# GenieGo Hard Drive support?



## xandor (Nov 18, 2005)

I've searched but haven't been able to find anything on hard drive support for the GenieGo(Nomad).

Can anyone point me to links or information on external hard drive(s) supported by the GenieGo?


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## inkahauts (Nov 13, 2006)

I think generally people, have simply added a large flash drive for more storage.


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## PK6301 (May 16, 2012)

The GenieGo hase a 16Gb internal storage, so you can use any usb above 16Gb for more space..So for less than $50 you can double the space..

Sent from my GT-P3113 using DBSTalk mobile app


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## trh (Nov 3, 2007)

When you plug in a USB drive, it is in addition to the 16GB the box already has. So you plug in a 16GB USB drive and now you're up to 32GB on your GenieGo. And IIRC, it will format the drive when you plug it in, so ensure you don't have any files you want to keep. You can get 64GB drives for under $25, so fairly inexpensive to expand your device's storage.


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## Jacob Braun (Oct 6, 2011)

Officially it's up to 1TB drives (I don't know why up to 2TB wouldn't be usable, but I don't have a GenieGo). I'm trying to find where that is publicly available, and not having any luck. I can't find anything that corroborates this. All of the DirecTV pages show to hook a hard drive up to it, nothing about a maximum size.


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## dennisj00 (Sep 27, 2007)

I think some guys tried 1TB drives and they worked, but found fairly quickly that it was a waste of hard drive. A 32 or 64gb usb drive gives lots of geniego space.


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## The Merg (Jun 24, 2007)

I have a portable 320GB drive connected without issue.


- Merg

Sent from my iPad using DBSTalk mobile app


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## Go Beavs (Nov 18, 2008)

The Merg said:


> I have a portable 320GB drive connected without issue.
> 
> - Merg
> 
> Sent from my iPad using DBSTalk mobile app


Same here. I never get close to filling it up though.


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## Mike_TV (Jan 17, 2006)

160 GB drive here that stays about half full most of the time.


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

When figuring out how much storage you might need, remember that a show will only stay in Genie Go storage as long as it's also still on the HR it came from. Shortly after a show is deleted from the HR, it disappears from "Ready To Download".

16GB of internal GenieGo storage holds about 20-25 hours of content, IIRC.


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## Stuart Sweet (Jun 19, 2006)

Given the figure of 700MB - 1GB per hour of programming, even your garden variety 500GB drive would give you 500-600 hours of programming. Now, keep in mind an average person is awake about 480 hours in a 30-day period. How could you possibly watch that much programming before its 30 day expiration? 

Also keeping in mind that it transcodes in real time, in order to fill that drive it would need to be transcoding almost constantly.

I mean it's great that the thing is expandable to a ridiculous degree but let's call it what it is.


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## RAD (Aug 5, 2002)

Stuart Sweet said:


> Given the figure of 700MB - 1GB per hour of programming, even your garden variety 500GB drive would give you 500-600 hours of programming. Now, keep in mind an average person is awake about 480 hours in a 30-day period. How could you possibly watch that much programming before its 30 day expiration?
> 
> Also keeping in mind that it transcodes in real time, in order to fill that drive it would need to be transcoding almost constantly.
> 
> I mean it's great that the thing is expandable to a ridiculous degree but let's call it what it is.


Who says you have to watch a transcoded program within 30 days, isn't that only once it's copied to a portable device?

I have a 1TB drive on mine, and have GenieGo transcode just about everything that we record. That way if we want to take some movie or show that we haven't watched yet it's already to download in a few minutes.


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## dennisj00 (Sep 27, 2007)

One busy GenieGo!


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## peds48 (Jan 11, 2008)

Given the figure of 700MB - 1GB per hour of programming, even your garden variety 500GB drive would give you 500-600 hours of programming. Now, keep in mind an average person is awake about 480 hours in a 30-day period. How could you possibly watch that much programming before its 30 day expiration? 

Also keeping in mind that it transcodes in real time, in order to fill that drive it would need to be transcoding almost constantly.

I mean it's great that the thing is expandable to a ridiculous degree but let's call it what it is.


also let's not forget that most mobile devices (tablets, smartphones) don't have that much memory to hold that much content


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## peds48 (Jan 11, 2008)

Given the figure of 700MB - 1GB per hour of programming, even your garden variety 500GB drive would give you 500-600 hours of programming. Now, keep in mind an average person is awake about 480 hours in a 30-day period. How could you possibly watch that much programming before its 30 day expiration? 

