Western Digital My DVR Expander 500 GB eSATA Desktop External Hard Drive WDG1S5000VN by Western Digital
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Digital camera reviews of Western Digital My DVR Expander 500 GB eSATA Desktop External Hard Drive WDG1S5000VN
Digital camera Review: Mine didn't work well with my Scientific Atlanta 8300HD DVR
Summary: 2 Stars
I think others had the same problem as I did. I have a Scientific Atlanta 8300 HD DVR (Time Warner Cable) and although installation was easy and my SA 8300 can read the extra memory...the shows that are recorded on my Western Digital external drive don't play back normally. There is a LOT of pixelated distortion and not just occasionally, like every 10 seconds or so. So much that it just makes whatever I recorded un-watchable and I end up deleting everything that's recorded on the external drive. When I unplug it and go back to using my SA 8300 DVR, the shows get recorded normally, so I'm sure it's the external hard drive that cannot record properly from cable. Does anybody have any solutions to this? It's too late for me to return the hard drive, so it just ends up getting dusty and unused...and I'm out about $100 bucks from this now.Digital camera Review: Fantastic product.
Summary: 5 Stars
Hi. I published a long review on Jan1st but I think it was rejected. So here we go again. Congratulations to Amazon for prompt delivery: 21hrs delivery time between Nevada and Montreal, Quebec. I installed the 500gb model on Jan1st. No problem but it took 2 attempts to connect the drive with the Scientific-Atlanta 8300HD+. I had 18 saved programs taking 76% of the internal hard drive; after installing the expander, it now shows 29% ! Excellent. This means I went from a capacity of 40hrs of HD-1080i recording to 103hrs of HD-1080i (820gb total now). Again excellent. As of today (Jan.9th), the drive has been perfect. All the features of the 8300HD+ work as before, including pause, FF, RW, on LIVE programs. I suggest plugging the DVR and the Expander on a UPS (battery backup). This way, if you get a power failure or hits, the DVR and Expander will not have to be reconnected together and the drive will have less chances of getting damaged. Playback (video/audio) of recorded programs has been excellent, in fact, I did not notice any difference. That's the way it should be! Again, congratulations to WD for an excellent device. Take care all.
UPDATE:22-Jan-2010 - So far so good but I have the unit for 22 days only....I am now 74 % full and 40 or so programs recorded, not a single problem so far. It seems some folks have big problems around the 12th to 18th month of use. Next update will only be IF I have some difficulties with the device. Cheers.
Digital camera Review: My DVR Expander With Moxi
Summary: 5 Stars
The My DVD Expander is not certified for use with the Moxi, but considering my qualified success using the Toshiba 2TB external HDD, which is not DVR certified at all, with the Moxi, I don't anticipate problems.
The problem with the Toshiba is that it automatically shuts down after 30 minutes of inactivity, and has to be turned on with the power switch. I got around this problem by filling the internal drive of the Moxi to capacity, and scheduling recordings 24/7 to insure that the Toshiba is always active. But filling the internal drive of the Moxi to capacity is not an easy task. Drive utilization is given as a percentage without any decimal points, and 1% of drive capacity is 40 minutes, even with HD. Complicating things is that the Moxi will not let me schedule programmed recordings without first overriding "keep until I delete", so it kept deleting programs when it hit 100%.
I ordered the 500GB My DVR Expander from Newegg for $69.99 figuring it could provide overflow capacity, enabling me to fill the internal drive to 100% then "disconnect" the My DVR Expander, and replace it with the Toshiba as desired. As it turned out, the Moxi hit 100% before the My DVR Expander arrived, so I have been able to use the Toshiba 2TB drive as intended without incident.
When my My DVR Expander arrived I did the following:
1) Plugged power adapter into My DVR Expander
2) Navigated over to Moxi Tools
2) Navigated up to External Drive
3) Selected disconnect.
4) Powered down Toshiba
5) Disconnected eSATA cable from Toshiba
6) Connected eSATA cable to My DVR Expander
7) Plugged My DVR Expander power adapter in
8) When Moxi prompted me to format I confirmed.
9) A few minutes later drive was ready for use
10) Recorded Bernie Mac to DVR Expander, Played, Fast Forwarded, Rewound, Paused Etc, without any problems.
Moxi has its problems, but it is leaps and bounds ahead of Tivo. I didn't even have to power down the Moxi to install eSATA drives. After recording to the DVR Expander for a while, I disconnected the DVR Expander, switched the eSATA cable back to the Toshiba, powered on the Toshiba, and waited for it to be recognized. Once the Toshiba was recognized I could access all the programs previously stored on it.
I think, in the future, I will buy the 1TB Western Digital My DVR Expander for archiving. At the current price of $119 this amounts to 80 cents/hour if I can get 150 hours of HD on a 1TB HDD, as Arris Group claims for the Moxi. As a point of reference, I started archiving exclusively in 2 hour mode on VHS when the price of T120 tapes reached $1.49. And if I can actually get 600 hours of SD programming on a 1TB WD, this would be just 20 cents/hour, which is more expensive than recording in 90 minute mode to 15 cent DVDRs, but competitive with recording to DVD-Rs in 90 minute mode at 30 cents each, which is what I was doing before getting the DVDRs. Buying a 1TB DVR Expander is much more convenient than buying 8x50 disc spindles of DVD-Rs.
I did not use included eSATA cable, perhaps if I did I would downgrade to four stars, but for now it gets five stars in my review. Will update later.
Dale LaRoy Splitstone
Digital camera Review: DON'T Buy This Thing
Summary: 1 Stars
Like so many - My expander died after a year. TiVo recordings started to fail during record and during playback. Unplugged the expander, lost all the recordings, But the TiVo works fine.
Don't Buy It - Just get another TiVo. Or do an upgrade on the one you have.
J
Digital camera Review: SATA Drives Just not as reliable as IDE I guess
Summary: 2 Stars
used this drive as an extender for our Tivo HD. After 18 months of service, the Drive started clicking and then Tivo rebooted and hung. Had to unpair the Drive with the Tivo which forces you to loose all of the recorded content ~60 hrs of shows. Drive is toast. In the last year we have been blowing SATA drives at work at a far greater rate than I remember in the last 20 years I have been in the computer industry. I run labs with thousands of servers so I've seen a lot of HDD's.