What eSata solution are you using with your HR20?

[captainjrl]

Just wondering what everyone is using. When my HR20 arrives Saturday I plan to use a Seagate Free Agent Pro 750mb.

[TivoScott]

I have the Cavalry ext 750 GB.

[captainjrl]

An update to my setup. I actually received an HR21 which has a history of not cooperating with the Seagate FAP. That turned out to be true for me so to resolve the issue I bought an Antec MX1 external eSata enclosure and pulled the drive (not easy) out of the FAP and I have been running smoothly for almost a month.

[Matt Dralle]

I picked up a MobleStor MS2UT w/ Internal hardware RAID 0/1 ($179 at Fry's) with Two Seagate 1TB SATA Drives ($299ea at Fry's) and built an ESata RAID 0 box. Plugged it into the HR21-700 and it works great! 2TB of storage!

Once caveat is that I had to plug the MS2UT into a Windows box using the USB port and initialize the 2TB RAID 0 using NTFS. Before I did this, when the HR21-700 first talked to the RAID, the MS2UT would report a drive failure.

After I inited it in Windows, the HR21-700 was able to re-partition it and go.

2TB is a lot of space for HD recordings! :-)

I sure hate that none of your configuration is carried across from the internal drive to the external drive, though. It really sucks having to rebuilt all my Season Passes and other configuration. That's just plain weak. What dipshit programmer at DirecTV thought that was a good idea? If he worked for me, he'd find himself fired. Just plain poor programming. (Yeah, I know that there are ways of copying the internal drive to a new drive, but that's hard and completely unnecessary.) Frankly, the fact that the stupid HR21-700 doesn't just use all available disk space - internal AND external - is just plain pathetic too. Again, lazy programming.

One final note on the MS2UT. Caution when upgrading the firmware using the RS232 port. My upgrade got to 99.9% complete then hung. It rendered the MS2UT box useless. Mobilestor Tech support said RMA it back; I just took it back to Fry's and got a new one.

For a Chinese designed/manufactured box, the MS2UT is really very high quality. I took it a part last night to have a look inside and was really impressed with the quailty of components and construction. Particularly for $179. Complete with a myriad of high-quality cables too. Oh, and it takes a standard 110v power cable - not one of those annoying wall-bugs. Excellent design from a hardware/software engineer's point of view.

Matt

[PlainBill]

An argument could be made that the OS should transfer season passes. However, expecting it to use ALL drives is foolish. If that happened, if ANY drive failed you would have to start over from scratch. What the heck do you expect from a $99 appliance, anyway?

PlainBill

[ronnythunder]

and see, i think the separation of internal and external drives is brilliant. i don't like having to redo the season links and such, but it gives you the possibility of creating a "library" of external drives loaded with shows that you could plug up at any time, while not touching the internal drive.

ronny

[Matt Dralle]

and see, i think the separation of internal and external drives is brilliant. i don't like having to redo the season links and such, but it gives you the possibility of creating a "library" of external drives loaded with shows that you could plug up at any time, while not touching the internal drive.

ronny

Well, I somewhat agree, but having to redo configuration pretty much negates this value, IMHO.

But frankly, the amont of software required to 1) copy configuration, and 2) allow the user to span internal vs. external, is insignificant. From the system configuation, a user should be able to select a) use both drives, b) use internal drive only, c) use external drive only. Really, this should be an option for each recording along with the "start early", "end late", etc. The functionality is programming 101.

Matt

[Matt Dralle]

However, expecting it to use ALL drives is foolish. If that happened, if ANY drive failed you would have to start over from scratch. What the heck do you expect from a $99 appliance, anyway?
PlainBill

Since all of the user configuration appears to be stored on the in-use hard drive, if the drive eats it, the user is screwed anyway.

And as far as the $99 vs. functionality is concerned, I expect a lot. Particularly when the features are simply software. And frankly, their monopoly of the hardware market irks me. I want to spend $1000 and get a really top quality product. But, I can't. I have to suffer with the POS $99 unit that everyone has to use.

Where's the Federal Trade Commission when you need them? Off badgering Microsoft again, I suppose...

Matt

[stevel]

What DirecTV should offer, for Ethernet-connected boxes, is the ability to "save" a profile on their web site with all the Series Links, autorecord searches and favorites lists, and then be able to restore it from the web site. This would make things so much easier when boxes get replaced, though it's not a feature people would use often.

[gottahavit]

I just picked upa WD 1TB SATA this weekend for 199, and an antec mx-1 cooled case. Works very well so far, wish it was hot swapable with my hr21. I guess a reboot between drives is not too bad.