External drive problem with 8300HDC

[Bokonon]

Well, after 4 years of die-hard TIVOness, I just got the TW 8300HDC about 2 weeks ago. I'll leave a comparison of the two to other threads.

My problem is that I just bought a Cavalry 500 GB external SATA drive to hook to the 8300HDC. I got a good deal on this and only bought it after I found multiple notes/reviews/posts online from others who had hooked the exact same drive to their TW8300's with success.

At first, everything was rosy...the DVR recognized the drive, formatted it and then showed that space used went down from 76 > 19%. Sounds great, right? I checked basic functions of the DVR, watched a pre-recorded show for about a half-hour and then went on to other things in life.

About 4 hours after the initial installation and quick-test (on my part), I turned on the TV and found that the DVR was in the middle of a reboot. It rebooted three times in sucession. It would stay on for about 2 minutes between each reboot. During one of the brief, accessible times, I checked the show list and the space had gone back to 76% -- i.e. it was no longer recognizing the drive.

Bottom line: I disconnected the new external drive and the rebooting has stopped. Everything seems normal again, but of course, I don't have my shiny new half-terabyte of additional space hooked in either.

Any help/hints/thoughts would be appreciated. BTW, I have tried various methods I've found online regarding how to access the DVR diagnostics and so far none have been successful, so any local (Columbus) peculiarities anyone knows of regarding this would be very welcome, too.

Thanks.

[jchiso]

Have you tried connecting the drive to a PC and seeing if it recognizes the formatted geometry? Or have you tried another drive in that enclosure?

[Bokonon]

No, but connecting it to a PC is my next step. I really don't want to try another drive in that enclosure, because breaking the seal to get into the enclosure apparently voids the warranty and I may just be sending this back if I can't figure out what's going on.

[Scott]

Did the drive come with any diagnostic discs at all? I'm assuming it did not because you probably would have tested already. Short of opening the enclosure and voiding your warranty to test; perhaps sending the drive back for a replacement may be the best solution.

[Bokonon]

Nope, no diagnostics. At this point, I'm pretty resigned to sending it back. Sigh.

[Bokonon]

Well, I sent my original Cavalry back and they sent me another very quickly. I ahve the same problems with the new one. SIgh. The DVR recognized it immediately, formatted it, 'saw' the new space available and was very happy. A few hours later, the DVR simply stopped outputting any signal at all to the TV. had to disconnect the external drive, reboot the 8300HDC and it was happy again.

I have a suspicion that it worked fine until the first new recording actually tried to happen and then, boom.

Does anyone know of any external hard drives that actuall WORK on the 8300HDC here in TWland in COlumbus?

[DublinDoodah]

About a month ago TW pushed out a new release of Navigator (2.4.8_2). That release caused a system with an external drive to lock up when it receives a command after going into sleep mode (seems to be about 3 hours after receiving no remote commands). Seems to have something to do with the spin-up time (even though mine never really spins down). Some people have experimented with setting up a series recording that will keep the dvr busy 24/7 (such as Public Access chan 21) with mixed success. I've just disconnected the external drive and pray that TW will realize their mistake and fix it in a later release.

BTW: Sleep mode is problematic even if you don't have an external drive. Any time you are watching a channel for more than 3 hours, it enters sleep mode and quits buffering. That means that if you are watching a long program like a football game, you can't back up and replay any of the action near the end of the game. Once you wake it up, it continues to buffer the program, but you've lost the first 3 hours.

[Bokonon]

Wow. thanks for the pertinent info, Dublin Doodah. This really hoses people who would like a little more space than we get. Wish I'd known this before I blew bucks on this external drive...I loved, loved my Tivo, but for the cost of getting a new Tivo 3 HD and an external drive for that and the monthly charges and the monthly charge for a cable card, I just went with the TW answer. I'm now rethinking my decision.

Thanks from Bokonon (Gahanna Goober).

[darkfiber]

Wow. thanks for the pertinent info, Dublin Doodah. This really hoses people who would like a little more space than we get. Wish I'd known this before I blew bucks on this external drive...I loved, loved my Tivo, but for the cost of getting a new Tivo 3 HD and an external drive for that and the monthly charges and the monthly charge for a cable card, I just went with the TW answer. I'm now rethinking my decision.

Thanks from Bokonon (Gahanna Goober).

I went the opposite direction. Back in Fall 2005 when I bought my HDTV the TW 8300HD DVR was the only option as the Tivo Series 3 hadn't come out yet. I had to live with that piece of crap 8300HD for a year until finally the Series 3 came out. I had been using Tivo's (I have a Series 1 and a Series 2 as well) for some time so I was used to the superior DVR experience you get with those. I finally bought a Series 3 at the end of 2006 upgraded the internal drive to 750GB and added an external 750GB for a total of 1.5TB (about 198 hours of HD recording). The interface and features of the Tivo Series 3 just blows the SA 8300HD away. Yes it was expensive but worth it (of course I make decent money and I am single with no kids so YMMV :D). Of course the newer Tivo HD's are a lot cheaper than the Series 3 (which they no longer make). I also transfered my lifetime sub from my Series 1 for $200 to my Series 3. The Lifetime transfer will pay for itself by the end of May.

The Cable Card fee for the 2 cards I use is only $5 a month total. Now once TW goes to Switched Digital Video any channel on SDV won't work on a Cable Card device. However, there is a device called a "Tuning Resolver" that could come out the first half of this year that would solve that problem.

http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=145411&site=cdn