External Hard drive discontinued by Western Digital
wartfang
Enthusiast - Level 2

Now that Western Digital has discontinued the eSATA drive Verizon recommends what are your new eSATA Drive recommendations?

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Re: External Hard drive discontinued by Western Digital. No alternatives available
wartfang
Enthusiast - Level 2

Sorry but this information is incorrect.  The drive is not discontinued as we were previously led to believe the 1 TB is still available I just purchased it on Amazon and it works perfectly.  HINT: hook everything up first and plug the drive power in last before activation via the FiOS menu

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Re: External Hard drive discontinued by Western Digital
jackmcgann
Specialist - Level 1

@wartfang wrote:

Now that Western Digital has discontinued the eSATA drive Verizon recommends what are your new eSATA Drive recommendations?



LOL, You can't make this stuff up.

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Re: External Hard drive discontinued by Western Digital
wartfang
Enthusiast - Level 2
Yea a real belly laugh. So any suggestions? I need to increase my space. Thanks
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Re: External Hard drive discontinued by Western Digital
dave350x
Enthusiast - Level 2

The only thing I can add is that I just purchased a Fanton 1TB Greendrive GD1000EU and it did not work out for me.  It connected to the STB with no issues and everything seemed right but then after a while the drive would, I guess go into a sleep mode or whatever the proper terminoligy is and it would then disconnect and not be recognized by the STB.  If I turned the drive off then on again everything was back up and operating properly but sure enough after a while the same thing would happen.  I contacted Fantom support and the only answer I got was that the drive was not specifically designed for this purpose and couldn't say whether it would or wouldn't work.  I'd like to know what others have used with success as well.

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Re: External Hard drive discontinued by Western Digital
Hubrisnxs
Legend

Unsupported eSATA - Summarized


Here's the executive summary of the info I've accumulated in my still unsuccessful quest:

1. Make sure your HDD doesn't have an automatic sleep mode as the DVR doesn't like sleeping hard drives at all.
-- Best way to do this is to make sure the drive is explicitly rated for AV.
-- If the hard drive sleeps, you get lots of errors as the DVR attempts to use a sleeping disk to buffer stuff.

2. Make sure your eSATA drive or enclosure/drive combination can handle the eSATA throughput requirements.
-- Be advised that USB 2 is slower than eSATA, and I get the feeling that this can be an issue with some drives or enclosures, so you need to be sure your drive and/or enclosure can handle the higher eSATA standard throughput.

3. Some people have had to reformat their HDD using the PC (using exFAT format, not NTFS) to get the hard drive recognized.
-- ymmv. mine did, and not in a good way.

4. FIOS may say the HDD can be any size, but it appears that FIOS can only use 2 TB of it max.
-- if your mileage varies, let people know.
-- This is based on experience: Despite not getting the DVR to talk to the drive for recording, the DVR did format the HDD into one 2 TB partition and the remainder of the disk was rendered unallocated.

5. Some people have had issues fixed by changing their eSATA cable.
-- whether just swapping out the cable or needing a cable that is explicitly "shielded" fixed the problem is unclear. Neither worked for me.

6. Even with the supported WD HDDs, some people have had to wait a day for the HDD to come online.
-- They initially thought it wasn't accepted and did the rounds of re-enabling and re-booting with no success, left everything in place when they went to bed, and the next morning/later in the day, Voila! it was working! I can't tell if this was because of a low-level reformat, a Verizon batch processing job that needed to run and download something to the DVR, or just some sort of timing fluke. Whatever it is, I haven't had luck with waiting.

7. Once successfully enabled and working, the following should be true:
a. Existing recordings will still be available.
b. All recordings, whether they are on the internal or external HDDs, will be available to all STBs that use the DVR.
c. The DVR will use the eSATA HDD for recordings until full, then use the internal.
d. Recordings will *NOT* be split across the external and internal disks. It will delete oldest shows on one disk to make room (unless the old shows are marked "keep until I delete").
e. Recordings on the HDD are encrypted so they can only be decrypted by that one exact DVR. If it dies or is exchanged, you lose all your recordings.

Note that c, d, and e means you can swap out eSATA HDDs so you can have an infinite library...that only plays on that one exact DVR.

Re: External Hard drive discontinued by Western Digital
Keyboards
Master - Level 3

@Hubrisnxs wrote:

Unsupported eSATA - Summarized



6. Even with the supported WD HDDs, some people have had to wait a day for the HDD to come online.
-- They initially thought it wasn't accepted and did the rounds of re-enabling and re-booting with no success, left everything in place when they went to bed, and the next morning/later in the day, Voila! it was working! I can't tell if this was because of a low-level reformat, a Verizon batch processing job that needed to run and download something to the DVR, or just some sort of timing fluke. Whatever it is, I haven't had luck with waiting.



BTW - just to clarify, my understanding is that there is something that has to run from the back-end (CO or VHO - not sure which) the first time requesting external storage that allows the enabling of the external storage - hence the indeterminate delay in actual activation (up to 24 hours).

Re: External Hard drive discontinued by Western Digital
wartfang
Enthusiast - Level 2

So I am going to get these technical folks of Verizon on the phone and see if they have a replacement now that the WD they recommended are no longer available.  Thank you all for your input.

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Re: External Hard drive discontinued by Western Digital
tns
Master - Level 2

Which one is discontinued. 

The current DVR extender (1TB) shown on the Western Digital site is WDBABT0010HBK-NESN.  It is out of stock but not yet discontinued.  Part of the shortage caused by the floods in Thailand.  Some sites show expected deliveries in March.

Re: External Hard drive discontinued by Western Digital
wartfang
Enthusiast - Level 2

That would good news.  The discontinued notice I saw on some of the vendors sites, on the WD site is just says out of stock as you said, actually the cheapest vendor so far is WD, some of the sites have it over priced.  I guess I have to be a little patient then.  Thanks for the heads-up, much appreciated.

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Re: External Hard drive discontinued by Western Digital
wah99
Newbie

WD Tech Support told me a few minutes ago that the DVR Expander will be available around 3.31.13.... we'll see. While I'm skeptical, I hope the rep actually knows what he's talking about.

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