Recently attached a esata drive to my DVR. Everything seems to be working fine except that the light on the drive keeps flashing which registers that the drive is doing reads or writes. This happens even when the TV is not on and nothing is recording. Anyone know what this might be. I had this drive connected to my PC for over a year and never had any problem with it. Why would the DVR contivue to do reads and writes even when nothing should be happening
@mccarron wrote:Recently attached a esata drive to my DVR. Everything seems to be working fine except that the light on the drive keeps flashing which registers that the drive is doing reads or writes. This happens even when the TV is not on and nothing is recording. Anyone know what this might be. I had this drive connected to my PC for over a year and never had any problem with it. Why would the DVR contivue to do reads and writes even when nothing should be happening
Sure. If you have had the DVR for any time you know that it buffers the last two channels to the internal drive at all times, even when you have turned the DVR off, so that you can replay the current program from either of those channels. When you attach an external drive that activity is switched to the external drive.
__________________________________
Justin
FiOS TV, 25/25 Internet, and Digital Voice user
QIP7232, QIP7100-P2, IMG 1.9.1
Keller, TX 76248
I knew it was buffering the show I was watching and the last other channel I was watching, but I never throught it continued to buffer shows even after I had turned off the TV and DVR. What's the point? So I can turn everything off andcome back later and watch a show that I didn't want to in the first place. Its not changing channels and if I had wanted to keep watching that channel I would have set it to record. I don't see any benefit to this except its annoying when I don't even have the TV on and don't want anything to record. It looks like it will just work my drive to death before its time with unnecessary work
@mccarron wrote:I knew it was buffering the show I was watching and the last other channel I was watching, but I never throught it continued to buffer shows even after I had turned off the TV and DVR. What's the point? So I can turn everything off andcome back later and watch a show that I didn't want to in the first place. Its not changing channels and if I had wanted to keep watching that channel I would have set it to record. I don't see any benefit to this except its annoying when I don't even have the TV on and don't want anything to record. It looks like it will just work my drive to death before its time with unnecessary work
The DVR has no way to know whether you might want to turn it back on and go back to the beginning of a program on one of those channels. Maybe you only missed the first 5 or 10 minutes when you turn it on, this way you can go back and see the whole program. Plus the DVR has to be "alive" even when you turn it off so it can record any programs you have scheduled to record.
Why are you even turning the DVR off? Do you think you are saving electricty or something? You are not, only a tiny, teeny amount, I doubt if you could measure it, even if you had a Kill-A-Watt or some other tool to measure it with. I did measure years ago, negligible difference. I leave my DVR and all of the other STBs on all of the time, seemingly faster viewing when I turn on the TV, no difference in electrical usage, and ability to go back on either of the channels I last used if I want to - and I sometimes do - win all the way around to me.
Turning the TV off has absolutely nothing to do with anything about recording stuff on the DVR.
It does exercise the hard drive (and keep in mind it was doing the same thing to the internal hard drive before you attached the external one, you apparently just didn't realize it). That is one of the reasons Verizon chose some specific models to recommend, they supposedly are designed for this type of activity. Why is it annoying, because the light on the drive flashes? Move the drive so you can't see it! You said you had this drive attached to your PC for a year; that makes me believe the drive you are using is probably not really designed to be used for this purpose, there are external hard drives that are made to be used continuously like you are seeing, maybe you should get one of those.
What you are seeing is the way it works, at least for now, you can't change it. If you don't like it, i guess you could unplug the DVR from the electrical source, or connect it to a surge protector with an on/off switch on it. But really, is it THAT annoying?
__________________________________
Justin
FiOS TV, 25/25 Internet, and Digital Voice user
QIP7232, QIP7100-P2, IMG 1.9.1
Keller, TX 76248
FiOS's expanded storage solution is not an additional archive function. The entire function of the DVR is transferred to the external hard drive. This is why you need an AV specific hard drive that is used in 24/7 type applications. All the background functions of tuner chaching, epg downloads, and other functions are now performed by your external drive.
As Justin indicated, "turning" off the dvr merely disengages the display output of the channel you are on. The DVR itself never turns off. I believe Dish network has the only DVR that spins down the drive and goes into a power save mode after a set amount of inactivity when in the "off" position.
Start a new topic or ask questions in the open forum.
