TWC 8300HD DVR eSATA port is now active! (external hard drive storage)

[TPK]

I think I will put together an enclosure with a SATA drive and hook that up to the 8300...

These 2 items come to about $100 with shipping after rebate:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2268595&sku=TSD-320AS

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2427201&sku=M501-1252

For 100 bux to add an extra 320 gigabytes of storage to the DVR, I cannot pass that up...

The only question I have is what cable will I need?  Does just a standard sata cable work?  Or do I need an e-sata cable with a different connector on one end, or both ends??  As far as I can tell, that enclosure doesn't come with a cable (I assume it comes with a power supply of some sort), but with that enclosure, what sort of cable do I need?

[MDR]

The sa8300 has an e-sata connector,  so an e-sata to e-sata cable should work for you. I thought I saw them listed on Tiger-direct web site.
 
Good luck, you'll appreciate this added storage.

Mdr

P,S, Good news from the AVS Forum. The first report of being able to use the e-sata with TWC's new Mystro(Navigator)  software was just posted from someone in North Carolina. Best of all trick play seems to work also.    

"Success !

After the 4th try, the drive was finally recognized and gave me the prompt to format it. The format ran in under 2 mnutes.

I looked in the Mystro DIAG, but it does not show a 'separate drive', it just increased my clusters and free cluster dramatcially for the 500gb drive. The diag menu does not show bytes, just clusters.

Inital tests on recording and playback are without problem.

The ability to also pause, rewind and fast foward live programing appears to work also. I had read on other versions, this was an issue apparently caused by buffering issues.

I will post anything else I find. "

[LuckySe7ens]

I've been reading that the new software "upgrade" will neuter the functionality of DVR.   For instance... when fast forwarding, currently, you hit play, and it rewinds a few seconds to account for human reaction time... this feature, gone.  This was just a short list of the many features that'll be lost with the "upgrade".

If you ask me, AT&T couldn't be offering competition to these morons any sooner.

[TPK]

I think I will put together an enclosure with a SATA drive and hook that up to the 8300...

These 2 items come to about $100 with shipping after rebate:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2268595&sku=TSD-320AS

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2427201&sku=M501-1252

For 100 bux to add an extra 320 gigabytes of storage to the DVR, I cannot pass that up...

The only question I have is what cable will I need?  Does just a standard sata cable work?  Or do I need an e-sata cable with a different connector on one end, or both ends??  As far as I can tell, that enclosure doesn't come with a cable (I assume it comes with a power supply of some sort), but with that enclosure, what sort of cable do I need?

As an update (if anyone who hasn't done this yet is interested):

I placed an order for these items yesterday with standard shipping, and when I came home today it was sitting on my doorstep (wow...  thats amazing in and of itself, and worth mentioning)...

Anyhow, the enclosure not only came with a cable (standard SATA cable), but it also came with a SATA to e-SATA dongle which converts one end of the cable to an e-SATA, while the other connector (standard SATA) hooks right into the back of the unit...  The 8300 box takes a e-SATA connector, so I used the dongle to convert the other end for the box...  So I guess I did not need to buy an e-SATA to e-SATA cable, which turned out to be surprisngly difficult to find, and cost something like $25 from an amazon 3'rd party vendor (best price I could find)... I guess that ones going to my cable collection when it gets delivered I suppose I will try to be more patient next time before I go ordering stuff I am not sure I need...

For power, I was hoping to plug the thing into the back of the cable box for its power (and tell the cable box to always power the outlet), but the cable box has a non-grounded plug (the power cable for the unit is a standard PC power cable, which is a grounded plug), and it would not fit into the cable box, even with a 3-prong 'cheater' adaptor...  So I ended up having to route the power cable behind my 'entertainment center', into an available outlet on one of the power strips...

I hooked it all up, and I had to do some futz-ing with the cable box a little bit (a couple of reboots and power cycles to the cable box and external SATA unit) and finally the box asked me if I wanted to format the drive...

Now when I go to the diagnostic menu, and select DVR AVFS screen, its reporting my AV Size at 426.2 GB (I think it was 120 GB before), and the SATA screen is reporting SATA Status: Authorized with what appears to be a log of activities (including 'Drive Unplugged', 'Drive Not Formatted', 'Format complete', and 'Drive OK' log messages)...

