Series3 eSATA Drive Expansion - Success/Problem Poll

[bgreen]

Please let everyone know if you've successfully expanded your Tivo Series 3 via the eSATA port...

[tivoABE]

Hooked up a 500gb WD My Book Premium ES. Worked right out of the box. Been using it for nearly 2 months now. No problems.

[jfh3]

Antec MX-1 + Seagate DB35 750GB drive working fine since the first week support was reported.

[bareyb]

Antec MX-1, DB35 500 Gig drive, 18 inch Tripplite cables. Did the expansion on TWO S3's about a month ago, and so far the new drives are absolutely transparent. The MX-1 enclosures run very cool and quiet and I have no complaints. The upgrade was easy and quite fun :up: .

[richsadams]

PLEASE NOTE: Questions and answers on this topic can be found on the Series3 eSATA Drive Expansion: FAQ + Discussion thread (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=350510) which has already been made a sticky. To avoid yet another thread on this subject, please do not post questions or comments (beyond yes, no) here.

Also note that this option is NOT currently available on TiVo HD untis at this time.

[bgreen]

PLEASE NOTE: Questions and answers on this topic can be found on the which has already been made a sticky. To avoid yet another thread on this subject, please do not post questions or comments (beyond yes, no) here.

Also note that this option is NOT currently available on TiVo HD untis at this time.


Yeah... what he said. ;) Thanks Rich. Let's keep all the comments together in the original thread.

Keep the up the voting!

[Dr_Diablo]

still waiting for the drivers to enable the Tivo SATA port, just how how long is it going to take ????

[richsadams]

still waiting for the drivers to enable the Tivo SATA port, just how how long is it going to take ????Hmmm...which part of "Questions and answers on this topic can be found on the Series3 eSATA Drive Expansion: FAQ + Discussion thread (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=350510) which has already been made a sticky. To avoid yet another thread on this subject, please do not post questions or comments (beyond yes, no) here." wasn't clear? ;)

[bgreen]

Placeholder #1

[msrolla]

Seagate FreeAgent Pro 750G with SIIG cable. Plugged the drive in the way it was configured from the box. No problems since I started using it over two months ago. It's been running full for at least the last 3 or 4 weeks with regular recordings, suggestions, TivoCasts and Unbox downloads.

[Dr_Diablo]

Hmmm...which part of "Questions and answers on this topic can be found on the Series3 eSATA Drive Expansion: FAQ + Discussion thread (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=350510) which has already been made a sticky. To avoid yet another thread on this subject, please do not post questions or comments (beyond yes, no) here." wasn't clear? ;)


Guessing that u dunt no the answer either, no matter, got rid of the Tivo HD for the Series 3 version... Happy now bubba ?

[Farson]

(10005225) HITACHI 0A34193 1TB SATA 7200 RPM 32MB Hard Drive Bulk

(103061) Apricorn EZ-BUS-DTS-EKIT SATA Backup & External Storage System Retail


Ordered those from ZipZoomFly hooked them up and everything worked great first time around and has been for a few weeks now.

[l_emmerdeur]

Seagate Freeagent Pro 750Gb with the firmware update and an SIIG eSata cable. I've gotten 2 or 3 GSODs since then, but they recovered in about 15 minutes. I do get the occasional 3-4 second pause during playback (maybe 3-4 times per one hour episode). I am wondering if an external eSata drive with 2 HDDs in RAID0 might resolve these issues. If I'm not mistaken, the pending Tivo-branded eSata drive is said to have this configuration.

[GoHokies!]

Hmmm...which part of "Questions and answers on this topic can be found on the Series3 eSATA Drive Expansion: FAQ + Discussion thread (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=350510) which has already been made a sticky. To avoid yet another thread on this subject, please do not post questions or comments (beyond yes, no) here." wasn't clear? ;)
Obviously, reading comprehension isn't too strong with some folks. ;)

[stubarrett]

I voted for "no problems" but about every couple of weeks I get an unexpected reboot. Everything come back normal. I have over 150 programs in 'recently deleted'. Some features (find programs) actually run faster then before, but I doubt there is a causal relationship.

[l_emmerdeur]

Seagate Freeagent Pro 750Gb with the firmware update and an SIIG eSata cable. I've gotten 2 or 3 GSODs since then, but they recovered in about 15 minutes. I do get the occasional 3-4 second pause during playback (maybe 3-4 times per one hour episode). I am wondering if an external eSata drive with 2 HDDs in RAID0 might resolve these issues. If I'm not mistaken, the pending Tivo-branded eSata drive is said to have this configuration.

