Missing External Storage

[Sturmie]

i have a 500gb WD drive in an "approved" Azio enclosure that has been working for ~1 year now and all of a sudden, my S3 won't recognize the external storage. i hooked up the enclosure to my PC via eSATA and it seems to see it fine...i could initialize the drive in Windows and/or format it, but i didn't. i swapped out the eSATA cable as well and nada...the S3 still doesn't see it.

any ideas?

[Sturmie]

anyone? if the drive is recognized by Windows, would it be the eSATA port on the Tivo that's the problem then?

[oViTynoT]

You may have to re-marry it.

[Sturmie]

thanks...that's what i was afraid of.

oh well, i'll give it a shot and post my results back here when i'm done.

[Slime]

Good luck - I had a similar problem, however Windows wouldnt reliably recognize the drive (I rebooted Windows a few times to make sure it connected each time).

I ended up going with an internal upgrade and the WD My DVR Expander is now in bits on my table... :(

[Sturmie]

well, i tried to proceed with the Tivo startup without the storage and then went into re-marry...it says that it doesn't recognize any external storage device :(.

i hooked it back up to the PC and the WD Diag error checking got stuck on a certain sector, so i am now in the middle of writing zeros to the entire drive.

[oViTynoT]

it says that it doesn't recognize any external storage device .Of course it will. It will ALWAYS say that unless you're using the vaunted "My DVR Expander" from WD.

[Sturmie]

Of course it will. It will ALWAYS say that unless you're using the vaunted "My DVR Expander" from WD.
i thought the S3's weren't picky about the storage...do i have to use the kickstart method like i had to when i first set up the external drive on this S3?

[oViTynoT]

They'll complain, but allow you to "mount" the storage anyway....

The kickstart method is a thing of the past. It's now fully integrated into the software.

[Teeps]

I've had this happen after a power outage.

Try a hard reboot, that is unplug TiVo, allow the drive to stop; then plug it back in. That has fixed this problem for me 2 times after power outage.

[Sturmie]

well, after hours of writing zeros to the drive, everything completed successfully, however, when i ran the quick test on the drive, it failed...i can only assume that the drive is bad :(.

[benh57]

It was likely just the cable not plugged in right or units out of sync. I sometimes have to plug, replug, turn on, off the tivo and DVR expander several times in various sequences after a power outage or fluctuation for it to be recognized. 90% likelihood of that over a hardware failure.

[Sturmie]

well, got the replacement drive from WD today and everything seems to be working fine now...guess it was a hard drive failure.

[cdoug512]

I awoke to the "external storage missing" message on my TivoHD this morning. Finally works again after removing the Antec external storage case and vacuuming out all the little dust bunnies. I assume it was overheating and thus failing.