Anyhow, the drive appears to be working and it looks like I have plenty of avaialble capacity..

The total cost for this including shipping is $126.97, before a $20 MIR, so it comes to $106.97 after the rebate..

Unfortunately, the live chase buffer is definitely bugged (I can be a lot more specific if someone would like a full explaination of what the DVR does not do that it did before, I  am still trying to figure out what the new 'rules' are myself)...  

Hopefully, this will be fixed in the pending upgrade...   Perhaps not..

My biggest fear is that TWC may decide one day to only allow us to use 'their' external SATA units (for a rental fee of course), as opposed to letting us build it ourselves (bringing TWC no extra revenue)...  Allowing us to do this appears to be more 'open' than the cable company usually is...

[TPK]

Today the live chase buffer started working on the DVR, even with the external hard drive attached...

My guess is that the chase buffer works as long as its being recorded on the internal drive...  If the chase buffer hits the external drive, then it doesnt work...

According to what I have read, the recordings go onto whichever drive has the most free space available....   So my guess is that once the external drive filled up, then it started to use the internal drive again...

So now the trick will be to try to keep the internal drive free, while keeping the external drive full, which I guess is sort of possible by forcing recordings to go onto the external drive by freeing up space on the recordings I made when the live chase buffer was not working for making new recordings (I guess I have to keep track of when the live chase buffer works and when it doesn't work)...

If the chase buffer is actually working, and I make a permanent recording on that, then I need to compensate by deleteing some other recording I made when the chase buffer was working...

.. Does this help anyone?

[Pixelmgn]

I have added a 300GB Seagate eSATA drive to my SA 8300HD (mfg date of 11/5/2006).  The recording and playback with the external drive works perfectly.  However, whenever the external drive is attached, the DVR functionality for live TV isn't working.  Normally, the DVR will capture up to 1 hour in it's "buffer" and allow me to pause as well as skip forward and backward within the buffer.  With the external drive attached, there is no buffer for any live TV.  The live TV buffer will work if I don't have the external drive attached.  The DVR works fine for any recorded program (but not during recording) from either the external or internal drive.

I have seen a couple of postings concerning success with the external drive, but some DVR issues.  Two questions:

1. Is my issue described above similar to your experience?

2. Has anyone added an external hard drive and had the live TV DVR work as it did before?

Thanks in advance for your responses.

[MDR]

Your right, that's how it works with Passport.

Once you fill up the external drive and have more space available on the internal drive; the buffer will return to the internal drive and the "trick play" features will once again work for live TV. It's all dependent on which drive has more space available.

Thus you might find that it works for a while and then stops because the buffer will alternate between the drives dependent upon free disk space.

The added capacity is worth putting up with this minor quirk.

Record and enjoy:)

MDR

[Movin2Milwaukee]

The instructions for the 8300HD suggest to contact your local provider, to find out which SATA drives are supported/recommended with this DVR. I called up the TWC location @ Mayfair and the person I spoke to said, "we don't support this feature so you're on your own, as far as picking a drive."

How do I find out if I have the right software in my 8300HD to add an external drive? Which ones should I go with, to be safe? Is over 160GB too much of a risk, as it may not work well with the DVR?

[Mark Strube]

If it has the port for it, and it's an 8300HD, it'll work. I think the posts in this thread are a good guide to figure out what works... anything over 160GB is not a risk - I'd recommend the Seagate drive.

[ebrire]

Sorry if I'm asking you any dumb questions, but I got the same enclosure as yours, the only difference is the HD, I got a Western Digital, 320GB and I can't get this thing to work.

I did pretty much the same: mounted the HD in the enclosure, it seems to be working fine, but I tried to connect it to the 8300HD (Time Warner Cable in Albany, NY) and the DVR never recognized the external drive.

I have SARA 1.89.17.1, and I got my DVR on Jun 12, 2006.

The questions are:

1. Am I supposed to disconnect the TWC coaxial cable?
2. When does the question to format the drive appears? Right after the boot?
3. Am I supposed to press the power button on the DVR or the prompt will appear on the TV if it's not ON? (like what happens when you check the SARA version

I'm getting frustrated, I was all excited to expand my DVR. Am I doing something wrong? I think I tried to reboot the DVR over 10 times and nothing

Thanks in advance for any help.
Ebrire

I think I will put together an enclosure with a SATA drive and hook that up to the 8300...