So I removed the hard drive from the Freeagent Pro enclosure (no clean way to do this, by the way, the enclosure is not made to be opened or tinkered with), and placed it in an Antec MX-1, and so far (about 5 days) the pausing has disappeared.

Also, the Freeagent Pro was hot enough to fry an egg on, which explains the behavior. The MX-1 seems to run cool.

[jfh3]

So I removed the hard drive from the Freeagent Pro enclosure (no clean way to do this, by the way, the enclosure is not made to be opened or tinkered with), and placed it in an Antec MX-1, and so far (about 5 days) the pausing has disappeared.

Can you provide some guidance on how you extracted the drive from the FAP?

[dougdingle]

Not enough choices in the poll.

How about adding:

Yes, but it's unstable and reboots from time to time for no reason.

[Televisionary]

Antec MX-1 + Seagate DB35 750GB drive working fine since the first week support was reported.

ditto!

[richsadams]

Can you provide some guidance on how you extracted the drive from the FAP?If you don't hear back it's probably a good idea to head over to the Series3 eSATA Drive Expansion: FAQ + Discussion thread (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=350510) where there's already posts about that (just recently I think) and you'll likely get more responses.

[bgreen]

If you'd like to post, please go here (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=350510). This thread is for voting only. Thanks.

[demon]

I hooked up a WD MyBook ES 500 to my Series3 as well, and other than the occasional issue where I need to mess around behind my gear, it's worked flawlessly. I've had it on for probably 5-6 months now

[megazone]

Honestly, 250GB has been plenty for me. I live alone and most of what I record isn't aired in HD anyway. I record analog at 'High', and even then I've never filled my S3.

Over time I expect more and more HD content to be available, by then TiVo will have officially support and I can just attach a drive. And price/time is in my favor.

[demon]

Honestly, 250GB has been plenty for me. I live alone and most of what I record isn't aired in HD anyway. I record analog at 'High', and even then I've never filled my S3.

Well, I recorded all of Planet Earth in HD, which filled about half the internal drive. Having channels like HDnet and DiscoveryHD, along with HD locals (as I did until a couple months ago, and soon will again) gives a fair amount of good HD content. I filled the whole thing up just before my move so I'd have plenty to watch, knowing that I wouldn't have HD cable at my disposal for awhile. Fortunately I succeeded on that count - nevermind that family stuff has kept me away from the TV most of the time over the past 2 months... :)

[TonyR]

I added a TiVo approved 500 GB expansion drive, and everything worked fine for around 2 years. :) Then I started having what appeared to be reception problems, with tiling/blocking and stuttering sound. :confused: They got worse over time, to the point where reception froze occasionally. :mad: I considered disk problems as a possible source for the problems, but reception of streaming video worked fine (e.g. YouTube and Netflix), and recording and playback of video from other sources worked fine (e.g. video imported from TiVo desktop), so that seemed unlikely. :confused:

A tech at Weaknees told me about the kickstart tests :), and those indicated a problem with my expansion drive. I copied my most important programs to an large external drive on my PC using TiVo desktop, and removed the expansion drive. TiVo did it's thing and re-initialized the system to go back to the original configuration. As TiVo warned, I lost almost all of my programs :(, but now the system works fine. My next task is collecting on my warranty for the drive :(.

[richsadams]

I added a TiVo approved 500 GB expansion drive, and everything worked fine for around 2 years. :) Yikes! How'd you find this old thread? :eek: :) You must have used the Search feature! Nice!! :up: Wish more people would.

Sorry to hear about your eSATA drive going to the great gig(abyte) in the sky. You did the right thing regarding your recordings. Various posts by others having to replace their WD My DVR Expanders indicate that Western Digital is very good about it so you shouldn't have any problems.

Not that you'll need it, but troubleshooting and other (more current) info can be found at the upgrade link below my sig.

Best of luck and let us know how it goes!

[TonyR]

Yikes! How'd you find this old thread? :eek: :) You must have used the Search feature! Nice!! :up: Wish more people would.
Yes--search took me there, and it seemed like a good place to tell my story. I didn't notice how old the thread was until after I posted. Thanks for the link!