Also keeping in mind that it transcodes in real time, in order to fill that drive it would need to be transcoding almost constantly.

I mean it's great that the thing is expandable to a ridiculous degree but let's call it what it is.


also let's not forget that most mobile devices (tablets, smartphones) don't have that much memory to hold that much content


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## peds48 (Jan 11, 2008)

Given the figure of 700MB - 1GB per hour of programming, even your garden variety 500GB drive would give you 500-600 hours of programming. Now, keep in mind an average person is awake about 480 hours in a 30-day period. How could you possibly watch that much programming before its 30 day expiration? 

Also keeping in mind that it transcodes in real time, in order to fill that drive it would need to be transcoding almost constantly.

I mean it's great that the thing is expandable to a ridiculous degree but let's call it what it is.


also let's not forget that most mobile devices (tablets, smartphones) don't have that much memory to hold that much content


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## dennisj00 (Sep 27, 2007)

You didn't have to say it three times!

But my 128Gb iPad can carry more than any of us can watch!


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## peds48 (Jan 11, 2008)

You didn't have to say it three times!

But my 128Gb iPad can carry more than any of us can watch!


opps, there must been a glitch. 128GB is "nothing" once you start downloading apps, documents, pictures, music. I have a 64GB iPad and I have 5GB left for "everything else"


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

Like RAD said, you want enough storage to provide choice of what you want to watch when you want to take it with you, especially when there may be multiple Genie client users in the home with different tastes. For some households that's 16GB, for other households it's more.


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## Beerstalker (Feb 9, 2009)

Stuart Sweet said:


> Given the figure of 700MB - 1GB per hour of programming, even your garden variety 500GB drive would give you 500-600 hours of programming. Now, keep in mind an average person is awake about 480 hours in a 30-day period. How could you possibly watch that much programming before its 30 day expiration?
> 
> Also keeping in mind that it transcodes in real time, in order to fill that drive it would need to be transcoding almost constantly.
> 
> I mean it's great that the thing is expandable to a ridiculous degree but let's call it what it is.


The 30 day expiration is only for recordings on the portable device. They will stay on the internal drive/USB drive of the Nomad/Genie Go as long as they are still on your DVR. I have some transcoded recordings on my Nomad from over a year ago because they are still on my DVR also.

I have my Nomad set up to automatically transcode every TV show that I record. So as soon as an episode is done recording the Nomad starts transcoding it. Then whenever I am getting ready to go somewhere I start up the Nomad app on my iPad and everything is already transcoded and waiting for me, so I just have to choose whatever recordings I want to take with me and tell them to transfer to my iPad. I can usually transfer about 20 hours worth of recordings to my iPad in around an hour while I am getting packed up etc.


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

FWIW, I added a 32GB USB stick to my GenieGo device. That brought my total available storage up to 44.93GB. I currently have 13 hours of programs in "Ready To Download", and my PC client system info is reporting I have 37.29GB free, so about 600MB per hour.

By that math, looks like something like this $60, 128GB memory stick would be more than enough storage to keep a GenieGO in sync with a full Genie's worth of HD recordings (200 hours).


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## nuspieds (Aug 9, 2008)

Is there a way to confirm that it is actually using the attached USB drive and how much space has been used thus far?


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## trh (Nov 3, 2007)

nuspieds said:


> Is there a way to confirm that it is actually using the attached USB drive and how much space has been used thus far?


Not sure about other clients, but on the PC client, in the top right corner there is an info button that will tell how much total storage and how much is in use.


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## nuspieds (Aug 9, 2008)

trh said:


> Not sure about other clients, but on the PC client, in the top right corner there is an info button that will tell how much total storage and how much is in use.


Thanks!

That works because I'm using PC.


