Aim: Add an eSATA external drive to a QIP 7232 2.
Note: Links are to products on Amazon, but other vendors sell the same equipment.
1. Purchase a Western Digital AV-GP 2 TB AV Hard Drive, 3.5 Inch, SATA II, 64 MB Cache - WD20EURS, $109. Two terabytes, and designed for stressful AV applications.
2. Purchase a Vantec NexStar 3 NST-360SU-BK External Hard Drive Enclosure, $32. This device comes with an eSATA cable but I used instead an 18" cable I bought on Amazon for $5 (no dust-collecting coils of eSATA cable stuffed behind the DVR!). Eighteen inches is ample.
3. Insert drive into enclosure. If you don't want a very bright flashing blue light disturbing your television viewing, do not connect the LED power wire to the front panel of the external drive.
4. Aftermakingsuretheexternaldriveisturnedoff, pluginitspowersupplyand connect the drive to the DVR with the eSATAcable.
5. Turn on the external drive.
That's all it took. I can't remember whether the DVR immediately recognized the drive or whether I had to go to Settings/DVR to kick off this process, but whatever happened, it was simple and quick. There was no lengthy disk formatting process -- less than a minute after I turned on the drive it was ready to accept recordings.
I was astonished at the simplicity of the whole process and gratified to find that my existing recordings were untouched. I can't imagine any way in which Verizon could have made this process easier or quicker.
The 3tb might work, but last I heard Verizon did not support using all of the drive for larger drives.
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