Re: FiOS DVR failed ... now eSATA drive doesn't work - External Drive Enclosure Suspect
Fis1
Enthusiast - Level 3

By that I assume you mean the drive enclosure. The HD itself appears to be fine. Clearly I need to find and test a new enclosure stat.

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Re: FiOS DVR failed ... now eSATA drive doesn't work - External Drive Enclosure Suspect
armond_in_nj1
Master - Level 1

@Quaker wrote:

By that I assume you mean the drive enclosure. The HD itself appears to be fine. Clearly I need to find and test a new enclosure stat.


Yes, my comment (and perhaps sangs's earlier) is based on what you wrote in Post 8 in this thread.  Speaking for myself, I cannot of course be 100% certain, but it sure looks like the enclosure is at issue.  It would not be the first time.

ADDED NOTE:  Just looked at your earlier posts dating to 2011 and it seems you had no real issues until adding the external drive.  Hmmm.  Smells fishy to me (smile).

Re: FiOS DVR failed ... now eSATA drive doesn't work - External Drive Enclosure Suspect
sangs1
Specialist - Level 2

@Quaker wrote:

By that I assume you mean the drive enclosure. The HD itself appears to be fine. Clearly I need to find and test a new enclosure stat.


Maybe? In my situation, I replaced the entire HD. I've had enough HDs goes bad over the last 20 years and I'm not big on trying to revive them when Father Time comes calling. 🙂 (Obviously I'm referring to HDs in general, not those connected to DVRs.)

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Re: FiOS DVR failed ... now eSATA drive doesn't work - External Drive Enclosure Suspect
Fis1
Enthusiast - Level 3
@armond yes I had early problems with adding storage, but after I switched to a Western Digital AV-G drive, everything worked smoothly.

New enclosure ordered. Arrives Friday. Stay tuned.

Have I thanked you all for your help? Thank you! I don't know why I ever bother to call FiOS support. This is far superior.
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Re: FiOS DVR failed ... now eSATA drive doesn't work - External Drive Enclosure Suspect
armond_in_nj1
Master - Level 1

@Quaker wrote:
... Have I thanked you all for your help? Thank you! I don't know why I ever bother to call FiOS support. This is far superior.

Contributions can be forwarded directly to our PayPal accounts.  Whoops, just kidding.


Re: FiOS DVR failed ... now eSATA drive doesn't work - External Drive Enclosure Suspect
Fis1
Enthusiast - Level 3

New box arrived. Set it up. Connected it to DVR. Tried activating several times. Nothing. 

The only glimmer of hope I had -- just a pure hunch -- was that when I tried to activate the external drive and the reboot sequence started, it didn't finish by itself. In other words, it started the sequence and shut down the set top box, but didn't turn itself back on automatically. This didn't seem right. So I called technical support and asked them to remotely reset the set top box.

This Hail Mary worked. I was extremely lucky to get Patricia -- the first technically competent person I've talked to at Verizon technical support all month. She understood what I was talking about, knew about eSATA drives, and played along. It took about 45 minutes, but we got it working. One key was that after clicking OK to activate, then getting the screen that said Press OK to Reboot, I waited before pressing OK. After a good minute or more, a dialog popped up saying that it recognized a new drive. Waiting for that was key.

At this point, I don't know if I needed to order a new enclosure or not. I'm not touching anything. Just glad that after more than a month, it's finally working.

P.S. - From the adding insult to injury department, Verizon offered me a generous credit of around $20.

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Was It The Enclosure Or Not? That Is The Question!
armond_in_nj1
Master - Level 1

@Quaker wrote:
... I don't know if I needed to order a new enclosure or not. I'm not touching anything. Just glad that after more than a month, it's finally working ...

I don't know either.  But II do know that it wasn't working with the old enclosure, and it is now working properly with the new enclosure.  Whether the idea of waiting to press "OK" was, or was not, the solution is easy enough to test, simply by trying the identical procedure with the old enclosure.

Of course it's very likely too much trouble, and only of academic interest, the go through the extra procedure.  Still, it sure does raise one's curiosity.  Good luck and good viewing.

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Re: Was It The Enclosure Or Not? That Is The Question!
greinstein
Enthusiast - Level 3

I had a similar problem.  STB would freeze or reboot.

I found by trial and error that if I "ejected" the external drive, no more problems.  The external box was very hot to the touch, which shouldn't happen with a good enclosure.

I did not want to lose the content on the drive, so I gambled and bought a dual fan enclosure from Amazon (hard to find an esata enclosure, even Fry's did not any in stock).  Two months later, no more problems.  So, if I have not just jinxed myself, the new enclosure worked for me.

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Re: FiOS DVR failed and replaced but now eSATA drive doesn't work. Formatting needed?!?
Butsky
Enthusiast - Level 2
I wish the techs at Verizon were made aware of this post. I just had the same problem, and when I described it to the Verizon tech, she was convinced that the DVR had gone bad, and sent me a replacement. When I connected the replacement DVR, I noticed the DVR expander was not being recognized, and when I tried to reinstall it, I got the same reboot cycle problem with an error message about reinserting the cablecard. Now that the expander has been disconnected, the original DVR works fine. I will try to get a new expander, I guess, though I certainly don't look forward to this happening again in the future, and losing more recordings.
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Re: FiOS DVR failed ... now eSATA drive doesn't work - External Drive Enclosure Suspect
usasnq
Newbie

Quaker, you said one of the keys was to wait on the 'ok to reboot' page for the drive to be recognized, what were some of the other keys? I have the 'ok' page up and have waited about 5 minutes without a pop up so I'm curious as to any other advice you can provide.  Previous attempts had the same results as you describe, go through the process, click ok to reboot,  set top box goes into a rolling reboot sequence and never comes back.  Once I turn the external storage enclosure off it comes back up.  I am using a Fantom Drives Gforce/3 3 TB External Hard Drive eSATA and have tried reformatting on a PC etc with no luck.  This has been frustrating to no end.  Thanks in advance!

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