These 2 items come to about $100 with shipping after rebate:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2268595&sku=TSD-320AS

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2427201&sku=M501-1252

For 100 bux to add an extra 320 gigabytes of storage to the DVR, I cannot pass that up...

The only question I have is what cable will I need?  Does just a standard sata cable work?  Or do I need an e-sata cable with a different connector on one end, or both ends??  As far as I can tell, that enclosure doesn't come with a cable (I assume it comes with a power supply of some sort), but with that enclosure, what sort of cable do I need?

[LoadStar]

Sorry if I'm asking you any dumb questions, but I got the same enclosure as yours, the only difference is the HD, I got a Western Digital, 320GB and I can't get this thing to work.

I did pretty much the same: mounted the HD in the enclosure, it seems to be working fine, but I tried to connect it to the 8300HD (Time Warner Cable in Albany, NY) and the DVR never recognized the external drive.

I have SARA 1.89.17.1, and I got my DVR on Jun 12, 2006.

The questions are:

1. Am I supposed to disconnect the TWC coaxial cable?
2. When does the question to format the drive appears? Right after the boot?
3. Am I supposed to press the power button on the DVR or the prompt will appear on the TV if it's not ON? (like what happens when you check the SARA version

I'm getting frustrated, I was all excited to expand my DVR. Am I doing something wrong? I think I tried to reboot the DVR over 10 times and nothing

Thanks in advance for any help.
Ebrire

Well, Milwaukee region is running Passport, not SARA, so for that major reason, I'm not sure how much help we'll be able to provide.

[Detritus]

Just hooked up successfully with:

Western Digital WD5000AAKS (500GB).
Kingwin KH-350SE-BK (that's the eSATA enclosure without USB) from MilwaukeePC.

I had previously tried it with an Azio ENC211-U41 (eSATA + USB), but the 8300HD kept saying the drive failed and that the cable was unplugged. Somehow it didn't like the controller in that enclosure (the disconnection message would re-occur and the diagnostic log was full of it). That enclosure worked fine with my Laptop's USB port.

Don't have much mileage with it, yet. So far trick-play seems to work fine.

Also worth nothing is that both enclosures came with the necessary cable (actually using the cable that came with the Azio enclosure right now, since I didn't want to open up the plastic of the new one)

[Detritus]

Scientific Atlanta 8300HD Passport eSATA Database:
http://www.baseportal.com/baseportal/xnappo/passport

The link above is a compatibility database that's being maintained by somebody from avs. Enter your own experiences.

So far everything's dandy... Recording 2 shows simultaneously while watching a third not a problem. Trick play (rewinding/pausing live tv) is not a problem, either.

So all in all, my storage capacity quadrupled I went from about 135G (formatted) to 594G (formatted).

[Detritus]

Well looks like trick play doesn't work, after all.

Experience so far has been ok, though.

There are more glitches in recordings than with the built-in drive, but they're rare and short. A HD specifically designed for streaming applications such as the WD5000AVJS would prolly prevent that.

[markd]

Has anyone experienced weird HDMI issues when attempting to connect a second drive?  After more than a year of problem free use, I bought a Seagate FreeAgent Pro 500GB External from Best Buy yesterday and a eSATA cable from Milwaukee PC.  After connecting the drive, I not only did not get an drive formatting message, I lost my picture through HDMI :eek:

I have a second 8300HD box (connected upstairs via component).  I swapped the boxes (taking the external out of the picture for a minute) and had no problems with the "dead" box via component upstairs nor box #2 downstairs via HDMI (so I know the cable is still fine).  After more than 20 hard boots and crazy cable trickery, I cannot get HDMI working again on box #1.

Has anyone ever heard of such weirdness.  Did my HDMI port on the 8300 just mysteriously "die" at the same time I connected a second drive!?

Also, fwiw, when plugging the drive back into box #1 while connected via component to upstairs TV (I was too scared to connect it to box #2 while connected to HDMI downstairs), I just got error messages and no option to format.  When unplugged, it would say that my external was diconnected and to reconnect it but I could never get it to format.