic” about a year ago.

By: Chris N

Chris N — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 14:47:36 +0000

Has anyone done this on Time Warner? I’m in the Raleigh, NC market… I’ll buy this today if it will work – I just don’t know anyone with an external sata drive for me to test with.