Western Digital My DVR Expander 500 GB eSATA External Hard Drive by Western Digital
|
List Price: Category: CE See more digital camera details and other models |
|---|
(Click here)
Digital camera reviews of Western Digital My DVR Expander 500 GB eSATA External Hard Drive
Digital camera Review: Excellent and very quiet. UPDATE: NOT!
Summary: 2 Stars
After a couple of reboots of the TiVo HD, the expander is up and running which adds up to 60 hours of HD. When I record a one hour HD TV Show, it only takes 1% of the total space according to the show info. The unit is very quiet, you will not be able to hear it from your couch. I noticed however that it feels a little warm so do not put this on top of your TiVo or Xbox...lol. It was the only option to me because I have TiVo HD and not series 3. I hope TiVo and WD release a 1TB drive later. Overall, it is a good price for what you get. One thing I did not like however was that you only get one year warranty.
UPDATE: Unit went bad yesterday, 8 months after my original review. The TiVo was rebooting in an infinite loop. I disconnected it and it fixed the problem. Lost all my shows though :(. Luckily, I am still under warranty. I will try to get in touch with customer to see how that goes. I tried to run Data LifeGuard which is a hard drive check utility for WD drives but it would never finished. It would just get stucked.
Digital camera Review: Excellent device
Summary: 5 Stars
The DVR extender is very good and can record up to 300 extra hours of television. It was easy to follow the directions given to install the device.Digital camera Review: Excellent purchase
Summary: 5 Stars
The Western Digital DVR Expander 500 GB works excellently with a cable DVR box. I have one on both of my HD DVR boxes. I have had one for more than two years. So when I saw the price go down to around $100, I bought another one for the second box. It is money well spent. I haven't regretted buying the extender for one minute. This weekend, I went out of town and I taped all the Olympic coverage in HD. I think it taped 11 hours on Saturday and 10 hours on Sunday. There was probably another 7-10 hours of HD programming previously saved on the DVR. When I checked it this morning, it was at 37% full. Incredible. Before the DVR extender, the Super Bowl in HD filled up the old DVR. Set up is a breeze. Connect it to your cable box, power it up, power up the cable box, and it asks you if you'd like to connect the two together. Click OK and you're done.
If you're contemplating buying the WD 500 DVR extender, wait no more. You won't be disappointed.
Digital camera Review: Excellent quality external HD for DVR expansion...
Summary: 5 Stars
I have the Scientific Atlanta 8300HD cable box and quickly realized that recording HD programming would fill the internal HD on the 8300HD very quickly. Then I found out that Scientific Atlanta was using only a 160GB hard drive!! Kinda cheap if you ask me. HD programming fills up space VERY quickly. So, I was relieved to find out that an external (eSata) drive could be connected. But which one?
Well, the Western Digital MyDVR Expander 500GB was cost effective and I have been very happy with Western Digital products in the past (I am a Computer Consultant and have replaced many a hard drive with WD ones and they all work well..... now Seagate, that's another story!). So, I gave this MyDVR a whirl.
I was pleasantly surprised to see how easy it was to install. Literally... power down the 8300HD (by unplugging it), plug in and power up the MyDVR expander drive, replug in the 8300HD, after the LONGGGGG boot time for the 8300HD a message pops up saying that an external drive was found do you want to use it?, click yes. And voila! Now recording space is increased MANY fold.
I was worried that the MyDVR expander would continuosly run, but I was happy to find out that when the Scientific Atlanta 8300HD is in standby mode (off), the MyDVR expander would spin down also into a standby mode, therefore reducing stress by running continuously.
So far, so good. In fact, I would swear that the recordings have stabilized somehow and are better. But that's probably just psychological.
One IMPORTANT NOTE: When you add the MyDVR expander you LOSE the ability to pause live programming. In other words, the buffer that used to happen automatically is gone. But I never really paused live programming anyway. And if I want to leave while a show I'm watching is on, I just hit the RECORD button and record the rest of the show. So it all works out in the end.
Digital camera Review: Expect it to FAIL
Summary: 1 Stars
This drive failed after 18 months. This is all too common these days with hard drives.
If you are using it with a TiVo when it fails, you will almost certainly lose every recording you have.