SA8300HD w/Seagate 1TB external

[Knight Watchman]

I have a Seagate FreeAgent Pro 1TB, with a SA-8300HD.
The Box sees the drive if I turn it off, an reminds me to turn off the SA before turning off the hard drive.
I have yet to get a prompt to format the drive.
Nor do I see where the drive space is available.

Plus, when I plug the drive in, turn it on and then plug the SA in I see the drive reboot.

I have tested the drive on my PC and it appears to work fine.

Suggestions??
Where am I going wrong?

[betona]

Just because it's a SATA drive doesn't mean the cable box will recognize it. I tried the exact same thing a while back with a 500g FreeAgent Pro and never could get it to work no matter what I tried, so I returned it.

Here's a list of user drive tests with the 8300HD box that can help you:

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

I ended up buying a 500g Apricorn DVR Xpander which works great--these babies are built specifically to work with cable boxes and even come with the SATA cable. Here's the official page for the manufacturer's product with good info:

http://www.apricorn.com/product_detail.php?type=family&id=37

I bought mine from provantage.com which usually has very good pricing, ships quick and is located right here in Ohio (Canton). They sell the 1TB version of the unit for $228 (http://www.provantage.com/apricorn-advrx-1tb~7APRC3N3.htm).

Side note: For our needs, 500g has been plenty and for a little over 100 bucks, a great deal. We usually hover between 45% and 65% full, with dozens of HD movies and shows recorded. I don't keep 'em on there forever and once I watch something I've recorded, I usually delete it. I'm sure other folks may want to build a collection and would want even more space. Keep in mind that everything saved on an external drive can never be transferred to another cable box (digital rights rules), so I wouldn't consider it a lifetime archive system.

[Knight Watchman]

Thanks for the info.
I took the drive back yesterday and have ordered the New Drive, with the hopes it will be here this week.

[Ronald Long]

Just ordered direct from Apricorn, 1TB $119 + $9.99 S&H = $128.99.
Model is ADVRE2-1000.
500GB is model ADVRX-500 for $99 + $9.99 S&H = $108.99
SA8300HD 160GB for 20 hours HD.
With Expansion:
1TB HD hours = 20 + 125 = 145 hours total.
500GB HD Hours = 20 + 62 = 82 hours total.

[Ronald Long]

I received the Apricorn 1TB drive for use with my SA8300HD. It formatted according to the instructions and appeared to work until I followed the last instruction was to reboot the DVR. That was not successful. My 8300HD software is Mystro (sp?). I got 4 bars but it never finished with the last 2 bars. I finally had to exchange my DVR with TW and of course lost the recordings on the internal drive.

When I go to Support on the apricorn site I see the DVR Xpander product is listed as discontinued! Also TW now gave me an SA8300HDC which apricorn says is not supported.

Now to try to get my money back.

Does anyone know if the 8300HDC has a larger internal drive than the 8300HD?

[DublinDoodah]

The 8300HDC is the same as the 8300HD except it has the removable cable card and a different version of Navigator software. Apricorn may be claiming incompatibility with the HDC because some releases of the software (ODN Navigator) had bugs that prevented all external drives from working. The current version is working again, so you might give it a try.

[mey]

This is what I have. Have had no problems at all. Great unit.

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Western-Digital-1TB-My-Book-AV-DVR-Expander/14691634