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## willardcpa (Jun 5, 2007)

Beerstalker said:


> The 30 day expiration is only for recordings on the portable device. They will stay on the internal drive/USB drive of the Nomad/Genie Go as long as they are still on your DVR. I have some transcoded recordings on my Nomad from over a year ago because they are still on my DVR also.
> 
> I have my Nomad set up to automatically transcode every TV show that I record. So as soon as an episode is done recording the Nomad starts transcoding it. Then whenever I am getting ready to go somewhere I start up the Nomad app on my iPad and everything is already transcoded and waiting for me, so I just have to choose whatever recordings I want to take with me and tell them to transfer to my iPad. I can usually transfer about 20 hours worth of recordings to my iPad in around an hour while I am getting packed up etc.


How did you set up your nomad to "automatically transcode every TV show that I record" I can't locate this in either settings, or help, or system info.
Thanks


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## Mike_TV (Jan 17, 2006)

willardcpa said:


> How did you set up your nomad to "automatically transcode every TV show that I record" I can't locate this in either settings, or help, or system info.
> Thanks


Right now you have to manually select each show individually.


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## Beerstalker (Feb 9, 2009)

Mike_TV said:


> Right now you have to manually select each show individually.


Exactly.

I have the Genie Go client on my Desktop PC and leave it running 24/7. I have checked all TV series that we record so they all auto download to the PC. So whenever a show is done recording the PC client sees it and then tells the Genie Go to start transcoding it. Once it's done transcoding it transfers to my PC. However, the transcoded file stays on the Genie Go (or the USB drive) even after it was transferred to my PC, so after it is done transcoding it will just stay there until it gets deleted from whatever DVR recorded it. That makes it so whenever I load up the Geni Go app on my iPhone or iPads everything is already transcoded and wiating on my Genie Go. All I have to do is select the shows I want to transfer to that device and they start transferring right away (I don't have to wait for them to transcode since that was already done for the PC client). So now instead of having to wait an hour and 5 minutes for a 1 hour show to transcode and transfer to my iPad, I only have to wait 5 minutes.


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## markrogo (Sep 18, 2007)

Beerstalker said:


> Exactly.
> 
> I have the Genie Go client on my Desktop PC and leave it running 24/7. I have checked all TV series that we record so they all auto download to the PC. So whenever a show is done recording the PC client sees it and then tells the Genie Go to start transcoding it. Once it's done transcoding it transfers to my PC. However, the transcoded file stays on the Genie Go (or the USB drive) even after it was transferred to my PC, so after it is done transcoding it will just stay there until it gets deleted from whatever DVR recorded it. That makes it so whenever I load up the Geni Go app on my iPhone or iPads everything is already transcoded and wiating on my Genie Go. All I have to do is select the shows I want to transfer to that device and they start transferring right away (I don't have to wait for them to transcode since that was already done for the PC client). So now instead of having to wait an hour and 5 minutes for a 1 hour show to transcode and transfer to my iPad, I only have to wait 5 minutes.


It's silly that you need to hack it that way; but that's a pretty awesome hack.


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

Beerstalker said:


> *I have the Genie Go client on my Desktop PC and leave it running 24/7. * I have checked all TV series that we record so they all auto download to the PC. So whenever a show is done recording the PC client sees it and then tells the Genie Go to start transcoding it. Once it's done transcoding it transfers to my PC. However, the transcoded file stays on the Genie Go (or the USB drive) even after it was transferred to my PC, so after it is done transcoding it will just stay there until it gets deleted from whatever DVR recorded it. *That makes it so whenever I load up the Geni Go app on my iPhone or iPads everything is already transcoded and wiating on my Genie Go. *


Unless there's a reason you want all the transcoded shows on the PC all the time, there's no need to keep the PC client up and running 24/7. Once you've made all your "auto-download" selections, the GenieGo device will transcode them on its own. When you eventually do fire up the PC client, you'll be presented with a list of any new transcodes for downloading now or later. And as far as your iOS clients go, you'll still find those shows in "ready to download" on those clients.


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## nuspieds (Aug 9, 2008)

Steve said:


> Unless there's a reason you want all the transcoded shows on the PC all the time, there's no need to keep the PC client up and running 24/7. Once you've made all your "auto-download" selections, the GenieGo device will transcode them on its own. When you eventually do fire up the PC client, you'll be presented with a list of any new transcodes for downloading now or later. And as far as your iOS clients go, you'll still find those shows in "ready to download" on those clients.


Yep, that's how it works for me and it's great!

While I'm away/disconnected, the GenieGO continues to do its job and when I return/reconnect, fire up the client, then I all I need to do is select what I want downloaded.


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