# R15 disk problem



## alagator (Sep 6, 2012)

Can someone clear something up for me? Recently had a disk failure on my 6 year old R15. Tech came to the house and confirmed my contention that the disk was failing. (Don't ask what phone support said it was.) He replaced my receiver with what I assume was a refurb and we're in business. My question stems from what he told me about the USB port on the receiver. He said I could just plug in an external drive and reset the receiver and it would recognize and use the external drive. I had read and researched this previously and thought it was not supported. So I went ahead and tried and it failed. Is this possible with this receiver and does it matter if the drive has a file system installed. I have used this one under Windows and Ubuntu it is formatted as an EXT4 volume but has plenty of space available.

T.I.A.
Gator


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## jimmie57 (Jun 26, 2010)

From my recollection when I had one of these, the USB port said "For future use" in my manual.
The HD DVRs do not use the USB either. It must be an eSata drive.


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## alagator (Sep 6, 2012)

That is what I understood, and I mentioned that to the tech. He said it was not documented but was functional.


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## ThomasM (Jul 20, 2007)

Your technician doesn't know what he is talking about.

The USB port on the R15 series is a "control" port and can be used to control or monitor the functions of the DVR with a computer. There is a document from DirecTV that details all the commands and functions of this port. It is available on this system if you look around for it but if you are lazy and really want to experiment with this port, send me a private message and I'll point you to the document. If you just want to connect an external drive, that isn't possible on the R15 series and even if you replace the internal drive (a 160 Mb PATA) with a larger drive you'll still get 100 hours of recording time.


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